Monogrammed Card Sets

Hi, Hope you had a wonderful holiday! Mine was wonderful. Got to visit family and friends, can't ask for any more than that!

I made some monogrammed card sets for my co-workers this year. I made the A-2 box that they're in, with the pattern from SplitcoastStampers website. The monogram stamps are from Just Rite. I love their stamps! The paper is leftover from my brother's wedding invitations! I am glad to be using it up.

Hope you have a wonderful New Year! I'm off to Pittsburgh to watch the Capitals in the Winter Classic outdoor hockey game.

Gift Card Holder

Hi, Thanks for stopping by my blog. I can't believe it's been over two months since I posted something! Wow, time flies!

I wanted to share a gift card holder I made for a friend. I found the template for the gift card holder at Splitcoast Stamper's website. I dry embossed the poinsettia and added a button. The Merry Christmas stamp is by A Muse. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas holiday! I am off to check out my favorite blogs and see what I've been missing!

Thanks!

Hi, Thanks for stopping by my blog. This is just a quick post to share a Thank You card I made for a friend. I used two different Lasting Impressions brass templates - one to emboss the Thank You sentiment and one to emboss the seashells. I used more of my favorite Lasting Impressions distressed paper on this card. Hope you're having a great week! I'm looking forward to going to a Capitals game tomorrow, so glad the season is in full swing again!

Fall Thank You

Hi, Wow, it's been awhile since I posted anything! I've been creating, so I guess I have no excuse for not posting! Promise I'll post more soon. It's finally feeling like fall here, so I thought it was a perfect time to post this card.

Here is a card I made using two older Lasting Impressions templates. The paper is also from Lasting Impressions. It's some of my favorite paper from them, I love the distressed look. I embossed the designs and then rubbed them with sandpaper, that technique causes the white to show through the paper. Have a great weekend!

Changing a template

Hi there, here is a card I made using a new Lasting Impressions template. The first picture shows how the template looks normally. I didn't like how the 'a' in the word Thanks was out of place above the rest of the words. That bothered me, so I changed the look of my card, simply by moving the template under my paper as I embossed. I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm really enjoying using this brightly colored paper, I stocked up on it when Lasting Impressions had a big sale so I'm trying to make sure I use it rather than just hoard it! Have a great weekend!

Template Challenge

I belong to a yahoo embossing group and each month we have a challenge to create a card using the same template. August was my month to host the challenge and I used this happy birthday template by Lasting Impressions. The first card is the card that I created. I'm not crazy about it, I think it's plain and boring! That's why I like these challenges, I get lots of new ideas for using my templates! I wanted to share a couple of the cards that other participants made. The second card is made by Donna, and the third card is made by Cin. I love their cards, thanks for sharing them with me ladies! Hope you have a great week!

Lemon Ice Cream

Here is the latest card I made for the monthly Iron Chef recipe card swap that I participate in. My category was cold dessert, and the secret ingredient was lemons! Our hostess, Jessica, sent everyone some patterned paper and challenged us to use the paper on our cards. The paper is blue, brown & white! Doesn't exactly go with yellow or a lemon theme, so it was definitely a challenge for me. I am pretty happy with how my card turned out though. I dry embossed the "Lemon Ice Cream" title, the lemon and lemon slices using a Lasting Impressions brass template. I put the recipe itself into a pocket I created with brown cardstock. Hope you're having a great holiday weekend!

OT: Mike Green

Hi, I wanted to share something a little off topic. This past Saturday, I volunteered at an elementary school in DC with Mike Green, defenseman for the Washington Capitals, and about 100 other Caps fans. The Caps donated paint, supplies for kids and teachers, plants & flowers, etc and we spent the morning sprucing up the school. This school definitely needed our help, it was in bad shape. I was on the goody bag committee. I never got a goody bag for going back to school, so I was a tad jealous. Especially because the goody bags were filled with school supplies and Caps trinkets! We also filled goody bags for the teachers, which consisted of construction paper, Lysol wipes, hand sanitizer and an electric pencil sharpener. We delivered the goody bags to the classrooms and I was amazed at the teacher's reactions. Every one of them was SO thankful for all the supplies, but especially for that pencil sharpener. One teacher said she had been asking for a pencil sharpener for 3 years and the school couldn't afford it. How sad is it that an electric pencil sharpener is so high on their list!!? I was sad and amazed at the same time. Mike Green was very nice and took the time to speak with each volunteer and sign autographs. I love this picture of me with him. When I first met him several years ago, I was so excited, I had a huge goofy smile on my face and I was blushing so badly (can you blame me, he's sort of cute) so the picture turned out horrible. At least I was able to take a better picture with him this time! Hope to be back later this week with some crafty posts!

Cards for Kids

Above is a card I made for the little Ring Bearer that was in my brother's wedding. He is my brother's wife's nephew. He did such a good job as a ring bearer and as the oldest grandchild in their family, he is so helpful with the other kids. He just loves my brother's iPod Touch and always wants to play games on it. He told my brother that he decided he's saving his money to buy an iPhone. The cutest thing was that my brother asked him who he was going to call (he's in 2nd grade this year) and he said he would call his Mom. He was open about being for hire to do chores to earn money so he could buy the phone. I made this card and sent it to him with $5 and told him I hope it got him closer to his goal of buying the iPhone. I used Stampin' Up punches to make the card, and printed a picture of him & his brother and sister and put it on the front, to resemble how photos look on the iPhone. I hope he likes the card!

Above is a frog card I made with Stampin' Up punches. This is for the youngest nephew. They all looked so cute at the wedding and were so well behaved. I made these cards and put some money in each one to send to them. I made the bee/flower card out of punches too, for one of the flower girls.

And, the last group of cards for the kids. I made these from punches too. I made the watermelon card for the youngest flower girl, she loves fruit and vegetables! I made the bite mark in the watermelon with a scallop circle punch. I just used the very edge of it to make it look like someone had bit into the watermelon. The other card is supposed to look like Legos! I hope I accomplished the look!

Purses

I got the pattern to make these cute little purses from this blog. Aren't they so cute? I made them to send to my brother's wife's sisters. I met them for the first time at the wedding, and they were so nice & welcoming to our family. I filled them with some mints and closed them with some velcro tape. They are pretty small, I was thinking they might be good to hold a gift card. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Embossed Card

This is a card I made for a 1-on-1 embossing card swap. You could choose any theme, so I chose to use some of my new Lasting Impressions templates for this card. I love how it turned out. I just love that new tree template. Hope you're having a good weekend. It's a rainy day here, so I'm spending the day in my craft room, still trying to un-bury my table from wedding related projects. Hope to work on something new this afternoon.

It's a Zoo!

Hi there, this is a door hanger that I made for an embossing swap. I had a hard time coming up with a theme for it, and I looked around my craft room and was inspired to make this! Trust me, it is a total zoo in my craft room right now!! Haven't had time to clean up after being out of town for my brother's wedding. I am in the midst of some fun projects and also trying to clean out and get rid of a lot of stuff. I used Lasting Impressions templates for the animals, their frames and the words. All of the paper is by Lasting Impressions too. I used several sheets of cardstock (4? I can't remember) to make the strong backing for the door hanger. Hope you are having a great summer!

Wedding Craftiness

When you entered the reception hall, there was a table where you could stop & pick up your name place card. They had 203 guests at this wedding!! On the same table, they had two frames, one with the save the date card and this message thanking me for making the save the dates & invitations, and the frame next to it had the invitation on it for display. I got so many compliments (even from men! You know you did a good job when a man compliments your crafts!) and I thought it was so sweet of them to do that for me.

Kristen & Jeff made the centerpieces themselves, I think they turned out so good. They used mason jars, filled them with coffee beans and stuck daisies in the top. I thought they were so cute. In an effort to save money and not use so many coffee beans, they rolled up a piece of brown cardstock and stuck it in the middle of the mason jar. The coffee beans are just around the glass and the center where the flowers are is empty, inside the rolled up cardstock. I thought that was a great idea.

This was the table for gifts. My Aunt JoAnn came from TX for the wedding and brought Jeff & Kristen this quilt that she made for them. She brought a couple sharpie pens and had people sign the quilt as they came in. Everyone signed on the white part of the quilt. I had never heard of this before, and it was a huge hit. The quilt was beautiful, and done in pinks & browns, their wedding colors. You can see the black/white canvas wall hanging that I made for them in this pic as well. I posted a photo of it last week on my blog. Kristen saw it before the wedding and started crying! I am so glad she liked it.

Wedding Photos

I'm back from my brother's wedding. We had so much fun, the day was just perfect and everything went smoothly. I'll post a few more photos tomorrow that have some crafty stories behind them. Whhewwww.... I am glad this wedding is over. Now I'll have more time to craft for fun!

Wedding Time

It's finally time for my brother's wedding! Seems not that long ago that I was working on sample invitations and making save the date cards. Since my gift to them was the save the date cards and invitations, I am not giving them a huge gift. I made this canvas wall hanging for them. It's made from a Quick Quotes kit that I found at a Scrapbook Convention that I attended last month. Super easy and quick to put together. I ordered the picture of them from the photographer that did their engagement photos. The die cut tree and all the other pieces came with the kit. I'll be away for a few days, hope you have a great weekend!

Climie vs Neuvy

One more scrapbook page from my Austin, TX trip! This is a page I made to show the goaltenders from each team. Climie is (was?) the goaltender for the Texas Stars, and Neuvirth "Neuvy" is (was? - not sure what next season will bring) the goaltender for the Hershey Bears. I found this hockey rink paper at my local AC Moore. I cut the words from my cricut, matted the 4x6 photos on some orange cardstock and that was it! Super easy page but I love how it turned out. It's one of my favorite layouts from my scrapbook. I put a little bit of journaling in the upper right hand corner. You can click on the picture to enlarge it and read the journaling. Thanks for stopping by!

Hockey Scrapbooking

These are a few more pages from my TX vacation scrapbook. These pictures are from the Calder Cup Final (AHL) game that I went to see in Austin TX. I had so much journaling on my other hockey pages, explaining what the pics are from, I thought it would be redundant to add journaling to these pages. The titles pretty much describe the pictures. I got the sketch ideas for the pages from this blog. I used my Cricut to cut the titles. Thanks for stopping by my blog! I appreciate it!

Swaps

Hi, These are two projects I made for swaps. The card swap had to follow a sketch (which I've since lost/deleted the image of, so I can't share it with you, oops!) and had to use the colors blue and orange. The image is from CC Designs. The recipe card is for the Iron Chef recipe card swap. We were each assigned an ingredient (mine was onion) and then we had to design a recipe card using our ingredient in a vegetarian main dish. This was pretty difficult. Who knew it was so hard to find a vegetarian main dish with onions in it?! Hope you're having a great week!

Scrapbook Pages

Hi, These are a couple more scrapbook pages that I made of my trip to Austin, TX in June. For the first page, I cut the title with my Cricut and used one 4x6 photo. On the left & right sides of the page, I dry embossed a wavy pattern. I thought the page looked too plain without it. The journaling says "New haircut & highlights - Frenchy's Salon, Austin TX." The second page shows a single 4x6 photo with me and a few friends I met while in Austin. I talked to these ladies on the Texas Stars facebook page prior to my trip to Austin, and then we met up during the hockey game. Everyone is so nice in TX, it's easy to make friends there! I dry embossed a tag and journaled on the tag. I cut out the title on my Cricut. Hope you are having a great week!

Cedar Park Center

Hi, Thanks for stopping by my blog! I've been working on some scrapbook pages to highlight photos from my trip to Austin, TX in June. This is a 2 page 12x12 layout I did on the hockey arena, Cedar Park Center. I don't consider myself a scrapbooker, but I am really happy with how this came out! This layout was really quick & easy to put together. I used two pages of patterned paper, some tan cardstock that I inked the edges with brown ink on, and a few embossed elements. I used a Lasting Impressions brass template and embossed a few stars and the Cedar Park Arena title. All the photos on this pages are 4x6, so no cropping involved there. I got the idea for the sketch at this blog. She has some great sketches that are wonderful for making quick pages using 4x6 photos.

The journaling says "Cedar Park Arena is the home of the Texas Stars. 2009-2010 was the Stars 1st season. They have a great fan base already. I saw the Hershey Bears face the Stars for Games 4 & 5 of the Calder Cup finals. The Bears won both games! Austin TX June 2010." It is really hard to photograph 2 page layouts! I hope you are able to see my layout okay! I feel like the picture doesn't do it justice!

Pergamano Coaster

I said in my last post that I would post some of my original Pergamano projects that I made years ago. This is one of my first Pergamano projects. I made this small Pergamano project and put it in a coaster that I bought at Michaels. I made a lot of mistakes on this one, but I still think it looks pretty nice. It's so delicate and different that I don't think people notice all the mistakes I made! Pergamano is a technique that involves embossing on parchment paper. Hope you're having a great weekend and are staying cool!

Back from Texas....

I had so much fun in Texas! The people there are so friendly, and I loved the city. Definitely different from East Coast life! Here are a few pics from my trip. I got my hair done while I was there. I went back to being blonde! I had a lot of fun at the hockey games and the Hershey Bears won both games I attended. It was worth the 3030 miles round trip! I went to San Antonio and saw the Alamo and also went to Waco and visited the Branch Davidian/Waco massacre site. That was very moving, and extremely sad. I didn't realize so many young people died during that stand off. The hockey picture is when my team won Game 5 in Overtime!! They came over and celebrated next to the glass almost right in front of me. How thoughtful of them, I got some good pictures!

On a crafting note, I've been taking lessons on Pergamano. I love this technique! I took a few lessons on Pergamano several years ago, then got sidetracked on other things, and decided I wanted to try it again. I found a teacher nearby and have really enjoyed learning about Pergamano again. Pergamano is dry embossing on Parchment paper. I mostly like the look of white on white Pergamano, so most of the cards and projects I make using the Pergamano technique won't have much color. I think it looks so elegant and is just beautiful. I made this card as a wedding card for my brother & his fiance. This technique is time consuming, it took me over 3 hours to make this card. I am so pleased with how it turned out. I think it's my best pergamano project that I've made! I'll post some of my original creations from years ago later, but they are not as good as this one. Hope you have a great week!

Monkey Business

Hi there, I just love this monkey template. He's a new one by Lasting Impressions. On the template, he's not hanging upside down. He's hanging from his arms. You can see it here. I then saw a card on Laura's blog that I thought was so cute, with a monkey hanging by it's legs. So I thought, I can change this monkey to hang by it's legs too! I embossed each part of his body separately and then put him together to look like he's hanging from his legs. Then I used another template for the birthday gift and then tried to make it look like he was holding the gift.

Hope you are having a great weekend. You all know I am a big hockey fan. Well, my team the Capitals didn't make it very far in the playoffs this year, so now I am obsessing over the Capitals minor league team. I am off to Hershey, PA for a day trip today to watch the Hershey Bears play in Game 2 of 7 of the Calder Cup finals. Then in a few days, I am traveling to TX to watch the Hershey Bears take on their opponent the TX Stars for Games 4 and 5. I am looking forward to getting away, even if it's for a short time!

Card Swap

Hi, Thanks for stopping by. I wanted to share some cards I made for a card swap. I'm not happy with how my pictures turned out. It was dark when I took the pics. I tried to lighten them with photoshop but then the colors turned weird. Trust me, these cards are a lot cuter in person! I used purple and green patterned paper from Lasting Impressions and dry embossed the word "Thanks" on each card. Hope you have a fantastic holiday weekend!

Iron Chef Recipe Card

After about an 8 month hiatus, I am swapping with the Iron Chef gals again! I am so excited to have the time to commit to swapping again. I had to take a break from swapping with them because I was just too busy trying to finish my brother's wedding invites and save the date cards. Now that I have those projects behind me, I can devote some time to swapping. I love the Iron Chef recipe swap. It's a swap for 6x6 recipe cards. Our hostess, Jess, is wonderful! I couldn't ask for a better hostess. She's organized and always provides us with great sketches and challenges. She provided the patterned paper to all the swappers and our challenge was to use the patterned paper and this sketch. The theme was salads. I chose a broccoli salad recipe. The tag has the recipe for the dressing on it. I wish I had taken a picture of the tag before I sent my pages off to the hostess, oh well. We're always looking for more people to join our little group of recipe page swappers, so if you're interested please let me know!