Hannah Hannah Bo Nana Me Mi Mo Mana...

Happy 2nd Birthday to the sweet Hannah! I painted this name sign on a 24x36 canvas & made the cute card for her as a gift & she & her mother loved it! I did too!

Kents Valentine Cards

These are the very simple and super cute Valentines Cards that a friend and I did for our son's Valentines parties.
Front

Back

Birthday Gifts for a 4 year old Boy

Kent was invited to a birthday party for his friend & I had to come up with something & this is it. It's a personalized activity book, domino puzzle & tag. I painted dominos so that he would have a puzzle on one side & could play dominos with the flip side. The bubbles were the easiest. I just put a circle over the label & top with his initial on it. I also made a little book of games (dots, tic tac toe, maze puzzle & a blank page so that he can doodle) I included a dry erase marker so that he can reuse the games over and over. I think I'll probably make one of these for Kent soon because I can see where it could come in handy at places like the doctors office when we have to wait awhile. I made the maze on an excel spredsheet so if you want to recreate it let me know & I can email you the instructions. I also made a tag that he can use on his luggage or bookbag & it doubled as the gift tag. With exception to the bubbles everything had a dual purpose. Dominos/Puzzle, Tag/Gift Tag, Activity Book/Photo Album.

My inspiration for the design & colors came from the accent ribbon I used. I've had it for awhile & I love it but I just couldn't find the right project for it until now.



This is the puzzle side of the dominos. This project took the longest because each color had to have 2 coats & drying time in between each coat. I used acrylic paint. I forgot the acrylic sealer this time but I will definitely remember it next time to prevent chipping. I was very lucky to have save a clear box that cards came in to package the dominos inside & I didn't include this in the pictures but I painted a thin piece of cardboard (saved & cut from a scrapbooking paper kit) so that he would have a picture to match to the puzzle. I guess if she wanted to his mom could frame that & this gift would have 3 different uses.


This is the outside of the booklet.


These are the activity pages that I put inside the booklet. He can also put pictures on the backside of the pages & have a photo album as well.


Unfortunately the party was at Chuck E Cheese & I didn't get to see him open the present but I'm sure he liked it...at least I hope he did. Kent really liked it so it was Kid Approved.

CHRISTMAS CARDS!!!

I finally finished my Christmas Cards around 1 AM this morning. I've been working on them for a few weeks and I am so happy that I am finished. Now I can start working on gifts. My sister in law gave me a box of blank cards with glittery fronts that I embellished on. I used every stamp in the Snow Swirl set and from a few other sets as well. I did my cards on a whim, not planning who I was giving them to or knowing how many to make. I decided that when I finished all the cards I would count them and then decide who to send them to and after I completed all of them I had a total of 50 cards!!! That's 25 less then last year but since postage has gone up I had to cut back some. If I really feel like I need more then I'm going to have some photo ones printed up at Walgreens because I have A LOT of gifts to work on. Some of the photos don't show how truly beautiful these cards are because almost all of them have glitter or some type of bling on them.

A few things to notice are:
- Rudolphs nose is a red rhinestone or "bling"
- The gingerbread man has cinnamon glued on him for a fuzzy look & nice scent as well.
- I used Crystal Effects on the poinsetta seeds & the small ornaments on the "make MERRY" tag & the snowflakes on the green card.
- I also used a little bling on the "make MERRY" tags as well.
- To me the Season's Greetings stamp looks crooked on all the cards but it's not, it's just the way the words are are connected, no matter how I stamped it, it always came out looking that way.

It takes too long to load this many photos so I did a pretty slide show.

My First Name Frame

I completed my first name frame! It turned out pretty well I think. I did it for one of Kent's girlfriends who turned 4 in the beginning of November. I drew & cut all the letters myself as I don't have a die cutter yet but I think they look really good to be free hand. I kept a template so in the future I can just trace the letters & cut. It took me a few hours to complete and Jeff asked me what was taking me so long because I don't usually need that much time to complete any of my projects but since this was my first time I took my time so I would get it just right. I think coordinating the different papers took the longest.


Here is the card, it was too pretty to put in an envelope:

Candles

Here are some Candles that I did as Birthday gifts. They are the Glade candles with the stickers peeled off and my own customization. The jars give off an optical illusion that they are complete perfect cylinders but they are not! They have a little bit of a taper in them so the paper doesn't lay perfectly flat against the glass but once completed you'll won't notice it at all! I love doing these as gifts because they are so simple but turn out so beautifully in the end.

I've also included the cards that I made for them as well. I've started to use cards as part as my wrapping as they really jazz up the outside of a gift, plus who keeps envelopes anyways?

Mountain Mist Scent
This one was for our 13 year old neighbor:


Card:


Clean Linen Scent:
And this one was for one of my bestest friends, Pat who turned 40 last month. I used some bling hearts for the cherries.


Card:

10/26/08 - Baby Shower

My mom, aunt, sister & I threw a baby shower for my cousin Dolores this past Sunday. I posted the invites a few weeks earlier but here are the thank you notes, baby bootie goody bags & hersey kiss flower arrangements that we used for gifts. I also did some Grandmother Brag Books that I've been wanting to do for a long time but couldn't find the albums. I finally ran across them at Dollar Tree on Saturday. I'm really impressed at how much I have learned since we did her bridal shower last year. The shower was supposed to take place almost a month before Dolores was due but the baby had other ideas and was born exactly a month early on Sunday, October 19th. She is absolutely beautiful!

This is one of the games we played. Pretty & Simple. The guests had to guess how many M&M's were in the jar. The correct answer was 311. The new mom won the prize.

These are the Thank you notes with coordinating envelopes. I also stamped a flower inside the card to coordinate it all together.

These are the Grandma Brag Books. I was really excited about how well these turned out. I will definitely be making more in the future.

Kiss Bouquets for guests.

Baby booties that I think almost my entire family played a part in. Mom arranged 3 templates on a page & printed them out. My sister cut them all out and rolled the flowers on them then she put all but 1 or 2 together...my dad had to get in on the fun! I punched the flowers and put the final touch on to finish them off.

Beautiful Baby Faith & Mommy Dolores.

This was the food table. Mom had the bouquet of Roses done up & my aunt made the yummy brownie cake.