Papertrey Ink June Blog Hop

This month's PTI chanllenge was, "Touch of Gold". All the details are on Nicole Heady's blog. Here is the photo inspiration:

Boy, I woke up this morning with this card in my head and couldn't wait to create it when I got home from work. It is rare that an idea for a card that is in my head turns out as nicely as this one.

Super easy too! I was done in 20 minutes flat. That is also really rare! I love my new chevron die from PTI, it just arrived in the mail late last week. This was the first chance I got to play with it. Such a great purchase. I have a feeling I'll be using this all the time.

The flower is from My favorite Things (MFT). You've seen it before on the wreath I made for my mother in-law for mother's day using felt, click here for more details. I love this flower die! It was A bit expensive but worth every penny. It makes for a great "wow factor".

I embossed "hello there" using some gold embossing power on some vellum to finish the card and tie it to the gold background paper. I hope you enjoyed my spin on this challenge. If so, click through the rest of my site.
I'll be back soon and as promised it will be with details from my sister's bridal shower!

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Make it Monday

I'm playing around with PTI's Make it Mondays Challenge today.  This is super cute but my craft ink isn't drying........any one else having that issue?  

I was thinking about using this technique at my sister's bridal shower.  The guest can pick a picture of the couple for the front side and stamp on it how they choose (I was also going to leave permanent markers sitting out so they can doodle on it too if they like). 

 On the back would be a place to write in advise for the new couple.  On the left side where the address would go on a standard postcard, I would put a photo of my sister with the guest that wrote the advise from that day (of course we'll have to do this part after the event).  This would then replace a typical guest book and could sit on their coffee table for years to come as a mini album.  Each page would represent a guest that was in attendance.   

I'm not sold on this idea yet...I got some thinking to do before it is "solid".  While I can wait for the ink to dry here at home, I'm not sure this will work well at a shower with a mixed group of inexperienced stampers.  Is it my paper?  I used a high quality professionally printed picture.  Perhaps I'll get out some photo paper and try printing my own pictures and see what happens.

If you have any tips, ideas, or advise, I'd love to hear from you.  PLEASE leave me a comment!

May 2013 Papertrey Blog Hop

Here is my entry for this month's blog hop.  Does everyone else agree that this month's hop has no rules really?  Pick some flowers and pick some colors and post them.  I like that!

I made my MIL a wreath for Mother's Day.  Here it is hanging on my door (only for this picture though).  I finally see my MIL today and this gift is going home with her.  Making a wreath can be pricey but I learned a nice frugal trick.  Skip the foam wreaths at the craft stores that run around $10 and buy a foam pool noodle from the Dollar Store....works like a charm!  Handy duct tape holds in in place.

 The flowers are cut from felt.  Some felt was purchased from PTI and some from MFT.  The flower die builders were purchased from MFT and once put together they were hot glued onto this wreath.  I bought a wood plaque at the craft store and painted it with chalkboard paint.  I hot glued a skew onto the back and stuck it in.  

Isn't my door just lovely?  1920's people!  We LOVE our house.  They just don't make them like they used too.  We'll never get rid of it.  These suckers were made to last.

I'm pretty sure my MIL will like her gift. . Super Easy!

 Oh speaking of my house, I need some help winning a spousal disagreement (we all know those, right?).  I'm confident I'm going to win this one.  Let me know what side of our house looks better: 

The right side with the white shades?

Or the left side with the tan shades?

Here is a picture of the whole house.  Which side looks better: left with tan shades or right with white shades.  

Geez, I'm going to smoke him on this one.

I got to go, I have a crying baby in the background and dinner is on the table waiting for me!  Bye Bye! 

The Best Card Ever

Expectations will be high with a title like that, don't you think?
I'm not worried, I know you're going to love these cards. My baby sis gets married in less then two months. It really is hard to believe that my baby sister is old enough to be dating let alone to get married! When I left for college she was in 3rd grade and while that age gap seems huge, I promise you it has gotten smaller and smaller as the years have gone by (and not because I stopped aging at 29).

There are nine years and one sister in between us but it hasn't stopped us from developing a sisterly bond. Two years ago when she called to tell me she was engaged, I was thrilled, but only half as much as the day she asked me to help her with her wedding invites! Yeeeeaaaahhhhh, homemade wedding invites...oh yeah, your fiancé is great too, you'll be married and in love forever, blah, blah, blah.

So here they are. The best card I (I'm using "I" here to make writing simplier but in full fairness my sister gets equal credit for these) have ever designed. It was a huge team effort, her and I, oh yeah and the fiancé had a tiny little say in these as well.

A little bit of bling, a little bit of chevron, a little bit of whimsy, oh my. So when you slide off the little outside sleeve with the groom's initial, you'll find a bit more chevron and get a full look at the cute couple. We wanted these to feel similar to her STD's (oh yes, my sister's STD's, who could forget those) in color and style.

When you open it up all the way, you find a cute little pocket holding all the details to their wedding. Don't readjust your screen, I did blur out some details to their wedding (I didn't think they wanted my million readers to show up on their big day!).

The ribbon is symbolizing "tying the knot", a theme we are trying to work with for all her wedding details, of course using cute bakers twine. Most of the invitation is printed on the computer but the saying, "love is patient, love is kind", is a custom stamp she bought on etsy (not cheap!). It was important to get that stamp on her invite, they both love that saying so much, they each have half the saying tattooed on their bodies....love is FOREVER too.

Here are a few shots of the inserts. We stamped the red heart on the inserts.
Making 150 invitations is a process! A LONG process. Especially when she was finishing her last semester in nursing school and I was you know, having a baby. These took us a TON of time, lots of designing and redesigning, and a couple trips to the post office to see if these suckers were legal to mail without having to take out a second mortgage on our homes.
Designing your own wedding invites is not for the faint at heart. It also isn't a project for a newbie! These were stressful and kind of pricey but the benefit and satisfaction of having and making the wedding card of your dreams is priceless (sort of like meeting and marrying the man of your dreams, sort of).

I'm looking forward to crafting with her for the rest of her big day and of course I'll share all the details right here on my blog.

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Papertrey April Blog Hop Challenge

I have started my son's scrapbook. Here is the very first finished page. Papertrey Ink's Blog hop challenge came just in time and helped push my page from boring to PERFECT and all it took was a tilt of the word "HELLO". You see, I was going to put the word "HELLO" on this page straight, how boring, right? Just before I started gluing things down, I remembered PTI's challenge for this month, "Tilted". You can find the details to the challenge on Nicole's blog. It was just the technique this page needed.
I don't consider myself a scrapbooker (cards are so much easier) so I find these baby books for my children to be extra challenging on my creativity but always rewarding when they are finished. Of course it helps to have such cute kids to work with.
I can't wait to see all the other fun projects everyone else had come up with for this challenge!

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Dirty Girl No More

My house is a mess.  I have a newborn, cut me some slack.  Most of the mess is not mine.  Everytime I turn around it seems I'm brushing up somebody's sandwich crumbs, picking up somebody's dirty socks, cleaning somebody's toothpaste out of the sick, or hanging somebody's coat up.  That's my life with three stinky boys in the house (my son's words, not mine...but I won't disagree).

In all this mess, there is one room that is all mine and unfortunately the mess inside of it is all mine too.  Our office.  Really, I don't know why I say "our".  As my husband likes to point out, I have taken over it.  This paper crafting hobby of mine that started when I purchased a single set of stamps on clearance at Barnes & Noble has taken over our "office".  I don't even know why we bother calling it an "office".  Really, it is a craft room, MY craft room.  I'm a crafter and apparently a very messy one at that!

When I'm crafting, I don't like to put stuff away and obviously when I'm done crafting I don't like to put stuff away either but this week I discovered my "carrot".  Buy a really nice new craft toy and tell yourself you can't play with it until all your other toys are picked up.  It works on my five year old son and it turns out it works on me too!

So in a house where there is a newborn and there are days I can't find the time to shower, change out of my PJ's, or brush my hair, I managed to find three whole hours to clean up this mess.  I REALLY wanted to play with my new toy.

Meet Mr. Bond.  Vega Bond.  Mr. Bond is the sexiest, coolest, and most dreamy thing to walk into this house in a long time...well... since last night when my hubby walked through the door (of course).  All the girls want him and he.is.all.mine.  I'm not sharing him.  Don't even dare touch him.  This beauty is worth every penny.  My husband says a good divorce lawyer is too, but that's beside the point.    But seriously, this is the coolest die cutting machine on the market and I'm going to care for him like I care for my own children, "boys, you both ok in there?". I should pause and go check on them, the seven week old didn't answer.

I'm back.  Here is my nice clean craft room:

I even got out the labeler to label my drawers.  Fabric organizers are on my Christmas wish list.  

\

I can see my desk!  

And my stamps!

EVEN THE FLOOR!  I haven't seen the floor in years!

Anyway, the point of this story was to show you what a dirty girl I am, how easily I can be manipulated (even by myself), give my sister photo proof that my office can be clean (even if only for one day), and introduce you to Mr. Bond.  Vega Bond.

Here is a peak at the first project Mr. Bond is helping me create:

I have a feeling we're all going to become really great friends.

My Sister's STD's

After you are done drooling over my cute baby (I needed a teaser photo), let's talk about my sister's STD's. I wouldn't possibly blog about my own sister's STD's would I?  Of course I would. She won't mind.  In fact, her STD's have become somewhat of a joke around here.  Of course I'm talking about her SAVE THE DATES for her upcoming summer wedding.

When her and I started planning her save the dates through email, it just became easier to shorten them to STD's for typing purposes.  Each time one of us would get an email references STD's, we would giggle....like little kids.  So of course it stuck, we have called them STD's ever since.

Funny thing, now that I am on maternity leave, I've been catching up on some television on Netflix (in my stay-at-home-mom "spare time").  After I got done watching all the episodes of The Office (for the 10th time) I decided to start watching Rules of Engagement, you know, to span my horizons (but let's be honest, I could watch Pam and Jim's relationship develop over and over again....so cute....and yes the current season is KILLING me).  But back to Rules of Engagement, I LOVE Patrick Warburton.  He's charming, cute, and funny.  I loved him in Seinfeld and love him now in this show.  In the season 4 premiere episode they make the SAME STD joke!  My sister and I should have gotten a trademark to that joke (sort of like when The Donald tried to get a trademark to the phrase, "You're Fired").

Ok, I got way off topic.  Back to my poor sister's STD's.  Boy are they awesome.  I love them.  If you are going to use a picture as the main focus of your card, it sure helps to be cute and adorable, right?  They check both those items off the requirement list!

These cards were easy peasy.  We printed the info on craft cardstock (4 on one sheet so they were economical as well) and rounded all four corners after we cut them to size.  We glued the photos on, stamped the heart image in red (from Papertrey Ink), and tied the ribbon on.  We were done with these in no time.

I love them.  I think they are charming, cute, and funny (kind of like Patrick Warburton).  Because they were fast, we had time that same weekend to start designing her wedding invitations.  JUST WAIT till you see them.  They are by far the BEST cards I (we) have EVER made.  I mean it!  I'm in LOVE with her wedding invites!  I'll be showing them here soon, we finished them this past weekend.  I'm just waiting to be officially invited :)