Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's a few cards I made for Valentine's Day...Unfortunately I didn't get around to posting them until now, so you get a two for one :)

in her momma's footsteps

Over the weekend, Lexi and I had a girls weekend as Daddy was out of town. I decided that was the perfect opportunity for her to make a card for her daddy.

She picked out the stamps (Tiny Treats: Valentine) and the colors. She had a bit of help lining stuff up, but did the hearts all by herself.

And, just to save it for posterity sake, I took a pic of the inside, too. She told me what to write and then signed her name. She messed up the first e (it's sideways) and re-did it so her name looks like Leexi. Ha!

you blow me away {easy valentines}

This is the first year that Lexi is in school (preschool) and needing to have Valentine's for her classmates. I knew I didn't want the traditional cartoon character ones that you can pick up anywhere for cheap, but I wanted the Valentine's to be fairly inexpensive.

I searched high and low on Pinterest and nothing was smacking me in the face saying, "DO THIS!!" Ok, I take that back...I REALLY love the "I "Wheelie" Like You" that includes the Hot Wheels, but she has more girls than boys in her class and I didn't know what to do for the girls. So, we made a trip to the Dollar Store.

I saw these packs of bubbles....3 in a pack for $1?!? Awesome. And they had boy and girl colors (not shown is a pack with green, blue, and yellow), too. I threw them in my cart while the gears were grinding as to what I could have as a saying....

"you blow me away valentine!" PERFECTO!!! I grabbed some lighter weight cardstock (on sale at Hobby Lobby for 50% off..score!) and set up the wording. This kind of thing is not my forte, let me tell you. I think it took me longer to get this set up than it did to go to the store, buy everything and put it all together! ha!

Once I got it printed out, I cut them all to fit right over top of the existing label. I didn't want to make things more difficult than need be, right? :)

I'm thrilled how they turned out. And, even with buying a pack of 50 sheets of cardstock, it was less than $10 for the whole thing!

I asked Lexi if she wanted to write her name and she declined, so I wrote all the names. She did put the heart stamps on, though, after picking out her favorite color (PINK) to stamp them in! {Note: I used MTF Jotted for my text}

Happy Valentine's Day!

pj's

My niece's birthday is a few days after Christmas. I knew she'd get a ton of toys for both, so I figured I'd make something that my SIL would appreciate a wee bit more than toys she had to find room for! On Black Friday, I found some awesome flannel (you can't beat $1.49/yard!) and picked it up. I also grabbed a plain white shirt to go with it.

I used basically the same process as I do when making Lexi's pants...use her old ones as a pattern and make them longer or shorter. Since Brooke is two, she went shorter, but the rest of the pants are the same as Lexi is super skinny and could fit into a 24 month pant if she didn't have such long legs!

I love the final product. Unfortunately, the ribbon is just for looks (although it can be untied, it's stitched to the pants). One of these days, I'll learn how to use it as a draw string.

I cut out one of the smaller flowers to use on her shirt to tie it in to the pants. Pinned it to the shirt and sewed around it twice to make sure it would stay. I wish I could have these for myself, I love them so much!!

happy birthday!

And we are on to the FINAL card I made for Day #2 of the PTI Anniversary. This is a total first...four cards made AND blogged about! Wow. Anyway, my final image comes from Dawn McVey. I always love her designs and this is no different.

I was flipping through all my scraps and found this little gingham in my stash and knew it would be perfect with the Raspberry Fizz! On Mat Stack #1, I used one of the flourishes from Holiday Photo Finishers stamped four times. I love that set...amazing what you can do with it when it's not Christmas!

I added a bit of Raspberry Fizz grosgrain ribbon and a Ripe Avocado button to finish it off. Thanks for looking in to see what I made...hope you enjoyed my crafty time tonight! :)

hello

My third card (I can't remember the last time I was this productive!), has an image from Maile Belles. I love her simplicity in her card making. Not only did I use her image, but I took inspiration from one of her posts in January.

I love the pops of color with the black image and ribbon. I used Dot Spot and Polka Dot Basics for my dots in Plum Pudding, Raspberry Fizz, Summer Sunrise, and Spring Moss and a spare ribbon I found in my stash.

LOVE

My second card for the Designer's Challenge was from Melissa Bickford. I decided to cut up the LOVE and make it 4 small squares instead of one large one. After just having done Heather's, I felt like I'd wind up with the same card.

Another simple card with no stamping! I die cut 2 flowers from Flower Fusion #3 in Summer Sunrise and Spring Moss and added a Hawaiian Shore button in the center of each.

Simple and cute....I'm having fun playing along! :) Stay tuned for more...

PTI Anniversary Day #2

I'm gonna have a bunch of quick posts for you tonight...you're lucky!! PTI is celebrating their 5th anniversary this month and is hosting lots of challenges and contests. Today, we celebrate the designers. Each designer designed a new "stamp" that we were able to print out and use in a card or project.

My first image was from my favorite designer, Heather Nichols. I'm not a fan of how this turned out, but it was a quick and easy card with no stamping!

A little Aqua Mist, some wood buttons....yes, you see THREE of them!!! I've been hoarding them, but what's the fun in that?? :).... and some twine. Simple :)

cinnamon

One of the easiest projects EVER!!

One mason jar, a glue gun, cinnamon sticks, twine and a candle and VOILA! You have a perfect winter decoration! :)

rags to riches

Have you ever started a project and thought, "why in the HELL am I doing this??!?!" Yeah...that was me. I had this hairbrained idea that I could make a rag quilt. I saw a pin on pinterest for a baby rag quilt. This one was different. It had long strips instead of those itty bitty squares. The directions were step-by-step. Easy-peasy, right?

Let's just say that I started this in, oh...October. It was going to be a gift for my niece who was to be born in December. Thought I'd have PLENTY of time. Good thing, since I didn't finish it until about 2 weeks ago!!

I learned a lot making this. One of those things was that I'm not a fan of quilting! I give MAJOR props to all the quilters out there! I do absolutely LOVE how it turned out.

I spent 5 hours just doing the binding. Whew. The one side was cake. The other, not so much. I'm not a fan of hand sewing! That bee fabric is my favorite :)

And, if you're still reading...I'll tell you what I did. This quilt went to my niece as I already said. Her mom is B's sister and they live in Florida, so I had to ship it down to them. I decided that it needed a note to go along with it and this is what I wrote:

Dearest Olivia:

This is a very special quilt for a very special girl. You see, when your grandma passed away, I was lucky enough to receive her sewing machine. With that sewing machine, she made quite a bit of things, including very special blankets and quilts for your mommy and Uncle B. I know if she were still here, she would've made you a special quilt with that very machine and so, I did it for her. She would've been so excited for you to be here! Lots of love

Aunt Liz

pick your plum

Have you ever heard of Pick Your Plum? OMG...awesome site!! They have one deal every day for incredibly cheap. Back in October (I think), they had a great thing of vinyl for $3.95 or something like that. Now, when you get the items, it's generally something crafty that you have to put together or that you need something else to go with it. Make sure you sign up and you'll get their daily email of what is the deal of the day!

So...I turned the vinyl into these..

I didn't much care for that red flower (I did it on my cricut), so it did come off and I put another flower there.

I love how they turned out. I was able to get remnants of wood at Menards for $1.69 and sanded them, found some $2.99 spray paint at Hobby Lobby to use and then put the words on. I actually didn't use all the words they gave me, so I still have some left. And I have another board that I don't have a pic of because I was an idiot and put "faithful" on there twice!!

These were all Christmas gifts for my mom, aunt, and SIL (I kept one for myself, too!). I know they all loved them!

Christmas wrap up

Yes, I realize that we're a little past Christmas!! I apologize...with trying to make so many things for Christmas and then hitting a few birthdays and year end at work, I haven't had a chance to post! I figured I'd just post the last of my Christmas things in one post :)

My girlfriends and I always do an exchange and I made a few cute little photo holders for them. Because there are 11 of them, I had to do something simple for packaging. I got a stack of paper bags, Ripe Avocado and Scarlet Jewel ink, my Peace, Be Still stamp set and went to work!

I love the finished product and it took no time to complete!

And here's the rest of the cards I sent out this year.

The first one I tried flipping over the die to just make an impression instead of cut...it didn't turn out perfect, but I like it :) I did find that it was better to stamp the snowflakes and THEN impress the die. The ink/stamp didn't like when I did the impression first!

I was in love with that little snowman this year!

You can't see it too well in this picture, but there are raised scor lines above and below the snowflakes. Love!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and were able to spend a lot of time with family! Thanks for checking in! :)