happy valentine's day!

this is our first and only year as an engaged couple so every little holiday and event is exciting! but planning a wedding takes a lot of time and money so we decided to not give gifts this valentine's day. WELL ~~ I saw the CUTEST thing on pinterest the other night and I KNEW I had all the supplies needed so my sweetheart got a little gift after all! <3

i painted the heart red and then used fine red glitter to cover. i also covered some areas in red stickles then glued it to the chalkboard which i painted white and then teal and sanded. i used my distress paint dabber with alphabet stamps for the "i love you because..." so now we can just fill in whatever we want with chalk. like this:

 and wouldn't you know -- he did a little something for me too! flowers and a card. happy valentine's day!

this was my inspiration:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/74590937552685668/

what does the fox say?

so, have you heard this song? have you seen the video? after I heard it for the first time I had to share with my fiancé, and he had to share with my mom. now, it is a fun joke between us all resulting in many a text between my mom and I asking one another "what does the fox say?" which we follow up by answering in a slue of jumbled (and unreadable) letters....and now, a birthday card (happy 60th birthday, mom!) based on the whole things because, hey, why not?

and HERE is a link to the video, just in case you haven't seen it -- or you have gone a whole day without having it in your head. thanks for looking!

happy halloween!

oh, I love Halloween! I love crafting for this holiday, too. I made a few things this year as gifts and it was really fun! so, first, for my October made with love (and paper) design team project I made pumpkins from strips of paper.

I made 8 of these and filled them with candy. 6 were sent to our nieces and nephews, plus one for my aunt and one for my fiancé!

 along with the pumpkins for our nieces and nephews went these Halloween notecards. they were simple to make and turned out so cute!

finally I made 2 Halloween cards - one for my mom and one for my fiancé. they were really fun to make and I think I might use this layout for our Christmas cards this year! hope you had a happy Halloween!

weekend!

this weekend could not have come fast enough! it was much needed after a very long work week. plus my hunny and I actually got a day off together!!! AND we had a couple of fuzzy guests - my mom's dog and my kitty that has lived with my mom for the past 11 years!!  it was really nice to have him around. I get to see him often but we haven't spent time like this together. he is so sweet!

 because we have 2 cats of our own we had meegs stay in my craft studio to keep from any wild cat fights. my cats love to help me craft and meegs was no exception. he was a major help!

although I didn't create a whole lot I did make a couple of little things. one was a cute little tag for a jar of candy I have on my desk:

 this stamp is so cute -- you just write in whatever you want on the top line!

hope you all had a lovely weekend like I did!

12 tags of 2013 ~ October

oh it feels good to craft again! it feels good to have the time to craft and to use my creativity!!! I have missed the last couple of months of 12 tags and I really wanted to create this Halloween project. tim offered some great inspiration this month. check out his tag here.

this was the first time I got to use distress paints! I used them along with distress stains that way I could use more colors (I don't have very many of either product). I liked the way the background came out. I used the cindy loo cricut cartridge for the frame and some chunky purple glitter. the moon, bat, and cat are cut from the paper doll dress up cricut cartridge. I used a silver pen and sharpie to highlight some areas on the cuts and then also some stickles for the kitty eyes and other little accents here and there. thanks for looking -- hope you like!

nieces and nephews birthday cards

these are the cards I made for my nieces and nephews birthdays this year. they were fun to make and I hope they loved them!

for cameron:

 

for brycen:

 

for kaylie:

for aubrey:

nieces & nephews birthday gifts

in my endless attempt to catch up on posting projects I am now sharing my nieces and nephews birthday gifts from last year (sigh). they are all within a few years of each other so each year I try to give them all something similar (these gifts also have to be mailed so I keep size in mind as well).
for 2012 I decided to decorate a container - up-cycled from crystal light containers - for each of them and fill it with goodies (markers, erasers, money, stickers, etc).
I chose papers and embellishments based on what I thought each kid would like and also a cricut cut then a got to work putting it all together...
for cameron:

for brycen:

for kaylie:

for aubrey:

 

thanks for stopping by and taking a look!



12 tags of 2013 ~ june

hello there friends! another month gone by and another awesome tag to create! i appreciated the coloring technique used in tim's tag -- coloring is something i love to do and haven't in sooo long! with so many crafts and so little time it's hard to find a chance to enjoy them all so i was thankful for this tag. i had a lot of fun coloring!

 i love love love this stamp. i used distress inks to color and ditress stains for the background. i also used a chipboard "dream" sticker and some purple and pink jewels just to give it a little "something".

thanks for looking! you can check out tim's june tag here