Neighbor gifts early!

We usually wait until the week of Christmas and bring our neighbors homemade goodies. Some years it was Christmas cookies that we decorate. Soooo much fun! Other years it has been homemade bread and homemade jam. But it is always very close to Christmas when life is a little busy. Last year my hubby said, "Why can't we do this sooner?" So this year we are! We are doing it tonight! We made advent calendars from mini muffin tins. I got the idea here. Then I added a bit to it. Inside each muffin cup is chocolate and a strip of paper with a kind activity. "Make someone's bed." "Give your dad a hug." and so on. Small things kids can do.

You might also notice there are only 24 muffin holes. What do you do on Christmas? Well, the numbers are off, the chocolates are gone. Take the ribbon off and make muffins!!! We included a homemade (the kids loved pouring in the ingredients) cranberry ginger muffin mix.

I did change a little from the original. I used business card magnets. Cut them to 2x2 and since they were sticky, just put the paper right on. Oh and since I did not buy the Wilton pans, I had to punch holes with my giant crop-a-dial. Boy was my hubby impressed!

The kids are stoked to go delivering to the neighbors tonight. And since I made 8 of these, a few other people might see them on their doorsteps too.

All things red for my mom

My mom loves red!!! So here is an early Christmas gift for her. (80 ornaments!)

My dear friend Becky sent me a link for this beautiful wreath - so not my original idea! http://www.eddieross.com/eddie_ross/crafts/page/2/Oh and a red gift for dad!

This is a tag I made for a tag swap with my girlfriends the other night. What a great night of stress relief with those fabulous ladies. Punches used were the large oval, large heart, three flower punch, star punch and martha stewart branch punch.

This was my second tag. Inspired by my wonderful husband. You can't see it but the dress is a beautiful sparkly red with Spica pens!

Happiness!

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back tomorrow to post the Christmas gift we are taking to our neighbors. More homemade goodies.

At least this one is not blonde.

Ok, it is another mermaid girl BUT a different stamp company AND she is not blonde. Actually this little cutie comes from All That Scraps and she is a digi image. They send them through e-mail and you can print as many as you want. Easy Storage and no smoodges. BUT I thought I could layer and the images are in this block that does not let you layer and then print. Someone told my to try photoshop but I have not yet. For now I did the old fashioned scissors for each of these. Also, I used a laser printer and not ink jet. I'll have to try the ink jet to see how it react with the copics. Yup, used those to color everything. Old SU ric rac, SU brads and paper too and a little crytstal effects for the pearls though I wish I had liquid pearls. Hmm.

I hope to post my workshop cards after the girls come to play tomorrow night. But no promises since I have to go see my brand new niece who will be born tomorrow and oh yea, that vacation thing. Life is crazy!

She's always blonde!

Seems like I have a hard time finding time. Three kids home for the summer means lots of cleaning and lots of hungry tummies, all the time, for both! BUT, I do stamp on occassion with some dear friends who lend me their stamps. These are from

Pink Cat Studio. I stamped several images to bring home and color. I grab my copics and images and color for about 10 minutes at a time when I am procrastinating on either feeding children or cleaning house. Are you seeing a trend here? This time I also used my Spica pens that have glass flecks to create the shimmer. Can you see it in the first photo?

Then of course, the girls I color always end up being blonde. Can't imagine why. *giggle** We just have more fun. I will have more of these pictures to share as Kylah was kind enough to share her stamps with me. (She entered some cool contest and won free stuff with her beautiful artwork! You can see the deets on her blog.) And I promise to not make them ALL blonde.

Try something new

I have to admit that I have slowly slipped in the Copic world. I tried to resist but now I am having so much fun. I get a couple at a time and slowly build a collection. If you are not sure what copic markers are check out this blog. http://ilikemarkers.blogspot.com/

Basically a REALLY cool marker that I love to color with. The card above was one of my first attempts. I have ben playing and practicing since and love them even more. You might see some more samples to come. My only problem is, most of the people I color are blonde! Imagine that. I forget they can be other colors. :)

The second picture are scissor charms I made for a stamping group. I took the SU designer brads and drilled tiny holes in them with my hand drill then put them on those cool jewelry strings I got from Michael's. Cute way to mark your scissors when everyone else has the same ones!

Still a secret

Remember, this is still not a blog post. I am not updating my pathetic blog. BUT... I will show you some pics of things I made. :) These were thank you gifts for teachers. Some were the kids teachers and some were teachers in the schools that had VERY kindly helped me with some of my teacher recertification hours. I made the bread holders usuing the cute BS basket die and making it longer. I really can't wait to show my club girls how to make it. STINKIN' CUTE! Then I decorated them of course!!! Wish I had taken pics of the cards but who had time to think with all the baking I did to fill the stinkin' cute baskets. I hope they liked them. Even if they did not like the bread, the baskets were way fun!

Remember, don't tell anyone I am sharing pics. :)

shhh....

This is not really a post. Nope, it's your imagination since it has been so long. :) Here is a two page layout for the scrap class I was teaching. The letters are Cuttlebug dies and the buttons are from Walmart. The Orange dots that are drawn are soufle pens I found and are just a little puffy when you use them. Really fun!

If you promise not to tell anyone I posted I might have another one tomorrow. Shhhh!

What? Not sharing?

Where did those promised posts go? Out the window! I should know better than to promise anything regarding this blog! Life just gets crazy and well... a girl has to prioritize.

So have I been stamping? YES!!! My messy desk proves it!
It started with the name tag I made for my weekend away. I went to Stamp New England with some fabulous crafting friends. If I took ALL my crafting friends we could have filled the place ourselves!!! The flower is a SU Big Shot die that I used and made one for each of the gals from Keene.

These are the fabulous gals. We stamped and ate and laughed and did I mention laugh? Oh it was divine!!! Well of course I had to stamp up a swap before I left so I could get in on the goodies from the other gals and since it was not all Stampin' Up! (I know you are gasping!) That would be the card at the top. Love that Elzy Bell stamp.




Of course there were gifts for those fabulous girls above. I made each one a different three drawer set made with the new matchbox die. Two drawers were filled with chocolates and one drawer had a monogramed keychain for each girly that I soldered.

Then for dear roomie for the night I made up a little toiletry package with chocolates that matched the pink! LOVE when that happens!!!!

When I got back from the weekend I had a workshop to plan for. The idea had been perculating for some time but I just had to put it all together. Being the last week of SAB I went crazy! SAB stamps, paper and ribbon. Not to mention the butterfly die I am in love with!!!!

See? I have stamped. So much that I have no time to take pics and upload them here!!! Actually there is even more but this is long enough.

Now this week I have my scrapbooking workshop (that page will come later) and a card for a friend that I can't share until AFTER I give it to her. I'm such a tease! But leave me a note and remind me to post again. I might get it together. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'm not even a little Irish. But the boys seem to be having fun with the holiday at school so we did Peppermint patty (get it?) treats for their classmates and pins for the teachers. My friend Marilyn found and gave me the idea. The original is WAY cute at the top.

But we had to make a few changes since I knew the kids would want to help. We did about 80 of them for the three classes and the kids all helped. I think theirs turned out pretty cute too and they were very proud of them! Love punch art with kids!!!

Lovin' my BS!

Swap #2 is more with the big shot. Got the cutest daisy die. It has three sizes on the one die. The ribbon is a new one from SU that I think is soooo yummy. But it comes with an orange ric rac one too and I am still working on how to use that one. I think it will stretch my brain and that could be good. Not much stamping but I like the graphic look of this. The dots at the bottom came from two sources. The green edge came from a circle punch and the pink ones are the flower centers of the biggest flower.

The swap was an original idea but these happy flowers are totally cased. I apologize for not knowing where I got the idea. I move too fast some days to remember much more than my own name. :) I gave some to a dear friend hoping to cheer her day.

My swaps

I recently did a swap and thought I would share my work. I did three and will be posting them today and over the next two. Then hopefully Monday I will have a cute treat to share. My kids are working on making them for classmates so when they finish assembly you will get to see them.

This card used the butterfly die with the BS. LOVE IT!!! Instant gratification. Paper in, roll through and up pop the cutest little butterflies! I used a versa marker on the edges and dipped in dazzling diamond EP and heat set. The body is a corsage pin with our silver duo beads and I snipped off the end and used crystal effects to hold it. The leaves were another BS die with a little sponging. The flower button has a silver brad and then the senitment is from the last page of the catty. I saw it on several samples in the catalog and thought it was a rub on. I was so happy to see it as a stamp! Oh and did you see the pretty satin ribbon? Lots of little details.

See you tomorrow for another swap. I am going to go get some vitamin D in the sunshine!

sneek peek and more snow

The kids are supposed to be back at school after a week of vacation. I actually like snow, BUT, I want them to get out of school before July and I AM NOT JOKING!!! I heard before today's snow day, the last day of school will be June 25th. That makes me sad! I want them out so we can go have fun swimming and camping! UGH!!!

I am actually working on a double scrapbook layout today so those pics will be coming. And I had hoped to share my three swaps I just made but they are not to the swappers yet and I don't want to ruin surprises. So just a sneak peek of one of my swaps and some snow pictures of the kids.

Enjoy the snow. It really is beautiful, peaceful and lots of fun to play in. My mail lady reminded me Spring is in 17 days.

Are you feeling sick?

Lots of my friends and family have had the winter bugs that bring sniffles and illness to their house. I designed a little goodie to give to my sweet sickies.

This uses the new yummy designer paper that is cardstock weight. Happy DAY!!! And new big brads, new edge punch, and stamps. The brad is metal and connects to the magnet to make a beautiful hidden closure. The box at the bottom is for the tissues to sit in and put some cough drops in there too. Then I picked up a deal on some Avon chapstick with the sweet hearts. The club girls seemed to enjoy making this but I don't think any of them will give it away. Hmm, is that good or bad?

Yellow streak sounds bad.

Those adorable bees make yellow a great color and I have had a grand time playing with them. As I searched my photos of things to share it seemed I had a bunch with the color yellow. Not like me but I think I was in a sunny mood. Not sure if you can see the gold sparkle on the beehive.

My yellow mood may have started with these. I took a stuffed pasta class. YUMMO! We learned to make our own pasta and the filling and now I want a pasta machine. Oh dear! A friend that took the class with me laughed because everyone had petite little ones and mine were ENORMOUS, in comparrison. I like big things, what can I say?

It really is Yo Yo Yellow!

I have a brand new pack of YoYo Yellow because I never use it. I am not a bold Brights kind of gal. So I grabbed it to use for a template. After I started sponging and stamping, it was not so bad - Ok, I actually liked it. And so did the gals. Admittedly, the adorable Bees help a lot. Not to mention the yummy candy inside.

I am catching up slowly on things my sister told me to post. Don't tell her she is right, it goes to her head. :)

Have a great day and hope you find sunshine too.

Scrappin' Up!

My scrapbook style is pretty simple. I like clean with minimal stuff. Mostly a black page with pictures and small little titles or stories below. I think it comes from looking at my mom's books as a kid so there is a whole nostalgic side to it. Besides, I look dated enough in the photos, I don't need to embelish it. :)

Here is my challenge. I have a new club that started last month and it is a scrapbooking club. Some of these gals are serious pros! Talk about intimidated! But I love a challenge and I love to create so I jumped in with both feet! The blue layout was my first month. I thought it was ok, cute mittens using a cuttlebug folder. But the gals were done in record time! I tried to add more this month without it feeling cluttered. I did not want to lose the pictures. How did I do? I will admit, I kind of like it. Imagine that. :)

I'll try to be back tomorrow with pictures of last month's stamp club items. My sister, I mean my downline keeps reminding me to share those.

Sneak peek of the goodies

My new clubs are starting this week and I am so excited. I know, I am always excited. But they let me stamp with them anyway. I like to make them little thank you gifts and well, I love to stamp. This one was super easy. I will give dimensions later, I have to finish getting ready for tonight and clean up the mess I made while I finished them. They are all made from current designer papers, yummy ribbons and laminated so they will last. In there is a note pad to make Wish Lists and sticky notes to mark their pages. Yea!