Coffee and Cross Stitch

Prettified notebooks. | Papercrafting.

And just like that, it's March.

Not only is it March, but we're a week in already, and we just lost an hour.  I will let you know when that is ever ok.  Especially this past week, when I seem to have gone from unable to stay awake to completely and totally incapable of falling asleep.  Thank you, Lyme disease and adrenal fatigue.  I see a nap in the very near future.  Hopefully.  Maybe. 

Aaaaaaanyhooter.

It's Sunday!  Let it be a lazy day, shall we?  The snow will be melting around here, thanks to predictions in the 50's for most of the week (with one day in the 60's!), and I'm just really hoping that spring is, in fact, right around the corner.  Winter is always rough for me; it wreaks havoc on my body, and I'm through with it.

Yesterday, I got my scrapping mojo back, and decided to stop hoarding paper and make something to make the day a little brighter, since it's still pretty damn cold out there.

For Christmas a year or so ago (probably more, because, you know...hoarder...), as part of my gift, my sister got me a few sheets of gorgeous fine paper from Paper Source.  It's seriously gorgeous.  So pretty, I would unroll them all, just to look at them, ponder about making something with one of them, and then roll them up again, not wanting to ruin the perfect rectangle by cutting them all up to use in projects.  Which is totally normal.

After having to pack up and move my entire craft room this winter, I decided it's high time I quit that nonsense and use the damn stuff already.  My sister didn't get me that paper for it to be just looked at, she wanted me to use it!  

This week, after having a few meetings to go to, and hating the wide-ruled (which, ugh - can't it at least be college-ruled?? seriously.) Gov't issue notepad the size of my entire arm that I had to use, I decided I needed something way cooler than that to have with me to take notes. Not wanting to spend any money on something like this, I went rooting through my stash to see what I had in order to make something.  I found two Moleskin kraft notebooks I'd totally forgotten I had (they come as a set of three...so god only knows where the third one is...), which are perfectamundo for this project, and unrolled those fine papers my sister got me for Christmas all those years ago.

And because I want you to be able to make your own gorgeous notebooks everyone will be jealous of, I'm gonna show you what I did.  It's wicked easy.  Ready?  Here we go.

Take the notebook, open it up, and lay it face down on the wrong side of the paper.  Trace the outline of the notebook, and then cut about 1/2 inch - 1 inch outside the traced line.

Using a paintbrush, quickly brush Mod Podge all over the cover of the notebook (I had to work quickly, so I couldn't take a snapshot of this stage.)  Carefully place the traced and cut paper on top of the Mod Podged notebook spine, and smooth out both sides from the center.  The edges of the paper will hang over the edges of the notebook.  Let it dry for a few minutes.  This shouldn't take long - Mod Podge dries relatively quickly.

Once it dries, flip it over, so the front or back flap is showing.  This is the back flap.  Cut the overhanging paper at the spine and at the corners, so you can easily flip it up and over to glue it down.  Since this particular notebook has a pocket in the back for hiding super-secret-on-the-down-low stuff, I had to make sure I also made a cut at the top to allow me to tuck the overhanging piece under the pocket, so the pocket could remain open.  

Do the same thing on the front flap, until the entire book has the overhanging edges secured on the inside.  If you're making more than one notebook, like I did, just repeat the process.  Both books took me a total of 30 minutes.  For realz.  It'll take a few extra minutes if you choose to also cover the inside flaps of the notebook.  I wan't really concerned about having them covered, so I decided to just cover the outside for this project.

Below is a shot of the back of the finished book on the left - this paper was made from strips of various fine papers, so the front is different from the back.

Now, this paper is pretty enough to have that be the end of the project.  But, we all know I can't let it end there.  I didn't want to do anything that would be overboard, but I wanted a little something extra on these books.  So, I got out my Versamark ink pad, my "j" stamp, and my favorite gold embossing powder.  I stamped the "j" on front, embossed, and viola! You can see the "j" on the above pic, in the lower right-hand corner.  I did this on both.  Took all of 1.5 minutes to stamp and heat emboss.

Then, on the inside, I decided to stamp only on the first page from a roller stamp from Kate Spade I got a while back (WAY more than I ever spend on stamps like this, but I loved the sentiments, so I splurged...):

Simple.  Awesome.  Total win.  People will be totally jealous when I show up with these beauts to boring meetings.  

That's it, friends! Two gorgeous notebooks that took a mere 30 minutes!  And they're totally personalized, and the best part - they're in my favorite color.  Purple.

I hope you have a fabulous Sunday, and that you're able to find time to create something today!

Baby Shower Goodies

My baby sister is having a baby! 

Naturally, I had to outdo myself, and make everything for the shower.  

Ok, not literally everything...but close.

First up:  the invites.  Why buy them when you can make them, amiright??  Especially when you don't know the gender of the baby - much easier to make non-gendered things than try and buy them.

I went to my local Paper Source, and picked up some mint green flat cards and envelopes, plus fine papers to line the envelopes.  (If you haven't tried lining envelopes, you totally should)  I also used a cutie stork stamp I got from there to put a simple flourish on the bottom.

How cool is that Color Box stamp pad!!  It matches almost perfectly to the paper I chose.  Awesome.

That liner paper!! GAH.  I can't get enough.  

The invites were super simple and easy to make - since I was using Paper Source paper, I went online and found their templates for printing inviations at home (You could use their templates with other paper, you'd just have to scale it to what size paper you're using, if the dimensions aren't exactly the same.). You can buy blank invitations from them and print at home, so they have Word templates to account for paper size and margins, depending on what design you got.  I used this one, since it was closest to how I would be stamping the image on the bottom of the invite.  I typed in all the info, hit print, and viola.  Then, I stamped the image on the bottom, and embossed it with clear embossing powder to give it a little something extra.

I stamped each one on the back with my Kelly Purkey stamp, and signed and dated them all.   

Perfect.

Next up: the favors.

In my mind, favors must be useful.  Or, they should be food.  Chocolate is usually a winner, but in this case, since it's fall and I have serious problems when it comes to great ideas and underestimating how long things take to make...I decided making apple butter and apple cranberry jam was the way to go.

I know, right.  Delicious.

So, I got 4 oz Ball canning jars, made the recipes, then hot bath canned them.  That way, people don't have to feel pressured to eat them right away.  Using scraps from cutting the white paper for the invites, I made little "thank you" tags for each jar.

Super simple little tags stamped with this expression stamp, hole punched, an eyelet smashed on, tied it with some twine, and boom.  Favors. 

Delicious favors.

They all went into baskets at the shower for guests to grab on their way out the door when the festivities were over.  

Each basket had a tag, so you knew which one you were grabbing.

 Um. So. Do you see that sideways "L"???  Yeah.  That's what happens when you pick up the letter stamp, and swear it's going the right direction, but it's not.  Then, your almost uncontrollable OCD freaks the f out, and you begin a panicked search for more blank tags.  Unable to find any, you decide if anyone even notices, you'll say you did it on purpose - it is a baby shower, after all, and it's cute to make stuff look baby/kid-ish.  If that makes sense.  You know, like when I used to write my "J's" sideways when first learning how to write my name.  Now I just stamp letters sideways for effect.  And to drive myself insane.  Literally.

So, there was a sideways "L" on the tag at the shower.  And now you know the story behind it.   Just in case anyone asks.

Ahem.

Lastly:  the dessert table.

 

Hello, sugar coma.

Cookies.  Pumpkin cake.  Pumpkin bread.  Luscious cake balls that my lovely friend, Angela, volunteered to bake.  Scones.  Maple cakelettes.  

Homemade baked goodies overload.  I think I'm done baking for the entire year.  My mom and I baked everything on that table, with the exception of Angela's cake balls.  

I made the cards to label the goodies, too.  Glitter pumpkins are all the rage.

 Glue stamp pads make using glitter SO much easier for stuff like this.  You use the stamp on the glue pad like you would a regular ink pad, stamp the image, then pour glitter over it, and tap off the excess.  Let dry.  Glitter pumpkins abound.

That's it for the shower goodies I made.  I have a few tricks up my sleeve for when the baby arrives, but until then, the projects are super-secret-on-the-down-low.  

Have any of you done any handmade things for showers or parties?  What did you make?? 

Christmas Card Factory | Card making

My needle and thread are taking a break at the moment.  I needed to get started on my Christmas cards.  My craft room has turned into a card factory.  Glitter & stamps ev-a-ry-where.

Each one is handmade; no two are alike.

Two down, eleventy billion to go........

 

Simple Recipe Cards | Scrapbooking

Hello lovlies :-)  I'm so sorry I've been absent for so long.  It's been kinda hectic in my house lately.

Not to worry, though...that hectic atmosphere has led to a few creative things happening around here, starting with fun recipe cards that I made last week (which you got a glimpse of on Instagram).

Most people have recipe card boxes, which come with cards.  I'm one of those people.  I have all kinds of recipes (most of them related to baking), and keep my box handy on a shelf above my counter.

I had the chance to write down one of my FAV.O.RITE recipes for some friends recently, and decided that they should get something different from the recipe cards I have in my box.

Now, we all know about my rather ridiculous obsession with kraft paper.  Naturally, this had to be part of my recipe card endeavor.  Because, well....it's awesome....and there really doesn't have to be any other reason than that in my book.

Since with kraft paper, you can do pretty much whatever you want to it, I got out my watermark stamp pad, and a flowery stamp.

I inked the stamp with the watermark inkpad, and stamped only along the edges of the kraft paper.

Since I want these to be used as actual recipe cards, I cut them slightly smaller than 4x6 (you'll see later why) so that, when complete, they'll fit into a standard recipe box with no problem.  You can see my stamping along the edges, which I did totally at random; no rhyme or reason to how I decided to place the stamp.

After stamping the image, I took my heat embossing gun, and dried the ink.  This caused the ink to set just a little bit darker than it would have had I let it dry by itself.

Plus, I'm impatient, and I wanted them to be dry immediately.

Ahem.

This is the part where I had to stop the creative process (which is never a good thing, but for this project, it was necessary) and go handwrite the recipes onto the front of the cards.

Once that was done, I went back up to  my project table, and cut pieces of scrapbook paper for backing for the cards.

 

You can see in this pic how the heat embosser dried the watermark stamp just a little bit darker than it was in the previous image.

Ta da!  I'm not done yet, though.....shocking, I know.  I have a YourStory machine, which doesn't just bind books........it laminates. 

If you own a label maker, you know the kind of obsessive behavior that comes along with it - you want to label EVERYTHING in your house.  Not just one thing...everything.  Same goes with laminating - I legit have to reign in my compulsion to laminate every gd thing I see..."just because".

Not this time, though.  No one likes their recipe cards to get all mangled and gross from sitting on the counter while you're throwing flour, sugar, eggs, etc. all over the place.  A perfect reason to laminate these - protective coating.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic of the back of the card - the scrapbook paper I used was double-sided, so the back at least had a design on it, even though I left it blank.  I wrote "From the kitchen of," put my name,  sent 'em through to get laminated, tied each one with a pretty ribbon, and gave it away :-) 

There you have it!  Simple, pretty, handmade recipe cards that took (minus the writing of the recipe) about 10 minutes each to complete.  Give it a try next time one of your friends asks for one of your recipes! 

You don't have to use the watermark inkpad like I did, but by using it, you can write over the stamped image if you're pressed for space like I was.  You could do something just as simple as stamping a colored image in one of the corners, and writing all around it.  You can distress the edges.  Anything!  And, if you don't have a way to laminate the cards, no bigs!  There are protective sleeves you can get that are a perfect fit.  It's seriously so simple to make a personalized card like this to give to someone :-)

Much love ~~~

A Gift Wrap Idea

Yesterday, I took a trip to central jerz to see one of my besties from college for her son's 2nd bday.  H-Man is 2 already.  Can't friggin believe it.  

Side note: best part about being an aunt (besides having H-Man scream over the phone "BYE AUNT JACKI!!! BYE!!! I LOVE YOU!!! BYE AUNT JACKI!!!!" and actually be able to pronounce a "j" at 2....) is that I get to go to the children's section of Barnes and Noble, and go straight to Dr. Seuss.  I may or may not have a slight obsession with Dr. Seuss.....still....at 32....

...ahem....

Armed with four of the most important beginner Dr. Seuss books a kid can have (we'll get into the more advanced Dr. Seuss books like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax at a later date) (aside from the one and only, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) - There's a Wocket in my Pocket, The Cat in the Hat, Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!!, and Oh, The Thinks You Can Think, I spread out on the dining room table to wrap them all up, only to remember that I have no baby/kid wrapping paper.

Naturally.  Why would I check to see if I had any BEFORE I went out to get his gift?  Because, duh, that would make too much sense.

I do, however, have plain brown paper, which is easy to dress up and make pretty.  Also - 2-year-olds generally don't care about the paper - they just want to rip it off to get to the good stuff.

Mkay.  So, how did I end up making brown paper look cute?  Simple.

 

Fabric riboon and a cute tag.  My cousin wrapped our Christmas gifts similarly this past Christmas, and I thought it was a fantastic idea.  Simple and pretty.  So, for H-Man, I chose three jelly roll strips that I had in my stash - all coordinating, of course - wrapped two around the gift, and then used one to tie the bow.  The tag I made with a simple stamp I got at Paper Source, distressed the edges, and wrote the sentiment on the other side.  Before tying the bow with the yellow ribbon, I attached the tag with twine to the fabric, which was then hidden from view after I tied the yellow fabric ribbon.

So easy, yet still cute and polished.  You end up looking like you actually had it together when you wrapped this gift, even though if your friends could have seen you frantically running around the house trying to figure out how the hell you're going to wrap books with no wrapping paper, they'd wonder how you survive without wearing a helmet and elbow pads on a daily basis.

There you have it!  A cute and simple way to wrap gifts!  Don't have fabric remnants all over your house?  Use ribbon instead! Get a roll of wide ribbon, and do the same thing.  It looks just as awesome.  Trust :-)

Much love ~~~

Christmas Cards | Cardmaking

Well, Christmas has come and gone already...which I can hardly believe.  There's always so much excitement about the Christmas season, and when the actual day is here, it feels like it just flies on by quicker than you can blink.

But I still love Christmas.  Love it.

As you may or may not know, I handmake the Christmas cards that I send out every year.  Yep.  Takes a sh-- ton of time, but I think it's worth it.  This year, due to time constraints, I mass produced a few -- usually I make each one totally unique.  This year....not so much.

I saw this way cool tutorial over at Tim Holtz's blog (he is beyond creatively talented. the things this man does with ink & paper? totally amazeballs.), and decided I wanted to give it a try.  Seemed easy enough, and the result is totally awesome.

The tutorial series is all about tags, and in this case, specific to Christmas.  The pic above is all the tags I made and then distressed by inking the edges and using a paper edger to rough up the sides.  Some tags I used were kraft paper; the others were manilla.  Same technique, different look, all of it easy & awesome.  LOVE.  

Taking these tags, I then dressed up some Paper Source  card stock, and this is the end result --

They didn't all have the same patterned background paper, but they all look pretty similar to this.  I'm definitely going to be repeating this design!  Make sure you check out the original tag over at Tim's blog - so totally cool.

Next up:  glitter embossing powder.  I hate glitter.  Like, hate it.  It gets ev-a-ry-where.  You end up sneezing glitter for months, because it's so fine you breathe it in without knowing it...random specks end up all over your face...in your hair........uggggggh.  BUT....when it's embossing powder, which means you get to heat it to make it adhere to your page and never come off, then I'm all about it.

Enter watermark ink pad, awesome  Santa stamp, and red glitter embossing powder...

BOOM.  Seriously.  So awesome.  This was my favorite card that I made this year.  In fact, I may still have it.  I don't remember if I actually sent this one out....whoopsie....

Where there's red glitter, there's also green.....

It might be tough to tell, but those are gifts all lined up.  Totally super cute.   Add green glitter embossing powder, and poof!  Sparkly gifties!

I also had a little too much fun with the "quantity" function on my Cricut....so I was able to just keep repeating some of the cuts I made....

This "Noel" made quite a few appearances on my cards with different background paper.  I used the Teresa Collins "December 25th" cartridge for this image, along with "Santa" and a few others that I totally forgot to take pics of, so I can't share them :-(

So there you have it!  A little snippet of some of the cards that I sent out this year!  Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get on my card list for next year, and get one of these for your very own!  :-)

Much love ~~~

Last but not least....the favors!!!

Let's be honest.  Favors either get tossed when people leave a shower, or they get tossed.  I'm relatively certain I don't have one single favor from any of the showers I've been to.  Zip.  

Keeping this in mind when I was trying to figure out what to have for Sis's shower, I decided the favors needed to be something cute and memorable, but not something that sits around and collects dust.  Or ends up in the trash.

Let's start with chocolate.  There are very few people out there who don't like chocolate, and we'll call them freaks of nature.  Clearly, chocolate is a fantastic reward for sitting through a bridal shower.  M&Ms has a separate site where you can make custom m&m favors for whatever your special event is.  You can either buy them in bulk and package them yourself, or have them pre-packaged for your affair.  Since I was already making a bazillion other things for the shower (see all the posts this week), the option to have them pre-packaged was quite appealing.

So, I went through all the steps on the site, picking the colors (yellow, grey, and white, of course), the design and the sayings I wanted to be on the candies.  I chose wedding bells, Sis & her fiance's names, and a "Thank you!" for the three designs/phrases I could have.  Then, I picked the packaging, which was a simple little bag with a yellow ribbon.

But...just having a little baggie with m&ms is clearly not enough and I had to outdo myself.  Again.

Reaching into the recesses of my brain for another idea, I remembered one of my friends, as her wedding favor on the tables at the reception, had little matchbooks which were printed with their names and the date.  Inside, instead of matches, there was a packet of wildflower seeds with instructions to "plant seeds of love."  Corny, cheesy, and PERFECT for a shower!!!  Here is something people can have growing in either their gardens or in a pot indoors, and they'll think of the shower they were at. 

My idea, however, was to get the paper that has the seeds in it, in order to make it even more awesome.  Finding it might be a problem.

That is, until I walked into my local Paper Source and found this --

It could not have been more perfect.  Then I picked up some glassine envelopes to stash them in, so I could tie them with another yellow ribbon to the already packaged and perfect m&ms.  Of course, I decided I needed to take a pic after I opened the package already, so I had to hold it together for this shot.  Whoops.  On the back of the label, there were instructions on how to properly plant these paper seed hearts.  I took the instructions, and hand-wrote them on a square piece of white paper.

The handwriting is what took the longest out of everything that I did.  

Then, I found a square background stamp, used my yellow ink, and stamped the image on the front of the envelope.  I took clear embossing powder, and embossed the envelope to give it a little dimension and shine. 

After all that, this is the finished product --

It's kinda tough to see the embossing, but it jumps off the envelope with the white paper background on the inside.  I used a super skinny yellow ribbon to tie the envelope to the bag of m&ms, so it didn't need a giant hole in the envelope, and so it didn't cause too much ribbon madness in conjunction with the ribbon already in place on the bag o' m&ms.

And here they are proudly displayed at the shower!  The other two baskets have fun printed napkins that my aunt and grandmom contributed to the table.

Yayyy!!!

So.....that's it!!  That concludes everything I made for Sis's shower this past Sunday!  I hope you enjoyed seeing all the different things I've been making in my craft room which have been stealing all of my cross stitch time.  I also hope that I've given you a few good ideas to take away (I know my timer giveaway idea seemed to be a huge hit!) and use for a bridal/baby shower you are hosting or helping to host!  If you do use one of my ideas, please come back and share it!!  I would love to hear how you used what I did, or tweaked it this way or that way so that it was more customized for your event. :-)

I was finally able to pick up a needle and thread last night, and it felt so good.  Like....so good.  To the point where I need to see my gals today at my LNS and get my cross stitch fix.  I think it'll be a while before I post anything scrapbook or cardmaking related, so I hope my stitch followers are anxious to see what I have been able to work on in little spurts.  I will remind you, however, that one BIG project is taking up a lot of my time, but I can't share it until it's framed and given to the recipient.  I don't want any spoilers here.

Ok - I really gotta get outta here and get some cross stitch stuffs.  I wish you all a wonderfully creative day, and I'll catch you up on my stitching here in a couple days!!

Much love ~~~

J:-)

   

More Sewing Fun

Well.  I survived.

I survived a 1st birthday party with more kids in one house than I thought could actually fit.

For those of you who don't know, me and small children aren't really friends.  Now, my high school band kids?  They rock.  Small children that scream for no reason whatsoever?  Not cool.

BUT.  This was for my T-girl, the daughter of one of my good friends from high school.  She turned 1 last Friday, and her party was on Saturday.  

There is one good thing about shopping for babies:  babygap.  Oh, yes.  babygap.  Here's a fun tidbit to know and tell:  I once worked for Gapkids/babygap.  Yep.  I was the denim/khaki specialist, and could make those walls and walls of denim and khakis just look perfect and pristine.  I was that crazy person with a cart and piles and piles of denim stacked around me, folding away like Rainman.  Touch my perfect wall of denim and you lost a hand.  Sometimes I'd be nice and I'd let you get away with only losing a few fingers.

I digress.

babygap.  T-girl. 

Another fantastic place to be when you're shopping for baby gifts:  Pottery Barn Kids.  Oh man.  At one point, they had The Grinch sheets.  GRINCH.  SHEETS.  If you are unaware with my complete and total obsession with Dr. Seuss, particularly The Grinch That Stole Christmas, go to this post where I freak out only slightly about fabric I bought.

Ok.  So, my shopping consisted of one item from babygap (because omg i couldn't resist) and one item from Pottery Barn Kids.  Again, couldn't resist.  I wanted to get her something else, but nothing was hitting me.

Then, I thought to myself, "Self.  Why buy something when you can MAKE something????"  

I mean, really.  

I have the tools, an amazing craft room, and a sewing machine.  I'm totes making something.

I remembered I have leftover fabric from the apron I made for my sister for her birthday, and I thought this would make a perfect pillow sham,  much like this one that I made for myself last week.

I switched it up a bit, and I decided that nothing said "baby" like a cute quilted pattern.  

OOOOOMG.  How adorbs is this????!??!!!?!  This turned out so daggone cute!!  

OK!!!  I did the same type of sham back covering, so Katie can take the pillow out and wash it every so often, along with the cover itself.

So.  Darn.  C-U-T-E.  Cricut owners:  you can cut fabric with your Cricut!!!  The possibilities are endless when you have a die cutter that can cut your fabric into shapes!!! 

Once I figure out the precise combination of speed and pressure, it'll be wonderful, that is.  This time around, I couldn't get it to make clean cuts on the fabric, so I cut paper and traced it on the fabric.

Moving on....since you're all supposed to believe that I'm absolutely perfect at everything....

This is the birthday card I made for the occasion --

Cute, amiright??  I love that birthday cake.  It's so...slanted....and it looks delicious.  Actually, now that I think about it, I think I showed you guys this pic already.  Wow.  I'm losing my damn mind.  Huh.  Well, there's the card.  Again.  ("Yeah, thanks, Jack.  We saw this already.  Aren't you doing anything new and innovative in your craft room???  Sheesh.")

Patience, peeps. There is much going on in my craft room, I just can't show you all the deets yet.  Somewhere aroundabout 23 April I should be able to show you more.  But not before then.  Well, not anything that I've been feverishly working on, anyways. 

Until tomorrow...or the weekend....whenever I have something supercool to show you (like the chipboard album I made last night -- keep an eye on that Instagram feed on the top left of my blog -- you'll find pics there that don't always make it to the blog right away....and it updates almost once a day....just sayin'......).  

Much love to all of you, my crazy crafting & stitching friends!

~~~ J

I should have just started all over with today....tomorrow.

Ever have one of those days where you wish you could just have a time-turner and start all over again???

Today was totes one of those days.

I was watching the news while I got ready for work, as per usual, and during the traffic report they said that Rt. 1 northbound was closed.  All three lanes.  Shut down.  Accident.  At least I found out before I left the house, amiright?

Bad news is, I had to take the only other route to work, which literally takes me all around the outskirts of the city.  Yes, there are quite literally only 2 ways for me to get to work.  NOT good when you work in/around a major city.  So, even though I didn't hit any traffic on my way to work (thank you Action News!), it took me a solid 20 minutes extra because I had to go all the way around the city.  I did get to see my favorite place to be in the summer --- Citizens Bank Park --- and got super excited that opening day is LESS THAN A MONTH AWAY!!!  WOOP!!

So, that happened.  20 minutes extra on the trip to work.  Then, to make matters slightly worse (after jinxing myself, of course), I got the heel of my shoe caught between the sidewalk cracks, and it scraped the leather off my heel.  AWESOME.  That was at 0800, and I still had a solid 9 hours of the day to go.  Amazing.  

Needless to say, when I got home, I needed nothing more than some tunes and my craft room.  Like whoa.   

First up -- the finishing touches on this frame for the pic of the gals at D's wedding in October --

The theme for her wedding was pumpkins, and her bridesmaids were in black dresses with hot pink shoes, so I used the black & pink to keep with the feel of the night.  Her wedding was SO much fun.  Seriously.  A total blast.  Can't wait to celebrate with these girls again at my sister's wedding!! :-)

Next up -- some cards I made --

This one came out way cooler than I thought it would.  I got a window punch a week or so ago, and am still getting the hang of it, so I think this turned out pretty good for a first-timer!  I stamped the "Merci" on a piece of grey paper over and over (not always re-inking), and then put the window on top for the layered effect.  Pretty cool, right?!

Here again with the window effect, I just swapped the square for a circle, and just used it as a little addition in the corner.  Not too much, but just enough.  I find that with this pack of cards I got, you don't need to add too many adornments to make it really special.

I have a ton more of these thank yous, which I swore I posted here somewhere, but can't find the post to give you a link back.  Maybe I dreamt I posted them.  Altogether possible.  Anyways....they're going to be part of my shower gift to my sister, which she can then use for either the shower or for her wedding thank you's.

Um....how ADORBS did this come out??!!?!  This is for my friend's baby, we'll call her T-girl.  Her 1st bday is coming up, and I clearly had to make her a very special card for the occasion.  The base card is from my favorite paper store and yours, Paper Source.  I believe I got them on sale, so they may not have these particular ones anymore, but I'm sure they have something similar.  I also got the bday cake stamp there.  So funky and fun.

 And you have all been so patiently waiting for me to show at least one cross stitch WIP, so wait no more.

For those of you obsessed with the With Thy Needle and Thread "Word Play" series as much as I am, you'll know that this WIP is "March."  I seriously love this series.  Love.  They're so simple, yet so....nice.  I don't know how else to say it.  I just love each one so far.  "April" just came out, so I'll have to get that...hopefully this weekend.   This pic came out kinda dark, and I apologize for that, but I just couldn't get it any brighter so you could see the fiber colors.  I'm stitching it on 40 count "Purely Primitive" by Silkweaver.  At least...I think that's the name.  I know it has "Primitive" in the name.  Man.  I need a vacay.

Alright peeps.  That's all I got for now.  Do something creative today!! Stitch your hearts out!

Much love ~ ~ ~

PS - before you even ask...all my pics were taken using Instagram....my new obsession.....
 

Simple "Thank You" notes

Hello all!!  You know I couldn't possibly go and entire weekend without doing something scrapbooking related.  

Today I want to share some SUPER easy "thank you" notes that I made to send to my fam for the faboo gifts they gave me for Christmas.  I know, I know, I'm a little late, but better late than never, right???

Ok so...no planned scrapbooking/papery event in my house is complete without at least a walk through Paper Source.  When I was there last weekend getting the supplies for my sister's "Save the Date" cards, I saw a FAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS new color called "Aubergine".  Oh, hello new color.  How I love thee.  Not only is it in the purple family (we all know my thoughts on purple!!!  well, as long as it's not barney purple and it's covering an entire wall in one of the rooms of my third floor, and then sponge/rag painted on top of a white base all over the remaining walls.  ahem......), but it's Paper Source's only textured paper!!  Oh, it's awesome.  LOVE. 

Mkay so.....I scouted out the Aubergine line last week, and this past Friday, decided to head on over and see what I could pick up for these thank you's I had buzzing around in my head.  Way back in March of last year, when I went to the opening of the Walnut Street Store, I saw a demo of a really cool idea.  Take a chalk stamp pad, and use IT as your stamp to create a color background.  Stay with me...then take another stamp, and ink it with regular ink, and stamp it on top of the chalk background you just created.  Viola!!!!  Magic!!!

Let's go through it....

Ok, so here are all my stamps and inks --

Yay!!  Ok - I forgot to take a pic of them, but the cards I got are #10 Paper Bag, and the envelopes are Aubergine.  I picked Paper Bag over Khaki because the Paper Bag ones actually have flecks of color throughout.  Way cool.

Now....here's the first step:  take your ink and make a color background:

Boom.  Next, take another stamp, ink it with a contrasting color (I used Frost White), and stamp it on top of the color block, like so:

Nifty, amiright???!!  The little "thank you" stamp was inked with the same chalk ink (Blackberry) as the background for the "j".  I took that stamp and put it in a different spot for each one - so some people have the thank you on the right in a spot, others have it on the left.  Gotta keep  'em all on their toes ;-)

The flap of the envelope I stamped with the "do something creative everyday" stamp that I got from Paper Source (all the stamps used for this project were purchased there, actually), because I FIRMLY believe that we should all do something creative every day.  I have a highly technical job, and I just have to dump all that stuff at the door when I leave, and turn my left brain on in full force, so that when I get home, I can fully engage it and either cross stitch, scrapbook, sew, or whatever!  It's such a great thing to be able to do that, and we all need to make time for it every day!!!

I digress...

I took the "do something creative..." stamp, inked it with Frost White, and then covered it with clear embossing powder to emboss it.  I'm not sure how I like it, to be honest.  I should have stamped it with a Versamark ink pad and embossed it with white powder instead, so it would be more vibrant white against the Aubergine...but oh well.  Ya live & learn, right??  :-)

That's it!!  Your 'thank you's' are all done!!  This project might be the quickest one I've done to date -- it only took me a whopping 30 minutes from start to finish, including clean-up!!  I'd say that's pretty daggone good!!!  haha!

That's all I have for today, crafters!  Have a fabulous Monday, and do something creative today!!!!!

Much love :-)