Tidings of Comfort and Joy

It has been almost a month since my last post! I have had one of those times where I get so card-making happy I forget about the rest of the world. LOL Being a stay-at-home wife doesn't help either, I have nothing but time in my hands after all the chores are done and all the errands have been ran. I just love being in my craft room, every time I come here, I am happy!

So enough with the jibber jabber... I have made quite a few cards the past couple of weeks. This is one of them:

This standard size card is made up of both scraps and some collections I have had for a while that I just now broken out to use. I cannot remember the collection (the name) exactly. I have made the mistake of taking them out of the packaging or losing the front covers, so I couldn't tell you where they all came from. This was of course before I started blogging and when I started needing all this information. :'( 

I made the card a second time and altered it. Instead of using the same patterned paper for the background, I embossed snow flakes on a plain blue cardstock. I used my white gel pen on the trees to make them look like they have been snowed on. : ) And I heat embossed the sentiment on a 1 3/4 inch black round cardstock.

Most of the time, I don't measure the elements I put on my cards or scrapbook pages. I eyeball pretty much everything. Whatever feels right or looks great is what ends up in my work. 

Thinking of You

This has been the most interesting, busiest week... at least for me, someone who doesn't get so busy very often. That is the beauty of being a stay-at-home wife. I get a lot of coffee time, craft time, and ME time, which I thank God and my husband, John for every single day. However there are weeks like this week, where I am like the energizer bunny... I cannot stop even if I wanted to but that was yesterday. Things have slowed down since I woke up this morning, and for that I AM SO GRATEFUL! 

I had a good morning, baked and made a black forest cake for Grandpa's birthday like I planned. While I was finishing up the cake the sweetest guy ever calls me to tell me he loves me and he wanted to hear my voice... and the rest is history. ;-)

Well, not really. Shortly after I finished cleaning up the mess I made in the kitchen, I got started on a card. I didn't need a sketch for this one, it's a simple A2 card. I am loving Papertrey Ink's Vintage Cream and Dark Chocolate cardstocks! I love the quality and the thickness. It holds up to heat embossing and it is awesome with dry embossing too. I used American Crafts' Glee stamp set for the tree and heart and TPC Studio's Greetings stamp set for the sentiment. 

I made a bunch of the same card since 'thinking of you' cards are like happy birthday cards, you can't just make one of them because there's always a birthday... and there is always someone needing to know that they are being thought of or prayed for. 

Been There... Done That...

A week ago, while I was putting stuff back into the craft room, I found four unused rolls of vinyl tucked away in one of our chests in the bedroom. How it got there, I have no idea but when I saw all that in the drawer, it brought back a fun memory!  

Almost a year ago, our friends Sara and Quinton and John and I decided we wanted to have dinner at the Golden Corral. We don't normally go out of town when it's late (at least Sara and I won't because we are both scared to drive in the dark and well, Sara can't see in the dark!) but that night on a whim, Sara and I decided we were going to Golden Corral and Q and John are taking us. It was I think 8 PM when we got there... Got our Golden Corral fix. Then Quinton asked the question John and him both dread asking!

"Where do you want to go next?" (As if he didn't know!!! LOL) Sara and I answered in unison, THE CRAFT STORE! then she followed it up with "we NEED vinyl to cut with our Cricut". By the time we got done eating it was almost 9 PM and that's when almost all the stores close! It was like we were on a race. We were running to every craft store's door to beat the clock. It was close to Christmas, so every store was wiped out. I mean one store didn't have any vinyl on the racks at all!!! NADA. Then we headed to the second one... There happens to be a Borders by where Joann's is so when we got there, Sara and I ran to Joann's and the boys headed to Borders and scoured the store for the vinyl we were looking for. Why they did that? Well, hopefully because they LOVE us and they didn't want us to go home empty-handed! LOL Long story short, we got our vinyl. Not the colors we wanted but we got vinyl and we got them all really cheap because they are the colors no one wants except for the black vinyl John and Q got from Borders. We got back to the car and we were all out of breath from panicking! As if, the stores will never carry them ever again! It was crazy. I laugh every time I remember that night. We were laughing our butts all the way home. 

So almost a year later, I actually made something out of the vinyl from that really weird night. : ) Now, every time I look at it, I smile because it will always have a lasting impression in my memory.

The quote is from scrapbook.com. I was browsing through the site yesterday and found it and thought it may be a good first time project with the vinyl. It is not awesome, but it is nice. I like how it turned out. And in the process, I learned how to handle the material and what settings to put my Cricut in when cutting it. I had such fun!!!

Congrats!

This card was inspired by someone I watched on youtube today. Her youtube name is KaleeStampin. Here is the card she made:

You can tell the difference very quickly. I am thinking about mailing my card to the recipients so I decided against the handmade flowers as they can make packaging really hard... and I ran out of prima flowers to use so I decided to do something else. I cut the champagne glasses out with my Cricut (using the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge) and used the Congrats stamp from TPC Studio's Greetings Clear Stamps. The card measures 5 1/2 by 4 1/4. I used Cuttlebug's Divine Swirls embossing folder to dry emboss the card base, and used Stampin Up's Close to Cocoa to antique it all up. The script stamp is from Inkadinkado (Dawn Houser).

Here's another version...

Smile!

In the weekend while I was going through my stuff in the craft room, I found my Paisley Cricut Cartridge that I have been looking for for a long long time! For some reason it got mixed up with the basket where I put my Cuisine at Home books from Betty. It might've gotten thrown in there while I was emptying the craft room to get it ready and prepped for remodeling... Who knows?! 

Anyway, I was so excited I went through the whole book and remembered why I watched auctions on ebay like a hawk for this cartridge... and that's because it has a monkey, a frog, and all kinds of cute little things in it that John and I both like. (Or stuff that we find cute and amusing at least!) John loves monkeys in all forms and sizes especially when it is at a reathonable price! (he had a lisp when he was little!)

So I made this very simple circle card for him! It made him smile when I showed it to him... The past couple of days has been tough on everybody, not just John (at work to be specific.) Even if there is no such thing as the "perfect job", I am praying every day that he will find the right place where he can do whatever he wants as far as his talent, skills and passion for music teaching could take him. John isn't the performing type, he is a teacher. He is awesome at it.