Benjamin Moore Aura Paint. Wowza!

There is nothing fun about painting, but it's amazing how one can of paint can transform a room and freshen up the place.

When it comes to paint, one things for sure: You get what you pay for. We always go for the best paint that covers well in one coat.

If you are like me and you love good paint, you'll love this stuff! Thanks BzzAgent for giving me the sample of this paint in exchange for my opinion.

I won! I won the October Unity Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge!! :)

Happy dance, happy dance! I'm so excited. I win the awesome prize that Unity offers for their Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge. I get a past Kit of the Month of my choice and 100 other stamps. I'm going to share these with my daughter since she helped me enter. :)

I just love their kits.

Okay, so I have some work to do on my terrarium!

Check out this great article about terrariums. These are beautiful!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/garden/03terrarium.html

So these Unity Sketch Challenges Are Addicting!

The September Unity Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge is up and I am D-U-N --Done! :)

My little helper wanted to make her own card for this challenge too, so I said, "Have at it!" and let her loose in my craft stuff.  Here is her lovely creation!

We both chose the February 2010 Kit of the Month to take on this challenge. It's the first kit I ever purchased and it's still one of my favorites. I just love those little birds! My card is actually a card front. I think I might use it on a scrapbook page. I'm all about making things that I can use and keep. I'm also way behind with my scrapbooks, so really I should focus any craft energy on those.

These nests are great to make. You really can't mess them up and all you do is layer (and layer, and layer) strips of paper together, round out the bottom, and cut the top to the desired shape. And there you go. A nest! I also dug through my scrap pile for the paper piecings. It's so liberating to get rid of those scraps that I've been hanging onto for these sorts of occasions. I think the orange dotted paper is Creative Memories paper that I've had forever!

And there you have it! This is what a Friday night looks like around here! Mom and daughter sitting around at the craft table. She is so my little clone and I just love her!

Back to School: Tag for Taylor's Bag! :)

There are so many great things about being a parent, but I just love how I can make cute things for my kids that they can use. Taylor, my little crafting buddy, gets a lot of things that I make. It's not that I don't like making stuff for my boys. Taylor just likes appreciates them a little more, I guess!

Unity Stamp Company has a challenge going on right now for back to school and I decided to make a tag for Taylor's book bag! And here it is:

I didn't have that cute Unity schoolhouse stamp, so I drew a school bus and cut it out. I also dug around in my Kits of the month and pulled out a variety of stamps from past months for the background collage.

Back to the bus: I'm so proud of it! I drew the basic shape of the bus and cut it out with my wonderful Martha Stewart scissors. Those things cut like buttah! I then punched out some labels using my EK Success Large Photo Labels Paper Punch for the windows. I trimmed them down and sponged them with CTMH Heavenly Blue ink. After that, I punched out a couple wheels, sponged some White Daisy around the edges and took out my black pen to accent the bus. When it was ready, I took out the VersaMark and sprinkled clear embossing powder over the entire bus. I love how it turned out!!

After that I used my Cricut to cut out Taylor's name. I used the packaging from a pack of rhinestone stickers for the plastic sleeve for the tag. Works perfectly and it will keep it nice and clean!

This was a fun project and I'm glad that it has a practical use.

Button, Button, Who's Got The Button?

I do! I love using buttons on my projects. I never throw an old shirt away without salvaging the buttons first, either!

I made an amazing discovery today: Sorting buttons is only fun the first two minutes. After that, well, it's work. And lots (and lots) of tedious repetitive work! My button sort project has been long overdue. I know I'm certainly not the first person to sort my buttons by colors, but hey, I'm here now! I was lucky enough to have one of my little helpers with me who actually enjoyed putting the buttons in their proper jars.

I've been gathering these little jars for a few months. Glass jars have been on my GoodWill hunting list ever since I got the itch to make a terrarium. I love grouping items together that are not alike, but similar and I think these jars look so pretty together.

Some of the jars have lids, some don't. A couple are cute old milk bottles. Love them! I also love how the next time I need a button, I won't have to dig around for the right color! They're all here, organized and will look pretty on my shelf when I'm not using them!

Now that I have these buttons all sorted, I think I need more buttons to get these jars filled to the top! :)

I finally did a Unity Stamp Company Sketch Challenge

My email inbox is a dangerous place to be if you're a message. I always have the best intentions to read my emails, but too often, they get "saved as new" only to become one of the many other messages buried underneath hundreds of other emails.

That's what usually happens with my Unity Stamp Company emails too, but a couple days ago I noticed a message that said, "Six Days Left for the August Challenge!" It was about the Unity Kit of the Month Sketch Challenge and I decided to print it up and actually do it this time! Besides, I was needing a little inspiration. What better way to get the juices flowing than with a sketch?! My first sketch ever at that!

So, here it is! I used my June 2010 Kit of the Month, Fly Free. I just love the beachy feel of this kit. It's so "California".

I gave it sunrise/sunset colors. Love those warm colors that you feel when thinking of the sun. You probably can't tell from the picture, but I actually broke out the embossing powder for this card too...twice! On the soaring bird and on the sunny waves below. I found a button in my jar with a sunburst look to it so I knew that needed to go on there too!