Random thoughts of a Confessed Stamp-A-Holic

Hostess Gifts

Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE my hostess club gals?????  Oh I have...silly me.....well let me tell you *yet* again how much I adore these women.  We have had just about the same group of ladies since I was preggo with Elizabeth.  They are a fun group of ladies that I am proud to call friends.  So this year for Christmas I made my friends some presents :)  I got these awesome unfinished wood perpetual calendars and thought they would make THE best little present!  I asked each lady for her favorite color combo and I LOVE that each calendar is different.   I used a little watered down reinker to paint the wood before adhering the dp onto the calendar.  The reinker acts almost like a stain and I love that I can use that and still have a nice match to my papers.  This was such a fun project to do!  I have a few more calendars that I am dying to jazz up....once I find the time of course.  

Here's a little close up of one of the calendars.  I used the scalloped square to add the dates to the blocks.  Then a little prima flower on each number to just add that bit of "Merry whimsy".  I still need to make one of these babies for me......now to just decide on what colors :)

Big DIsney Marathon weekend coming up!!!!  Half marathon is tomorrow morning and the full is on Sunday :)  Can't wait!!!!  I'll be walking the half with my sister and my DH will be running both events!  hoping the weather is better than last year (it sleeted-in FL- for the full marathon).....I guess anything is better than that right???  

Thanks so much for stopping by today!!  Have a wonderful weekend :)

Simple Makeover

Happy New Year!!!!  I hope that you had a wonderful Holiday season and that the new year brings a renewed sense of peace, love and joy to you all!!!!  

As I'm sure occurs at your home, the holidays bring along with it so much craziness!  i have been so swamped with "life" that the blog has had to sit on the back burner for a while.  Sadly there just aren't always enough hours in the day to do everything you'd like.....But I'm back today with a super simple Simple Sunday project.  I think this took me longer to gather my supplies than to actually make.  And I am SO happy with the end result :)

I got this fabulous Mom Agenda desk planner for Christmas and while it is such a pretty color I felt it needed a little touch of personalization.  So I dug out some chocolate chip decor elements and some self adhesive rhinestones and got to work.  The decor elements were a little tricky to get to stick but once I managed to get them on there (with quite a bit of rubbing) they are stuck done really nicely.  I love the look of the chocolate on the tangerine!!!  Then I added just a few rhinestones to bling it up.  I also took a little bit of stickles and put it on with a q-tip and then quickly wiped it off.  What this did was leave just the barest hit of glitter along the edges of the flower with out over powering the flower.  Then a simple run of ribbon along the binding of the cover with a few more rhinestones where the ribbon overlaps.  Then to tie it all in I added some polka dot ribbon to the already existing white ribbon bookmark.  LOVE!

We've got one more day of "vacation" before Elizabeth heads back to school on Monday.  But happily it's only a few days then until we are off to FL for the annual Disney Marathon Weekend!  I'm walking the half with my sister and my husband is running both the half and the full marathons!  I can't wait!!!  It's looking to be a little chilly but no where near as cold as it was last year.  Chilly I can deal with *wink* and honestly anything is better than the snow covered ground were have here in NJ.  As pretty as the snow is, and I really do love it, it just makes all the drivers on the roads go crazy or something.  Just getting around town is enough to make you want to pull your hair out!!  it's crazy!!!!

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday and I thank you for hanging around with me!!!!  I've got lots more to share with you so hopefully you'll come back and visit soon!!!  Until then, thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a great one :)

Simple Sunday Hardware :)

 I saw these adorable little bookmarks on a few blogs oh maybe a year or so ago and knew that I wanted to make one (or two).  So I finally gathered my supplies and settled on a design and made these cute little bookmarks with my hostess club on Friday night.  Isn't it adorable?!!?  And oh so simple to make!  There are a few ways to make these but I opted to follow Dawn's directions since it required no gluing (and then I didn't have to worry about my stamp girls taking them home).  I stamped the flowers from pocket silhouettes in early espresso and then punched it out using the designer label punch.  The butterfly was added *after* the image was in the hardware label so that the wings have a little lift in them.  The ribbon for the actual bookmark is the yummy poppy parade stitched ribbon.  I love this ribbon... it's so soft!  The ribbon on the top is the 1/8 taffeta ribbon in early espresso.  This ribbon is a little tough for me since it's so thin....I just need a little practice with ribbons in thicknesses other than my standard 1/4"  *wink*.  I used the cute little flower ribbon slider on the taffetta.  The slider has a little channel that goes around the edging of it so I filled that with some silver stickles for LOTS of shimmer and shine!!!  I LOVE the way it turned out.  I made sure to run the edges of the ribbon through a flame to melt the edges so that I won't have any fraying issues...and yup I know I could have used fray check but the flame is SO much easier and much more fun *wink* 

Materials used (all SU unless noted otherwise): pocket silhouettes; baja breeze, so saffron cs; early espresso ink; early espresso taffeta, poppy parade poly ribbon; stylized silver hodgepodge hardware; designer label, word window punches; silver stickles (ranger)

Here's a close up of the image panel.  Can you see the glitter on the slider??    I LOVE the way that turned out.  I love when you can do simple little things and get such a great result from it :)  Ahhh it truly is the little things that make me happy!

We are off to Yo Gabba Gabba Live today with the little lady!!!  It's almost embarrassing to admit but I am so excited for this silly show :) The whole crew is going to be there and it's going to be a FAB dance party.  If you've never seen the show, it's a totally crazy show but it's SUCH fun and all about dancing and having a great time!!  I can't wait!!!!

Well thanks so much for stopping by today!!!  I hope you have a wonderful day!  :)

IHP June Challenge-Add a little bling :)

Have you seen the fabulous self adhesive crystals from Zva Creative in the i {heart} papers store?!?!?!  They are so super shiny and so easy to work with, I {heart} them :)  This month the ihp DT has been challenged to make a project using these fabulous crystals, or some other form of bling.  I have been looking to jazz up this frame for a while so I thought this was the perfect excuse to do so.  

The frame is from the unfinished wood section at Michaels, even though it's not wood, I think it's MDF but anyway....that's where I found it.  The frame measures a full 12x12 which allowed me to use the entire sheet of this adorable paper Fancy Free paper from Moxxie.  I will totally admit that I have been hanging on to this paper for a while.  It was one of those "too pretty to cut" papers but with this project I didn't have to cut any of the prettiness. I added some silver stickles in the center of each of the flowers on the paper. Then I added one of the small crystal flourishes framing the top and bottom corner of the picture.  To finish off the sparkle I adhered a sparkling flower to a scrap paper and cut it out and then put in in the upper corner of the picture opening.  A few pieces of glimmer ribbon finished off the sparkle and shine for the frame :D  

Materials used: fancy free (moxxie); glimmer ribbon-magenta, pink, pastel blue (creative impressions); small flourish crystal, sparkling flower (zva creative); silver stickles (ranger)

I do have to apologize for the quality of these pictures....it is really difficult to take a picture  of a frame and even more difficult to attempt to capture all the shimmer and shine of the crystals and stickles.  Sorry!!!  You'll just have to trust me when I say this baby shines!!  Here is a close up of the sparkling flower in the sunlight...you can *almost* see how shiny these crystals are....almost.

Make sure you check out the blogs for the other ihp design team members today to see what sparkly creations that they have come up with :)  I promise you won't be disappointed!!!    

Ballerina ballerina

Today was the last day of Elizabeth's dance class...where did the time go?!?!?!?  It just seems like yesterday that we were signing her up.  Now she is all done with class and getting ready for her recital on Saturday.  WOW!!!  She was very lucky to have three wonderful teachers this year, all of whom are still students themselves.  These young ladies have shown such professionalism and patience this year, they are truly amazing young women :)  I wanted to give them something that I knew they would enjoy and what teenage girl (or any girl for that matter) wouldn't love a gift card from Sephora??!!?!?  

Not sure if you've ever seen the awesome packaging that Sephora uses for their gift cards but I can tell you they are brilliant.  They house them in this adorable double sided black compact mirror!  Brilliant!!!  Well, as you know I just couldn't leave well enough alone so I just had to doctor them up a little bit.  I used the adorable Anya Ballerina-love her!!!  I colored each one to look like each teacher, which is not only cute but helped Elizabeth to give them out without my help :) I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!  

And just because I am the beaming mom I just have to share a picture (or two) of my adorable little tap dancer in her recital costume.  She LOVES her costume and had so much fun smiling for all her pictures the other morning....I just hope that she smiles as much for the actual recital.  Enjoy my little "Blueberry Pie" 

Ok.......and one more *wink*

Thanks for letting me indulge myself.  I've been working on lots of end of the year thank you gifts and cards.....I have been BUSY.  I'll try and get them posted when I have a minute to spare *whew*

Appreciate your teacher

This week is National Teacher Appreciation week.  As a former teacher, I can tell you just how hard that job is!! Sure the hours are great but the workload is a killer, between lesson plans, grading, records.......it's a lot of paperwork in addition to the teaching.  So make sure you tell your child's teacher (well if you have kids and they have teachers) thank you!!  And for all you homeschool moms out there....take an extra piece of chocolate this week :)

Elizabeth helped me pick out the perfect present for her teachers, "the most beautiful flowers in the whole garden" or so I'm told.  Actually I love the color, they are such a pretty orangey yellow-so so pretty!!!  I bought pots for Elizabeth to decorate and then we repotted the daisies in the new pots, added a cute ribbon and tag and the perfect springy gift was created!  We bought a few of these babies for our front flower bed too....they came in so many pretty colors and they were just too pretty to leave at the store *wink*

Here's a close up of the tag.  I used the adorable Teacher Anya from The Greeting Farm, she reminds me a little of Elizabeth.  I gave her brown hair like my little lady and she's holding a nice yummy looking red apple for her teacher.  I added a little clear spica glitter pen to the diamonds in her skirt to give her a little sparkle but other than that she is just straight coloring.  I mounted her on a scalloped oval that I doubled up to make a little card/tag and tied it onto the pot.  Cute and simple!!!

And just because they are SO pretty....here's a close up of the daisies.  Hope her teachers find them to be the most beautiful flowers too, I'm sure they will.   

Make sure you take a minute to thank a teacher this week!  I know it will be appreciated!  Hope you have a great day, I actually stamped the last few days so I will be back tomorrow with another card to share, promise!

not a single stamp

was used on this project!!!  Not a one!!!  Can you believe it?!?!  I picked up this adorable box at Wal-Mart while I was visiting my sister in NC back in September (my Wal-Mart doesn't have cute little things like this!!!!).  It was maybe $1 and I had NO idea what I was going to do with it but I just knew that I couldn't leave it sitting there on the shelf all by itself.  If it had had friends I would have bought them too *wink* but sadly it was alone.  Well I brought it home in Sept and there it sat in my craft room just waiting for the perfect project.  I got this paper from i {heart} papers and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to use it to cover this cute little box!!!!  

I first started by painting the little paper mache box with a wine color acrylic paint.   I was trying to match the color of the flower centers-it's close not perfect but still close enough that it doesn't bother me.  Then I covered the sides and the lid of the box using this adorable paper from My Mind's Eye.  I was originally going to cover the sides of the lid too but I opted out of that-it was simply too much!!  So instead I wrapped it with the TOTALLY cute sheer heart ribbon-but here's the thing that at the time my tired little mind didn't grasp.  The ribbon is sheer--which pretty much means that the strip of tape I used to adhere it to the box...yeah you got it-it shows through.  Not a lot but enough to bother me....so I grabbed some SU tempting turquoise ribbon and wrapped it over the tape strip *giggle*  It's probably hard to see in the picture but some of the flower petals have the tiniest little strip of turquoise in them, so the ribbon was the perfect touch :)  

For the box embelishment I simply cut out one of the flowers from my left over paper and glued it (with some foam tape so it pops up ever so slightly) over the same flower on the lid-but i twisted it a little to make the flower look a little bigger.  But that was not enough....oh no it needed more!!  So I outlined both the base flower and the overlay with some pretty cotton candy stickles--so shimmery and pretty.  I finished it off with a rhinestone in the middle to give it a little extra shine.

Here's a close up of the heart ribbon because it is WAY too cute for you not to get a good  look at *wink*  I {heart} this stuff...seriously totally cute right??

Materials used: blossoms dp (my mind's eye); acrylic paint; paper mache box (provocraft); cotton candy stickles; light pink sheer hear ribbon (may arts); tempting turquoise ribbon (SU); hot fix studs; hot fix rhinestones (swarovski); rhinestone (martha stewart crafts)

I had SO much fun making this little box!!  It went together so quickly and easily.  Right now it's empty but only because I am not 100% sure what I want to do with it.  I haven't decided if I should fill it with goodies and give it to someone, if I should use it in my bathroom for holding soaps, put it on my dresser to put some of my jewelry.....I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough.  Until then, it will just sit in my craft room for me to look at and enjoy :)

Got cupcakes??

When I first saw this adorable cupcake chipboard book at i {heart} papers I knew I needed it!!!!  Seriously, it is just way too cute :)  I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew I *needed* it!!!  Well, I think it's been in my possession for a little over a week and while there are many other cute little books sitting unloved, this one got some serious love!!!!!  I had SO much fun making this little book!!!!!

I covered it using some A-Dorable paper (also from IHP) from Basic Grey.  This one is Urban Prairie and it just way too cute!!!  I love the colors, the patterns.....LOVE it!!!  True it's not really "cupcake"-ish but I love the colors so it just worked out.  I decided to use this cute little book to hold the pictures of Elizabeth's First birthday and her first ever taste of cupcake *wink*    Each page is covered with a different pattern-the backs are covered with the solid papers from the stack.  Then I sanded the edges and inked them up with some black ink to give them a little something.  Oh and see that cute little flower??  Yup, you got it-I got that from IHP too-right here...way too cute!!!!  I just finished it up with some ribbons on the chain, added some rhinestones to the chipboard letters (those are from SU) and ta-da total cuteness *giggles*

Here are some of the inside pages.  I used my new nestabilities that I also got at IHP :).  Each page is very similar.  The photo is simply matted and then accented in the corner with a photo corner.  Then I used the cute little flowers that I used on the cover to accent the photo corner and then I also put one on the strip below the photo.  Then I added some rhinestones around the flowers to give it a little sparkle.  

I love how simple and easy this book was to make.  I kept my layouts very simple not only for continuity within the book but also because it was FAST!!!  I mean seriously, Elizabeth is almost 3 and I am just now scrapping her first birthday pics...I need fast!!!!!  *wink*

Now, here is THE best part......do you want to make one of these for yourself??? Well then today is your lucky day!!!!  I have this awesome BLOG CANDY to give to you courtesy of i {heart} papers.  What's in it you ask???  You get 2 yards of hot pink ribbon, 5 sheets of 12x12 cupcake paper, AND one of these cute cupcake chipboard books. 

If you would like a chance to win this awesome candy then simply leave a comment on this post.  You have until Saturday Nov. 15 at 6 pm (EST) to enter.  I'll post the winner here Saturday night :)  Also make sure you check out the other IHP DT member's blogs for more chances to win blog candy this month.  There's LOTS of yummy candy to be had!!!  Best of luck to you!!!!

Phew, time really does fly

when you are so busy to notice *wink* Man I have been swamped the lat few days and am just now beginning to dig out!!!!  I think I am down to *only* about 1500 blog posts to catch up on!!!!!  Yikes!!!!  I had gotten a little behind when I went away last weekend but then last week I had my hostess club on Friday night and I went to my first Shoebox swap (SO much fun!!!) on Saturday...so time has just flown by!!!!!!  

The gals hosting the shoebox swap also decided to do a door prize.  Basically anyone who wanted to participate was to bring an altered item as well as $5 worth of product.  Well since I {heart} to alter things, I could not participate!!!!!  I found this cute little perpetual desk calendar at my trip to Hobby Lobby last week and knew that it would be perfect!!!!!!  I used Hawaii Papaya DP and just had so much fun jazzing this cute little wooden calendar up.  When I bought it there was a little wooden anchor where the big flower is now...well that was the first thing to go.  Somehow I didn't think an anchor would fit in with the rest fo the project!!!!  This was pretty easy to do but it did take a while to cut out the paper and then mod podge it on but I love doing this kind of thing so it worked out just perfectly for me!!!!!!  I used the Full calendar set to do the months and then put a little tangerine tango flower in front of the month name.  The numbers are stamped and then mounted on a barely there scallop rectangle so it just gave a slight separation from  the patterned paper.  I was so pleased with how this came out...I was kind of tempted to keep it for myself *wink*  Guess it's a good thing I bought a few of these because now I need one for myself!!!

Materials used (all SU): full calendar, school serif numbers stamp sets; kiwi kiss, tangerine tango, chocolate chip cs; hawaii papaya dp; old olive craft ink; kiwi kiss classic ink; flower trio punch; BS blooms and baskets die; filigree flowers brads

Things on the home front have been going well.  Elizabeth LOVES school, dance, and gymnastics!!!!!!  She loves her teachers and talks about them all the time :)  Plus she is starting to "talk" with some imaginary friends that seem to travel everywhere with us lately.  Gymbo the clown (from Gymboree) is almost always with us but rarely does he ever travel in the car *wink* He can usually be found flying above our car. And Buster (the dog from Pooh and Friends) is usually walking outside and getting dirty of course *wink*  Yup, she has quite an imagination!!!!!!!!  

I hope that you had a great day today and a very enjoyable weekend!!!  Sorry for the short absence but I should be back to the grind again now.  I have been having fun playing with my new stamps from The Rubber Cafe that I will need to share.  I'll also have to share the cute card I made for the shoebox swap (and yes, I know I describe *almost* every card I make as "cute" but they ARE!!!!!!)  I need to dig out the camera and get some good pics for you :)   

Take a note

This is one of my favorite sets and sadly it's retiring very soon :(  along with the designer paper and soft sky *sigh* but I know that there will be many new loves to replace these!!!  This is one of the projects we made at my last hostess club.  I always do a goodbye to retiring sets and I couldn't think of a more fitting set to use to make this cute little post it note holder. 

The base of the holder is a 6x4 acrylic photo frame.  I used the notebook designer paper and punched the side with the spiral punch to make it look like it had been torn out of a notebook.  The daily notes is stamped directly on the DP.  I used the tab punch for the side-it reads important message.  Then I slid the base in the frame.  I stamped the big flower with soft sky ink on soft sky paper and cut it out.  I used a little knot of soft sky stitched ribbon for the flower center.  Then the flower is adhered to the outside of the frame and is the post it note pad (duh).  Then we made a cute little matching pen to go with the note holder.  It makes a cute little gift or just a cute little countertop-next to the phone- accessory :)

Images © 1990–2008 Stampin’ Up!

Materials used (all SU unless otherwise noted): office accoutrement; soft sky, always artichoke, sahara sand cs; soft sky, chocolate chip classic ink; notebook DP; ticket corner punch, tab punch, spiral punch; soft sky stitched ribbon, artichoke ribbon; sticky strip; pen (RSVP); 6x4 frame; 3x3 post it notes 

So I have been working like a mad woman on my swaps.  I am happy to report that I now have 4 sets done-only 3 more to go *wink* I am really pleased with them too, which just makes me even happier.  Even my DH likes them so I think they are convention swap worthy :)  Now I just have to figure out exactly how I am going to get them to SLC-I don't want to ruin all of my hard work in transit.  ugh!

We had some crazy thunderstorms blow threw here tonight....actually they are still rumbling pretty badly out there.  We've lost power few times as well, which is not fun!  Elizabeth is not even phased by the storms usually but these were pretty rough so she was a little nervous.  My dog on the other hand is a basket case!!!!  She can not handle storms and tonight's just made her nuts.  She usually wakes me up in the middle of the night when we have one because she gets so nervous.  Tonight I think she must have lost about half her fur, she sheds A LOT when she gets nervous *wink*  Poor baby!!!!  I'm hoping they end soon though so I am not up all night again with her tonight! WIsh me luck!!!  :)