After 15 LONG months....

Well it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks here. I have been busy busy busy. I have been making more cakes, actually got some stamping done, but most of all I was getting ready for my hubby's unit of 400+ soldiers to come home after 15 months! YAY!!!! Here are some pics from the ceremony where we welcomed the first plane which had 230+ soldiers. My hubby was one of them! *grin*

Seeing these pictures make me so proud! My hubby was way in the back and I had a lady standing in front of me with her sign so I wasn't able to get a pic until after all the soldiers were in formation.

The National Anthem was being played and snapped a quick picture before putting my hand over my heart.

This is the Brigade Commander giving his speech to the "Kodiaks" (That's hubby's battalion) his speech was simple, "Welcome Home, Welcome Home (crowd cheering), You're all awesome, you're all heroes, Stay Safe, Go meet your loved ones, Well done, Hooah!" (and the crowd goes running) I love it when they keep it short and sweet. *grin*

And my favorite picture in the bunch:

It was a LONG 15 months, but he is finally HOME!!!!! YAY!!!

I will post some projects and cakes in the next couple of days so be looking for those. I thought these wonderful pictures deserved a post of their own. *giddy grin*

Now to go get ready for my daughter to come home. Can you beleive she is going to be 13 in less then a week? Crazy!

What I have been up to recently.

I know it's been a while since I last posted anything. Sorry, life has been crazy busy. But it's for a good reason! DH and his unit are getting ready to come home from their 15 month deployment! YAY!!!!!

I have been keeping myself busy and frankly, keeping myself from going nutso with lots of projects. A couple that I have done recently are these:

For Michele's birthday. She turned 4 I think. She wanted a Little Mermaid party and her mom asked me to make her a small cake just for her and to make the kids cupcakes. I didn't take pictures of the cupcakes, sorry, forgot to. But here is the birthday girls cake. I did two different colors of blue frosting to give it the look of water. It looked really cool in person. I did some swirly vine work and some drop flowers with a drop flower tip I have and then I used a little Ariel character that my friend gave me to put on the top of the cake. All in all I was pleased with how it turned out. The cupcakes were a big hit too.

Another friend asked me to make a monkey head cake for her son's birthday. I have never done one before but she gave me a picture as reference and this is what I came up with. I was really excited about how this one turned out and I can't wait to do another monkey cake!

And just so you know that I haven't been doing nothing but cakes:

I asked the ladies on the Altered Arts design team over at ASB to alter containers. They rose to the occassion like the true artists that they are! Check out what they all did here: http://www.ashadeofblue.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1111

I made this bank using a crystal light container for my daughter. Aren't the papers yummy! They are from A Shade Of Blue's new line of papers! Avaliable now in their digi store! Be sure to check them out!

I sometimes get Spare Parts flowers from Hobby Lobby and the last time I did I decided to see if I could use the container. So here is the container before.....

And after.....

Can I tell you how I love this one. The papers are again from ASB. The flowers and the word friend are from SU's rubons (Sell-a-brations) and the ribbon is from SU.

I made this for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day

I asked my sister-in-laws' (is that the correct term? 3 of them? I don't know, anywho....) to send me pics of their kiddos. I used a frame I had gotten a couple of months ago, for this specific purpose and placed the kids pictures in the frame. I then looked online and found a beautiful saying about grandmother's from this site: http://www.great-inspirational-quotes.com/

The saying was printed off my computer and then I stamped a rose from the SU set Cottage Rose (I love that set!) so that it looked like the rose was behind the sentiment. The sentiment says: "Grandmothers and Roses are much the same, Each are God's masterpeices with different names. ---Author Unknown" I thought it was perfect.

My last one that I have to share with you (although I have done more I just can't find them to show you, sorry!) is this one. I did this one tonight. The technique challenge on ASB is the kissing technique. I love this technique!

So I have a story behind what some might call my odd color choice. I was folding laundry tonight and as I was folding the 4th shirt I looked at the pile of shirts that was sitting already folded. I had in my pile, shirts that were Night of Navy, Taken With Teal, and Groovy Guava. I thought, hmmm, that would make a good card combo! So, here you have it, the results of my folded laundry. ROFL! (all items from this project are SU except the navy ribbon swirly thing)

I stamped the paisley background onto Taken With Teal CS using Night Of Navy Ink. I am not a fan of Taken With Teal but I am challengeing myself to open my mind to new colors that I wouldn't normally use. So by stamping this with Night Of Navy ink I was able to tone down the Teal. LOL Then I DTP'ed the edges. I kissed the H & B from Headline Alphabet with the Navy ink on the Paisley BG stamp. Mounted it with Navy CS. Added some ribbon and the navy charm and then I mounted it onto my Guava cardbase. I decided to punch it up a little, using as my inspiration a card that my SU demo had us do in stamp club and I peirced the card right above the teal piece. You can't see it in the photo but I stamped the Aida Cloth BG stamp using Versamark on the Guava peice. On the inside I stamped a saying about birthday's although I don't remember which one. So in case you didn't guess it, HB stands for Happy Birthday. LOL

Anywho, there you have it, my very long blog post with all my latest projects.

Moments

I was getting ready to head to bed tonight and decided to check out the color combo challenge over at SCS. This week CC163 is Pretty In Pink, Certainly Celery, and Chocolate Chip. I just LOVE this combo. I decided that for my card I wanted to depict a pretty spring scene. What better excuse to use my new Seasonal Scenes set by Artful Inkables.

Layout from page 73 in the current SU catty. Sentiment from Wedding Silouettes (Artful Inkables) Used watercolor paper, watercolor Crayons and Aquapainter to create my scene.

I am in love with how this card turned out! So simple, but so pretty (which as you know if you read my blog often, I don't normally love my creations. I say things like, I'm pleased, or I like it. I never say that I love it. But this one, I love!)

Quilt Square Project... Complete!

For the last few weeks I have been working on a project for church. We are doing a quilt square swap. What is a quilt square swap you ask? Well, it is exactly like a card swap. There are 25 of us who signed up, we each make 25 of our quilt squares and on Sunday we all bring our squares to church and "swap" them. We each get 1 of each of the 25 squares (including 1 of our own). So we each end up with 25 different squares. We are each able to do whatever we want, our own color choices, our own patterns, our own designs, etc. So all 25 squares will be completely different. We then each get to make our own quilts to keep for years to come. We have to put our names on the squares so that years down the road we can look at the squares on the quilt and remember who everyone is. Fun huh?! I did this a couple of years ago and it was a blast. There were 14 of us last time. I made a simple square in green's and rose colors. I was going to do a more ambitious one but decided to procrastinate and ran out of time. So when this opportunity came around again I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The square is very simple to look at, but trust me, they took FOREVER to complete! I started working on them right after my honey went back from leave, I needed something to keep me busy. Trust me, this definately did the trick. So for the last 2 and a half weeks I have been working on......
The center of the square is cross-stitched (hence why it took so long). The first one took me 4 hours to do (just the cross-stitched part). By the final few squares I had memorized the pattern and it took me only just over an hour for each. Then came the strips on the side. I found some cute fabric at hobby lobby (thanks for helping me find it Belinda!), in navy blue with tiny stars and burgundy with tiny stars. Very Americana huh? That is what I was going for. My friend Chelsea likes these so much that she wants me to make more squares for her. I told her that I was making an extra square (so yup, 26 total) so that I could make a pillow for my mom, who's family room is done in Americana colors. Chelsea's eyes lit up immediately and asked me if I could do some pillows for her too. lol I told her I would.
I am considering making a bunch and selling them at a craft sale. hmmmm.......

Fairy Whimsey take 2!

So the more that I looked at the last card that I did for Emmy's birthday, the more I didn't like it. So I sat down and created a new one. I used the sketch from this weeks sketch challenge on ASB. I love this sketch! I am much happier with this card and I am happy to report that Emmy loved it! She kept showing it to everyone. lol So here it is!

I again used the cuttlebug and the stylized flowers embossing folder. I decided to DTP the card just lightly to kind of make the embossing part stand out more. Thought it added to the nature-y feel. (Is that a word? well, it is now!) I used the Canvas BG stamp from SU on the Amythest and celery panels and DTP'ed the edges. The fairy image (which is of course from the Artful Inkables set Fairy Whimsey) was stamped with staz-on onto Shimmer White and I used watercolor crayons and blender pens to color it. I added sparkle to the wings with stickles and brush. Finished the card off with hodge podge and some ribbon. I love love love this card!

For Emmy's Birthday

Guess what I got in the mail today! *grin* I got my Artful Inkables order! I am so excited! Obviously... since it's 3a.m. and I just made a card. lol I was getting ready to go to bed and I got inspired, so I had to make my card and then share my creation with you. So I have this friend who's DD is turning 4 on Saturday. I needed to make her a birthday card. Emmy is a wonderful little girl who always makes me smile, so I set out to make a special card for this special little girl.

Now normally I am not a fan of Fairy sets. But, when I saw the Fairy Whimsey set on Artful Inkables I decided it was really pretty, but, I didn't know if it was a must have, I was tempted, but I needed something to sway me. Now for me to say it was pretty is HUGE, cause like I said, I don't like fairy sets. And normally I don't like to be swayed. (Case in point, the In Full Bloom set from SU, I saw what so many people were doing with that set, so I bought it.... I owned it for 3 years, used it a total of two times.... And that was because I made myself use it. I couldn't get that set to work for me. So I decided that I would never buy sets just because I liked what someone else did with it. If it was one I liked, but wasn't set on wanting right from the start, I would have to use it first in order to decide if I could get to work for me.) So back to the Fairy Whimsey set... I thought it was really pretty, but was wanting to be swayed (odd, I know, given the decision I had made about not being swayed right? lol) Then, the swaying started.... I saw this card: Stunning on my friend Amanda's blog, then she posted this one: Gorgeous Then came the push over the edge: WOW! That was it! I was hooked, and Fairy Whimsey was on my order. (Thanks for the enabling Amanda! *wink*) I don't even pretend to think my card is anywhere near Amanda's work, but I am happy with it.

Supplies: Fairy Whimsey Stamp Set (Artful Inkables), Stylized Flowers Cuttlebug Folder (Provocraft), Cuttlebug (Provocraft), Love & Happiness Rub Ons (SU), Watercolor Crayons (SU) Blender Pen (SU), Cardstock (All SU)- Close To Cocoa, Pretty In Pink, Going Gray, Whisper White

Other Supplies used: Stickles, Flower, Bling Brad

The Sketch was inspired by the Sketch Challenge 49 on SCS, The RubOn sentiment was added for SCS Ways To Use It Challenge 160, The Colors are from this weeks Color Challenge (73) on ASB.

(****Sorry for the bad pictures lately, I need a new camera and better lighting but the lighting in my house, not so good....)

Artful Inkables!

So a while back I told you about my friend Kristin who had her own stamp line called Artful Inkables. Her line was avaliable through Starvingartists. Well Kristin has ventured out on her own and now has her own online stamp store. I have been meaning to announce this for a couple of weeks now but have been so busy with DH home on leave and then right after he left again I got sick... again. But feeling better today I decided to sit down and stamp a card using one of Kristin's stamps. The colors are a complete departure for me, I am really happy with how this turned out. For my Artful Inkables card I used the dragonfly from the Pond Friends set. I have a gel pen that is a turqiouse-y color so I colored the dragonfly with that and then used liquid glue and glitter for the wings. I Cuttlebugged the background using the stylized flowers template. Wanting to make the dragon fly pop I used Pink Passion and Taken with Teal cardstocks for the card. I used the sentiment from Sweet Dreams (SU). I thought it went well with the whole flying dragonfly thing. It makes sense in my head, trust me. So without further ado, my Artful Inkables Creation:

Check out Kristins store here: http://artfulinkables.com/index.html