Jazzy Birthday

I had just picked up the Oldest Kiddo early from school on Wednesday, as he did not have to take his last final. He had maintained a high enough grade again this last quarter for that extra little perk from that particular teacher. Yes, that is a mother bragging!  As he was loading up all the "junk" from his now clean locker, I heard that lovely "DING", indicating that I had a text message.

From work.

It would seem that the front office gal and I had forgotten that the office was going to be celebrating the new gal's  birthday on Thursday.

Did I mention that we were the ones who were in charge of getting the present and card?!!

Now, being the Queen of Procrastination, I normally would have gone home and hemmed and hawed over a layout all evening and then jammed to get something put together right before I had to walk out the door to the lunch.  BUT!  No such luxury this time!  I had to book it home and bust out a card so that I could drop it by the office, before it closed for the day, as my Thursday is booked with the job of accompanying four boys to Disneyland for the day.  

It was about then that Mojo took one look at my panicked face and RAN.

Sigh.  So, now I'm having to produce a card, in a very short amount of time, for a person I've only worked with a couple of times, with NO MOJO.

Thank goodness for the world wide web!!  I pulled out some Graphic45 papers and went to their DT gallery to get some ideas.  This card from Gloria Stengel was my inspiration.  Here is my version of her incredible card.

 

click on photo for larger view

Card Basics:  Base is 5 1/2" square of Pure Luxury Ivory.  All the design paper is from Graphic 45's Curtain Call.  Spellbinder's Lacey Squares was used behind the main image and  Peony dies  were used for the flower.  Accessories:  Distress Antique Linen was sponged on the Lacey square and the Louis Armstrong "announcement" and Pearl Glimmer Mist on the flower.  The bling was from my "left over" stash.

I really have no idea if this is the new gal's  "style", but I rather like how it turned out despite no Mojo and thinking time! Thank you Gloria Stengel!  

One more day to get through before summer vacation begins!  YES!!

'Till next time....................... remember that there is inspiration everywhere, just make sure you give credit, where credit is due!!

Rockin' the Blues

Hey there People! Are you sitting down?  Yes, it's true!  I'm back with another post today!  Geesh! Is this the third post in 6 days?!  I highly recommend grabbing your cameras and heading outside.  Pigs are very likely flying right now!!

*****

Before I get to my card for today, I'd like to take this moment to thank all the men, women and families that have sacrificed so much for this country.  They are the ONLY reason we have the all these freedoms that we tend to take for granted. There are not enough words so I will stick to a simple THANKS for all that you have given to the rest of us. 

*****

This has been a crazy busy weekend for us!  In addition to the 90th birthday celebration, we also have the family celebration for the Oldest Kiddo, for which I am pretty much expected to make a card for!  His actual birthday is later this week, but bummer for him, it falls right smack dab in the middle of finals and then he has to help with graduation duties as an underclassman next weekend.  This just seemed like the better weekend to try and pull off the family party and we'll figure out a better time to plan a get together with his friends later.

This was actually a fairly quick card to put together once I came up with the idea. That was the kicker.  Coming up with the idea.  Making cards for teenage boys is very hard when their interests don't change much over the last couple of years!  I want the card to be relevant  , but not the same o, same o!!  I found my inspiration from this card of Susan's.  I liked the simplicity of only two colors and the grungy genre.   I think it took me maybe 10 minutes total, and that would include having to re stamp the entire card.  It would seem that somebody pulled a lazy stamper moment and did not stamp off or even pretend to clean the sentiment stamp the last time she used it.  This resulted in a completely different shade of color on the almost completed card.  

Basic details:  One layer card, top fold from Pure Luxury White.  Lightly inked the splatter stamp from SU's Extreme Elements with Distress Tumbled glass.  Stamped SU's Extreme Guitar with Distress Broken China and added a bit of shading with Copics.  The stars are from Extreme Elements stamped with Distress Peeled Paint.  The sentiment and the other grunge element is from Tami Mayberry's Live Life Loud set and were also stamped with Distress Peeled Paint. 

It would seem that I REALLY need to address the after effects of the creative tornado that has gone through this room over the last few weeks!  Mojo is finding it very hard to even think in this mess!  

'Till then, enjoy the simplicity of creating!!

XCth Birthday

Ahhhh!!  A nice long weekend to sit back and relax!

Ok.  So the sitting back and relaxing is more of fantasy than reality this weekend, but, you can't blame a gal for dreaming!!

One of the events on the schedule for this weekend was the 90th birthday party for a long time client of the Toad.  This gentleman has just been giddy with the wish that his grandson and The Oldest Kiddo meet at this party as they share the same first name and both play basketball.

Reality was the boys met, shook hands, posed for a picture and that was about it.  The Oldest Kiddo actually ended up hanging out with another young man his age who has taken to the birthday gentleman and helps him with yard and home projects.

It worked out, not as the birthday gentleman might have imagined, but, it was good.

The Toad requested a birthday card for this gentleman, as that is supposedly what I do.  Make cards.

Did you know that making a milestone event card for someone you have never met personally is really rather difficult?!  The Toad's helpful insight was, "he was a principal for many, many years and used to play a lot of tennis".

OoooKaaaay!!  No problem!

When I get really stumped for card ideas, I usually head to SCS, click on the gallery link and then do a search for the theme of card I am mulling over and see what comes up.

BINGO!  I hit the jackpot with this particular search as I found the perfect vintage image for my project!  The image is a digital image from McMahon 5 Designs.  

I re-sized the image and altered it with a sepia tone in PSE.  Light sponging was done with Distress Brushed Corduroy.  The image was matted onto BoBunny's Time Piece collection, and then again, on the Roman Numeral design paper from the same line.  This was adhered to a base of Gina K's Pure Luxury Ivory, cut to 5 1/4" square.

The sentiment panel was cut and embossed using Spellbinder's Classic Circle dies.  While the paper was still in the die, light sponging was again done with Distress Ink in Brushed Corduroy.  I masked the retired Stampin'  Up sentiment, so that I could border the old scrapbook stickers I pulled from my stash that states what special birthday is being celebrated.  The sentiment was adhered using dimensionals.

Being true to my status of Queen of Procrastination, I was trying to snap off a quick picture before having to walk out the door!!  LOL!  

Now, I just need to find some inspiration for a birthday card for the Oldest Kiddo.  Vintage guitars?!  

'Till next time...............

A Woman's Strength

Whew!

Today is another blog hop with the E-Team and special guests!!  I didn't originally think that I would be able to participate, but while on the drive home from work last night, creativity hit me over the head and I left dishes in the sink so that I could join in on the E-Team's Inspired By Words, part 2!

Before I show you my page inspired by this quote, let me give you the details for a chance to win an eP gift certificate

• Visit each E-Team blog participant PLUS the guest bloggers to leave a comment for the chance to win a $25 eP GC. Comments can be left from May 23-May 28th. Two random winners from the blog hop will be chosen. GC winners posted May 29th on the eP blog.  
  
  Join the E-Team in our journal adventure and post your journal cover on the eP blog. We are going to pick 2 people to join us next month for another journalism adventure.  You have until Sunday, June 3rd, to upload your  journal page inspired by this month's inspiration quote. We'll pick and announce the next E-Team guest blogger Fri, Jun 8th on the eP blog. 

  Daisy/eP Blog

  Broni

  Micki

  Sherry

  Me!

  Guest Melody Schwartz

  Guest Marjie Kemper

  
  

  Here is my page.  I paraphrased the inspiration quote as I felt it fit better with my main image.

  

  
  

  

  
  

  Basic details on the makings of this:  I started with my version of the Wrinkle Free Distress technique. I smooshed (technical term) randomly Distress Inks in Fired Brick, Faded Jeans and Tea Dye onto my craft mat and misted heavily with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Vanilla Breeze and Antique Brass.  I then placed my paper in the wet ink and ran my hands on the back to spread out the wet ink to all the edges.  

  

  
  

  
  

  Using a finger sponge dauber, I applied Claudine Hellmuth's blank canvas paint randomly over the background.  Since I grabbed a finger dauber that is usually used for blue inks, the dots have a blue tint.  

  
  

  The image was found on the Internet and cut out and taped onto the background.  The letters were written with a combination of Copic markers, Faber-Castell PITT artist pens and an inkssentials opaque pen.  

  
  

  I personally am dedicating this to my sister!! Love ya!

  
  

  Hope you will join the journaling adventure!  I look forward to seeing your take on this inspiring quote!

  
  

  'Till next time

  
  

In the Garden

I'm finding myself needing to do something creative, yet due to circumstances that life has decided to throw at my family, creativity from paper and ink is no where to be found.

So today, I put on the new 50mm lens on my camera and did some practice shots in the garden.

And because my brain does not want to think at all, all the shots are SOC (straight out of camera) with only some cropping.

First three photos done on with the aperture priority setting

 This next one bothers me that the main flower is blurry, but I like the bokah effect!!

These next ones were done on the  automatic depth of field setting.  I think I might like the aperture setting better for flower shots.  

That's about it for me today.  Remember to take time to stop and smell the roses....the flowers fade all too soon!

'Till next time..............

Mother's Day Monday

Good Morning Peoples!  Another Monday is upon us and that means another Monday that puts up closer to the end of this school year.

I hope that those of you who are mothers had a nice day celebrating YOU.  Personally, my day just reaffirmed that I am a mother!!  Saturday was spent all day at the beach reserving a spot for the Oldest Kiddo's class to have an end of the year party.  We took down a total of 7 teenagers with us, then the rest of the group joined later in the afternoon.  We got home very late and I had NO energy left to deal with all the sand, laundry and cleaning out of ice coolers last night, so Sunday was spent cleaning.  And feeding a few extra boys that ended up camping out on my family room floor.

And you know what?!  That is how it should be!! I am very blessed that the Kiddos and their friends like hanging out in our home. I would much rather deal with the mess of having a house full of teenage boys (so far, we haven't had girls join in the "hanging out") then having them run around who knows where!

 I was pleasantly surprised by a new lens for my camera from the Toad and the Kiddos.  They got me a 50mm lens for taking pictures of my projects and other close up photography.  I used it to take the pictures of the card I made for my mother in law.

I obviously need to play around with it more, but I think I'm really going to like it!!

Since I hadn't cleaned up the mess from making the Tea Time gift for youngest Kiddo's teacher (ahem!),  I stayed with using the same paper pack and colors for this card.  

Basic details:  Card base is 5 1/2"  square cut from Gina K's Pure Luxury Ivory.  All the design paper is from My Mind's Eye Lost and Found line Sunshine. I used Spellbinder's Label Eleven to cut the print layer.  To make the small black edge, I cut out a smaller of the Label Eleven dies and traced around the outside and cut by hand.  The large flower was cut and embossed using Spellbinder's/Donna Salazar's Carnation Creations  from SU's More Mustard card stock.  Sponging was done with Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge.  I then misted the flower layers with Tattered Angel's Glimmer Mist in Pearl. 

The little blue flowers were punched with an SU flower punch (this punch has three different little flowers on it) from more of the Sunshine line.  The leaves were cut using Sizzix's Branch w/Leaves  from SU's Certainly Celery.  I then swiped Distress Ink in Peeled Paint directly onto the leaves.  The sentiment is stamped on vellum with Archival Jet Black ink with the Mother's Day sentiment from SU's All Holidays set.  

I'm really trying to use more of my stash for my projects versus buying all the newest goodies out there.  While I LOVE the new stuff, I think it is such a waste that I haven't even used what I already own.  Sooo, expect to see more projects with those blasts from the past that we used to love!!

Enjoy the rest of your Monday.  I have work, but am really hoping to get home at a decent time so that I can start to clean up this current mess so I can make a NEW mess!!  'Till then.......enjoy some creativity!!

Tea Time

Happy Friday People!  It is getting close to the end of the year and life has been shifted into 5th gear in this household!! Now if only this life was a high performance sports car!! 

This past week was Teacher Appreciation week.  The Youngest Kiddo die cut an apple and wrote a sweet note on it for his teacher earlier this week, but wanted to give a more formal type gift too.  His teacher loves her daily tea and a bite of chocolate so we went with that as our starting point.  This teacher also loves the little packages and class room treats that the Kiddo and I come up with for his class so we wanted to make sure that the packaging was a bit special too.  I gave myself a break and went shopping for a couple of templates to accomplish the job versus trying to come up with my own.  I ended up buying a few templates from Lauren Meader's My Time Made Easy web store.  

Seriously, what ever took me so long to utilize her talents?!!  First, allow me to commend Lauren on her customer service.  I emailed Lauren late at night with a question as to how the templates would size on a regular 8.5x11" piece of paper, as I am the last person in the crafting world who still does not own an electronic cutter.  She replied promptly the next morning.  Bonus points for her!!

Second, her templates were not difficult to hand cut!  Step by step instructions with pictures are also provided with the downloads, which took any guessing out of the assembly process.  So far, I have been more than pleased with my purchase and expect that more of her templates will find their way to my downloads!! FYI:  I have not been asked to promote Lauren's products.  I am just pleased as punch with my purchase and will not have a problem ordering from her again!!

As I said earlier, the Kiddo and I decided to give his teacher a gift of some special tea and chocolates.  Using the My Time Made Easy  templates, this is what we came up with:

The box holds some full leaf Vanilla Rooibos tea from Starbucks.  The cup holds some specialty chocolates that I actually found at my LSS.  The box template has the option to make a slit that tea packets can be grabbed from, but with the tea bags, that wasn't needed.  

Basic details:  Templates for tea box and cup from My Time Made Easy Pretty Packaging. Paper was SU's More Mustard and Basic Black and Vanilla.  Design paper is My Mind's Eye Lost and Found Sunshine.  Spellbinder Dies of Fleur de Lis Squares, Spiral Blossom One and the leaves from the Daisy Head set were used for the accents.  Flowers and leaves misted with Tattered Angel's glimmer mist in Old Lace and Honey Dew.  The sentiment was computer generated.  

That's it for me today!  I have shopping to do for a class party at the beach tomorrow, plus some extra food to feed the additional boys that will be staying the weekend here so that they can attend the party!!  

Enjoy your weekend, Happy Mother's Day to you that are mother's and remember to take some time to explore some creativity!!

Have you ever.....

....made a card and wished you could make it for another purpose?

Happy Hump Day!!  Seriously, how do the weeks fly by so quickly?!!  The end of May is like tomorrow. Slight exaggeration, but you know what  I mean!!

 I was asked to make our marketing gal's birthday card this week.  Which is fine, except, I always feel just a tad bit of pressure when making her a card as she enjoys paper crafting also.  I know that she appreciates the time and effort that goes into a homemade card, but, at the same time, I feel that I need to bring my "A" game to the creative process.

This is usually when Ms. Mojo hits the road.

I really had no creative gears grinding this morning so I started cruising various blogs for ideas/sketches, and as a result of the amount of blogs that I looked at, I'm afraid that I have no idea where I got the idea for this layout.  I believe it was from Jennifer Mcguire's blog.  If I'm wrong, and I got it from your blog, I apologize!!

Anyhoos!!  I really like how this card turned out.  And there lies my quandary.  I wish I could use it to make my mother in law's mother's day card!

And yes, I could make another card using the same layout.  But I have already pushed my self imposed rules of creativity by CASEing the layout of this card.  

Ridiculous?  Yes.  But, that would seem to fit the space for my middle name!

I bet you would like me to quit my ramblings and get to the card, huh?

Card base is Gina K's Pure Luxury in Ivory, with the corners rounded with my 1/2" Zutter corner rounder.  The background panel design paper came from Creative Imaginations "Loolah" 6x6 pad that I got in a class kit at CHA.  The DP for the flowers is unknown.  It was in a pile on my desk and I can't figure out what line it came from.  It matches perfectly to the background paper, but that paper is single sided and this paper is double sided. Maybe little elves are leaving me gifts?  I die cut the double sided paper with Spellbinder's/Donna-Salazar's Carnation Creations for the flower and inked the edges with Distress Ink in Warm Lipstick.  Spellbinder's Daisy Heads  leaves were cut from SU's Kiwi Kiss paper and sponged with the same ink (I can't find this die on the Spellbinder site.  It might be retired?). A couple of Maya Road heart trinket pins  were tucked in above the leaves.  A 1/2 self adhesive pearl finishes the center.  

The ribbon is one I found at my LSS (local scrapbook store).  The "Happy Birthday", is retired from SU's Warmest Regards set, and was stamped in Archival Coffee ink on a scrap piece of Ivory card stock and curled to make a wavy banner.  

I now need to figure out a card for my MIL.  If you don't see a new card in the next few days, you will know I caved in and just CASEd this one again!! haha!!

'Till next time.................enjoy some creativity!

Baby Team Safari

I have a baby shower to attend to tomorrow and of course, waited until today to make the card.  This baby boy will be the newest addition to a very athletic family.  Not only are mom and dad very athletic (as in junior Olympian (dad), athlete of the year (mom, I believe more than once), but his grandparents and aunts are also known for their athletic endeavors and records.  Mom has chosen a cute Safari Team theme for the nursery and I used that as my inspiration for the card.

There is very little stamping on this card.  I used a plaid stamp for the texture on the leaves and that is it! I free handed all the elements and put them together.  Well, I did trace around a couple of Spellbinders classic circle dies for the lion's mane and the soccer ball (because the size I wanted was just slightly larger than what the die cut!!)

This picture shows the dimension of the layers.  

The basics of the card are:  4 1/4" x 5 1/2" Pure Luxury Ivory top folded base with SU's Chocolate Chip on top.  Certainly celery, barley banana, Creamy Caramel, and white card stock.  Wild Wasabi, Vintage Photo, Fired Brick, Chocolate Chip and Creamy Caramel inks for sponging.  Sharpie white paint pen.  Black, and blue copic markers.  Ruby red marker.  

And here is the inspiration picture that led to this

I'm pretty please with my version!  I like to think that Mom will keep the card in Baby's book as a memento of his nursery!  

Now, I just have to figure out how I am going to wrap the baby tub box!!  

'Till next time!!

Melted Crayon--2 versions

How in the world did it get to be Wednesday already?!!  I had great plans for Tuesday and apparently they never happened because I was all set to get them done today!!  Now, I guess I'll just have to resign myself to the fact that Tuesday is lost and Wednesday is moving right along with or without me!!

Since making my journal cover, I have had a couple of ideas floating around in my head for my next journal entry.  I decided to take the plunge and give one a try today.  

I keep seeing these Melted Crayon pieces all over Pinterest.  In those version, crayons are glued to the top of  a canvas, blasted with a heat gun until the crayons start to drip down.  Some versions will add a silhouette to the bottom of the image, giving the illusion that the dripping crayons are "raining" on the silhouette subject.  

I didn't go that route.  I pulled out my mini craft iron and applied my crayons directly to the iron.  

It didn't work.  At. All.   

Well, that isn't entirely true.  It did work, but not for the actual idea that I had hope to create. Despite failure number one, I went with the moment and continued on.  

Can I just say that mistakes can lead to happy dances?!  You can click on the photos for a larger view.

Notice the very small brown smudges into the red on the right?  Yeah.  No big deal, I know, but they bothered me.  Lesson One:  learn when to walk away.  I thought it couldn't be that difficult to just add a little bit more red over the top of them and make it all nice and clean.

Wrong.

I ended up with a somewhat stormy to the piece.

While I like this version too, I have to say that I liked the original "sky" better.  Remember Lesson One?  I walked away.

This is created on a 8.5" x 11" piece of glossy card stock.  Various crayons were applied directly to my little mini craft iron and swiped across the paper.  The grass was made the same way, but the iron was pounced on the paper and then twisted on the edges to create the grass lines.  

I'm going to try and make a goal of adding to this journal at least once a week.  Cross your fingers I figure out how many days are in a week! haha!!

Thanks for stopping by and Enjoy Wednesday!!