Happy Graduation!

What a hot weekend in GA for high school graduations! As happy an occasion as it is, I sure was glad I wasn't out in a football stadium in 95 degree heat. I made a few graduation cards that I wanted to post here for documentation purposes. What amazes me is that I used to ride the bus 8 miles to my high school, and now there are about six high schools within a 10 mile radius of each other in our county. These cards represent three kids who live close enough to attend the same church and yet go to three different high schools. It's a different world these kids are entering, in more ways than one. I pray God's blessing on each one.

For a Special Lady on Her Special Day

The older I get the more I realize how fortunate I am to have been raised in one place. When I say one place, I mean I came home from the hospital to the house where my daddy recently breathed his last breath, to the house where my mama misses him and carries on with life in her vibrant way. Growing up, our road was populated by family—grandparents, aunts & uncles, lots of cousins—and little has changed. And there were neighbors. Good neighbors you could count on. One such neighbor is celebrating a birthday this week and I am thrilled to have created a card just for her. This lady is a neighbor but she has been there for so long and has been so good to us that it is more natural to think of her as family. As a matter of fact, when my daughter was small, she began calling her "Aunt Shirley." She has been such a wonderful friend to my mother since my dad's passing. She has a special gift for thoughtfulness and generosity. You cannot out give her, however you may try. It is my prayer that on her special day she will be blessed by the only One who can truly repay her generosity. Happy Birthday, Shirley.

In creating this card, I was excited to find such a fun sketch today at Mojo Monday. Immediately, I realized the butterfly image I'd chosen would work well with this layout. It's hard to see in my photo, but I have used a natural fiber paper filled with dried leaves and flowers. There were obvious purple and yellow fibers in the paper which led me to choose those colors, but I was completely surprised by that orange ribbon. As I brought out bits from my ribbon scrap bin and held them against the card elements, an orange fiber in the background paper practically reached out and grabbed that orange ribbon. My daughter contributed the tiny formed flowers. She made them using the technique I referenced in my Mother's Day post. The color scheme is a little stretch for me, but I find it was cheery. I hope Aunt Shirley will, too. Thanks for taking a look. 

Mojo 241 Sketch

My take on Mojo 241

Happy Mother's Day

I had great fun creating cards for the two mothers in my life.

First, there is my husband's mother. You've got to love a woman who raises a gentleman. My husband is a true gentleman, and I am certain it is because he was raised by a true southern lady. She is well into her eighties, so we count it a blessing that she is here for us to celebrate. She loves a good Snoopy card, so I've called upon that happy little fellow to deliver our heartfelt greeting: "Happy Mother's Day to the sweetest mother in the world."

I stamped the image with Staz-On black ink and watercolored the background and letter. I then stamped the image again on white paper, fussy cut it, and adhered it over the one on the background. I finished the card with some ribbon, a computer-generated sentiment, and a die-cut lacy circle frame (Spellbinders) which I popped up over the image.

The second mother in my life is, of course, the most special to me—my own mother. It's hard to put into words all that she means to me. All I know is that if I can be half the mother she is, my daughter will turn out just fine. For her card, I've used a beautiful punched flower technique that I just discovered over at Kittie Kraft blog. (That link goes to the tutorial, but you owe it to yourself to look around over there. I'm just in love with her stunning style.) I love how the flowers coordinate with the floral designer paper and pink cardstock that I purchased months ago with Mom in mind. I've tried to capture a few of her strengths in the poem I wrote for the front, "If Ever," and the inside sentiment says it all, "You've taught me everything I know."

I hope they each will feel how very much we love them and be blessed on Mother's Day. 

Catching Up

This blog is supposed to be a record of my card-making, and while my volume of card production of late has been woefully small, my blogging has, sadly, been worse. I'm realizing that I must make more effort to blog about each card as it is created or else I'm going to end up with posts like this, a catch-all. Here are some of my recent cards that made it into the mail (yay!), but not onto this blog (nay!).

Let's start with the somber, shall we. Sympathy cards. I made ten of them to have on hand because, for me, sympathy cards seem to be the most difficult to get out in a timely manner.

Next up, some fun with our furry friends. A Snoopy hello card I made for my husband to send to an underprivileged child and a baby card for my friend's little grand monkey.

A couple of happy cards to celebrate the birthday of a friend's daughter (who happens to also be my dd's friend) and to encourage another friend's daughter during basic training for the Coast Guard.

And then there was Easter . . . 

And last, but certainly not least, my sweet girl's birthday. We're still trying to get used to the idea that we are the parents of a teenager. 

If you stuck it out through all that, thanks for stopping by. Since this is the last week of school for us, I have hope of actually developing better blogging habits over the summer break. But for now, I'm off to make Mother's Day cards! It's next week, you know.

Duck Tape Birthday (a la Mojo Monday)

I had so much fun creating a birthday card for my daughter's best friend. This girl is as artsy and creative as my girl (and they are both knee-deep in the Duck tape frenzy), so I thought it would be fun to incorporate Duck tape into her birthday card. My daughter fashioned the "ribbon" and bow for the card  from Duck tape and generously donated some purple sheet Duck tape that she just received for her own birthday a few weeks ago. Mojo Monday Sketch 236 provided the perfect layout for this card which features some of the brand-new teenager's favorite colors, a cake image ('cause cake is one of her favorite foods), and—what else—Duck tape.

Here are the dimensions for the various layers in this 4 x 5.5 card:

• teal card base: 8 x 5.5, scored at 4.25
• white 4 x 5.25
• aqua 3.75 x 5
• purple  3.75 x 1.25 duck tape pieces
• purple 3.75 x 1.25 with top punched w/birthday edge punch
• yellow 3.75 x 1.25, swiss dot embossed
• teal 2.5” scalloped circle
• white 2.25” plain circle w/ heat embossed cake image
• white duck tape “ribbon” 3.75 x .5 and bow

Thanks for stopping by! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Spring

From a Christmas card yesterday to a spring wreath today . . . well, that's about how fast time is moving these days, or so it seems to me. I saw this wreath posted on two blogs that I follow, Thrifty Decor Chick and Moxie Fab World, and even though it was only days until Easter, I had to give it a try. Jenni and I did this together. She wrapped the dollar store pool noodle (thank you, Thrifty Decor Chick) in duck tape, and I wrapped it in fun fur. By shopping together at JoAnn, we were able to get each of the balls of Fun Fur yarn 40% off, which brings our investment in this project to a whopping $6. We then worked assembly-line fashion to create the paper daisies (die cut with the quickutz daisy die and my Big Shot, and fastened with a brad). We hot-glued our daises to the grass, added a pink ribbon, and voila—our spring wreath (and the daisies wanted their close-up).

Praying your Easter is blessed and happy, and that you know the One Who died and ROSE for you! 

Scrappy Christmas to all . . .

A few weeks ago, Cath Edvalson previewed the Paper Crafts magazine special issue, Practical Solutions for Paper Crafters, over on the Moxie Fab World blog. Soon after, I was paging through the issue in person and found myself inspired to tackle my scraps bin. The issue contains tons of innovative ideas for using and/or storing paper scraps. For instance, there was a wreath created by overlapping short strips of ribbon in a circle. And then there were the flowers made by layering short, thin strips of paper and securing with a brad. Super cute ideas!

Before long, there I sat in the art room floor, thinking about trying those flowers and beginning to cut paper into strips. It just so happened to be green paper, and inspiration struck! So I grabbed my phone and took a quick picture of my scrap pile:

I snapped another once the scraps took on the shape of a Christmas tree:

Finally, I decorated the tree with some flocked dots (just took the paper off one side of a foam dot and covered it with flocking powder), topped it with a star punched from a scrap of glitter paper, and layered it alongside some other scraps.  A leftover piece of white cardstock I'd embossed with snowflakes; a scrap of kraft cardstock transformed with an oval die, a trip through the crimper, and some inking around the edges; and a piece of snowflake ribbon from my ribbon bin to tie it all up—yep, I see a theme here.

Here is my card, made almost entirely from scraps. It is inspired by Paper Crafts magazine special issue, Practical Solutions for Paper Crafters, and I have entered it in the Paper Scraps Challenge in the Moxie Fab World. Entries are accepted through midnight, Monday, April 9, so if you are a paper crafter yourself, what are you waiting for? Get out those scraps and make something! 

Thanks for stopping by!