Bath and a Haircut – Two Barks!

Daisy the goldendoodle is just the cutest little fluffball – especially after a bath!

It’s Almost Time for VBS

And I’m testing out some of the crafts!

One of the crafts we’re going to make is an ‘under the sea’ corkboard.   The kids will take a corkboard tile (had to look long and hard to find these at a decent price) and paint the top blue leaving the bottom brown for the ‘sand’.  Then we’ll let them stencil or paint in seaweed on the bottom. 

 The little circles are clear, flat marbles with little circles of cardstock punched out and a fish sticker attached to the bottom.  We’ll glue these onto the heads of flat thumbtacks and take a photo of each child to put on the cork board for them to take home.

One of the other projects is a seashell suncatcher.  The book we’re using suggested making these with acrylic water (the kind that floral shops use with silk flowers).  You place some small items on a plastic plate, mix the fake water and pour it into the plate.  After it hardens, you take it out of the plate and you get something that looks like this:

It’s actually quite cute – I also added glitter flakes and fine glitter to my sample (you can see it better in the photo below).

The only problem is that the acrylic water dries to a tacky finish, making the suncatcher flexible, but making it sticky to handle.  In fact, you don’t even need a suction cup to hang these – they’ll stick right on the window all by themselves!

I just ordered some clear resin compound to try as well – I’m going to see if it dries to a better finish before we buy large quantities of fairly expensive acrylic water.

Better living through chemicals, right?

What’s Blooming in My Garden

Here are a couple of things blooming in my garden this week…

I have these beautiful clematis flowers that are intertwined amongst my climbing roses:

The roses will be blooming soon along with this other wonderful clematis vine:

The flowers on those vines will be a bright, beautiful purple – I can’t wait to see them all in bloom! I’ve been trying for YEARS to get that vine to take off and of course, the first time it bloomed, the flower was on my neighbor’s side of the fence! But this year should be a show-stopper on both sides.

I also have some red flame honeysuckle vines starting to bloom:

My husband wants me to take this one down because it’s become entwined with our gutters. If he had built me a trellis or pergola, we wouldn’t be having this issue. 🙂

I also have a nice, late blooming lilac:

The window about it is my craft room – can I tell you how HEAVENLY is smells in there with this beautiful bush right outside?

I also have a small herb garden going:

And some MONSTEROUSLY large hostas:

I may have to split these next year.

I also have a few rhododendrons blooming – one for the first time:

And some of the seeds Emily and I planted are starting to grow – the green beans, morning glory and squash seeds have started to poke their heads up…

I love spring!

A Few More Card Samples

Here are some cards that I made a while ago but never got around to posting.

On the card below, sentiments are used as the flower stems and some bling is added to the flowers in the form of gems.

This card uses a spectrum pad on watercolor paper spritzed with water for a soft effect. The flowers are embossed with gold embossing powder.

This doll form was over-stamped with a definition of ‘thank you’ and then cut out and hinged with brads. The wings are embossed with silver EP on silver paper and she is wearing a metal mesh dress with a ribbon tied as a sash.

The lace background on this card is embossed with white embossing powder.

The sunflowers were done with the ‘rock and roll’ technique to add color around the edges. The Print Pattern diamonds were accented with a white gel pen.

The chipboard ‘h’ was colored with ink using a direct-to-paper technique and then over-stamped with the Weathered stamp.

This is a fun paper bag card.

The large letters stamped on the background of this card also spell out Thank You.

Accordion Scrapboxes

While I was at the craft store the other day, I purchased two of these accordion scrapbooks-in-a-box to make for Emily’s preschool teachers. They came like this:

I thought that they would make great little end-of-the-year presents. I finally had a chance to work on them today – I think they turned out really cute!

Here are the finished boxes on the left with the closed accordion books on the right. I covered the front, back and sides of the boxes with paper. The books slide into the boxes:

I used the Stella Ruby paper collection from Basic Grey along with these BEAUTIFUL, huge flowers by Prima. I love that the ribbons I put behind them makes the flowers almost look like a little corsage!

Since the boxes already had black ribbon on them, I had to find a color scheme that coordinated with the black ribbon. I think Stella Ruby worked very well.

I cut out the letters with my Cricut machine using the Doodle cartridge. The paper and letters are adhered to the box and the book with ModPodge to make it more durable.

I filled the inside of the accordion books with photos that I kept uncropped and then matted on black cardstock to make it an easier project – there were fourteen panels on each book, front and back, including the covers.

I also thought it would be nice to include some quotes about teachers, teaching and education. So I Googled some quotes (24 different quotes – 12 for each teacher), printed them out on transparencies (after a minor situation with some thin vellum melting in my laser printer), cut them apart and adhered them over each of the photos with brads. Here’s an example of one page:

What was nice and easy about this was that by leaving the photos uncropped, each one had some empty space that I could use for the quote.

I hope the teachers like them (and that they don’t read my blog and ruin the surprise…).

"Let’s Hear It For the Boys" Stamp-A-Stack Card Samples

Whew – let me tell you…designing cards only for men and boys is a real challenge! It’s really tough not to use ribbon or flowers anywhere on cards.

After a whole day in my craft room, I finally came up with five designs that I like (at least three others made it only as far as the recycle bin) for my upcoming Stamp-A-Stack this Thursday night.

If you’re attending the SAS and would like to be surprised by the cards, don’t read any further on this post!!!!!!

I’m going to give my guests several options for the sentiments on each card so that they can make them for birthdays, thank you’s and other occasions.

I still have room in the class if you’re interested in attending – just send me an email and let me know. We’ll make two of each of these cards for a fee of $18 (all supplies and envelopes included).

My Irises Are Finally Blooming

Just a pretty picture from my garden…

We have a large shed in our backyard and I have beautiful yellow irises planted around the base.

These are another ‘found’ plant – there used to be an overgrown, empty lot next door to us and these were growing in it. I rescued them out about nine years ago and planted them in our yard. They bloomed nicely for a few years but then needed to be divided to bloom again. I split them up the year before last, but they didn’t bloom nicely again until this year.

Gardening certainly teaches me patience – good things come to those who wait (for a few years!).

Cool Yardsale Finds!

While we were camping this weekend, I found a few unique items at a church yardsale just outside of our campground.  Both of these were purchased from the sweetest little old man – he said he was 85 years old and just loved to chat!

I got these really cool vintage thumbtacks:

They have numbers on them and were used as window markers to mark which window went into which opening.  I think they’d be great on a card with the number matching a specific birthday.

On the right is also a little container with two dice – probably from an old baseball board game.   Thought I could use these as an embellishment on some baseball project someday.

I also bought this item from him:

Doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s hinged on the left and inside are lots of pages of vintage ephemera:

These are color pages from the Philadelphia Inquirer from the 1950s – 60s.  There are a whole bunch of pages inside – I can’t wait to find a project for them!

Oh – and this was also in the book:

It’s an old Phillies poster – my husband thinks it’s from the late 1980s-early 1990s.  Maybe I can list it on eBay and some sort of collector would be interested in it…

Daisy the Goldendoodle at 15 Weeks

Here’s this week’s shot of Miss Daisy Doodle…

She’s getting so big!  And she’s doing wonderfully at obedience class.  The trainer said that she’s one of the smartest dogs she’s ever seen!

Here’s a nice shot of her and Andrew on the beach this weekend, too:

Looks like it should be titled, “A Boy and His Dog”.

Camping in Cape May

We went camping for a second weekend in Cape May and just returned – we had another GREAT time!

The weather report was really gloomy, but we ended up having beautiful weather anyway.

The campground had a demonstration with some therapy dogs which is what I would like to do with Daisy when she’s older – I think she and I would get so much out of it!

Speaking of Daisy, can you believe we packed everything up but forgot to take the dog’s crate with us?!? But she did great anyway – she just slept at the foot of our bed.

We stopped at the beach at Cape May Point again – it was an interesting day at the beach. There was a wedding right behind where we were sitting:

And there was also a large youth group meeting on the beach at the same time:

In fact, Andrew took the dog for a walk and Daisy was quite the ‘chick magnet’ for him with the youth group girls:

Who can resist a cute puppy (and a cute boy)?

We also managed to get a GREAT family photo on the beach – it may just end up as our Christmas card next year…but I wish I were having a better hair day:

Daisy loved the beach again…but she did test Andrew’s strength a bit…

And she LOVED the water and sand this time – she kept digging holes and burying her nose in it (can it feel good to have tiny stones in your nostrils?)…

With her eyes and ears, she looks like some sort of a mad dog in that photo! But she was having fun – TRUST ME!

I really noticed this weekend how good the camping trips are for me and my mental and physical health. It’s so nice to get away from the crazy schedule, the computer, the yardwork, the laundry (although I did have to stop at the laundromat to wash the sheets because some very muddy little dog jumped up on our bed Saturday morning!)…

I feel so much more relaxed and refreshed after a weekend away. Plus, it’s nice to spend some quality time with my family – especially my husband. He coaches Little League and is also the treasurer of the league too, so I haven’t seen him much since baseball season started back in March. But for the last two weekends, we got to just sit by the campfire after the kids went to bed and enjoy each other’s company for a few hours. It really does wonders for me!

We have a week at home before we go camping again – we can’t wait!