Cards - Finally!

Yay! I've finally made some time to stamp. Below are 2 card samples that I made for my yahoogroup list, MidMOstampangels (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midmoStampAngels/).


The above sample was made with Spring Dream (stamp set) and A Little Whimsy (patterned paper), as well as cardstock (colored CS by DCWV), black brads and Prismacolor pencils.

This second card was made with the Floral Collage Trio stamp set and Winchester patterned paper/cardstock, as well as TAC's Ivory cardstock, Prismacolor pencils and a Creative Memories mini-square Shape Maker. The image is stamped with Burnt Umber Palette ink, which was also lightly sponged around the edges of the image. I love using Burnt Umber whenever I want a vintage or "grunge" look.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out The Angel Company's latest Fall Supplement: http://www.theangelcompany.net/fallsupplement.html. There are lots of great new stamp sets, including ones for autumn/Halloween.

Ali's Room

Alison loves her new room! It's done except for hanging up pictures & her new shelves. Her room is too small to get a full size picture of the wall (no matter how I contorted myself!), but here's a few pictures to give you an idea:

She has 2 striped walls, one pink wall and one white wall. (Eventually I'll paint the bedroom and closet doors white.) I think this room will indulge her current love of pink yet grow with her. If she "outgrows" the pink, we can repaint that wall white or brown and add thin brown stripes to the pink stripes (mimicking the quilt pattern more). It was a lot of work, but it does look cool. And she loves it!

Take It Back...

Weekend project

As her reward for (finally!) keeping her room clean, we have been getting ready to redecorate Ali's room. (Jess & I spent a day and a half in there this summer and came away with 3 tall kitchen garbage bags of garbage and 6 brown paper grocery bags of books, toys & clothes to give away. The big clean up really helped inspire Ali to keep it looking nice.) Here's a before picture of Ali's room, as well as a closeup of the wallpaper border.

As you can probably guess, we have not decorated Ali's room since she was a baby. (Hey, she's the one who wouldn't keep her room clean! We've heard lots of whining over the past few years, but have held firm.)

Originally, I thought I'd get the room prepped and get the first coat of paint on the walls Friday night. (Why do I always get these crazy ideas in my head?!) OK, that wasn't happening, but surely I'd be able to get the room all ready to start painting first thing Saturday morning, right? Ha ha ha... I'd overestimated how much energy I would have left by Friday night and WAY underestimated the amount of stuff Ali had taped, thumbtacked and otherwise fastened to her walls.

Anyway, I did finally get to start actually painting Saturday afternoon. Ali wanted stripes to coordinate with her new comforter (http://www.target.com/gp/detail-tab-popup.html/ref=in_de_detail-item-display/601-3112146-2690557?ie=UTF8&parentStoreItem=0&asin=B0016A7CQ8&tabToSelect=additionalImages). Here's the sketch of what her striped walls will eventually look like:

I got the inspiration for the pattern from this blog: http://family.go.com/blog/princess_peg/painting-stripes-that-won-t-make-you-see-red--261964/. I was disappointed that she had not included dimentions for the stripes - I was left still struggling with that. So, I first planned mine making all the stripes equal to 1, 2 or 4 notebook paper lines. I divided the # of inches in my wall (140) by # of the notebook paper lines (20), so come up with stripes that were 7, 14 and 28 inches wide.

Here's Ali hard at work sanding (we had to do some spackling where there was residual glue from the original wallpaper border): Here's one of the partially completed walls:
When it's all done, Ali's room will have 1 white wall, 1 "Muted Fuschia" (pink) wall and 2 striped walls (white/pink/brown).

After an entire weekend of prepping and painting I will be so glad when we're done! Ali is SO excited about her new room, though, so it's all been worth it. She is certain that she is going to have the BEST bedroom!

What Makes You Happy...

This is what makes my daughter, Alison, happy:

This is what makes my dog, Dixie, happy:

What makes me happy? (Well, besides chocolate...) New crafting supplies! Last weekend, I bought 2 little white chipboard boxes at a crafters' garage sale. I covered them with scrapbook paper and added stamped images that I'd colored with my Prismacolor pencils. Here's the final result:

I hope to sell these at a craft fair this October. I'll be sharing some more stamping projects next week. Have a great weekend!

What I've Been Reading...

I've been reading the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray and have really enjoyed it! I was intrigued by the first book, "A Great & Terrible Beauty" when I spotted it while working in the school library. I finally decided to check it out to read this summer. I loved it! I quickly moved on to the second book, Rebel Angels, and am now almost done with the third and final installment, "The Sweet Far Thing". Part of me can't wait until I finish the book and find out what fate holds in store for Gemma and her friends. Part of me doesn't want to finish the book, though, since it is the end of the series!

These are definitely the favorites of anything I've read lately. My next read will be "Three Cups of Tea" for my bookclub. I've heard mixed reviews from my fellow readers. I hope I enjoy it enough to finish it for book club!

In Memoriam

My brother-in-law, Bob, passed away Friday after a long battle with heart disease.

We'll miss you, Bob.