Finally!

Its been a long and awesome week teaching science to a bunch of K-2 teachers. I am completely exhausted, but here we are at Saturday, our final day of the institute. Mostly it has been a fabulous experience. This is by far the largest professional development program I have been in as an instructor and I have really enjoyed myself. Of course there are always one or two that have to spoil a good time. We have the participants fill out an evaluation at the end of each day. We read those and in our debrief meeting we use them to guide and help plan the next day. Most of the evals are nicely worded with helpful suggestions etc. But then there always has to be one or two who are rude and uncalled for, and truth be told completely unprofessional. You know teachers (me included) always complain about not being treated like a professional but then sometimes the way some teachers act its easy to see why they arent, kwim? In any case I am glad to be at the end because I feel like I need to sleep for a week! Hopefully I will be back with some crafty things tomorrow.

More Guidelines

So sorry there hasnt been anything new for so long. I am teaching at a science workshop all week. Its been great fun but the days have been long and havent allowed for much else... I haven't been able to craft a thing all week. We end on Saturday, so I should be back then. In the meantime I made this card a few weeks ago using PTI's new guide lines set. Its such a fabulous set and very forgiving. I would totally recommend it. The cardstock, ribbon, and ink is all by PTI as well.

Happy 4th of July!!

A special shout out to my dad who is celebrating his 58th birthday today! Happy Birthday Daddy! When I was little my dad used to tell me and my brother that all those fireworks were just for him. Of course we believed him... I mean he was our dad why wouldnt people want to shoot off fireworks for him every year?! So one time when I was 4 or 5 he asked me, "Why do they only have fireworks on my birthday and not yours?" I thought it over and then stated very matter of fact: " Oh Dad! You know why... my birthday is in the day and yours is at night!" Hehehe I was clever even back then. Happy 4th!

Wise Owls

This is a notecard holder and notecard set that I made for my daughter's teacher as an end of school gift. Her class is always known as the Wise Owls. So cute! She has tons of owl stuff that has been given to her over the years. I usually give the teacher a cookie bouquet as an end of the year gift but this week I just didnt have the time. So I came up with this. My daughter says she really really liked it. Note: The colors are really off in the first photo. The note card photo is a much better reflection on the actual colors.



Ingredients: Sassafrass Lass paper, hero arts owl stamp, PTI ribbon in berry sorbet. Berry sorbet ink, MM expresso ink. Lettering is my handwriting, American crafts pen.

Guide Lines

This is made with Papertrey Ink's newest releases. We have vintage cream cardstock, plum pudding cardstock and ink. Plum pudding ribbon and then the terrific guidelines stamps. They do have a bit of a learning curve, but they are so forgiving! Its really hard to totally screw it up. I only wasted two pieces of paper getting started. What can I say I am a slow learner. The happy birthday is from birthday basics, I believe.

Just Hangin' Around

A kiddie card! I made this for my friend's three year old's birthday. I used Hero Arts stamps. I just picked these up the other day at my local stamp store, which I must say is a very good store. They have all the latest and greatest. They even carry scor-pal and nestabilities! The name is Stamper's Corner and if you are ever in the Sacramento area you ought to check them out. Anyway back to the card. Images are stamped with palette black noir and colored with Derwent water color pencils. The green cardstock is bazzill and the white is stampers select by PTI. The ribbon is from Michaels.

We Interrupt Your Crafting to Bring You This:

Oh my this is so funny! Especially since I am related to several engineers and I, of course, own 6 cats.

More Sunflower Goodness & Some Non-Crafty Rambling

A few more of the sunflower cards. I have all the ingredients in the previous post. I really had fun using these colors I would normally shy a way from.




In other news, we are preparing to take a little trip to my husband's cousin's wedding. Its going to take a week before we are back home. The wedding is in Paso Robles. Its a cute little town. About a 4 hour drive for us, maybe a tad longer since we will have to stop for the kids. Of course, with two kids in the car, it may feel like its a 14 hour drive. We do not have an onboard DVD player. No its old fashioned travel for us. Are we there yet? How much longer? I have to go pee! Dont you wish you were coming with us?

While we we are on the road we will be sans computer. I fully expect to have withdrawal symptoms but sometimes I think its good to step away from the technology. So I am leaving the mac at home and I am going to just go cold turkey. I did upload a few blog posts to appear while I am away. More cards and crafty stuff, I hope you enjoy them.

It's Blog Hop Time!

This month's challenge was to use acetate. Let me just say that I now hate acetate. LOL. Honestly I had the worst time with this, it did not come easy. For my card I actually recycled some packaging to make a 3D window in which to hang my stamped flowers. The flowers are stamped from the Garden of Life Set. I used all PTI products on this card with the exception of the Hero Art sparkle embossing powder, DMC floss, and crystal stickles. I cut the square hole using my nesties. I glued everything down with glue dots.

Sunflower Goodness

This is a little notecard set and holder I made to give as a gift.... not sure who is going to receive it yet though. The holder I made with the help from an awesome tutorial I found over at Samantha's blog. She rocks. Her directions are super easy to follow. I made five cards; a get well, a thank you, a generic hello, and two blanks. Then I stamped 5 matching envelopes. Almost all the supplies are PTI. I will put a full list below. Thanks for coming by. I love when you leave comments, it totally makes my boring little day!


Sunflower Notes Ingredients: PTI Cardstock: Summer Sunrise, Lemon Tart, Spring Moss, Select White. PTI Ribbon: Summer Sunrise Swiss Dot, Spring Moss Twill PTI Ink: Summer Sunrise, Spring Moss, Lemon Tart. Stamps: PTI Garden of Life NON PTI ITEMS: RIBBON: brown: offray sparkly gold: American Crafts. INK: Making Memories brown OTHER: fiskars punch, nestabilities squares, Cinnamon stickles, Cowboy dew drops.

Ribbon Storage

I modified my MM embellishment center so that my ribbons would not have to be on the dowel anymore. I always liked the way it looked, but using the ribbon and changing them out was time consuming and tedious. So I took out the dowels and I threaded elastic through the holes. Now I just stand my spools up behind the elastic. It works great!

More Money Saving...

This time I hit the jackpot at Tuesday Morning. Oh there was so much scrappy goodness it was hard to keep a hold on my wallet! I got two sets of MM clear stamps, MM acrylic block, 3 sets of Heidi Grace chipboard Alphas, 2 pads of 6x6 MM paper, 8 mm stamp ink cubes, two huge sets of MM ribbon on a spool, a set of basic grey ribbon, 1 pkg basic grey rubons and a 12x12 pack of MM paper! All for the unbelievable price of 40 dollars! I felt like I had struck gold!! So my goodies are now home and unpacked and I cant wait to scrap some more this week.

Casual Midweek Challenge 11

Over at the PTI message board they have the Casual Midweek Challenge, I just love the name. Its like...no we dont need any commitments... just come as you are. I have spent half the morning trying to load this card on PTI's gallery but its not working for some reason. So for now I thought I would just put it here.

Recipe: PTI's Aquamist, Select white, and Lavender Moon cardstock, aquamist and versamark watermark ink, lavender moon ribbon, hero arts sparkly embossing powder, crystal stickles

Quiz Time

A bit of fun I found on Sheri's blog. I am surprised my score was that high!

53 As a 1930s wife, I am Average Take the test!

A Little Birthday Crafting...

My old college roommate's son just turned three so I made him this little cupcake card. I used Birthday Basics and It's a Celebration from... where else? Papertrey Ink... yes i heart them....very very much! I think the cardstock is Bazzill but I am not positive I just pulled it out of my stash. The white is PTI's stamper's select. The ribbon is from michaels. The ink is the dew drops chalk ink and the bling is unknown, sorry I bought it so long ago, just like so much of my stuff. Hoard much? Why, yes I do. Anyway hope you like.

Cookie Gifts

I meant to post this picture two weeks ago when I made it. I was also going to post pictures of my disastrous kitchen, the clock blinking midnight when I finally finished them, etc. There is a reason the bakeries charge $50 for these things... they are a huge pain in the butt! After they were all done and I went to wrap them up I noticed that the bags were a little small. I think Michael's has stopped selling the ones I normally use. I need something between tiny and gigantic (the only two sizes Mike's is carrying). Do any of you crafting divas know where I can buy more little bags in Medium? I just love individually wrapping the cookies because it looks so professional. Anyhow, the cookies were a huge hit with my son's preschool teachers. Thanks for stopping by!

Did I Just Say That Other Card Was My Favorite?

Well that was before I made this one! I really like how it came out. I was on a card making frenzy the other night. Its been nice to be able to stay up late and not have to worry about work the next day! I have been taking my daughter to school but hey I can do that in sweats and a ponytail (Yes, I am a Glamour don't).

Ingredients: PTI Garden of Life stamps, PTI cardstock in sweet blush and white, PTI inks in lemon tart, sweet blush, and spring moss, PTI ribbon in spring moss. Tag cut using a cuttle bug die.

In non-crafty news I am working on getting to gym everyday. One failure so far. I will be back at it tomorrow. I see my endocrinologist this week. Hopefully I will find that everything is going well. (I am a type 1, insulin pump wearing diabetic). My son is adjusting to being home with mom, I am adjusting to actually doing my housework. I spent two hours on it today... a record for me to be sure. Katie asked about how the playhouse was coming along.... my contractor (fundaddy) quit. He hasnt worked on it at all! Hoping he will be back out there soon so I can get it painted this summer.

My Most Favorite Card....

well most favorite in the last couple of days anyway. All supplies paper trey ink except for some of the colored inks, those are dew drops chalk ink. The flowers and bee are from the PTI honeybees set.

Another Day, another card....

This was made for a friend of mine's baby to be. The baby is going to be named Emilia. I used Papertrey ink patterned paper, ink and boxs, bags and tags stamps. I also used a Brenda Walton letter set for the E. finally I added in a good dose of stickles.

On another note, School is OUT! Which means a good 9 weeks of vacation for me!!! YIPPEE!!! Lots of days to do absolutely nothing! Well I still have to watch my kids and take care of the house... but thats hardly anything.....

More Crafty Stuff

Another card... I have quite a pile going on my craft table... now if I could just get back into scrapbooking... I have such a back log of pictures. Anyway this little card is all PTI... including their fabulous new kraft paper cardstock... that stuff is awesome. If you havent checked out PTI you should. The link is in my sidebar.