Thank You cards

I liked my polka dot card for the Caardvarks challenge the other day SO much that I decided to make a batch of them in "thank you" format to have on hand after Conference this year. Last year, I meant to make thank you notes to send out to all the speakers and stuff - but I went on vacation afterwards and ran out of time... and ended up just buying a pack of cards. So THIS year, I decided I was going to be ahead of the game!

So I made a big batch of orange and blue cards for all the speakers at conference. And then I got to thinking...

I'm sure the workshop leaders would like handmade cards as well! But I was kind of burnt out on the orange and blue cards. So I decided to pick out a new color combination.

Since purple is the "official" color of American Baptist Women's Ministries, I thought purple cards would be most appropriate. Besides that, I have a TON of purple paper and embellishments and, honestly, purple is not my favorite color. So it was a good way to use a bunch of it up!

And then I got sick of purple and decided to move on to something else. (Clearly, I should have scored the top before I folded this card. MESSY!)

Messy folding aside, I love how the card turned out. I decided to use just a touch of patterned paper on one of the flowers to give it a little more interest. That, AND I couldn't find any cardstock in just the right color.

I need about 30 (yes, THIRTY) more thank you cards on hand for Conference. So I have chosen some other color combinations. I'll do ten of each. This is one of my favorites. Aren't those colors just HAPPY!?

These colors are similar to the first set of cards I made, but the ribbon is TOTALLY different. And I will orient them differently, too, so it won't look the same.

And this... is kind of patriotic. Which isn't a bad thing! But... well, I bought this ribbon a while ago and I'm not sure why. I don't love it. But I am excited to see how it looks on this card! I'm also excited to use it up and be done with it.

Orange and blue card supplies:

Cardstock and ink - Papertrey Ink

Stamps - Papertrey ink (Around & About Sentiments)

Ribbon - May Arts

Die-cuts- Sizzix (Flower Charms #1)

Buttons - American Crafts

Pink and green card supplies:

Cardstock and ink - Papertrey Ink

Stamps - Papertrey Ink (Around & About Sentiments)

Patterned Paper - Sassafras Lass

Ribbon - May Arts

Die cuts - Sizzix (Flower Charms #1)

Small brad - Making Memories

Large Brad - Heidi Swapp

Purple card supplies:

Cardstock, ink, and ribbon - Papertrey Ink

Stamps - Papertrey Ink (Around & About Sentiments)

Die cuts - Sizzix (Flower Charms #1)

Brad - Making Memories

Button - Buttons Galore and More (Sherbet assortment)

Fabulous!

My friend, Laura (who lives five minutes from me and I haven't had any contact with except online in the past two years, which is inexcusable on my part!), nominated me for a fabulous blog award! Thanks, Laura!

So with this honorable award, I must list my top 5 current addictions. Hmmm...

1. Peanut Butter Balls. I made a batch yesterday and can't stay away from them. They are soooooo good. And bad, at the same time.

2. Challenge blogs. I have been looking for as many challenge blogs as I can find lately because that's really the only way I can motivate myself to do something crafty every day. So if you know of any that I'm not already doing, link me up!

3. Downy Simple Pleasures Vanilla and Lavendar Fabric Softener.

4. Big Love on HBO. I'm with Laura on this one. It's a very guilty pleasure.

5. My crocs. Yes, I know they are ugly. But they are soooooo comfy and keep my toes nice and warm in the winter. I love them and I will not stop wearing them even though they make my feet look fat.

And now I get to pass this award on to five fabulous bloggers!

1. My mom! She's gonna hate me :)

2. Who is Tracy

3. Becky Oehlers

4. Elisabeth (in an effort to get her blogging again!)

5. Cherie (my cousin, whose blog WILL be fabulous once she learns how to upload photos!)

Caardvarks Polka Dot challenge

The current challenge over at Caardvarks is POLKA DOTS! I happen to be a big fan of polka dots, so I couldn't resist joining in.

The foundation of this card is very similar to the one I did last night for the Papertrey Ink blog hop. I already had the stamps and tools out (bad me, for not cleaning up immediately!) so it was easy to just re-create the bottom part of the card, only in different colors.

The fun flowers are more leftovers from past projects. I have this bowl that I keep on my desk and any time I have leftover punches or die cuts from a project, I throw them in there. It's been fun digging through the bowl and challenging myself to use the leftovers, instead of cutting into new sheets of paper or fabric - or opening new packages of embellishments.

Supplies used:

Stamps - Papertrey Ink (Polkadot Basics, Mixed Messages, Around & About Sentiments)

Cardstock and Ink - Papertrey Ink

Ribbon - May Arts

Flowers - Sizzix Flower Charms #1

Buttons - American Crafts

Brad - Heidi Swapp

January Blog Hop at Papertrey Ink

I'm so excited to actually be participating in this month's blog hop at Papertrey Ink! I usually just go from blog to blog, oohing and aahing at what everyone else does. And this month I decided to jump in and participate!

This month's blog hop "challenge" was to create a birthday card. It was that simple! I had this little owl leftover from a project I was working on yesterday - some Valentine gifts for Jack's teachers. So I decided to use her on a card rather than let her go to waste.

Lots of stamp sets here - Wise Owl, Polka Dot Basics, and Around & About Sentiments, all from Papertrey.

Thanks for peeking! I can't wait to see what everyone else has done for the blog hop!

Color Inspiration #39

I'm feeling MUCH better since my last post. The stomach flu has officially been BANNED from this house! Jack is back to school, as of yesterday, and I am back to feeling like a human. I'm still not back to being crafty, though. For so many days, I only had the energy to do the bare minimum around here, which included cleaning out puke pans, doing laundry (LOTS of laundry), and cleaning the toilets. So now the rest of the house is a disaster. Gotta get that situation under control before I can justify spending any time on crafting!

I did whip up a quick card for Kristina Werner's Color Inspiration challenge, though. I consider that the bare minimum! ;)

The colors this week are really fun - and great for creating cozy winter cards. All the flowers used on this card were actually leftovers from other projects! So I was glad to use those up.

Thanks for taking a peek!

So sick

We've all been hit with a stomach virus here. So no new posts from me.

I was in the process of taking photos of my craft room to post when I was overcome with a wave of sickness the other day.

I'll post those when I'm feeling better. Hopefully within a few days.

K Werner Color Inspiration #38

Love the colors for this week's Color Inspiration challenge on Kristina Werner's blog. I chose to make a Valentine card since... I'm just kinda in the mood for that stuff. :)

I used the Heart Prints Papertrey set that I was so fortunate to have won last month. It's a very simple card, but I felt like the colors and the designs of the hearts really stood out and it didn't need anything else. Simple and classic. :)

I'm afraid this will be the extent of my crafting today. Jack came down with this stomach bug that, evidently, EVERYONE is getting around here. So I've been dealing with that since 4:00 this morning. If I'm not working on laundry, then I'm cleaning out a puke pan, or spraying Lysol on something. NOT FUN. On the bright side, this is supposed to be a 24-hour thing. Hopefully, Jack will be back to himself by morning. But he's so pitiful right now. It's nearly 2:00 and he hasn't been out of bed yet. He sleeps in between sick spells. And he asked me to put pull ups on him so he doesn't have to get out of bed to go to the bathroom because it makes him feel sick to get up and walk (he's five). I'm just hoping I'm not making a big mommy mistake here, letting him pee in a pull up all day! Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Oh, and by the way - GO WASH YOUR HANDS! Right now!

That is all.

Just one of my obsessions

I gave John this travel Yahtzee game for Christmas a few years ago and immediately stole it away from him, hid it in my night table, and played it non-stop for about a year. I play it a little bit less now than I did when we first got it, but I think I still manage to get in at least one game a day.

Forced Creativity

So, I haven't been feeling very crafty the past few days. I've been working my tail off on Conference stuff (hoping to get the registration booklet to the printer in about three weeks) and just generally not feeling creative.

Well, I was uploading some photos to Snapfish to use for my first week of Project 365. I downloaded the digital elements of the kit from Becky Higgins' blog, added my journaling in Photoshop, and uploaded those to Snapfish as well. Anyway, for my first week I decided that the pictures would all be things that represented goals that I set for myself in the new year. I'll share the page later - but one of the goals was to do something crafty every day.

It's been a few days since I did something crafty. *blush* So just as I was getting ready to shut down the computer and head to bed, I decided to whip out some papers and stamps that looked promising and FORCE myself to make something pretty.

I ended up using a Prima flower instead of the stamps that I pulled out. And I didn't include a sentiment on this card because I'm not sure what I want to use it for. But I'm pretty happy with it (not happy with the PHOTO of it, but that's to be expected at 10:00 at night with poor lighting).



No more excuses for un-craftiness! Good night!

K. Werner Design Color Inspiration #37

I was very excited when I saw the colors in this Color Inspiration challenge on Kristina Werner's blog. I usually don't actually DO the challenges. I just click on all the links and oooh and aaah over what other people do. But I was so inspired by this color combination - I decided to have a go at it, myself!

I used the Wise Owl stamp set from Papertrey Ink. The colors are kind of a mish-mash of different manufacturers - some Papertrey, some Bazzill, I think the ribbon might be Chatterbox.

Thanks for peeking!

In an effort to be more productive this year.

I heard about Motivated Moms through my friend, Stephanie, on Facebook. It's a system that works for her and it looks like something that will work for me, too. So I downloaded the spreadsheets (they were $8 for the whole year), cut them to fit the small notebook that I already had, and (of course!) had to make a cover for it. I hope having a pretty cover on it will force me to actually USE it! Ha!

I was also SUPER excited to use the Honey Bees stamp set by Papertrey Ink. I purchased this set when it came out over the summer. And I LOVE it, but never actually USED it! *blush* While cleaning and organizing my craft supplies recently, I discovered that there are actually several stamp sets that have never been used. Shameful! I always tend to gravitate toward the sets that I am already familiar with and ignore the ones that require a lot of CREATIVITY to use. So it feels good to be using a "new" set.

I was really excited that they have the option to buy the chore lists with a "read through the bible in a year" plan. With it only being the 5th of January, it shouldn't be too hard to catch up!

Alright, now I'm off to complete today's tasks! I'm not going to worry about the Sunday tasks - if I try to play catch-up, then I'm bound to not do it at all! No need to overwhelm myself! *wink*

Scrapbooking

I have a few layouts to share. This is a BIG DEAL. I haven't done any scrapbooking since last July. This is serious.

So I have one new page to share:

And one page that I started YEARS ago, but never finished.


I have several pages like this - partially done, no journaling, don't like them for one reason or another. So one of my goals for the next few weeks is to dig out these layouts, finish them up (or tear them apart and re-do them), and get them into my albums.

Finally, A Sunny Day!

Poor Jack has been stuck inside the house for what seems like weeks! Actually, it kind of HAS been for weeks! It's been either icy, snowy, windy, or rainy every day for the past three or four weeks - almost since the beginning of December! So we were both excited for a sunny, although rather cold, day and the chance to get outside with the fresh air and sunshine.

We had some errands to run and on the way home, I asked if he would like to play at the playground for a little while. Of COURSE, he said that he wanted to. We were already all bundled up, so I figured it couldn't hurt to stop for a little while.
I was not surprised to find the playground completely deserted - and it was kind of fun to have it all to ourselves. We both ran around, burning off a little steam, and played "King and Queen" in the playground "castle".

After a while, another family arrived with kids Jack's age and he totally dissed me! (I can't say that I blame him) By the time we left, we had been there for an hour and a half and were both completely wind-blown, with rosy cheeks and everything. It was definitely what I needed to help get out of my post-Christmas funk.

Happy New Year!

I meant to post yesterday, but spent most of the day in bed. Something I ate or drank on New Year's eve didn't agree with me and I was quite sick yesterday. But I am feeling much better now (after John and Jack brought me breakfast in bed this morning - that always makes me feel better about things).

I created some simple 'Thank You' cards this morning to send out for the Christmas gifts we received this year from friends. I used the "Out on a Limb" set from Papertrey Ink (AGAIN!). I have been using this set on EVERYTHING this season, but it is one of my absolute favorites and it just works for everything!

These cards are all written in, sealed in envelopes, stamped and addressed, and waiting to be picked up. I'm glad to have that done. I don't like to wait too long after Christmas to send my thank you cards.

There are two very important "to do" items on my list today - take down the Christmas decorations and LAUNDRY. Ugh. Neither of the two are sounding very appealing right now. I love having the Christmas decorations up and it makes me sad when they come down and the house looks so empty. And laundry - well, it's one of my least favorite things to do (besides scrubbing toilets!)

Whoever's reading - I hope you enjoyed a fun-filled New Year's celebration. Here's to health and happiness (and craftiness!) in 2009!