Busy, Busy, Busy

I have been super busy getting ready to do my first craft fair. I didn't realize how much work it would be. I have to stop once in a while and remind myself that this is supposed to be fun.

The first picture here shows a gift card holder. I used my Cricut (which I love!) to cut out the ornaments. All the sides were sponged to add the look of dimension. I then used my big shot to emboss one of the bulbs and added glitter to both of them. I topped them with an 18 kt. gold leaf pen, added some bows and string and glued them all together.


I used my swiss dots cuttlebug folder to add some texture on the inside. I used my 1 1/4 inch circle and tag punches to make the slot for the gift card to slip into. These came out very nice.


Next up are very simple. I cut the flowers so I had about an inch of stem, took the top off the pen and then glued the flower stem into the pens. They turned out gorgeous!!


I purchase some blank writing journals and then went to town covering them with designer paper, glitter and flowers.

Next up is another easy project called Magic Reindeer Food. The poem reads;

Sprinkle this reindeer food outside tonight.
The moonlight will make it sparkle bright.
As the reindeer fly and roam,
This will guide them to your home.

Lastly for today ~ Aren't these the cutest little gift bags?!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope your day is fantastic!
Michelle
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Falling Behind

Happy weekend, woops it's almost over. I am so falling behind in my postings. This beauty is called a recessed window card. Here's the link for the directions. The papers are all Stampin' Up! The blue flowers were made using my Silhouette, I then sponged everything I could with Chocolate Chip and sprayed the flowers with some Glitter Mist.


Lots of layers with the flowers. I also curled in their petals using then end of a paintbrush.

I made this card for my friend Betty who loves butterflies.

Lots of gold embossing. She is gonna love it.

And the last card for the day is one of the cutest little cards I've made in awhile. Betty will probably want this one too. The stamp is from ClearStamps.com. I stamped it on watercolor paper and used SU markers and an aqua pen to color her in. The other papers are from Stampin' Up! I did a bit of distressing and sponging around the edges.

I love the look of layering ribbon on top of the lace.

Isn't she a cutie.?

Next on my agenda, a little Stampin' Up! news
Most of you have heard me talk about Sherrill Graf before. She is the list mom for the LNS group. One of Sherrill's callings is to be lead at the Ronald McDonald House in Las Vegas, NV. Sherrill has asked us to post the following three links on our blogs to increase awareness of the RMHC and to hopefully drum up more interest and volunteers for this great organization. Please take a moment of your time to see what this great partnership between SU! and RMHC is all about.

http://latenightstamper-stampandscrap.blogspot.com/

http://www.sugardoodle.net

http://rmhc.org/how-you-can-help/volunteer/30-ways-in-30-days

Colby and Erin 1992

I know!!! Can you believe it!!!
thanks for stopping in,
Michelle
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tri-shutter card

Here's my take on the tutorial over on Splitcoasters for the tri-shutter card. You can find the directions here. I used the beautiful, retired Parisian Breeze Specialty paper from Stampin'-Up! The stamp is from the Baroque Motifs set, then added lots of flowers, half pearl backs some ribbon and a ribbon slide. Didn't it come out great?
I had made one of these a week ago, but ended up giving it to a total stranger who had admired it at CHA. She had admitted to be a newbie to the craft world and was totally overwhelmed by CHA. I'm so glad to have been able to help her along with a new craft. Who ever you are, I hope you are still smiling and enjoying your new hobby.
hugs,
Michelle
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Catching up

Isn't she the cutest pup! She hasn't been feeling well lately. I brought her to the vet yesterday for $93 ~ thank you very much. She was given a shot and some pills and if she's not better tomorrow, to give them a call for possible blood tests and x-rays. uggg

This is one of the stamps that I bought myself at CHA.
It screamed for watercoloring and gold embossing.

I cased this card from one of the SU convention boards that was posted online.

A tri-fold card using a doily cut out using my QuicKutz Silhouette.
It cuts such fine details. Then I just had to add the little pearls.

Another bi-fold using all Stampin' Up products.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Invisible World

I have always wanted to try a fantasy page and I got my chance when The Daily Scrapper team decided that our theme would be fantasy this month. Yay!! I created this hybrid-digi layout using the fabulous kit by New Life Dreams called The Invisible World. There were so many elements to chose from that it was very hard to narrow it down to the pieces that I chose. The kit comes with 186 elements and 18 papers, all absolutely gorgeous!
The image is a picture of my daughter in her prom glory. She was so beautiful.


Here's a close up of the butterfly I made using my Silhouette.

Doesn't the spider and it's web look almost real?

coolie-oh

This is the coolest present that I could ever think of to give someone. A picture of themselves LOL Once upon a time, I was a model (believe it or not) My daughter took one of my old pictures from my portfolio and then recreated into this fabulous art. She added shells, lace, yarn, scrapping paper...anything she thought would work. Is it not the best!! She gave it to me unframed, so we went to Goodwill and found this terrific frame for 5 bucks! I think the frame works great with the picture. Her artwork is now hanging proudly in my craft room.
Thank you Ciara
xxxx

Deal of the Week #4

Deal of the Week #4 Is Up!

Deal of the Week #4:
Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware

Stampin' Up!'s Styled Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware adds class to any project. Get it for just $18.99 (over 30% off the regular price of $29.95)—only July 20-26!

Throughout July, be sure to check my web site every Monday for the week's new deal.

Period	Item	Page	Description	Regular Price	Special Price
July 20 through July 27	112454	178	Styled Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware	$29.95	$18.99

Candy alert

Stampin Addicts dot com has tons of ideas using the Stampin’ Up! Big Shot and is giving away a Big Shot Die Pack as part of the Stampin’ Up! summer celebration. To enter, all you have to do is write about it. This is my entry. Now give me my dies.

Bocci by the Sea

The new issue of The Daily Scrapper is ready to check out. This issue is packed full of tutorials, interviews, articles and I have a hybrid-digi layout in it's pages. fun! Check out my tutorial here on how I create this page.

Every summer my family has a reunion at my parents house at the beach. Usually we will play volley ball in the sand, but this year we decided to try our hands at Bocci in the sand. That's me showing off my form.

Turning 50

Today's post is a layout that I made last week using the Sweet Nothings Simply Scrappin' kit. Isn't it adorable! and yes, that is me and I did turn 50 a couple of years ago, So since I was in the scrapping mood....here ya go. I love the colors that are in the kit and the elements were all so cute, it was hard to just pick a few.
My parents gave me a beautiful Bougainvillea bush to celebrate my birthday and sadly it got hit by a heavy freeze we had this winter. Hello! this is Florida, we aren't suppose to have such cold weather. Luckily it's bounced back with gusto, so I've been trying to prune it back into an acceptable shape.

That's me hugging my Dad out by the pool. Then my Mom decided to show off her hula hooping skills. Not too bad for a Mom of an old lady LOL (that would be me)
That's my Dad and husband with a bit of help from my daughter planting the bush.
Thanks for stopping in and have a great weekend.
Michelle

Catitude Pheasant

Happy Weekend, and thanks for stopping by.
My back pain, from my surgery two weeks ago, is easing up a bit and I was able to make a couple of cards this weekend.
The first one is for my good friend Betty who is going through chemo, I've made it out to her cats from my cat. I think she will get a nice chuckle out of it.


I love how rich the addition of the gold pen makes the card.


My second card uses the Pheasant from one of the new stamp sets from Stampin' Up! called Autumn Days. I've added quite a few elements to this card starting with the paper lace. I made the lace using my new Silhouette from Quikutz. Isn't it beautiful! I added half back pearls to it for even more dimension. The green leaf fronds are made using a Martha punch. The pheasant and yellow card stock were cut out using the same nestie that I used for the cat in the above post.


Close up of the lace and pearls. It's so pretty!!


I used my gold pen again, then added a cluster of primas, half pearls and more fronds.


That's it for today.
Thanks for stopping by,
Michelle

Caught in the Act

Poor kid. LOL Here's my son 23 years ago...holy smokes does time fly! yup, 23 years ago. He has now graduated from college and has started off on his career in finance. I am so proud of him. Love {kisses} and hugs Colby.
This layout originates from the challenge June Color Play contest on DigiShopTalk We are challenged to use some very fabulous colors along with one of their many prompts. As soon as I saw the prompt for National Potty Training Awareness Month I knew exactly which photo I was going to scrap.


I decided to title the page, 'Caught in the Act' and then put the photo into the layout as if it's 'caught' behind the wire. An added benefit to the wire was that it covered up his boy parts. The page is all digital except for the twine on the tag. Can you believe it!?
The was a free kit called ~ Bee My Honey from Andrea Dickinson.
Thanks for popping in,
Michelle

The Daily Scrapper Issue 10

Here's the hybrid-digi project I did for The Daily Scrapper's Birthday issue using Cinzia Loosemore’s Celebrate digital kit.


You can find the complete instructions here

I'm still not feeling great...only been 10 days, so I have quite a few more recoup days ahead of me.

thanks for stopping by,
Michelle

Taking a break

I thought I should let all my faithful readers know what's been going on with me and my crafting.
It's been on hold for a bit since my back has been giving me such a huge problem for the past ten years. Can you bloody believe it! 10 years bloody painful years. Well not too bloody. I finally had an appointment with a Neurosurgeon here in Lakeland who looked over my well travelled MRIs and pointed out ~clear as a day ~ L4 L5 herniated disk into the spine. Well hello! And another huge surprise came out of this mighty fine looking doctors mouth. 'I can fix you.!' Say what!!! well sign this girl up right now!!!!
Now I am a week later and not the happiest crafter bee. I can sit for 10 minutes at a time, but it takes to much work trying to sit straight up with a metal plate and rods in your spine. Never mind trying to get comfortable. I know...gross huh.

I will leave you with this tonight...I was published and will share tomorrow. yippiee

kisses

Can you beat that picture :-) This is has always been one of my favorite pictures of Ciara and Liyah. Then I came across this quote and the 2 just needed to be scrapped together. Lucky for me, I just got a Quickutz Silhouette! I was able to write out the quote in Photoshop then copy and paste it into the Silhouette software which in turn cuts out the letters for me. Lesson learned is to use a font that does not have such skinny lines.


The flower was made from part of the batch that I had bought from Overstock. I think they went quite well with the ribbon paper from American Crafts. I also added some dew drops, lace and velvet ribbon.

The word kiss was cut out twice, layered, glued onto the page then I put a coat of crystal effects for more dimension.
oh ~ and ps, this is mostly digital...can you tell?

2004 and counting

Here are a couple of pages that I made highlighting Ciara's delight in a 'photo shoot' These were taken quite a few years ago, so I am very glad I still had them hoarded away on my computer.
The first picture was taken in our back yard by my garden of tulips, in the spring of 2004. The layout is a freebie frame set that I added quite a bit of glitter to. Yup, I added all that stuff by hand!


The next picture is the one we used for her Senior picture. They grow up way too fast.


Again, more glitter plus primas and pearls.

free..yup free digital stamp

I decided to give digital stamping a try, and boy oh boy..how many hobbies can one person have?
This is another one of those addicting projects that I just can't get enough of.
I drew the butterfly, scanned it into my computer then colored it using Photoshop. Totally cool stuff.



I'd love to share the butterfly with you and see what you come up with. Just send me an email and I'll forward on the file to you.
Is this considered blog candy?