crafting this and that

Hi!  After I cleaned my desk I found this sweet Tiddly Inks Wryn -- Fairy Friends all printed out and waiting for me to color her up for Sweet Stamping Pixies Challenge #3 -- fave fairy/pixie and Tiddly Inks Challenge #87 -- flowers .  Wryn is such a cutie and I love her as a fairy, definitely one of my favorites! This card came out so much larger than I intended!  Just about 6.25 inches.  The front is about an inch or so larger than the folded card itself.  But I really didn't want to shrink it.  I used my Perfect Layers rulers for all the mats.  Definitely helps when I'm feeling lazy to get up and use my paper cutter.  I don't have a scallop square that large either so I just cut 2 and layered it and covered the corners with flowers and the sentiment.  I rounded the corners too as advised by my daughter!  I think I agree that it looks better like that!  Added some stickles to her wings, flowers and the butterflies....

Hi!  This is the last set of teacher gifts I made for this school year.  I'm not sure why in this photo the hair on the girls look different.  Must be the lighting.  Anyway, this is how it looks closed.  I bought these mini pens a while ago from Walmart.  I used Sister Stamps Yoshimi and Ayako. This is how they look opened.  The memo pads are from Office Depot that I bought a long time ago on sale and I've only gotten around to making something with them now.  These open like easel cards but because the memo pad is so long (5 inches) I only could leave about an inch in the back of the pad (so I could use a 12 inch strip of paper) but it was still enough to stand nicely. After I made all of these end of the school year stuff, I cleared off my desk and threw away lots of scrap paper that I had just piled up.  Now my desk is clean and I feel like I'm so ready for all the exciting things that are coming up this summer! Hope you're enj...

Hi!  My daughter graduated from the 5th grade and will be moving on to middle school this fall.  I'm sure the next few years will fly by just as quickly.  I wanted to make something for her classmates and for my son's class as well.  I had MFT's pinwheel die and stamp set for some time now so I wanted to put it use.  I didn't think the sentiments that came with the die fit our occasion so I made up my own which is the title of this post.  These are the pinwheels for just my daughter's class.  Yup, purple and yellow are the school colors.  Yup, do you watch Storage Wars?  And that one guy always says Yuuup!  Can't believe it's creeping into my blog writing!  Anyway, these took me a while to figure out!  Cause what's a pinwheel if it doesn't spin right?  Especially if I want to give it to a kid.  I saw tutorials where they stick a pin through the center and into a pencil eraser but I didn't think that would be very ...

Hi!  Yes, I have survived another school year and I'm relieved and sad and happy and tired and so many other emotions too.  Mostly though, I am ready for the summer to just hang out with the kiddies.  It's gonna be busy with summer school, swimming and tennis and birthdays for the boys. I don't know why I waited til almost the last minute to put together some teacher gifts.  Never again!  While I was at Ben Franklin I saw these frames that I've seen Jenny alter on her blog .  And they were reasonably priced.  I was really surprised when I went to the register to pay that they were on sale for $3!  So I actually went back to buy more!  The washi paper I used cost more than the frame!  I altered 5 frames for my kiddies' Japanese language teachers. Sorry, the angle may be kind of awkward in these photos.  Trying to avoid the glare.  I liked this green washi paper but it wasn't really a hit with my kids.  I finally got m...

Hello.  I thought I'd post another card since Eva's probably busy working like a madwoman getting all her end of year gifts made.  I thought I was supposed to be taking a break from making stuff, but I figure one or two cards a month is reasonable, especially when there's so many occasions that could use a card! Anyhow, here's Amelia from the Little Dreamer Greeting Farm set . Sort of went with the same idea of my previous Oliver card.  Mostly monochromatic and butterflies in place of stars.  Used a Tim Holtz die cut butterfly, PTI Love Lives Here die cut butterfly, tiny Martha Stewart punch butterfly, and the little butterflies from a Spellbinders circle butterfly die.  Cut the 2012 from Kerri Bradford's twenty-twelve set .  I originally bought those files thinking I was going to use them for Project Life, but that has fallen by the wayside.  Mounted it on an angled label from PTI.  Cut the mats using my Perfect Layers rulers .  Added s...

Hi!  I think I'm crazy.  I just came home after shopping and collecting what I'll need to complete some teachers' gifts and goodies for my kids' classmates.  On my to do list are 46 pinwheels attached to pencils, 5 altered photo frames and a few notepad covers.  Hmmm, think I'll make it in time?  The last day of school is next Thursday. Anyway, it's been such a long time since I played with my Paper Smooches stamps !  They have a new challenge format now with a different type of challenge every week.  The current challenge is Designer Drafts . I love that these sketches are always so open ended.  My interpretation of the sketch.  I masked some clouds in the back but may be difficult to see in these photos.  Then I stamped 2 trees to represent branches and the individual leaves from Gently Seasoned.   I added some twine between the trees for the little monkey (from Smoocheroos) to hold.  I also used some leave...

Hi!  There are so many fun challenges to participate in!  I'm trying to do as much as I can before I get onto some end of the school year stuff.  I'm thinking of making pinwheels attached to pencils but maybe that is too time consuming.  I have just about a week left.  After making my previous bright card, I saw that Some Odd Girl is having a BRIGHT challenge !  And it'll be on Facebook too.  So I printed out Bookish Tia and had fun coloring her up.  Yeah, I bought her cause of her glasses and her books.  Totally reminds me of my daughter.  Even my daughter thought Bookish Tia was a lot like her so she wants to give this card to her school's librarian.  I kept the papers (from Doodlebug) pretty simple.  I added some cork borders (PTI die) and used my felt too which I haven't used in quite a while. The little tag, cork star and circular embellishments are all dies from PTI.  The sentiment is from PTI's Tiny Tags ...

Hi!  I know Cheryl titled her most recent post Wish so I called this one Wishes.  Hehe.  I think I'm getting the hang of using digis especially now that I have a heat gun to set the ink.  It works so much better than my hairdryer!  Though I think I tend to size them a bit on the larger size but it's easier for me to color.  Anyway, thought I'd try the current challenge at Saturated Canary #17 -- May Flowers and Paper Sundaes Challenge #120 -- Things with Wings . I know this looks kind of bright.  Haha.  I think I wanted to try using colors I don't use often like orange and then blue hair.  Plus I had matching blue and orange flowers, so why not?  This image is Fairy from Saturated Canary.  Love her long flowy hair.  So then I chose simple papers.  I added lots of flowers, maybe I may have over did it?  It was kind of hard to stop adding flowers here and there.  The sentiment is from Paper Smooches. Added...

Hello.  Hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day.  Made a card this weekend to test out my Perfect Layers since they were generous enough to include me in their Brand Ambassador group.  I was actually thinking about getting these rulers years ago when I saw them on QVC (remember those marathon scrapbooking sales?)  But then scrapbooking fell by the wayside after about 4 months through my son's baby book. Anyhow, it's only two little layers on the main image, a 1/8th inch light blue border and a 1/16th inch dark blue border.  Baby steps for me.  I even forgot to take pictures of the whole process.  But it actually does make it quite easy to mat multiple layers.  I tend to be a little cockeyed when it comes to sticking things down straight so this helps to actually cut around the image. I decided to go with the monochromatic theme over at the  Greeting Farm's Farm Fresh Challenge .  Haven't participated in one of their challenges in a w...

Hi!  Happy Mother's Day!  I am trying really hard to do as little as possible, not just tomorrow but the whole weekend.  I even got my hubby to wash the dishes last night by giving him a major guilt trip and I went to bed at 9:30.  Haha!  I spent most of today working on a Mother's Day card for my co-blogger BFF.  We've known each other a long time, over 20 years now! So, I Copic colored Tiddly Inks Wryn and Emmy.  Aren't they cute?!  Guess which one is Cheryl?  Her complexion is pretty fair so she's Emmy and I'm Wryn.  Haha!  I tried to color Emmy's skin lighter than Wryn and I think I like that skin tone combo.  I also used my Perfect Layers rulers to mat the image in pink and then a little bit wider in green. The sentiments and the tiny tags are from PTI.  I added a whole bunch of flowers and pearls and a bit of twine.  I intentionally colored their shoes in the same colors.  Cheryl and I used to shop...

Hi!  I have some exciting news to share today!  Cheryl and I are now Brand Ambassadors for Perfect Layers !  Click the link or the banner on the right or bottom of this blog to see what Perfect Layers are about if you are unfamiliar with them.  There is a video which can explain how these rulers work much better than I can.  I just tried out my new set of rulers last night to create mats/layers for today's card.   Sorry if the pictures are a bit dark.  I really wanted to try the rulers out!  Each ruler creates different size mats. I usually mat my papers one sixteenth of an inch all around. I had cut some paper to size and glued it to the cardstock I wanted to use. Then I placed my ruler so that my paper would catch in the lip of the ruler and I cut the excess cardstock off with my xacto knife.   I did that for all the sides and came out with a nice mat for my paper. This is how I had my papers positioned wi...