Valentine's

Okay, so let's just pretend that I have been blogging regularly since my last post. Maybe I have been and the posts have been mysteriously deleted. By aliens. Yep. That's what happened. I'm sure of it.

Anyway, I'm having a blast with a $1 pack of HEAVY cardstock stickers from Dollar General. And the best part? PURPLE FOIL accents!!! How much cooler can you get! And, it just so happened, that I had a scrap of purple foil gift wrap in EXACTLY the same color!! Scraps are good. Saving is good. Anyway, here are a couple of the Valentine's I've created. The inside of the lion card says "I want you to be my Valentine!" The inside of the giraffe card says "I'd STRETCH my neck out for you, Valentine!" I made each letter in STRETCH a different size so they s t r e t c h up. Clever, huh? Printed the text in purple to match the TOTALLY AWESOME purple foil accents. The hearts in the tree are red foil (more foil!!!) confetti. It may not show, but I stuck some foam pop dots under the lion, leaves and giraffe for a little extra dimension.

I've got a snake, alligator, elephant, monkey and turtle to play with yet! Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!!

How is it possible that I managed to totally ignore/abandon my blog for an entire month!! I'm so ashamed! I thought about new postings. Really! I did! Anyway, it's a new year. One filled with new hopes and new challenges. I've been working on the same resolutions since 2008 and have yet to accomplish them. Guess I'll hang on to them for one more year.

Here are some of the projects I was working on in December. The altered binder clips are soooo fun! Little works that have to make a BIG statement. Backyard Candle Co. in Washington, IA agreed to sell them for me. We had a good run in the fall. I haven't seen the results for Christmas/Winter yet. The post-it note holders were "freebie" gifts that I gave to all of the women at the family Christmas get togethers. I saw the idea at Memory Bound, a scrapbooking store in Ankeny, IA. (Such CLEVER gals there! They never cease to inspire me!)

E - I - E - I - O!

I'm so easily distracted! While in the middle of some Christmas projects, I ran across this piece of farm animal print paper from Reminisce. A light bulb came on! I shoved the current projects to the side and started working on this card. Easier said than done. First I had to find a simple barn template on the internet. My pattern was too large for a folded 12 x 12 page, so I had to make it in two pieces. Then I decided to paper piece the front. Okay, cute barn, but I still hadn't used the paper! It had to go on the inside. Writing will have to be done on the left side. Oh, well!! I'll probably not make another one of these cards, but this one is kinda cute.

Don't You Love It.....

......when you get an idea (this time at the last minute), you make it, and it turns out just the way you wanted?? I had one of those moments yesterday. Before going to Iowa City for the day, I decided to make a "team spirit tag" to hang from my purse. I knew there would be THOUSANDS of Hawkeye fans in town for the football game (we were going up for volleyball) and I wanted to see if my "experiment" would draw any comments. Well, (sigh) no comments, but I thought it looked dang cute hanging on my purse. Sooooo easy and sooooooo inexpensive!

Ask Your Mummy for a Candy Bar

Here's Frankie's buddy! Too stinkin' cute, don't you agree?! I used vinyl wallpaper strips for their texture. I didn't ink the edges of the first one, but I did the rest. Much cuter inked (as always!). There are little white dots on the eyes that add a lot of personality, but they don't show up well in the scan. Spiders are from my never-ending supply of confetti. A plain Hershey bar lies beneath. (Disclaimer: This is not an original idea. I saw a sample done at Memory Bound in Ankeny. They had used scrapbook paper designed to look like what I did.)

Carter's Card

Here's the card I just whipped up for a little boy's first b'day. His party is this afternoon. I work with his grandma. The paper is from Reminisce. The balloons are 3-dimensional and from a pack of confetti. They were the perfect size for the front of the card. 3-d --- what fun!

18 Random Things mini-book

Make a Smilebox slideshow

If only getting this project into a viewable format was as easy as the project itself!! Augh!!! Anyway, here's the details about this project. I completed it in one day, with interruptions. The pages are slid into sturdy, top-loading trading card sleeves. There is a thin layer of cardstock between the two papers to make it easier to slide in and out. I used a 4"x6" package of Dollar Tree paper for the entire project. (No 12" x 12" papers were harmed.) I also used 4 colors of coordinating paper from my scrap collection. My goal was to keep it simple - no inking, ribbon, or froo-froo. For one thing, there isn't room, unless you adhere the embellishments on the outside of the sleeve. I also forced myself to use my own handwriting - something I rarely do. The letters on the cover were cut free-hand. I should have mixed up my papers - you know, been a little more RANDOM. Don't know what I was thinkin' there. I used my Big Bite to punch the holes. I used a strip of torn brown fabric tied in a knot to "bind" it together. I could have easily put the question and answer on the same page and only done 20 pages instead of 40! Oh, the things we learn when doing something for the first time. I hope you had a good time learning some of my little "quirks"!!