"Wedding March-ing"

Andy and I went to a lovely wedding Saturday evening. I NEVER used to cry or even get the least bit misty at weddings, but now that I'm seeing the "kids" that grew up with my boys going down the aisle, I can't keep the tears away! And I turn into a sniveling mess when one of them has a baby!

I got to know the bride, Becca, when she served as the drum major for our marching band. I'm sure for some of you that conjures images of a girl in a knee-length pleated skirt with a baton. Others might picture someone standing on a podium simply keeping time. But when you commit to being drum major for the Aurora Houn Dawg Marching Band (NOT the Aurora "Marching Houn Dawg" Band--take a moment to picture the difference) you take on a huge responsibility. We have a long-lived and very impressive reputation around the state, and the drum majors are the student leaders who help keep that reputation alive. They lead both on the field and off, setting a strong example for other band members with their work ethic and dedication. When the band takes the field, the drum majors do not simply keep time. They take charge and they conduct. These students know the music inside and out, forwards and backwards, and they almost always win the Best Drum Major awards at the competitions the band travels to each fall. Becca was very young when she stepped into the role--I think she was a freshman, possibly a sophomore--but "she wore the uniform," if you know what I mean. Having been unbearably shy until my senior year, I was impressed that an underclassman was able to carry herself with such confidence and poise.

Fast forward a few years and guess who Becca called about invitations when she started planning her wedding.... Yep, ME!

Becca wanted a casual country wedding using sunflowers and mason jars in some of the decorating, so I came up with this design for her invitations...

The card on the left is a thank you note. We decided to go with a monogram on half of the note cards and "Thank You" on the other half. That way, any left over cards can be used for any occasion. The card with the wording pulls out of the pocket and the RSVP and other information are tucked behind it.

We were able to work the mason jars into the Save the Date cards:

That is a piece of vellum that I ran through the printer then through the BigShot with a mason jar die. It really popped when I inked around the bottom and the shoulders of the jar. The "zinc" lid is a piece of silver metallic cardstock, also inked to bring out the lines, and that's a Top Note die behind the jar.

That's it for today! I have to get back to learning how to address envelopes using Excel. I don't enjoy using Excel or Word nearly as much as, say, Photoshop or Coolibah! 

Go figure!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Easy Peasy Needle Case

How adorable is this little needle card?! My mom saw a picture of it through one of my links to the Heartwarming Vintage Blog and mentioned that she would like for me to print one for her, so...here you go, Mom!

This image is part of the Sewing Ephemera set offered by Crafty Secrets. You can find links to their online store at their blog. I won the whole sewing themed set in a giveaway! Sandy has lots of those! 

I printed two copies of the image on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 heavy white cardstock, then cut them out and scored the fold lines. When it's all closed up it's about 2.75 x 3.5 inches.

Can you see the tiny button in the middle of the bluebird's head on the bottom half? That's a brad that I put there to work as a closure. The little flap up at the top will slide under it. The legs of the brad show right now, but they're about to get covered up....

I cut a piece of kraft paper about 2.5 x 3.25 (just smaller than the folded card) and ran a line of adhesive along the bottom. It will hold the needles, so you only want one edge glued down.

(See--the legs of the brad are under the kraft paper.)

When it's all folded, the little button brad holds the flap very securely. You could also tie it closed with string or use a string and button/brad combination. It might even stay closed just by tucking the flap into the top, but I liked the little brad. :) 

Pretty easy, right?! I'm sure you know a seamstress, quilter, or cross-stitcher who would love to keep her needles in an adorable little case like this. If you're not crazy about the image on this one, you could make one out of any cardstock. But how could you not like this one?! If you print it the same dimensions I did it will be just the right size to hold a gift card to your needle crafter's favorite fabric/craft store! 

That's it for tonight! Now I'm headed over to put this up in the Heartwarming Vintage Linky Party. Have a great week!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Free June Desktop and (Masculine) iWhatever Calendar

Wow! What a busy month May has been! Time to slow down and enjoy some warm summer days. 

It's also time for a new calendar for your iWhatever!

I forced myself to go flower-free in honor of Father's Day (and my dad's birthday on the fourth!) Not that men don't like flowers, but I have been a little heavy on the pink & girly the past couple months. Totally flowerless is a whole lot harder than it sounds! Compared to my normal frilly, flowery, fru-fru calendars, this one looks a little bare! Never fear--I promise the July calendar will be all girly-girled out! 

If you need a quick reminder of how to save the calendar to you homescreen or lockscreen, click HERE.  Or if you would like to make your own version, click HERE to learn how I make mine on my iPad with Coolibah (my favorite app!) If you make your own, feel free to use this ^ June calendar, or you can do an online search for a free June 2013 calendar. 

 Here is a desktop version. It's a bit less busy, with more open space around the edges so you can more easily see your icons. I'm sure my husband will be very happy to see something besides pink on the computer screen! 

Happy Father's Day, Honey!

 I already have a couple of projects ready to show you, so I won't be gone so long before my next post. Until then, I hope you have some wonderfully warm weather and some time to enjoy it!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

The Perfect Combination

Happy Mother's Day! This "card" is an odd combination of digital and paper elements. The main image looks like the front of an old greeting card. It is one of the first things I ever downloaded from the Heartwarming Vintage blog. They sell some amazing images, but they have several you can download for free, too, like I did with this one. When you go to the blog, just scroll down the page until you see a list of "Free Crafty Secrets Vintage Printables." As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to enter it in their May Linky Party. 

The original image does not have any words, so I added the "Happy Mothers Day," printed it on plain paper, and cut it out. 

Next I laid the picture on a sheet of pink glitter paper and took a picture of it. I saved the new picture in my iPad and used Coolibah to make this pretty page, pulling in the photo of the card front like you would any picture.

See--kind of a weird combination--digital, then paper, then back to digital. That is not the "perfect combination" I refer to in the title of this post.

The perfect combination is Mother's Day and Graduation.

Just think about it. After eighteen years of cleaning, counseling, and cursing, you have a child who is taking a HUGE step toward moving on in life. Isn't that pretty high on the list of things we want the child to accomplish? 

That is why I love having high school graduation ceremonies on Mother's Day. It is a perfect combination!

I don't have a high school graduation to go to today, but I do have a COLLEGE GRADUATION to go to Thursday!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!

We are almost ready. The house is all shiny clean. (Well, maybe not all.... My scraproom is just a tad bit messy, as I am preparing for Project Grad again. That's the excuse I'm going with, anyway.) We don't have a lot of extra space since I commandeered an entire bedroom for the aforementioned scraproom, so some friends loaned us their fifth wheel trailer. It's so cool! Andy and I just might sleep out there and turn the house over to the in-laws! 

This is the graduation announcement I made for Michael. His degree is in Electronic Media Production, which is exactly what it says. Working in any type of electronic media--tv, radio, film, or music. 

The background is an image I found online--an electronic control board. Very appropriate, right? There were several similar photos, but Michael liked this one. I used PhotoShop to make the sheer white block and add the words. Then I printed it on photo paper and mounted it on some shimmery cardstock. You didn't expect me to go completely sparkle-free, did you?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day and all of today's graduates stay safe!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Free May 2013 iWhatever Calendar and Desktop!

Well, I hope everyone liked the color scheme for April's calendar, because this one is quite similar!

In my world, May is pretty much dominated by Mother's Day and graduation ceremonies, so I either had to go with black and white or some combination of pink and roses. I think the white flowers under the word May are supposed to be camelias, but some of the flowers in the paper are roses. ;)

Please feel free to download of this lovely calendar to whatever device you like! If you need help, you can find it HERE. Or if you would like to make your own, you can learn how to do that with Coolibah if you go HERE. If you don't like those options, you can always print it!

This is the calendar I started with if you'd like to use it when you design your own:

Or here it is in white....

And last but not least, here is the desktop version. I like the one with the pink background, but since that might be a bit much if you share your computer with a manly-man, I switched that out for a cream background with two taps of my finger. 

If he complains about the pink, tell him I'll make a blue one in June in honor of Father's Day!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Chalk Paint Paisleys (and a Chair!)

Good evening! Sometimes I come up with a quippy little title for a post and that makes me very proud. Other times I pretty much punt. ^ Oh, well. It covers all the important stuff!  :)

The home decorating and DIY blogs are full of posts about chalk paint, and you can't avoid all the chalk-paint-painted furniture ideas on Pinterest. (Not that you would want to!) Nevertheless, Yours Truly had never so much as dipped a brush into a reclaimed margarine tub of the stuff. Not being one to miss any opportunity to make a mess (just ask my mom or my husband), I felt compelled to give it a go. 

I understand that there are some lovely brands of chalk paint on the market. They come in a wide range of  colors and go on very smoothly. But I was planning to paint a chair that took a detour on its way to the burn pile, so I didn't want to pay the rather high price for one of those colors. I did a good bit of reading online and found several variations on basically the same three recipes. One uses Plaster of Paris (POP), another uses non-sanded grout, and the third uses calcium carbonate powder. I went with the POP because I'm cheap frugal. 

I've mentioned before that I'm not really one for recipes. But I thought it might be a good idea to use other peoples' experience to my advantage. I went with a three-to-one ratio of paint to POP, with enough water to dissolve the plaster powder. In a reclaimed margarine tub (You thought I was joking, didn't you?!) I mixed a little water into the POP. Once it was nice and smooth and about as thick as pancake batter, I added the paint. I used a flat white that I kind of splurged on. I was shocked at how little odor that paint had. 

I used a cheapy disposable brush and slapped on a couple coats of white, then added a few drops of acrylic to tint most of the paint that was left, saving just a little white for the stenciling. I wish I had taken pics, but it was just an experiment. I didn't expect to blog about it!

I painted the seat, the strip across the top, and the...uhh...flat piece in the middle of the back(?) with the blue. Honestly, I only left the legs and the spindles white because I wanted to get to the paisleys and it takes a long time to paint around all those spindles. Then I got to break out the stencil!

After all the paisleys were painted, I scuffed everything up a bit with sandpaper. I tried to keep it to the areas that would have worn over the years, like the tops of the stretcher where your feet rub, or where you'd grab the top to pull the chair away from the table.

Next I mixed a little stain with some good old fashioned furniture wax. I think I've had that can in my utility room cabinet for 15 years! I'm sure it was happy to be put to use. The stain was a very red shade, so the white paint looked very pink until I buffed it. I learned that if the wax sets up too thick (in this case, too pink!), you can rub in a little fresh wax and it softens so you can remove a little. Nifty!

Ok. You saw the seat up above. That pic is now the homescreen on my iPad. Here is the rest of the chair:

And another angle....

It will soon have a spot at our booth at Ava Belle's Flea Market in lovely downtown Aurora, Missouri. Hopefully someone will adopt it and give it a loving home. I see it in a nursery. 

Now that I'm on the chalk paint bandwagon, don't be surprised to see more painted furniture, and yes, most likely more paisleys!  ;)

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Finally!

Have you ever started out with an idea for something that sounds SOOOOO simple, but it turns into one mess after another? That could be the title for this post, but it would probably be too long and I would cause Blogger to crash! 

I had projects like that back when we used to sew some of our own clothing because you could buy the fabric and make an item yourself for less than you could buy it pre-made. I would make a bad seam, or put the wrong sides together instead of the right sides, so I would rip out that seam and re-do it. Then I would have a big wrinkle in the middle of my seam, so I would rip it out again and re-re-do it. Then I would--you see where I'm going. By the time I sewed the same sleeve in three or four times (sleeves and zippers were the WORST!), I knew I would never wear that particular article of clothing if I lived to be 120 years old.

When I came up with the idea for this card, I thought, "This is going to be the quickest and easiest card ever!" My plan was to print a bobbin card that I downloaded from Crafty Secrets, tie a ribbon on it, maybe add a button, and adhere it to a card. You can see the bobbin cards and lots of other sewing themed items HERE. 

I opened the bobbin card in Picassa, a free editing program, and typed "Thinking of You" in the oval in the center. Then I printed it (and ran out of ink!) and cut it out. That's when I realized how spoiled I have become with all my dies. I tied a piece of seam binding tape around the bottom and added a cute flower button. But when I tried to adhere it to a card, it just didn't work. It needed something. So I decided to add a mat behind the bobbin card. Then I spent ten minutes digging through my dies to find one that would work. But alas, I was in store for more fussy-cutting. (Val, this one's for you!)

Even that mat wasn't enough--it still needed more. So I printed a blue polka dot paper that came in a Valentine kit from Crafty Secrets to use as a mat behind the red, then one more layer of red behind that. I love the color combination of anything-close-to-Baja Breeze and just-about-any-shade-of-red. Especially if polka dots are included. I don't understand it, either.... 

Apparently my computer was not in the mood for so many digital images, because as I started to work on these photos, the computer started to throw a fit. Who said it was ok to update in the middle of my photo editing?!

All's well that ends well. I have a lovely card for a dear friend, a new blog post after only a week, and an entry for the Crafty Secrets Linky Party! Click over and check it out! Hopefully I'll be able to make my link with no problems....

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!