I am always amazed and impressed with the bloggers who post every day, and every day they show new things they've created. I let a week...or 2...or a month go by between posts sometimes, and it's always because I'm either eyeball deep in projects and can't post until they're complete or I am so busy reading everyone else's blogs and drooling over their creations that I'm not making anything at all!


Since my last post, I have been doing both! I've just completed a wedding book assignment for a customer.
I created a two page layout in 8X8-inch size for each member of the wedding party. On one page is a place for a picture or two, and on the facing page, a personal message to the bride and groom from the bridesmaid or groomsman. The title page pictured above is the couple's monogram. The last page features a spot for the bride and groom's picture, with the tag "happily ever after". There are 3 small brothers and sisters in the wedding party and so I created one page for all of their pictures and then a facing lined page so the ones who can print a message can do so. It was a fun album to make as the bride's favorite color is red, so I used the cranberry of the bridesmaids dresses and cream for the main color scheme with black (to match the tuxedos) as the accent. This allowed me to use my favorite Foof-a-La papers in red, cream & black and I thought they made an elegant book. Making custom memory albums is what I do for people. I enjoy creating books where pictured memories will be stored for years to come. Only twice have I made albums using the person's actual photos and that is hard to do when you might not know the person whose pictures are going in the album. I usually do just the creative part and then let folks choose their favorite pictures to place in the album. Baby shower albums, baby albums, wedding shower albums, First Christmas albums, Dog and/or cat albums; I've made lots of books for people in the past few years. Do I have a completed album for my 8 month old grandson yet? No, but I'm working on it!


The other project that I completed this afternoon is for a friend of mine. Her beloved cat recently died and the vet who who had been caring for the cat, came to the house and stayed with the cat and my friend and her husband until the cat passed ( which has to be a rare thing) My friend asked me to make a thank you gift for the vet using a favorite verse of hers.
The board is 6X8-inches. I used Basic Grey papers for the front and scaled down vintage sheet music for the back. I will give the completed piece to my friend tomorrow at church. I hope she is pleased with it.

I've run out of projects for now but I will leave you with two pictures. The first is my little friend Amelia, who comes to hang out with me on Thursdays (surrounded by 3 bears from my collection) We always have a good time together. The second picture is from Charlie's visit last weekend. He came with his Daddy to see us while his Mommy was out of town. We had a wonderful visit.
This last picture is of Charlie and Papa's feet....they have matching sandals! Papa thought that was pretty cool!

Back from Vacation

We are back from vacation and I can finally add some explanation to the pictures I uploaded before we went away. First of all, I must tell you that part of our time away was spent visiting this sweet boy. Charlie is now 8 months old and growing by leaps and bounds. He is crawling all over and pulling himself up to stand. He is always smiling and squealing with happiness, I'm sure he must know how much he is loved. Anyway, these pictures are among our most recent. If you notice in the picture with the blue t-shirt, there is a drawing on his shirt and the words "I miss Jerry". Both of his parents and our other son Michael and his wife, are big Grateful Dead fans. When we saw this shirt on Charlie (in a 6 months size) we just cracked up! The other picture of him is with his Papa who is just crazy about him.

Before we went, I was able to finish this banner with Charlie's name. It is hanging in his room, from a valance that is trimmed with little farm animals. So cute.

This little birthday card was made for a very special little friend of ours, Amelia. I get to spend many Thursdays with her while her Mommy, my good friend Bethanie, is at work. Amelia just turned "one" so I made this card for her. I couldn't resist the mary jane stamp. The white eyelet trim on this card was made using a Martha Stewart punch. The card design was taught at a mini class at my favorite stamp store, Stamp Fanci, by one of my favorite instructors, Carolyn Dewey.

Now I mentioned in a previous post that I participated in a fun summer swap called Parasols, Pink Lemonade and Polka Dots. My swap partner was Samantha and I must say that I was so lucky we were paired together. We both like alot of the same things although my "vintage" goes back further than hers......her idea of vintage is the 60's, when I was in High School and she hadn't been born. Her blog is an interesting read and when I see the furniture and things she's interested in, I have to chuckle. It was fun to gather things for her, some of which is pictured below. Dig those crazy candle holders. They are vintage Scandanavian. The fun part of the swap was that we had to make something for our partner. Because Samantha loves Pyrex ware and is an avid collector, I made this funky collage for her kitchen in her favorite color-Green! OK-who remembers green stamps?

When my goodies came from her, this was what the outside of the package looked like. There was a wonderful assortment of goodies inside the polka dot wrapped box, including but not limited to......vintage cards and book pages, ice cream scoop, popsicle molds, the most awesome flamingo pink Pyrex baking dish complete with a recipe for Pink Lemonade Cake. There was also a beautiful paper parasol (big, too!) with directions for conversion into a ceiling light cover. Hanginf from the underside were funny tags...like the one shown with Mary Poppins. Thanks Samantha-you made this swap so much fun!

Finally, I wanted to post the pictures of the project I made for Vicki Chrisman's challenge. Each of the 20 participants received a package of papers, embellishments and an image from one of the Crafty Secrets journaling booklets. Vicki has such a good eye for selecting items that will work well together, it was a dream to make this project. I was lucky to be given an image with a robin and nest on it....you know I love the birdies! I distressed the edges of the images and both pieces of cardstock for the matting by running scissors around the edges, inking and tearing. The image just begged for music and since we could use stamps, I grabbed the little sheet music stamp from the Crafty Secrets set "altered Art", and stamped a strip of music, mounted it on cardstock and placed it behind the mounted image. These was a beautiful piece of lace in my package and I hated to cut it so I just tied a knot and fanned it out to look like a butterfly and mounted it on the corner of the frame with a glue dot. Buttons were the final touch. Did you notice that the whole little collage is mounted on the inside of the back of the wooden frame? I wanted a recessed, shadowbox look.

OK-if you haven't drifted off to sleep or wandered away to watch something interesting on the Discovery Channel, that's all I have to post for now. It's been hard not being able to upload pictures and keep my blog updated. Hopefully this will be the start of some consistancy! Now I will leave you with one final treat. See you soon.

What a nice surprise!

Imagine my surprise to find out that I have been given the following awards by Vicki Chrisman.














Now the rules are, that you must


1. Post the logos to your blog


2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you


3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs


4. Add links to those blogs on your blog


5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs


Thanks Vicki. Now my nominees are:


Michele~a dear friend I don't get to see often enough


Bev~a former work-mate and friend who is a great card maker


Samantha~a great swap partner


Heidi~one of the sweetest bloggers I have had the pleasure to meet through blogging


Mimi~my partner in Garage Sale hysteria


Dawn Edmunson~The Feathered Nest (I love to visit there)


Michelle Wooderson~ MishMash (one of the most inspirational card makers)


Whew! I did it. Please visit all of these blogs and say Hi!


Thanks again Vicki and have a blast at CHA.

On Vacation

Hi Everyone!
We're on vacation visiting friends in Crisfield, Maryland and having a very relaxing time. Before we left, I uploaded about a dozen pictures to Blogger so I could update my blog with pictures from the Parasols, Pink Lemonade & Polka Dots Swap and the WOW! goodies I received from my partner, Samantha, my challenge from Vicki Chrisman and some other things I've been working on. When we arrived at our friend's place, I found out that the only internet service they are able to have is dial-up. It would take me 3 days to download the pictures to my blog so please be patient. I have lots to show you!