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.

Blog Hop Entry

Well, I haven't had time to make a new card for the blog hop but I do have a Scor-Pal and love it. I am going to re-post a card I made before and I think that the use of the Scor-Pal was good. I made a frame around the center items and then made holes in the front so that I could run ribbon through the holes.

Thanks for looking! This is a short post but I'm super busy with a lot of other things going on around here. I'm supposed to be getting a light tent soon. Thanks Niki Estes for the suggestion! The FedEx website says that it's been on a truck for delivery since last Friday....hmmmm. Strange.


Supplies:
All PTI stuff

Father's Day Card

Well, I wasn't going to post this until after Father's Day but I realized my dad and my FIL don't look at my blog so it's okay!

I have ordered a light tent and am so excited. I bought it for my purse business but am also going to use it for my cards and paper products.

I need to get started on some purses because I'm going to start having Plaid Parties. They are similar to Stampin' Up parties where the hostess can earn benefits for merchandise sold at their party. Oh, and I just got a really cool design for some new business cards. I ordered my design from nbcreative on etsy.com. If you haven't been to etsy yet, you should check it out. Everything sold there is handmade and I could literally spend all day just surfing around. It really inspires and encourages me to expand my own purse business.

I've been busy with a knitting project. I've been meeting with a great group of ladies at the local B & N where we sit and knit on Thursday nights. I'm getting ready to start my second big project. I just am about finished with a drop knit scarf. I will post pictures when I have the last stitches bound off.

This past weekend I went to Nashville with my Bunco friends. We rode on the General Jackson, saw the Peking Acrobats on ship which was cool!, got my first pedicure, played at Dave & Busters, and watched Made of Honor (cute). On Sunday we ate at the Aquarium restaurant which is such a cool experience. It feels like you are eating underwater.

Okay, now onto the card. I submitted this card for the PTI GSS contest but did not win with this card. I still really like the vibrant colors. I'm really looking forward to next month's GSS because my SIL is pregnant and I'm going to make a goodie basket for her. (cover your eyes April :)).

This card uses only Papertrey Ink supplies. Race over to the site because their products rock :).

Close up...I just love close ups:

Hoppy Birthday

Edited to add: This ensemble was highlighted as an honorable mention on Nichole's blog. I feel so honored and the other projects are great. Go check them out here: Capture the Moment.

This is another entry I had for this month's PTI submissions. Today's project was a gift bag set for a boy's birthday. The project was supposed to be a boy's birthday card...there's where I went wrong :). However, once I thought of stamping on the tissue paper my mind was on a gift bag. I did make a little card though. I just got out a kraft bag and put the front decoration on. I stamped the frog from Pond Life stamp set all over the place...on the tissue paper, on the card, and on the front of the bag. I used the Spring Moss ribbon, ink, and paper along with the white cardstock. I had some Me & My Big Ideas rhinestones that coordinated very well with the colors.

Close up of tissue paper

Kraft bag

Little card

Mother's Day Shadow Boxes

Here are the shadowboxes that I made for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. I think that she liked them. I used all PTI products, which is now my staple product even though I have a ton of other great stuff that I need to start using! I highlighted Garden of Life and just love these flowers! Alli and her designs rock! I used Berry Sorbet, Aqua Mist, and Summer Sunrise. I used Lemon Tart on all of the shadowboxes. I have been meaning to find a way to reuse the acrylic cases that the stamps arrive in from PTI. I looked at them and immediately thought of home decor and the shadowboxes seemed to fit. I put a band around the case and stamped the polka dots with Polka Dot Basics in Lemon Tart. I used my lovely Nestabilities that I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have them. All of the products are PTI so I won't include a supply list.


Close-ups of each box...which one do you like best?

It's Been Too Long

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted a card or any project. I am going to post a few peeks of the Guest Star Stamper entry that I've submitted this month. I'll post all of the pictures once the entries are shown on the Papertrey Ink site.