Oh my poor back!

I am beat-I built all of those Jetmax cubes all by myself. Moved out all the the old book shelves and books. Moved in all the cubes and organized! As soon as I recover I will be back!

Birthday Candles!

I saw a card that had some rolled up paper just like this, and thought it was a clever idea! It's great for all those scraps of paper that really are too small to hang on to ( most of my scraps end up in the trash) But if you keep them, think about rolling them up to make candles.

One little Red bird

I enjoy cards that have just a little bit of color mixed with black and white. (and some brown in this case) I really like how the "love" bird stands out. I also like the vintage look-I added some sheet music and a corsage pin to achieve this look!

Love Grows Here

Bird cages are really trendy right now, and I have a cricut cartridge(Bloom) that has a few on it.

I cut it using Black CTMH cardstock and then added some paper flowers. I also added a some of the Wings pattern paper, and if you look close you can see a butterfly inside the birdcage!

Heart Pin cushion

I needed some easy and inexpensive gifts for a weekend group of friends that I got together with. I had several of these jars left over when I was organizing buttons. I decided a pin cushion would make easy and simple gifts. I found the fabric at a local craft store and I found the sewing kits at the dollar store.

I have a couple extra and they will be for sale in my etsy store.

Quick Valentine's Day Card

This card was inspired by a card from the current issue of Paper Crafts Magazine. I thought it was so cleaver that they original creator had used a heart in place of one of the flags.

In my Craft Room-INSPIRATION STATION

This week the challenge over at the Heart 2 Heart blog is to share an organizational tip or idea. I get lots of comments, emails and questions asking me how to get published in magazines. I have posted some other thoughts before that you can read about here.
Today though, I thought I would share how I organize and gather supplies for submitting. Once I get the project call email I print it out and read through it very carefully. Making notes and underlining important info. Most magazines are looking for something specific-weather it be a trend, theme or technique. And that's where I start. Lets say that Paper Crafts is looking for projects about Love and hearts. I use what I refer to as my INSPIRATION STATION! I would start by pulling out stamps/stickers and embellishments that are heart and love related and add them to this wooden trey and basket.

Next I add in some trendy items that are very popular right now-for instance dollies, buttons and tape measure strips

I also like to added in some ribbons, brads and such. One thing that I do is make frequent trips to the dollar store for cheep seasonal supplies like little notepads or pens. Lots of times I keep them stashed in boxes for the next year.

Here is thing about working for magazines, it takes alot of pre-planning to publish a magazine. So even though this is my Valentine's INSPIRATION STATION, it is more likely that right now the magazines are more focused 6-8 months away. Meaning even though it is the season of LOVE, your mind has to be set for FALL and HALLOWEEN!!

So create your very on INSPIRATION STATION, even if it's not for working on submissions put together a basket, box or whatever works for you and add some fun goodies to it. You will be surprised how much it will inspire you!!

Head over to the Heart 2 Heart blog and check out the all the other tips and scraproom pictures!

Friendly gift and book review

A week or so ago I put together a few gift tags to have around. I used some large shipping tags and added some stamping and pattern paper. Look close and you can see that I accented the butterfly pattern paper with some liquid glass. Its really easy to jazz up a project with just a little effort using Liquid glass.

Last night I finished a GREAT book. It was a really easy ready, I think I finished it about 4 days while reading at night before I went to bed. (one night I was reading and look over at the clock and it was almost 2am!! Yikes!)
This is a story of Love-true love and love for animals. It a way it makes me want to run off and join the circus (maybe not in the days of this book, because it was a hard time to live in)
The story is about Jacob, and he is in college about to become an animal vet when his parents are killed in an accident. He returns home to find out that his parent had nothing, because they had used all the money to pay for his college. He is upset and runs away. He jumps on a train that is a circus train. When they find out that he has studied to be a vet they hire him on. He falls in love with a performer (who happens to be married already). The circus acquires a elephant who they think is hard headed and stupid. Turns out the elephant is trained in Polish and she is very smart. There are lots of interesting twists and turns along the way.
And this book has been turned into a movie that will be out soon.

And all you Twilight fans should look at who is the star!!

Celebrate You!

How fun are these little pennants? Banners and Flags are so popular right now. This card was inspired by a card in the recent paper crafts issue. I made it before Christmas as a sample for "craft time" when my family was here. I love that it says celebrate you-because that could be for anything, a birthday, a good job or even just because.

Friends Forever

I recently worked on a call for Paper Crafts magazine, and I a pleased to say that one of my cards will be published in the July/August 2011 issue, you will have to wait till the magazine come out before I can post it. This card is also a card that I submitted that wasn't picked up. I used a butterfly from the Sentimentals Cartridge for my Cricut machine. The original butterfly was whole and I cut it apart and layered it to give the look of flying.
I will let you know in June when the magazine hits the stand!!!

Valentine Coffee Cups

I saved this card in my file, because I loved the white, Kraft and red combo and knew I just had to re-create it. I used CTMH Colonial White Ink and then stamped over it with cranberry to create the fun cups.

Loads of Love

Last week while looking at blogs I saw a card with a little dump truck and a bunch of hearts in the back of it. It gave me the idea to make this card. I used the color combo from the Heart 2 Heart blog Challenge. I used a few different letter stamps and my own hand writing to create the sentiment. Be sure to go by the Heart 2 Heart blog and look at the design teams work!

Tic Tac Toe and a book review

A new product from CTMH this season is pleated ribbon. I LOVE pleats, but if you have ever tried to make your own, then you know that it is a bit of a chore to do. So I jumped for joy when I saw the set of 3 ribbons pre-pleated!
Of course this is a clear card (which are a little hard to photograph) using a new A size stamp set called A Game.

This is the 1st book that I downloaded on my Kindle that I got for Christmas. The book is a great read, I will say that it gave me some sad dreams. It's kinda of 2 stories combined, but they turn out to be about the same person. The mother of 2 grown women is re-telling them a fairy tail from their childhood, turns out the fairy tale is about her. The fairy tale is a heart wrenching story of hard times during the war in Russia. I will say that ending is wonderful, and the fairy tale made me truly appreciate the modern time that I live in and made me very thankful for all that I have.

Believe until your dreams come true

Another card using the wonderful new Close to My Heart products featured for January. I used some black embossing powder to give that gorgeous swirl a bold look. I also added some zigzag stitching to the side for fun!

Tea for You Valentine

One of my favorite holidays is Valentines, mainly because the whole holiday revolves around PINK! I also like to hand out sweet little treats and goods. Today I have a project for you with directions and if you are interested I will have a limited number of kits to make this project in my Etsy store.

Here is what you need-Mini lunch sack, pattern paper and cardstock, a heart (I cut mine with the cricut), bakers twine in red, a glittery branch, mini tag and a tea bag.

1st up fold your lunch sack in half with the bottom of the bag on the inside. Then fold down the front half about a third of the way (making sure to leave some room at the bottom to show the pattern paper)

Next up using some temporary adhesive attach the pattern paper and the cardstock strip and sew around. If you are not into sewing, no problem you can glue your pockets or even staple it.

Next up decorate!

Here is what the kits in my Etsy store will look like. You will get all the supplies (minus the tea bags) In addition you will also get a dollie, white glassine bag and a clothes pin to use on other projects!

Head over to my Etsy store if you are interested in this kit.

Celebrate candles

This card was also lost in a file, and the credit goes to my upline, Audrey. This is one of the cards she created for her stamp camp. I will be back on Monday with a Valentines project and directions along with some kits for the project that I will have for sale in my etsy shop.

ETA: Several questions and emails from yesterdays post. To create the pattern on the bird I did the kiss and twist technique. I used the small flower in the A Tweet stamp and kissed it multiple times on the bird.

A lost card

I was cleaning out some folders in my computer for the year and I came across a few cards that never made it to the blog. This sweet little bird thinking of you card is one of them.
And I 100% lifted this card from my upline, Audrey, so the credit really goes to her.

Crusin Chloe!

To thank the lovely lady who lent me her VW Bug for 2 weeks I made her a set of note cards. I used this super cute image from my blog friend Sparkle. She started her own line of stamps called Sparke Creations.
I colored all of the images with Close to my Heart markers and I added some liquid glass over the top of the windshield and the lights. I also created a matching bag to hold the cards and envelopes using one of the bags from my Etsy store.

Christmas Canvas Project

Over the week of Thanksgiving I borrowed a 1968 VW Bug from a friend to do some Christmas Photography sessions. I had Charlie take a few of me before hand to show everyone what the set up would look like. I really liked how my pictures turned out, so I added them to a really large canvas. (That large picture is 8x10). Of course Christmas is over, and I will have to put this away till next year, but I thought I would show you a quick picture before that. Below you can also see a few of the pictures that I took that week-(none of these were edited-all straight out of the camera). I had so much fun, I took over 2000 pictures that week. I offered the sessions for $50 for 1hr. After I downloaded all of the pics I put them on a disk for them to have and do with as they pleased. Everyone got 200-500 pictures each. Part of the deal was that I would also edit a few in Photoshop CS3 for Christmas cards, framing or whatever they wanted to use them for (but not all 200+ pictures)
Check back tomorrow and see the cute cards I made for the owner of the bug as a Thank you/Christmas gift.
And by the way-I did get a total of 9 people to fit in the bug-it was tight and they complained a little, but it turned out really cute!

Rolodex Class-Join Me!

If you are in the Lubbock area-Join me for a fun morning and make a great Rolodex to keep up with all of your addresses. Sign-up deadline is today!
You can find all the details on my Website here.
Please note that the time is changed to 10:30 am for a few ladies coming from out of town.