Getting on with the Valentines

     Well, despite some shopping at Hobby Lobby and JoAnne's, I was still able to finish my DS's Valentine card. Very tricky this year, because he's in collage and likes to put up his cards on his bulletin board, so I had to keep it non-mushy and non-embaressing, as well as mature ;- ) That's an awful lot to ask of a mom! So I decided, no pink or red on the outside. I have picked up a lot of cool, free Photoshop brushes, at a few sites so I took some time yesterday, just going over them. One, I liked for my son, was from a site called photoshopfreebrushes.com. Who'd of guessed. I applied a few effect to it such as, chrome and wow chrome beveled edge to make it look metallic. I had the original layer on top and made that layer partly transparent for the effects to show. I also add one of the texture backgrounds that comes with Photoshop Elements. I then printed this and used it as the top layer of the card. On this I attached the word Hugs cut from the Smiley Cards cart on the Gypsy. It was cut at 1 1/4 inches from blue DCWV paper. I bowed it slightly and attached it with shiny heart brads and silver dull brads from Spare Parts. I also added faux stitching with a black glaze pen.

     On the inside, I started with a black mat. I made the sentiment digitally using the font Tabitha, which comes on Macintosh computers. After that, I remembered an idea I had while shopping, to put a list of the reasons we love him, in his card. So, I decided to make a tag and find a way to squeeze that in too. I stamped the tag with a clear stamp by Autumn Leaves called Hand Drawn Journaling Panels by Katie Pertiet with Big and Bossy and clear embossing powder. I then rubbed rubbed Ranger's Broken China ink over it and cleaned the excess off of the embossed areas. I wrote on it with a black glaze pen. I made 2 hearts out of Core'dinations Magic Paper that was black with a red core. I cut the hearts at 1 inch with the Expression using Plantin Schoolbook using the Roly Poly feature key. I then dry embossed it with Swiss Dots and sanded it so the red core would show. I used one of the hearts to help hold the tag on the card, but also attached the tag with removable tape, so he can take the tag off and save it anywhere he wants.

     What would I change? I would have planned for the tag better to begin with and moved the writing  over inside the card. Or... maybe I would have planned a pocket in the card for the tag to fit in and the it could be slipped out. Though I do like it as an element in the card, maybe I'll shorten the twine a bit yet and attach the twine across the top. The inside isn't quite right, but I like the card. I might have been able to make the digital writing narrower and that would have balanced the tag better. Ah, that sounds better.
Well, thanks again for visiting. Please give me your feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

Centerpieces... Nearing the home stretch

     Well, where we last left the saga was with the need for a trip to the dollar store. Nothing is ever that easy. They didn't have any vases with thin necks that weren't hugely tall, but they did have a couple of Valentine vases. We brought one of those home and another, thinner vase to work with and make decisions.  We decided we liked the Valentine vase, but since it was wide, the wires would tip over. We knew we had a lot of sand we could fill the vases with, but that meant we had to line them, so the sand wouldn't show. Of course the vases weren't exactly cylinders, but slightly tapered. Here is a photo of DH working on a template for the paper liners.

     While, he worked on that I cut out hearts from Plantin Schoolbook, with the Roly Poly Feature Key sized at 2 1/4 inches to fill page. I made them in both pink and red. They were embossed with a number of different embossing folders.  My DH even learned how to use the Big Shot ;- )

     Next I used the Gypsy to cut out the Emoticons, Phrases (these were sized smaller) and Speech Bubbles (also sized smaller) from Smiley Cards. Spent a "fun"evening gluing all that together. 

     As I mentioned in a earlier post, I hid many of the cuts to streamline the smilies, leaving out the cheeks, highlights and some tongues. I'm only slightly crazy. I think they turned out cute though.  I drew the black dot eyes on the ones, that have the large white eyes. We don't have a good way of getting 21 of these vases to Church, so we decided to take the cut-outs, vases, wires and sand separately and then this Sunday, the teens can help assemble them during Open Youth Lounge. We thought that assembled and put in a box they would catch on each other and get tangled. Here are some of the wires on my family room floor.

     And finally, here is what they will look like, except...... when my husband said he was able to get all of the vases at the dollar store he stopped at this morning, they were the wrong vases. Just noticed that after we were all done. Instead of the one I'll show you, they are full of red hearts and lady bugs. He's now decided he likes the ones he bought better. Good! Done! Also we have red tape, but no black or pink, right now. Hope to tomorrow. I had yellow, but I forgot the smilies have black backs, also have white, but thought pink was better for the speech bubbles. So, this is a close approximation.

     Well, considering they assigned this to me because when we did the Hoedown and centerpieces were mentioned, someone said, "We'll talk about that if there is time." I knew that meant no centerpieces. I said that I could cut something and all I did was cut a Scarecrow from Oct. 31st, a Cowboy boot from Just Because Cards and a Pumpkin (can't remember which, maybe from Stretch Your Imagination on Blackout), made them double sided, and attached them to straws which we then stuck in tin cans, this is amazing. LOL Thanks for following this od(d)yssey. Should be retuning to cards and such again, but maybe this helped inspire those moms out there stuck on banquet duty. If so, costs for 20 = $12 in wire and $20 in vases. The sand was free from our town ages ago and the paper was donated from the Church. The reason I gave you the cost for 20 is because the 2 sets of wire only made 20 we have to spend another $6 to make 1 more. It's never easy ;- ) Have a wonderful and blessed weekend.

Table Decorations underway...

     Well, finally getting to those table decorations. I figured I should post the prototype, to keep myself honest. Part of my thinking behind starting this blog, was to motivate me to be consistent. This blog holds me accountable. No you don't have to do anything, but the commitment is my motivation. so even though I had a migraine earlier today, I had to produce something. First here is the photo of the only vases we could find at the Church.

     Well, this doesn't fit with what DH and I envisioned. It's way too tall. When we placed the wires in it, our design didn't look good at all. We got done one of my bud vases, (I know there are some of these somewhere at Church, but my DH just couldn't find them) and we made the following prototype.

     The theme of the dinner  is "Love and Happiness." The plan is pink and red hears, embossed with many different folders. Many different Emoticons from Smiley Cards on the Gypsy and also a number of the phrases of the Emoticons, also from Smiley Cards on the Gypsy.  The Emoticons will be done simply, with only eye and mouth cuts, since currently I have to fill 21 vases and there are 13 wires in each vase. While theoretically, they don't have to be done until the 12th, I lose the help of DH on Mon, so I would like to have them done by the weekend. If we have them in a good place by Sunday, we run the Open Youth Lounge for High Schoolers on Sunday afternoon and I maybe able to get them to help finish them, because the proceeds from the event go to the High School Youth, for mission trips and other expenses. Now I just have to go to a few Dollar stores and see if I can get 20 more vases and then donate them to the Youth. 

     I thought I might show you some photos of our huge snowstorm in the Chicago area. With a the drifting, it's hard to tell how much we really got. there are drifts to 4 feet and spots where the snow is only 2 inches. DH, who is better at this than I, estimates our snow to have been about 18 inches.

The drift in front of my back door.

         Thanks for stopping by and spending your very limited time with me. 

Quick Card using Smiley Cards

      Finally, a card that went together quickly. This one gave me no problems and I was able to make 2 at a time, with a few design changes.  The only difficulty with Smily Cards, which is a free download to the Gypsy if you register it before Feb. 28th, (there are 4 other free downloads and it comes with 2 pre-installed carts) is there is no handbook since it is a download. You can find a cheat sheet online, but I'm afraid I can't remember where I found it. If anyone knows let me know. As I was looking for it, I found that Joy at Obsessed With Scrapbooking has a handbook on her blog Here. That would have been helpful earlier today, because the cheat sheet showed them put together, and on the Gypsy, it was hard to tell what the layers were meant to be, at least for me. So I'll go over it in case anyone else in interested. Skip down if not. The first layer of the Emoticons is the black background the makes up the eyes and mouth and goes behind the yellow circle. The shift of the key is the top layer and I cut it using Yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights. Both were cut at 2 1/2 inches. Next is the Emoticons Layers. The unshifted one gives you the cheeks, (mine were cut from peach scraps), and the shifted one is the highlight at the top of the smiley (white cardstock from Walmart). Finally, the next element of this image is the Phrase. The Thx is unshifted and I cut it from grey scraps on 1 3/4 inches. The shifted Phrase is the speech ballon and it was white cardstock cut at 2 inches. For some reason they didn't look like the Thx fit inside the balloon on the Gypsy screen when both were at 2 inches, so I cut it smaller.
     The first mat is yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights, cut at 5 1/4 x 4. The aqua piece was cut from Core'dinations paper at 5 x 3 3/4 and I ran it through my Big Shot, using Sizzix Texture plate Petite Daisies, from the Texturez Starter Kit. I didn't think the embossing was very deep so I sandpapered it lightly to bring it out more. On the inside I used the same yellow paper and made a black circle using the base emoticon at 1 inch and then the same one in yellow at 1.95 to go over (so that you could see it on the yellow background) and drew the face on it.  Actually, as I was cutting all of the pieces out, I cut out 2 of everything, because I knew I wanted to make 2 cards. I was able to use the power of the Gypsy to set up the cuts so that I could cut it all out at one time, since I could see where everything would cut-out and position the paper colors in the correct spots. I stamped and embossed the inside with a sentiment from Clear Dollar Stamps sentiments called, Church Chatter using Memento black ink.
     The second card appears below. The only differences are that I ran the aqua background through the Big Shot using the Square Patio Texture plate from Sizzix Texturez Plate Kit 2. This time I put a shim (a couple of pieces of scrap cardstock in the embossing "sandwich" to try and get a deeper emboss. It worked except for the fact that the pieces were smaller then 5 x 3 3x4 so the deeper embossing is only in the center, but I didn't mind the distressed look. I sanded this one as well. I also used aqua cardstock on the inside of this one, so I skipped the black shadow on the inside smiley face.
     These can easily be used by our Youth Director for teen volunteers or just to catch a teen doing something nice. I think either can be used for male or female, but the second is more masculine if you had to choose. At our Church or 3rd though 5th graders are making cards for military personnel, stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to send back home to their loved ones. Everyone loves to get a card!