Card Swap Reveal

I recently hosted a card swap with 12 of my crafty friends and all of the cards have returned to me, ready to sort and pass out back to the group.
Because there were 13 crafters we each made 13 cards. Most everyone made the same or similar card 13 times and when all are sent to me (the host) I sort the cards and everyone gets one of their cards back and 12 new cards from the other crafters.
It is a fun way to add to your card stash and get lots of card crafting inspiration!
All of the cards that came back are just beautiful!

The first card is from Kelli, done in my favorite red/black/cream combo. Each card has a different embellishment. And is just beautiful! The second card is my poppy card as seen here

Ida's card is a pretty and pink. She used lots of die cuts and borders to shape her card.

Lara made a big flower card with pretty petals on a kraft background. With a button center, so sweet and lovely.

Karen made a lovely card with a beautiful butterfly flitting over some pretty pink flowers.

Lou's card has a sweet punched lace border and some beautiful hand crocheted flowers!

Both Heather and Jenny made pretty flower trio cards. Heather used 3 little buttons for her flowers and Jenny stamped and hand cut her flowers. Both used cute punched borders.

Jessica participated in her first card swap and made these pretty green, yellow & orange floral cards. Each one is slightly different. Some have stamped flowers, others have ribbon trim, but all are very pretty.

Tiffani's cheery green card has an embossed background and a patterned paper square with a punched butterfly embellishment.

Michelles fun card has a stamped bicycle carrying a pretty basket and boquet of "Flowersoft" flowers. Flowersoft adds such a great "touch me" accent to a card.

Ann's card is very similar to Tiffani's but because she used different papers, colors and trims it has a cheerful look all its own. Even if you use a card "sketch" or "map", your color choices make the card unique!
Narda's pretty butterfly card has layered stamping and is very elegant and beautiful.

Each of the ladies made a beautiful and unique card and they look even better in real life. I think when they get their cards back they will be pleased!!! I love hosting a card swap and seeing what all my talented, crafty friends come up with. I also get to add to my card stash, but most I can never part with :-)

Family is the Best!

This weekend we hosted a family reunion at my home. My husbands family has a reunion that we host every summer. But my side of the family has not had a reunion since 2002!

My nephew was visiting some of his cousins while on a business trip, and he realized how long it had been since we all had gotten together. He called me about having a reunion and we decided my place is the biggest so we held it here at the ranch. My nephews are all less than 7 years or younger than me, so they are almost more like brothers, than nephews and all 6 of them have not been together in years. Adding my 3 boys and my niece we finally got all 10 cousins together! Adding in any cousins of mine who could come and my three sisters we made up a crowd of 49.

It has been a busy week here at my house cleaning, decorating, shopping, cooking and visiting!!! 

But so worth all the work!

Saturday morning started with a pancake breakfast! After working out a few electrical problems my nephew manned the griddles cooking pancakes for the crowd!

The kids all hit the pool while the "old" folks sat around and visited while waiting for all to show up. We were so lucky to have such nice weather that we could make good use of the pool. Our last reunion was so foggy and drippy it was almost raining!

We served BBQ tri tip, hot dogs, sausages, beans and salads and we all were stuffed after our meal, so a hike down to our redwood grove was called to order.

It is a bit of a hike down the hill (and then back up!) so when we got back it was time for our make your own ice cream sundae bar. Yummm!

The evening ended with a circle around the fire pit with games, catching up and just plain fun!
With this busy week I have not had much crafting time at all! I can't wait to get back into my craft room.
But having family gather was the best reason to miss my crafts.

Red, white and blue

I love to craft and a good excuse to make more crafts are to make holiday decorations.

After Christmas 2009, my sister and my niece and I went on a girls road trip from my home in Sonoma Cty. to Portland OR. We headed up Hwy 101 and had a great time stopping to shop, enjoy the sights, eat and stay where ever we thought was a good place to spend the night, spending New Years Eve in Portland. 

Since I did not return home until after New Years I still had all my Christmas decorations to put away.

I put up a big tree in my dining room that we cut down here on the ranch, so it had to come down first.

All 11 ft of tree and ornaments. And then all the other decorations, the Santas, the wall hangings, the garlands etc. So by the time I got to taking down my "fake" tree in the solarium, it was halfway through January. And now it was time to put out my Valentine decorations.

 So since the tree was still up, I turned it into a Valentine tree. I thought my sons and hubby would think I was crazy, but they liked it and even suggested I could do a tree for every holiday. So I did! I now have decorations for Valentine, Easter, Spring, 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving! And I have crafted ornaments for all the trees.

Since 4th of July is the next holiday coming up, I now have my 4th of July tree on display. 

I made several paper crafted ornaments for the tree including this patriotic bingo card with a great vintage image from vintageimagecraft 

This little chenille man was made from a down load from Vintage Image Craft also.

He is so cute!

And another fun vintage image on a paper rosette.

The rosettes are easy to make with my Martha Stewart Crafts score board.

 Score board  A great deal at $20 and even better on sale or with a coupon. I use mine a lot!

I also found this great striped crepe paper streamer somewhere (I don't remember where) and made this ornament collage.

And my Jenni Bowlin vintage looking supplies also came in handy for this calendar card ornament.

The Liberty card ornament was put together with stuff from my stash.

I love decorating for the holidays and I will post my holiday trees with each season. So Halloween will be next, unless I decide to make a "summer/beach/tropical"  tree?

I am making a few more Patriotic ornaments and a garland for this year which I will post in a few days.

 

Thanks for looking! And if you have a ??'s about any of the products I used, let me know!

Sunny California Poppies

My friend Jenny and I love to craft together. She and I started a Silver leafing project awhile back and although Jenny has finished her beautiful jewelry cabinet and posted it on her blog, I have not finished my cabinet. I ran out of silver leaf and knowing I would not be able to work on it for a bit, did not order more right away.

I placed the order and I have worked on my cabinet again and it is almost finished!

Silver leaf comes in "books" with each delicate sheet of silver between two sheets of orange tissue paper.

As each book of leaf is used up, you have a lovely book
of orange tissue sheets left over.

Being the thrifty person I am (OK, really a pack rat!)
I could not bear to throw them away!

The tissue reminded me of the delicate petals of poppies, especially our beautiful California Poppy,
our state flower, that is a bloom all over the state right now.

Since they reminded me of flowers I got out a Sizzix die and cut the tissue books into flowers. I could cut a whole book of flowers out at once, 25+ sheets with the Sizzix die and my Cuttlebug.

After the flowers were cut I used some Shimmerz spray ink on each flower.
I then dried each with my heat gun to give the petals a soft crinkled look.

I then tore some book print paper from Stampin' Up into strips and stamped stems,
leaves and grass on to the book paper.
I mixed some Close to My Heart stamps from two different sets for my grass and stems.

To give the flowers some more dimension, I folded and pinched just the centers together. I placed a drop of glue at the stamped stem ends and pressed the flower centers to the paper. A final touch to the flowers was
a bit of yellow Stickles in the center.
I adhered the book paper to an orange card, added a bit of twine for an accent and all done!

I have a whole pile of poppies cut from the leafing books, so I could make a Wizard of Oz size field of flowers!

If you have a ??'s about the stamps, papers or would love a field of poppies of your own (believe me I have some poppies to spare), leave a comment!

Pinterest Find

As seen here

Everyday, all day, anyday!

I love this quote!

A Creative Mess

This last week was I busy with my sons graduation from 8th grade. I helped to decorate the gym for the kids Tropical beach Party after the ceremony. Lots of planning and work by lots of parents went into making it special for the kids. I remember when I graduated from 8th grade, it was just the last day of school and the next day was the first day of summer vacation. We had no ceremony or party after!

To raise money for the grad party they raffled off baskets and I made up a Card Crafting basket to donate. I added stamps, inks, a couple of card magazines, card blanks and colored pencils. I also went thru all my stash and cut up cardstock and pattern papers in card front size. I added some ribbons and embellishments. It was a success!

Since the kids wanted a tropical themed party we decorated the gym with bamboo and plants. I made this banner from my Life's a Beach cartridge. Sharks are the schools mascot, so I cut this cute guy and added him to the banner.

  

I took two of our patio umbrellas and tables and plastic outdoor chairs to keep with the outdoor theme. With all the plants, including two lighted palm trees, it really looked great.

A reminder to all, don't offer your plastic chairs if you have not seen them lately! 3+ hours in the evening the night before are not fun hours when you have to power wash the chairs in the cold! But they are already clean now for family reunion in 3 weeks :)

But after making the banner and putting together the basket my scrap table ended it looking like a hurricane blew through it. I needed to clean it up, but I decided to make a few cards from the scraps.

The card basket papers left me lots of 1" paper strips in a rainbow of colors. I ddin't want to just throw them away so I made a couple of rainbowed hued cards.

Both blues and reds.

To add to the mess I made this card for a friends daughter who graduated from high school on Friday.

Now it is Sunday and hopefully I can find some time to find the top of my desk!