10,000 Hits!!!

I've passed 10,000 hits and that can only mean blog candy!

Just post a comment with your favorite vacation spot and you'll be entered in the drawing. Please be fair and just make one comment.

I am going on vacation this Saturday and won't be back until July 5th so I will choose a winner on July 7th.

What does the winner get? Well, since I so enjoy PTI stamps, I'm going to offer that to the winner too. The winner can choose a $15 stamp set, a perfect match cardstock (12 sheets), and I will also include the coordinating 6 X 6 patterned paper.

June PTI Blog Hop

It's time for another Blog Hop with Papertrey Ink! This month's challenge is to use acetate in the project. This was a very fun challenge and I found three different ways to use acetate in my projects. They are not new techniques but they do turn out nicely. The three ways I used acetate were: stamped on already formed acetate (i.e. the letters), emboss the acetate with my Cuttlebug, and make the card base out of acetate.

I'm just going to put all three of my cards in the same post. Have a great time hopping from blog to blog to see how everyone used acetate. You can also go on the PTI forum to chat it up with a bunch of great people: http://forum.papertreyink.com/forum/

These are also the first pictures I have taken using my new photo light tent kit
(That's a mouthful!). I need to work on making sure the cards don't look crooked. I love the kit though!

Supplies:
PTI Honeybee Stamp Set
PTI Lavender Moon and White cardstock
Palette Inks: Berry Sorbet, Lemon Tart, Lavender Moon, Spring Moss, Noir Black
Lemon Stickles
Transparency sheet
Rhinestones by Me & My Big Ideas

Supplies:
PTI Bitty Baby Blessings Stamp Set
PTI cardstock: white, Lavender Moon, Lemon Tart, Spring Moss, Sweet Blush
Copic markers
Heidi Swapp acetate letters
Cotton Candy Stickles
Martha Stewart Punch

Supplies:
PTI Wedding Day Stamp Set
PTI cardstock: Lavender Moon and white
PTI Lavender Moon ribbon
Nestabilities
Rhinestones by Me & My Big Ideas
Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots embossing folder
Transparency sheet

I Got Tagged!

Julia at Create with Me (http://createwithjulia.blogspot.com/) tagged me after we'd found each other's blogs through Papertrey Ink. So much good comes from PTI.


Okay, now for the random facts about me.

1. I can't get puns and phrases right when I say them. It's as if my brain is working faster than my mouth.

2. When I first learned to knit, I was twisting all of my stitches and then even when I thought I was doing it right, I was moving my needle in the wrong way.

3. I love to speak Spanish and travel to Spanish-speaking countries. I've lived in Spain and Costa Rica.

4. When the school year starts in August, I will have been at 4 different schools in 5 years as a teacher.

5. Not really about me, but our cat Zoe loves to lick and suck on ears and our other cat Storm loves to lick deodorant, Listerine, toothpaste.

6. I talk in my sleep, a lot.

7. I don't know what it means to do too much: I work full time, make purses as a small business full time, I'm trying to get a job at the local community college as a part time Spanish instructor, I volunteer to do a lot. I love being busy though.

Okay, well I'm supposed to tag 7 people but I'm going to let anyone that wants to answer to go ahead. Please let me know if you tagged yourself so I can read about you too.

Sophistocated Baby Food Jars

These are not just regular baby food jars, these baby food jars are now sophisticated after being dressed up with PTI products. This was my favorite project of the four that I entered into the GSS Contest. If you want to see all of the winners and honorable mentions, go to Nichole's blog: http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/2008/06/june-honorable.html. I am proud to receive an honorable mention for the set of three toiletry canisters for my sister-in-law. There is a lot of great work over there.

Here are the tops of the lids. I just love the itty bitty images and coloring them with the Copics was wonderful. I especially love the purple elephant.

Here are a couple of close ups of one of the jars of baby food. I realized that I could get really anal and coordinate the food color with the PTI supplies. I thought it was so neat to be able to do that. Thank you Gerber!


Supplies:
baby food jars
PTI cardstock
PTI Bitty Baby Blessings patterned paper
PTI Bitty Baby Blessings
Me & My Big Ideas rhinestones
Palette Ink
Copic markers
PTI ribbon

Diaper Raffle

I was at my dentist a month or so ago, sitting back in my chair, listening intently to the dental hygenist go on about a baby shower she went to when she mentioned the idea of a diaper raffle. Each person who came to the shower contributed $1 for a raffle ticket and got their name in a drawing for a door prize. She was telling me about the website where I could buy the raffle tickets but I knew I could make my own :).

Here's the finished product!
I made the diaper on the front of the pail with the largest Nestability circle. I made 30 raffle tickets and colored all of the ducks with my Copic markers.

Close up of the diaper:

Supplies:
random pail that just happens to be Lemon Tart
Bitty Baby Blessings and Simple Alphabet stamp sets
White and Lemon Tart cardstock
Copic markers
yellow Spica AtYou glitter pens for duck's bill

Bottle-Fed Advice

I wanted to use the Bitty Baby Blessings to decorate this project for the baby shower. I know that giving words of advice is very popular at wedding and baby showers so I wanted to create something unique. I decided to buy some bottles and decorate the bottles so the guests could give the mom "bottle-fed advice". I wanted to make covers that would come off easily and these do; they just slide off and stay in-tact. It was a bit difficult to hold everything in place but in the end, I really like how it turned out.


Close up of front of the bottle decoration (I LOVE the sailboat!):

Just so you can see the cover off of the bottle:

Everything is PTI :)
patterned paper
Summer Sunrise, Spring Moss, Lemon Tart
ribbons
white cardstock
Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder
Nestabilities
Simple Alphabet stamp set
Bitty Baby Blessings stamp set

BTW, the graduation party was really great! We had such a nice time hanging out. The girls spent the afternoon crafting: my sister-in-laws were working on a blue jean quilt, my mother-in-law was working on a rag rug, and I was knitting an afghan. The guys were playing euchre. Then, we went to the Japanese steakhouse for dinner which was yummy. We came home and played Apples to Apples. Then, my day was made because I realized the party for PTI is tonight! I was thinking it was tomorrow because tomorrow is the 15th but it was such a great surprise to know that it is tonight. Such a great ending to the day.

PTI GSS Submission

Well, most of my craziness has calmed down and summer is here. I have had such a great day, just creating things. Everything I made today is for my sister-in-law's baby shower. Some are gifts and others are for games to be played. I still need to make the invitations, a picture frame gift, and a few other things I can't think of right now.

I'll share one of my projects here tonight and then I need to get to bed. My husband's family is coming over tomorrow for a graduation party for me so I have to get up early in the morning and cut up veggies and fruit for the trays. Why didn't I just buy them premade.... :)

The project I'll share tonight is a gift. I got cotton balls, Q-Tips, and baby washcloths. I found these great glass containers at Michael's. I put every single one of those Q-Tips into the jar too! My fingers were sore after that. I used Bitty Baby Blessings, which I love! Everything was Papertrey Ink, of course. I used their new kraft paper, mixed with Aqua Mist since the baby's room is going to be pale blue and chocolate brown. I thought this would coordinate. I chose the duck, baby onesie, and the boat. I also used my beloved tools: ScorPal, Copic markers, and Nestabilities. These are my staple items.


I'll share some more close-ups tomorrow. I'm sleepy...

Life Has Been Crazy!

I'm sure everyone can say that their life is crazy but I've never had so much going on at the same time. Here's my list of craziness:

1. I just accepted a new job with a local high school
2. FedEx lost my photo light tent kit and I've talked to a dozen representatives in probably a dozen states (I'm supposed to meet the driver on Tuesday and he's going to give me the money for the lost package)
3. I found out Thursday night that there is an additional person that we don't know on our auto insurance and we are trying to figure out if the company has our records messed up or if it's a case of identity theft
4. When I went out to the mailbox yesterday, there was a vacant form in the box. Our neighbor moved out so I suppose it was put in the wrong box. I went to the post office and sure enough, our mail was there.
5. I have my first Plaid Party today and I have seven more covers to finish within the next hour and a half.
6. I've been meeting with my knitting group and I've been really into knitting lately. I just bought 18 skeins of yarn to make an afghan, my first big project.
7. We just finished up our school year yesterday.
8. Just the other regular stuff.

Needless to say, life has been slightly busy :). I hope to get some projects put together for the next PTI Guest Star Stamper Contest.