The other night, I had a dream. I am not sure what my dream was about, but it had this color combo in it... go figure! :

Not Quite Navy

Old Olive

Soft Sky

Sahara Sand (as neutral)

Close to Cocoa

In my dream, the OO and SS looked amazing used together... Anyway, I needed to make a card for my nephew's birthday and those seemed to be pretty good colors for a boy card ( I have such a hard time with those). I used the Bronc Buster SU! set, the cardstock mentioned above, NQN and CC inks, distressing tool, Natural Hemp Twine, Martha Stewart brown twill tape and a little pebble.

I just got my Scor-pal and wanted to make a tri-fold card or "gate card".

I can't wait to try more projects with this little gadget.

I borrowed my mom's camera, again (super nice camera), since my camera is old and doesn't seem to capture the clarity and color hers does. I had fun snapping a bunch of pictures of the kids so I could finally fill my picture frames I got for Christmas in '05. I just can't decide if I want to do B/W or color... they are a dark walnut stain... 2 frames. I think I will hang one vertically and one horizontally. I am trying to attach some of the pics for your opinion but for some reason it's not working... will try again soon.

Inspiration

It's funny the things that bring creativity to our brains... what sparks our imagination. This past weekend I had a chance to browse the Pottery Barn Teen catalog- there are quite a few "inspiration" pieces in there. So I dog-eared a few pages in hopes that I would have an opportunity to translate what I saw in this publication into a greeting card. The first card I made was inspired by this fabric on this "Lounge 'n Chair" .

It was also a great opportunity to finally ink up my new SU! Enjoy the Moment stamp set. I have to say I was a bit surprised at how nicely and perfectly the word inked up. The ink just covered it so nicely! I was also able to use my Die-Cut Blooms. The base of the card is Old Olive cardstock. I layered a piece of textured purely pomegranate and Cuttlebugged chocolate chip cardstock. The flower layers are Flower Fusion and die-cut blooms with a pink rhinestone brad in the middle. The 2 ribbons are striped grosgrain (pumpkin pie) and the old 3/8" tangerine grosgrain. "Enjoy" was stamped in chocolate chip classic ink and the center was stamped with Pumpkin pie and Purely pomegranate on Whisper white cs backed with the DSP Summer Picnic available in the current Occasions mini. I used a small brown brad in the corner.

Besides having a great time making cards, I had the opportunity to spend a little time in my garden. I feel like I was given a gift from God. I have been cutting roses and giving them away to special people as little gifts but have not cut any for myself~ until today. Aren't they amazingly beautiful!?! Every rose is a different kind, color and fragrance! I took a few photos of my roses and actually found the most interesting insect on one of the roses... Check this out:

Isn't he cool? (click on the picture to see it up close)

Each rose plant is different~ I have 47 rose bushes. Some have the most fragrant petals, some are huge! and some are so delicate. Everyday is a surprise as to what will have bloomed. Several bushes are full of flowers and some haven't even bloomed yet but have dozens of buds just waiting to take center stage.

Check out the color and size of this flower! That is my hand next to it! It totally looks like I did some fancy photoshopping on it- I don't even have a program like that! It's amazing. I love it~ had no idea how much I would cherish my garden when we bought this place.

Anyways, have a wonderful day and don't forget to stop and smell the roses!

Well, I finally cleaned my house! I don't know why it has been so hard for me to get my "rear in gear"! I guess 3 little kids making a mess of what I just cleaned could be part of it... Fortunately, I have a great hubby who can look past the mess and unorganization of the house. He once told me that he could care less about what the house looked like if he new the kids and I had a great day and a good time making the mess! Isn't that sweet! And it's like my s-i-l once told me... "the house will always be a mess but the kids will only be little once!" But sometimes it just gets out of control and it has to be done!

I did get the card for my great uncle made- it couldn't have turned out better! I have pictures on the camera but my hubby has the camera on his trip right now... so I will post pics of it when he gets back. In the mean time, I will share some more scrapbook pages that I did awhile ago. I am definitely going to make at least one card today- I got my SU order and my "Hey There, Cupcake" from Stampendous. Can't wait to play!

I have got to get things done!

Ok, I had taken such a long break from crafting (over a year) that now that I am back into it I want to do nothing else but craft. Well, my house is a disaster! I have got to do something about it. So I am only allowing myself one project for the rest of the week: a vintage style Hawaiian birthday card for my great uncle who is turning like 88 or something. I have this old little picture of him in his Army uniform with 2 Hawaiian models. Very cool picture! I love pictures from the 40's! So I made a digital copy and am planning on making some sort of collage style card with it and some postcards I picked up in Hawaii of vintage Hawaii posters. Since that is my only project I thought I would share with you some of my scrapbook pages that I made a little while ago (my last project before the big move).

I hired a photographer (in '96) to take some pictures of my kids down at the beach (when we lived in Huntington Beach) for Christmas for my husband and family. The pictures were stunning! These are the pages I made with those pics. Enjoy!

Ziploc Purse Tutorial

During this past weekends VSN (virtual stamping night) at Splitcoast, I made the purse seen in my earlier post. In the comments section some very nice lady asked if there would be a tutorial on my blog. I hadn't thought to do that but will give it a shot. So... Ladies, here we go~ my very first tutorial!

For this project you will need the following items:

• 1 Quart size Ziploc bag
  



• 2 sheets double sided paper (DSP)




• 12" ribbon




• 2 brads




• Mono-multi adhesive




• sticky strip




• 1/16" hole punch




• oval cutter (I used the Creative Memories cutting system)




• Scoring tool




• embellishments

Step 1

• Cut the front piece of DSP to 7 1/4" x 9"






• Cut the back piece of DSP to 7 1/4" x 12"

Step 2

• Score the back piece @ 9"

Step 3

• Using an oval cutting system, cut half of an oval~ lining it up with the score line (do not cut past the score line)

You may need to snip the edges:

Step 4

• Line the ziploc's edges with the sticky tape, front and back. On the top of the bag, put down the sticky tape just above the ziploc closure.

Step 5

• Remove the bottom strip lining on the back of the bag and adhere to the back piece of cardstock.




• Remove the side pieces and then the top





• Repeat for the top, making sure the top lines up just slightly underneath the score line.

Step 6

• Fold flap over, making sure it folds nicely

Step 7

• Punch holes for the ribbon in the upper corners of the top flap






• Attach the ribbon handle (see finished product picture so see how it looks attached)

Step 8

• Make a decorative closure




• Attach half of it permanently onto the flap




• Spread around some mono adhesive to the unattached half and let completely dry (making it tacky for closing)

Step 9

• Decorate and embelish






• Fill and give to someone special!

Ziploc purse

One of the VSN Challenges was to make a purse using a paper lunch bag. Since I don't have any of those I decided to use a quart size ziploc bag instead. When I completed my "purse", I realized the possibilities this little bag held. What a perfect Hostess gift (for you SU! demos) ~ you could fill it with precut cardstock, ribbon, little accessories, etc... It could even be filled with ready-to-make cards leftover from previous camps. You could even put some small yummy things inside~ obviously you couldn't stuff it too full since the paper doesn't have any "give".

I will take pictures of each easy step while making another so I can do a tutorial to show you how simple and fun it is to make. As for the tutorial for something super cute that I mentioned in my previous post, I am researching a little more trying to make sure that I am not claiming somebody else's idea as my own. So far I haven't seen anything like it.

We are trying to redo our garden and still getting our veggie garden ready for planting so I haven't had a ton of time to craft... I will get these done for you soon! Have a good rest of your weekend!

I did get to play more! VSN is a lot of fun! I just wish I had a computer down my craft area so I could participate more in the dialog and see more of what everyone else was doing. I guess I can do that later. Between getting dinner made and cleaned up and everybody ready for bed I was able to do 2 more challenges.


The first one (second challenge today) was to have stitching on it and since I was not going to drag out my sewing machine and set it up I did the faux stitching technique (paper piercing and connecting the dots with pen). The colors used were Basic Gray, Soft Sky and Wild Wasabi. The stamp sets used were Live your Dreams (available in the current Occasions Mini Catalog) and En Francais. I used some older DSP (my goal is to start using all of this paper that I have and not buy any new paper~ unless I have to have it!) The accessories used were the photo corner punch, paper piercing mat pack, basic gray taffeta ribbon, 1 3/8" circle punch, a marvy scallop punch and some fun little pebbles that I got the other day.

Anyways, I will share with you the other VSN project I made tomorrow (or later today I guess since it is 1 am... I am a bonehead!)

Plus, I created a fun new thing (I think it's new- I haven't seen it before) that I would love to show to you and perhaps do my first ever tutorial! Check back.

So I am hopefully going to attempt a few of the VSN challenges over at Splitcoast today/tomorrow. Hopefully the family cooperates (questionable). Plus, it's been beautiful outside- I don't want to spend all my time down in the cold dark basement... just part of it. I had a few minutes so I tried the first challenge which was to make a card inspired by this dress:

Wow! It's a bright one. Can't say I would ever wear it- but I can be inspired by it. I don't have a spectrum pad and I wasn't "feeling" the black & brights combo. So this is what I came up with:

So, I am sure you can really see all the simillarities (I never can remember how to spell that...). Ya! Just in case you can't (insert sarcasm):

• The bold colors- mine are just a little muted in comparison.
• The top flower's petals reminded me of the dress's wings (don't think I have any dresses with wings... will have to get me one of them!)
• The line art on the print of the dress and my background paper.
• The orange strip is kinda like the neck of the dress.

So, clear as mud? Hopefully I will get more done... by the way, my house is still a mess!

Good to be back... again.

We had a great week with our friends! It was so good to be together and see the kids rekindle their friendships.

So since I was having such a wonderful time with good friends I didn't have time to make anything. While doing other things I did come up with some ideas that will be fun to put on paper.

This is one of them:

I finally rec'd my CB folder "swiss dots" and have just about "dotted" every piece of paper around! I LOVE it! The card base is Chocolate Chip cardstock folded so it opens upwards. The green paper is adhesive backed textured paper my mom gave me(it's from Quickcutz)- I embossed it with the dots and then sanded the top to show the white core. I love this color- it's not quite an olive color (when side by side with SU!'s olive) but has more of a kiwi color added into it. I finally put together my Doodle This set that I have had forever! I stamped the swirly in Old Olive Classic ink on a whisper white piece of cardstock and backed it with chocolate chip. I put together the flowers from the Flower Fusion felt flowers and used brown brads to adhere them together. The Purely Pomegranate cardstock is also "dotted" and then wrapped with the double stitched ribbon. The bottom has a little brown pebble just give some more dimension. The inside is lined with Purely Pomegranate and Whisper White cardstock to write on. The inside sentiment I used is from Time Well Spent ("time spent with friends is time well spent"). I am sending this to my friend that was just up for a visit. I miss her already!

I hope to be back tomorrow! I have missed some great SCS challenges that I would love to catch up on. But I have a ton of cleaning to do now- so we'll see where my priorities are tomorrow!