I Love to Swap...Part I: A Swap For All Seasons...Friendship

It's no lie...I love swaps.

From my first one back in 2009, I loved the thrill of sending and receiving little surprise treats in the mail.

I love meeting new friends (yes, blogging friends who you may or may not ever meet count, too!)

I love learning from each partner I have...new techniques, recipes, resources..

For several years I swapped with a group that was the brain-child of Linda Smith...

A Swap For All Seasons.

There were many themed swaps and for each swap,  we would be given a different  partner with whom to exchange 

Some of my swap partners have become dear friends to me.

Well, Linda decided to take a break from being a swap hostess in 2011...

certainly understandable given the enormity of the task and the fact that she needed a personal life, too

When Linda announced in the summer that she was going to start up some swapping in the Fall...I did a happy dance!!! There were new guidelines, making it easier for the swappers and Linda, too.

You can hop over to the swap blog HERE and read them as they will basically be the same for each month, only the theme and the color will change.

I Love This Group!

OK....The October theme was friendship and the color was pink. Pink in honour of Breast Cancer Awareness month...have you had your mammogram yet???

My partner was Heidi Wallace and I was soooo lucky!

Heidi's blog is Queen For a Day and while her posts are sporadic, she is a  great writer....funny, honest, talented! I hope she will write more and show more because I can tell you her art is fantastic!!

Here is the Card that Heidi made

Take note of the detail...the use of velum, stitching, backgrounds, coloring!

I love the doodling!

Here is the tag...

2 Friends holding each other close

We were to leave the card unsigned so that our partner could send it to someone...well, that's not going to happen...I think I may frame at least one of these beauties!

don't forget the stash!

A big thank you to my sweet friend Linda...first for restarting this swap and for "assigning" me to Heidi!

Heidi....thank you again for sharing your incredible talent with me!!!

Sign-ups for November are going on right now and today is the last day to sign up HERE  if you are interested.

I will share what I made for Deb as soon as I know she has received her package!

xoxo

Joyce

The First Valentines

I have been working on Valentine projects for weeks now. I was involved in two swaps, the first

 I've written about here and the second one we were asked not to post until Valentines Day.

There have also been Valentines to make for family and friends near and far.

Two weeks ago I had an appointment with my dental hygienist, Mindy,  for a cleaning (twice a year...like clockwork!) and I decided to bake some brownies for her. I wrapped them up and then thought I should make a tag. I had an image, from a digital collage sheet, of a woman that I had been wanting to use for a long time. I came up with this design using  a copy of a ledger sheet as a background and some stamped red hearts. The Valentine phrase, "Be my Valentine...or else!", just fit the picture somehow, don't you think?

 I was pleased with the concept but of course had to tweak it a bit and ended up with this finished product which became the Valentine card I sent to friends. I digitally added a cupid and stamped a flourish for Miss Kissy Face to stand on and I changed out the red heart stamp. Miss KF is mounted with dimensional dots.

I wanted to make Valentines for all of my workmates, 11 of them, but knew it would take me forever to do all that layering so I decided to scan the orignal card and then resize and print them out as digital cards.

They are the size of an ATC or playing card. I then made goodie bags for each of them

 with some sweets and added  the card. Unfortunately, the snow kept me home from work this week

 so they won't actually get these until next Tuesday when I go back to the office.

The people who know me well, know that I will always choose a funny, silly card

 over a sentimental one. I always go for the laughs! It's who I am.

On the other hand, this year I decided to go for a more tender card for my husband, David.

I wanted to use the two little children featured in my blog header. After playing around

with the image for a while, I decided to use the blog header itself.

I sized it, added just 2 words and cut it out and

 mounted it on a kraft cardstock 6X6-inch card.

Did you make Valentine cards this year? I used to be one of Hallmark cards best

customers. Now they send me coupons all the time for free stuff...I think they miss me!

I have two more Valentine collages to show you but

 I want to make sure they have reached their destinations first.

I'll be back soon.

xoxo

New Stamps

PaperTrey Ink is one of my favorite stamp companies. Two weeks ago I bought this stamp set...

It is so cute. OK, I admit it....I also had to have the add-on set........Seriously, aren't they the most clever stamps? I chair-ish your friendship....that cracks me up!

I have been cleaning and reorganizing my scrapbook room/craft space/studio all week. (I have too much stuff!) Today, I needed to make an Anniversary card for my sister and brother-in-law. I put down the duster and vacuum cleaner and whipped this card out. Ahhhhhhhhh! It felt good to create something! (If you want to see amazingly cute cards made with this set go to the PaperTrey Ink website and look in the gallery.)

Now ,the On My Couch set has the cutest phrases and images but none for an Anniversary so I had to print my own phrase for the inside of the card...
If you need some cute stamps......run over to PaperTrey Ink! I have to get back to my cleaning!
Oh, but first, one more thing since we're talking about decorating (you know, couches?...) a new magazine is coming next Spring

WOOHOO! The co-editors are Matthew Mead and Ki Nassauer. WOOHOO! Until it comes out in print, we can follow along on their new blog
OK, I'm finished now.....until next time!

Michele's Birthday & other fun...

This is going to be a quick post because I have lots to do in preparation for my Book Group gang (and husbands) coming for a cook-out on Saturday.

Today, Mimi & I went to visit our friend Michele and celebrate her birthday. When we arrived, Michele had Constant Comment iced tea prepared for us with honey bear stirrers to sweeten our tea. We sat on her patio with our tea and these goodies....chocolate ganache, white chocolate cheesecake, chocolate mousse and a cookie crust. Decadent but delicious! (No, I didn't make them, Sam's Club is my friend!)

This is what I made for Michele....

a little Birthday Fairy artboard. Everyone has to have a cupcake on their birthday...with glittery sprinkles, and of course, a gold crown. Vicki Chrisman has me loving fairies and I have purchased a number of digital collage sheets from Patty at Lisa's Altered Art. She has great images and always a $1 special on Wednesdays. The Bingo card is a flea market find (I got a whole box of them) and this one actually has Michele's age on it but....I'm not telling!

This is the card I made for Michele, which was my adaptation of this card made by Dawn McVey. I loved the simplicity of it and the dimension of using the butterflies. Thanks, Dawn, I'm always inspired by your cards.

OK-I'm almost done now. Don't you think these flowers are cute?

I didn't buy them in a package......They are a font!Each flower is a letter of the alphabet. You can size them up or down. I printed them in black on cream colored cardstock, cut them out, layered them and used a brad for the center. How cute are they! Flowers, any time you want them! I love it! (my friends all know I am a font freak-I think I have about 550 fonts-YIKES!)

Well, that's it for today. Had a great time with some fun friends.....Happy Birthday Michele!

Until next time.......enjoy!

Randomness

I've been looking over my blog today and have decided that it's too wordy. I have a tendancy to just blab on and on and on (my friends are laughing right now!), so this post will be few words but lots of pictures. If you have any questions (the few who actually read my blog) please leave me a comment. Speaking of comments, I'd love to do a blog candy give-away thing but I need you to let me know you're out there. More about that next time.


The first picture is a thank you card for a dear friend who hosted DPG & me for dinner at her tres chic loft apartment.

I decided to post these next pictures after seeing some of the dress forms from this post of Tiffany's and seeing a blog friend, Heidi's, "Spreckels" dress form. I don't have a full size dress form but I do collect dress form stamps. The third picture features my three favorites.
Some recent garage sale, flea market, antique store finds. I've decided to collect children's chairs. Not quite sure how I'm going to paint them or what I'll do with them once they're painted (I'm sure Charlie will score one of them) but for now, I just like looking at them and imagining all the children who have sat and played in these chairs.When I was a kid (before electronic games.....heck, before color TV) we would drag the kitchen chairs into the living room and line them up and play train...or bus...or car. Some of my bears decided to go for a ride today.I've been collecting bears for a long time. These are among the most recent additions. My wonderful friend, Pam, has given me three of these four.When I had my back turned for a moment, they must have circled their chairs around to chat...enough train rides for now. This guy with the bell around his neck is one of my favorites. All four of these bears are Boyd's bears. Some day I'll drag my handmade bears and "others" out to show you. Do you see the stenciled ants on my wall???? I don't like real ants in my house but the stenciled kind always make me laugh when someone discovers them for the first time.

While we're on an ant theme.....here are some pictures of the invitation I made for my Book Group Cook Out for this year. I always use ants in some way on my invitaions and this year I found this cute picnic basket stamp at Stamp Fanci. Aren't the ants carrying the chicken drumstick and the olives a hoot? I stamped the basket on patterned scrapbook paper, cut them out and mounted them with dimentional tape for a 3-D look. If you're in the neighborhood next Saturday, stop in!Thanks for visiting today. I will plan some blog candy for my next post. Thanks to all of you who leave a comment, it means so much to know you're out there.

No new pictures of Charlie this time. So I will leave you with this vintage postcard image. (Does anyone know how to turn this image around?)