A Birthday Card

Today I wanted to share a card that I made for my Niece for her birthday.  It is a digital image from Sweet Pea Stamps and the image is called Spring Nocturne. 

 

I colored the image with my Copic markers and then cut it out and used a gold stamp pad to apply gold to the edges of the image.  For the background paper I used Tim Holtz distress pads and applied the ink with my  ink blending tool.  Then I dropped little droplets of water on top of the ink to create an aged look.  When I stamped my images onto the background, I stamped them on a scrap piece of paper and then stamped them on my card without re-inking so that the image would be "faded" and give a more vintage appearance.

Quick and Easy Halloween Treat Bag

Life has been a little crazy lately........... crazier than normal that is.  My son came in from Oregon and visited us for a while and we threw a party last weekend so friends and family could visit with him.  Our large Chest Freezer quit on us.  Ahhh.  That was frustrating.  We probably had $60 worth of food, so not much really had to be thrown away but I still  hate that!  I know it could have been much worse so I'm not too upset.

My Niece and her husband just came in from London so we visited with them yesterday.  It was good to visit with them.

With all of these different things going I just realized that Halloween is this week.  Am I ready??  NO!! Since we don't get trick-or-treaters I make gift bags for my grand babies.  This year I kept it simple and quick (um ya know, since I spaced it off until the last minute).  I bought these little orange bags from Wal-Mart for cheap and then cut some spiders out with my Cricut to use as a gift tag.  I used  the October 31st cartridge.  I applied some green Stickles for their eyes, wrote their names on the body of the spider and hung them on their bags.  Boom! Halloween bags done.

A Mermaid Card

My granddaughter recently had a mermaid birthday party.  I had a digital image from  Mo's Digital Pencil.com.  This image is called Melia on Her Shell Phone.

 

I use images from this site a lot.  For some reason I am really drawn to these images.  I used some brown flock as sand at the bottom of the card.  I had purchased a variety package of flowers on Peachy Cheap a while back that included some small little flowers that had sea shell centers.  I cut the flowers off of the sea shells and used the shells as embellishments on this card. If you haven't heard of Peachy Cheap  it is a daily deal site that offers a different deal every day.

as you can see I also used some liquid pearls by Ranger to embellish her top and bottoms ( um er tail I guess). 

Well I think she liked the card so success on my part.  

Have a great weekend. I hope you get to do something crafty!!

Knit a Honey Cowl

I have to start off with an apology for my post yesterday.  My video didn't work on the email you received but if you go to my actual blog you can watch it there. I don't know why it works on the blog but didn't come through on the feed.  I'll have to research it and give that video thing another try some day.

I really love to knit and crochet.  I don't usually have a lot of time for it and I'll be the first to admit that I don't have advanced skills but I can usually do afghans, scarves and such.  I am actually working on a chevron afghan right now and hope to get it done in the next couple of weeks. 

I wanted to share this Honey Cowl I recently knitted.  It was a fun project, it turned out great and is so cozy and warm for those Wintery days that are headed our way.

This was a pretty easy project for anyone that has moderate knitting experience.  It is knitted on circular needles.  The pattern is FREE on Ravelry.com  and creates a dense warm cowl.  I made the longer version shown on the pattern and used Manos Maxima Merino Wool purchased from Urban Arts and Crafts store in color M2552 for the cowl pictured above. I hope you make one either for yourself or as a gift.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Tutorial on making a paper rosette

I use a very simple technique for making paper rosettes.  I use them all of the time. Its a great way to use up little scraps of paper.  It's also a great way to create an embellishment that matches your card - or page for basically no extra money.  Once you have made the rosette, it can be sprayed with a medium such as Glimmer Mist, glittered, or you can use a stamp pad to darken the edges and so on and so on.

I was playing around with video on my Ipad the other day.  I made this tutorial in a video format and it is my first time at doing so, so cut me some slack!  I do think it explains the process pretty easily but if you have questions just leave a comment and I will be glad to help.  I have also posted an example of a card that I used a rosette on. You can also look back at previous posts to see other examples of how I have used them in the past.