Stampin Up at LG's

I went to a Stampin Up party at my friend LG's house. We made these two cards. Thought they were each pretty cute. For some strange reason the owl card is showing up vertically instead of horizontally but it is late and I'm too tired to fix it tonight. Maybe I'll fix it tomorrow. Or maybe not! Just tilt your head please! Thanks!

Valentine Treats

Here are the Hand Sanitizer holders that I made for my colleagues at work. They were really appreciative of them. Glad they liked them.


I am on the social committee at my work. I made little gift bags for each staff member that held a pack of valentine kleenex and some hershey's kisses. These were placed in every staff member's mailbox for Valentine's Day. I cut a few inches off the top of a brown paper lunch bag and then punched the edge with a Martha Stewart edge punch. I then stamped and punched out the tag and tied them on with red ribbon! Turned out great!


Forty bags later I was done!

Saturday Night Stamping!

Last Saturday some hard core crafting went down. My friend LH cranked out a bunch of these little Valentine boxes filled with candy.



Here is the crafting table complete with ATG guns and virgin margaritas! Everything you need to get crafty! I will share what I made in my next post.

Isn't it funny that no matter how big the table, I always end up working in about a one foot by two foot area! LH had to move to the kitchen table to complete her Valentine boxes!

Partially Finished Owl Punch Cards

I made this card the other night at the Valentine Stampin Up party I had at my house. My good friend LH gave us a basket full of materials and let us go to town! I love this punch - have seen it used to make many different animals too - reindeer, pigs etc. The branch is from the two step bird punch.


The reason this card is partially finished is that I forgot to finish the eyes on the red owl. He looks a little "blank" to me. I might add some googly eyes to it.

Same goes for this pair of owls that I put inside the card. I wanted to use the reverse pieces of the owl punch and so just slapped them inside the card. Not quite done yet though!

Knitting Tags 2

I made up some more packages of knitting tags for a few special friends. I held off on posting about them until I was reasonably sure they had all made it to their final destinations. I gave one pack to a lady at my church who has knit several little hats and mitts for Junior Jay and my nephew. I mailed another packet off to Kristie of OCD: Obsessive Crafting Disorder. You can read her blog post about them here! I also sent some off to one of the most ambitious and extreme knitters I know - my husband's cousin E. You can see some of her extreme knitting on her blog Elsie's Orange Button.


Here is Junior Jay "helping" me with my pictures. I have to one again apologize for the lackluster photographs. The light here is very poor and I usually only have time for picture taking in the evening after JJ goes to bed.


Hope the knitters like their tags!

Hand Sanitizers

I made these little hand sanitizer holders to give away as door prizes at my Stampin Up party I had last week. I found the tutorial on this blog. I thought they were so darn cute!


I used hand sanitizers from Bath & Body to put inside the little holders.


They were so easy to make I whipped up a bunch to give as Valentine treats to my colleagues in my department at work. They loved them!

Cards from LH

My friend LH made this cute card for me as a thank you for having a Stampin Up party. I love the pink and green colors - so fresh and spring like!


I like the way she attached the little bow separately using a glue dot. Cute!


I may be the luckiest gal in the world. LH also made me this cute set of personalized notecards for a handmade Christmas present. She made them using a letter press plate. Not sure if you can tell that the R is impressed into the paper.

Love the color too!


And she made a cute little card holder for the note cards!

Build A Blossom

I made this card with my friends BH and LH a few weeks ago. It is created using the Build A Blossom stamp set and punch. I think it is such a gorgeous card! You can see that the top layer of petals are rounded and attached with pop dots to make them stand out.


I love the button, tiny tag and hemp twine!


Overall a cute card! I apologize for the poor photo quality but I had to take some pictures at night time when the light isn't as great. Ah the life of a working mom!

Stampin Up Party!

Last night my dear friend LH came over and hosted a Stampin' Up party at my house. She just recently signed up as demo and this was her first workshop. She did an amazing job and the projects she had for us to do were top notch! Thanks friend!

Here are the projects we did:

A valentines themed gift box. So adorable! The directions were found here:


A little valentine that holds a single serving of smarties just perfectly.


The little trap door allows you to access your smarties without ripping up the card! Ingenious!


Who would refuse to be your Valentine if you gave them this little treat!


We also made a card using the Stampin' Up owl punch. I'll post it tomorrow.

Extreme Couponing!

Last week there was a documentary on TLC about people who do Extreme Couponing. These people built up major stock piles of items in their homes and also purchased in large quantities - one guy bought over 1000 boxes of cereal and with his coupons got them all for free! (He donated the cereal to a food bank).

I have been continuing my couponing (although I hardly would consider it extreme). I have had some great deals on diapers and wipes (large box of diapers and large container of wipes for $10). In honor of the Extreme Couponing show I wanted to share my latest great deal (no pictures as the "stock" has been given out already lol)

Recently Walmart had a deal on Old Spice and Gillette deodorant @ $2 each. My brother uses the Old Spice brand and hubby uses Gillette so I took this as the perfect time to stock up for them. I had Old Spice coupons for buy two Old Spice products get $3 off AND I had coupons for buy one Old Spice Deo and get a body wash for free. So for $1 I got two deodorant and two body wash. A great deal!

The Gillette deal was just as good. Coupons for buy three gilette products and get $5 off plus the buy one deo get one body wash for free so for $1 three gillette deo and three body wash!

I was able to buy enough to stock up my hubby, brother and cousin for the year. Also had some body washes to wrap up for stocking stuffers for the men in my life. I donated some more to Siloam Mission and am giving some to the Dubois family ( a local family that recently suffered a terrible accident).

Not going to lie, I did get a bit of a thrill at getting such a good deal but rest assured I am miles away from becoming an Extreme couponer!

First Cards of 2011

I have been spending a lot of time over at the Split Coast Stampers blog lately. I find it to be a great source of inspiration for me. If you are a paper crafter you most definitely should check it out.

My stamping goal for 2011 is to get some serious paper crafting done this year! I have so many awesome stamps, paper and supplies and I really want to make the effort to use them. I have a great friend LH who is also an avid paper crafter and we have been encouraging each other to create. Here are some of the cards I made yesterday.

For the past few summers I have been getting together with a few stamping friends at the lake for a few days of stamping. We bring our supplies and share with each other and generally have a blast. These images were embossed using my cuttlebug machine. I embossed so many images my elbow was aching!

The flowers on this card were embellished with some diamond dots. They are a little hard to see in the photograph as the cardstock is metallic but they add some nice pop to the card. I used a peel off sticker to add the sentiment.

This card was made using the stampin up Manhattan Rose embossing folder. Love this folder. So beautiful, simple but yet elegant! I gave this card to my mom for her birthday today. The sentiment was stamped in Chocolate Chip ink and I used my two new Stampin Up punches to punch out the white oval and the red scalloped oval. The sentiment is mounted with pop dots to make it stick out from the card. Added a little red rhinestone bling and mounted the card on some Real Red cardstock. A cute card I think!

Variation on the theme. Grey and red with some Real Red grosgrain ribbon and silver "pearls" to embellish.

I was on a roll and found this purple shiny ribbon while looking for the red ribbon and whipped this card together as well. It is not quite done - needs a sentiment or further embellishement - but I think it has the "bones" of a cute card! I used my new scallop border punch to add some pizazz.

Knitting Tags

I made this little package of tags for my mother in law for her birthday. She is an avid knitter and I thought she might like some of these to attach to the knitted items she makes to give away. She has knit baby blankets for all of my husband's cousins new babies and so I made these tags a little large to suit a blanket. I packaged them with some coordinating ribbon in a clear plastic envelope. She loved them! I also made some up for my mom. I used a Stampin Up stamp set called Hand Knit. I love this little set.

I used my cricut machine to cut out the shapes for the tags.

Baby Shower

We had a baby shower for my sister to celebrate the birth of her little son. It was a bit belated (held when he was 4 months old) but a fun party. I made these party favours using a tutorial I found on splitcoaststampers. They hold ghirardelli chocolates.




These little clothes pin onesies were for a game called "Never Say Baby". If you said the word baby or my nephew's name you forfeited your clothes pin to the person who caught you. At the end of the game, whoever had the most pins won a prize. I used a wheel stamp from Stampin Up to make the little onesies to decorate the chocolate boxes and the clothespins.


This was made using my Cricut machine. I used the Cupcake Wrappers Cricut Lite cartridge to make these little wrappers for the dainties my mom made. They turned out pretty cute I thought!

Quilting Bee - the results

After two days of quilting the numbers are in. 20 quilts pieced, tied and sewn together. These quilts have been donated to Lutheran World Relief to be given to people in need of warm sturdy quilts for shelter and warmth.

A small group of 7 ladies from my church got together to work on this project. I was very happy that we were able to get 20 quilts done. We still have lots of fabric left over and plan another quilting bee in the next few months.

The quilts are definitely colorful (no designer fabrics here) just plenty of old sheets and scraps of cloth but meet the criteria of warm and sturdy. We used old blankets and flannel sheets to line the quilts and crochet cotton to tie them.