Wednesday, July 21, 2010


During my whole butterfly metamorphosis experience, I started playing around with these butterfly cards. Both cards are made with CTMH colonial white cards stock, an assortment of CTMH ink pads and swirl stamps, along with 2 different Martha Stewart butterfly punches and a lot of embossing with some embossing plates I have. Oh, and don't forget the glitter, you can never have enough glam. A perfect card for my grandma's birthday. She will be 86 this year. Enjoy.

Monday, July 19, 2010

On Friday morning I decided to take a crafter's weekend, destination my CRAFT ROOM. Immediately after work on Friday (at Noon) I entered my home, put on my stamping clothes and off I went for some serious crafting and me time. I first started with cleaning my room from last weeks card and club class, which took about 4 hours. The whole time my dogs just laid at my feet, my little speed bumps, supervising I guess. Not sure were Reese, our other dachshund was when I took this picture. While I was doing my cleaning and laundry too, I had hired someone to come and clean my ceiling, fans, light fixtures, baseboards, etc., all the stuff I hate doing. Just to let you know, Reese hates the vacuum cleaner which was running constantly for about 4 hours, so it was no real surprise that I couldn't find her, ever since she was a puppy she would hide, usually in our closet. While folding the laundry the mystery was solved, there was Reese buried under all my clothes on the couch. Sure wish I had my camera when I found her.

Saturday, I continued my crafting time by catching up on preparing the cards and project I had made last week for next month's class. 2 movies later, I was done cutting, sorting, inventorying, and packaging the kits for this cute Coffee canister and some other cards. Breaking to make dinner for my husband. Before I knew it, it was 7:30 and I was done for the day.
Sunday, back to it. Made these really cute cards using CTMH Makin' Waves stamp set and other assorted CTMH papers.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Keeping up with my blog is very exciting to me. I've made so many cards and projects over the past year and I've decided to stay true to myself and to my followers by posting the most current projects and showing off all great products I've been using.

This card is a 4x4 card made with CTMH Veranda Level 2 paper packet, Papertrey dies, Sizzix branch die, Spellbinders, and Cottage Cutz butterfly die. Oh my goodness, just love this butterfly die and all the teeny tiny pieces. I strategically placed the pieces together and glued them down using liquid glass and stickles. Fun, Fun, Fun is all I can say. Enjoy.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

5 new babies today.....Well I almost missed it. This butterfly was born a few minutes ago, I believe. He was still wet and his wings were all curled up. Only have a few cocoons left and this adventure will be over. I really hope you have enjoyed this experience as much as I have.

Monday, July 12, 2010


What a great day for stamping and making cards. While watching the news the weather man predicted a hot and muggy Florida Summer day and was he right, it was 101 with the heat index. So I dropped my A/C down to a cool 72 degrees to accommodate my girls. The second Sunday of each month is when I have my Card Class and Cards Plus Club together. This Sunday I had 4 Club Gals and 3 Card Class Gals. What a way to spend a day like today, on top of the heat, it began to rain. This month I decided to challenge the girls and make more detailed cards, with lots of pieces. I just know they liked the finished projects no matter what it took to get there. The class ran a little over this month, which gave me the opportunity to show sneak peeks of next month's project, cards
and special projects for a new Open Project Day, which will be held on the last Sunday of each month. This is a special day indeed. Currently, all my gals are into card making, so instead of a crop day, I'm offering a project day. All the girls are invited to either participate in a special project or they can bring along a project they are working on and can use all my fun, fun stuff. The really great thing about this project day is the cost......$5.00 to make a project or for the use of all my supplies, paper, embellishment, dies, punches, you name it, if I have you can use it.

Just look how happy these gals are while working away. After everyone left, it was time to clean up, I literally tossed everything into my craft room until Monday. The funniest part of the day was, my husband and the dogs retreating to the MAN Room during class. When class was over my husband came out and the first thing out of his mouth was, "what is the temperature in here?", he went straight for the thermostat, 72 he said, I'm freezing and he turned the air up. My husband is just wonderful, he helps me set up my tables and chairs and when we're done he helps me clean up, What a guy, he even found Beth's glasses and took them to her.

Bright and early 6:30 on Saturday morning, still in my pajamas I'm outside taking pictures of my butterflies. This one is ready and should be coming out in a few hours. See how transparent the cocoons get, you can see the wing patterns through the outer shell. Went to Target and Walmart for my weekly shopping and when I got home in about and hour and a half, he was gone. I searched everywhere for this guy and found him laying on the rocks in my garden. This little guy must of been really shocked, he actually stayed in the rocks for 5 hours before he took his first flight. This guys cousin was born shortly after, still can't catch this in action, but I have about 10 more cocoons to to keep an eye on.





Friday, July 9, 2010

Down to the last minute and I'm done with my dad's birthday card. Besides getting this card ready, I've been busy setting up for my Card Club and Card Class for this Sunday and designing a project and cards for next month's class. Where did the week go? Having off on Monday made this whole week fly by. My goal is to do one card or project a night, so I can be ahead of the game. Then I choose the best cards and project of my classes. Definitely a task, but I love it. This is the best way to work out your stresses from the daily grind. I'm sure my husband likes it too, since he has the superior rule of the remote control when I'm in never never land, stamping and coloring. Have a great weekend.

Thursday, July 8, 2010




This afternoon when I went home for lunch, I checked on my little butterfly cocoons, no change today. Then something told me to turn around and when I did, there it was, a beautiful baby butterfly that had just come out of its cocoon and was still drying it's wings. Poor thing, I spooked him while trying to get a better picture and off he flew, well, if a butterfly could stumble that was what he was really doing. I then found his empty cocoon and to my surprise, at least 15 more in different stages in my cypress trees. This one is just about ready for freedom, hopefully when I get home tonight I can catch one coming out. I just can't believe how bright these cocoons are in the early stages.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010


What truly goes into making a card for that someone special. Last night I started making a Birthday card for my dad. I bought this really cute little boy with frogs stamp several months ago just for this occasion. I like to use watercolor paper when I stamp images to be colored with markers, water color or paint. I'm using Copic, CTMH and SU markers for this project. My favorite maker is the Copic blender, this does wonders for shading and if you go out of the lines a bit. This is the first draft. yes, I make the first one for practice until I'm happy, then I color the other two images that I have stamped. Then when you are done you have 2 extra cards for later.

When I was working, I didn't really like the way the little boy's vest looked, so I went through my scrap paper and found a piece from CTHM Cherry-O paper and paper pieced the vest. What a difference a piece of paper makes. So, then I rummaged through my ribbon collection, all 3 bins and found this fuzzy ribbon to use on the cattails. Definitely still have a lot of work to do on this before I can start the actual card, I better hurry, dad's birthday is in a few days.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010



The beauty of the butterfly. Early this spring I decided to make a butterfly garden in my front yard. I planted milkweed, gold mound, lantana, other colorful flowers to attract these beautiful creatures. For the past few months, I've noticed a lot of butterfly action. Just last week there must of been 25 of them floating around my yard. Over the weekend while doing my routine yard work, I noticed that my milkweed plants were being eaten alive and found a ton of caterpillars all over the place. Through more investigating I found 3 monarch butterfly cocoons. These cocoons are a bright neon green with neon yellow dots throughout.
My goal is to take pictures everyday for the next 2 weeks and make a butterfly mini scrapbook of their metamorphoses. I'll keep you posted as the changes come around. Hope I catch one coming out of the cocoon. That would be too cool.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Just love mini mental health breaks. Honestly, I take about three of them a day. A few weeks ago during one of my breaks, I stumbled on to a blog and discovered this wonderful idea on how to alter a battery operated tea light candle as a birthday cake. Oh, was my mind racing. For days I thought about this card and altered cake. When I left work on my early day, Friday, I ran to the dollar store and found these tea light candles 2 for $1!!!! I had so much fun with this project, but you definitely need to have some patients, good lighting, glasses and tweezers, too.

I used CTMH paper (Caboodle), Just Right stamp set, spellbinders, flower punch, Martha Stewart border punch and a very cute butterfly stamp that I had laying around and lots of glitter and stickles. Just love the BLING!!!
Now, when I made this I didn't have any tweezers to work with, so immediately after I was done, I ordered a pair from CTMH. So I'm ready the next time I make this project. Club gals, leave a comment if you would like to make this at class next month.
Have a Happy and Safe 4th of July.