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.