Trying something new...

Happy Sunday friends!!  Sundays are happy and sad days for me.  Sad because it's the end of the weekend and I have to go back to work the next day but happy because it's always a good day to spend with my family!  We had such a good time tonight, we went to see the Padres vs the Knights of Columbus game and it was so exciting! 

A co-worker asked me to make a thank you card for her using black and white and a splash of another color.  Well, I love red with black and white so I put my thinking cap on about how I wanted to design this card.  I looked around online for some inspiration.  I knew that I wanted to use the flowers from the Verve Visual Good Friend set so I went out there to their site and look around.  They have such a great group of creative ladies on their site!  They are always giving me some inspiration and  in fact this design idea was inspired by Julee Tilman.  I had never tried a shaped card before and I am really excited about the way this one turned out!!

 

 I stamped all three of the outlined flowered stamps onto red card stock and bent the petals up a little bit then attached a large clear sticky jewel in the center. The base of the card is actually the largest Nestabilities scalloped circle that I have in that set.  The "Thanks SO MUCH" is from a Paper Trey Ink set called Out On A Limb Sentiments. What do you think?  I sure hope she likes it!

Well thanks for peekin' in on me friends.  Hope you have a fabulous week!  Take care of you!

Wishing You...

Well how are you all doing tonight?  I have been busy making Valentine Cards that I will be sharing with you very soon.  I made a new years resolution of sorts that when I purchased any new stamp sets I would get the ink on them quickly and not let them sit for a few months before I used them.  So far so good!  These two cards here are from a nifty little set from Verve Visual called Wishing you.  There are 10 little stamps in this set and you can easily use them for various different occasions...gotta love that right?

 I love this card because I used scraps of other projects...doesn't that just make you feel so good?  The flowers are Prima and I have had them for so long and haven't found the right project to use them on until today!  Woot Woot!!

For this card pictured above the flourishes were from another Verve set called blessings.  I am not sure what kind of patterned paper this is because it was also from my scrap stash.

Thanks for peekin' in friend!  Hope all is well with you and yours!

Hello 2012!!

Hi there my blogger friends!  What a crazy 2011!  I decided to take some time away from blogging for a while to catch up on some much needed family time.  My hubby was diagnosed with prostate cancer and thankfully we caught it in time and all is well now but I just needed to focus on our family and eliminate some things.  I would like to begin blogging again this year but I will probably only post once a week.  I have missed catching up on everything with you all but some of you I have kept in contact with through Facebook, others I have stalked your blogs!!

Any how, here is a little something that I worked on for a friend of mine at work.  She ordered a card for her mom's birthday.  I just loved the way this turned out.  The colors are so fun and cheery!

I really enjoy using baker's twine!  It is just the coolest thing!  The large flower is from a stamp set called  Great Friend from Verve Visual.  The Birthday Wishes stamp is also from a Verve set although I don't remember which one right off hand.

Thanks for lookin' in on me friend.  Hope you have a wonderful 2012!

Happy Father's Day Weekend!

Well it's here...summer that is! It's already the middle of June and Father's Day weekend. Here are a few of the Father's Day cards that I made for a few of my customers. All of the stamps on these cards were purchased at Verve Visual. Great gals over there and quick with the shipping too! I was having such a hard time coming up with ideas for masculine cards and when I went to their web site to look around they had all these great layout ideas! If you ever get stuck for what to do head over to their web site and check them out!

Do you like the edges of the square with the sentiment on the card above? Remember those deckle edge scissors from EK? Yeah...blast from the past right? I thought they added just the right touch and then I inked the edges. See...I am going to be a trend setter...you want to go dig these scissors out and cut paper don't you?

What else would make a card more masculine than "screw" brads? Makes you want to go "ARRR" just like Tim the Toolman Taylor doesn't it?

We have been busy little bee's here at our house today. Our grand-daughter will be turning 1 this week and we are having the whole family over to celebrate with a cook out and pool party. My good friend at work is making the cake for me...she is awesome with decorating and our theme is Tinkerbell! So today in order to get ready for all the festivities I washed out decks...manually! I don't have a power sprayer and didn't want to spend the money to rent one so I bought the deck wash and scrubbed myself. Man was I a picture...I was in my swimming suit, yellow rubber gloves up to my elbows and hot pink tennis shoes...can anyone say hot mama? LOL! Needless to say with it as hot as it was today I jumped in the pool when I finished the chore. Feel much better now and am going to focus on the inside of the house. Mike and I need to put the mirror up in the basement bathroom and that room will finally be finished. Can you believe how long it took us to finish that bathroom up? Oh well at least it is done now right?

I am making some serious progress on Angelina's album and hope to finish it up this week before the party, so stay tuned as I will be posting pictures of pages as I can. Next week I will have tons of photos from the party so that should be fun too...who can resist looking at a cutie patootie eating cake in a diaper? Not this grandma!

Happy Father's day to all the dads in your life! Hope you have a wonderful weekend my friends! Till next time! ~Toni

Mother's Day...this is the last group

Hi Friends! How are you doing? It has been a while hasn't it? May always seems to be such a busy month! Haley's last day of school is tomorrow. Yep...one more day and then she will officially be a sophomore! Sidney's last day of school was last Wednesday so she is now a 7th grader! Man I can't believe that my girls are growing up so fast!
Sidney is going to summer camp again this summer, this will be her last summer to go, she is really looking forward to going this last year. Both of the girls attended this camp for 4 years it is such a great way for a kid to spend the summer. It's a day camp and they do tons of fun activities with the kids and they get so much exercise that they are usually pretty wore out at the end of the day! Good stuff huh?
Haley is going to have a very busy summer this year. She has decided to volunteer for YESS camp, which is a camp for the mentally handicapped. She will be working for half a day at school helping with whatever the teacher needs assistance with and then the rest of the day they play games and other activities. On Fridays they have a field trip to a fun place...swimming, horseback riding, etc. Then she will have Color Guard Camp and practices every week and let's not forget about golf! I am tired thinking about it! *wink*

Here are the last few Mother's Day cards I made. The paper on this first card is from SU, I have actually had this paper for 2 years! Sick isn't it? But hey...I pulled it out and am using it that's good right? The stamp set is from Verve Visual. I used the stamp off technique so that the color was a little faded looking for the flowers. You can't really tell in the picture but I used clear embossing powder on the Happy Mother's Day phrase, then inked the edges up a little bit to soften it up.

This is the card that I made for my mom. The paper is Making Memories but don't try to find it because it is also several years old...LOL! For this one I used my markers to ink up the stamp so that I could make the stems one color and the flowers another color. The verse is from the same Verve Visual stamp set I have used on all the Mother's Day cards. The little butterfly is a Martha Stewart punch and to bling it up a bit I used some green stones in the middle. I picked up the crochet lace at Hobby Lobby...I was so excited because I wasn't even thinking about this card when I got it...LOVE IT!

This is a playful little card that I made for a gal at work to give her daughter. It was so simple but I loved the youthful look. The border punch is...you guessed it Martha Stewart. You would think that with all the snappy punches Martha has that she would have an awesome personality...CRAZY!



Well guess what I am doing now? You guessed it...I am trying to come up with Father's Day card designs. I have such a hard time with masculine cards. I need to work on our little granddaughter's scrapbook. She will be turning 1 next month and we are having a birthday party for her here with all of the family so I would like to get caught up so that they can look at how much she has changed! We shall see how far I get on that idea! There just aren't enough hours in the day are there?

Thanks for peekin' in on me! If I don't get something posted this weekend I hope you have a happy and safe memorial weekend where ever you are!

Grandma Cards

Hi friends! Holy cow! We had some very strange weather here this evening. They were predicting that tonight could be just right for super cell storms producing large hail and tornadoes. Around 4:30 today I decided the weather was looking pretty ominous so I decided to head home for the day. I pulled out of the parking garage where I work and got a few blocks away and the tornado sirens fired up. There was a tornado on the ground about 40 miles south west of town. It would be so easy to get crazy and panic and believe me my heart was pounding but I decided to say a few prayers and ask the Lord to get me home safely...that is exactly what he did! In fact my DH drove in at the same time as I did. My mom was here with the girls and they had everything ready downstairs...flashlight, doggie, dog food...just waiting for us! So we watched everything for a while and we got a lot of crazy rain but missed the hail (thank God!). Tornadoes were all around us and they kept popping up here and there but after about an hour the weather cleared up and the sun came out. Funny how fast things got crazy and then left just as fast. Unfortunately I don't think the people in Oklahoma are as fortunate tonight! God be with you all!

Here are a few of the cards I made for Grandma's for Mother's day. This first one was so simple! The buttons made me think of a Grandma! I cut a slit with my exacto knife and fed the ribbon through the card and tied in the front. I really like that idea...it would look great with wider ribbon too. The white card stock in the middle is punched out using one of my new border punches. I had seen it in all the magazines and have been looking for it everywhere but couldn't find it here locally, so I called up those fabulous gals at Scrapfunattic and asked if they could order it for me. Fiskars carries a version of this punch but I really don't care for the Fiskars border punches because I just don't think they are a quality product. This punch is actually from EK Success and I am sorry but I don't remember what it's called! However I also found out that EK makes Martha Stewart punches...figures...I love the quality of her punches too!

So as you can see...I used the punch here on this card too and then did a little "foe" stitching on the side.

These next cards are very similar and this first one reminds me of my sweet little grandma. I really like the colors they are so cheery and springy. The white side of the card was made with the swiss dot embossing folder and the cuddle bug.

Thanks for peeking in! I hope you are all safe this evening!

Mother's Day Cards & Birthdays...

Hi friends...how you doing? The weather here has been so beautiful for the last week! I love it! I have been doing very well getting my walking exercise in almost every day...hopefully just talking about it won't jinx me and I will keep it up! I would love to shed about 10 pounds...just wanna be a little happier me...know what I mean?

It has been so busy around here lately with the girls birthdays and school activities and ...do you remember that basement bathroom project I started several weeks ago? I decided to tile the bathroom floor? Yep, well I called my dad to come over and help me with cutting the tile around those tricky parts then we pulled the toilet up to tile nicely around that area and well nothing ever goes as planned in this old house...needless to say things broke and we had to get a few new pieces. Dad and I thought we could fix it but after fiddling with the toilet for the whole day we decided to call a plumber friend of the family and he worked us in and was able to come out tonight and put everything together! Yay! Now all I need to do is fix up the walls and we are good to go! I will take pictures when I finish.

Now onto some creative fun. Here are a few more Mother's Day cards that I put together this week. This is still the same stamp set I purchased from Verve Visual...it's called Because of You...such a beautiful set! Even though I bought it for Mother's Day cards I can see how versatile this set would be to use for other cards too. This first card was fairly simple the time consuming part was cutting all the little petals out for the flowers but they really make the card, don't cha think? I used the Giga and Mega Marvy large punches for the circle and scallop.



I think I am going to make this next card for my mom for Mother's Day. She saw it laying there on the floor and she said I love that! I am sure your mother really shouldn't pick out her mother's day card but what the heck! At least I will know that she likes it!



Here are a few pictures from Haley's birthday. I can't believe that she is 15! I blinked and she turned into a beautiful young woman. I remember when she used to play dress up and play with baby dolls!

Dad got her first pair of golf shoes...you think she was happy?  LOL!

Here are pictures from Sidney's birthday, she just turned 12! I can't believe she is almost a teenager! She cracks me up...she is so crafty like me. She made the invitations for her party to hand out at school.




We were so lucky because Whitney and Lena were here for Sidney's birthday!  Here is a picture of Angelina having a big cookie with frosting!  Momma wasn't too sure about all this mess!

Thanks for peekin' in my friends.  Hope you are having a great week so far!  Take care of you!

Maaaa....

Hi friends! How are you this evening? What a nice evening to just sit out and enjoy the peace and quiet! We have been so busy around here lately! With the school year wrapping up just around the corner there are plenty of school activities that have been keeping us busy and the girls birthdays are so close together so April and May are always busy with that and then there's mothers day! Speaking of mother's day...I have had a total of 55 orders for mother's day cards! I was so excited and surprised at the same time! Last Saturday I didn't have anything going on (if you can imagine that) and thought I would begin working on all the cards. I thought with the whole day I should be able to crank the cards out...I even had all my sketches ready to go. Would you believe that I had absolutely NO creative mojo what so ever? It was so weird. I was so mad! Then Sunday morning rolls around (we weren't going to church until that evening) so I got up and said my morning prayers and asked the Lord to please have mercy and help me! He answered my prayers because I finished 22 cards by late afternoon on Sunday! Here are a few cards that were part of that group.

I used a fabulous new stamp set that I got from Verve Visual...wonderful online store.


The "Happy Mother's Day" used on this card was also from Verve Visual but it is sold by itself.



All of the Mother's Day cards I made thus far have been done with paper I already had in my stash. Is that good...or sick that I have that much paper. After I stopped working at the scrapbook store I realized how much stuff I had that I hadn't even started to use and I decided that it was simply greedy to keep buying and not using it up. I always thought that I had to have the most current paper designs to keep up with the trends. While it is nice to get the new stuff coming out people that don't scrapbook or paper craft, that buy my cards, don't know if the paper is from this year or 4 years ago...and I haven't had any complaints on the cards yet!

Well thanks for peekin in friends! Hope you have a great weekend! ~Toni