I spent most of the day today doing two things, cutting out onesies and shopping for bling and ribbon for on the onesies.  I wasn’t sure how long it would take to trace the onesie pattern onto the cards and then cut them out, but let me tell you, your hands start to really feel it after you’ve done the first ten.  I pushed through to sixteen and threw in the towel (for now), and then went shopping.

I need to find some bling that will work well on the invitations.  Right now, they need something to make them cute and worth sending. Naturally our only craft store is Joanns, so this involved driving almost an hour for some serious shopping.   I went to AC Moore and Hobby Lobby and bought small rhinestones and ribbon.  Of course I couldn’t find orange ribbon to match the Halloween theme, so I went with a light pink that will match the color I’m stamping on the background.  I’m not in love with the invitations yet, but hoping the bling will turn my thinking around.  I can’t fail at this project because I don’t want to disappoint my friends and I won’t give them something that I’m embarrassed or just not thrilled with.  I know they are giving these to their friends and family and definitely don’t want to put them in a position where they look at them and are appalled at how they look.

On a side note,  I’m surprised how hard it is to find orange ribbon this time of year.  What’s the deal that I can find purple but not orange?  What’s Halloween coming to anyway?  Geez, give a girl a break, will ya?

I’ve been working on two projects today.  I painted the stars that will be a part of the child’s chair that I’m putting flowers into and then re-painted the chair itself.  This is the third color for the chair as the blue I used was too bright and the new yellow color was school bus yellow and I hated it, and now I’m using a lighter yellow.  The chair is yet to have a coat of polyurethane on it and neither have the wood stars.  I had been given some cute candy corn from our niece, and it turned out that they were not wood (I’m not sure why I thought they were), and they instead, are foam.  Foam isn’t going to work for this outdoor chair, so back to the drawing board.  I need to find another item that will be fall inspired, to be attached to the chair by magnets.  My last piece to attach are small daisies that should look great with the yellow chair.   All in all, this chair has been a problem from beginning to end.  (It’s not even the end and I’m not sure when it will be.)   It seems like I’ll be giving them the chair in the spring with tulips and forget about the mum I already gave them for inside the chair.

The other project are the baby shower invitations.  Rich spent almost the entire day printing the inside information on them as the writing was very specific with a very specific theme.  I’m hoping they will like the inside, but there is a lot of information and confetti, so it’s a little bit busy looking.  I finally got the first finished invitation around 6PM, so worked on it for a long time, as I wanted to make sure that I really like the look of the outside of the card.  I’m not exactly sure if she will like it, but I’m hoping she will.  I chose a pink pattern to put on as a background and I don’t think it’s a dark enough color.  I’m going to work on distressing the edges and I need to buy some ribbon and bling to really make it cute.  Right now, it ok, but just ok.  I can’t give our friends something that is just ok and I need to make twenty-five of them, so ok is not an option.  I need to get serious about these invitations as time is of the essence.

I decided today to get serious about a project I am working on for friends.  They are having a baby shower for their son and daughter-in-law and asked if I would make their invitations.  Normally I would say no to a project this extensive, but my friend is ill and I can’t say no to him or his wife.

I’m using the onesie template that I made in an earlier card, and the mother wants an autumn theme.  So far I have given her four ideas and am waiting for her to get back to me with the one she likes best.  I used a sock monkey holding a baby rattle in one, a pumpkin with candy corn on either side of it for the second, one with three pumpkins in a half circle as the third option, and finally, a little girl dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween for the fourth choice.  I changed her candy basket to a small heart and it looks cute.  I was pretty sure she would pick the little girl, and in the end, she did.  The girl will require coloring with something other than alcohol markers as they will bleed through the paper, so I’m leaning toward using water based markers and a blender pen.  I’m also going to highlight the colors with colored pencils so it’s a brighter image.  I guess we’ll wait to see how they come out.

Of course I’m making a video of the making of the invitation, so you’ll see the process and the end result.  I’m making twenty five of them and anticipate this taking a very long time to finish.  The shower is October 30th.  Time is of the essence.  Yikes!

Ok, I’ll admit it.  It drizzled today so I didn’t do anything but nap.  Some days just go like that. Sorry.

I love this time of year and found this stamp of a seed packet that I had in my stash and thought it would be fun to color with watercolor pencils.  I used Derwent and Prismacolor watercolor pencils on Canson XL paper.  I started with an orange background 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ A2 size cardstock and then added a layer of black paper that was 5 3/8 x 4 1/8″ and then another layer of orange paper that was 5 1/4″ x 4″ and my watercolor paper was 5 1/8″ x 3 7/8″.  I used Antique Linen from Distress ink around the edges of my watercolor paper to make it stand out and put a layer of foam tape under the watercolor paper and ran an orange taffeta ribbon around near the bottom of the watercolor paper and made a bow with fishtail ends.  I put orange washi tape around the envelope near the bottom edge.  I ended up putting some Stickles on the flowers and Wink of Stella to make the flowers more frisky.

 

 

I got this message when I logged into my site this morning and thought I would just attach it so you can see it.

Encourage your US-based visitors to register to vote by adding a subtle prompt to your site.

 

Do you think that was subtle enough?

I thought I would tell you about my trip to Joann’s.  I am an addict.  It’s official.  I walked around that store and up and down every aisle. I probably could have bought a lot more than I did until this happened.  I wanted to buy another pair of the Fiskars Easy Action scissors that I love.  If you watch my videos, I did a run down of a lot of different types of scissors and these are my favorite for ease of use and convenience.  Here’s the part that made me laugh.  They moved them to the top row, so if you do have some issues with mobility, you won’t be reaching them. Now they have a lock on them that says, “Ask for assistance.”   I probably would have had to ask for assistance anyway because of their height, but now they assured themselves that I’d be asking, since it is now locked into place.   At our Joann’s location, you have to ask for assistance for Spellbinders dies and now some, not all, of the Fiskars line of scissors.  I guess shoplifting must be reaching an all-time-high for scissors and dies.  I’m ok with it (since I couldn’t reach the scissors anyway), but the funny part was the “assistance” I got, couldn’t figure out how to work the lock so had to ask for assistance.  This could have gone on all day, but luckily assistant number two had the secret code to unlocking the lock.  Oh, and the first assistant brought some device that she thought was a key but made the second assistant laugh really hard.  I don’t know what it was, but clearly it wasn’t a key.  Oh, how I long for an A C Moore,  Hobby Lobby or Michaels.

I had a great idea (or at least I thought it was a great idea) for a card.  I was going to make a window with shutters, without using a die.  I thought I could use my score board and create the shutters with the score board and also create siding by scoring the paper.  I wanted to make a card with a flower basket below the window and have flowers cascading below the basket and add some three-d flowers into the basket as well.  I’m not sure why it looks so bad, but the video is probably an hour long and I’m still not done with the card.  I thought it would look great if I put acetate over the windows, and the glue that was supposed to be “invisible,” currently is not.  I really thought I could make this a cute card, and I’ve spent so much time on it, that I hate to scrap it now.  I used some really cool techniques on the card.  I put a couch inside and made it a patterned material by “kissing” two stamps together.  The couch looks ok, but the rest of the room looks odd.  The couch seems like it’s too large or, I’m not sure, just out of place.  I hate it when I put so much time into something and have it turn out so badly, I can’t use the video, and worse, I can’t send it to anyone.  I really thought this was a good idea and that it would be really cute.  It’s not.  I guess I’ll have to add this to my “thought it would be a great idea, but wasn’t,” pile.  Some crafty days just turn out badly I guess.  Darn it.

On a brighter note, the card I made yesterday that I really was unhappy with, doesn’t look so bad now.  Maybe I’ll have the same thing happen to this one.  I seriously doubt it.

I wanted to make a thank you card for our friends that organized the landscaping party we attended yesterday at our friends’ home.  I think sometimes people are overlooked when they do a really good deed and this certainly counts as one.  Our friend Carl, and his wife, Leslie, organized the labor, the tools, made the food and arranged for everyone to bring tools and minimal food items.  They did such a great job and the day and the work progressed so smoothly, you’d have thought we’d all been working together forever.  Of course I wasn’t much help in the landscaping, weeding and mulching arena, but asked for other jobs and was able to help with kitchen duties, sweeping and keeping the dishes clean and put away throughout the day.  I wanted to make a card for our friends to thank them for all that they did and for what the day meant to us.  We are all tired and sore today, but in a great way.  We really feel like we gave back and that’s always a terrific feeling.

This sympathy card is for the grandmother of our niece and nephew on their mother’s side.  I wanted to make a card that was simple yet elegant.  I started with 10″ x 7″ white 110 pound cardstock scored on the 10″ length at 5″. The sentiment came from Creative Times and is from a set called Floral Sayings.  I used Distress Ink Antique Linen ink pad and ran it over the front of the card until the paper was completely covered in the ink.  I used light yellow handmade paper that I got from A.C. Moore and cut a strip that was about an inch high and seven inches long and used distressing scissors so the edges weren’t straight.  I put gold speckled washi tape in the center of the yellow paper and attached them to the inside below the sentiment.  I dried the front paper because the ink hadn’t dried and then I cut the yellow handmade paper into squares.  Two that were 2 1/4″ across and I used a patterned paper cut in a square that was 2″ square.  I glued them together centering the patterned paper on the yellow paper with Art Glitter Glue.   The center piece of patterned paper is 3″ and the yellow paper is 3 1/4″ square.  I put a piece of fun foam under the patterned paper using tear tape to adhere it and used the yellow handmade 3 1/4″ piece in the center of the card.  I did not glue the patterned paper down.  Before I put the center yellow piece down,  I glued the smaller squares on the top left corner about 1/16″ from the top and left corner) and the bottom right corner (same distance from the edges) with a Stampin’ Up glue stick.  I used the bow jig with yellow ribbon that had a brown edge that matched my patterned paper and created a bow that was about 2″ across.  I ran the excess ribbon around the back of the 3″ patterned paper and glued it to the back.  I put tear tape on the back of more ribbon and put strips of it on the front of the card.   I used the same gold speckled washi tape on the flap of the envelope.  I hope you like this card.  It’s simple yet elegant.

I know I’ve mentioned a friend we went to college with who has been ill.  I’ve sent him several cards and have been wanting to visit him, but our timing hasn’t been good.  His wife was talking to one of our friends and mentioned that they needed help with landscaping so he volunteered and said he’d put out a request to the rest of our group of friends.  In the end, we had fourteen or fifteen volunteers for this project.  They live in a log cabin (that he built) on a wooded lot with a lot of flower islands and rock gardens.  Since he has been ill, they haven’t had the time to really keep up with things and they installed a pool for him to use for therapy.  Our men worked on the area around the pool and created a brick walkway from the pool to the end of their home.  They also leveled out the area around the pool so it looked nice.  The women tackled weeding and mulching and there was a lot of it to be done.  I’m really not great at any of the jobs that were outside, so asked if there were things I could help with inside.  His wife said I could do their dishes and I was thrilled, because it gave me one-on-one time with our friend who is normally surrounded by a lot of people.  He kept calling my name and telling me to stop doing dishes.  Although I wanted to do the dishes, I really wanted to spend time with him more.  It was so great to spend parts of this morning and afternoon catching up with him and just talking.  We talked about the medicines we were both taking (his were chemotherapy) and mine are more pain related.  When lunch time rolled around, I asked him if he would like to eat with all of his male friends (including Rich) and he was anxious to do so.  Rich was also thrilled to get a chance to spend quality time with him and loved every minute of the time they spent talking.  When you’ve been friends with someone for almost forty years, you have so many memories and shared experiences and it’s so much fun to reminisce.

He and his wife thanked me repeatedly for the cards I had made for him and I’m so glad that he’s happy to get them.  It means so much to me to send notes to my friends to let them know I’m thinking about them.  I met three of his grown children today and all of them have taken time off of school and work, and moved home so that they can be with him.

When my father was ill with cancer, I had won a trip from work that was a pretty prestigious event.  It fell one week after dad’s first chemotherapy treatment.  The doctor’s told us that if he was going to have any significant side effects, they would occur a week to ten days after the chemo.  (This was over twenty years ago so I’m not sure if this information is correct today.)  So instead of going on the trip, I declined and took the week off work (as originally planned) and spent the whole week with my dad.  I’ve never regretted that decision, and in fact, think it was one of the best decisions of my life.  I got to spend one-on-one time with him and that was so much better than a trip with strangers.  I told that story to one of my friend’s sons today as he has taken a semester off at college to spend with his dad.  He said he doesn’t regret taking time off school either.  Time with his dad means everything to him.

I pray for a miracle for our friend and will continue to send cards as often as possible.  I want to make sure that no matter what, he knows we are thinking about him and that we will definitely find an opportunity to visit with him again.  You can never make up for time that is lost, but you can make the most of the time you have and spend it with people you care about.  If I’ve learned anything, it’s that life is short and time is precious and you never know how long you’ll have people in your life, so make the most of it.