A CAS(E) Birthday Card

I made a simple birthday card for my mom following along with this weeks CAS(E) sketch.

I wanted to make the butterfly look more dimensional, so I print-and-cut two sets of butterflies, attached them at the body, then added a pop dot to make one of the wings stick out more.  

The Sketch!

Guest Designer - Scrapbook and Photobook

Hello!  Long time no post.  It's been a crazy year so far.  I finished up another semester as a grad student and then had our reception/housewarming party this past weekend. That was crazy!

Today I am a guest designer over at Getting Cricky with K Andrew.  Be sure to check out her store here.  She has lots of fun stamps as well as huge rolls of bakers twine for just $5 each.  Check out all the colors. I used the green in one of my projects below.

For my guest design, I used her Of Mice and Lil' Men stamp set.

 I thought up lots of ideas using this set.  My husband's family has had horses since before he was born.  They did a lot of fun local shows when he was a kid.  He got to dress up and play cowboy on a real horse.  Young me is green with envy.

For my next project, I added some fun Disney themed stamps to a Disney photo album I have been working on.  They make the perfect embellishments for anything Disney related.  

The cover:

Inside pages:

Back cover:

Recycled Christmas

This week's prompt over at the Jingle Belles blog is Peace on Earth(Day) where we are to recycle materials to make the cards. I chose to use a piece of cardboard for the front and some scraps for the rest. Most of the paper on the cardboard came off, but not all. I like the look. I slapped on some gesso then spritzed with some glimmer mist. The snowman stamp is a $1 one from JoAnn's and the words are from a stamp set by K Andrew. They're all embossed except for the snowflakes. I did follow the Merry Monday sketch from last week, but wasn't able to download the image until today, so it wasn't linked up.




 In other news...my semester is almost over! I have one crazy take home exam and possibly another. It's been a busy semester with working full time and taking two grad level courses. I'll be happy to have my evenings back for the summer and be able to make more crafty things.

The chicks are doing well. I'll be able to move them into their new coop hopefully tonight. We just have to get some hinges and latches on. I don't think I can call them chicks anymore though. They're getting so big. Pictures will come very soon of the coop and the girls.

Christmas Card

This card is for the Jingle Belles Neutral Noel challenge and



The tree and dots are actually embossed with a pretty gold powder, it just came out poor in the photo. I took inspiration from the tree pillow, then found some grungy papers and went with it. I don't think it quite works, but I still think it looks okay.

On a side note, I got chicks today! I've been wanting some laying hens for a few years, but living in apartments hasn't allowed for it. Last summer was so crazy with buying and moving into the house. So now I have some. There are six of them and they are golden comets.

Jingle Belles Challenge

As a break from working on my organic chemistry homework today I made a Christmas card for this week's Jingle Belles' challenge. It was to create a card using stickers or rub-ons.

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The 'let it snow' words were from a sticker pack. The snowflakes are adorable dimensional stickers from K&Company. I added some glitter around the edges of the card using some Martha Stewart paint I received with my Live from CHA kit. It was very easy to put together since most of it was stickers.

Inspiration for the 'let it snow' theme came from our crazy weather. Yesterday it got up to about 65F and today we had some snow. I had the song running through my head all day.

Pink Birthday Card

Tonight I made a birthday card for a friend.

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I used this week's Mojo Monday Sketch for inspiration. I'm almost certain the paper was a small 12x12 $1 pack from Target. The flowers are Prima.

Valentine's Card

Long time no type. The holidays were very busy for me. I've still been crafting, but haven't had the chance to photograph anything until today. I made some Christmas decorations for the new home that turned out well. I also finished up the wedding portion of my wedding/reception scrapbook. The reception/housewarming is in June. It seems like it's a long time away, but between school and work, it will be here quickly. I'm starting to work on things for that and just finished up the save-the-dates for it today.

Today is the first day of Charity Wing's Live from CHA feed. I won a scrap pack from their first interview, Robin's Nest. I've never heard of the company, but their products looked wonderful and I'm so excited to get their giveaway.

I've been working on some simple Valentine's cards for various people. They were super easy to make.



I used a border punch for the red border at the top. The hearts were cut from printed scrapbook paper. The lines were drawn on with a pearlescent pen. The final touch was a little bit of bling. That's it! They're great for assembly-line card making.

Pink Christmas

The Jingle Belles challenge this week is to make a card using pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The best part of this challenge is that $2 will be donated to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for every card that is entered. I'm not a big fan of pink, but there's no way I could pass this up. It really was a challenge creating something for Christmas with pink.



For the background I used pink card stock and spritzed it with Tattered Angels pink bubblegum glimmer mist. The tree is from a set from Hobby Lobby. The adorable little deer and text are from K. Andrew's Christmas stamp set. Flowers are Prima's, ribbon from the dollar section at target. All stamps are embossed.

It didn't show up in the picture, but below the deer and tree, I used Tattered Angels chandelier glitter paint. I haven't used it previously and wasn't sure what to expect. I wanted to add some glimmer as snow. Next time I will add a little more definition for the snow first. Maybe do some clear or slightly off white embossing then add the glimmer.

Cupcake Toppers + Freebie!

Today I made some cupcake toppers for Halloween. They're not quite finished because I discovered that I didn't have any toothpicks or skewers to attach them to. The inspiration for this project came from Getting Cricky's Simply Sunday Challenge in which we were to make a fall treat craft. I have plans later this month to make some cupcakes and thought this would be a nice touch.


The circle and star shapes came from MTC shape files and the font was one that came with my computer. You can download this file below. It's in MTC format. The bat is a Lettering Delights simple shape file and the ghost came from the web.



Halloween Cupcake Toppers

Let it Snow! - a card

I'm not at all ready for winter and am quite enjoying the warmer October weather we've had this week. However, I did finally get my KAndrew Winter Wishes stamps recently. They had a little adventure. Short story even shorter, they spent some time in the ditch across the street from my mailbox. The mailman thinks that the door was blown open and they flew out and spend some rainy cold days in the ditch. Luckily the field had already been harvested and the stamps were well packaged. They were completely undamaged and in perfect condition.



I love these stamps. This is the first, and so far only, card I've made. But I plan to use them a lot for holiday crafting. They stamped so nicely straight out of the package. I wish I could have made the circle a little wider, but that was as wide as my baby bug would allow. Really, I just wanted to make something with these stamps. It actually goes along with last week's Jingle Belles challenge, but I didn't get the time to make it before the deadline.



I also used her stamps for a fun greeting inside.

Jingle Belles Peace Challenge

The theme for this weeks Jingle Belles challenge is Peace on Earth. We are required to incorporate either a peace sign or the word Peace into our holiday card.

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I stamped and embossed the background and the lettering. The bird is from a Lettering Delights SVG file.

Wedding Soap Favors

For favors, we gave out handmade soap with recycled, handmade soap dishes. The soap was a simple recipes I found on Brambleberry's Soap Queen Blog. The scent I called Summer Wedding, but is Brambleberry's energizing fragrance. To me it smells citrus-y and summery. Almost everything I used to make the soap came from Brambleberry. Awesome shop. The ribbon I purchased at Forever Wed.



The soap dishes were made from scrap wood from the oak flooring we installed throughout most of our house. It couldn't be used for the flooring for various reasons such as being too warped, having the tongue cut off, too short to look good and so on. I couldn't let all this scrap wood go to waste, so some of it got turned into simple soap dishes. To do that, I just cut off the tongue, made them a uniform size to fit the bar of soap, and added three drainage grooves to help direct water away from the soap. In the process I also got to use a table saw for the first time. That was fun.

We still have a bunch of scrap wood left over. Do you have any ideas on how to use it? Please tell me below. I'm itching to make something or somethings with it.

Mojo Monday Challenge

I recently came across the Mojo Monday sketch challenge blog. I really enjoy making cards from layouts. Probably because it's one less thing to worry about. I can follow along but still be creative and make it my own. For challenge this week I made another Christmas card.

Link Up Love Party with K Andrew

Kristal over at Getting Cricky is hosting a link up party this week. It's a great way to meet new people and find new inspiration. For this month's party, she asked that we post our favorite fall/Halloween project.

I only have two that I've posted on this blog and they're both high on my list, so they'll both be mentioned.

The first one was from last year.



A card for my then boyfriend (now husband) for our 13 month anniversary. He really likes Halloween and I was glad that lucky number 13 happened to be October. He loved the card. I was just starting to get to know my new Cricut so I was quite happy with how it came out.

The second project is the group of tombstone ATCs I just posted about Monday. The post is here.

Be sure to check out some of the other blogs linked below. There is some great inspiration out there!

Link Up Love Party with K. Andrew

The Link Up Love Party K. Andrew is hosting over on Getting Cricky with K. Andrew is a way to get to know fellow bloggers and find new inspiration for your crafts.

So far my most favorite project I've posted about is my Marion Smith Inspired Art Journal.



If you'd like to join in the Link Up Love, follow the link back to K. Andrew's blog and join in.





As for me, I'm moving to my new house this weekend so I doubt I'll be posting anything new soon. Have a great end of the week!

Sketchy Thursday Layout

I really liked this weeks sketch at Sketchy Thursdays that I decided to do a layout with photos from my recent trip to Tennessee with my fiance. The trees and lettering font are files from Lettering Delights. The strip of trees is a punch.

First ever altered tin

I decided to make an altered tin recently and am entering it in Getting Cricky with K Andrew's All A Flutter Challenge

Some of my daffodils have started blooming and this was my inspiration





I also received a Leibster Blog award from Debbie. Thank you!

Marion Smith inspired art journal

This project is also being entered in K Andrew's Simply Sunday "All A Flutter Challenge at Getting Cricky.

I've been watching some of the Prima Live videos lately and really love Marion Smith's projects. She made a couple of altered art journals lately and I was inspired to make my own.

The cover is painted canvas art board. The lace was my grandmothers and was spritzed with blue and green Glimmer Mist. It's mostly to hide my chop job on the bottom of the cover. The paper butterflies were cut from one of Lettering Delights doodlebats font. They were inked and the dark green one was embossed. The 'create' was made with rubons, then dabbed with liquid glue to make them stay on the canvas since they wanted to come off.


Below are a few pages that I have complete. There are lots more to do.

The shapes were randomly cut from scrap paper pieces and inked.


Tim Holtz stamps were used for the tag


I love the little owl in the corner and the tree punch I used for the bottom.


My favorite page so far. The bird was hand cut and lightly stamped with black ink then embossed. The quote says "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" by Lori Holtz.

My Favorite Blogs

I have several blogs that I read regularly or go to when I need some inspiration. Here are three of them.

Mod Podge Rocks - She posts a lot of links to projects that use Mod Podge. I had no idea that there were so many different types of this glue out there. My local craft stores only carry the matte and gloss types. This years she's having a contest about once a week to win a little trial pack of Mod Podge.

Not Martha - Megan posts a variety of links like food, electronics, games, and of course crafts.

Oops, I Craft My Pants - I love her style and use of bright colors. I know I have at least two of her ATCs up on my ATC wall.