Sunday, September 18, 2011

Early cards

My sister and my mom have been in the process of cleaning out my mom's cedar chest. She's been saving things and putting things away into that cedar chest for most of her adult life. It holds a lot of treasures, including such things as what she wore on her wedding day.

It also contains "treasures" that she received over the years from her children. I knew she probably saved some things (don't we all?), but with seven children it's hard to say how much she could realistically save from each of us.

Well, it seems that I've been doing handcrafted cards, complete with embellishments, way before it became the "in" thing to do. I don't even remember these items, so that tells you how old some of them must be.

This is a selection of cards that I made over the years. I "love" the tissue paper flower on the Mother's Day card:

For this card, I went all out. I think the best "touch" must be the artificial flowers that are STAPLED to the outside of the card.

The inside:


On Mother's Day 1964, I was not quite eight years old (would have been a little over three months until my birthday). Too funny... In retrospect, I did a pretty good job on this artwork for a seven year old.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Baby Shower Decorations - getting there...

The shower decorations are coming along nicely. I went to Michael's last night for glue and ribbon, Walmart for sucker sticks to mount my cutouts, diapers ,and a baby receiving blanket (ended up finding a few basket stuffer items), and Dollar Tree for shred and floral foam.

Although I still have the banner to make and some small table decorations, I'm pretty close to being ready to just sit back and not worry about the next two weeks. I have purchased the plates and napkins, but no plastic table ware or cups to drink out of. Amy and Rex are helping with some of the expenses because it's kind of expensive to host a nice shower, or party of any kind, these days. I still have a cake (or cupcakes) to get ordered and some kind of punch to drink. Because of where we live, we can use the center's recreation room for free, which saves about $75 dollars.

I'm not sure exactly where these decorations will go, but the stork will for sure go on the gift table. The other two will probably go on the "food" tables.

The stork was cut with my Cricut New Arrival cartridge and then layered for strength. I ended up putting his neck on a sucker stick and sliding that down into the package. I made his bow and tied that on around his neck and the stick for added stability. The other bow is one that Michael's had on clearance for $1.99 (I couldn't have made it for that price). His receiving blanket package is filled with diapers.


This basket was supposed to be done to look like a bathtub, but it just wasn't the right shape and I couldn't find one that was. So, I decided to use it as a gift basket instead and put in things that add up in cost, but are things you might not think about needing. I made the bow and used diapers in the bottom as filler. Then, I put in some floral foam for my items that are standing up. They're glued to the sucker sticks and then those are stuck down into the foam. On top of that, I added shred to hide all the "hardware" needed to put it together. It's got two headbands (with bows), bedtime lotion, body wash, socks, alcohol-free hand sanitizer, nail clippers/files, stuffed hippo and giraffe. I picked those up because they are very close to the animals on her invitations and on her bedding. I just couldn't resist them.


This basket has all of my Cricut cut-outs in it. I used the New Arrival cartridge again. I used grocery bags as filler and then added my floral foam for the sucker sticks. The cut-outs are glued to them and then attached to the foam. On top of that, I added shred and some iridescent shred (I added that after this picture was taken). It's kind of hard to see everything, but there is a bathtub and duck behind the rattle, the circle in the middle is a cut-out of booties, then the right side has a bottle in front and two onesies behind it. The safety pins are attached to one of the diapers. The three "heads" are attached to soft rattles and I got them because they matched the other animals.


Amy loves them and was very impressed that I was able to find the animals. Actually I was, too.

Next up, the banner. I'm used the baby bottle as my background and then added "Anna" to it. Once they were made, I attached the letters together with ribbon.

 

She likes it.
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I used this post to enter a giveaway hosted by a very talented artist blogger - Dribble. She does things I only dream about doing. I have to have a machine to help me create; she does things with paints and brushes and canvas. Very cool. Check it out: http://just-tish.blogspot.com/2011/09/do-me-doodle.html

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

And, the winner is....

Rene Vaughan!!!

Rene - please send me your email address so I can provide it to the My Memories consultant.


Thank you to ALL who participated. Remember, even if you didn't win the free suite, you are still eligible for a discount.  As a special gift, everyone who places an order from My Memories will receive a $10 discount and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store – a $20 value! To get this special offer, visit the My Memories Digital Software Suite store, click "Add to Cart" and enter this code STMMMS48018 on the shopping cart page. Finish the checkout and the discounts will be applied.

Thanks!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

My Memories Giveaway

Don't forget to enter the My Memories Software Giveaway. To show you another example of things you can do with this software, I decided I'd take another (free) download and create an invitation to a Halloween party. Because you can export the album pages as JPEG images, you can import them into other projects online and have them printed (such as card-sized invitations). This example is just one thing you can do.


This same idea could be used for birthday party invitations and Christmas cards. The only limits are your imagination!