Colorful Baby Shower

Last month was my baby shower!!! And of course little creative me planned the whole thing. I know, I know, I'm NOT SUPPOSED TO plan my own shower. But I really really wanted to make the invitations and do the decorations and deserts.

We officially said that my mom and mother in law threw it for me, because we had it at moms house in California, and Mitch's mom {Connie} made all the yummy Mexican food {I REALLY wanted Mexican food, and it was DELICIOUS!}

So this post is going to be all about the colorful and fun stuff I did for the shower.... the pictures of me opening presents, guests, and other fun shower pics will come later!

Here is the invitation!!!

Notice that I used fabric that matches my crib skirt??? I really like that fabric! :o)


I made guest packets for everyone! They included a predictions page, "finish the nursery rhyme" game, an envelope for guests to self address, a pen, and a mini scrapbook paper covered clothespin for the "don't say baby" game.


Here is a closeup of the "predictions" page. Everyone wrote a little message to our family in the 3 circles, and filled out their guesses. Each guest had a different color page in their packet, and I'm going to put them all in a mini album.

I think it will be fun to see who came the closet to guessing correctly, and it will make a wonderful keepsake!


Here's a bunch of the decorations!!!

These bottles were gifts for my guests.

I saved a bunch of Mitch's Newcastle beer bottles. removed the labels, soaked them for several hours and got them REALLY clean. Then I spray painted the bottlecaps turquoise blue. I made cute little labels for them, and after running them through my xyron machine, I stuck them to the bottles, and filled them with Skittles.

They each have one BIG bag of Skittles in them. Yes, I know, that is A LOT of Skittles!!! Everyone loved them though! :o)

I made 20 tissue paper pompoms. I love these things!!!


The rest of the pictures are of YUMMY deserts!!!

I made the cupcake wrappers, and toppers. And I showed my little sister Danetta how to make the marshmallow pops, and she did those for me!! Oh and of course this super Easy Lemon Cream Pie!!! MMMM.

Anyways, that's everything!!! I had fun planning it all, and had a blast spending time with my family and friends!

Fathers Day Card and Gift Box

For Fathers Day, I made my father in law Dennis a fish card and box. And then we went to Scheels and filled the box with his favorite lures and a jar of colorful bait.

Connie says he looks forward to my handmade cards every year. And about a week before Fathers Day Mitch started bugging me every single day to make his dads card.

I remembered saving a tutorial for a cute folded box from Martha at So Lovely Creations. And knew I wanted to finally try it out. Once the box was done, making a matching card was easy!

Here is the set.


Here is the outside of the card.
You can't really tell {because I forgot to take good pictures, and had to quickly snap these before handing the stuff off to Connie to bring home} but I used a glaze on the fish, and he's shiny and cool looking. Then I popped him out from the card.


The inside is stamped and simple. I used alphabet stamps, and parts of two other stamps that said some other holiday sentiment.

Then I lined the envelope with matching paper.


I really like my box. It looks way better in person.


And you can't really tell {again} but the scalloped circle that says "DAD" is popped up from the box as well.


Don't forget, if you wanna make your own box, the instructions are here! It was super easy!!! Thanks Martha! :o)

Mothers Day Cards

Just wanted to do a quick post showing the cards I made for my mom and mom in law. I totally need a new camera, and have one picked out, that I plan to get this month. Oh and I took the pics at night, so I could get the cards shipped out and to them before Mothers Day! So the pics aren't fabulous, oh well, enjoy!!! :o)

This one I made for my mommy!

And this one I made for Connie {Mitch's mom}.


Anyhoodle, that's all! I've been unpacking the final boxes that I never got to after our move, due to months of morning sickness. And cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! I am almost done. And then I am gonna turn my attention to my studio, it is a disaster up here!!!

Right now I'm gonna go drag Mitcheal outta bed so he can see what in the world the birds are doing on my roof. They are LOUD, and have been at it all day long, seriously, they started at 5 a.m. Which of course meant no sleep for me! Or at least bad sleep. Between them and Mitcheal's LOUD snoring it's a wonder I get any sleep at all! And this pregnancy had turned me into an extremely light sleeper, I HATE IT!!! Not the pregnancy, just the newly acquired sleeping problems. Not fun!

But the baby is growing every day! It feels so weird. I'm not positive if I'm feeling the baby move yet, but I am definitely, constantly aware of stuff going on in this tummy of mine! :o)

About time I shared these {Christmas Cards}

Good golly.... I have been SICK! On Christmas my little nephew Izaiah was sick, well, he got my hubby Mitcheal sick, and then Mitch got ME sick! UGHHH. I've been in bed for days. But... I am finally feeling a bit better.

And since we are a whole 7 days into the New Year already, I thought I better get on with this Christmas sharing stuff I never got around to. So I'm starting with my Christmas cards!

Remember I was using all these pretty pink papers? Well, here is the finished product!

I didn't finish my cards until Christmas Eve, hehehe. I just got so busy with all the projects I was doing! I finished them at my mother in laws house, and handed them out to everyone on Christmas Day. Which was kinda cool, because I got to watch everyone open them.

Yeah, do they look hard to open to you? Well, several of my in-laws had a hard time getting them open. It was quite funny to watch them. They couldn't figure out that you slide the first part off them pull the picture out. They kept trying to rip the paper, lol!

Oh, and one more thing while I'm on a similar subject.... I machine sewed my presents shut. No tape, no scissors. It was different, but turned out cute! The presents looked like little pillows.

Well, after I was done and put everything under the tree, my father in law looks at the presents, and says "wow, check out that wrapping paper, it's so different, how did you do that?"

And after some coaxing, we figured out that he thought I'd woven the paper on my sewing machine!

Yep.... too funny!!! I used "non-traditional" wrapping paper, he'd never seen it in those colors and patterns. So he thought I'd been in the other room making it! LOL!

We were dying with laughter as we explained that I'd just sewn the packages shut, nothing more! And couldn't resist teasing him Christmas morning as we were opening the presents!

So, I decided that next Christmas I'm gonna have to REALLY wow him with my wrapping job! :o)

Card in Progress

I am in the process of making my Christmas cards. I have enough patterned paper to make 15 cards. One is done already. Maybe I will buy more paper, maybe not. We'll see how I feel when I'm done. So, wanna see the photo insert I made for my cards?

You know you do! Here it is...


And...... here is my work area. I have all my paper cut, and ready to go! It should be easy breezy to get it all done!



You can see the finished card in one of the pictures. But no details until I am ALL DONE! Soon! I gotta get these babies sent out before Christmas is here! So, I gotta get back to my studio now! :o)

Christmas {Tree} Card... finally done!

Do you remember this post and this post? Well my drawing finally made its way into becoming a card! YAY! I'm a slacker girl lately with Halloween decorating and making my small garage into a mini haunted house for the neighborhood kids... so I won't be listing it until I actually make a matching envelope. But I decided to take a mini break from decorating and share a few pictures.
So what do you think? It really looks soooo much better in real life. It's all super dimensional, and sparkly and pretty! I really need a WAY better camera. Someday.......

And until then I will try my best to capture as much as I can using my crappy camera and my scanner. :)

Coloring...

Every time Mitch called me yesterday he would ask what are you doing? And every single time I would answer "Coloring".
It got pretty darn funny, and to the point where he would just say "are you still coloring?" Well kinda, but not exactly. I was coloring, embossing, glittering, layering, cutting and gluing. Plus playing on the computer, cooking dinner, picking up around the house, taking a lunch break, and dealing with Chumba (aka bad doggy in case you weren't sure) every 5 freakin minutes!!!
He drives me nutso's. It is like babysitting, and no that wasn't a typo, dog sitting would be a breeze. But I was "babysitting" my own dog, who thinks everything, and I mean everything is his chew toy. And baby proofing, oops I mean dog proofing my home is pointless now, because he has recently discovered that furniture and vinyl floors are the best chew toys. What to do? What to do? Maybe I'll go insane???
Sorry, back to my "coloring"... You remember my drawing? Well yesterday I finally managed to squeeze in some time to work on it. So I took a few pictures of the different stages.
Notice the red circle in the last picture? That is the next thing to be colored, the little bear that is going to get layered on there just one more time.

Now don't judge me based on these pictures, they aren't the best, I seriously need a new (better) camera. And am not gonna scan my work in progress. But come on admit it, seeing my creative process is fun!!! Now I'm off to finish this baby. Next up: The completed card. WOO HOO!

For a Christmas Card

I am trying something new-ish. I used to like drawing when I was growing up, I stopped around age 17. But decided a few days ago I want to try selling handmade cards. I have always loved making cards, but there are so many copyrights with rubber stamps, and other stuff. What to do? What to do?

I decided to draw a rubber stamped type image, scan it into my computer, then tweak, resize, and print the desired size (the scanning into my computer part allows me to print multiple images if need be, for layering if desired) Then I can use my embossing pen to add the embossing powders if I want them (since computer ink dries faster than stamping ink) and from there continue to decorate the image as if it had been rubber stamped, and then add it to my card. Sounds a bit complicated, but actually pretty darn easy, and new (for me) and fun (especially since it is different, and I like drawing) So here is me in the process of drawing... I did everything in pencil first, and many papers later I finally had what I wanted, so I used a fine point pen to trace over all my work, then erased the ugly pencil marks. And this is the finished result, scanned into my computer:I kinda like it, and it totally looks like a rubber stamped image (with outlines to be filled in with pretty decorations later) Now this weekend, I am gonna print it out, and make it into a card. I'm home alone all weekend, since Mitch is going fishing with his parents in Susanville, so I got lots of time!!! I'll show you what I come up with when I'm all done!