More Crafting

I wanted to show you how I made my latest handmade flower. You need to start with approximately 8 hearts. You can punch out the hearts, hand-draw the hearts, or stencil them. I traced mine using some chipboard hearts that I had in my stash. You will want 4 larger hearts and 4 smaller hearts. The size you want will depend on how big you want your flower to be. Your largest heart will be about 2/3 the size of your completed flower.

Once you have your hearts, use your fingers or a pencil to curve them a little bit, which will make them easier to manipulate later.

Poke holes in the bottom of your hearts and put them on a brad -- smallest hearts first. Arrange the hearts around the brad and you will end up with this kind of flat looking flower.

Mist your entire flower with water so that it is easy to manipulate and then pinch each petal to get this look:

I used my handmade flower on this layout of our trip to Hawaii last year. I used MME's sketch, theme, and their new Lost & Found 2 papers, pearls, and brads.

I also made this card based the MME's card sketch & theme and using their Lost & Found Union Square and Lush Red lines.

Taos

Jesse and I had not gone to Taos except to ski, so we had fun taking my mom and Jeff there while they were here a couple weeks ago. We stayed there overnight so that we could have the time to see all of the sights. We walked around galleries and saw neat things like the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge:

the San Francisco de Asis Church:

And the Taos pueblo (my favorite):

We had a great tour of the pueblo, saw their adobe homes, and bought some art and bread:

Vintage

The Dusty Attic chipboard in the Paper Trail store (http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart/) is perfect for those vintage-looking layouts. I paired it with paper and alphabet stickers from Fancy Pants' Its the Little Things line to create this layout of the marriage conference Jesse and I attended earlier this year.

The Big 3-0

Believe it or not, I am 30 today! Crazy, huh? It seems like there has been a whirlwind of birthdays lately. I have started making more cards and here is a birthday card that I made for my boss's birthday that was just last week:

I used Bo Bunny's Timepiece papers, Fancy Pants' It's the Little Things alphas, and Ranger's stickles on this card, all of which you can find at The Paper Trail store: http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart.

Scrapbooking

I was able to do some scrapbooking this month, which was nice! I scrapped these pictures from our trip to Connecticut this summer and used a sketch from MME. To create this layout, I used MME's Lost & Found Union square line and their Lush Red line.

I also used a combination of the Lush and Union Square lines for this birthday card (I told you I have a bunch coming up) and followed MME's card sketch for this month.

This last layout I did for Sketch Inspiration's sketch this week. You should check it out because the Paper Trail is sponsoring!

Birthday Card

There are a lot of birthdays coming up in my family so this birthday card challenge (create a birthday card with non-birthday papers) is very timely. I used TaDa Studios's Whirlygig Collection papers, Basic Grey's Out of Print Collection alphabet stickers, Creative Studios's rhinestone brads, and Unhinged Creative acrylic charms. The way I used the charm was to adhere a piece of patterned paper to the back of it and tie it off with some ribbon. You can find all of these supplies at The Paper Trail store: http://www.leaveapapertrail.com/zencart.

Out of Print

The Paper Trail store (http://www.leaveapapertrail.com/zencart) is carrying Basic Grey's new Out of Print line, which I used to create this layout of our frozen adventure on the ridge of Sandia mountain. My favorite part of this line are the butterflies, which I accented with Prima rhinestone flourishes.

Jesse's Chile Trip

Once again, Jesse's brother is living someplace cool and Jesse used it as an excuse to visit him! This time around, it was Chile! Being that it is their wintertime, it was quite chilly (ha! pun!) and they were able to hike near icebergs!

Most of their time was spent doing some sort of physical activity or the other. Here, they were indoor rock climbing in preparation for their outdoor climb.



They also took a trip to a port town, where they took a boat ride and saw the coast at night.

Jesse's dad's family was able to join him on his trip, which was pretty neat.

Chile has some great wines and they were able to do a tour while they were there (yes, Jesse brought back many bottles!)

Although they enjoyed the local fare, Jesse was able to sneak in his customary McDonald's stop.

Jesse took tons of cool pictures of these stairs that they paint and this one is my favorite.

Last, but not least, they got some outdoor rock climbing in.

MME Projects

Here are a couple things I have been working on lately. I made this card using MME's Lush line and card sketch:

and I used MME's Union Square line and layout sketch here:

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th everyone! We spent this weekend at Pop-Pop's cottage at the bay and did the usual crab-eating, damnation-playing, water-skiing, and book-reading. One new thing we tried was kayaking:

Despite an early mishap . . .



. . . it was smooth sailing for Jesse.

His mom even said that he was "showing off" . . .

. . . but found that she did well too after Jesse gave her a couple pointers!