Sea You Soon

Happy Friday everybody, It is officially the end of June and summer is in full swing.

Today's blog post is going to be really short because I have had a lot going on but I wanted to share the second card that I made for one of the ladies that worked with my mom that left her job. If you haven't already read Tuesday's post, you might want to check it out for more information.

The only information that I was given on the woman leaving was that she plans to take a couple of weeks of vacation to visit family before coming back to start a new job and a new phase of her life. She really likes Sea Turtles. She and my mom already made a plan to meet up for lunch when she gets back from her trips.

This is the card that I came up with and I hope she likes the turtle:

The Sky Is The Limit

A couple of weeks ago, two ladies that work with my mom, celebrated their lasts days working at the Church. One retired to travel with her husband and the other decided to move on to another phase in her life. The plus side for me is that my mom 'hired' me to make cards for each of the ladies.

I talked to my mom about what she was looking for in a card and she said that she really didn't know. The only thing that she said was that she didn't want the cards to be focused on the fact that they were leaving but to instead focus on what lies ahead for each of them.

Like I did with the masculine Father's Day cards from last week, I decided to break each card down by the recipient. The first was retiring after working there a number of years and planned to take some cross country trips with her husband. When I came across this hot air balloon stamp in my stash I felt that it would be fitting for the occasion and the freedom that she would now have to take the trips that she wants to take and has dreamt so long about.

Psst... I will post the other card on Friday, be sure to check it out. 

Pool Table Card

Hey guys, I am back today with Father's Day card number two, the one that I created for my dad.
As I mentioned in Tuesday's blog post, my dad and my grandpa enjoy different things so often times making two separate cards is the way to go so that each one can get a Father's Day card that is personalized just for them.

Now, most masculine cards tend to fall into a few select categories: Sports, Tools, Food or simple layered cardstock. Trying to come up with the right kind of card can be tricky if the intended recipient simply isn't interested in most of these elements. This is the problem that I typically run into with making cards for my dad. So, when I ran across a card that was made to look like a pool table (something that I know he enjoys and that we used to play together when I was young), I fell in love.

It took me a while to figure out the sizing of each element and how I wanted to lay it out but once it was completed it looked even better than I had imagined that it would.

***Hey friends, on a side note: if you could please include my best friend's husband Ryan in your prayers it would be greatly appreciated. He was admitted to the hospital last Saturday (the 17th) and then took a turn for the worst and was moved to the ICU on Tuesday. Thank You.

Golf Ball Father's Day

This past Sunday was Father's Day so I wanted to make a couple of different masculine cards. Each year I make a Father's Day card for my Dad and also one for my Grandpa. Since they are both so different in the types of things that they enjoy most of the time I try to make a different card for each of them, one that reflects their individual likes.

Today I want to share with you the card that I made for my Grandpa. When it comes to my grandpa, he has MANY things that he enjoys. He likes golf, bowling, baseball, fixing things, etc. His many interests making cards for him slightly easier, since there are many different things to choose from. The hard part is that I have to come up with two separate ideas within days of each other since his birthday is also in June and has been known to fall on Father's Day itself.

As you can tell by the title of this post, I decided to stick with a golf theme for this card and I like how simplistic the overall design is.

Mermaid Kisses

Hey guys, today I am featuring another birthday card, this time for my beautiful niece Stella, who turns 6 years old today. Whenever I make a card for a kid's birthday I like to stick to the same theme as their party, whenever possible. It serves as a great keepsake since it reflects the theme but, you can also be sure that the recipient is going to like it because they chose the party theme. This year I struggled a bit with what I was going to make since this is a pirate theme party and I have absolutely NO pirate anything in my craft room and I am trying to use up my stash before I spend any more money. Stella wants to be Miss Elizabeth Swan from The Pirates of Caribbean movies, a I spent hours browsing the internet for inspiration and nearly everything I saw was either very boyish or more mature in nature. In the end I decided to not be so literal with this one and thought that doing a mermaid card would be just as fitting. I hope that she likes it because I absolutely LOVE how this one turned out!!

It's Your Birthday...Have a Ball

Today is my amazing grandpa's 92nd birthday! Can you believe it? I hope that I am as active and ornery as he is when I am that age. One of the things that my grandpa and I share in common is our enjoyment of bowling. And, up until last year my grandpa was on a senior's bowling league with his brother, sister-in-law and a friend of theirs. Because of this mutual love of bowling I try to come up with new ways to create bowling themed cards for either his birthday or Father's Day. And, when I saw this cute stamp set by Art Impressions at Michael's Craft Store, I just knew it would be PERFECT!

Galaxy Mirror CAKE

This past week (Sunday June 4- June 8) was Vacation Bible School at the church that my mom works at. Each year I help out by doing the attendance and helping out where I can. The theme for this year was Galactic Starveyors, so it was all about space. I wanted to do something special to mark the end of this galactic journey so I thought that I would make a cake, something that I enjoy doing but rarely blog about.

I found the directions for how to make this cake on YouTube and all in all I think that my attempt turned out pretty good. I ended up make two of these galaxy cakes, one to take to our family reunion tomorrow and the other for my grandpa's birthday cake. I made my cakes larger than the cake that was made in the video because I know that they each need to be able to feed a number of people. 

Chocolate Box Birthday

June is always a BUSY month in my family. We have several birthdays, Father’s Day, a family reunion and Vacation Bible School at church. So when I sat down to plan out what projects I wanted to post on my blog for this month I didn’t have to think very long on content as each week would be tied up with some new event.

The first birthday of June is my cousin-in-law (is that a real title?) whose birthday is tomorrow. Whenever I am making a card for someone I like to first think about what that person enjoys so that I can customize the card to their likes so that it makes it special. My cousin-in-law is a big fan, like most girls, of chocolate so I am pretty sure that this card will be well received.

I decided that while I was making this birthday card I would also create a thank you card that looked similar because my stash of thank you cards is rather limited.

Did I Buy This?

Yeah it’s finally Friday! I have been working hard on trying to clean up my craft room and I have discovered that for every other item I put away I find something new that needs to be dealt with or new storage problems arise. What a nightmare!! The supplies in my craft room must be related to bunny rabbits because they seem to multiply alarmingly whenever I'm not looking (it couldn't possibly be my fault). And, on top of that I have a rather large pile of new stuff that needs to be added in to the mix that I have bought over the last 6 months (and I have no idea where half of it is going to live).

  Here is the Adhesive:

The Embossing Folders:

 
Some new markers: 

 When I go to my grandpa's I like to hit up their JoAnn's because they have a much bigger store than we do at home. And, I sometimes treat myself with a magazine that has awesome freebies included:

These are all punches that I got at Tuesday Morning:

Stamps pile 1: 

Stamps pile 2: (do you think I have enough) 

And finally the dies:

Please don’t judge me! I know that I have a bit of a shopping problem, but in my defense it is 6 MONTHS worth of supplies that I got primarily on sale or on clearance. The sad thing is that I had forgotten that I had purchased half of it so it is like I get to rediscover it all over again.

By the way, in case you couldn't tell, I have failed DRASTICALLY in my New Year’s Resolution that I would only buy items that need replenishing (such as glue) until I made a large dent in the amount of stuff I have. Oh well, there is always next year (but let’s face it, chances are I will fail at this one every year! All I have to do is walk past a sign that says CLEARANCE and I am done for).