WOOHOO! A first for me!

I actually made a card that fulfills TWO different challenges!!!! I've never tried that before and just had to share my excitement. I know some of you can meet 5, 6, or even more challenges with one card/project but, still, this is a FIRST for me!


So, for the details: My card is a 5x5 square with a 4.5" opening cut into it. Behind the opening, I layered a section of a black flourish die cut cardstock over white cardstock. I added a curvy edge section of silver glitter cardstock, a strip of white cardstock punched with my MS lace border punch, and then a strip of DCWV stripe cardstock. I trimmed the edge of this section with baby ric-rac colored with silver ink. Then I stamped a birthday cupcake stamp onto a piece of white cardstock using my black staz-on ink. I rounded the corners, stamped a section of a flourish onto a corner and inked the edges with silver ink. I added a gem and pearl flower embellishment and couple of rhinestones. The sentiment was stamped with staz-on ink and given the same silver ink treatment as the cupcake. Oh, and I almost forgot - the flame of the cupcake and the sprinkles on the icing are diamond stickles.

The challenges I met:

Pixie Dust Paperie has the following sketch challenge:


And, Crafting with Christina has a color challenge - Black, white and gray (may substitute silver).


Thanks for taking a look!

Just a Note about Vera Bradley

I just wanted to say that I am thrilled that you are all so excited about the VB give-away. I figure if I have had them stashed for 2 years - it's time to get rid of them. I didn't know what type of response I would get since they are just small pieces and retired items at that.

How do I happen to have "extra" Vera? The only reason that I have so much VB is that my daughter lives in Fort Wayne, IN and hits the annual outlet sales. We get pieces for about 20-25% of msrp that way. You don't get a lot of pattern or style choice but as long as you are not set on getting a specific item, it can be a lot of fun. I've managed to get "sets" of almost all of my patterns - a purse, wallet and cosmetic. And, I have one pattern that I probably have 15 pieces of - it's my travel set so I have all sorts of different pieces to vary depending on the situation.

In case you think you might ever want to go to the outlet sale, here's a little more info:

The year I went to the sale, the doors opened at 8 and we sat outside in 30 degree weather from about 2:30 until 7 when they finally let us into the lobby. It is insane but the building has a capacity and once they hit that number, no one else can go in until some leave. And, obviously, the first people in get the best selection of merchandise.

It works best to go as a group so you can divide and conquer. I went with both of my girls so we each took a third of the sales floor. When you go in, you get a large plastic bag (think garbage bag) - you walk up and down the aisles and grab ANYTHING you even remotely think you might want. Then you go to sorting areas and look through your stuff and toss what you don't want into large boxes. The staff restocks those items to the tables. Compare notes with the other people in your group and then one person holds everything and you run around again looking for anything you might have missed. They bring out more stuff as tables empty so its always good to hang around for a little bit. I bought about 15 extra pieces that were exceptional bargains - used a bunch of them for birthday gifts and such for co-workers and friends. (the ones I'm giving away are the last of that bunch)

It made for a good girls day out for the 3 of us - with the girls grown and Jenn living in Indiana, we don't get many of those. Maybe we'll do it again in a year or two if they are still having the sales by then.

I have a free VB svg file available here.

I'll leave you with this layout I did of my daughter's first VB sale from 2008.

And I thought my Craft Room was a Mess......

......it was nothing compared to my Computer!!!! I have spent the last 3 hours working on cleaning up and reorganizing my files.....and I haven't even begun to touch the thousands of digital pictures I have. I've basically dumped all of those into one folder and will work on them another time.

What prompted this? Well, when the PC starts slowing down, you know its time to take action. MY PC isn't the latest, fastest edition but it is just over a year old and has LOTS of memory so it shouldn't be bogging down the way it is. In perusing my hard drive, I noticed that I had 2 & 3 copies of some files --- PLUS .zip files for the same items. No wonder I'm having problems.

As soon as the last of my photo files are copied into the one folder, I will be doing a backup of my hard drive onto my Passport portable HD followed by a defrag of the PC hard drive. Hopefully these steps will speed things back up!

I could use any tips/hints any of you have for keeping your computer files organized - I obviously need some help in this department!

Natalie's Valentine Card

SVGCUTS released the cutest valentine freebie yesterday (you can click on the picture to go to their blog to download it):




I was going to use this just to make my grandson a valentine card and make Natalie a princess themed card. Well, my daughter said Natalie would love the dino too - so I attempted to combine the dino and princess themes with this card:


The card is a gate fold style and when you open it up, there is a lacy heart cut that says ".....to our DINO-MITE princess!" and I have another little crown under the word princess.

What do you think? I know it's busy and has lots of sparkle but is it too much? Does it work?

Thanks for taking a look! Off to work on Daniel's card now.

Wk3 jingle belles card challenge

Don't know about you, but I haven't done much today - followed a couple of blog hops and did the pink stamper challenge that I posted earlier. And, figured I should work on the jingle belles card challenge - doubt I'll manage to keep up with all of them for the year but I really want to try!

The challenge this week was to use acrylic paint in some way. I have a drawer full of acrylic paint - bought it all when I was really into the making memories foam stamps (still have those by the way). Never really thought about other ways to use it so I just started playing around this afternoon to see what I could do. The card I made uses nothing but paper, paint, glitter and one flat back pearl from basic grey.

I created the lettering by using a CHALK TEMPLATE (an oldie from Fairytale Creations that I have had for YEARS) with a metallic acrylic paint called "dark patina". While the paint was still wet, I sprinkled it with the glitter. I tore my patterned paper and used just a quick swash of paint along the top edge. The snowy corner with the pine trees is a cut from the Santa's Workshop collection at SVGCUTS.com. I used my patina colored acrylic on the trees and added some glitter. Then I took some white acrylic and dabbed it on the snowy area and again sprinkled it with the glitter. The snowflake is from the same SVGCUTS collection and is painted with white acrylic, sprinkled with glitter and then I adhered the pearl in the middle. The snowflake is mounted on a foam dot.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

My Pink Stamper Blog Hop Challenge

How is it possible that I have never visited My Pink Stamper's blog? WOW - some amazing stuff there and her new design team rocks! I just followed their first ever blog hop and was truly in awe of some of the beautiful creations the ladies shared.

Part of the blog hop was to collect a word at each blog to form a challenge sentence and then post your entry on My Pink Stamper's Blog.

Well, those of you who follow along here know 1) I'm not a card maker and 2) I'm not much of a stamper. But, I managed to put together a card - using only things in my scrap bin, a freebie SVGCUTS file, my MS Lace Border punch, foam dots, ribbon, chalk, ink, and a marker. Since I had never visited my pink stamper before, obviously I didn't have any of her stamps, but I did manage to meet the color challenge by using a lot of pink on my card.



Thanks for stopping by!

Inside of Little Birdie card......

.....here's the inside of the little birdie card I posted a couple of days ago. I designed the word happy to the right side thinking of adding a cupcake or something in that space. Decided it was a good place for the little birdie instead. Also - the little birdie on the top right is not white like it looks here - it's actually light blue.