A Couple Cupcake Cards

This first card is for the Cupcake Inspirations #100 Challenge! You should head on over since they have a great giveaway and super cute cupcakes for the inspiration pic. It's been a while since I've ventured over there to take a peek at the cupcakes that inspire the card challenges and just like always it made me hungry for cuppacakes and pastries! I tried to satisfy my sweet tooth by making this sweet card, but in the end I just had to bake something. Fortunately I chose to whip up some healthier whole-wheat applesauce muffins instead of cupcakes ;) It's rare for me to know right off what I want to do with a card, but with this one I instantly had the idea of a big sun in the background and some happy yummilicious cupcakes on top. The stamps are from Basic Grey that I nabbed for 50% of at Roberts last year and this is the first time I've used the set.

I had stamped out a half-dozen cupcakes to play with so I also made this card with a cupcake theme for the Corrosive Challenge. This week is distressing so I scissor distressed all the background paper edges (except the scallops of course). I also added a little sparkle to the cupcakes on this card for a little more fun. Some fun cards to finish off my weekend. Since I've finished my forever long take home test I'm going to reward myself with some co-op Halo Reach with my hubby ;) Enjoy the cards and have a great week!

Make a Wish Ketto

I'm back with another challenge card! This one is for two challenges, again with the Corrosive Challeges, a magical creatures theme, and the ESS #119 sketch. I kept with the same paper since it was already out. The last long 4x12 strip I'm saving for a scrap page, since it has the big flower comglomoration in the corner that I wanted to use in a layout, no specific one mind you, just a piece I knew I wanted to use a page somehow ;) I used a fairy as my magical creature and of course no fairy is complete without some sparkles. I glittered her wings and crown baubles, then added some fun rhinestones for fairy dust. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Bright and Happy Hello

Here's another card! This one is for the Corrosive Challenge #103, a sketch. After making the thank you card, I decided I needed to play with some of my RAKed images. I heart my RAKed images so much and I realized that the best way to really love them is to use them instead of just oogling their cuteness, lol. I think sometimes I'm just afraid that I'll mess up coloring one and then I'll feel like I wasted it somehow, which I know is silly. So I took out this bella, since bellas are quick and easy to color ;) And I used this Sassafrass paper again, the fun eclectic print is the other side of the mini flowers. I think sassafrass papers are so fun and cute but I have a hard time using them since they are a different kind of style - another product in my stash I like to just oogle, lol. So here's to getting out of my box again and using stuff I love to look at in actual projects ;) Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely Sunday!

Warm Little Thank You

I made this card for the Corrosive Card Challenges #102 and the CPS #207 Sketch Challenge. I need a few thank you cards so I decided to hit some of the challenge sites for inspiration. The fun hot colors in the Corrosive Cards Challenge : Red, Orange, Yellow... FIRE! was a fun jumping off point and the sketch from CPS helped me play a bit out of my comfort zone. I feel like I get so used to playing with images (like pictures in scrapping!) that I forget how to make cards without them. So this was a great way for me to step out and use some of my neglected (but very cute!) PTI stamps! Have a wonderful weekend!

Boys Rule Challenge

Here's my card for the Boys Rule Challenge over at Sparkle Creations and for the CPS Sketch Challenge she's hosting! One of my nephews has a birthday this next month, so this challenge ended up being perfect for me. The girls and I have been doing much better, no one's had a fever for a couple days now. C will get to go to school tomorrow and, lucky her, she gets to take a unit reading comprehension test. I unfortunately have to take a test as well (for chemistry), lol. But fortunately for us we're both pretty good students and we've both done our studying ;) Anyway, enjoy the card and have a wonderful week!

Sweet Treats Paper Piecing

I finally got a chance to play along with this week's challenge on Sparkle Creations, which is paper piecing! I have to say that it's been a while since I've done this technique and I've been a bit lazy when it comes to paper-crafting lately so it took me a while to get in the mode to make this card. I do love the way the piecing came out in the end though! This last week has been more crazy than usual for us, lots of appointments for Paul (dentist, doctor, and dermatologist, poor guy had to have a mole removed, he has a couple stitches from that, as well as a molar removed!), White Ribbon week at the elementary, 2 tests and a big project for me, oh and we all apparently have RSV - which we found out Friday night when the doc called us back with culture results. Little A has it the worst and she was coughing really bad, but the doc said she's doing alright and as far as risks go she's past the age when RSV is a real danger. Today she was doing a little better, so I'm hoping it will just be recovery from here on out. Anyway, a bright cheerful card to combat our dreary rainy weekend here and our sick little family ;) Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Guess who loves you ;)

As usual life around here is a bit crazy and so I kinda, sorta, didn't get around to making my kids their Valentines until after Valentines Day. C shared some of her loot from class Valentines with A on the 14th and then yesterday they got Valentines in the mail from Great-Grandma and Nana came over to drop of more Valentines plus a couple balloons. I'm grateful for all that because I've had so much reading to do for my classes the past couple days. This morning I stole some moments to make their cards and they are getting their Valentines from Paul and I today. And tomorrow or Friday grandma's goodies should be arriving in the mail. So far they've been more excited about getting stuff spread out over a few days rather than sad at not getting these all on the Holiday ;) Which I am so thankful for! I'm so glad my girls have the same casual take on holidays and birthdays that Paul does. It makes my life so much less stressful, lol. Anyway, enjoy the post-Valentine holiday cards and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Quickie Valentines

A quick last minute Valentine inspired by my heartfelt thanks card a little while back ;) I think sometimes as a crafter I'm a bit hard on myself. This year C and I didn't make Valentines. As we were picking out her treats for her class at Target, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and tired and just too busy to devote more than a minimal amount of effort to class Valentines. So I did the unthinkable. I let C pick out some from the store. I know, blasphemy! I mean cardmakers just do not buy cards, right? But I discovered something: we had just as much fun slapping on the cards to the candy and putting heart stickers on as we ever did putting together handmade Valentines from pattern paper and stamped images. And I realized, as C happily posed for a pic with her hoard of candied cards, that it didn't matter whether what we did was simple and short or long and complex - so long as we did it together. Hoping you all had a great day together with your Valentines! Happy Valentine's Day!

Pretty Spring Top

My first sewn top! C has been growing out of her clothes like crazy and it seems a lot of the stores around here just don't have that many cute tops in right now, probably because we're still a little in-between seasons. Not quite spring, not really winter anymore (at least not here). We've gotten a couple of darling tees for her, but as for pretty blouses, we haven't found many that she really loves. This last month I picked up a few remnants at Joann's for less than $10 total. I not only cut out enough fabric for a dress (which I haven't sewn together yet), but also enough for this cute tunic!

I used the peasant top variation in the Portabellopixie pattern "Claire", which actually uses up quite a bit of fabric. Because my last size up with her patterns worked so well I did it again here, using a size 8 for C even though she's a size 7. This way she can wear it next spring as well.... hopefully, lol. She's the one who spotted the fabric while we were perusing the bin, and I love these shades of blue! Luckily there was this cute mini flower print and a blue matching solid as well that I snagged at the same time. Someone's must be making a darling project and I just happened to benefit from the end of bolt scraps!

Since the back looks very much like the front, I used a pretty ribbon for the inside tag and wrote the size and my initials beneath so C could easily tell which side was front and back, and so later with hand-me-downs we have the size number for reference. Both C and I were so excited when the top was finished. This was my first time shirring so I was a bit nervous, but it turned out to be so easy and fun! I definitely looking forward to seeing how her dress will turn out ;) Enjoy and have a lovely Sunday!

Sammified B-Day Josh

We've had such a busy week, so I've been playing catch-up all weekend. One of these things was to make a b-day card for our BIL, Sam. So using the sketch challenge at Sparkle Creations, I whipped up this card during our complex's kids club Valentine activity. The girls made cute Valentines and I made a b-day card ;) After seeing a few different looks on the soft colored hair style, I thought I'd try it out. After I was done I just felt like his hair was missing something, so I added highlights with the white gel pen. It was fun to color his hair differently than I'm used to. I'll definitely try the soft look again sometime, maybe I'll get it looking right enough to leave out the highlights. Anyway, enjoy the card and have a wonderful weekend!

Stuck 2 You

These pictures crack me up. One day I left the stickers down for C to use, A was 3 at the time. It seemed like I had just turned around when suddenly I see A has covered herself in stickers, lol! Toddlers are so funny ;) I'm certain C had been helping her as well. I love my silly girls. Since this was my last page at the crop, my mojo was starting to wane. I took inspiration from the 1x1 inch patchwork I did on the girls letters in their rooms and created a fun border. I love the way it turned out, like a mini sampler of all those cute patterns! The extra plus is that it really goes well with all the square stickers A had on her face ;) So that's all I have to share. I hope you enjoyed the pages. Thanks for stopping by and have a fab Friday!

Vegging Out

The rick rack sticker that I used in yesterday's layout came from the Farm Fresh Sticker set from October Afternoon. This set also contained a bunch of fruits (almost all of which I have already used), some farm animals (which I've only used a couple), and other various things including... vegetables (which I hadn't touched). Truthfully, I thought I would need to do a dinner page or something to use up those stickers, but when I saw these pics of Paul and the girls just vegging out, I knew they were destined to be together. What even worked better was that those odd Girl Friday letters that I had left from the bedroom art projects, I also used here. The colors matched so perfectly, I couldn't have planned it better! I hope you enjoy the page and have a terrific Thursday!

Catching Some Zzzzzz

My second layout from the crop. I adore watching the girls snuggle with their daddy, and A loves to snuggle with him while he naps. She doesn't nap along, much as we wish she would. Instead she lays quietly, watching him sleep. When she snuggles with me she likes to rub my arm. She says I'm soft, lol. This page came together rather quickly and was pretty simple. I love that it used up my feltie Sassafras birds as well as the rest of that rickrack sticker from OA. I also used a fun swirl that I had no idea what I would use on when I got the set. It ended up being just the thing the page needed to feel complete. Using up various thicker Zzzzs was also made me feel like I was getting the most out of my stash. This was definitely a scrappy layout ;) Enjoy the page and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Who's Who?

These are the old pictures I was talking about in my last post. The ones that had been in the frame. Before I took them down we had these fun pictures up on our hall wall: a set with me and a set with Paul. Both our girls looked so much a like as babies that you couldn't tell their baby pictures apart. So what we did for fun was put pictures taken in similar poses, during about the same ages (nope we didn't plan this but we took so many photos with both our girls that we just happened to have some that worked out this way), and framed them. This set was me with the girls. They are so hard to tell apart! If you look really REALLY close, A has slightly (very slightly!) different eyebrows and chin. At that age their noses were the same which is their biggest differencing feature right now (though a lot of people still mistake them for twins!) They are both 5 months in these pictures ;) While cropping at my friend Julie's, I decided to scrap this story of how we tell their baby pictures apart, which is basically to look at the clothes they are wearing ;) A was a little smaller than C. Instead of growing out of things a month early like her big sis, A didn't get to wear them until often a month later. I also used a bunch of scraps from the girls room redecorating project. In fact all the pages I made at the crop use at least some of the those scraps ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the page! Have a great Tuesday!

New Spring Decor

Every so often I feel a little rebellious when it comes to doing my homework. Not so much that I won't do it at all, but that I'll do a whole lot of other things just to avoid doing the homework for as long as possible. This weekend, after 4 tests between Thursday and Friday, I was happy to note that the only weekend school work I had was some reading with a one page reader response. But instead of getting it done and out of the way, I somehow got it in my head that I didn't want to do it, which is silly since I found the articles fairly interesting when I finally did get around to reading them. Anyhoo, I decided to kind of redecorate my girls' room instead ;) Here are some fun photos of what we did.

The first item was the pendant banner which you see a part of in the photo at the top of the post. It was too hard to get a decent photo with the light coming into the room, so I ended up not getting a photo of the banner itself. From there I went a little batty with paper crafting decor in their room ;) I made this big "flower" as C puts it out of the funny end pieces from the banner triangles. I love the quiltish look of it. Then I made the fun circle paper fans or whatever it is that they're called to match. C calls them "daisies, because they have lots of petals," she says ;)

After that I couldn't leave their wooden letters out. For more over a year I've been telling myself I'd paint these white letters and just never got around to it. Friday, I sat down and cute 1" squares from scraps and covered the letters.

Here is A's fans. Since I only had enough leftovers from the pendant banner to make one large quilty flower thing, I made her more "daisies".

And I couldn't stop there. A while ago I saw a darling scrap page that used these Girl Friday paper letters from Cosmo Cricket. I happened to have scraps of the same alphabet and hoped I had enough to make some alpha art. As it turned out, I didn't have any Es or Rs. But I did have 2 matching Fs and a P and X that were the same pattern. So I fashioned my missing letters out of them. I put together the cute alphabet to fit a 8x10 frame, the girls singing the ABCs about 2 dozen times while I made it. The frame is one that I simply repurposed. It's been sitting in our closet with Paul's AS degree. So I put his in another repurposed frame (which had old pictures) and took this one for their room.

In addition to that frame I took the two 5x7 frames I had bought to go with it, but were still empty to this day. Using scraps and some fun stickers, I made some sweet papercrafted art to with everything. The left one says "Dream Big Dreams" and the sheep with balloons says "Shy girls are sweet girls". The shy one definitely describes little A ;)

I also made a quick little fun piece for their bathroom, which has been artless for quite a while. The colors match their little circo cups and towels. A big part of this piece was to use up some of the extra single letters I had left, since with the two other framed art pieces for their room, I had used up all the vowels. In this case, the extra Q and B were used.

And last but not least (and before I made the bathroom art actually) I made a fun magnet for C's hot lunch menu from school. My cheapy, but super cute, kitchen magnets aren't very strong so it takes about 4 of them to hold up the menu.  So, when I saw that a few of my odd left over letters spelled out lunch, I just had to make a fun magnet! The other two words were 'big' and 'shy', then there were a string of odd consonants. Anyway, I did finish my homework, Sunday morning before I went to a friends house to crop (yay!)  I hope you enjoyed this little peek into the girls newly decorated room. Thanks for popping by!

It's a Girl Thing!

While this semester has given me a lot more busy work, I find that it has also gotten me to take more breaks. It's been really nice to reward myself with some me time after finishing a draft, or studying a chapter. Usually it comes in the form of some quick blog hopping through my fav sites, bookmarking and saving tutorials as I go. If I'm lucky it involves crafty time to make something fun ;) Today, after revising one of my papers, I sat down and played in this weeks Sparkle Creations Challenge. The theme is "It's a Girl Thing!" I tried pleating and stitching my ribbon to the card. While the pleating came out pretty well, I didn't realize while sewing that I was at a slant. So my ribbon is a little crooked going across. Next time I'll know to watch for that ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the card. Thanks for stopping by!