Pastor Appreciation Card 2014

I was asked to make a "big" card for Mark Jordon for Pastor Appreciation Day. I'll take it to church Sunday and get the congregation to sign it while he and Donna are on their vacation to the beach.  I was having a hard time deciding what to make. I scoured Pinterest for several days. There aren't many that I liked. This one is a little bit of one, a little bit of another, and a little bit of me.

I used silver mirrored cardstock for the backing of the cross. The cross is the one from the Wedding Cricut cartridge. I cut it at 6" and cut the blackout at 6" from the mirrored cardstock. I used pop-dots between those two layers so the cross would have a shadowed effect, sitting up from the silver backing. The mirrored strip was embossed with the dots folder. (It looks black in this picture, but it's a strip of the mirrored silver cardstock). I used my punches for the leaves and flowers. I used the palest pink, blue, and two pale shades of green. I only wanted faint coloring in the leaves and flowers.

I added rhinestones, silver dots, chrome blings, and green pearls for the centers of the flowers. I punched the butterfly from a piece of patterned vellum and bent the wings up and only applied glue to the butterfly body. The "In Appreciation" was printed on the paper and then cut, using the Big Kick die cutter.

The inside has folded paper, glued just to the center fold to make "pages", to give everyone space to add their congratulations.

The verse is from 1st Corinthians 9:14 - " ...the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel." I thought that would be appropriate for a preacher!

Note: If you click on the picture, it will expand so you can see the entire card.

Hallowe'en Cards for 2014

I made one like this for a friend last year and decided that it would work for Alex's Hallowe'en card this year. He's 5, soon to be 6, and in Kindergarten. He saw a bowl of apples on my table and exclaimed, "We're studying about apples in school!" I asked him if he'd like one to eat and he said, "Mmmmm, nah, but thanks for asking, Nanny!"

He later went out to help Popie pick up all the fallen walnuts.







Emma's card is a spooky tree with a glittery bat. You can't see the bright orange cardstock very well in this picture. It's almost a neon orange. The bat was re-cut in a glittery black paper.  Maggie's card is the Grim Reaper with some bright pink glitter paper behind it. The inside of her card has a bat swinging from the word "Spooky".

I wish could remember how to get these pictures where I want them. Oh, well.

Warren County Fair 2014

This year at the Fair, I entered 18 items and won 17 ribbons - 4 red (2nd place) and 13 blue (1st place) and won $38.25. I had been working on this year's entries since the last fair and spent most of the fall, winter, and spring getting things made. 

Most of my ideas came from Pinterest. I can spend a lot of time browsing through the pages and pages and pages. After finding something interesting, I click on it and WOW - there's another page that leads to another page that leads to another world and then I get lost and find that an hour has passed.  

(If you click on the picture, it will open wider) 

These are the items that I entered this year that earned Blue Ribbons. Kara's scrapbook, the fashion doll bridal dress, the knitted AG doll outfit (she's a painter and has her paint supplies and paint palette), the Trick-or-treat AG doll outfit (she has a mask and a trick-or-treat bag with lots of tiny goodies inside. I found a site where you can download lots of printables for candy wrappers and chip bags. They turned out great!) The plastic canvas tissue box cover was really pretty - it was done in ivory yarn with ivory ribbon and then I glued a tiny ivory pearl in each of the little squares. 

I had a lot of fun knitting the baby layette. I actually managed to learn how to knit cables and the front of the sweater has a cable in the middle of the front. The set includes a car-seat blanket, booties, hat, sweater, and pants. Since I was in a knitting mood, I also knitted a pair of white baby booties and a yellow baby bonnet. I had knitted a blue hat and mittens for Alex last year for the fair, but I already had a hat and mittens to enter so I save them for this year. Unfortunately, I think they are too small for him this year. I think I'll add them to the stash of hats and mittens my church group is making for the pre-K classes at one of the local elementary schools. 

The blue booties that I crocheted with thread turned out nice. We have a great-nephew who's wife is expecting, so I'm pretty sure (if the baby is a girl!) I'll be giving the booties to them along with the baby layette.

I found a pattern on Pinterest (of course!) for the knitted slippers. They turned out great! I love them! Kara, Maggie, and Emma want a pair, too. I have the yarn ready, just have to sit down and make them. The little champaign-colored purse was crocheted with cording that a church friend gave me. It is a little shiny and that makes it so pretty! I lined it with a light colored fabric and added a zippered pocket inside and also a zipper to close the purse. I used bright blue for the bookmark and added blue beads and a little metal disk to the cording. 

My afghan got a red ribbon. I really don't understand that. This thing was beautiful with the popcorn designs. What's wrong with those judges!! Two other red ribbons were for the ecru doily (again - what's up with those judges?), and the blue neck scarf that is for my little cousin in Fairfax. I had knitted hats for her and her little sisters but held the scarf back to enter into the fair. I don't think she'll mind. The last red ribbon was for the pink hot-mat. I crocheted it with pink thread because that's all I had left that was a color. I have a lot of ecru and white, but I wanted the hot-mat to be colorful. I hand-stitched a circular piece of pink felt to the bottom. 

This is my final year for making things to enter in the Fair. I've run out of ideas. Pinterest has millions and millions of ideas, but I think I'm burned out. All my energies went into finishing things. There were a few things that didn't get to the fair. After looking at them, I decided that they weren't "Fair-worthy" !  The ladies slippers are the second pair I made. I unraveled the first pair and re-knitted them. I'm sure I'll still make things, but not for the fair. I'll still be making cards and scrapbooks, too, so I think I'll still be busy.

Pinterest Cards

I love Pinterest! I've gotten so many great ideas from that site. If I'm not careful, I'll find that I've been on for hours - losing track of time. I find a card idea that I like and click on it to be taken to the creator's blog or site. From there, I find another card idea and another and another....clicking on any of those might take me to another site and another and another....you get the idea!

This one was for my pastor and his wife, celebrating 25 years with our church. It was a sheet of poster board folded and cut down a little. I make this type really big and then we put it out for the congregation to sign before we give it. The "25" and "Congratulations" were cut using my Cricut and silver poster board. It turned out really nice! The leaves were cut with Storybook (letter J, shift) and the flowers were from Walk in My Garden. 

The three with the black backgrounds were a lot of fun to make. That design came from stuffbyvickie.blogspot.com. She used fabric flowers, but I didn't have any of those, so I used paper ones from K&Company. I have a whole pad of sheets of popout flowers. I ran the black paper through the Big Kick and an embossing folder. The ribbons were just some that I had in my ribbon stash. I cut the bottom edges of the colored strips with different edge punches.

This one with the three flowers was pinned from iminhaven.blogspot.com. Mine is pretty similar to hers except I made mine for a birthday. I used orange/white checked paper for the flowers and a muddy green for the "grass". The tag was cut with my Big Kick and I stamped the word with dark green ink.

This last one was made for my daughter's 40th birthday. I love the black, yellow and white.  The flowers were made with a punch and I used a regular hole punch to punch out the black centers. I have white floral wire that I glued to the backs of the flowers and then to the back of the "Celebrate" banner that was attached using yellow brads. The flowers are doubled so that when the card is opened, the flowers appear on that side, too. The "40" was cut with Cricut and SCAL using a font from my computer.

I hope to upload more of my cards when I have the time. I also wish I had the creativity that I see on Pinterest! I also need to get crackin' on my next scrapbook. It's going to be all about my daughter. I've already done one of her two beautiful girls, one of my handsome grandson, one of my husband and me, one of just all of us as kids, and a small 8x8 of our ancestors. All of my scrapbooks have been entered in the county fairs and all of them  have won blue ribbons! After I finish hers, I'll be starting on one of my son. I have lots of pictures, lots of crafting supplies and lots of time. I just need ideas.....

Warren County Fair, 2013

This year, I entered 17 items and won 17 ribbons! The 3rd place ribbons were for the white crocheted purse, the multicolored dragon, the Christmas ornament, and a pair of red Mary Jane baby shoes.

Second place ribbons were for a crocheted multicolored hat, Emma's turqua afghan, Alex's crocheted JMU sweater, my red knitted vest, a blue crocheted bookmark (with added bling!), Alex's knit "doggie" sweater (the arms are the dog's ears - cute!), a green doily, and three red crocheted strawberry coasters.

First place went to a pair of knitted mittens, a yellow baby's layette (that was a baby shower present, but she had to wait until after the fair to receive it!), this year's scrapbook "Just Kids", a sewn outfit for the AG doll - a bathrobe and pajamas. The outfit also included bunny slippers (purchased), a bath tote I made with plastic mesh that held a bath puff I made with some nylon net, a washcloth and a tiny bar of real soap. She had a bath towel draped across her other arm and a bowl cover was used for her shower cap.

The rest of the blue ribbons were for a pair of crocheted slippers, the crocheted Barbie gown - pink with black trim, and the knitted outfit for the AG doll.

I'm already getting things made for next year's fair.

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.