Tiddbits from Dawn

Twirling Fox

Friday is our youngest grandson's 3rd birthday and he's coming to visit Saturday. I'd been thinking about what I would do for his card for awhile now. I finally decided to try a spinner card and got it all ready yesterday. I watched a video Jennifer McGuire posted last week here about making Z-Fold Spinner cards and decided to give it a try for Weston's birthday. It was fun to do!

I followed Jennnifer's directions in the video and stamped the entire Crumb Cake card base with the Hardwood background stamp. I knew I could use the Foxy Friends stamp set and Fox Builder Punch to make two foxes that would work on the spinner. The foxes were punched out from Cajun Craze card stock and the tail switched on one of them to the opposite side to make them match when they were layered onto the fishing line. The stamps from Foxy Friends were used to add legs and eyes and also the circle of leaves behind the fox. You'll see that better when the card is opened.

Little Numbers was used to cut a "3" from Pumpkin Pie card stock. It's hidden right behind the fox when the card is closed. Finally, the "Happy Birthday" from Number of Years was formed around the punched out circle from the front of the on a clear block, stamped and embossed in White Embossing Powder to finish off Weston's card. I'll put a piece of Whisper White card stock on the back of the card for signing.

We are supposed to have great weather today after a rainy day yesterday. I'm glad because it's errand running day for me. I may even have to pick up some special cupcakes for someone's birthday! Hope you have a sweet day too. - Dawn

Otterly Awesome!

This weekend is one of our grandson's eighth birthday. While he was here last week, at our first Cousins Camp, we visited the GA Aquarium where he fell in love with the otters. He even took a stuffed one home with him. Happily, a few months ago a friend of mine came to scrapbook with me and brought a stamp set with her for me to stamp and die cut some images to use later. It was otters! I am so glad she brought this set and dies but I cannot remember the name of it. I believe it was a Lawn Fawn set but I'm not positive because I can't find it on their site to tell you the name of it. BUT it was great to use for Luke's card and I'm thankful she shared it with me.

I had to pull out some retired By the Shore Designer Series Paper to use for the water on this Soft Sky card base. Clouds were strategically added to the sky with the cloud mask from the Pattern Party Decorative masks with Embossing Paste. I did this first and while the clouds dried I worked on the rest of the card. I used four other Stampin' Up! stamp sets to finish the card. I colored the party hat, from Better Together, with Clemson colors, Elegant Eggplant and Tangerine Tango. The package, found in Weather Together, was colored with Daffodil Delight, Lemon Lime Twist and Tempting Turquoise. I had to fussy cut those out. It was nice that the Crumb Cake otter has slits in his arms to hold things! I stamped a few sentiments from my friend's stamp set, too. I'm glad I stamped "Otterly Awesome". The rest of the sentiment I pieced together using words from Sunshine Sayings...again! This set has gotten a workout lately!

Inside the card are more otters! No birthday card is complete without some birthday wishes. I found these in Birthday Banners as well as the balloon. The "8" was die cut using the retired Little Number Thinlit dies.

Those otters had slits in their arms already too! It was easy to add those embellishments! Now I've got to get to the Post Office! The dog groomer had a conflict in her schedule yesterday so we'll have to wait until for her to come this morning before I can do that. But that's okay because I only got part of my cleaning done. Good thing I "saved" some for today or what else would I do?! lol  I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday!

In other news, Stampin' Up! restocked the Clearance Rack yesterday with loads of new goodies up to 60% off. To check it out click below!

 

Another Double-Digit Day

We've got three double-digit birthdays this year and this is the second. Our oldest grand-daughter turns 10 today! She is such a sweet girl and she loves crafting. She also has a coop full of chickens! I made a magic slider card for one of our grandson's birthday the end of May and thought I'd try another. I only attempted this again after purchasing the Lawn Fawn Magic Slider Card Dies. I held onto my Hey, Chick stamp set for this card.

When I started this card I remembered I had some Designer Paper with hay on it from a scrapbook project I did once upon a time. The trick was to find it, and I did!! 

As the Pull tab is enabled you'll see a little birthday sentiment and the beginning of the color start to appear. These dies are very easy to use and this card was much simpler than my last magic slider card.

Finally, I the tab comes all the way to the top and you see the whole reveal...

To add the chicken wire I used the retired Hexagon embossing folder and some Memento Black ink. First, I had to get the chicken covered up with a Post-It note. Then I could ink up the embossing folder and put the Whisper White panel with the chicken on it over the inked portion. I rubbed it really well with my Bone Folder. Voila, chicken wire! I still have my Basket Builder Framelit Dies so they were used to cut the 10 eggs out of Daffodil Delight and Whisper White card stock. The eggs were hand numbered. I put the whole thing, including the hay DSP onto a piece of Berry Burst flat A2 card base. I will definitely be pulling these dies out again!

Here's a close-up of the slider pocket...

I decided to enter this in The Paper Players challenge this week. The theme is Birthday!

I have one month to plan my next double-digit birthday card! Our first three grandchildren were born within 8 weeks of each other! Now I'm off to play with my new product that arrived yesterday. I got it all organized and put away. Now I need to get it out again. I hope you have a great day! - Dawn

"8" is Great!

Our grandson, Tucker, turns eight today! He is an outdoor boy, happiest in the woods with some critters or at the pond with his Poppie fishing. The first thing he does when he arrives at our home is hop out of the car and turn over every rock in sight to see what's under them. I wonder when that will stop, if ever? I had to use the Bear hugs stamp set to create Tucker's 8th birthday card.

This is a magic slider card that took some trial and error for me even with a great tutorial over at Splitcoast Stampers! I felt like an engineer. The bear is stamped on a window sheet with Jet Black Staz-On ink. I added the lake from Always an Adventure and you'll see why in a minute. The Happy Birthday sign was created with the Labeler Alphabet. That bear probably feels great himself holding that big "8" cut with the Little Numbers Thinlit Dies (retired). I'm not going to describe how I made Tucker's card as it would take way too long, you can check the tutorial at Splitcoast for that, but when you pull the tab, also stamped with Labeler Alphabet, watch what happens....

The bear begins to slide up....

Until he's all the way up with his full string of fish! The sentiment, also from Bear Hugs, is perfect for the day because all Tucker wants to do is go fishing! I hope he ends up with a string full of fish too!

Tucker is the last of our daughter's four children to have birthdays this year. But...that's just the beginning of birthday season in our family. Our other five grandchildren and most of their parents all have birthdays during the summer too!

I'm happy to have a long weekend this weekend. I'm starting it by scrapbooking/card making with a couple of friends tonight. After that I have no plans except to get more retired/retiring product ready to sell, oh, and getting my order from the new catalog narrowed down! I hope you have a great Memorial Day Weekend! - Dawn

Double-Digit Day

Yesterday our first grandchild had his 10th birthday! I can't believe he's already 10! I was thankful to be there yesterday morning to celebrate with him. I had actually been up there since Monday and took him to dinner by himself on Wednesday evening. They were having standardized testing this week so we couldn't have lunch with him or take goodies to his class. :( We made up for it at dinner! For his birthday he wants to go to downtown Charlotte with his dad and spend the night. On Saturday he wants to ride bikes and stop at cafes along to way to eat, specifically he wants a blueberry muffin for breakfast. This kid is a planner. We chipped in with his parents to get him a new bike for his birthday. His other grandparents bought tickets for him and his dad to go to a Charlotte Knights game Friday night. What a fun birthday he planned out!! For his gift (I have to have something wrapped for him.), which he'd been eyeballing since Monday, I told him it was a blow-up bike! It was lights for his new bike and he was so happy with them. I also made a special card. I again used my Silhouette to help me get this one done!

I used a Z-Fold card tutorial from Splitcoast Stampers to make this card. In the Silhouette store I found an actual download of the Charlotte Skyline (I removed the word Charlotte from it for this card.) and the bikes too. I re-sized them to work for this card. I cut the sunshine and clouds from a set of Wplus9 dies called Sunshine Layers and the grass is from a Lawn Fawn Grassy Border Die. The big "10" was cut with the Large Number Framelts in some retired Pumpkin Pie Glimmer Paper. It was added to the folds inside the cards with a strip of Window Sheets. The balloons were punched with the Balloon Bouquet punch and pieces of Baker's Twine were tied to each one. They were also attached to a strip of Window Sheet. My final piece was the Happy Birthday Banner created with the Birthday Banners stamp set and coordinating Bunch of Banners Framelits. Whew! There is a lot going on with this card but Grey loved it! I thought I took a picture of him holding it up but when I uploaded the pictures I took with my phone it's not there. :(

Here are couple more views of the card.

I can't wait to hear all about Grey's birthday adventures after the weekend is over! 

I hope you have something fun planned for the weekend too! - Dawn

The Tale of 6 Dolphins

Yes, you read my title correctly! Our grandson, Will, is turning 6 next week. I'm going up to visit later this week and wanted to take his gift along with me so I'm sure he has it on his birthday. Naturally, that meant I needed to get his card made too. I told you in another post not too long ago about a card I sent him last fall. I think it had a raccoon on it and he wasn't thrilled with it. His brothers told me that he even tried to give it to a friend! Well, I had to make something I knew he'd like for his 6th birthday, didn't I? Last summer we took him and one of his cousins to the Atlanta Aquarium and it was at the dolphin show that he decided (and whispered in my ear not to tell anyone) that he wanted to be a dolphin trainer when he grows up. He's since told people about his aspiration now so I think I can tell you too. Will's birthday card is full of dolphins!

My Silhouette came in really handy for this card. I used it to cut out six dolphins. It's so easy to resize the files to make two different size dolphins. To cut the circle slider I used the Sliding Star Framelits and that worked perfectly to make a circle for the dolphins to jump over that big "6" cut out with the Large Numbers Framelits. Next I had to come up with water in which those dolphins could swim. The perfect piece of Designer Series Paper was found in the pack of By the Shore DSP. I love all the color variation in this piece. Lots of Dimensionals were used to pop the DSP up off the Soft Sky card stock base so the pennies, on which the dolphins are mounted, would easily slide around the circle. Labeler Alphabet is really getting workout in my craft room and it's used again for this sentiment.

Inside the card are four more dolphins (6 total, I hope Will notices.) They're jumping through the hoop left when cutting the circle slider for the front. I stamped "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" (a little crooked) from Birthday Banners across the top of the circle in Dapper Denim.

I hope Will doesn't want to give this card away!

That's it from me today. I've been working hard on my new craft space and it's taking lots of my time. I'm heading over there now to wash walls from wallpaper removal, which is more painful than the removal itself. :(  We scraped ceilings over the weekend and sanding is the next step. Thankfully, my husband bought some attachment from his shop van last year when we were doing another project that will save on some dust! Have a great day! - Dawn

Where in the World?

Some of you may be asking where in the world have I been. I really took an unintentional extended blogging break. I even had cards made to post but no time to get them posted. They're Valentine cards but I thought I'd share them today anyway and then I'll share a little about my week last week.

This first card was the card I made for my mother. It was fun to make and could be used for other occasions besides Valentines Day. A quick water color background panel was made by inking up a clear block and spritzing it with some water and stamping onto watercolor paper. That was a great place for a die cut heart from the Bloomin' Hearts Thinlits in Blushing Bride Card Stock.

Next up are a couple of cards I make using some downloads I cut with my Silhouette. The first one is perfect for our teenage computer whiz friend, Will. He would like to build his own computer some day.

The next one was for our 2 year old grand daughter, Lucy, who loves doughnuts. I found a cute cut file for a doughnut in the Silhouette Design Store too. I used the Labeler Alphabet for the sentiment and sprinkles I found in Party With Cake. The extra hearts came from Perpetual Birthday Calendar.

Next is Greer's, our nine year old grand daughter's card. She wears purple glasses!

Okay, that wraps up my Valentines cards for 2017! I felt like I made Valentines forever. I pulled one out of my stash of cards I had made a year or two ago for my husband. He didn't notice!

As for my whereabouts, I'll keep it short and sweet. I want to say I did have a good time but it was interesting too. We went up to NC to keep two of our grandchildren for a week while our son and daughter-in-law went to a conference. We drove up on a Thursday. We took our dog along with us at our son's invitation. They have three dogs, a cat and 14 chickens themselves. One of their dogs is a 3 month old puppy, cute as she can be, but inside for another month and not house broken. Our dog, Oscar, did not like the puppy and their two big outdoor dogs did not like Oscar. Every time we took Oscar outside we had to kennel the dogs. Friday went along fine but Saturday my husband woke up and his "cold" had escalated to the point where he was weak and felt like he should go to Urgent Treatment. The flu, his shot had failed him! We had to isolate him and that left me to tend to the menagerie and the kids! I went through a whole roll of paper towels on Saturday alone with the puppy! The kids were good and we managed to get out of the house and do a few things. My husband was able to join us for a Valentine Day pancake dinner! We all made it through the week and I just felt bad (and so did he) that Poppie couldn't join in with some of the fun!

Yesterday, we had Cards & Coffee here and then I started stripping wallpaper from my new craft room. That gives me a month before our next Cards & Coffee to make some good progress on it. Have a great day! - Dawn

 

 

 

This Little Light

Okay, there are a lot of lights but they are little...

 

 

This card is going to each of our two 9 year old grandsons and they're at the age where puns are funny! Pun Intended is a great stamp set for puns and this one is perfect for Valentine's Day. I was inspired by Nance Leedy's card over at the Paper Players this week but her card is for her teenage daughter and is much more elaborate. I'm sure it will be appreciated too. The boys, not so much! After stamping the lights varying lengths the hearts were "lit" up with a little (retired) Real Red Glitter Embossing Powder from the 2016 Holiday Catalog. I can't get rid of embossing powders! To get the cords different lengths I just didn't ink up the top of the light image and then used a ruler and Project Life Journaling pen to extend the lengths. Those boys will laugh but I wonder if they'll figure out the balloon inside the card has $$ in it? They have to blow them up and pop them to get the $$ out!! :)

Inside I used the "XO from Layering Alphabet again. Those two letters are now stained red! :) I added a "happy valentine's day" from Teeny Tiny Wishes underneath.

My quilting didn't work out too well yesterday! My tension was off on my sewing machine and I didn't see it, because it was on the bottom of the quilt, until I had 1/3 of it quilted. I did a practice piece and it was fine but I spent 4 hours pulling out thread. I'm hoping for better results today. I hope your Wednesday is Wonderful! - Dawn

Doggone Cute

I will be sharing some Valentine cards this week. I've made quite a few of them since Valentine's Day is quickly approaching. I had to get mine done ahead of time so I could get them mailed off this week. You should have seen the mess I had up here in my craft room while I was making Valentine cards. Stuff was everywhere! This is one of the cards I made.

All the Valentine cards I made for our grandchildren this year are note card size at 3 1/2" x 5". I pulled Playful Pals out for a couple of cards and this doggie card is one of them. There are so many things you can do with this stamp set and I've made a few dogs already for some other occasions. Our grandchildren like dogs and I guess that's why I've made several! I love that his ears are floppy and give him some dimension. The sentiment is appropriate to go along with him, isn't it? I stamped it using Labeler Alphabet. That set got quite the workout for my Valentine's cards! 

Inside the card I used the Layered Alphabet to stamp XOXO!

This is one of our little dog lovers on her 2nd birthday. Our 2 year old grandson got one of these cute dogs for Christmas. Both of them love to "hold the leash" when we walk our dog. We thought Lucy would like one too so we got her one for her birthday. This guy is perfect for a 2 year old to walk. He walks along as you pull this leash on special feet and there are no batteries involved. She loved him and he went to the zoo with us too!

I've got lots of things on my calendar today. I'm still working on getting my new craft room ready to take wallpaper down. Doesn't that sound like fun? Thankfully, I can still work in my current craft room while I work on the new one. I may get a chance to work on it for a few minutes today. My main goal is to get our oldest grand-daughter's quilt, that she pieced, quilted so I can get it back to her! Wish me luck. You have a great day! - Dawn

 

Thinking Hearts

Hearts are what this little raccoon has on his mind today.

I'm trying to get a head start on my Valentine cards. Are you? When I saw this week's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches I decided to use it to create another one using it. I don't know why but I started looking through the Designer Series Paper Stack, A Little Foxy, and low and behold there was this sheet of cute gray hearts. Yippee! That little raccoon is so cute and so easy to stamp with the Foxy Friends stamp set. I used Smoky Slate and Basic Gray inks to stamp him. Adding Real Red card stock and ink was the perfect addition for a Valentine card.

Inside the card I added a miniature panel and a sentiment using Layered Alphabet and Sunshine Sayings.

 

Here's the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches that started this card.

I have to tell you a funny story about another raccoon card I made. I wrote each of my daughter's three boys a thank you note for some birthday gifts they made me. Each of them had a different animal from Foxy Friends. I sent Will, the youngest who's 5, the one with the raccoon on it. I went up a couple of weeks after sending the cards to babysit and noticed that the older two boys had their cards on display. So I asked Will where his card was and the other two boys quickly volunteered the information that Will didn't like his card and tried to give it away to a friend. He said he doesn't like raccoons. I'm tempted to send him this one for Valentine's! :) But I won't!!

It's the weekend! I'm taking a class at a quilt store tomorrow on how to use the many rulers that are out there since I first learned to quilt 35 years ago. It's kind of a "try it before you buy it" type class so I'll see how that goes! I hope you have something fun planned this weekend. - Dawn

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