Father's Day Creations!

Hello there readers!  It has been quite awhile since I've written to you and again LOTS has happened!  I'll spare you the details and just give you the headlines:

• I had a complication after my c-section that caused me to end up need a lot more recovery time - but luckily now I'm healthy!  
• Sammy is healthy!  She'll be 8 months tomorrow and she's absolutely just the most fabulous baby ever!  Being a Mom is the absolute biggest change but best thing about life!  
• By Husband switched jobs, which was stressful but now he is MUCH happier in his new situation!  

Needless to say, it's been a stressful few months!  I really didn't do much crafting during this time, but I did get back in the saddle for Father's Day!  

First - this I made a month before Father's Day but I couldn't wait to put it up in our house!  It's a shadowbox that holds bottlecaps!  I saw it in Pinterest and figured I could make a nice one for a LOT less than the one that I saw had cost.  I was able to make the entire thing for about $32!  =)  I got the vinyl lettering on Etsy for $9 and the shadowbox at Michael's with a 40% off coupon for $20!  Then my husband cut a hole in the top of the box for us to toss the caps in!  I love how it turned out:  

In addition to the shadowbox, I made some Father's Day cards for my husband's first Father's Day and my dad's first as a Grandpa!  We had a LOVELY weekend of friends and family!  Here's the first card: 

I created a golf hole with copics and cardstock, and used my Paper Smooches stamps which I love! My daughter's room is owl themed, so I couldn't resist adding the DeNami Design owl and I LOVE that Lawn Fawn sun too!  My husband loved it!  

Then onto the next card: 

On this one I freehand cut out the tree and used mostly Lawn Fawn stamps to create the sentiment and cloud background!  I had the owl rubber stamp from ages ago (an oldie but a goodie!) and I colored everything with copics!  Grandpa definitely thought it was "Owlsome" hehe!

It's been a long time since I got inky and I must say that it felt REALLY good!  I'm hoping to have more time to work on stuff in the future - both including cards and scrapbooking stuff!  

I hope you enjoyed these cards today!  =D  Have a crafty week!  

Happy Monday to all! =)

Hello everyone!  Well, this is my last week of freedom before I go back to school!  I've got lots of crafty plans for this weekend, and also plan to work on cleaning up the house and whatnot.  It's been a super busy but AWESOME summer! 

This past weekend was a TON of fun!  It was my hubby's birthday, so we went out to BRGR (the best burger place ever) for dinner and had a great meal!  Then we went to the State College Microbrew Expo on Saturday with some friends.  It was AWESOME!  So many amazing microbrews!  It was really neat to get to try so many delicious beers and talk to the breweries about how they got started, how they decided to make certain types of beer, etc...  Finally, Sunday the hubs went golfing and I got to see my Dad perform in the local Senior Follies music and talent show!  It's a huge fundraiser for his Aging Agency, and it's always a great time!  We all met up for dinner after too, for a perfect ending to the weekend!  =) 

Ok, so onto the card!  I made this last Friday, but didn't get to post it until today!  This card uses several stamps and stamp companies, and I LOVE how it turned out: 

Can you spy all of the stamp companies on this card?  There's FOUR: Hot off the Press (scroll and border), Studio G (butterfly), Papertrey Ink (Circle), AND Lawn Fawn (sentiment).  I also love that I once again got to use several of my favorite techniques -- distressing and embossing!  The middle strip is embossed with clear powder and then covered with Mustard Seed Distress Ink -- I LOVE this particular stamp/color combination here!  So vivid and pretty!  I also heat embossed the sentiment and used watermark ink for the borders.   I also added some teeny tiny pearls and embroidery floss to finish off the card.  =) 

So, this card was also inspired by a couple of my favorite challenge blogs: 
CR84FN #36 - Yellow, Kraft and Neutral Colors

CAS-ual Fridays #16 - Embossing

Also, don't forget to check out my BLOGOVERSARY GIVEAWAY!  There's only four more days to comment for a fabulous $25 giftcard to your favorite store!  =) 

Keep the Sun in your Heart

You know, I just love that sentiment and I've not yet used it since I got Lawn Fawn's Partly Cloudy set forever ago!  This card was a bit difficult for me, mainly because it had to be ONE LAYER, because I wanted to play along with the latest challenge over at Lawnscapings!  I didn't know if I'd be able to make that happen, but then I saw this week's CAS-ual Friday's challenge, and I had an idea that matched the sketch and involved LOTS of Distress Ink (which I've been SUPER into lately!)  Here's the final result:

This card really turned out better than I expected!  I masked off that white strip and went to town with my Broken China distress ink!  Then, I masked off the blue and stamped the white area with elements from Lawn Fawn's Partly Cloudy and Blissful Botanicals.  I drew in my own flower stems and added some embroidery floss and pearls as added embellishments!  I really like the way that the embroidery floss looks twisted around the front of the card, too!  It's a super fun technique! 

So, as I said I made this card with both Lawnscapings and CAS-ual Fridays on the brain:
Lawnscapings #16 - One Layer Cards

CAS-ual Fridays #15 - Sketch Challenge

Ok friends!  This is a SUPER exciting time for me, stay tuned!  There's something exciting coming up VERY soon on my blog, and it might just involve a giveaway!  =D  Happy Wednesday to all! 

Happy Happy Birthday!!!

So recently I've been spending a LOT of time playing with my new stamps from both DeNami Design and Lawn Fawn (and sometimes together since the FABULOUS blog hop they held last weekend!!!)  The DeNami projects will have to wait for now (some of them are for ANOTHER blog hop this weekend, and others are just not quite ready to be shown off!) but here's something that I made with Lawn Fawn's little "Year One" set that I really, really like:

I recently purchased the "Fly a Kite" 6x6 paper pad from My Mind's Eye's Lime Twist line.  Isn't that PP just to DIE for?  I really like that whole paper pad... so bright and cheery!  It was just screaming for some Lawn Fawny goodness to make it awesome!  I also added some fun colored pearls that match colors in the starred PP, and some white grosgrain ribbon... I really wanted to make the white pop on this card!  I finished it off with some faux stitching (thank you new Tim Holtz ruler for helping me measure!) and there it is!  It's fun and cute and totally mailable!!!  I have a few important birthdays coming up, too!  =) 

This card was inspired by two fabulous challenge blogs:

1. Wee Memories Challenge #63 - Dare to Color

2. Tuesday Throwdown #61 - Birthday Cards

I hope everyone is still having a great summer!  I'm slowly coming to the realization that I'm going back to school SUPER soon, and so I've been trying to get ready for that.  I'm really going to miss all of the fabulous crafty time! 

So, I have one more thing to share with you tonight!  I've been doing a LOT of cooking lately, and I love LOVE cooking.  One food that I absolutely love is dill pickles.  And being the kind of person that always wants to make things themselves, I've always wanted to try making pickles but often felt they would be something that was difficult to get right!  Well, THIS RECIPE over at One Perfect Bite is SO easy and makes pickles that are SO delicious that I'm not sure why EVERYONE wouldn't start making their own pickles all the time!  Here's a picture of my (delicious) homemade pickles:

Yum yum yum!  Ok well that's enough for me tonight... thanks for reading!!!  =)  Have a lovely Thursday and weekend and as always thanks for stopping by!  =D

If Friends Were Flowers...

I'd pick all of you!!!  Seriously, those of you who read my blog are so very VERY sweet!  =)  Thanks for stopping by yet again to check out another fun card creation! 

Ok so first of all... I FINALLY got ahold of Lawn Fawn's Blissful Botanicals set!  I've been wanting it for awhile, and I FINALLY got the chance to purchase it, along with some Jenni Bowlin inks and LF's Year One set also!  =) 

Next, I was hopping around blogland, and I saw a new challenge post from Wee Memories that was RIGHT up my alley:

This challenge asks us players to use no less than FOUR colors on your card!  Well, you ALL know by now that I LOVE color, and bright colors too, and so I couldn't wait to play along with this one!

I was really in the mood for fussy cutting the other night, and so here's what I came up with:

Aren't those flowers just the BEST?  And I love the long leafy border.. it's so much fun!  The leafy border is also stamped with Jenni Bowlin's "Seed Packet" ink which I LOVE.  It might be hard to see, but all of the flowers are cut out, colored with copics (as are the leaves), and then they are popped up on foam adhesive.  Here's a different angle that shows off the dimension a little better:

On the inside, I covered one side with some PP from Basic Grey's "Out of Print" collection which I bought this week, and the other side simply says "Thank you for being my friend" from LF's "Hello Friend" set! 

So there you have it!  I've been having so much fun with this stamp set and many more this week.. I can't wait to show you all the fun things I've created!  Stay tuned, and as always thanks for stopping by today! 

The Happiest of Anniversaries -- with many more to come! =D

Hello everyone!  So, today is a VERY special day for me... it's our 3rd Anniversary!  3 years ago today, I married my absolute best friend and we had the most amazing wedding!  It was a very special day with lots and LOTS of fun for everyone!  Our wedding was REALLY big (about 400 people, we invited 500!) because Zach has a gigantic family and my family knows EVERYONE.  =)  It was a really perfect day, and we took LOTS of pictures!  =)

For our 3rd Anniversary, my husband and I had a fabulous dinner last Sunday out at a restaurant that is right on the Allegheny River... we had a fabulous view and the food was excellent!  Today we did things a little more low key, having a dinner at a local restaurant (one we'd never tried before because we always love trying new things!), then we went out for dessert, and shared a little champagne this evening!

One special thing that we always do for our anniversary is to share some blueberries.  I know this might sound strange, but during our wedding sermon (which was quite possibly the STRANGEST wedding sermon ever given!) the priest started talking about the price of blueberries in Washington state (we live in Pennsylvania).  He then tried to tie it back to the Beatitudes -- I wish I was joking but this really happened. I couldn't hide my complete shock over the chosen topic and many of our friends and family were too.  It's ended up being this funny blessing though, because we always remember the sermon about blueberries from our wedding and laugh!  We decided on our first anniversary that we'd always have something with blueberries for our anniversary!  Here's us tonight with some blueberry yogurt (with fresh blueberries of course!) at a Simply Yogurt:

OK so onto the project!  I'm not much for scrapbooking, but I did make a really nice scrapbook of our wedding!  It has lots of fab photos, journaling tags, stamping and all sorts of other techniques!  The full album can be viewed HERE, but I didn't want to put up the entire thing on my blog.  Here are a few of my favorite pages:

The Front Cover -- the embellishments are handmade clay flowers!

This is my favorite picture that we took at the wedding!  It really shows just how happy we were that day!

 Just married!  I made several pull out tags for this scrapbook -- the blue one in this picture reads: "After the ceremony, we took pictures and went for a limo ride!  The pics started in the church and ended in a beautiful courtyard!  This was the slowest part of the day, and we had SO much fun!  =)"

I also love this picture and quote!  This picture really highlights my dress which I LOVED!  =)

We took a lot of pictures with our parents, but this one from the rehearsal ended up being my favorite.  I like it because in order, it goes: Zach's Dad, my Mom, Zach, Me, my Dad, and Zach's Mom.  It reminds me of how easily our lives blended together!  =)

Our relationship started because Zach taught me how to swing dance!  Of course at our wedding we had to show off!

I wanted to include as many pictures as possible, so on a few pages I made photo collages like this to showcase more pictures!  This one is my favorite!

Another favorite picture of mine, and we are planning on living a long happy ever after!  =D

WOW ok I know long post!  Again if you want to view the whole scrapbook in picture format, go HERE!  Thanks for visiting and reading about our anniversary and wedding story!  I hope you enjoyed it!  =) 

Wee Memories Challenge and some other crafty goodness!

Hello crafty friends!  Happy Friday!  I'm really enjoying being able to share projects with you again, now that life has calmed down a bit!  First of all, I wanted to share with you all that I was the lucky LUCKY winner of Kim Wilson's Relay for Life prize pack over on her blog -- which included 8 or 9 stamp sets, adhesives, distress ink, pens, and even more goodies!  I got the package in the mail not too long ago, and so I wanted to get inky right away!

One of the reasons I was doubly pumped about this prize pack (as if there weren't enough reasons above), is that all of the stamp sets I won were from stamp companies whose stamps I don't own!  I'm always looking for new stamp companies, but it's hard to invest in too many!  I was most pumped to finally get my hands on some Wilson Design stamps - namely the Everything's OwlRight set!  I used it lots in today's card:

I am super proud of this card!  I really enjoyed blending my Wilson Designs and Lawn Fawn stamp sets!  Although the design is CAS, I did a lot of work on this card to make it fab!  The background is hand-stamped, the polaroid was masked off and the party hat was paper-pieced, AND that little yellow flower was also made by ME!  =)  It's a homemade resin flower!!!  Anyhow, I'm really happy with how the whole thing turned out!

I kept this card CAS because I was inspired by the current Wee Memories Challenge:

 

I have one more crafty project to share with you today!  I was over on Pinterest (if you haven't gone there yet, do it NOW!) and I saw this awesome yarn wreath with handmade felt dahlia's on it.  I followed the picture to THIS AMAZING BLOG!  I modified some things for my own wreath, mainly using three dahlias, not including the argyle pattern and wrapping the wreath with ribbon instead of yarn.  Here's how it turned out: 

I ended up really liking the result!  It looks just great on our front door!  =)  It was time-consuming, but totally worth it for the final result!  =)

Well, that's all I have to share for now, but I do have more fun things to share with you SOON!  Stay tuned, and have a fantastic weekend!  =)

Spiders in the Attic!

At least, that's how I remember every attic I've ever been in!  Today I bring you something right out of the attic for the current Lawnscaping Challenge: 

I've been thinking about this challenge for a LONG time and not being able to come up with something that created a scene that hasn't already been done.  So today I was going through my Lawn Fawn stamps once more, and I thought, wouldn't those spiders (from Heebie Jeebies) look cute hanging in an attic doorway? So that's exactly where I put them:

I just purchased Tim Holtz's designer ruler today, and it came in handy for measuring and cutting out the doorway and the patterned paper (from Basic Grey's Max and Whiskers paper pad).  Most older houses had fabulous wallpaper like that in their attics too... hehe!  Then I modified the spiderweb stamp from Heebie Jeebies and added some webs through the door with some spider cuties!  Then, of course I needed a custom sentiment so I turned to Harold's ABC's!  The doorway is distressed with Antique Linen and the PP is distressed with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo.  I used leftovers from the door frame to alter the top of the card to make it look more like an actual attic roof -- which is my favorite part of my card!  =)  All in all I ended up having a lot of fun with this challenge!  =) 

I've been working on more fun non-cardy projects too!  I have a fabulous Halloween wreath in the making, a summery wreath almost finished (my door is really under-dressed) and some cute Christmas Tree decorations for the holidays!  I'll be sharing all of this super soon! 

Ok everyone!  I hope you all have a fabulous rest of your week!  =)  See you soon! 

Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop!!!!

Hi blogland, and welcome to the Young Crafter's Unite Blog Hop!

 

What a great reason to have a blog hop! By now, you should know a few key things.  First, be sure to comment as you go on the blog hop for a chance to win some AMAZING prizes!  =)  Second, the theme of the hop (other than young crafters) was to use our favorite things!

If you are hopping along, you should have made your way here from Deena's Blog.  If you just stumbled upon this post and would like to start from the beginning, please head over to www.youngcraftersunite.com!  The blog hop starts at 12:00 PM CST on July 1st!  =)

So what makes me a young crafter?  Well, I'm only 27 so my age qualifies me as pretty young, but also I definitely have a very fun, whimsical and vibrant style that gives my cards a cutesy and young feeling!  I truly believe that my personality is that of someone that will always be young at heart no matter how old I get, and that I show that style often through my paper crafts!  =)

For this blog hop, I chose to feature two of my three favorite stamping companies.  I also tried to use many of my favorite products to make these two cards.

When I really got back into card making about a year ago, two stamp companies really stood out to me and caught my eye as fitting my style!  The first was DeNami Design!  If you've never checked out their awesome, high quailty, adorable rubber stamps, you should!  DeNami has a fabulous style and is known for their cute and whimsical images, especially animals: 

Here's a card showing off some of my favorite DeNami Design images - their owls!  I just think they are so cute, versatile, and super easy to paper-piece (another thing I love about DeNami stamps)!  And how cute is that sentiment?  I also used some of my other favorite products for this card: VersaMark watermark ink (the best for watermark images AND embossing) and Copic markers.  I cut and colored the tree free-hand!  Here's a close-up of the Copic coloring:

The second stamp company that caught my eye when I started blogging is ALSO super whimsical, fun, full of animal images, and easy to paper piece!  That's right, it's Lawn Fawn!  =)  Lawn Fawn has super high quality photopolymer clear stamps that are fun and easy to use!  Again, I chose animals (and birds too, I do like birds on cards) and did a lot of paper piecing:

One of the things I love most about Lawn Fawn's stamp sets is how well they all work together!  Here I'm using several Lawn Fawn sets: Critters in the Snow, Hats off to You, Bannerific, Sophie's Sentiments (I needed the loose exclamation point), AND Teeny Tiny Backdrops.  I also used Copic markers again here (because they are awesome), and two of my other favorite types of ink: Memento's Tuxedo Black (the best all around for Copic coloring), and Tim Holtz's Distress Inks (here showing in Broken China and Tumbled Glass, these inks are super versatile and amazing for creating a distressed look or many other inking techniques).  Finally, I used a new favorite tool here - my Spica Glitter pen!  If you've never used one of those, they are amazing and worth every penny!  =)

Finally, there are TWO favorite items that I have that I use ALL of the time but that didn't make it on either card, and I wanted to take a second to share those items with you because they both rock!  First are my handmade clay embellishments that I make with my molds from MoldMuse.  These molds are SO easy to use and produce beautiful embellishments:

Second, I love pearls!  I've tried many pearls from many different stamp companies, but my FAVORITE by far, for both quality, price, and convenience, are the pearls from Queen and Co.  I love these pearls because they come in a TON of colors, they are individually adhered (not attached by a row of adhesive), and each package of 60 (which includes 3 sizes) runs between $1 and $1.50!  Here's a picture of mine, which you can see are very loved:

 

OK!  I know that was a long post but in the past few years I've learned a lot and have a lot of favorites and I wanted to pay homage to them all correctly!  =)  It's time to hop along to Jillian's blog!  Thanks for stopping by, happy hopping young crafters!  =)

Have a WHALE of a Time!!!

Honestly, I think that should DEFINITELY be the idea on your birthday - to have a whale of a time!  =)  Anyhow, that was the inspiration for this Lawn-Fawny creation today!  Here's my card:

This is one of my absolute favorite cards I've made in awhile!  I love the colors, and I love getting to use Critters in the Sea - which I haven't really put to good use for a long time and it's one of my favorite Lawn Fawn stamp sets!  =) 

I started by punching the edge and cutting out the seahorses and whale.  Then I used Tumbled Glass distress ink on the paper just to add a little extra coloring. Then I stamped the spouted water and sentiment onto the green cardstock, adhered down the embroidery floss and then the whale.  Then, I adhered the punched blue piece and the seahorses.  I then added the bubble stamps around the seahorses!  I finished the whole thing off with a few pearls (which you should know by now are one of my favorite embellishments) and some glossy accents to the bubbles (doesn't that make them look fun?!?!) and there you have it!  =) 

This card was inspired by three different challenges:
1. Lawnscapings #12 - a fabulous sketch (shown below) 

2. CAS-ual Fridays #8: Getting Edgy - I used my favorite border punch and the seahorses to create a CAS but funky edge to this card! 

3. CR84FN #32 - Use Aqua, Yellow, and Green as your main card colors

Wow I posted twice in the same day!  =)  It's been a long time since I've done that, but I'm feeling really great about all of the fun, crafty creations I've had time for lately!  =)  I'll be back with some more fabulous fun tomorrow! 

Happy Birthday Plane

Hello everyone, and happy Monday!  I have a fun little card for you today using two of my favorite stamp companies, Papertrey Ink and Lawn Fawn!  I have a bunch of male birthdays coming up in the next few weeks, and so I made this for one of my brother in law's! 

I just love love LOVE the Fly Away stamp set!  I stamped one of the planes and added the Happy Birthday banner!  Then I colored the whole thing in, and added glossy accents over the whole plane (I just love the way that plane looks with glossy accents on it!)  Then, I added the clouds from Lawn Fawn's Partly Cloudy stamp set to make a fun sky scene!  Finally, I added some baker's twine and pearls for a final touch! 

This card was inspired by lots and LOTS of fantastic challenges:
1. Wee Memories #60 - Party Time

2. Tuesday Throwdown #54 - Create a Masculine Card
3. Off the Wall Craftiness #56 - Red, White and any Blue color

=)  It's been so SO great to get some seriously crafty time in lately!  How is everyone else enjoying summer, and can you believe it's almost July already?!?!?!?!  Madness!  Anyhow, have a lovely Monday!