Birthday Blessings

Today I was able to sit down and play with my new paper cutter. Yay!  I created a birthday card using the Thomas Kinkade Paper kit that was also a gift.

Supplies:

Paper: Basic Recollections card stock, Thomas Kinkade paper, I took the green paper and used one of the blades on my new paper cutter
Embellishments: Gems from Wal-mart, ribbon from a friend
Sentiment: typed out and layed over a cut-out from Birds Cards blog and print out, I colored in the areas to be cut out with gold Recollections gel pen

I am blessed...

In I Thessalonians 5:18 it says to "give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Lately, I've been having a hard time being thankful. So many times it is so much easier to dwell on the difficulties surrounding us than the gifts that the Lord is continually blessing us with!  I was reminded of this these past two weeks when two people very sweetly sent me some gifts. I wrote about one in an earlier blog entry and the other I just received yesterday. A dear friend found some wonderful crafting goodies at a garage sale and picked them up from me, including a rotary cutter, which sells for approx $60 on e-bay (she picked it up for $10!) I have some pictures below, but I just wanted to say thank you to those that have thought of me. It was such a blessing to me and it once again helped remind me of how good the Lord truly is to me.

Look at this! I feel like my birthday came a week early this year!

Is this not the cutest ever?!?! It's adorable :)

And she didn't even know how much I enjoy looking at crafting magazines. I always look and put back because they can get expensive, but now I have 5 magazines with lots of great crafting ideas :)

eeek... I just saw a stink bug (my apartment complex is infested with them right now... can anyone saw ewwww??) crawl across my lunch plate! (Thankfully I was already done eating off of it!

Some beautiful papers and a Thomas Kinkade kit

Some punches!

and stamps!

and buttons, ribbons, and some little org. containers!

and now for the big one....

a rotary paper trimmer!

with 4 extra blades 

Thank you Anita for thinking of me.... and thank you Lord for your never ending goodness to me!

Some Birthday Cards

Hey, I'm actually ahead of the game. I have almost all of the birthday cards I need done for the month of October and November done. :)

 Birthday Card for a Friend

Supplies:
Paper: Patterned paper from a friend, card stock from ColorBok
Embellishments: Gems from Michaels, ribbons from a friend, "S" sticker from Target

Little Boy Birthday Card

Supplies:

Paper: Patterned paper from Recollections, card stock from Michaels

Sentiment: Rub-ons from Target

Hope you are all having a great weekend :)

Thanksgiving Blessings

This card has been a work in progress. I've been adding to it little by little until I was happy with it. I am very ready for Thanksgiving to be here... That means we get to go back to Erie for a few days and see the fam. :)

** Edit: I am sending this card out today (October 8), along with two others for Caring Hearts Card Drive that Ling's Design Studio is sponsoring. It's a good cause, giving cheer to elderly residents in Nursing Homes during the Holiday Season. See her website at the link above for more information!

 

Supplies:

Paper: Card stock from Michaels, patterned paper from a friend

Digi Image: Unknown

Sentiment: Freehand

Hi Friend

I actually made the circular part of this card for another card, but didn't like it and yanked it off. I like the way this card looks much better.

Supplies:

Paper: Cardstock from Michaels; Patterned paper from Recollections "Bird Watching" collection

Embellishments: Ribbon from a friend; Gems from dollar aisle at Michaels

Sentiment: Cut out from a paper pack

RAK

My cousin made my day today. :) She sent me a lovely envelope filled with crafting goodies. Thanks so much Christy!!!!

Get Sketchy Card Challenge

So, this week I decided to enter a card challenge over at Get Sketchy. 

Here is the sketch:

And here is my card:

Supplies:

Paper: Card stock from Michaels, patterned paper from Recollections

Embellishments: Ribbon from a friend, gems from Michaels' dollar aisle

Digi Image: Unknown

Sentiment: MM Designs

My First Blog Award

Good Morning All.... I just won my first blog award from the lovely Deanna over at Musings...

With this great honor comes great responsibility.... here are the rules for accepting the award. :)

Rules for accepting the award:

1. Accept the award. Post it on your blog with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link (done).

2. Pay it forward to 15 other bloggers that you have newly discovered (see below).

3. Contact those blog owners and let them know they've been chosen (I'll get right on that :) ).

So on to the 15 bloggers I have (relatively) newly discovered - I am really not sure which of the blogs I follow are the most recent!

1. Anita at The Other Side of Me
2. Christy at Christy Gets Crafty
3. Kimberley at Kropf Konnection
4. Pryn at So Not Mocha-vated
5. Sarah at Handbags and Pigtails
6. Jodi at Inked Inspirations
7. Latisha at A Busy Little Craftee Bee
8. Andrea at EwenStyle
9. Vera at Ling's Design Studio
10. Alice at Alice's {Little} Wonderland
11. Angela at Body, Mind, Spirit, and STAMPS!
12. Kez at KB Papercraft
13. Nina at Crafting in Croatia
14. Simone at Designs by Simone
15. Kathy at Inspired to Stamp

A gift from a friend and a combination of ideas.

A few weeks ago a friend found a book with card making ideas and sent it to me. I hadn't had the chance to make anything from it until this morning. Because I did not have all of the supplies I needed to make a whole design, I combined the ideas from two different card options.

Book my friend sent me (She is amazing at finding things at awesomely low prices!)

Card inspiration

Resulting card

Supplies:

Paper: Basic blue card stock from Michaels, Brown card stock from Colorbok collection; Plaid paper from a Surf collection i had; 

Embellishments: Flowers from Recollections; Ribbon from a friend; Gems from dollar aisle at Michaels...

Oh yeah, here is a free advertisement for Michaels ;0) 

I don't know if this is for all Michaels, but a lot of their dollar aisle stuff is on sale for 50% off right now and they also have some great Christmas stamp and embellishment supplies out for Christmas cards and a lot of other new fun things in the dollar aisle!

More Organization Creations

So I have pretty limited space to store my crafting stuff. Up until now, I have kept most of my paper supplies in a small storage container and an expandable file. It keeps things out of the way, but it involves a lot of digging to find the right color paper or embellishment/sticker/etc. that I want to use. I used a jumbo pack cereal box to create myself a more open way of storing my papers and stickers so that I can just pull the box on to the floor with me and have easy access to my supplies. I also created a few folders to hold paper scraps and stickers. The paper I have standing in the back.

Supplies:

Paper: Patterned paper from a paper back from Wal-Mart

Embellishments: Gems from Wal-Mart, Black and Brown cut out using a cut-out I saved from a paper pack. Now I can just trace out the shapes on any paper I want!; White cut out from Martha Stewart Calling Card collection

Some gifts

Recently, a friend bought her son a new desk so I wanted to create something for him to go on his new desk. He has a sister and I also wanted to create something for her. I ended up taking some food cans and cleaned them out and took the labels off. I then covered them to match their rooms. I won't be able to get the gifts to them for a couple of weeks since I have to have  someone deliver them, but I hope they like them. Their mama is going to get to see them early though as she will probably read this entry. :) 

Pencil holder, decorated with Lightening McQueen as that is what his room is decorated in. I also created a matching holder with his name on it.

And now on to the one for sister. This one is done in blues and surf boards.

I put a separator in this can as it was bigger and this way there wouldn't be any problems with keeping the pencils/markers/etc. standing.

Autumn Blessings and Another Birthday

Wow, I know that it is a short week this week, but I think after having such a nice long weekend it has made the week seem so loooonnngggg... But, I am thankful that it is Thursday and that we had a day off this week. The card I am posting this morning I created a little over a week ago, I just haven't had the opportunity to clean it up with Fireworks and post it. I also whipped up a birthday card last night for someone at church whose birthday was on Monday.

Supplies:

Paper: Base card stock from Colorbok; patterned papers from a friend

Embellishments: Ribbon off of a ribbon on a vase; buttons from a friend

Digi Image: Crafters Digital Art Center, colored with Crayola brand markers

Sentiment: Freehand

Guy birthdays can be so difficult; especially cards for grown men. I used the only "male" looking papers I had to create this :)

Supplies:

Paper: Base card stock from Colorbok; patterned papers from Recollections

Embellishments: Buttons from dollar aisle at Michaels and extras from a shirt; thread from my sewing kit 

Sentiment: Freehand

Hope you all are having a wonderful week!

Some Organizational Creations

So, this week has been a loooonnnnngggggg week... But I found some inspiration for creating some new organizational projects from Gina K's Stamp TV tutorials. It started out with a creation from a tissue box, but then I took a fetuccini bottle and spaghetti bottle to use for my markers and buttons... and here is how it turned out!