Merry Christmas - Chalkboard Style

To my friends and family here and all around the world, Feliz Navidad! May this season bring you and your family blessings and good health.

This is my annual photo Christmas card. The stamps are all from the Holiday Sayings set from Hero Arts, except for the Lawn Fawn banner stamp.

With all the inspiration on Pinterest regarding chalkboards and when I saw Betsy Veldman's chalkboard-inspired cards here, I knew I had to create our Christmas card with that inspiration. This card is probably one of the most time-consuming cards I've ever tried to mass-produce. It involved embossing, die cutting felt, using a white pencil to color in chalky details, rubbing white pigment ink over everything (my favorite step) to give the chalkboard authenticity, and slicing an opening above the banner to insert the photo. I ran out of steam after creating 60 of these babies. Sorry to all my local friends who will not be receiving one of these cards this year.

Thanks for stopping by! I've got to get downstairs to get dinner prep started. Ho, ho, ho.

Happy Birthday, Judy!

I recently spied this cool Silhouette design in the Silhouette Online Store. Now that all the designs are 50% off until Nov 30th, I decided to download several.

Today we had an impromptu birthday celebration at school for my friend, Judy. I made this card for her.

The cardstock is from Stampin' Up and the rhinestones are from Michael's.

Thanks for stopping by...especially, my sweet blogging friend, Amy, who always manages go leave a kind word. Woman, you were up in the middle of the night just like me!

Simple Tag Using An Instagram Photo

I love Instagram! It's got to be my favorite app on my iPhone.

Last month, Kalino went to a birthday party for Lillie, my friend Nadja's daughter. A while back, Nadja posted an awesome photo of Lillie dressed as an Jedi. I love girls that love Star Wars. I loved the photo so much, I used it to make the tag for her gift bag. I love that Nadja has a chalkboard wall in her house. I didn't add "Jedi" and the arrow, that was on their wall. I wish I had a chalkboard wall. So cool!

I used the editing tools in Picasa to add the Happy Birthday text. Before I could add any text, I had to "erase" their light switches in the photo because it was right where I wanted to put the happy birthday sentiment. I downloaded a free Star Wars font. I glued the photo onto a plain shipping tag and I was done. Very simple! Thanks for stopping by.

Happy World Card Making Day!

My dear card-making friends,

I hope you had a great World Card Making Day today and found time to make some cards. I didn't get time to make anything, so I'm actually showing you a card I made for my friend, Lutex, back in August. The design is completely based on this great card by Nichole Heady.

The floral stamps all come from the Natural Beauties set from Papertrey Ink. The sentiment is from Birthday Bash Sentiments stamp set (also from Papertrey Ink). The papers used are also from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for stopping by!

Janet, We Will Miss You!

I just posed this question on Instagram:

Am I still a card blogger if I haven't blogged since August 2nd? 

I still consider myself a blogger. Life has gotten in the way: volunteering at school and having work done to the exterior of our house.

I have made cards during the summer, I just haven't posted them on this blog. Well I'm back today.

I made this card for a dear friend at school, Janet. She and her family are moving to Salt Lake City very soon and all the volunteers and staff at school are really going to miss her. She was such a great volunteer in our library and all other events we had. We took her to lunch on Friday at a really good Vietnamese restaurant I'm town.

The stamps I used are all from Lawn Fawn: Quinn's ABCs and Harold's ABCs. The papers are from a great paper pad from My Minds Eye called Dolled Up. The heart button is from an older American Crafts flair collection.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy 9th Birthday Kalino!

Yesterday was the Little Guy's 9th birthday. This is the card I made for him.

The card started with this Silhouette design. Instead of using a number in the middle, I used the same photo I used on his Evite.

This kid loves his birthday. For example, on New Years Day he said "8 more months until my birthday." And he's been counting down every 1st of the month ever since. He also loves to have his party on his actual birthday, and since it's summer time, we have been able to accommodate his request. He invited 8 friends from school to play laser tag at Laser Quest in Mountain View. He attended a birthday party there last month and was totally excited to have his party there. Since they didn't open until 2PM, we took all the kids out for burgers at In N Out before driving to the party location. He had a great time. Here's a collage I posted yesterday on Instagram.

I did very little crafting for his party. Kalino and I decorated small water bottles with By the Numbers Papertrey Ink patterned paper. My friend Judy added numbers to the bottles so the kids could keep track of their own bottle. I also wrapped the same Papertrey Ink paper on jars that I up-cycled to hold the spoons and forks (didn't include a picture).

Instead of giving a traditional party favor bag, I bought gift cards at Baskin Robbins and made these gift card holders (Kristina's pattern). I added a photo of Kalino with a speech bubble that says "Thanks for making my day sweet." I used the Phonto app on my iPhone to create the speech bubble on the photo; I love my iPhone!

I researched laser tag cake ideas on Pinterest. I found several that all had glow sticks. I found several packs of them at Big Lots for $.60 for a pack of 4. Just stick the glow sticks in and "break" them to start the glowing effect. I had Costco customize their All American chocolate cake. I asked them not to put chocolate shavings on the perimeter. I also asked for neon-colored frosting. Did you know that Costco customizes more than just their sheet cakes? You can even take swatches of color and they will color-match the frosting to your color(s).

Thanks for stopping by!

I Love My Dad

I loved the free Father's Day frames from the Silhouette Online Store this past week. It made it easy to create a couple of Father's Day cards. I made this one for my Sweetie. He is such a great dad. My son is a lucky kid.

I took this photo of the guys at Legoland during our Spring Break. I processed the photo using Instagram on my iPhone.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Birthday Sweetie

Hi there! Today I made a birthday card for my hubby. We happen to share the same birthday. It's been a great day already: lunch with friends, hugs, flowers, gifts, red velvet cakepops, and a red velvet cake. Oh my...such sweet friends!

I love this Happy Birthday design from the Silhouette Online Store. It felt like a perfect design to use on a masculine card. The patterned paper is from Stampin' Up and the heart was cut from an older piece of Cosmo Cricket paper (I think). The letter stickers are from Cosmo Cricket.

The guys and I are off to dinner this evening to continue the celebration. When the principal at school asked me if I had any philosophical thoughts on my birthday, I remember saying I didn't have anything profound to say. But, I really do believe that age is just a number. It doesn't define us unless we let it.

Life is good. Thanks for stopping by!

Look Who's Turning 2

Our friend, Little Miss A, turned 2 this weekend. Here's the card I made for her 2nd birthday. The white card base was made with the heavy white cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I recently bought some new washi tape from Target and Groop Dealz, so I layered different washi tapes on the card base.

The design and dry embossing was completely inspired by these cards Lisa Spangler made where she dry embossed the washi tape after she placed it on cardstock. I loved the look so much, I had to try it out immediately. I used the By the Numbers impression plate from Papertrey Ink on front of the card.

I took this picture of Little Miss A when the kiddos had a playdate and I ran it through the Instagram App on my iPhone. After printing the photo on 4x6" photo paper, I trimmed it to look like a Polaroid photo.

The sentiment stamps are from Papertrey Ink and the chipboard number is from American Crafts. The baker's twine is from The Twinery. I also got a great deal on this baker's twine from Groop Dealz.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the inspiration, Lisa! 

Wishing You All Things Wonderful

Hi there! Here's a card I made last month for Daisy, one my favorite school secretaries who transferred to a different school. My son won't be done with his school year until June 15th. I'm sure most of you with school-age kids are already on your Summer break.

All the stamps are from Hero Arts. They were a gift last year from the fabulous Jennifer McGuire. I sewed several dozen flower pins for the Hero Arts booth at CHA last year and sweet Jennifer sent me a lot of stamps as a thank you. The sentiment stamp is from the Just Find Me set.

The papers are from Stampin' Up and Papertrey Ink. I love the weight of their cardstock.


I'm watching "House Hunters" on HGTV right now and the couple featured on the show are searching for a house in Maui. Lucky! Ahhh...love that island!


Well, thanks for stopping by!