Happy Leap Year!

It is Leap Year 2012. It was Leap Year 2004 that my now husband and I had our first date. It was on a Sunday that year. Leap Year 2008 we celebrated by going to the same place we did in 2004, but this year my husband is working. I'm celebrating by hanging out at the library and posting in my blog.

I recently bought a sewing machine and a serger. I'm so impressed by people who can sew. I love the thought of being resourceful, and I really love how various pieces of material come together to create something. So far I've made pillowcases for Sam, envelope pillow covers for my niece Aliya, and reusable shopping bags. Here's a picture of the pillow cases:

I found the tutorial for these pillowcases on 'The Crafty Gemini' blog. She also has a lot of tutorial videos that you can watch on YouTube. She does a wonderful job of explaining. She has a Facebook page as well, and I was so happy with my pillowcases that I submitted this photo. She responded back that same day. That may seem like no big deal to you, but I was just thrilled. As far as the pillowcases, my plan (once we have a house of our own) is to keep our bedding real simple. Our bed sheets will be a solid color, and we'll get matching duvet covers for the comforter. Then I will dress things up with the pillow cases. Now to get a house...

I'll be taking photos of some of my sewing projects soon. What's been happening is that I get so excited showing them to people, I ended up giving my stuff to them so I don't really have a lot for myself. That's okay. It just means that I get to go to the fabric store and make some more!

Will hopefully post again soon!

Yes, I'm Still Here

Holy Crap! I knew it had been awhile since I had posted, but I didn't realize it was THIS long! I need to get my butt going. What keeps me from posting is the fact that we don't have high-speed internet where we currently live, so things take FOREVER! I have to schlep my stuff to the library, and with everything I've been doing, that has been a challenge to find the time to do even that. Plus, after while, you get to the point of, 'Why bother'. You feel (or at least I do) foolish 'cause you've been away from it this long, whoever had followed you before is probably long gone. Well, even if nobody follows me, at least I can say that I still made an effort.

The other thing that's been making consistent posting difficult is me getting all the products I use organized. It's nice to be able to tell people what you used for your creations, and to provide them a link to it as well. There is a really neat program out there called InLinkz ( http://www.inlinkz.com/ ). I'll probably butcher its purpose, but here goes: InLinkz helps you to create collections of links. When you create a link in this program, you're not only providing a URL to the product, but a picture and a description as well. InLinkz will help you capture all of that and file it away. Then, when you mention that product in your blog, at the end of your post you can list all of your products, and have a picture of it as well. If a reader is interested in purchasing that product, they can find the picture, click on it, and it will take them to the website and actual webpage that you provided. Anyway, to get all of that organized takes time. Even moreso with a slow internet connection. And, as I've been attempting to utilize InLinkz, I have been having some issues. Not all of the websites that I use are cooperating with it, so to speak. I have InLinkz's staff hard at work on this even as I type. The plus side is it's making me learn all about the Safari browser (InLinkz works best in Safari).

So, I guess what I'll do is post for now and edit them once I get InLinkz all figured out.

More to come. I promise.

Back to School and Other Things

Hey there!  Well, Sam went to school on August 18th.  He started Kindergarten this year.  Last year he was in preschool in the same building, so that wasn't anything new.  This year, however, he is in school ALL DAY!  A big change for him, and for me as well.  It's been a bit bumpy.  He gets weepy in the morning before we head to school, and sometimes he does cry, which breaks my heart.  He also doesn't want to eat lunch at times.  Part of that is because he's a picky eater, another part of it I think is nerves.  I want to be sure that he gets something to eat so this weekend we're going shopping to find a lunch box and some containers that we can put his food in.  I'll look through the menu and have him bring a lunch on the days that I know for sure he won't eat what they're offering.

It's hard to see him go through all of this, but hopefully soon he'll realize that this isn't such a bad thing and start to enjoy himself.  As for me, I've been able to exercise and do things that I've been wanting to do for quite some time.  Let me show you what I've done this past week:

This card I made for my husband's nephew, who just recently had a birthday.  The stamps I used came from DeNami Design.  I love their stamps because they are so whimsical.  They're also fun to work with and color.  The stamps I used for the front was their Rocketship and Outer Space Set stamps, which includes the sentiment shown.  I colored everything in with Tombow Markers, and used a Sakura glitter pen to fill in the stars.  I cut out the sentiment and it's borders with my Spellbinders dies.

Here is the inside of the card.  Look at that little Space Chickie, isn't that the cutest?  DeNami Designs has a whole bunch of little chickie stamps, and I want every one of them!  The sentiment comes from their Everyday Greetings stamp set.  I used Tombow markers to color the chickie and Spellbinders of course for the layering of him.  For the sentiment I cut all of that by eyeballing it on my paper cutter.  Not too shabby, if I say so myself!

My hairdresser and friend also had a birthday earlier in August and I made a card for her as well.  I used another DeNami Set called Party Time.  Here it is:

The DeNami website has lots of card ideas, and this card was inspired by their card called 'Pastel Dots Espresso Happy Birthday'.  I hope I did DeNami proud with my version.

I did another DeNami inspired birthday card for a friend of my mom's.  I just finished it  yesterday so my mom could give it to her on behalf of Sam and I:

This one uses, along with the Party Time stamp set, the Birthday Cake stamp.  Very festive, don't you think?

I have one more birthday card to show you.  This one is again for my mom's friend.  This card I made for my mom to give to her:

I got the layout idea from the Spring 2011 volume of Paper Creations magazine.  The layout featured a Pure Innocence stamp from My Favorite Things (MFT).  I wanted to try that layout, and I thought that this stamp would work well with it.  This stamp is also from MFT, and it's from their 'Who's That Girl?' collection.  This one is called Sunflower WTG.  For the flowers I used a Die-Namics die, also from MFT, called Upsy Daisy.  I used Copic Markers for her skin, and paper pieced her dress.  To be honest, I can't remember what papers I used for her dress and the rest of the layout, and I'm not writing this near my craft table so I can't jump up and document that.  I'll have to post that some other time.

Whew!  That was one busy blog post.  With Sam in school I'm planning on creating and posting more often.  Until then...

Do your best!
Kim

Happy August!

Whew!  It's been quite awhile since I last posted.  Done a lot during that time, and I managed to make a couple more cards.

My sister's birthday was July 29th.  I wanted to make her a card, and I really like the design I saw quite a few months ago in Paper Creations magazine.  I made a card using that design for a friend of mine back in May, and I used it again for my sister.  I did change the color scheme.

I used the Pure Innoncence ~ Birthday Princess stamp from My Favorite Things, and their Jumbo Ric-Rac Die-Namic.  I paper-pieced her dress and crown, and colored the rest in with Copic markers and Prismacolor pencils.

The next card I made because I had just got the new stamp and couldn't wait to try it out:

This is 'Make a Splash' from the Pure Innocence collection from My Favorite Things.  I also used their Sunshine and File Tab Die-Namic.  I colored her with Copics, added some glitter to the flower in her hair using a Sakura Stardust Glitter pen, and added little gems to her sandals.  I paper-pieced her swimsuit using paper from Echo Park's Splash collection.  Some of the background papers came from that collection as well.


In my last entry I showed you what I did for my niece's pretend restaurant called 'Nataliya's Cafe'.  It was a hit with my nieces and everybody that participated.  The girls were so excited when I showed them their shirts, and they were so cute taking people's orders.  I also had them put out a 'tip jar', and they got around $52!  Definitely something we'll have to do in the future. 

Do your best!
Kim

Nataliya's Cafe

We're down in Carthage right now, and we're going to be heading to EAA's AirVenture 2011 next week.  This is like Graceland for my husband and his family.  So, this coming Monday we will have quite a few family members hanging out at our place. 

John's niece Natalie is 9, and my niece Aliya is 11.  Ever since they were little they would help me in the kitchen.  One of the things they now both love to do is play restaurant.  A couple years ago for Christmas I gave them a 'restaurant kit'.  I bought some menu folders, a small serving tray, a waitress apron, a bus tub, and a plastic water pitcher.  Since both of them will be here I thought the night before we head to Oshkosh they could open their restaurant at our big cookout. 

For the name of the restaurant I combined both of their names and came up with "Nataliya's Cafe".  One of the catch phrases I came up with is "We'll see ya's at Nataliya's".  Using my Storybook Creator software from Creative Memories I created their logo and menus.  The menu items are what I've chosen to prepare for the cookout.  I also made the front page of the menu (the 'Good food, great service' page) a little smaller and did an iron-on transfer to the left lapel of their 'work shirts'.  The logo with the catch phrase I left fairly big and did an iron-on for the backs of their shirts.  I also made even smaller ones of the front page, cut them out using my Cuttlebug and a small circle Nestabilities die, added a purple Lacey Circles cutout, thread a ribbon through it and use them as napking rings.

Here is page 1 of the menu, and the one I reduced down to iron-on to the lapel of their work shirt, and also made napkin rings:

Here is page one of the inside of their menu:

Here is page two of the inside of the menu:



 And here is the back page of their menu, and also what I made as an iron-on for the back of their work shirts:

I had so much fun doing this!  I found clipart from a website and used that for their faces, and also the flower border and font for the inside of the menu.  My niece Aliya has already seen these, and she's super excited about 'opening the restaurant'!  I hope Natalie will be as excited.

Do your best!



Whee!

Hey there,
I just had to play around with this stamp set. It's another Pure Innocence set from My Favorite Things, and it's called 'Start the Day With Whee!' I love this little girl. She's so cute!

The card base is the Pure Luxury Heavy Base weight cardstock in Kraft, and it's from Gina K Designs. The light blue mat is from the Martha Stewart collection, and the red cardstock came from Hobby Lobby. I stamped the image using Memento ink in Tuxedo Black onto an X-Press It blending card, and colored it with Copic Sketch Markers. I cut it out with Spellbinders Classic Rectangles Small Nestabilities. The red cardstock was cut with Nestabilities Labels Seventeen. The cloud dies came from My Favorite Things as well, and I colored them with Prismacolor Pencils and OMS. The sentiment at the top was cut out with Spellbinder's Banner dies, and I stenciled it with Tim Holtz's distress ink in Tea Dye, I believe.

The other papers I used came from the Stella & Rose collection from My Mind's Eye. I used them for the Open Scallop Border and the Simply Scallops Medium, again from My Favorite Things, and also for the girl's dress.

Whew! I hope I didn't leave anything out! I've been trying to write down everything that I use after I make each card. It's best for me to do it right away while I have everything on my table. I need to start keeping note cards so I can refer back to those if I want to make them again.

Thanks for stopping by. I'll soon be posting a project that I did using my Creative Memories scrapbooking software Storybook Creator. I'm so excited to show it to you!

Do your best!

Welcome to July!

Sorry it has been awhile since I last posted. We've been busy with life. Also, our current housing situation is a bit unique. We are planning to move to my hometown, so we pretty much live with my parents until we can get our house sold. The house is big enough that we each have our own areas, with the exception of the kitchen. The property we own is very special to my husband and he would like to keep it in the family. For now we're waiting for his nephew to sell his house so he can buy ours. Until that happens, I don't have a lot of room to do my cardmaking. I'm basically using 1 table to do everything. For me, I need about 3 or 4!

Back to the card: A cousin of mine just had a loss in her family. Her mother-in-law passed away after battling cancer. I made this card to give to her. I used Gina K Design's Pure Luxury base weight cardstock in Ivory for the base of the card. I then took a separate piece of lighter weight cardstock and embossed it using Spellbinder's Impressabilities called Flourish. I then sponged it with Tim Holtz's distress ink in Antique Linen. The sentiment came from Gina K Design's stamp set called 'Take Flight', and was stamped on some basic Ivory cardstock I got at Hobby Lobby with Memento ink in Rich Cocoa. I used one of the dies in a set from My Favorite Things called '1st Place Award Ribbon & Die Set' to cut out the sentiment, then inked the edges with the Antique Linen distress ink. The butterflies were punched out with Martha Stewart's Monarch Butterfly punch. I did that in both Ivory and Tan cardstock and after I inked the edges of the Ivory butterfly, I layered them using micro pop-dots.

Hopefully I will be able to submit my next post a little sooner. Until then, do your best!

-Kim