Rated PG-13! Happy Valentine's Day!

Today started out pretty cute...at 12:02 a.m., Sean had a virtual kiss e-mailed to my e-mail address from Bored.com. I guess he set it up previously, because he was sleeping by that point! :) When I got up this morning, there was a cute pink pig and two cards on the butcher block. The pig was for Gracie and the cards were for me...one from him and one from the kiddos. Cute!

I included a picture of Gracie with her pig...she's decked out in pink in honor of the day, although most days she is decked out in pink because she looks adorable in pink. :) By the way, I am very hair-impaired. Gracie and Ava have the worst hair mom in the world I think. And, yes, her bows don't match. We lost one of the pink bows when we went to Disney Princesses on Ice in September.

Ava will be decked out in pink as well, but she needs a bath first and I am not up for that by myself. 18 pounds of squirming baby mixed with soapy water is more than I can handle right now. :)

Anyway, like I mentioned above, Sean got me a card from himself as well as from the girls. His card said on the outside, "tonight, let's try a new position." When you open it up, it's a man and a woman hanging upside down from the couch, watching TV and eating popcorn! Very fitting with two young ones underfoot! :) I thought I would return the favor and make him a card that is a little bit sassy. I saw the idea for the saying last year sometime (I don't remember where...either on Splitcoast or on a regular store-bought card). Of course, I can't BUY a card for him, because I have approximately 10,000 supplies downstairs that I have purchased for the sole purpose of creating beautiful works of art ("honey...just think of how much money I will save if I make my own cards!!" hahahahaha!)

I will let the card speak for itself....warning, it's definitely rated PG-13! Not for little eyes or anyone who will understand the undertone. Can you tell that the sword pops up when you open the card? I crack myself up!!

I can't get it so that my post appears first and the pictures are underneath that. Does anyone know how to do that on Blogger? Well, this is a long post and Sean just got home, so I will wrap it up now. Thanks for looking!

Cards for Hire

My MIL asked me to make a set of 10 cards for her coworker friend for her birthday.

I had fun with these, using a couple of sets that I had never used before. One of those sets was a hostess set from the Fall/Winter catalog that I hadn't mounted, called Oh So Lovely (the flowers in both of the "thank you" cards). One of the cards (the "happy birthday" card using navy, pomegranite, wasabi, and soft sky) was a card that I did at my Stamp Camp this past Saturday. It was a hit and since I had all of the supplies ready I decided to duplicate it for Mindy.

I CASEd the focal points of two of the cards, the "thank you" card with the black gingham ribbon and the "rock-a-bye" baby card, from some talented stampers on SCS (splitcoaststampers). I gave both cards my own spin by changing up colors, accessories, etc. If you visit my SCS gallery (link on right hand side of this page), you can see the original cards that I CASEd.

All of the supplies are by Stampin' Up! If you have any questions about any of the techniques, please comment and I will address them. Thanks for looking!

Last two calendar pages

The rest of the pages are below. Thanks again for looking!

Five more pages

More pages as well as details below. Thanks for looking! :)

Calendar Project for my MIL--first five months

This is the first five months of the calendar that I made for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I can't figure out how to get more pictures in here, so I will do the rest of the pages in a separate post. If you want to see any of the pages in a larger view, just click on the picture that you want to see.

Sandy had requested a picture for her desk at work of the girls and I went just a few steps further and made this whole calendar. :) Yes, I realize that I didn't show the month of August, but that's because I took the picture of the cover page with one of the layouts instead of flipping to a month first. Oh well. The calendar is made by Stampin' Up! and the pages are all perforated so that at the end of the year you can rip out the scrapbook pages as well as the monthly calendars and put them all in a 6 x 6 scrapbook.

I decided to use a common theme throughout the calendar--Kraft cardstock, a black mat on each photo, and the Dymo labelmaker for the titles of the pages. These aren't the best photos, but I mainly just wanted to capture the essence of the scrapbook pages so that I can recreate some of the pages later. I like some of the pages more than others, obviously. The ones of Ava (the baby) alone didn't turn out as well because of the colors...the light pastel pictures aren't showcased very well with a black mat. The only one that I like of her alone is the one where she is sitting on the brightly-colored quilt.

Anyway, I have babbled on enough. Most of the supplies used are by Stampin' Up! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks for looking!