Patriotic Letters

I'm feeling a bit guilty I let the ole' blog gather a couple of cobwebs, but I'm back to give a sneak peak of some of the decorations I created for our upcoming "3rd" of July/Housewarming party this weekend!!!We have been super busy getting the house in order over the last couple of weeks, and the remaining "junk" boxes unpacked, but I think we're as close as we'll ever get. In the middle of unpacking, I'm surprised I found the time to do a bit of decorating and craft making. You might remember back in this post how I made some festive X-mas decorations with some wooden letters, paint, mod podge, and scrapbook paper. Well, I tried it out again, except this time I used some cardboard type letters I found on sale at Michaels for 99 cents (score!).I used the same red and white paint I used on the X-mas letters to paint my U-S-A letters. It went a lot faster this time since I didn't have to sand the letters before painting them, but I did have to be careful not to over saturate the letters with paint for fear they would break down and get all gooey on me. I think I may prefer these letters over the wooden ones. For one, they're a lot larger and easier to see from across the room, and two, the bottoms are flat which allows them to stand up straight on my mantle, where as the wooden letter were sort of propped up against the wall.

I won't bore you with all the details since the process was pretty much the same as my x-mas letters, but you get the idea with my pictures. Lucky for me I was armed with a 25% off my entire purchase coupon (including clearance items!!!) when I went to Michaels, so this project ended up costing me less than $8.00. Hard to believe I know but here's the break down: Three letters @ 99 cents each; polka-dot ribbon @$1.00, blue ribbon @1.00; three sheets of scrapbook paper @ 35 cents each; three wooden stars @ 65 cents each; I already had the paint, mod-podge, red and white ribbon, and glitter used to decorate one of the stars on hand, so all those were free. Add everything up, subtract the 25% off coupon, and you've got yourself an inexpensive, patriotic mantel decoration. I'm hoping to take lots of pictures of the rest of the decorations I have planned for the party on the day of when the tables are all set and the house looks all pretty. But for now, I'm linking this up to Centsational Girl's Stars and Stripes Party!!! I just love her sense of style and have gotten a ton of inspiration from her.

Fathers Day!!

Please forgive me for the horrible lighting; it was late, I was tired, and my camera battery was low. I promise it looks much better in person than what the picture shows!!!I'm super excited because I think I finally mastered a 'masculine' card! I used CardPattern's sketch #68, and linked everything up! This sketch was super easy, and will probably be used multiple times in the future! I just love adding new patterns to my go-to sketch book for those in a bind, gotta make now cards. Not sure who this one will go to yet, either my father-in-law, or my brother-in-law. I made my dad's card sometime last year, only because I had this awesome layout in my mind and wanted to get the card completed before I forgot about it. I still have one more card to make before Sunday, in between cleaning the house and painting another room!!! Hopefully I'll get around to sharing them both once I find my camera battery charger....

I'm back with a cute card!!!

I know it's been a while, but I'm back without any further delay (hopefully)!! Let's get to the good stuff first! Here's the first card created in the new house!!! Made for a friend of mine who is probably my biggest supporter on this card making hobby of mine!! I used the Mojo Monday sketch challenge because lets face it, after taking an almost 3 week break from making cards, I needed to just jump right back into card challenges. And what a way to start!!! I found some cute buttons in Michael's the other day, and knew I had to use them right away. I also used some new (to me) stamp pens on the baby carriage to mix things up a bit. Eventually I'll invest in some Copic markers so I can start coloring my images in, but for now I'll play with my new pens!

I also decorated the inside of the card, and actually took a picture of it!! Amazing!! The image and sentiment are popped up on some foam 3-d dots so the card wouldn't look so flat.

The DH and I have had a pretty busy week, and haven't made as much progress on the house as we'd like to, but it's coming along quite well. Spring baseball ended this week in the semi-final round of the championship game. The boys played a good game, and lost by only one run. Bummer. But fall ball is just around the corner, and we still have plenty of Durham Bulls games to attend, so all hope is not lost.

We're still planning on having a 'house warming'/4th of July party this year, so we'll be working our butts off the next few weeks unpacking those final random boxes, and painting some more rooms. Yup, you read that right, more rooms implying I've already started painting!!! Stay tuned for a post in my painting adventures in the new house, and the fun I had while the DH was out of town!