hello

Another group of mass-produced little post cards; I just love how these turned out!

I used the long rectangle nestabilities for the ivory mat and the scalloped base. The floral DP is some I had left over, just cut a little strip and adhered to the pink. Stamped the little birdie from Cornish Heritage Farm's Moca Chica set (I *heart* this set); colored with Copics, placed on a larger pink circle and put it all together. How fun, quick and easy these are!

You can write your note on the front AND on the back so there is plenty of room.

Thanks for popping in; hope you have a GREAT week! Hugs, ~M.

Warm Apple Pie

I saw these adorable boxes on Sharron's blog, "No Time To Stamp"; she has some great posts on presentation; love, love, love her ideas!

I purchased this Warm Apple Pie candle at Wal-Mart and could not WAIT to try and make one of the boxes; I just can't believe how easy it was!

This first picture shows everything I used to put the box together. The paper is by Wild Asparagus and I hate to admit how long I had it without using it! That's okay; it came in PERFECT for my little project. I don't have a paper shredder and didn't want to buy paper to go inside the box, so I crimped the left over Wild Asparagus paper, then cut it up into small strips for the inside stuffing. The candle smells so dee-lish!

Believe it or not, there is NO STAMPING in this project. The final wrapped project has a "sweet" tag that came with the Wild Asparagus set; I just punched the corners to fancy them up a bit; added the 3 flowers (that once again came with kit) with dimensionals, tied it all together and ta-da, there you have it! I have to say, this is one of my all-time favorite projects; quick, easy but smells oh so good! I love candles!

Thanks for dropping in; its great to see you! Hugs, ~M.

Spider Mints Anyone?

I saw the cutest spiders on Rochelle's blog "Impressions". Rochelle has to be one of the best 3D stampers and I'm alwasy CASEing her ideas. She was also nice enough to punch me a TON of circles and scalloped circles so I can make some sammiches of my own - I STILL owe her for that.

I made several of these little spiders and then put them in a Halloween treat bag with some other candy. The inside of the spider is Peppermint Patties - YUM!!

These were so easy to make - all with punches, add some googly eyes and then I had the neon green dots from Gina K Designs - the noses are very sparkly IRL.

On this 2nd spider picture you can see the Peppermint Patties in between the scalloped punches and the final picture is an up close of my little spider friend.

Not much else for tonight; its been another really long day - not feeling so whippy and didn't get home till 9:45 p.m. from a volleyball game, eating and the grocery store - I'm definitely ready for Friday; too bad we start with a meeting at 7 a.m. tomorrow! YIKES!

Thanks for stopping by; hope you're having a great week. Hugs, ~M.

Halloween invitations

WOW; I have some new photo software and let's just say...its going to take some figuring out! And this is NOT the week to mess with me - LOL!

Here are some Halloween invitations I did recently; I used the same sketch as THIS post.

They didn't want them "scary" but they really liked the card I did before with the tree and bats; too bad the spider web paper was from last year; I really liked it with these images, but alas, it wasn't to be.

Purple was one of their favorite colors, so I think I got some purple in there, what do you think?

Pretty straight-forward stamping; I punched a circle, placed over the bats and then sponged the colors on - Pumpkin Pie; Perfect Plum and Going Gray.

The tree and bats are embossed so they really stand out. The details of the party are on the back side, so the card doesn't actually open; strictly two-sided.

This past weekend we also got a new hunting dog, Babe. She is sooo tiny; DH thinks she only weighs about 35 lbs. Each of our children have a dog and I have one - even though they really belong to DH and he hunts them; we each claim one as our own. HA!

Babe belongs to our middle one and let me tell you - she LOVES Babe! Our DD has taken Babe for 1 or 2 walks per day and today she brought her inside because it was sprinkling and she didn't think Babe would like that. Too cute! Here's a couple pictures of her with little Babe.

Thanks for stopping by; I love when you visit! Hugs, ~M.

Spooky Sweets!

Yum, this little pillow box is filled with some "Spooky Sweets". At the grade school that our youngest two attend, they have secret pals for the teachers - what a GREAT idea! This is my first year to participate and I"m very excited. This was the first gift I made for my secret pal and I delivered it along with a Diet Coke (the teacher's favorite drink).

The funny part? I don't know the teacher I'm assigned to, but I know her husband pretty well. Hmm...that sounds bad doesn't it? Well, he's been a big encouragement and fan of our middle one playing basketball. When our DD injured her knee last year he was asking about her, always encouraging her when she plays and he's just a great guy. Anyway, when I went to the school to drop the gifts off, I had trouble getting in the door - you know, security and all. Well, when I finally got in, there was a teacher walking by and she went straight into the office...I was right behind her. I asked the secretary "who was that"...yep, you guessed it, it was my secret pal! So if she noticed what I had in my hands, I won't be a secret to her anymore. LOL

I added some clear glitter to my pumpkin's eyes and mouth to add some fun.

Next I have a picture of one of our DD's showing love to her guinea pig, Patches. And last is a slideshow of our oldest daughter's last football game. It started out pretty warm, but once the sun went behind the stands, it got mighty cold. You can see a picture of her changing into her long sleeve shirt and then someone helping her put her uniform top back on - it made me chuckle. She's normally extremely modest, so seeing her change just below the fence made me chuckle.

And one more thing...on my soap box here...our oldest, the cheerleader, just cut her hair (pix in previous post); anyway, they STILL make her put it up in pigtails. It makes me so mad; her hairstyle is so very cute, I was hoping we wouldn't have to do the pigtails but it's a requirement. URGH! :(

Oh well...she's still a cutie patootie (thank goodness she doesn't read my blog, she wouldn't like being called that)!

Have a great week and thanks for popping in! Hugs, ~M.

My personality!

This made me laugh!!

The Recipe For Michele

3 parts Panache 2 parts Seductiveness 1 part Brilliance Splash of Giddiness Limit yourself to one serving. This cocktail is strong!

What's the Recipe for Your Personality?

My Red High Heels

I can't help but think of Kellie Pickler's song, "In My Red High Heels" after I created this card. LOL

I did some wedding invitations a few months ago and the black and ivory paper is something we used in the invitations; it's handmade paper by Bradley Paper. Isn't it just gorgeous? (YKWIM?)

I love pairing it with red, black and ivory. I don't have much left, but wanted to make a classy card for the sketch challenge at SCS. My red high heel and stand comes from My Favorite Things, a new set called "Window Shopping". What girl doesn't want some nice red heels, right? I didn't say you had to be able to walk in them! *snort*

The base is SU Real Red layered with the handmade paper. The display stand is stamped on SU Ivory paper in Brilliance Graphite Black ink (my all-time favorite ink); the shoe was also stamped on ivory, but I cut it out - even inside that little strap that goes around the ankle....ooooo...gotta be careful there; I was thrilled I didn't cut that little strap off!

I then layered the ivory on SU Basic Black, layered on more SU Real Red and SU Basic Black. I decided to emboss the small red layer with the Swiss Dots Folder by Cuttlebug; I really like those dots! I used a silver shimmer pen (not sure who its made by) and then after coloring the shoe, I used the red Atyou Glitter Pen to add a little sparkle; you can't see the sparkle in the pictures, but its great IRL!

If you look closely at the full card, you can see I stamped the strappy sandal inside too; love that look. The inside says "Good friends & good shoes are always in style.", also from the Window Shopping set. Added some black sheer ribbon to finish the card.

But you know me, I couldn't stop at just one card; had to make another one at the same time!

Same layout, just flipped in the other direction and used the 3-step Hibiscus stamp from Kitchen Sink Stamps. The flowers are all done with SU Real Red in various generations. The leaves are done with SU Old Olive also in various generations. The saying "All the flowers" is embossed in black and the inside has the remaining portion of the sentiment, "of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today." What a great quote! This time I choose to add paper piercing to a couple of layers.

I had a GREAT time making these cards; I even had an hour of ALONE time in which to work - ahhh.....what a joy that is, seldom am I alone.

Hope you're having a great weekend; thanks for peeking in. Hugs, ~M.

Need a sticky note?

I saw this on Val's blog and thought it was pretty funny!! Enjoy!


EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

B4 & After - Glamour Girls

I promised some before and after pictures of the girls and their haircuts - so here we go. First one up is our middle daughter; she decided to take a shower 20 minutes b4 it was time to leave for the appt., so she went with wet hair which was just fine. We evened hers out, cut a little bit of length off and gave her some long layers. You can't tell when her hair is wet; but in the "after" picture you can really see those curls on the right side (looking at her) of her hair.
She loves parting her bangs to the side (mind you, it doesn't matter if the part is straight or not - LOL); but she has a strong cowlick in the front, like me, so it makes keeping those bangs over there a challenge, but she's young, she doesn't care if her bangs are in her eyes. LOL Might drive momma insane; but hey, that's the least of her worries.

Next is our oldest; she really went for a change cutting her long hair to medium length, adding some layers and blending her bangs into her hair. Its meant to be a 'shaggy' style although it isn't as shaggy as the pictures we took in, but she loves it and that's all that matters!

See how long her hair was? WOW; just about as long as mine - I think mine is about 3-4 inches longer than hers; I cut 2 inches off, she cut 4 or 5 off. She can wear it down as the first picture shows, or behind her ears - cute either way. And then there is a side shot. She loved posing with her new "do"!!

Thanks for peeking in; I'll be back later this week with those Halloween invitations and maybe a few more creations!

Have a GREAT week! Hugs, ~M.

Inky Doodle's Blog Candy

Don't forget to check out Korin's (Indy Doodle) fabulous blog candy - I really like this girl!!! She does great work and designs fab-o stamps!

Happy Haunting!

How many of you are ready for some happy haunting this year? Do you have your costume ready to go? What about the little people - are their costumes all ready? What are they going to be this year?

I have never really gotten in to Halloween; but I have some invitations to make so while I was playing around I decided to finish using up this spider web paper from last year. I also have some new stamps from Taylored Expressions so I wanted to use them also.

The tree and bats are from Frightful Night and are embossed with Fine Detail Black embossing powder. I then punched a circled; placed on the white card stock and sponged on the various night time colors. I think the moon would have looked better directly over the bats, but I couldn't put it there due to my anal retentiveness - YOU can't see the problem, but I do and that's all that matters in my little head. LOL Trust me, the voices in my head were talking - HA!

This card was made in conjunction with Julee's Mojo Monday Sketch #55. I strayed a bit as I didn't like the piece I had made for the bottom; so I switched and went with ribbon and the "happy haunting" phrase which is also from Taylor's Frightful Night collection.

The purple card stock was embossed with the Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes embossing folder. I just love orange, purple and black for Halloween!

Thanks for peeking in; hope to see you again soon! Hugs, ~M.

All Kinds Of Happiness - Cupcake

What a great day we've had; what about you? Our DS had a football game this morning - I even got some pictures so I'll share those later; then our two daughters and I got our hair cut this afternoon (before and after pictures to come) and then we attended Wichita State's Volleyball game tonight - those girls are undefeated and ROCK!!! Go Shocks!!

Meanwhile, today was World Cardmaking day and I finally snuck in some time to create. Ahhh...makes for one happy momma!

These cards were made for the Papertake Weekly Challenge; I love these bright colors and this adorable image by Imaginisce; I thought it worked perfectly with the challenge. Changed the colors up a bit and just had some fun.

The base card is Stamper's Select White by PTI (it's 110 lb., so it's incredibly sturdy) layered with SU Pink Passion layered with some miscellaneous DP (trying to use this stuff up - LOL); the center panel uses all the same colors. I embossed both pieces of DP with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dot folder to give it some fun texture - our girls thought it felt so cool. I used Spica glitter pens on both cupcakes, not sure you can really see the sparkle in the picture but it looks fab IRL!

I should have added this strip of green polka dot ribbon to the other card too - but my brain doesn't work that well at 11 p.m. - shoulda had a nap!

I also added two small green jewels to the "sweetie" card. The "Happy Birthday" and "Sweetie" sentiments come from Hey There Cupcake by Stampendous and allowed me to use my window punch to add the text to the cards. Each was sponged in Pink Passion.

Hope you're enjoying the weekend; thanks for popping in!! Hugs, ~M.

Hello Chica...and a little man!

I just love that saying, "Hello Chica"; it makes me smile every time!

Another card with NO STAMPING; woo hoo; kinda fun, ya know? All layers were sponged with Chocolate Chip ink; the base card is SU Pumpkin Pie, all remaining paper is from Kim Hughes Mocha Chica collection. I love the papers in her pack!!

Tied on some green ribbon with a piece of orange and ta-da - that's it!

Its been a tough week around here - very busy as usual, but just tough. I'm ready for the weekend! Our girls have a special night tonight and DH and our DS went to the high school football game. They were announcing all the flag football players, which our DS is one, so they had a great time.

Mommy had some play time! I got a pedicure and a manicure - whew - talk about feeling pampered!! I then came home for some stamping time; I'll get those pictures loaded soon.

Our DS is also playing fall baseball through the end of October; the following pictures were taken last Sunday. They've just begun kid pitch, so its a whole new world to us. Very interesting to watch. We were blessed as DS was able to pitch one inning; he was thrilled and thought that was so cool.

I also have a picture of him batting - he kinda looks like he knows what to do...but oh my, look at his face when he swung and missed - he was MAD!! :D

(you can click on any of the pictures to see them up close...might help see his mad expression - HA!)

That's okay, the boys are used to machine pitch, so it's going to take some time getting used to kid pitch.

I love watching the boys play ball! We have a football game tomorrow morning, then all the girls are getting their hair cut in the afternoon (me included). Our oldest is cutting her hair about chin length; it's just past her shoulder blades now. I hope I remember to take a before and after picture!! Then Sunday, another baseball game. Busy, busy. And for some reason, these kids think I should do laundry - what is fun about laundry? LOL

Thanks for indulging the mommy in me! I hope you have a G-R-E-A-T weekend!! Hugs, ~M.