Give away at Practical Scrappers!

The team over at Practical Scrappers is doing a great giveaway of eyelets and brads from Eyelet Outlet! They are doing two prize packs one for old followers (just leave a link to your blog with a post about the giveaway) and one for new followers. For the new followers all you have to do is click on over to Practical Scrappers and become a follower, it's that simple! Good luck everyone!

Busy Busy Busy

So I've been a little MIA from the blog for a bit. It's gotten really busy around here, and I don't see an end to it anytime soon! My son is finally feeling better and so we're off doing our regular play dates and he's back at preschool 3 times a week. Besides all the normal things one must take care of in life I'm busy planning two baby showers, one of which is my own. On top of that I've been trying really hard to get my sisters Thank You cards finished. Luckily I did get them done today!!! It was hard finding the time to sit down and get them finished but I did it!! They are going to be heading out to her tomorrow. Here is what they ended up looking like.

Besides that project I had attended the baby shower of one of my friends last week and I took pictures for her so she didn't have to worry about it. I burnt them to a disc and then made her a quick little scrap book of the pictures. Instead of printing out all the pictures and cutting and gluing I just made collages on my computer and printed those out and put them on a shaped book that I had gotten a while ago from Michaels dollar bin. I did put a little more effort on the cover, If you scroll down you can see the finished product and the inspiration from the shower!

Some great finds today!

One of my favorite blogs to visit daily is Free Digital Stamps, I love digi stamps and I especially love finding them for free! One of the best ones from yesterday was Scrap-A-Licious-Times with a TON of great sentiments. I couldn't find a way to leave her comments to tell her a great big thank you for her generosity so I decided to tell everyone about it hoping that would give her some extra traffic. They really are great sentiments so please go take a look and grab them while she's got them!!

Birthday Surprises!

Today is my friends 25th birthday! I am taking her out to lunch and wanted to make her a birthday card. This is what I ended up with. Since I love participating in challenges I love to use them as my inspiration for cards that I need to make or projects I have waiting on my desk. That way I kill two birds with one stone! So this card was inspired by Dutch Dare Card Challenge Blog and the sketch they had up this week. It was also inspired by Cardmadfairy's Digi Days Challenge of spring! I hope you all enjoy these projects!
I found this cute Fairy digi here. Then I found the lovely flower background in my scraps and some cordinating scraps. I colored the fairy using pastel colored pencils and Gamsol. Then added a little glitter with some clear stickles on the wings and Distressed Stickles Vintage Photo on the 25.

This cute sweetie pouch is my solution to gift wrapping my friends small gift I got her. I found the template at Waltzing Mouse in their freebies section. I printed it out then printed the digi image large enough to cover the whole template. I found the image here. Then I colored the image in using pastel colored pencils and Gamsol. After putting the box together I added the flower detail out of my stash and mounted it on some of the left over scraps from the card. Just a couple of brown rhinestones and the same Distressed Stickels on the branches to give it a little glitter and it was done!

Baby Shower gifts

There are tons of babies due to arrive this spring! One of my friends from my playgroup just had her baby shower this weekend and she is having a little boy. I like to give gifts that are more than just store bought so I made her a decorated wipe case and a diaper & wipes case carrier. One of my other crafty friends found the tutorial online and we've been making wipe cases ever since! The tutorial can be found at the Make It and Love It blog here.


This was a lot of fun to make and it was pretty simple and didn't take much fabric or time. I'm proud of myself as well because this was my first project by myself on my new sewing machine. In the past sewing machines and I have not gotten along but with some tips from a local seamstress I'm doing good! Now I need to jump back on the sewing machine and get that car seat cover finished! Only 6 more weeks till the new baby is due to arrive!!

Baby Shower Invitations...DONE

So I finally finished my sisters Luncheon Tea baby shower invitations. I decided to do a variety since it's popular these days to mix and match your china at tea parties. I love the way they turned out and I'm happy to have them done. Next project is to make the matching thank you cards.

Exciting!

Hey everyone, so today is going pretty good. I'm working on getting my sisters baby shower invites finished. They are almost done!!! I should have them complete by the start of the week if not earlier. Then it's on to tackle my invitations! I just wanted to share some exciting things with you. I've been having tons of fun getting back to the challenges on all the great blogs around and because of it I've been featured in two email newsletters this month! It's super exciting!! I know it doesn't seem like much but it feels good to know that someone else is enjoying your crafts. It's a far cry from being any type of "professional" crafter but it's the best kind of recognition for a stay at home mom who crafts in her spare time. It gives me the hopes that maybe one day crafting can not only be a hobby for me but some kind of career one way or another. So in case your curious on what was featured and where just take a peek below.

This card was featured in the McMahon Five Designs.com Newsletter Edition 80! You can see there website here. If you'd like to sign up for their newsletter there is a button right at the top of the page!

This card was featured in the Coloring Page Tuesday Alert on the 15th! If you'd like to take a look at Elizabeth's awesome site with tons of free coloring pages (here I printed it smaller to create a digi image for my card) follow this link. You can sign up for her weekly alerts by clicking on the Color! tab under the main title.

Simple and sweet with some St. Patty's day treats!

First of all let me wish everyone a happy St. Patrick's day! I hope you enjoy the fun day and stay safe!!

So today I have a nice simple card to share with you. I created this for the Less is More challenge One Layer Card - "Off the Edge". I started with a plain white card stock and stamped my cute little dandelion stamp in Blush from CM. The stamp is just a single flower so I stamped it a couple times to make it look like a small bunch. I think stamped my sentiment in black. I added some clear stickles on top of my flowers for a little pop and rounded the card edges and it was done! Such a simple and fast card to create but it has a lovely charm about it!!

My son is 4 and he started preschool last fall. This winter has been difficult for him. He's been constantly sick and has missed out on school quite a bit. He's been out of school all week and missed out on the Leprachaun hunt so I decide to have our own this morning. I had it ready and waiting for him when he woke up. Here is his hunt with a nice prize at the end!

Happy St. Patty's Day

So tomorrow is St. Patty's day and I'm having a product party at my house with some of my friends. As a thank you for coming I'm giving away a gift to one lucky lady!! I wanted to make a cute little bag to put it in and this is what I came up with!

Since I was making a project already, I decided to try and incorporate a couple challenges along the way. So my first challenge for this project was FF #70 over at If the Shoe Fits...Scrap it! They challenged everyone to make a St. Patty's day inspired project so it fit completely!! I also tied in Challenge 66 from Colour Create, they asked everyone to use greens, olive greens, browns, blacks, and creams.

I started with a plain white card stock and printed a Tea Bag Baggie template that I found at Waltzing Mouse Stamps. After cutting out the template and assembling it I cut out my green background from some scraps (I believe it's Bazzil's Swiss dots collection). Then stamped my sentiment in versa mark and embossed it in black on cream paper and attached it to the background. I then hand stitched brown ribbon on the border of the sentiment creating folds as I went. The last touch was a Luck O' the Irish lapel pin that I wanted to include as part of my gift. Oh I almost forgot, I also inked the edges of the white with distress ink.

Thanks for looking and reading! I hope you all have a great St. Patty's day tomorrow!!

Baby shower preparations

Bear with me this is a lengthy one.

So yesterday was a bit of a tough day. I've got about 7 weeks until my little girl is due and there are tons of people around me that are having babies as well. I was on Facebook and saw that one of the girls I knew growing up (who is due not to much later than I am) had her baby shower and put up photos. So of course I had to look at them. It looked like a fun shower and there were TONS of people there. I recognized so many of the faces in the photos and it just made me sad.

I am a Navy wife and moved away from my home town over 6 years ago. I left behind my entire family and all the friends and people I grew up with. The house my parents still live in was were I celebrated every birthday from my 1st to my 19th so just imagine I had 19 years of history there and grew up along side many of the same people from kindergarten through high school. I know it might seem silly to some but seeing photos of celebrations with so many people that you've known for so long just makes your heart ache when you are no longer in a place with ties like that.

I envy people who have these big elaborate parties with tons of people who are a part of their daily lives knowing that I gave that up. Do I regret leaving that behind and not getting those experiences, no because I love my husband and where ever he goes is where I will go. If I have to follow him across the ocean I will, but it still hurts to know what you gave up at times. I gave it up for love but miss it at the same time.

To further my sadness my sister is also pregnant and is planning her shower with a couple of our cousins and our mom. It's going to be this big elaborate fancy lucheon tea. It's going to be beautiful and she's expecting 60 guests. I am so happy for her and want her to have the best shower she can (she's been waiting over 5 years for this baby) but at the same time I'm jealous because I know mine isn't going to be what I truely want. I'm going to have to give up some elegance to bring down the cost. I'll be lucky to have 12 guests and extremely lucky to have any family there, and if I do it will be from my hubby's side of the family. I guess I'm also a little jealous that someone else is planning her shower where I am planning my own. I am controlling and like things a certain way so it's best if I'm involved but it kinda hurts that no one has asked to help.

So to sum up my feelings of the day I was yearning for more and saddened that it isn't possible. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to have a baby shower any more. Some of those feelings are still lingering today and I'm sure they will stay there for a while. However, in an attempt to get out of the funk and look forward to my shower again I jumped head in to planning. I've looked all over the internet for things that inspire me and I created an inspiration board. To help me get the best shower for a reasonable price I made a price comparison chart that I can take around town with me so I can make sure I'm getting the most for my money. That way I might be able to afford a little something extra. So I'm trying to put the sadness and gloom behind me and focus on making the best shower I can with what I've got. I need to be grateful that I'm going to have one, that I can afford it and that I do have friends to share it with. I know thats more than some people have. Oh the life lessons we must continue to learn.

Where I found my inspiration:

Top Left - Evie S. Things of Beauty

Top Right - Life In Pictures

Center Left - I Could Make That

Center - Wedding101 Blog

Bottom Left - Emmaline Bride

Bottom Right - Ma Joie Press (Blog)

Emily over at Through Emily's Eyes has some exciting things to share today! She has made her 700th blog post!! WOW! That's a lot of time and dedication there. It seems like it would be so simple to just post and post and post but it really does take some time and effort, especially with a crafters blog because you have to craft something first! Finding the time to do post can be difficult. So congrats to her on her fabulous blog and I'll be reading the next 100 posts and beyond! So to help celebrate she's cleaning out her stash and giving away a HUGE Candy batch!! Look at all the goodies she's got already and she's gonna have more! She is going to keep the post up at the top until March 27th at midnight CST. So hop on over there and leave a comment, become a follower and spread the word!!

Emily has inspired me to do my own little candy giveaway related to posts. Currently I'm at about 125 posts so I think at 150 posts I will be putting up a candy of my own. So keep an eye out for it! I'm not sure if it will be as grand as Emily's but I'm sure it will be worth stopping by.

Spring Inspiration

Spring is definitely on it's way...there is tons of spring inspiration around in the blog world. Today I've created a card for two challenges that brought spring to life! The pictures of the daisies were the inspiration picture over at Flutter by Wednesday's and of course I had to incorporate a butterfly, fairy or angel. I choose to use a butterfly. The butterfly image came from McMahon Five Designs via a sketch challenge (I used this as my template for my card) Crafter's Digital Art Center. I think these two challenges were just perfect for each other!! I love how the card turned out.

I started my card by printing off the wonderful butterfly image and the "You make Happiness Bloom" sentiment that I found over at Create with TLC via the Free Digital Stamps blog. To make the petals of the flower I cute out a bunch of small circles using my Creative Memories cutting system then gluing them to the back of my yellow circle. As you can see in the picture at the top left I glued one side of the green straight onto the blue background but made the other side the inside of the card. I covered the back of the flower with the same green as well to make it look more finished. My final touch was the butterfly which I cut out and bent the wings to make them pop off the card. Thanks for looking!

Hello...

Today I've gotten a head start on being productive. I guess it helps that my little Chloe (due May 4th) doesn't care for me to sleep in lately. So here is my simple little Hello card. My inspiration was a sewing challenge over at Tickled Pink. I love this cute little image of theirs. Hope you like it! Thanks for stopping by.

Simple Love...

I have another card for you today! I'm on a roll today, when your feeling crafty you gotta let it rip!! So I had a ton of fun making this card and I plan on giving it to my hubby some random day to make him smile, maybe by slipping it in his car before he heads off to work.

Supplies:
White CS
Sentiment was printed from my computer
Hearts were cut out of Bazzil "Painted Dessert" CS
Chameleons are by Elizabeth O. Dulemba
Ribbons are from my stash
Foam tape for 3D effect

Challenges:
Dutch Dare Card Challenges Who's Who in the Zoo
Simply Scrapping March 4th CAS Challenge

Spring is coming!!

You can tell that spring is on it's way! All the challenge blogs are bringing out their spring inspired challenges and gearing up for the beautiful pastels of the season. So of course I had to play along. I must say it feels really good to be using the light colors and just makes me smile. This card is for my mom for mother's day and I'm sure she will love it and it will reminder her of me from across the country! (mom if you're reading, act surprised when you get it!)

Supplies:
Kraft colored CS from my stash
Yellow and Green textured CS from my stash
White CS that I punched with my EK Success Swiss Cheese Edger
the image is a Tiddly Inks image called For You (a freebie)
Mom sentiment by Sarah Paris
Color Pencils, Gamsol, and Pebbles Inc. Pastel Chalks
The brads and rhinestones came from my stash as well

Challenges:
Tiddly Inks Kraft With Me
C.R.A.F.T Challenge 92, Mother's Day
If The Shoe Fits...Scrap It #69...be INSPIRED
A Gem of a Challenge Challenge 16

Works in Progress

So it's been a while since I posted last. My son has gotten better and we've been attending play dates and he's back at preschool so my time to craft and be on the computer has dropped. I do have three projects to share with you today so it might get a little lengthy. If you have the patience to read through it all thanks so much! If not I hope you at least enjoy the photos.

This first project is from my Mom's Craft play date that I had this morning. I like to host one of these each month to let the moms get in on the fun while the kids play. I had found these great bamboo coasters (advertised as wedding favors) at Michaels on sale for $10 for a set of 40. So I bought those, brought out all my paints and let the ladies paint the coasters in any way they wanted. Not everyone was happy with their results but I was happy with mine. We used regular acrylic paints and then a decoupage glue over top to protect the paint from condensation. It was really fun and now I have a cute set of coasters that match my decor!

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It's baby season and SO many people around me are having babies but the most important one (other than myself) is my sister! She and my brother in law have been waiting a long time to add a little baby to their family and we are all so excited for him or her. She lives on the west coast and I live on the east coast so we won't be able to attend each other's baby showers so to be a part of it I offered to make her invitations for her. She is having a luncheon Tea so I wanted to find papers that reminded me of tea cups and fancy wall paper you would see in a tea parlor. I also wanted there to be a variety since many people are helping out by providing the tea cups for her shower and they aren't going to match. It's sorta the thing now anyways. I'm loving how they are turning out so far but it's a lot of work to get all the pieces together.

This is what the final look will be with some variety of course. I hope she loves them and that they impress all of her guests. Hopefully it will help set the mood that she wants for her special day!

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One of the most important projects I've been working on is recovering my infant car seat! My son is now 4 years old and I am expecting a baby girl at the beginning of May. After 4 years of buying everything in blues and greens and reds I'm finding that I LOVE pink. This is really odd because I actually hate pink so to have found a love for it is a bit shocking. So although my green car seat is gender neutral and is a nice pattern I wanted something more girly. So instead of buying a whole new car seat I decided to recover it. This is what it looked like in the beginning.
This is the progress my friend and I have made so far. We aren't making it from scratch we are using the old one and just covering it. We started by measuring the center portion and the side portions and sewing the pink fabric on the sides of the patterned fabric. (Oh we did separate the cover where the seat meets the back to make it easier to cover) Then we marked where the "button" holes were, these are the slits where the belts will go through. After sewing the holes and cutting them I pinned the new fabric on the cover and hand stitched around the holes to join the cover and the new fabric. Now we are waiting for another day that we can set aside a couple hours to get it finished. I can't wait to see the final outcome, when it's finished I will post an update!