New Gaucho Pants

I saw the idea and instructions on craftster.org (http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=99090.0) for these gaucho pants made from tee shirts. The instructions were easy, because all you do is cut the shirt sleeves off and cut it down the middle. Then you re-arrange the pieces, sew up the sleeve areas to be the crotch and sew down the sides for the legs. They were too low riding for me, so I took a second tee and made the waistband, sewing a button hole in before closing it up and then inserted a drawstring. Tee-shirts are very stretchy and my hips/bottom wouldn't hold the pants up! Man, are they comfortable! I plan to make more of these! And you can buy/use shirts in any color to make them different....to match bathing suits, shirts, anything! How fun!

Jewelery Party

I went to a jewelery party last night with my friend, Laura. A couple ladies from our church make jewelery and wanted to sell some for some extra money. This is my loot. Cool, huh?! And the kicker is that I got it ALL for $20! Amazing! It was a very fun, relaxing, girls night out. We even went out for ice cream at Marble Slab afterwards! I feel inspired to get into making some more jewelery now! Ahhh...if only I had the time and money to do all the crafts I wanted to....

Boy Birthday

I made this card for a 3 year old's birthday Saturday. My husband started laughing at the bird riding the back of the alligator....It was an idea from theStampin' Up! Idea book....

I stamped the animals from Wild About You set with Versa Mark on the card to give it some background. I stamped the sentiments in blue on white cardstock, and used green and more white to give the tag some extra dimension, and cut the top to go in by hand, then I put it onto the card with a blue brad. The bird I stamped in blue and then brown and cut out the feet of the brown bird and attached it to the bottom of the blue bird. The paterned paper is the inside of another envelope! Love the animal print with this stamp set!

Thanks

OK, so I have needed some alone time this week and I've been motivated to get in the craft closet! I used a tag stamp to stamp the sentiment, and stamped it in Chocolate Chip, More Mustard and Cranberry Crisp. I cut out the flowers of the Mustard & Cranberry ones and adhered them to the Chocolate one, then matted it with a piece of Chocolate cardstock. Then I took a strip of Chocolate cardstock and dry embossed polka-dots in a line and put a white dot in the center of each. I Got a piece of Mustard cardstock and Versamark stamped polka-dots to it, and cut it with a fancy edge. I adhered the two together and put a ribbon across them and tied it. I got out a piece of Cranberry cardstock that had these leaves Versamarked all over it and put them on. Ah. At least I remembered to have a jazzy background on this one!

Birthday From the Heart

I was in the mood to try another spring-y yellow card, and I liked the look of the torn coffee filter from my last card, but I wanted it to be a little more fun! So I added the bright pink to the card. I stamped the gift in black ink onto glossy white cardstock, then I used a yellow crayon to color in the polka-dots and the ribbon. I then took a cotton ball and rubbed into the pink chalk and onto the gift box to color it in pink. Then you can rub harder over the yellow crayon, and all the pink chalk comes off those areas. It's a neat way to get two colors onto one stamped image easily. Then I matted it with matching pink paper, and put it onto a rectangle of torn coffee filter (see previous post for instructions). I added a scrap of ribbon to a strip of pink and put it across the card with the gift on top. Then I stamped the sentiments in pink and then in black to give it the shadowed look. I thought the second one needed a little something to fill the empty space above the "f" so I added a pink heart eyelet.

I often finish a card and wish I'd put something on the background cardstock. This is one of those projects. It always looks nicer with something stamped onto the background....If only I could remember that before I start attaching things!

Wedding Card

I made this for a friend who's getting married. Her wedding is in December, but she chose yellow for her color! Daring and untraditional, but it is my favorite color, so I love it!

I stamped the background of the yellow card with hearts and Versamark ink. Then tore a coffee filter to put behind the stamped image. (I folded it across a ruler, wet it along the tear mark, then pulled it along the ruler to tear it in a straight line) I stamped the image from Year After Year in black ink, colored in the areas with a yellow colored pencil, and then added Dazzling Diamonds glitter to the areas I wanted to highlight. Then I stamped the 'always' with Versamark and heat embossed it with white powder. I matted that piece with white, and then put a black piece across the horizontal area of the card with a ribbon around it and called it a night! I like the contrast of the soft yellow and the black.

Happy Birthday Laura

I made this card last weekend for a friend. She loves bright colors and I couldn't pass up these pink and green flowers! It is simple, but I thought it was girly and fun.

Stamped a little starburst from a non-stampin' up set in the green and pink on some vanilla cardstock. Then I stamped the starburst and flower from Stippled Celebrations in the colors, as shown. I stamped a few extra to cut out and mount (popped-up) on the center flower. Then I stamped Happy Birthday....or at least I meant to stamp it on the inside of the card. It occurred to me moments ago that I might not have done that!!! OOps! Sorry Laura!

Thanks, Dad

I know, I know. It's been a long time....but we've been so busy with the building of a new room onto our house and getting our vegetables into the ground that I have been able to do little else than that and caring for my kid-o's.

Anyways, I made this card for my dad, who has helped us tremendously on our addition to the house. It was an idea from a card making magazine I got in the mail last month. In retrospect, it should have been a hammer, not a neck tie! Oh well! That's the thing about retrospect....you can't change what you've already done!

The dots on the funky tie are stamped with black ink and a background from Beyond the Basics. The 'Thanks' is from the word "Thanksgiving" on a stamp. I markered only the first six letters to get it to say thanks instead, then stamped it. The DAD is from my alphabet stamps. Other than that, no stamps on this card. It is not like any of my typical cards, which is why I wanted to challenge myself with it. I liked the end result.

LadyBug

I made two of these, because I thought they were so cute! This was also a card idea from the Paper Crafts magazine. I used a couple of cards someone had sent to me for the red half-circles and the blue/white polka-dots. I punched a couple snowflakes and then cut them smaller, for the white around the eyes (they used a flower punch in the magazine, I don't have a flower punch! - yet) Then I used black circles & tiny white circles I punched out to put in the center of the 'snowflakes' for the eyes. I cut a few strips from the same blue/white paper for the antenna and added black brads to the ends. Then I stamped the little sentiment from Very Punny and matted it in the red matching paper. A card made almost entirely from recycled materials! It's not my usual style but I thought it was super-cute and wanted to make a fun card that day!

Thinking Of You

I made this card for my uncle who has just been diagnosed with cancer. I know it's not very manly, but I felt like I had to add some more to it and I grabbed my flower stamps without really thinking!

I got the idea for the three big pieces of cardstock placed this way from the PaperCrafts magazine. Then I adapted it to what I had. I inked the individual words of the sentiment and stamped them each on a different piece of cardstock and then cut to size. I put a flower on each piece with VersaMark ink, and then decided to add cut flowers to them too. I punched tiny holes and added the flowers to the card with silver brads. Then I still felt it was missing something, so I added VersaMark flowers to the off-white paper. It isn't my favorite, but I know he will enjoy getting it in the mail.

Bright Birthday

One of two of the bright birthday cards I made today with the inside of security envelopes. You can see the only stamp on the card is the sentiment in orange, becuase I do not have this turquiose ink! Then to give it some flair, I cut circles and squares to put as a medalion on the top right, and for the middle circle, I punched a part of the envelope to bring the pattern in at another spot.

Wild Congrats

I decided to try to use some of the colored envelope insides. A difficult feat when you don't quite have the right color ink. This is my first attempt, and I used the two different blue inks to make up for the fact that neither was the perfect match. You can see I cut out the darker ear and put it on the lighter blue elephant with a pop-dot. Then I used a small piece of blue paper with a jewel brad and a little white ribbon. I stamped the 'congrats' with the Brilliant ink and put it all on the blue & white envelope inside, and put it on a Whisper White card.

Framed Verse

I made this verse last night to go in this blue frame we've had laying around for years! My husband picked the verse, but I made it all girly! It was pretty quick. I did it in a couple hours. I printed the verse on my computer, then cut it to size and stamped it all over with the flower in different shades of blue (bashful & brilliant). Then I colored in the darkest ones with a white crayon and used a cotton swab to put Not Quite Navy chalk all over. Then I rubbed off the spots with the crayon for the chalk to come off, leaving white flowers. I didn't think it was enough punch, so I stamped a few black flowers and used my blender pen to color them in, and attached them with Stampin' Dimensionals - some going off the edges. I matted it in a little black paper and then put it all on a silver piece and put it in the frame. Much easier and quicker than I had expected it to be.

Asian Thank You II

A more manly thank-you note I made today with the same Asian set I got for Christmas. The top rectangle is a gemstone brad on black paper with silver wire wrapped around it. The bamboo and the sentiment were stamped in black. The patterned paper - you guessed it - a recycled envelope. All matted in black. I'm not in love with this card, but the metal added a lot in person....

Asian Thank You's

I got this great Japanese stamp set for Christmas, and made a stack of these notes for our Christmas thank you's. Those of you who've seen my stuff before will probably recognize this black & white print as my 'recycled paper' - from the inside of security envelopes. I put a 1/2 inch strip of black to border the paper. Stamped the sentiment and the branch in black. Then I colored the branch with colored pencils and matted it in red for a punch of color. I like them!