Build-A-Bear Birthday Card

Sunday was not only Valentine's Day, but Sunday was also my mother-in-laws birthday. She is such a fun lady that I wanted to do a fun card for her. I hadn't used my Build-A-Bear set yet really, so I wanted to use it for her birthday card:
I like how it turned out!
Stamps: Aida BG, Build-A-Bear, Build-A-Bear Word set (SU) (not sure what the word set is called)
Cardstock: Certainly Celery, Pretty In Pink, Whisper White, Nursery Paper Pack (all paper SU exceot paper pack, got that from HL)
Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black
Access.: Signo Gel Pen, Copic Markers, white grosgrain ribbon

The bears dress is paper peiced. Seriously love how this turned out. I know, it's a little more like a little kids card, but I just loved these colors together. Very springy!

I found this fabulous sign at Hobby Lobby and just had to get it for her. ;o)

Gift card holder

Seriously, can I be any worse of a blog mommy? Sorry to anyone out there still reading my blog! I will try my hardest to be better and post projects more often.

I haven't felt much up to stamping lately, or doing anything crafty. But I determined to do the challenges on SCS in hopes of getting some creative mojo back.

My neice Kim turned 19 at the end of Decemeber. I can't beleive she is so grown up!
What do you get a 19 year old? I asked my 14 year old daughter Tammy what she thought her cousin might like. Kim and Tammy are really good friends and if anyone knew what she would like, it would be Tammy. Tammy suggested a gift card to one of Kim's favorite stores, Plato's Closet. Gift care it is! But that meant I needed to make a gift card holder. So here is what I came up with. Not my best work, but o.k.

Tammy chose the colors, they are some of Kim's favorites. And Kim is obsessed with fairies. I don't have any measurements for this, I just winged my way through it, and this is the result:

The colors Tammy chose were Taken With Teal, Elegant Eggplant, and Basic Black. I used the Build A Bear stamp set from SU for the flower on the outside. I also did the scallop edge punch from SU for the border. I paper pierced the edges of the sleeve thing and used the circle and scallop circle punch for the front focal image.

The inside looked like this:

I used some scrap cardstock to make the pocket for the gift card. The Happy Birthday sentiment is from the SU Sell-a-brations set Whimsical Words. This is one of their new unmounted sets! SU unmounted, who knew?! I love it! It's the best of both worlds! unmounted stamps take up less storage space, and you can see exactly where you are stamping your image, BUT you still get the awesomeness that is the unbeatable SU quality rubber stamps! Love it!

Since Kim loves, and mean LOVES fairies, it was only fitting to put a fairy on the inside! For this I used the Enchanted Fairies set from Artful Inkables. I colored it using Copic markers. After I was done my daughter thought it needed some bling. So I added some stickles to the detailed parts of the fairy's wings.

Like I said, not my best work, by any stretch, but not awful.

Request

I know I have been MIA these last few weeks. The day that I made my last post I found out that a very old and dear friend of mine had been involved in a horrific car accident (we met when I was 13 and she was 14). She was driving south on the freeway, was temporarily distracted (like for only a couple seconds), swerved a little too far to the left, and over corrected. She crossed both lanes of south-bound traffic and the Expedition she was driving rolled 3 times before coming to a stop on it's side. She and the two passangers in her car (including her 9 year old daughter) were wearing seatbelts, but my friend was partially ejected from the vehicle. The front part of the drivers side roof caved in on her and she suffered severe head trauma. My sweet friend also suffered a broken cheek bone/eye socket, broken ribs, and a broken arm in 3 places. Her daughter and the other passanger escaped virtually unharmed with only minor bruising from the seatbelts.

For 12 days my friend was in the ICU in critical condition in a coma. This past Saturday, January 16th, she passed away. It has been a hard few weeks. I was able to go to the hospital to see her the day after the accident and again shortly after she passed away. I have known her husband since 10th grade and he is also a dear friend. He is doing as well as could be expected. I also saw him for a few hours on Monday. He is devastated and misses his sweet wife dearly. They met in high school and were married for 12 years (this year would have been 13). Her daughter is doing o.k.. She doesn't really understand what's going on, how can you at 9 years old. My heart is breaking for her loved ones left behind, ecspecially her husband and daughter. I wrote this on my other blog the day of her passing, shortly after returning home from the hospital. It sums up what I have been feeling. http://jacobandsharon.blogspot.com/2010/01/god-be-with-you-till-we-meet-again.html

So this is why I haven't been around. The funeral services are on Saturday. I don't normally make posts like this, forgive me if it offends anyone, but please, please keep Matt & Dayna (her husband and daughter) in your prayers. They really need comfort and strength right now.

Hopefully soon I will have some projects for you. I have been stamping, a little bit, I just haven't been up to posting much. But soon, very soon.....

Happy New Year!!!

I can't beleive it is 2010 already! That's just crazy!

It's around this time of year that people make resolutions. I normally don't like to make resolutions just because I know I won't stick to them. But this year, I thought I would make some crafting resolutions. I have been in a stamping funk for the last several months. And so to get myself out of it I decided to make resolutions.

First of all I'm joining a stamp club. Which I am totally excited about. My mom joined with me as well. I'm hoping it will help get my creative juices flowing again.

Next, I am determined to make at least 5 Christmas cards a month. This way I won't be scrambling at the end of the year when it comes time to mail out Christmas cards again. Each of the 5 will probably be the same. I don't like mass producing, but 5 isn't that many to mass produce. So I will have 10-11 different styles. :D

I also want to get my birthday box going again. A couple of years ago I made a birthday box, with index cards for each birthday and anniversary in our family. I made cards and put them in the box and then at the end of the month before I would get the cards ready to mail out for the next month. I stopped doing the birthday box right around the time we started getting ready to move. Now that we are settled I want to start that up again.

Another thing I want to do is just stamp. Stamp for fun, stamp for me. It's been a long time since I've done that. Stamping cards to put in my box of "hey, I need a card" cards. ;o)

The final thing, I need to come up with a way to raise funds for our adoption. Not sure if it will be stamping related. I know we could sell the ink storage units again. Hubby is starting college next week, in addition to his full time job, which is in addition to the Army Reserves, so he is rather busy right now and doesn't have the time to work in his shop. Plus he says it is waaaaaay to cold to be out there right now. So I need to figure something out. I'll let you all know so that if you want to help you can get the word out.

Things have been eerily quiet on my crafting blog these last several months and I'm determined to change that. I fell down the stairs early early Christmas morning and I'm still recovering from that. But I'm getting better every day. So be ready! Cause craft room, here I come!

Neighbor gifts

This is the first time we have lived in a neighborhood where the neighbors do gifts for each other for Christmas. We love that! Been trying to figure out what to do from us. We were going to bake Christmas goodies but with hubby's work schedule and our daughter at her dad's for a couple of days we just didn't get to it. So instead I'm making bread and we bought honey bears to go with. I made little tags (using the My Digital Studio of course) to go with them that say "Wishing you a Beary Merry Christmas!" Love how the tags turned out.

I found a cute Christmas Bear Clipart online and used that. The background is from the Christmas Jingle kit on the software. I did the label and matted that, did the text and added brads. These will be attached to the honey bears and given with the bread. Love it! The longest part was finding the right clipart. All in all these took less than 4 minutes including printing. :D

And the Christmas cards, were just as quick. This was the finished product:

Can't wait for Christmas!!!

Christmas Cards gone digital!

Sorry that it's been so long since I updated my blog. This has been a crazy year. So crazy that I haven't been able to do our Christmas cards yet. Normally I have them not only done, but mailed out by now. I want to send them because we have pass along cards for our adoption that we are sending with them (that and I always send Christmas cards). I tried to buy some this year, but just couldn't. But making them was just stressing me.

That is until I remembered that I have the My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up! I could make Christmas cards quickly! So far I have come up with 2 options. After figuring out what photos I wanted to use they each took less than 5 minutes. What do you think? I'm still going to play around a little and see what else I can come up with, but not bad if I do say so myself. These are both done using the Christmas Jingle Scrapbooking Kit on the My Digital Studio. Love it! Seriously, this software, has got to be one of my favorite crafting purchases in a long time!

My goal for next year is to make at least 5 Christmas cards a month starting in January. This way by December I will have plenty of cards and I won't stress so much come time to send them. That's the plan anyway. ;o) I will be sitting down in the next week or so to make a Birthday card for my neice. So I will have that for you soon. I promise it won't be a month before I post again!

Oh, and adoption update. We are still waiting to be chosen. Our agency profile is officially updated and we are good to go and back online with them. We are also in the process of looking into getting approved for the states Foster to Adopt program. You can help us get the word out that we are hoping to adopt. Take a look at the right sidebar. You'll see our adoption blog button and an HTML code to go with it. copy and paste that HTML code into a gadget on your blog and viola! A button directing others to our blog. (BTW, the button, was made by me, using My Digital Studio. Soooo quick and easy, I love it!) If you want to stay updated on us and our journey, other than my occasional updates, I update our adoption blog often so check it out. :D

Look at me! I'm digi-scrappin!

I told you yesterday about my box of goodies from Stampin Up! My first stamping order in a year. In that box of goodies I told you I got the new My Digital Studio. I got it because I wanted to try my hand at digital scrapbooking. I have tried before and just couldn't get the hang of it. So I decided to see if all the reviews I have heard about how easy this program to use are true. And can I tell you, they are oh so true! I love this product! My Digital Studio rocks! I did a whole 12 page layout in under an hour. Love it!
Most of my pictures are on my computer so I had a hard time trying to edit the images, send them to snapfish to get printed and then when I would received the prints I would find I would spend hours at my craft table just trying to do 1 page. Then I would get discouraged before even finishing that 1 page and would walk away. This has made it so easy for me to scrapbook. I love it!!!
Here are just a few of my favs. I used the already put together for you Christmas kit and just dropped my pictures in, did some journaling, a little tweaking and tada! I did use a little creative liberty on some of the pages. Like on the one with the white background and red blocks. The predone layout showed pictures there, I took out the space for pictures, left the red blocks and had this as journaling page.

Not bad for my first attempt at digiscraping!