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!

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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!