It been a while

Life has been so busy lately. Holidays, vacations, house hunting. I haven't even been able to post on my blog or read other blogs.  November til now has been a whirlwind.  Lots of fun times but I think I need a cruise....a total relaxation from everything, where someone waits on me, cleans my room and cooks for me then does the dishes.  I guess I shouldn't complain as I have had 3 lovely vacations since November, but all of them required me to cook or clean or wash dishes. I just want some time to do nothing but read or sew.... Maybe it's the house hunting between working my two 16 hr day shifts. Ok, enough of the complaining, after all it is Valentine's Day and I have an amazing hubby and a wonderful life.  I designed a pretty little embossed card for my sweetie. It's hard to see the watermark hearts in the background on the red paper. The gold embossed hearts and love match the gold embossed saying on the inside. The red embossed heart is on pop dots to give the 3D effect.
I couldn't resist the cute bunny holding the heart for the envelope.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day.

Mom's Birthday

I love my Mom dearly.  She was a wonderful Mom to grow up with. She is very talented in sewing and crafts. She made most of our clothes when we were kids (there are 6 of us). She also made my Dad's shirts and her own clothes. Costume for Halloween? OK. Fancy dinner? Need a nice dress? No Problem! Prom? What kind of dress do you want? She even made my wedding dress. I picked out the pattern and fabric, put in in the mail to her and it was just as beautiful as I had imagined. She is also very good with crafts and we always had the cutest (or scariest for Halloween) decorations for the holidays. She is a good cook too. Nothing fancy, but the best pot roast or meatloaf around and nobody does mashed potatoes like Mom. She even made sure we knew how to sew and cook. I still think I was very lucky to be born into my family. We might be a little quirky and we might like to have animated discussions, but we all love each other and are there for each other.
Talking about quirkiness (is that a word??), my Mom HATES with a passion, to celebrate her birthday. Not really sure why that is, but it is. Despite that fact, I just can't completely ignore her birthday. I have long ago realized I dare not buy a gift (she will be downright mad if you buy a gift), but since I make handmade cards I send her one each year. It almost never says "Happy Birthday" 'cause she definitely would take offense, but it usually suggests it. I was at a scrapbook convention a couple weeks ago and saw some awesome rubber stamps. I just couldn't resist. So I bought a few and used them to make a card for my Mom. This lady was just irresistable. I had to have her for my Mom's card. Take a look:

(notice it says Have a Wonderful Day.....no mention of birthday)

I think the window stamp is awesome and I look forward to making many cards using it. If you like it too, the company that makes it (and bunches of other cool stuff) is Art Impressions. The lady is called Birthday Girl F&B and the window is called Garden. You can find them at www.artimpressions.com
They have no idea that I am blogging about them, but they deserve the credit for these!

Thanks for visiting and I hope you will be back for the Red, White and Blue blog hop where I get to show off my stuff tomorrow (There is a blog hop schedule on my previous post and I will post the remainder of the hop schedule tomorrow).

I can say it here (since Mom doesn't ever use a computer and she won't see it): Happy Birthday, Mom !!

Mother's Day is fast approaching!

I enjoy making handmade cards. Mother's Day is almost here, so it was time to design a card to send to my Mom and my Mother-in-law.
I started with 8 1/2" x 11" piece of white cardstock folded in half for the card.  Using a 5" x 8 1/2" piece of pink cardstock, I punched around using Martha Stewart's Deco Shell corner punch and edge punch. On the 3 1/4" x 5" piece of yellow cardstock, I used just the corner punch. Then I topped it with a  3 1/4" x 3 1/4" piece of pink cardstock punched using both the corner and edge punch. I wanted to try a new edge punch I had purchased that could also be used to make flowers. It's called Dimensional Flower by EK Success. I punched 2 pieces of 11" marroon cardstock, glued them on top of each each other 1/2 petal off center and twirled on a pencil into a spiral. The yellow flower centers are yellow cardstock cut with Martha Stewart's fringe scissors and twirled into a spiral. Flower stamens were added to the center. The wording "Mom" and "Happy Mother's Day" were cut with the Cricut cartridge Mothers Day, using the marroon and yellow cardstock.  A 1" x 11" piece of pink cardstock was edge punched  and attached inside the card as a decorative finish.  I hope you like the results.

inside

Thanks for visiting.

Woo hoo, I have a business card !

I guess it must have been meant to be.... I almost never (never say never) read the sports section of the newspaper, but Friday I scanned the front page of sports. There it was, an ad for 100 free color business cards. No catch other than coming into Office Depot with the ad and designing your business card. I had to do it! I convinced my DH to come with me and help me to design it. I am so excited to show you! I really like how it turned out. Yeah!!

I also added a calendar of sorts to my blog on the right side, so I can list the scrapbooking, card making and other classes I teach. October's calendar is listed, November's will be up around the middle of October.

It's Been CRAZY

     Sorry for such a delay in posting.
     School started on August 22nd and it's been CRAZY busy. Everything I learned about uploading photos to my blog got lost in the filing system of my brain. I think I need a new filing system .... something where I don't "lose" the new stuff just because I can't remember where I filed it. I still can't find the "file" on uploading photos yet, but I did want to post. I will ask my DH tonight to help me upload a photo or two to this post.(It's really not fun to read a post without some visual).
     I worked on a last minute, "make it with what you have with you in the camper" birthday card for a camping friend. I knew I was in charge of making the cake (which I baked and decorated in our little travel trailer), but for some reason thought someone was bringing a card. When I realized that didn't happen, I couldn't very well let our dear friend go without a card. So I made one for her from the stash I brought with to make samples for a display for classes I was teaching. The card and the cake turned out cute, so I took some photos to post..... hopefully tonight DH will get them up on here for me.

Well, I need to get off the computer for a while so I can go to the post office and mail a birthday card to my youngest grandbaby. Shannon will be 1 on Monday. Maybe DH will help me post the photo of her card also.

BTW, if you are a quilter, you should check out Madame Samm's blogspot, sewwequilt.blogspot.com It is an amazing blog with amazing guest bloggers talking about all kinds of quilting info. Facinating and fun!