Catching up!

It looks like it's time to do some catching up here on the ol' blog!

First off, we had a terrific Fourth of July weekend. We didn't do much of anything on the 4th...didn't even see any fireworks, although we heard them since they were being set off 8 miles from our house. It was pretty much a lazy day.. But then on Sunday we hosted a picnic get- together at our place. It was kind of a spur of the moment event, but we had plenty of good BBQ and food and everyone here seemed to enjoy themselves. Ohh, and I decided to make cupcakes and decorate them red white and blue, and as I was making these I really thought that I should and needed a nicer way of displaying/presenting them and then I remembered that I saw the cutest cupcake stand at Target... of course I had to stop everything and go right away to get myself one ;) I also made some cute embossed silver star picks to stick on their tops with my Cricut and Cuttlebug! Here they are...

They turned out really cute and of course they were yummy!

And here's a few more pix from the day...

the grill master at work!
... and a shot of my mom... it's like pulling teeth to take her picture, but I got it!

...our friend Jen and her 7 week old princess, Emma...

...and her silly boy too...

I've got more pictures, but I don't think I'll bore you all to pieces... but I will show you all some photos of more previous DT projects that I did for Creative Xpress recently.

I 've been meaning to post these but keep getting side-tracked. My assignments for the month of April were to create a layout using the Ranger (Tim Holtz) Distress Embossing Powders and two distinct cards using Acrylic Stamp and Store stamps from Bo~Bunny.
I love to incorporate stamping into my projects and even though I rarely heat emboss with powders, it is an enjoyable technique to implement.

"Impression" layout

The photo I chose to work with for this page carries a lot of weight of emotion for me and I definitely wanted that all to come across. The use of the Distress embossing powders in combination with some dry embossed cardstock and textured embellishing worked perfect to show-case the focal photo.

I also high-lighted my page with chipboard title letters which I cut out using a Cricut font from the Lyrical Letters cartridge. I then handpainted the letters brown and then stamped them and heat embossed with the, "Tattered Rose" Distress powder. I completed my page design by making a scrunched ribbon accent from Bo~Bunny double dot ribbon and a floral accent cut and dry embossed using the Cuttlebug machine. I just LOVE these fonts from Lyrical Letters!

"Family-Home-Blessing" card

I wanted to make this card to send for any occassion. I came across the sentiment in a “Country Home Accents catalog”… where it was used on a wall hanging. I thought it would be nice on a greeting card embellished with die-cut and stamped accents to represent a country home-spun design. This card features a house accent (Cricut Lyrical Letters cart.) and girl and boy accents (Cuttlebug), all cut out of generic chipboard and stamped using Bo~Bunny ornamental images.

"Hang in There" cardI was inspired to create this card from a Cricut “sun” die-cut that I had leftover from a previous project. One of the larger Ornamental images from the Bo~Bunny stamps had a section that reminded of sunshine rays and I thought the sun die-cut would be perfect stamped with this image. The other smaller stamped images reminded of tree branches so I incorporated a bird and branch accent onto the card as well, using the Wild Card cartridge. The card was finished of with some inking detail and a spattering of the Antique Brass Glimmer Mist spray to mimic the glistening of sunshine!

And as always I do "Thank YOU" and appreciate you all looking at my projects and reading my blog! Have a great weekend... I know I'm excited... we're going to Knoebel's Friday evening and then to the State College Arts Festival on Sunday to listen to a Reggae band on the lawn of Penn State's Old Main! Praying it doesn't rain! Enjoy :)