Miscellaneous Cards

My birthday was in July so I made some Thank You cards with the chef Quickutz paper doll since I had received a Crock Pot from my sister.  I had a couple of birthdays in early August so I switched the "Thanks" to "Happy Birthday" and voila!

Also, my husband needed sympathy cards, so I used the Songbirds cartridge and a Sizzix cross.  I made another one with a different bird cage from Songbirds but same color scheme, muted cream and brown.

Father's Day and Birthday Cards

I used a simple template for Father's Day and a couple of June/July birthdays. Stamps from Stampin' Up and paper from my stash.  The tag was die cut from an original Sizzix.

Birthday Card

Here is a birthday card that I made for my friend Kathy.  My camera card is still full from Disney (since I can't back it up due to my computer with the DVD R/W still at the shop to evaluate the motherboard...after one month!), so I took the photo with my phone.  It is so unbelievable that phones come with 3.2 Megapixel cameras and now some with 5.6!  Wow!

I was inspired by the butterfly and rick-rack that Tami used in her Spring Door Hangers.  You can see her really cool work here.

Thanks for taking a look.

15th Anniversary "Card"

This is the "card" I made for my husband for our 15th anniversary.  My printer was going wacky with photo paper so I used a highly textured cardstock to print the photos and it turned out okay, I guess. 

Folded up....

Front Side.....

Back Side...  Boy did we look young, even printed on cardstock - LOL!

For his gift, I got him a t-shirt from University of Idaho Humanitarian Bowl win (Go Vandals!) and tickets to the Astros later this year.  The tickets are Will Call, so I didn't have anything to give him but a receipt -- not very romanitc! 
And, I couldn't justify buying the Sports Mania Cricut Cartridge for one card, so I made a "ticket" using the Disney cart and used some Jolee's stickers.  The star almost looks like the A so it seemed a good fit.  Should be fun!

Thanks for looking!

March Birthday Cards

I have a (scrapbooking) friend who has her "bullet proof" birthday next week.  So, I had spent the week working on the Gypsy to design a nice card for her.

Then, my husband remembered his brother-in-law's birthday is soon, also.  He confiscated my card for my friend Donna and I made her a new one.

I was inspired by my sister Tami's Valentine's cards.  Her blog is here.

Kissin' the Blarney Stone and Murphy's Law

Supposedly, if you kiss the Blarney Stone, you are given the gift of eloquence.  I might have eloquence, but I certainly don't have any sense of organization!!!

I started working on the Ireland scrapbook immediately after returning from our 2-week trip in May of 2007.  I had a lofty goal -- to finish this scrapbook in one year.  To make it easier, I limited myself to only one page for each place that we had visited regardless of the number of photos or miscellaneous cool stuff (like tickets, receipts or other souvenirs).

Blarney Castle was high on my list to visit.  I read lots about the history of kissing the Blarney Stone, and the gift of gab.  You've got to do this!  And, though it wasn't the nicest castle in Ireland and though there were huge, long lines stringing through the rooms to get to the top level to kiss the stone, we diligently waited and finally....kissing the Blarney Stone! 

For anyone who has not been there, you actually have to lay on your back and lean down over an opening to kiss the stone.  Of course, they take your picture and for 15 euro, it's yours to keep.  Awesome souvenir for a scrapbooker.

Time passes, we pack up all of our belongings, put them in storage, and move to another house.  Suddenly, it's 2009 and I CANNOT find the Blarney Stone photos.  Oh, well, surely they will show up before I get to that page.  Nope, they are nowhere to be seen.

Finally, last night, I scrapped the Blarney Castle (which had a really terrific garden, by the way) without my precious photos of Kissing the Blarney Stone.  I joked with my husband that as soon as I finished the page, Murphy's Law would kick in and I'd find the photos in a week or so.

To my surprise, I finished gluing the page and started sorting through my stuff for the next page in Ireland and voila!  the blarney stone photos!  Not even 5 minutes had passed!!  I don't think I like Murphy!

Here's the scrapbook page of Blarney Castle sans kissing the stone......

A little book & one page from Ireland...

Also, here is a prototype of the word book I was going to make for the scrapbook class next Saturday. I've changed my mind to use a different word for the class because I guess I don't know what to do with 2 books of the same word. I'm not 100% happy with how the book turned out. I used the Gypsy font heart instead of the letter "o". I can't think of anything remarkable to say about this book, except that I learned the "chipboard" (e.g. cereal boxes) doesn't slip around as much on old mats in the Cricut if the printed side is down (facing the mat). I might have a dull blade or something, but I find that sometimes the knife edge will grab on the lower left corner regardless of the direction of the mat. I've put in a new blade recently too.

So, the word for the class is _______________________. Fill in the blank for your suggestions or I will choose one of two candidate words that start with the letter M. (You have to guess this, too.)

And a page from Ireland. Will I ever finish this book that I planned to finish in just one year (now going on three years)??? Andy lost one of his favorite rugby shirts in this town and I opened the back of the camera, damaging my film because I thought it said "E" for empty but it said "3" for third picture. This was the last stop for the Titanic before it sank and the museum was really interesting. We met some nice Irish folks in the pub over dinner. As I recall it rained while we were there. The city has had three names: Cove, Queenstown, and now is Cobh (pronounced Cove) under the various English & Irish ruling periods. I really loved Ireland and would go back in a heartbeat!

New Year's Cards

Since I'm really loving my new Old West Cricut cart, I made these New Year's card for family members. The inside used Quickutz dies. All the paper was from my stash, the shiny papers inside were from DCWV Metallic Stack. I pulled the embellishments from an assortment of places and it's impossible to give the references since they have been sitting around for years & years. Fun, though!

Happy New Year everyone!

Yee-Haw Thank You Cards

Yee-Haw!!!! For Christmas, my parents (with a LOT of help from my scrappin' sister) got me the Old West cartridge. Wow! What a fun cart!

I made our thank you cards for our Christmas loot using this AWESOME cart! The "Yee-Haw" is from the Cricut cart, the cactus is from an old Sizzix die cut, the cowboy hat is also from Sizzix and cut from foam. The cactus stamps are from a wonderful store in old town Santa Fe, NM (sorry, but I can't remember the name of the store but it is right on the main plaza and is always a lot of fun to visit). The ribbon was from my stash and the brads are Making Memories which have been in my stash forever, I think!

This was a lot of fun to make and I am totally LOVING Old West!!!

I've also included a photo of Big Bend National Park (bleow) which was my inspiration -- such a wonderful, beautiful, peaceful park. One of my favorites. The photo is taken from the Chisos Mountain Lodge area toward "the windows" -- this was the first time we did the hike but the sunset view is quite famous and during busy seasons, you have to stake out your viewing spot up to an hour before sunset. Luckily, the park was not so busy when we visited this trip so we had some awesome views to ourselves!!!

P.S. I found a free program called Picasa that will allow you to downgrade your high res photos so they can be posted on the internet. How cool!