Tutorials

Hi guys; happy Sunday. Cloudy gloomy day here; been that way for weeks now. It's starting to drive me crazy! Today I am putting together a new recipe box for my class tomorrow night. I will post it when I am done. And I am going to do some coloring tutorials, hopefully! I have using several different methods to color lately and just wanted to share them with you. You may already know how to use watercolor pencils or crayons, or prismacolor pencils with baby oil, or markers, but I'm getting bored with just posting a completed project without the pictures of the entire process. LOL. So we'll see how that goes! Will check back in later. Have a great Sunday!

New elements added....

Late post tonight! It's 11:30 pm and I am getting ready to go to bed but wanted to say hey! This week at work went fairly quickly. The guy I hired quit yesterday. He didn't like our boss! LOL. Oh well. He was starting to drive me crazy at work!

Tomorrow I am taking the kids to the fairgrounds. Animal Planet is coming to Vermont! I heard a commercial on the radio about some dog shows and different animals that are going to be there and I thought the kids would enjoy that! Besides that, it's free! LOL Can't beat that!

I have added more pictures to my slide show called Some of my Creations. And I have added a guestbook at the bottom of the page. Seems kinda cool. I saw it on another blog and thought it looked fun. Check it out and sign in if you'd like!

Oh and I added another favorite blog to the list......drum roll please......Cindy Haffner!!! Yay. I love her cards and her gallery at SCS. Check it out.

Sunday, Katie is doing another craft fair; purses, cards, cell phone pouches, jewelry. Wish her luck!

Post again tomorrow. Thanks for checking in.

So grateful...

Hi everyone, I was just going through my email and noticed a ton of email from SCS. I received a ton of notices that people had left comments on cards in my gallery! I just finished reading them all and I just wanted to say thanks for all your compliments!!! It really is sweet when someone takes the time to tell you how funny or cute they think your card is! I really love to read through all the comments in my gallery. Thanks so much!

I have a class tonight that I have to get ready for. I spent a couple of hours this morning cutting paper and gathering the stamps and ink I need. Oh that reminds me, I have to grab the ribbon! Tonight's class is on the star book. I am hoping that it doesn't run over! I have to get up early for work tomorrow!

Expecting thunderstorms again this evening into tonight. Probably down pour on my way to my class or walking through the parking lot with my arms full of stuff! LOL. Thanks for stopping by; I have more cards to post but I don't have pictures of them yet. Will do that soon! Have a great night! :)

You Make Me Smile...

This cupcake is from Hero Arts and the set is called Clear Design Cupcakes. I am really into cupcakes right now..........actually anything to do with desserts! LOL. I colored it with Prismacolor watercolor pencils and my dove blender. I stamped the cupcake with Stazon black on SU's watercolor paper, colored it and then cut it out and adhered it to the scallop circles from Marvy. I used some decorative scissors and cut out the sentiment (from SU) into individual words. Some of them are adhered with dimensionals. Fast and easy card!

Hi There!

Hi There! I think this is my favorite card among the several I've made recently. I love the bright bold colors! I can't remember where I got that patterned paper, but I've been holding onto it for a long time. Now that I have all these cupcake stamps, I have a use for the paper! The cupcake and the sentiment are both from Hero Arts. The sentiment is from the Spring Catalog. The cupcake is stamped with Stazon black and colored with Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils and Dove Blender. I then cut it out and adhered it to the circle with dimensionals. That piece is then adhered to the red circle with just adhesive and then that piece is attached to the patterned paper with dimensionals. The sentiment is stamped also with Stazon black and punched out with my Marvy oval punch. It's attached to the red piece with dimensionals. I used my horizontal slot punch from SU so that I could tie the ribbon on each end. I added dots with a fine tip marker. I love, love, love this card! :)

Yum!!

Yum is right! Can you imagine eating a huge ice cream cone like this? LOL This stamp is from Denami Design. I think their booth was my favorite at the stamp show. They have such cute stamps. The sentiment is from Hero Arts. The set is called Clear Design Cupcakes. I used Stazon black to stamp the ice cream cone on SU's Watercolor Paper and then colored it with Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils and my Dove Blender. I mounted that piece onto the green piece with dimensionals and the ribbon is running between the two layers. Then the entire piece is mounted to the patterned paper which I can't remember where it's from. Sorry! The circle is punched out using Marvy circle punch. I used SU's ticket corner punch on the ice cream cone corners and then used one of my fine tip markers to add the dots. I like the bright colors of this card!

Tornado Warning!

Ok not only does little Jared hate thunderstorms but he is deathly afraid of tornadoes! And we have a warning for those little twisters today! Will let you know later how today goes.....

Copic Marker Blog!!

Hi Everyone!

I haven't been on in awhile. Have lots to post and some things to share. First I want to tell you that I have had added a new link. Check it out! I added it to my "Fun Places" list and it's called I like Markers. I recently found this site while reading the forums about Copic Markers. And this is the blog to visit. You learn everything you need to know about Copic Markers. I don't have any yet but I want to start my collection after seeing them demonstrated at a stamp fair I went to.

I also wanted to share with you something I recently purchased called the Bind It All Round it All. Here is the link; you'll see a close up. http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/yhst-56935576670441_2005_6457906
I haven't tried it yet but I am dying to! Here is the product description taken from the site

"The only corner rounder made to handle thick chipboard, acrylic, tin, and most other materials up to 1/8" thick. It is available in two sizes. The R10 tool will be pink and the R5 will be blue. This Round-it-All is available for PRE-ORDER and will ship end of May 2008. If purchased with other products, everything will ship immediately with the exception of the Round-it-All."

Another new item that I have is from Denami Design. They have really cute stamps! Here is their link....http://www.denamidesign.com/shoponline.html
I need to add them to my shopping list as well. I just acquired the frog stamp shown here....http://www.denamidesign.com/stamps/pages/N/N114.html
and the ice cream cone shown here.....http://www.denamidesign.com/stamps/pages/K/K55.html
Their fruit is so cute too! I have the Small Citrus Splash and the Small Cherries. http://www.denamidesign.com/stamps/tropicaldreams5.html

Another company I recently found is called Class Act. Here is the link to their site. http://www.classact.ca/index.html
I have this stamp of strawberries, http://www.classact.ca/RubberStamps/Fruit/FT08C_C_Strawberries.jpg
this stamp of cherries, http://www.classact.ca/RubberStamps/Fruit/FT10C_C_Cherries.jpg
this fence which I love! http://www.classact.ca/RubberStamps/My%20Garden/CJ08E_E_Fence.jpg
and they have some great ice cream stamps but I can't find them on their site. Might have to contact them to add them to their site!

Other info............
Just this past Friday was my birthday and I was going to go have dinner with a friend because Jared's first officer candidate school weekend was this weekend and he was going to be gone. Well, little Jared had a stomach ache that got progressively worse in a matter of a few hours and ended up in the ER having tons of tests! They told us he had acute appendisitis and within 40 minutes, he was in the OR!! Not a fun evening but he's ok and recovering this week. This is his last week of school and he will miss all of it except Friday. What a crazy year with my family and surgeries! LOL

Anyway, have to get some cards done today and mailed out but wanted to share all that info with you! Thanks for stopping by!

Katie's Graduation Announcement

I managed to get Katie's announcements done today.....well some of them! LOL. It started out really simple with just the layers of cardstock. Then I added the stamping. I couldn't figure out what to do with the top black square with the limited graduation stamps that I have. So I decided to get my cricut out and cut out the year. At first I was going to rest the cap like a hat on the first 0, but then I got the idea to hang it and take up some of the space below the year. I love that part! LOL Then I added the stars at the bottom, which are brads and the yellow brads at the top. I wanted to spruce up the very bottom so I punched holes along the bottom and added a little dot between each hole with my glitter pen. I put yellow cardstock behind the holes so they would show up nicely. The card looks much better in person. My camera is yucky! LOL What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Recipe Box #2

Here is my other recipe box. I like this one better. This isn't the one I am teaching in my class because the people taking the class don't want the dimension on the top. So this is for my own personal use. This one is made the same way basically. I didn't mat the letters on the front and I cut out extra fruit and raised them with pop dots on the lid. I also added a ball to the top to look like a handle. My dividers will look a little different but I haven't finished those yet. I will post those pics when I get them done. :)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Star Book

I am teaching a class in June on the star book. I was going to use the other star book that I made but decided that one was too much work for a 2 hour class so I came up with this one. I love the colors!

I used book board for the front and back covers and I used mulberry paper and a glue stick to cover them. The ribbon is attached with red line tape. The stamp on the front is from Hero Arts (my favorite company right now). I used chalk, a glitter pen, and markers on the cover.

On the inside pages, I used a variety of stamps including Hero Arts and Kodomo. I used a lot of different chalk colors around each page. The stamping was done with markers and NOT ink pads so I could get a variation of colors on the stamp. After "coloring" the rubber, I "huffed" to re-moisten the ink and then stamped on the cardstock. I really love how this one turned out. Star books are easy to make. Depending on the size you make them, you can use very little paper. This one is 4x5 because that's what size the book board was. That stuff is really think and hard to cut so I just changed the size of the cardstock.
What do you think? Thanks for stopping by!

Recipe Box

It's been a while since I've posted! Sorry about that! I am anticipating that June is going to slow down for me as far as work goes. At least I hope so! My boss is supposed to come back to work on June 3rd, but I haven't heard from her in three months so we'll see if she does come back! Her vacation was supposed to be 2-3 months long and she is taking the whole 3 months. How nice, huh?

Anyway, I don't want to get started on that whole story! I have managed to make some things during my absence! The only reason I did however, was becuase they are samples for classes! LOL

The first one is this recipe box. I love how it turned out! I found this great box by Darice at Michaels. It's larger than the average recipe box. It will accomodate 5x7 cards. I dont' know about you, but I can't fit an entire recipe on 4x6 cards! LOL. The paper is from Flair Designs and I found that at Joann's. They have several different papers that coordinate in this "food" motif. The look aged so it makes the box look like it's from your grandmother. Of course, I added chalk ink to all the edges to further emphasize age.

I used my cricut to cut out the letters to spell recipes and for the dividers I used letter stamps on my Stampa-ma-jig.

I used a glue stick for the entire project, including the tabs. I used my craft knife to go around the hinges and the inside of the lid. I attached cute little feet to the bottom as well.

I just love this paper! What do you think?

PIctures of the fall...last year

Boy I am just finding all kinds of pictures this morning! LOL. I came across these while posting the mural pictures and I had to share them! These are pictures from last fall in an area about 30 minutes from here. This is my favorite time of year! Vermont is just amazing in the fall. Some years, the colors are more vibrant than others and I am not sure what determines the changes every year, but I have to take pictures! Last year though, was our first official leaf peeping year. We got in the van and went driving for the purpose of looking at leaves! LOL. Aren't they just gorgeous?


These next pictures are in a different area, still about 20 minutes from our house. This is in a town called Jericho. I love this picture of the church off in the distance. It was a little hazy that day but still beautiful! This picture of the road is in a neighborhood on the other side of the church.
I love the bright orange leaves!




































This old mill is in Underhill, I believe. We were driving through town and passed this on our left.
I had to stop and take a picture. See the stream that flows next to it? You don't have to drive very far to see some amazing landscape!! Have you visited Vermont yet?? :)

Dogs...

Look at my dogs! This is hershey and he is laying in a bed that is too small for him. LOL He is laying on his back with his head hanging over the left side! What a dork! Then later, I caught Jazz on the couch in the basement! He's too big to be on the couch! Just wanted to share....

A Mural I Painted

Good morning! It rained all weekend and today is supposed to be nice and sunny and much warmer. Right now it's at 44 degrees! Still a wee bit chilly! Didn't do much over the weekend. Just hung around the house. Actually, I did clean quite a bit yesterday. Mopping, vacuuming, vacuuming the stairs....YUCK.......I hate that! Laundry is never caught up though!


I wanted to share with you some pictures of a mural I painted last year. I think this was before I started my blog so I didn't post them. I came across them this morning and thought......"I should post these since I mention painting on my blog..." The picture you see here is a before picture of a paint store. This is a children's area they set up in the back of the store. They wanted something more vibrant and colorful. The owner definitely wanted a beach scene, and wanted it to span across the two walls. Well I love love love painting murals so I was so excited to do this! His request was to keep a chalkboard area on the wall and I said, "no problem."
After many sketches we came up with a plan for palm trees, beach, sailboat, mountains, island, greenery, a dog, and kids playing in the sand. Well.......I don't do people!!! So I was really nervous!! I started with the sand and water, tree trunks, and a little bit of greenery...easy and fun! I decided to move the position of the chalkboard from the wall on the left to the wall on the right. You can see a tiny portion of white wall remaining where I planned on putting the chalkboard. Then I worked on some clouds; clouds are fun too!
Then I started on the island and mountain and the palm trees.
The following day, I started on the sun, the umbrella and chairs.
I left a space for the sailboat. Here is the space I left for the chalkboard....and added a tiny little island above that. Islands, water and sand are really easy to do. I kept the hard things for last......like people! LOL
Then came the doggie and the ball.


I am not thrilled with the color but I like that he is running through the grass. I think he came out too dark.

Everytime I tried to lighten him I wasn't happy with how he was turning out, so I left him alone. The only way to make him lighter at this point was to white him out and start over, and I didn't want to do that. I do like how my ball came out though. :) Then I added my little sailboat....isn't he cute?
LOL I put the palm trees on the island as well. I like making crooked palm trees. It drove my husband crazy but I told him "they can't be too straight!"
After that, I made the waves on the shoreline. That was fun! Sorry about the shiny spot in the middle! It was really hard to photograph after I put the topcoat on.
Here you see the canopy of the palm trees. Palm trees are really easy. And they take up a lot of space! LOL
Here is the end result. I can't show you a close up of the people...LOL. You can see them though on the left. LOL. The big black square is the chalkboard paint. It's a really cool thing, actually. Just paint it on like regular paint, let it dry, and then you can draw on it with regular chalk! Love it! Here is the wall on the left side.
Overall, I am happy with how it all came together. I am no Picasso and don't claim to be one. I got a lot of ideas from various websites. This too me 4 full days, if I remember correctly. Notice how the color of the floor matches the colors on the mural. That wasn't intentional. People have asked me if they replaced the floor after I painted, but that floor was already there. There was just an area rug covering it. And while I was painting, I had it covered with a dropcloth so I didn't notice that it was matching! LOL. I would paint another beach scene in the future but without people! LOL
















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I think I fixed it!

Okay, I had to change my layout, which I am not too thrilled about, but I think I fixed the comment and link problem! Maybe someone could try it and let me know????....

Work Week #1 is over!

What a long week! I can't even tell you what a mess I walked into at work! 4 weeks of having substitute managers who all do things differently in their own stores has wreaked havoc at mine! Two of them left piles of paperwork for me to do and it's hard to describe what this job entails and how much work it is! Twice I worked until 7 pm and I should be leaving at 5:30. I even put in a few hours yesterday and we were closed! I am about 80% caught up and hopefully I can get things running smoothly again by the end of this week.

As far as this blog goes.......I might have to transfer everything over to a new blog because I still can't fix this comment problem and it annoys me to no end that I can't click on any of the links down the left side of my blog! I know that you can't see any of the tutorials or anything and it's frustrating that I can't get an answer from Blogger! So I will definitely let you know what I plan to do about it. I am sorry that this has been such a hassle!

I hope that everyone had a nice weekend! Weather here for the past couple of weeks has been amazing! 70's and sunny! Well, it's back to reality for a bit.....rain today thru Wednesday and below normal temps......49 for a high on Wednesday! YUCK! Maybe my next two days off the weather will be nice again and I might be able to plant something! :)

Have a wonderful day, and week, and I will keep you posted! Thanks for checking in!

Still having issues with commenting

Hi all,

I am sorry, I haven't been able to fix the link and commenting problem. I am waiting for another reply to my question on the blogger help group thingie so hopefully I can get it fixed soon! It's rather annoying! LOL.

Our weather has been awesome lately! Yesterday I took the kids to the home and garden show at the fairgrounds because Dale Jr.'s racecar was there and my son loves racecars so I thought he'd get a kick out of seeing one in person! I took a few pictures that I will post later.

Heading back to work on Tuesday!! I dropped by yesterday and met one the several managers who filled in for me. This gentleman was from Maine. Another was from Connecticut, and another was from Massachusetts. I am not sure where the other one came from. But I received lots of feedback from the man I met yesterday regarding our store and it's layout and the whether or not my own manager was coming back from her vacation! I am guessing from what I gather from the fill-in manager and my employee that she isn't coming back. Which would mean that this would turn into my store! Which I don't mind but personnel just needs to tell me that and stop leaving me in limbo here. Don't you agree? So I will give it a few weeks and if my manager isn't back then I will have to call personnel and find out what the deal is. I will keep you posted on that.....

The kids are on vacation all this week! Sucks that I have to go back to work! Daddy has plans with them for his days off this week, so they will enjoy that.

Anyway, gotta run for a bit. Have some things to do.......thanks for stopping by and checking in. I will post some pics later tonight. Have a great Sunday!