Mother's Day a little late

I did see my Mom and make her a card on Mother's Day, but I didn't download my picutre to post until now.

While cleaning up some of my paper, I found this sheet of K & Co. yellow collage paper that my Mom would love. From it, I made this butterfly card - she seems partial to my butterfly cards. We met my Mom, Gradma, Sister, Nice, Dad and Brother-in-law for lunch followed by several rounds of dominoes, which my sister and I tied for winning. Grandpa always taught Mom to play to win, and she's passed that mentality down to us. And now you know why I don't use my dominoes for crafting (I might use the one I need to win!)

Cleaning Up

I just got back from vacation in New York (hopefully some of the pictures I took there can be used on cards sometime in the future - but I guess that would mean that I have to PRINT them first).

Now that we're back, we're concentrating on getting our condo in order to put on the market and hopefully find a bigger house (with a REAL craft space)! We've been doing LOTS of downsizing and cleaning, and now I'm to my scrap area. Even though it was originally rather small, trying to fit ALL the paper, ribbon, supplies and tools that I just can't part with into a much smaller covered space is going to be a challenge. Of course, some of it can go to the off-site storage unit, but who wants their creative freedom hampered by a trip to the storage unit to try and find exactly what you're thinking of at the moment? That's almost as bad as having to go to the store (which is actually closer) and buying something new.

One of up-sides for you is that in order to make some room, I've been scanning card samples that I created in the past so that I can put them up for sale and still use them for inspiration in the future, and this is a great place to share them and find them easily.

Another is that I have this grand plan to actually finish some of the projects that got started and then put in project envelopes to await completion when I had some free time. Clearly there hasn't been much free time since I've got a stack of unfinished projects, and who knows how much free time we're likely to have when we're busy selling and looking for houses. But hope springs eternal, and we'll just see how many projects get completed and shared.

In the interim, this butterfly card is one that I did from one of the first sketch challenges I ever took part in.



All the supplies on this one came from The Angel Company, and rather amazingly, since the card is several years old, all of them are still in the catalogue. The paper is from the Juliette paper collection and matching cardstock, and the images are from Butterfly Swirls.

Pink and Brown You Rock Card

On Friday, my niece was in a school talent show. Their version of American Idol. I left work an hour early, but even still, traffic was horrible and I missed her scheduled performance. I did however get to see her steal the show when she danced on the floor to the side of the stage to another song that someone else was doing. She was also voted class vice-president this week.

This is the card I made for her to congratulate her on her achievements.

The stamp set it Taylored Expressions' "You're My Hero" set. The background is the Allegro Cuttlebug embossing plate, and the stars were cut with my Nestabilities.

Brown and Ivory Wedding Card and Tag

This is the card and tag I made for the bridal shower I attended on the 10th; the one where I gave the brown and ivory towel cake. The card was quick and easy. I used Ivory cardstock scored in a harlequin pattern using the Scor-Pal and put Cinnamon Stickles on each intersecting line. Then I stamped the champagne glasses from The Angel Company's retired Blissfully Ever After stamp set and colored the "champagne" with Yellow Stickles and the ribbon with watercolor crayons and a water brush. The sentiment is from the Growing Love set. The bottom of the panel uses cinnamon glitter bubble stickers.



The tag was cut from the Wedding/Marriage Cricuit Cartridge. The sentiment came from the same Blissfully Ever After set and was accented with more Cinnamon Stickles. The ivory ribbon is a remnant from the cake and is tied with a smaller brown ribbon.

Mother's Day Card

Today was my Create a Bunch at Lunch group. For this meeting, we made the card I posted a few weeks ago with the girl and the umbrella and we also made this Mother's Day card.



The patterned paper is Brooke Paisley from Making Memories' Simply Fabulous collection with Coordinations' White Washed Green. I used my Labels One Nestabilities for the sentiment panel and the Flower Creations die and some punches to make the flower.

The sentiment is from The Angel Company's Trendy Greetings stamp set, and the swirl is from Fancy Curls. The stamped swirl and the flower are both accented with a Stardust Clear Gelly Pen, which is one of the groups favorite things to use.

Elegant Wedding Card

This is the wedding card I made to go with the cream, black and silver towel cake for my co-worker.

This card uses Heather Scott's Monday sketch from a few Monday's ago. I had it all ready to go, but didn't want to post it until after the shower, because the bride is a blog follower and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. So here it is now.

The background is black cardstock covered with Pewter Perfect Pearls, and using the Angel Company's Victorian Elements stamps to remove the perfect pearls in spots revealing the black underneath. The image panel takes the champagne glasses from TAC's retired Wedding Wishes set, and the Contratulations from the Growing Love stamp set.

I colored the ribbons around the glasses with Silver Smooch, and filled the glasses with Illuminate Smooch. The silver ribbon is a scrap left over from decorating the cake.

Another Towel Cake

Here is the second cake I made for my co-worker's bridal shower last weekend.

This one is basically the same as the one posted Saturday, but it uses two bath sheets and two bath towels. Note to self....while bath sheets seem much larger when you look at them or when you use them after taking a shower, they're really not all that much bigger than the bath towels when you roll them up. In fact, both layers were the same size. To help the bottom layer look bigger, I ended up rolling a measuring cup set in the center and wound the bath sheets around it, and even then, the bottom layer is still not much bigger than the top layer. Something to keep in mind if you decide to do this yourself.

Other than that, the cake came together in exactly the same manner as the one I posted on Saturday, including using spatulas and wooden spoons to poke through both layers and help hold the cake together.

Since the towels the bride chose were cream, I was able to incorporate her black, white and silver wedding colors into my decorating, and went for a big bow on top accented with flowers.

There is also a matching card that I will post on Thursday.