Framed "Sisters" Layout

I finally finished this layout of two sweet sisters meeting for the first time. I love pictures, but I especially love scrapping those sweet moments captured by the camera. The pictures in this layout are of the meeting of a new sister. I love the wonder on big sister's face. These little girls belong to a friend of mine from church. I knew as soon as I saw these pictures that they should be framed, and so this became my gift instead of new baby clothes, toys, or diapers. Maybe I'm just a real sap when it comes to pictures and people... but... isn't that what makes a scrapper? (at least sometimes.. :) ? ) Ooh, and I played with the ribbon and ruffling this time, which I haven't tried before, and I think I'm hooked already..

Cards for the Women's Retreat: Pictures

So here are the cards we came up with for the kits for the Women's Retreat. They're not embellished as much as I'd like, but we were faced with a tight budget and not a lot of time, also not wanting to overwhelm people who may not have made cards before... I hope people will want to them, and hopefully it's mostly self-explanatory so that I don't make something difficult that shouldn't be.

Some Fabulous blogs for craft ideas that I stumbled across last night!

Okay, I'm a self-professed craft nerd, and I'm relatively okay with that- so much so that I got really excited last night when I found some new craft blogs with some awesome ideas that are inexpensive and WAY CUTE!!! I plan on trying to see how I can implement some of them into MOPS crafts for next year, and definitely plan on making some for gifts- I suppose I should do some for myself too, but I always end up making things for gifts instead- since I love to be 'gifty'. Anyhow, check out these fabulous ladies' blogs: it all started at http://ikkiscuttlebugcupboard.blogspot.com/ when I was checking out some of her links at the bottom of the post for Transformational Thursday- where people can link up to their own blogs and such where they've taken something that perhaps might have been trash or Goodwilled, and turn it into something better. I love this idea because I am always happier making something cute out of somthing that would have been landfill somewhere. I think we throw away way too much when it's perfectly useful- often something just needs some imagination and a coat of paint and embellishment. Thanks Ikki, for a great blog! So my blogging travels took me to www.HowDoesShe.com , there's just too much to mention, all I can say (trying to restrain my gushing) is that it's great! That blog featured another fabulous lady's blog - who also loves to make great things out of the inexpensive and also repurpose things to make them great- and this is : http://infarrantlycreative.blogspot.com/ Um yeah, my happy craft nerd dance is seriously grooving right now, which is probably quite the spectacle, but I love new craft ideas!! :) Anyhow, I just thought I'd share since I love new ideas and if you're checking out this blog, chances are it's out of some kind of crafty curiosity too. I hope you check out these fantastic blogs and get a chance to create some of their fun crafts for gifts or even yourself. I'll be sure to post when I get a chance to try some.

Making more card kits - this time for the Women's Retreat

So for someone who does not call themself a card maker (AT ALL), I've somehow gotten involved in 2 different occasions of making card kits for groups of women.... hmmm.... In March I was asked my mother in law to do a card craft for her church's ladies night out, and this month I'm involved in putting together 240, yes, that number is right - 200 more kits than the ones for last month's card night. March's was 20 cards each for 2 designs. This month is 60 cards each of 4 designs. I was asked to help another lady at church with this craft project for the ladies at our church's Women's Retreat next weekend (who, this is funny, :) - doesn't make cards EITHER!!)- apparently being the Creative Activities/Craft Coordinator at our MOPS group gets you a reputation for being creative... Let me be honest, I get a lot of ideas from other people- online, books, magazines, blogs- VERY rarely my own- and certainly not cards... So I find it somewhat funny that for someone who doesn't make cards (I scrapbook and do other assorted crafts), I've started to have to dabble in card making. My motive (or lack of motive in this adventure) is that I'm a perfectionist and I don't like doing things that require a lengthy learning curve because there's no guarantee that I'm going to GET good at something, and I don't have an abundance of time to just flail at something... bad attitude I know! I can take an idea and run with it, but I don't tend to run too far. Anyhow, it amuses me in an odd way- the lady who is working on the cards with me has a good laugh about it too- 2 ladies together trying to put together nice cards for 60 women when we don't have a whole lot of experience doing it. Fortunately I have a lot of pictures printed out and sketches from online to at least use ideas from. Today I showed my friend Rebecca the 4 cards we'd come up with- she's been in Stampin Up! so she's done card parties and such and had experience with what people tend to want to do when they make cards and stamping and such. I also value her opinion a lot on whether something looks hokey or actually nice and something someone else might want to do. She liked all the cards we had, and gave some creative suggestions to help with some finishing details that I wanted advice on. She's also honest, which when you want the truth about something, she's not going to feed you a bunch of hooey, she'll tell it like she sees it, without trying to be too rude about it. So anyhow, we're just about done putting the pieces of the kits together, and now I just need to look for some ribbon for one of them in a color that works better than white, and get the adhesives... lots of work- I'm very glad I had a partner in it! I was going to post some pictures, but since I'm tweaking a couple of the cards a bit, with the ribbon, I'll just wait.. anyhow, I had to share my bemusement (is that a word? ) with doing all these card kits when I don't make cards...I hope it doesn't come across as obnoxious, I really am more bewildered by it...

MOPS auction items

Well, after much preparation, we finally had our MOPS auction tonight- it is our only fundraiser, which we rely on to offset the costs of running our MOPS group. God blessed us again this year with a great result- it's exciting because it opens up more possibilities for how we can serve not only our MOPS ladies, but those in our community too. I made a set of cards, the 'live, love,laugh" votive holders, a bunch of the magnetic memo boards (the leaders had set the minimum bid for $5- which I thought was too much to start with but I didn't quibble about it,) and to my surprise, they not only sold but were bid on higher than that... go figure! They were very basic... I also made a bunch of gift tags with my scraps that I hate to part with, a couple of altered notebooks, a "mother" themed mini album, and a crackled paint picture frame. I was also surprised at how much people bid on the gift tags.. again, go figure. I also made an 8 1/2 x 11 inch layout to be framed, but I ended up in my rushing to leave for the auction leaving IT on my kitchen counter... ugh! Anyhow, it's always gratifying when something you make sells. It would just be nice if I could actually make a profit from crafts in general. I think I just have to stick with making them for gifts, it's more fun that way... :)

The latest card...

I saw the original version of this card in a stamp shop in Poulsbo, WA while spending a weekend with my best buddy. I needed a card ( the other one of two) for a card craft I am heading up for my mother in law's ladies evening out at her church in Tillamook, OR on Friday. Anhow, we each bought the stamp that was used. The original had a script stamp for the background of the paper that the flower was stamped on. I didn't want to buy another stamp just for script, so we came up with the idea of using the Cuttlebug Script embossing folder for the paper covering the card base instead. In an ideal world, I'd probably be inclined to ink around the edges of the all the pieces, but since this is for a group of up to 20 women, who mostly haven't any experience with cards (haha.. like I have much either!!! :) ) and inking and techniques used often in scrapbooking and cardmaking, I was trying to keep things as simple as possible. I will be stamping all the images ahead of time, and making kits for the cards, and my best buddy helped cut out the paper - the mat was cut with a die from Quickutz, most excellent layering I would say!! :) I used pop up foam dots to pop the white paper up from the rest, I like how it adds another element to the card. I used organza ribbon to complement the colors of the card with the color of the flower- also added another element to the card which I liked The original had this tiny little bow which was so perfect, but I don't want to try and get a bunch of women (pardon the pun) all up in knots over trying to make bows for the cards. A simple double tie worked great for me. I think I will be using the Script embossing folder a lot, I really like how it looks.

Card Day for MOPS service project

This last Saturday, ladies from our MOPS group got together to make cards to go in kits for families of deployed military. These kits have cards for various occasions during the year- birthday, Mothers/Fathers Day, 4th of July, Holiday, First Day of School, and blank (just for fun), along with postcards for the recipient to send back to their child/family, and stamps. Our group's card efforts will be going to Fort Lewis. Despite not being much of a card-maker, I made some efforts to create some cards too. Here are some of the results- I ended up making a set of the green cards for our MOPS auction- from a suggestion of one of our fellow MOPS members and card maker that day. I used a couple of card sketches to jumpstart me- I still struggled, but I'm satisfied enough with the results. My category was "just for fun".