The Season of Friendship - Is just around the corner!

As I'm sitting here on this three-hour school delay morning, I'm dreaming of spring. Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I love a good snow day, but after having two months in a row heating bills that were so high that I nearly fell out of my chair upon opening, I'm ready for a nice warm front.

So in my daydream believer style, I whipped up this card to entice spring to move on in. After all, Mr. Groundhog's shadow was nowhere to be found this February 2nd.

For this card, I used my beloved Season of Friendship stamp set that Stampin Up! offers. Love that set.

For the leaves I just stamped, stamped, stamped away to fill out the tree and I love how it turned out. And what tree would be complete without a few blossoms and a sweet yellow bird perched on top? Not this one!

I love me some Circle Circus!

I have to admit that I can't tell you how many times I've flipped past Stampin Up's Circle Circus in the catalog thinking to myself, Pssht! Who needs to spend twenty eight dollars on a bunch of circles? Well, Self, you do; that's who!

I recently became a Stampin Up! demo and when I was putting my first order together, I did a quick search to see just what the dealio was with this set and I was just floored by all the fun projects other stampers have made with this fun set.

Here's a thank you card that uses a bunch of inks and every single one of the stamps in that Circle Circus set. I have to say that this is now one of my favorite sets!

Love this nest.

I love making these simple nests. It's just strips of paper, but the overall effect is just lovely. (If I must say so myself!)

This nest also makes a great embellishment on a scrapbook album title page. When my youngest was born, I used one of these nests with the title, "A new bird in our nest." Sigh. So sweet!! Now my little bird is five years old! Whew. Time really does fly on by when you have kids! (Pun intended. Get it... birds, nests...flying?)

Shark! Halloween costume.

I got into the Halloween spirit a bit early this year and this weekend I was given the opportunity for uninterrupted craft time. (Hubby was out of town!)

So naturally, I ran down to Hobby Lobby and picked up some supplies to make this shark costume. A friend of mine from school that I'm now friends with on Facebook, has this adorable picture on her page of her and her little brother from a Halloween many moons ago. In this picture I was given the inspiration to take a stab at making a shark costume for my youngest child. Her mother, who was my elementary school art teacher, had made this glorious shark costume for my friend's little brother. I took the picture and figured up a pattern. After a couple hours of sewing and a little bit of hot gluing, here's my cute Chase posing in his new costume! I may sew the glued items down later on, but for now it will do!

The second photo gives a better view of the sleeves/fins. Chase was asleep when I finished the costume so his big sister tried it on for me. This was before I added a few more teeth!

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NES Controller Birthday Invitations

My son will be 10 a week from today! I can't believe it! This is probably the last year he'll let me make his party invitations, so I wanted to make something that he would really like. Here's what I came up with and he LOVED it!

I love it too! Obviously it's a simple design. I used my paper cutter for the base and background. For the buttons, my Cricut Sans Serif cartridge proved to be very useful! My little Xyron was a life saver for all of these tiny parts. This was a fun project and I love how it turned out!

I made a skirt! A real skirt!

Alright so I've played around with making pillows, sewing buttons on and little things like that, but this is the first thing I've ever sewn from start to finish using a pattern. And it wasn't terribly hard! Just a little tedious and time consuming at most.

When I first pulled out the pattern I almost stuffed it back in the envelope and walked away from it. I was just so over stimulated with it all, but then I sat down and took one step at a time.

I started by cutting out the pieces that went with the skirt that I chose to make from that pattern. (Skirt C) And then began pinning the pattern pieces to the fabric.

Here's where I almost stopped again. Pattern lingo is so simple that it's confusing to a beginner! I didn't know what the heck "Cut 2 on Fold" meant. I called my mom (the master seamstress) and she didn't answer. I tried her 3 times! I even tried calling my dad to see if he could put my mom on the phone. Then I finally Googled it.

So here it is. I can't believe that I didn't mess anything up. I almost did a couple times, but I kept my brain on and here it is! My creation. And my beautiful daughter posing in it. It's a little longer than I thought it would be, but I'm still proud of it!