It's finally here....

Blog Candy! Ü To thank you all for reading my blog, I have a little blog candy to give out. There are 15 -quarter sheets of varied Cuttlebug embossed images, 19 yds of different vintage silk ribbon, two sets of clear stamps and one clear block (that I found at Michael's in Thornton, CO), a mini stapler, staple remover and staples and a bag of (various colors) punched tabs.

For a chance to win, please post your favorite color, using SU!'s colors as a guide. Mine is Chocolate Chip with anything Ü, but usually Pretty in Pink or Cool Caribbean.

I will draw a number Wednesday morning(6/20) to see who wins.

Belize journal entry 5/25

" ...today I did electric working. Lots and lots of electric working. After dinner we went into town tot he woodworking shop. There was so much cool stuff...I got mom a candle holder, dad a set of coasters, Aaron a bookmark and me a letter opener. It was raining for the first time while we were here. And when it rains here, it pours here....for supper we had Hawaiian baked pork chops."

Blogger RAK's

I rec'd a couple of blogger RAK's before I left for Denver. The first one if from Beate. I "met" Beate on SURAS and we have exchanged my cards/projects. I love Beate's work and we have alot of the same tastes in colors and images. This RAK is from Diane Gilbert. She says this is her first blog RAK. I love it Diane!! Thank you so much for this lovely card. Be sure to check out both Beate and Diane's blogs.

Belize Journal 5/24

"It is very bright at 5:00 am and very dark at 7:00 pm...after breakfast we went out to 26 Acres to work...we put the beams for the ceiling up and I helped with that for quite awhile, then I started to help with the electrical work. It is a good thing I had experience with woods and electrical work because that is all I did yesterday...for supper we had sweet and sour chicken and rice with coconut milk."

Sweet Kitty

I have lost my "mojo"!! I haven't stamped in so long and whenever I would sit down
to stamp, I just couldn't seem to get going. Hopefully I have found it now. I really do like how this turned out. Kitty image is Inky Antics that someone RAK'd me with. The patterned paper was also a RAK and I don't know what company
it is from. It was in a pkg of several 6 x 6 sheets. The parenthesis is from the George Cricut cartridge. This sketch is #118 from Splitcoaststampers sketch challenge. "Sweet" is Karen Foster snap stamps. The image is colored with colored pencils and gamsol and then stitched together with sewing machine.

Belize Journal 5/23

me talking...Every four years the youth group kids get a chance to go to Belize on a mission trip. There is a couple in our church that lives there part of the year and the youth group leaders are the daughter and son in law of this couple. The kids go down and help out where ever they are needed.

Benjamin..."When they first opened the door on the airplane the first thing you could notice was the humidity. It is so humid here, but after an hour or so it seems to be normal and it doesn't bother me so much...Kent picked up a stick that he called stinkitoe. It smells awful, but it tastes like bitter chocolate."

I am home

and I am tired! Benjamin is making supper and I plan to go to bed early.
Dad did really good on the way home. We had to stop every hour for him to walk. I figured he would sleep all the way home, but he was awake. He will sleep good tonite (and hopefully so will I). I can't believe that he is in NO pain, is walking straight and not stooped over. It's amazing that that could all happen within a short amount of time.
Thank you for all your e-mails and prayers. With the exception of a road rage incident all went well.
I will start posting a bit from Benjamin's Belize trip journal tomorrow. I see I am getting closer to the 10,000 mark, so be watching for a blog candy posting.

Hello from Thornton, CO!

We had a safe trip out here and dad had surgery this morning. It was much better news that we could have dreamed. He has a herniated, ruptured disc that broke (ruptured just means a cracked disc) and a piece was pushing on a nerve causing the pain to go down his leg and loss of feeling in his foot and toes. He is waking up now and the dr said he should have little to no pain when he wakes up. He will be really happy about that. He made history today here as he is the oldest patient (64) to have never had surgery in his life (at this place anyway) and did really well.
They have one computer here that no one is using, so I am cking up on messages and e-mailing people about dad.
Thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers. If all goes well today and tomorrow morning, we can go home tomorrow.

I see I am only 420 visits from 10,000. Very close to some blog candy Ü
TTYL,
Debbie

thank you...and a note...

Thank you for all the kind words and prayers I rec'd for my dad. I didn't expect to hear from so many, was just letting everyone know where I would be if there was no e-mail access at the hospital. I have had some ask what hospital we will be at, and I have no idea, I am just the driver Ü. All I know right now is we are going to Denver.

I have also received several messages asking to hear about Benjamin's trip to Belize. He kept a journal (per my request Ü) each day. He gave me permission to write a little from each day. I will do this when I get home. Just right a couple sentences from his journal to give you an idea of what he did. We gave him 4 disposable cameras as we were told not to send our digital or it would get stolen. The disposable camera pictures are kinda fuzzy and we found out the other kids took their digital cameras! Oh well. I will post a couple of the better pic's too.

So things to look forward to...
me getting back
news & pic's from Belize via Benjamin
blog candy when I hit 10,000 visits

I'm packed and hope to get a GOOD night's sleep. Going to early church in the morning, then we are going to see gr'ma (she is worrying about dad), then heading out. Please pray for me as I drive the whole way-should be about a 6 hr drive.

See you in the funny papers! LOL!! (my gr'pa always said that and it came to mind *heehee*)

Going to be gone

If I hit 10,000 while I'm gone, I will post the blog candy contest when I get home.
My dad has 3 ruptured discs in his back and one of them a piece broke and is floating in his leg. I will be taking him and mom to Colorado Sunday to see a specialist on Monday and possible surgery on Tuesday. I have no idea how long I will be gone.
Need to get things ready for a garage sale Saturday and finish up things that need to be done here before I leave. I won't have access to a computer to my knowledge as I don't have a laptop, so will post when I get back.

Benjamin is home!!!

As of 2:30 am this morning. We are all tired and he is still sleeping. I don't have any cards to show you this morning, but hopefully tomorrow. Can't wait until Benjamin wakes up so we can hear all about his 12 days in Belize.

Slit Flower Frame

This card was made by another of Maria's wonderful tutorials. You can find the tutorial here. After making the card I had a hard time trying to figure out what to put in the center. I chose a SU! set and like how it turned out. Papers, ribbon and sticker border is from CTMH (Close to my Heart). I didn't have CTMH ink, so really had to *grunge* up the SU! inked images to match the CTMH paper.

Accordian File

EDITED: the tutorial link should now work. Thanks AJ for letting me know it wasn't working.

Now that things have slowed done a bit, I am going to try to post a few times a week. I would like to post every day, but just can't promise that that will happen. Here is a FUN Accordian File I made. You can find step by step instructions here. While checking this out, take time to look around Maria's blog. She has WONDERFUL tutorials. I am in the process of making a couple more samples from her tutorials.

I used CTMH papers and sticker (the circle is a sticker) and SU!'s tab punches and stamp. I colored the image with gamsol and colored pencils. I am showing you the side image as well as the open image, but Maria shows it much better. You could use this as a fun mini album and cut cardstock to fit in the envelopes and add the tabs to the cut pieces rather than the envelopes like I did. I am going to fill this with some stamp goodies and give to someone.

Blog candy #2

Here is the second blog candy I won. This was on Jen's blog. Go check out her awesome blog! She sent me lots of ribbon, primas and some vellum squares (not pictured).

Thanks bunches Jen!

I won blog candy!

I can't believe it! I won blog candy on two different sites. I rec'd blog candy today from Erica. Here is a picture of what I rec'd. The scan isn't too great, but the card is AWESOME!! I love Bella stamps and this one is the Stampabella (I believe that is the name) and she put glitter on the bow in her hair, on the wheel and on the bag...tooooo cute!. The words say "you've been rak'd by a stamping bella". LOVE IT!

Erica, thank you sooo much for all the goodies. Can't wait to play with them.

I will post the other blog candy and site when I receive it. Ü Remember what I always say..."you can't win if you don't enter"

Punchy Idea

I have been a fan of Nicole Heady since I first saw her work in PaperCrafts magazine. She now has a blog and designs the coolest stamps (which I have two sets of and can't wait to get more-if you haven't seen her clear stamps from her company Paper Trey, you have to check them out). Today I saw this post and just had to try one of these. Is this not just the cutest tiny purse?! Here is my version with a couple of additions (you can click on the image to see it larger). I added a tiny piece of velcro to close the purse (which is not needed if you put a piece of candy in the purse, but would work if you added a couple of coins or something smaller) and I added a side. To make the side punch or cut a square (I used SU!'s 1.25" square punch) and cut in half. Then accordian fold about 1/4" (you will get five 1/4" sections). Apply 1/8" sticky strip to ends and press to the inside so it lines up at the top second "hump" of the purse (when folded). Here is the side view. I used patterned cardstock and stickers from SU!'s Friends & Flowers kit. To keep the sticker ribbon handle from being sticky (as well as the flower that sticks out over the edge of the "purse") I rubbed baby powder on the sticky side of the exposed stickers. This takes the sticky away. In keeping with the flower theme which reminds me of a tropical design, I added a Mango & Creme Cream Savor.

Benjamin note: We haven't heard from him, but Bethany (one of the youth leaders) has e-mailed us a couple of times. She says he is having alot of fun, working hard and had a crash course in swimming so he could swim with the sharks today. (Yeah, I really feel better now! LOL!!) We are counting the days until Sunday (actually probably EARLY Monday) to see him and hear all about his experiences in Belize as well as Guatemala. I will let you know about it when I hear what he has to share. Ü Thank you for your prayers for him and us. This is the longest we have ever been apart and hard on Bruce and me.

Sock Swap rec'd

Here is what I rec'd in the sock swap I swapped with Melissa. (You can see what I sent her here). I told her I thought I owed her more!! Look at all the goodies she sent me!

Here is a close up of the socks, so you can see the cool flower on the top of the sock. I love them!

In this scan you can see the bag that she sent the socks in. It is sooooo cool! She made it from Beate's tutorial called a one sheet box. You make it using just one 8.5" x 11" sheet of cardstock or patterned paper.

Here is another scan of the fun clear stamps and embellishments that she sent.

Busy busy busy

It has been so crazy the past few weeks! I am still here and hope to post something card/gift wise soon. We are now done with track. Benjamin did very well. He qualified for Districts and was 15 seconds short of qualifying for State. He is only a freshman, so I can see him qualifying next year. He had a personal record at Districts and we were pretty excited about that-shaved 4 seconds off of his previous personal best.

Last week we had rec'd a letter from school saying that six boys and six girls from each class were chosen for the Wall of Fame and that Benjamin is one of them and there would be a program where they would be honored. We had no idea what this was and neither did Benjamin. We were surprised when we found out that he had one the Most Representative of his class. Another was voted Student of the Year (who is voted by class peers) and the other 4 were honored by teachers. The principal told Bruce that he was very proud of Benjamin as it is uncommon to see a new student come in and do as well as he has done.

Tonight is the Industrial Arts Display and I am looking forward to seeing the night stand Benjamin made me. I haven't seen it except for a very rough sketch when we were helping him figure out the measurements.

He doesn't think he has to take any finals, so he should be done by noon on Friday. It will be good to spend some time at home with him before he leaves at 11:30 pm for Belize next Wed. (YIKES only a few more days and "NO" mom is not ready for this. I know he will have a great time and is excited, but I am a little nervous. I like my kids home at night so I know they are safe and sound Ü)

So even though I don't have any cards to show you yet, I wanted to let you know I'm still here and will hopefully do better once school is out.

Thanks for letting me brag about my kid Ü
Debbie

Sock Swap

This was a fun sounding swap that I read about on the Papercrafts website. It's called a sock swap. You buy a pair of socks and $5- $6 in matching embellishments. Make a coordinating card and package it all together in a matching/coordinating bag or some kind of packaging. I thought this sounded fun and presented this idea to my on line friend Melissa. Here is what I sent to her today...The socks were purchased at Dollar Tree. They had the funnest socks! You can't tell in the picture very well, but there are flowers on the soles of the socks with green and turquoise ribbing. Then I found the matching notepad, pen and notecards there and just had to go with it! The primas are from my LSS and the ribbon is some that I had on hand. I went over the dollar amount abit, but just had to put it all together. The flowers on the card are made with my Cricut again (love that bug!). I used loops of green sheer polka dot ribbon for leaves. Melissa, I hope you love this! Ü

Anyone else want to do this type of swap with me? Just send me an e-mail Ü

Remember you can click on the picture to see the detail better.

I took my friend Gloria to lunch the other day and she was asking me how I store my stamps. I will take a picture in the next couple of days and post it here. I always like to see how others store their stamp items.

With Sympathy

This card is for DH's gr'ma. His gr aunt (her sister) passed away and they were really close. I think they talked on the phone every day and this is really hard on Gr'ma Ruth. I wanted to make her a really pretty card. I love this verse for times like this.Flower diecut is cut from Cricut's Walk in My Garden.Ribbon is actually some vintage seam binding. It is 100% Rayon and I purchased a bag of 20 rolls at Goodwill for $3. There are 100 yds on each roll and most of the rolls were full. So $3 for about 1800 yds was a great find!

Jar orders

Here are the five jars that the owner from Twigs & Berries ordered when she saw the plum one when I was mailing it at the PO. The first three were made using Basic Grey papers. The ribbon is from JoAnn Fabrics. It was the perfect size for the side of the lid. The jars are from Dollar General. The images are cut with my Cricut using George, Walk in my Garden and Mini Monograms.

This jar was made using Signature Suite by Jen Wilson. The center of the flower is Basic Grey. The flower on the lid is Basic Grey with the center being Signature Suite.

And on this last jar I used Daisy D's paper. The ribbon on this jar is some I rec'd from my friend Lana a year or two ago. The color was perfect. I grunged it and all the ribbon and papers with basic brown ink by SU!.

French Bread

I love making bread and every now and then it turns out "perfect". Today was such a day-it rose nicely, the texture was just right and when it came out of the oven, you almost hate to cut into it, because it is so "pretty". LOL!! If you like making bread here is the recipe. It's almost fool-proof!

French Bread

8 to 9 ounces hot tap water

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbl vegetable oil (I use canola)

2 tsp sugar

3 cups bread flour

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl in the order given. Mix well and then turn out onto floured counter and knead until elastic and smooth. Place in lightly greased bowl and allow to raise 1 hour or until double in bulk. Punch down. Let rest for 10 minutes. Turn out on a lightly floured counter and kneed lightly. Shape into a long loaf and place on a greased cookie sheet. Brush top with 1 beaten egg mixed with 2 tbl milk and then sprinkle with sesame seeds. Make shallow slashes at 1-2" intervals (depending on how thick you want the slices). Let raise in a warm place until double in bulk (about 30 minutes). Bake in 375 degree oven 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy! Ü

On a stamping note...I have been sooo busy! Between buying a car where the dealers lied repeatedly to us (note to those in NE, do NOT buy from Anderson Ford in Grand Island!!), Benjamin's track meets and getting ready for our church's salad buffet tomorrow nite for which I am the coordinator (so far we have 381 ladies coming!), there hasn't been much time to stamp. Oh and I have 5 jar orders with different styles, but similar to the plum and moss one I made. I will post a pic of them when I get them all done...3 down and 2 to go. Ü

Hope you all are having a beautiful spring day!

Swapping with Kendra

Note: Kendra, if you haven't rec'd your cards from me, don't look if you want to be surprised. Ü

My friend Kendra e-mailed me awhile back and asked if I wanted to swap some cards with her using the stamp sets from the SU! Spring mini. Here is what I made to send her...

This first card is done with the crayon resist technique. I stamped the flowers in black on glossy cardstock. Then with a white crayon made marks around the petals of the flowers. When I sponged the ink onto the images with a sponge dauber, the ink resists where the white crayon marks are. Set used is Doodle This.

This second card was made using the new patterned paper and Polka Dots and Paisley stamp set. I love this paper as it has designs on both sides. Card number 3 fits into a business sized envelope. I again used the double sided patterned paper and this time used Big Blooms stamp set.

This last card is my favorite. It used patterned paper from the Au Chocolat package and Doodle This. I stamped the flower, watercolored and then curled the edges to give it dimension. The paper is actually vanilla and brown. I sponged the paper with pink ink. The "hello" is from Paper Trey

Inky Baby

I am not only behind on sending birthday cards, but behind on ALL cards! Here is a MUCH belated baby card that will be going out in the mail today. The pink hearts are embossed with the Cuttlebug embossing folder. I then lightly brushed the raised image with SU!'s white ink pad. The argyle & "Sweet Baby Girl" ribbon is by DCWV and it is adhesive ribbon. I really don't like adhesive ribbon, but it was in my stash and worked well with this card since I wasn't making a bow or knot. The baby bunny is Inky Antics. I colored it with Prisma colored pencils and blended with Gamsol. Both can be bought at Inky Antics. I love the little safety pin by Making Memories and thought it would be perfect on a baby card. The sheer polka dot ribbon is from Wal-mart.

Butterfly Birthday Wishes

I love this butterfly set from Paper Trey. I stamped the butterfly once on the white oval and then again and cut out and adhered on top of the first stamped image using glue dots just in the center so the wings are free. Before adhering, I wanted the butterfly to have antenae things, so I just inked up the outline butterfly on the side between the top and bottom wings and stamped. It had the perfect arch and looks much better than if I would have tried to free hand it with a marker. The "happy birthday" is also Paper Trey.

The background of the card is used with all my scraps from DCWV thank you card kit.

Now if only spring would REALLY show up, so we could see the butterflies!

brother's bd card

I sent this late, but better late than never. Maybe I should have left off the ribbon, but it seemed to need something. The photo corners are cut from my Cricut with Jasmine cartridge that I borrowed at my crop and cut a bunch. I pierced around the edges and sponged to look like old leather. The saying is from a Rusty Pickle pack full of saying for cards and scrapbooking.

another birthday card

Here is another bd card done with the cuttlebug birthday embossing folder. In my cardstock stash was a BUNCH of the green, purple and white already cut for a swap I did years ago!! I don't know why I cut so many! Anyway on those that I did way back when, I stamped flowers from Watercolor Garden on the white part. I must have cut extra thinking I would make more??? So I decided to use them up and make some bd cards.

Thank you Melissa!

This ADORABLE card is made by my on line friend Melissa. Melissa and I "met" on line on a stamping yahoo group 5 (?) years ago. The group disbanned and Melissa & I have kept in contact. We have swapped off and on and I was sooo excited to get an e-mail from her a couple of weeks ago, asking if I wanted to swap again. We swapped 4 cards and this one just popped out at me. I absolutely love it! I love the colors and the striped paper is just adorable for the bunnies face. I also love the "bunnies..." stamp. How cute is that??! The pink is sooo much brighter IRL! On the right is the inside...I love how it opens from the bottom and how she added ribbon from the oval punch out. Here are the other 3 cards that she sent. We are going to do a fun swap next where you buy a pair of socks (we both wear the ankle kind, so are going with that) and then make a coordinating card and add coordinating embellishments~wrap up cute in a matching bag and fun, fun, fun! Can't wait to go to Target to find some fun socks! Melissa, thank you so much for swapping with me!

Birthday Cards

I was sooo behind on my birthday cards. So yesterday afternoon I took the time to get caught up (for now anyway Ü). I usually make all the cards different, but I just didn't have time to do that and after designing this first one, I liked it well enough to make lots like it. I made 18 of them with different colors and ribbons. Here are a couple the cards I made. I used my birthday Cuttlebug embossing folder that my secret sister sent me (this is going to come in soooo handy!).

Then I brushed the top with white ink to make the image "pop". I used my white signo gel pen (the best I have ever found and I got this from SU!) to make the white dots on the scallop punched oval and for doodling around the white stamped image. I used my watercolor crayons to color the flower image~spritzed a couple times with water~then stamped on the oval that was cut from my Coluzzle oval template. On the caribbean card I just punched the holes for the ribbon. On the plum colored card I added silver eyelets. I used eyelets on all the cards that I had matching colors for.

Wallet album

This is another item that is in the altered jar I made. It is called a wallet album that was made at a SU! gathering (I think it was leadership, but not sure). Anyway I tweaked the instructions that were sent to me a bit and this is what I came up with. I am going to be

teaching this at Scrap Happens in May. The only changes I will make is to make the piece that wraps around the album shut with velcro vs. sliding off. Papers used are Basic Grey's Baby Girl. Flowers are cut from the Walk in My Garden Cricut cartridge. The tab is from SU! new tab punch. I will post the instructions after my class.

WHEW!

What a week! It was very crazy last week. The crop I host was Friday and Saturday, setting up on Thursday nite. I usually teach several classes, but I had a tough week and needed to just take a break.

I joined a secret sister swap on SCS and needed to get the final item made for the "reveal" (where I tell who I am with what I send). So at the crop I worked on this altered jar...

I bought the jar at Dollar General, then wrapped patterned paper around the jar and decorated the front with flowers that I cut with my Cricut die cut machine. I pierced holes in the dark plum and brushed the plum flowers with ink and sanded the green flower/center. It still needed something, so I added a plum button tied with moss floss (hey that rhymes Ü). Anyway, I tried adding leaves cut with the Cricut and it just didn't work, so I layed the rickrack behind the flowers and liked it. I got the rick rack at Maranatha's crop and have no idea who the company is, but definitely need to get more when I go again in the fall. Here is the top...

I traced the lid and cut the cardstock to fit. The scalloped circle is cut from my Cricut also. The "full o' stuff" is cut from the Sizzlet font 'Girls are Weird'. I brused the letters with ink to make them pop and added rick rack to the edge of the lid.

Here is a fun treat that is in the jar along with lots of fun items in plum and green (brad, flowers, stickles, beads, etc) as well as a bag of pom poms and die cut bunnies for her to make. I got this idea off of SCS. I can't remember who posted it first, but she had made hers with a stamped bunny head. I didn't have a stamp that would work, so I used the Cricut cartridge Doodle Charms to cut the bunny head. I then doodled around the edges and drew the face. I sponged the ears, nose and cheeks with pink chalk. Using glue dots I adhered the face to one end of a Hershey Nugget candy bar and at the other end a white pom pom for the tail. I think I will make these for my Awana girls Wed. nite.