February 2013

February's weather has been bouncing back and forth between nice sunny balmy days and snowy sleety cold and windy days. I prefer the balmy sunny days!

Since the heavy driving rains haven't caused the bathroom ceiling to leak for some time now, Jimmy finally decided it was time to fix that ceiling. We still don't have the bathroom repainted yet, but hopefully in the spring! We've decided to paint it a nice tan (to match the floor we put down two years ago) and I plan to buy some NEW towels!! I hope to get burgundy and light brown.

I had some great ideas for cards for February and, of course, I was looking at Pinterest. Wow! I can lose several hours diving into that deep, deep place. If you haven't tried Pinterest, you should!

This pretty card has an embossed panel at the bottom with a glittery paper ribbon I found in a 90% off bin at Joanne's Fabrics. I bought pink, blue, red, green and gold. I paid .30 for each roll. Nice!

The card I found on Pinterest was much more involved and more luxurious than this one, but I think this one looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  I used a leaf punch and a flower punch instead of cutting out something with the Cricut. I stamped "hello" on the outside and "Happy Birthday" on the inside. I just love my "cling" stampers. They take up very little room and I have them mounted on a clear plastic sheet that I've put on a clipboard. It's very handy and I can get at all my clings at once.

I made this 25th anniversary card for our pastor, Mark and his wife, Donna to celebrate his (and her!) being with our church for 25 years. We had a luncheon after church and they showed a video that his family had made for them. It was touching and funny! We had a nice crowd, too. Well, it WAS a Baptist lunch! Everyone knows that Baptist women can cook!

This was the big card I made for everyone in the congregation to sign at the luncheon. I used a piece of poster board folded in half. (I had to cut a section off to make it more pleasing to look at, because otherwise, it would have been too tall and skinny.) I rounded the corners with a corner punch, too.

As you can see, it's almost the exact same as the birthday card. I used three pieces of pink glittery ribbon and cut the leaves and flowers with my Cricut. I also cut the "25" and "congratulations" using the Cricut and silver foil. The 25 is backed with black to help make it stand out from the white card.  The centers of the flowers are gold glittery paper. I attached a poem about pastors to the inside. It was well received. We managed to get just about everyone to sign the inside of the card. Some people I approached said that they had already put a card in the basket and I had to ask them to sign the big card, too. Mentally, I was shaking my head and rolling my eyes! HA!

Cards for January 2013

The silver foil bird is suspended in the center opening of this card. Behind the bird, when the card is opened, is a tiny handwritten phrase: "Happy Bird-day" . The difficulty was cutting the circle and the foil frame and getting them to match up and making sure the bird was in the center, because the bird can twist and turn when the card is propped open.

This card was made with the leftover centers from a bunch of silver foil frames I had cut out for Santa's belt buckles on my Christmas cards. I didn't want to throw them away and just decided to make a card with them! I cut the "weed" from black and added silver foil dots on the buds. 

This is hard to see, but it's a white-on-white card that looked beautiful "in person". The top right and  bottom left corners are embossed panels and white lacy ribbon was glued horizontally and vertically at their edges and the large white snowflake was "popped" up and a white pearl was added in the center of it. I used it as a birthday card, but it could also be a nice anniversary or wedding card. 

These are just several of the cards I made. Actually, I made 16 cards for various birthdays and anniversaries for January.

New Cards for December 2012

I've been using Pinterest for a couple of months and have found so many excellent sites for cards, needlecrafts, household hints and anything else you can think of. If you haven't looked at Pinterest, you should! I have several "boards" and one of them is "Cards".

I thought I'd start with January and post pictures of the cards I've made, using Pinterest ideas. Some of them are not exactly like the Pinterest posts, but they are close. Completely duplicating another's card isn't what I start out to do, although sometimes I do get very close. Usually, though, I like the picture of a card and then my own imagination takes over and it'll turn out close, but not exact.

These are the cards I made for Alex, Maggie and Emma. You can't see it, but there is sparkley glitter under the snowmen on Alex's card and that sky and the cuff of Maggie's glove card have sparkles on them, plus the snowflakes are silver foil. Emma's card has a red foil backing on a black card front and the penguins have "googley" eyes.

I have a box of paper scraps that I use when I'm punching out shapes to use on cards or scrapbook pages. After a while, I have to "purge" the box and start over. Luckily, I hadn't purged the box before I made these cards, because I found just the right shade of green for the holly on the snowman's hat and the brown for the snowmen's arms.

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Warren County Fair 2012

Knitted outfit

This year I entered 19 items and received 17 ribbons. The 1st place ribbons were for the white knitted American Girl Doll dress , poncho, hat and gloves; a crocheted Barbie bridal gown, hat and basket; a dress with a pinafore and purse (that also won Best in Show!) for an AG doll; a hand-knitted sweater, hat and mittens for Alex; a pink crocheted afghan for Maggie; an afghan-stitch crocheted purse; a yellow crocheted doily; a pair of crocheted bear slippers for Alex; pink crocheted booties; a white/silver crocheted bookmark that Emma took home; and our Good Times scrapbook.

Crocheted Barbie gown

AG doll outfit.

Alex's sweater, hat and mittens

Maggie's afghan

Second place ribbons were for the eucalyptus swag, six crocheted coasters and a crocheted ladybug backpack I made for Alex. Third place ribbons were for the three crocheted potholders and a cross-stitched picture of Santa.

The Angry Bird hat didn't win! That was a surprise. I was told that the judges didn't even considered it for judging because they didn't feel that a teenager would even want to wear it! My granddaughter was very happy to take it home and she can't wait for cold weather to wear it to school.

I have already started making things for next year's fair.  Emma's afghan is almost finished and, like Maggie's, I've incorporated her name into the afghan.

Warren County Fair 2011

The Warren County Fair was held while I was away in Florida with Kara and the girls. I had everything packed and labeled so Jimmy could take them out and get them entered. I was holding my breath until I got a phone call from him saying everything went off without a hitch. Whew!

The "Best of Show" ribbon was won (plus 1st place) for the raincoat, hat, bag and dog I made for the American Girl doll. I had also tried to make a green "pleather" raincoat and hat, but that



stuff is MURDER to try to sew! Never again. I'll stick to real fabric. The little bag also has a small spiral bound pad and a "toothpick" pencil. Her umbrella is a circle of fabric with toothpick "spokes" that I gathered and tied to a thin dowel rod with a wooden bead at the top. It can't be opened, but looked so cute with the raincoat. The dress beneath the coat is pretty blue/yellow/white flowers. I used that same fabric as the trim on the coat.


The other AG doll outfit was a knitted poncho, skirt, top, mittens, boots
hat, and messenger bag. The yarn for the skirt, mittens, boots and hat was turquoise and the yarn for the poncho was a brown/turquoise variegated. Maggie and Emma were excited to know that they would be getting the outfits after the fair! This doll's bag also had a little notebook and "pencil".


The afghan was a beautiful shade of royal blue and it took me FOREVER to get it crocheted. It had several different stitches - popcorn, cables, zigzags - and I had to rip it out several times because I'd look at it and see that 4 rows below, or so, had a mistake! Rats!! I was happy that it won a 2nd place ribbon but I really, really thought it was a 1st place winner. Even Kara's friend (who won 1st) thought it was going to be the winner. Rats, again!

These were just three of the 16 items I had made. I received 16 ribbons, plus the "Best of Show" ribbon. The money prizes totaled about $47. I'll never be rich but I enjoy making things.

2010 Warren County Fair

This year's Best In Show was an outfit for the AG doll (whose name happens to be Emma!) A friend had given me a piece of fabric with large lavender/purple flowers on it and I found a matching solid lavender remnant in my fabric box. I put together this cute dress and jacket and made a slip to go under it and, voila! Another prize winner.

The other Blue ribbon winners were a crocheted gown for a 11" fashion doll, a doily, crocheted baby socks and mittens, a scrapbook of Jimmy and me before kids came along, a green/white crocheted purse, a crocheted hat for Emma (the g'daughter, not the doll), a pair of thread crocheted baby booties, 3 crocheted potholders. The Red ribbon winners were a crocheted horse for Alex and a yellow crocheted "pineapple" bookmark. The White ribbon winners were for a crocheted afghan and 2 green/white crocheted hot mats. The x-stitched covered bridge didn't win anything. Sigh....

Next year, I think I'll try to add some knitted items. Maybe I'll also try to do some more "one-stroke" painting. I won for that several times in the past. The next scrapbook will be the one I'm making now for Alex.