The Joy of the Lord......card

I made this card last month and I forgot to share it with you all. This was for a dear aunt of mine who lost her mother, who was a wonderful lady indeed.

For this card, I stamped the verse in an olive green and then I went over each letter with a blender pen that I rubbed in some olive green marker. I don't have one of those neat paper edge de-stresser tools, so I carefully rubbed an Exact-O knife along the edge of the paper and the green mat. Oh, I stamped the verse on water color paper and don't tell my husband about my dangerous use of that Exact-O knife! It scares him to watch me cut an apple, because I hold it in my hand, like my mom always did. Anyway. ;-) I used a Versamark pad and stamped the small flowers on the base of the card.

Now for the fun part. The flowers! At first I had this great idea to use my flower punch, but punches and tissue paper DO NOT MIX! lol So, I used my Big Shot and a flower die and cut out several flowers and that worked well. I did have to use my tweezers to pull the separate flowers apart, because I ran several layers through my die-cutter at once. This takes a very light hand, because the flowers are very fragile. (Does anyone else say "fra-gee-lay" when they type "fragile"? lol) After I had each flower laying out on my table, I used a liquid glue pen and carefully glued each punched flower on top of each other until the flower was a many layers as I wanted. I used my tweezers for this part, too. I made two different sized flowers, but each flower is made up of the same sized flower, if that makes any sense. ;-) I added a rhinestone in the center of each flower to finish them off.

The leaves are punched from green card stock. Then, I placed them on top of a piece of craft foam and used my embossing tool to burnish the center of the leave and to shape each leaf so that it looked more real and dimensional. I'm not sure if I can describe what I did.....maybe I should do a tutorial for you some time! I added some ribbon, because I love ribbon and this one matched my card perfectly, so I had to use it. ;-)

I've been making a lot of cards lately and it's been a great way for me to do some creative therapy.....now to work on some layouts!

Take care!

Rub-On Challenge @ Practical Scrappers!

There are always lots of great things going on at Practical Scrappers and I sure do hope that you make some time to stop by to see all of the fabulous projects that are shared there!

This weeks challenge is to use Rub-On's! I don't have many and it took some rooting around in my stash to find some, but I finally stumbled upon a sheet of rub-on words that all focused on "love". So, I thought of the stamps that I have seen where the words are all fitted together to make a shape and I thought that would be a great thing to try to do with these rub-on's! I crossed my fingers and started rubbing each word on, one by one, and just hoped that it would turn out into a rectangle shape. It worked great and I'm really thrilled with my card!

For the flowers, I punched a large flower from three shades of blue, a medium flower in pink, and a small flower in light pink. I crumpled them all up and the unfolded them a bit, stacked them on top of each other and used a small, flower-shaped brad to hold them all together.

Please stop by Practical Scrappers to see all of the great inspiration there for using rub-on's! Join in on the fun and leave a link to share your projects! We sure would love to have you visit!

Crochet Laptop Cozy

As soon as I saw this tutorial for a crochet laptop sleeve, I knew that I had to make one for my new Mac! This was really easy and I honestly just kind of stitched away, kept putting it on my laptop to see if it was working, and then stitched some more. I added a stitch for a few rows at the beginning, so that it widened bit by bit and fit around the bottom nicely. This was pure luck that it turned out right! lol I haven't ever done anything like that before, so like I said, I just went with it and kept putting it on my laptop to see if it was working. This is a super easy project and the only really tough part about it is that you are crocheting with THREE skeins of yarn at once, so it does get a little bulky to work with because it starts getting a little heavy and you have to sit with three skeins of yarn in front of you. I actually set mine on the floor in front of me with the ends facing up that the yarn was coming from. I used a light yellow, light pink and then a darker pink of Red Heart brand yarn. One big, Super Saver skein of each color was enough for this project.

The end is sewn together, so that you have to slip the top flap over the edge of your laptop. This is nice because it protects the edges of your laptop and just looks a lot nicer anyway. I also stitched around the edge of the flap for two rows, instead of one, because I needed that extra length so that the edges that I needed to sew together fit together well.

Then I had to embellish it, of course. lol I got the silly idea of putting my initial on it, so I tried crouching with silk ribbon. This was the first time I've ever tried this! I do like how it turned out! Then I made some yo-yo's from some scraps of fabric, added some old buttons and felt leaves. I decided to stitch around the leaves in a lighter color of green DMC floss, because I didn't like how the leaves looked plain, I think it was because the color of the felt was more of an olive tint and not green enough for this project. The light green floss adds that green color that I wanted and also gives the flowers neat dimension. I sewed all of the embellishments on with yarn.

I LOVE my cozy! lol

I hope you are all enjoying Spring! Isn't it wonderful????? :-)

Oh where, oh where have I been????

Whew. Well, I've been gone for awhile, that's for sure. A lot of things have been going on, some good, some not so good..... Right now we have more sickness going through our house. I am so tired of germs! I can't wait until we can get outside and I can open up the windows and let some fresh air in. Spring is here, but here in Nebraska, Winter is fighting w/ both fists to stick around! We had more snow last Friday.....I am so tired of snow! lol

So here's a little photo journey of these past two months....

First of all......we went to Vegas! I was asked by a dear friend to take pictures at her niece's wedding, so me, my husband and our youngest flew out there on a Thursday morning and came home on Monday night. What a time that was! Wow. The wedding was beautiful and I was totally terrified because I had never done anything like that before (I'm not sure if I ever will again! So stressful! lol). I had a lot of fun playing tourist and took a ton of pictures. My favorite part was Fremont Street. Vintage Vegas is what I really wanted to see and it was something else. We also went to Red Rock Canyon and it was so beautiful! The craziest part about the whole trip was that we left home with several feet of snow and freezing temps and stepped off the plane to 50 degree weather, blue skies and green trees! Wow! That was so refreshing! We were totally covered with several feet of snow from the beginning of December until just a couple of weeks ago!

Lent had started while we were in Vegas and we couldn't wait until Friday, because Friday during Lent means: FISH FRIES!!!!

Yum! Oh boy.....this is the best fish ever....cajun spiced....all you can eat. lol We have really enjoyed going to Fish Fries every Friday during Lent this year. It's an evening full of wonderful fellowship and amazing food!

How totally fun is this cake batter? I needed to make some cupcakes for a benefit dinner at church and since St. Patrick's day was close, I decided to make these fun cupcakes. I found the recipe at Real Mom Kitchen. Oh wow! They are SO GOOD! The frosting is so yummy! These were gobbled up really quick. I had to make extra so that we could have some for ourselves. My kids always get on to me, because I bake all sorts of yummies for bake sales and such and never make extra to have at home. lol So, this time I made a double batch and kept a pan of cupcakes for ourselves.

Aren't they fun?????

Now the really fun part. lol Like I already said, we have had TONS OF SNOW! I mean, TONS! And, now we're paying the price of having our roads snow covered for 2 months. We have potholes like nothing I've ever seen before! I'm talking pot holes that are like the Grand Canyon! Look at this:

Isn't that horrible? And, it gets better. So far we have had 2 flats and a broken drive shaft from hitting a pot hole! You just can't miss them. You can try, but you will either hit another one or hit a car beside you. It's crazy! Driving is pretty stressful and you can't take your eyes off the road or you'll hit one!

So, that's pretty much what's been going on here. Well, the things that I've gotten pictures of. lol I haven't been able to do much scrapping or any crafting at all. But, I did get one fun project done and I'll share that in another post. It's a crochet laptop sleeve and it's pretty neat! I also started new sewing project last night that I'm really excited about and I'll share more about it soon.

I hope you all are doing well and that you are starting to feel the wonderful wakening of Spring! We actually have blue skies today. Something that we haven't seen much of for the past 4 months! Talk about depressing weather here! loll I'm so ready for green grass, green trees and to start getting my hands dirty in our new garden that we're planting this year.....Come on Spring!!!! ;-)