Coffee presents

Hi all!  As you may know, yesterday was Administrative Professionals Day.  I've been so thankful for our two admins since I started my new job- not only have they been extremely helpful when I haven't known where something was or how to do things, but since my office is literally about 3 feet from their desk, we also get a chance to chat and keep each other company when I have down time.  So, I felt like I wanted to give them a little something to say thanks.

I found this idea on Pinterest, although the blog that it was said to be from appears to no longer be functional.  But in the sense of honesty, it wasn't my idea.

The tags were both cut with my Cricut.  The plain tag is cut from Doodletype, and the patterned paper is from Studio Calico.  I stamped the "thanks a latte" saying using Lawn Fawn's Milo's ABCs and the little arrow at the bottom is from a Stampendous set I have.  On the back I wrote a little personalized thank you note.

The latte cup tag is from the Love You a Latte Lite cartridge.  I left off the heart and word "cafe" and instead I used the Lovely Letters stamp set from Avery Elle to stamp each of their names.  These stamps are super awesome, because if you stamp carefully they go together and look like all one word.  Love it!

I went to Starbucks and got two empty cups.  Also, I got one cup full of delicious frappuccino for myself.  I thought it would be rude to get empty cups without also ordering something for myself, right?  ;)  Anyway, the Starbucks women were really nice about it when I explained why I wanted the cups and thought it was a super cute idea, and even gave me a bag so I wouldn't have to cart two empty frappuccino cups around the mall.

I stuck Starbucks gift cards down inside, put in the straw, filled it up with caramel Hershey kisses, plopped the gift card down, and put white tissue paper in the lid to look like foam.  The cups are tall sized, and it took about 1.5 bags of Hershey kisses to fill them up this full.

...and I started a third scrapbook for my dog

Here's the title page for Sophie's third scrapbook.  Yes, it's my dog's third in her series of scrapbooks.  The photo was an Instagram photo I took of Sophie sleeping in my scrapbook room while I worked one day.  I used some cardstock for the background and a piece from the DCWV Pet Stack for the paw print paper.  The three diecuts are from Deja Views Dog Days pack.  

In the bottom corner, I used an embellishment from Little Yellow Bicycle.  It originally said "10 things I love about My Life."  I loved the colors, and so I got it and so I made a new black pennant to cover up the words "My Life" and then cut the words "My Dog" out in white cardstock using Doodletype.  Then I wrote 10 reasons why I love Sophie on the tabs!

Pinspired!

My Creative Time is hosting a Pinterest inspired challenge this week.  I love the My Creative Time blog.  I have a couple of her stamp sets on my September "to buy" list.  It's hard to pick only a couple though!

I thought it was the perfect time to make a card based on a couple of pins that I had pinned to my "Card Inspiration" board.  My pinning philosophy is that once I've tried something or made something based on the inspiration, I delete the pin.  That keeps my boards under control and keeps me seeing the things that I haven't tried yet- so if you want to see the pins, you'll have to follow the links here.  They've been cleared out of my board to make room for more inspiration!

Anyway, the two cards that were the inspiration for this card are found here at counterfeit kit challenge and here at just cards.  They were both cards that used a white background and colorful tags to spell out a word.

For my card, I also used the white base.  I borrowed the idea of embossing with Swiss Dots (I should clarify:  I used Swiss Dots, I'm not sure what folder she used.)  I adhered that directly onto the card, and covered the join spot with black polka dotted washi tape from Queen and Co.  I stamped "birthday" underneath that from Everyday Sentiments from Joy's Life Stamps.  The button is an extra one that I had.

The tags were all cut at 2 inches.  They were all cut from Plantin Schoolbook except for the blue one with the P on it, which was from Doodletype.  The white letters were all also from Doodletype at 1 inch.  I used some of my homemade twine to put through the tags.  After everything was glued together, I cut the extra off of the twine.  I kind of wish I hadn't, because I think it looked better when they were longer, but since everything was glued down I had to leave it.  Live and learn.

It's almost the big day

It's almost here.  The day women dread from the time they turn 25....my 30th birthday is in August!  Aaaaaahhhh!

I've been throwing around whether or not I want to have a birthday party, and since there were a couple of challenges that I wanted to try I thought I'd make a first attempt at an invitation. 

The 30 is cut from Doodletype, and I wanted it to fill up almost the entire page.  It's a big deal, after all!  Then I wanted to add the little grasshopper from Stretch Your Imagination because...well...I think he's cute and I've always wanted to use him for something.  But I wanted to make him festive, so I added the party hat from Doodlecharms, cut with the blackout feature.  He's cut at 1.5 inches, the hat is at .75.  I even used some old Doodlebug paper for the hat- it's a doodle fest in here!

I embossed some white paper with my Cuttlebug Seeing Spots folder, and it looked SO HARSH against the blue.  So I used some blue and purple ink and one of my makeup sponges, and just inked all over the page.  It was still pretty harsh, so I pulled out my Ek Success corner rounder (the medium one) and chomped away.  That helped a lot.  Then I added the little hop marks with a black gel pen, and it was done!

Since it's an invitation, I had to include all of the information!  I used Pink by Design stamps Party Time for the entire page.  It has mix-and-match sentiments for all sorts of invitations.  It's great!  I stamped it in the same purple ink that I used for inking the front of the card. 



I'm not sure why the picture came out so yellow?  It's really a piece of white cardstock
and purple writing in real life.  I think it has to do with the flash being on.

 I plan to enter this card into the following challenges:

Fantabulous Cricut- Don't bug me
My Craft Spot- Birthday- what's your age?

January and February Birthdays

I've decided to group birthdays by every couple of months, so there aren't just post after post of birthday cards. So here are January and February 2012.

 I made two of these cupcake cards for two different sister-in-laws that have January birthdays. You can see that I put a cupcake on the outside and also cut the words for the inside of the cards.  My cardstock here was Paper Studio.  The cupcakes paper that I put on the front was from The Paper Studio.  It was a 6x12 paper pad, but I can't remember the name.  Something about celebrating, I think.  I used my new Cuttlebug with the D'Vine Swirls envelope on the green cardstock.  The cupcake was cut from Simply Charmed and I used Icicle Stickles to decorate the frosting.  The "Happy Birthday" sentiment was cut from Calligraphy Collection.

Obviously, we also had a very special birthday this year- my youngest SIL turned 16!  I cut this card mostly using Cricut Craft Room.  The cardstock and patterned paper are both from Paper Studio.  For the car, I used Craft Room to hide the frowny face that appears on the Smiley Cards car. I also used the Craft Room to weld together the words "Sweet Sixteen."  I used the Doodletype cartridge for "Sweet" and Jasmine for "Sixteen."  I was really pleased with the colors on this and the way that it came out.  This may be one of my favorites so far.

Last, but not least, is a card made for my brother-in-law.  I don't really make cards for males very often, so this one was kind of a challenge. I mean, an adult male doesn't really want something cutesy.  I can use Simply Charmed or Create a Critter for my husband, because he loves me so he doesn't mind.  In the end, I went online for inspiration.  I finally found a card here: Happy Place for Jen and made a few tweaks based on what I owned.  I didn't use the cricut for this one, just plain old cardstock, paper that I got in my Provocraft 6x12 Celebrations pack, and an EK Success medium corner rounder.  The stamp is from Paper Studio, called Everyday Expressions.  It has many different words that can be put together to form the sentiment that you want.