Celebrate!

Hello!

Surprise! Two days in a row? How can that be?

Today is Jessica's birthday! 

She is 17.

Gulp

While checking out some You Tube videos I saw this lovely card being created and I thought it was beautiful and elegant and a bit more grown up. Kind of like my Jessica. :)

The stamp is from Concord and 9th and celebrate is a die from My Favorite Things.

She had a full day of school, came home for a bit to do some homework and then headed back to school to participate in the first Battle of the Books for this school year.

And, for the first time since she joined, her school came in first!

How's that for a wonderful birthday surprise. 

If you know Jessica, you know reading is one of her very favorite things to do. 

*Ü*

Birthday Girl

with Amy at Red Robin, Jessica's choice for her birthday dinner.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hope your week is off to a great start!

Queen and Company Hocus Pocus Shaker Cards

 Hello!

I'm not sure if I have shared here my fascination with Queen and Company's shaped shaker card kits. My friend, Kristie Marcotte, is mostly to "blame." :) She is an enabler extraordinaire. She is on the design team for Queen and Co and makes the cutest cards using her 6x6 paper pad tutorials and card sketches. You can find her blog, The Best Things in Life are Pink here. Last month she shared the 29(!) cards she made using their Hocus Pocus kit. You can see that post here. Kristie donates a majority of the cards she makes to a retirement center. Those lucky residents! I have no need for 29 cards, so I work on her tutorials until I get my fill and feel the nudge to move on to another project. Squirrel! I see so many ideas and have so little time! LOL

Here are the cards I made following Kristie's inspiration. I do add my own tweaks to make them my own. I had a lot of fun. There are so many fun components to the kits and the shakers are really easy and fun to create. Thanks, Kristie for enabling and inspiring! I added some of my own paper and cardstock to the cards. Most of the pattern papers are from the 6x6 paper pad that comes with the kit. The spider web pattern paper (inside the haunted house and spooky card) are from a different company. The black glitter cardstock is from Hobby Lobby.

The yellow embellies on this card are from Hobby Lobby. Paper Studio brand. FYI, that brand is on sale this week. ;)

The embellishment on the witch's hat is from Making Memories from many years ago. 

The buckles on the witch's shoes are an embellishment I found at Michaels a week or so ago. They were part of their Halloween line this year. 

I added some foil from Queen and Co in the upper corner of this card. This foil is neat because you do not need a laminator to use it. It adheres to a sticky surface, like double sided tape. :)

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

Marching season ended on Friday, so hopefully, 

I'll have a little more time on weekends to create. 

Fingers crossed!

Fall Shadow Box Card and Fun Schtuff

Hello there!

Yesterday we had a real taste of winter here in Colorado. A storm flew through and dropped the temps significantly and a little bit of snow. Guess it's getting real. Today is sunny and 50s. I like those kinds of storms. 

I've also had a few days off from work. Believe me, I have enjoyed them. Work is a bit of a challenge and I am working hard to keep a positive attitude about it. Some days I'm more successful than others. But I knew I was going to do something for me these past few days and that means I spent time in my crafty corner. *Ü*

Lawn Fawn continues to be a favorite company of mine. When I came across this shadow box card by Valerie Ward, I fell hard. It was so cute! I made a shadow box card for spring/summer and put it on my mantle. I wanted to put a new one up and this fit the bill perfectly. I made a few tweaks to make it my own, but you can definitely see Valerie's card in mine. 

Though a wagon would be a fun addition.

I dressed up the back side differently than hers. 

And a peek inside.  I thought it'd be neat to ink blend on the three sides, instead of just the back. I cut those two corner corn stalks and glued them on each side. 

All my images were colored using Copic markers and I found  a nice fall Copic color combo post recently and decided to use those blends on this project. 

Originally I stamped all my lined images in a brown ink, but discovered upon coloring them, that it wasn't Copic friendly. Drat. It took me another day to restamp the images and start over. But, I think it was worth the effort.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out. 

And now, I thought you might like to see a few pictures of my girls. A week or so ago was Homecoming/Powder Puff week. Amy got a jersey her junior year and stood on the sidelines rather than playing in the game. We've heard the girls are really rough in the game and she didn't want to risk getting hurt right before a marching band competition.  Jessica got a jersey this year, too. And she ended up having to work Bingo the night of the powder puff game. But both girls loved showing off how "tuff" they are.

The theme for Homecoming this year was Hollywood. Jessica wasn't able to find a dress that really fit the theme, but she did find this fun music note dress and that's just as good! She pained her nails with music notes, but I don't have a picture of them handy. Here she is with her boyfriend. They had a good time at the dance. And bonus, driving children can pick each other up! Amy picked Jessica up after her shift ended at work. Sweet!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and can find some crafty time.

Jessica and I are going to a marching band competition tomorrow. Then the Regional Competition is on Monday night. If they do really well there, they could head to the State Competition at the end of the month. If they don't make that, they've had a fun year. The show is fun and Jessica has enjoyed having a very full pit this year. 

Hope you don't mind my sharing some "life" stuff. I enjoy getting to know people I follow and think it makes blog reading even more fun.