Our 42nd wedding anniversary is tomorrow, September 23. Yesterday Emma disappeared upstairs for a few minutes before her mother came to pick them up. She came back down with a card she had made for us.
Using the Cricut, she cut out the champagne glass and glued it to the front of a card that she had covered with patterned paper. Inside she wrote:
Happy Anavirsry, Love Emma and Maggie.
She also drew a heart with red pen. And to top it all off, she applied one of her "Handmade by Emma" stickers to the back.
This is one of the anniversary cards I'll be sure to keep.
I took fifteen items to the Warren County fair this year. When I went back to get them, I had my granddaughter Emma with me. We were picking the things up before church, so we had to get in, get them, and get back before Sunday School started.
I was pretty sure the crocheted Barbie gown would get a blue ribbon and I was right. The doll was over on the "Best of Show" table with another hugh rosette ribbon. The judges liked the crocheted umbrella and the fact that the doll was wearing pantaloons. I worked a long time on that outfit. I'm already trying to decided which pattern I'll make for next year. What the heck and I going to do with all the dolls?
The other first place winners were a cross-stitch picture of an old barn and antique car that I had used an old wooden tray as the frame; a dress and apron for an 18" (American Girl) doll; a crocheted bear (black) wearing a crocheted dress and hat (green); an 8x8 scrapbook "Our Family", that has pictures and notations of all our ancestors; a crocheted "Betty Boop" potholder; a crocheted doily; a crocheted pocketbook; a "Pumpkin Queen" centerpiece.
Second place winners were the painted box (Donna Dewberry "One Stroke" painting); a blue crocheted and beaded bookmark and a crocheted hooded sweater with mittens for Alex. The third place winner was a Spring grapevine wreath.
After church, when I got home, I wanted to lay them out on the table and take pictures. (I'll post them here after I get them uploaded) After getting everything out of the boxes, I realized I was missing two items! A cross-stitch advent calendar and a fabric teddy bear. Yikes! Were the fair people still there? Would I get there in time? Would someone hold them for me???
Kara, the girls and I rushed back to the fair building and yes, they were still there! Thank Goodness. I hurried inside and found they were just about ready to leave. There were my two missing items - the advent calendar (no ribbon!!!) and the fabric teddy bear with a "BEST IN SHOW ribbon!! They told me it was sitting with all the other "Best in Show" entries, didn't I see it when I picked up the Barbie doll? Well, obviously no!
When Emma and I had gone before church, she was Chatty Cathy and I was trying to find all my entries and listen to her at the same time. It's pretty well established that I can't do both! She even said later that she saw the advent calendar and thought it was theirs, but since I didn't get it, she figured it wasn't the one they had. Any other time, she would have said "Nanny! Is that the one you made for us?" But, not this time. This time she decided to stop talking.
These are two samples of cards I've been making lately. I had forgotten how to write in a circle with MSWord, but found the instructions on a card-making forum. I think it adds alot to the card. The champagne glasses are from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge (Cricut). I added a piece of vellum behind the glasses and glued little tiny clear marbles to the vellum.
I love the black and white paper, too. I made several variations of both cards.
Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. I've been trying to use my PC Stitch program and I've encountered one problem after another. Since I'm having so much trouble, I decided the best thing to do would be to start from the beginning.
I opened the program as if I had never seen it before (I've had it for about seven years!). I pretended that I was a newbie and was going to start with the tutorials. OK. Click on the icon to get it all started. Now comes the first obstacle. A little window opened up and said it was starting the install wizard. Hmmmm. It's been installed for seven years. Ok, never mind. The little green dots go across the little screen, everything seems to be going along splendidly. Oops. A little message comes up that I need to install Photo Explosion SE. I check my programs list and see that I have Photo Explosion already.
After clicking on the "close" button about a gazillion times, the stupid little box goes away and the program starts. What?!? Why is it starting? What about the Photo Explosion SE it demanded from me a few minutes ago?!?
Never mind. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just relax and enjoy this nice little program. Sit up straight, relax my shoulders and let's get on with it. Ok. The program opens and I click on the tutorials box. I've decided that I'm a newbie, right? I click on the first tutorial. Click this, click that, yawn, boring. But I've decided to go from the very beginning. Ok. That's done. Let's click on the second tutorial.
This one is about importing pictures. It doesn't want me to import my own pictures, yet. It wants me to open its own first, to get the hang of it. I'll all for that. I click on the "import" button, I see the box it wants me to open. I open that box. Now the instructions tell me to open a file that the installation program put on my hard drive. I see two files but they aren't the one I need. It's a picture of two little kids. Nope. Nowhere. Gritting my teeth, now. Wiping sweat from my brow. I search my program list. Nothing.
I've been at this for about 90 minutes. Jimmy wants to use the computer. Hah! Fat chance. I'm going to get this thing worked out or the computer goes out the window.
My next question is - can I uninstall this program and reinstall it? Will that work? I've got an email out to the PC Stitch company. I wonder if this will take as long as the Cricut fiasco did? That was about two weeks.
The image is not as clear as I would have liked, but...these are the clipboards I made for Maggie's and Emma's teachers as "end-of-the-year" gifts.
I really like black, white and red together. I found these black and white papers at Michael's in a pad called "color basics" by Me and My Big Ideas. They also have a pad of red and white. I cut the butterflies with my Indie Art cartridge, layering the colored paper over red.. The letters spelling out the names are from Base Camp. I found a cute quote from Phyllis Diller to add to the top of the clipboard - "We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and be quiet". I thought that would be appropriate to give to a teacher, since she must spend a lot of her day telling the kids to sit down and be quiet.
I glued a 1/2 inch strip of red paper where the two black and whites meet, simply because I love to add red to black and white. I cut 6 lengths of black, red and white ribbon and tied them to the clip, just for pretty.
When I saw this clipboard being demonstrated on tv, the lady made it look so simple. She said to get a clipboard with a removable clip. That's hard to find. I finally found them at Michael's. The clip has two little screws with washers at the back. They were very easy to remove. They were NOT easy to get back on! It's almost a two-person ordeal.
What she didn't say was that the clip has a very tight spring to keep it closed. Yes, to keep it closed. You can't put it back on when it's closed! Yikes! And the screws are very short! They barely poke out the back where the washers are supposed to screw on. I had to keep a good grip on the clip, keeping it open so it would lie flat enough for the short screws to go in far enough that the washers could go on.
How many times do you think the little screw when flying off into who-knows-where, or the little washer would slip from my sweaty hands and land somewhere under the table? How many times do you think that clip would snap shut, almost severing my fingers? I tried jamming something under the clip to keep it open, only to have it slip out, time and time again. How many times do you think I almost gave up?
Maggie's and Emma's birthdays are next week. They'll be 8 and 7. How fast the years have flown! I didn't know what to get them for their birthdays - money is tight. I started thinking about their AG dolls and decided that I would sew up some doll clothes. Going through my fabric stash, I realized that I didn't have much to choose from. Most of the fabrics I have left over aren't suitable for dolls.
When I was at band practice last night, I saw my friend, Roberta! She's a seamstress and has a basement full of fabrics. She gave me lots of satins and silks when I wanted to make my son's ring pillow. I asked her if she had any fabric scraps big enough for 18" doll clothes and she looked at me as if I were crazy. "Do I have any fabric scraps?!? I have a huge bag just waiting for anyone to come and take it!" Wow! I made arrangements to come to her house the next day.
She gave me several "pieces" that are large enough to make Maggie and Emma each a sundress. There are all sorts of pieces for the dolls. Solids, coordinating prints, kittens, "suede", corduroy, flannel, fleece, sateen, velvets, black lace (ooh-la-la!). I'll be making doll clothes for a long time.
I went to Michael's and bought two of the 18" dolls, $10.07 each (with my 40% off coupons). That's a significant price difference when you consider that American Girl Dolls are almost $100. Maggie and Emma always drift to the doll aisle at Michael's and they've each chosen the doll they want. I wasn't going to get the dolls for them, because they already have AG dolls that they got for Christmas, but the last time they were there, they told me that they wanted them "very, very much, Nana".
I wish I had time to get Jimmy to make four beds, or two bunk beds. I've been imagining myself crocheting bedspreads or making "quilts" for the doll beds. I could make pillows, mattresses, blankets....
After all the trouble I went through with the Cricut and not being able to get through to ProvoCraft, I was ready to explode!
The answer to my question of why my Cricut DS kept telling me that my (only) 6x12 mat was the wrong size (there is no other size for my original Cricut) was finally given to me, not by Cricut personnel and not by ProvoCraft personnel, but by someone on the forum page. I still don't understand why I couldn't get through by phone, email or fax.
I finally got an email from a guy named Wayne, from ProvoCraft. He was sorry it took so long to get back to me and what was my question? Oh, boy! I wrote back to him, explaining that I had gotten an answer from another crafter on the forum page. I did ask him why it took over two weeks to hear from someone. He never answered that one, but instead, he offered me a cartridge of my choice for all my trouble!
I jumped at the chance to get one that I had wanted: Storybook. I told him that I was saving up for it (the cost is extravagant! $90!) and if he was serious, I'd love to have that one. He wrote back and said it was on its way!
A few days later I opened the mailbox and there it was! Storybook. Mine. All mine.
I've had fun using it. It has a nice font with all types of changes, plus all types of swirls, leaves, flowers, birds, a crown and some word phrases. In with that, there are several creative features: Tall/border, shorty with holes, fancy corner, accent frame, shadow and accent blackout.
