Cards of Fathers Days Past

I know, I know . . . I'm so behind! I'm still talking Dads and Grads while everyone else has moved onto current events like our Nation's birthday! Hopefully I will get better about staying on current holidays and seasons, but before we turn the calendar tomorrow to July, I wanted to post my Father's Day cards from years past. I really like that I did that for Mother's Day and I think I will try to do that for every holiday that I make cards until I'm caught up. It's great to just hop on my blog anywhere and look up what I've done in the past, so really it's a great resource for me.

So, here are my Father's Day cards from years past:

 2005 Cowgirl theme- We made sugar cookies for the Dads!

 2006 Barbecue theme - We gave a local BBQ sauce

with some other BBQ related things!

 2007 Movie Star theme - We gave

microwave popcorn in this gift set!

2010 Wanted theme - I know, similar to 2005,

but I really liked the Stampin' Up Wanted set

and decided to put photos of the Dads instead of

giving photos of my girls! They get enough of my torture.

Unfortunately, however, I am missing 2 years - 2008 and 2009. My PC died in 2009 so I lost some of my crafty projects and shamefully didn't have them backed up. I know 2009 was a coffee theme with coffee beans in a shaker card, but I don't have a decent photo of it. And 2008 I have NO recollection!! I must have had a theme, though - I always do! :)  I'm hoping that in visiting family houses in the near future or by going through some of my saved memorabilia (husband's cards) that I'll find the missing cards and will update this post.

Thanks for bearing with me as I utilize my blog to index past craftiness for myself. I'll be back with a fresh project soon!

For a Berry Sweet Graduate!

Here is my last graduation card for the season (well at least I think it is!):

I came up with the idea during one of my many recent visits to Bath & Body Works' semi-annual sale.  There is a Berry Vanilla collection that came out last year that I just love, and they brought it back for the sale at 75% off - at least at my local stores.

I used my Gypsy and the Simply Charmed Cricut cartridge for the berry, Wrap It Up for the graduate cap, Lasting Impressions red dotted patterned paper, and I outlined everything with Stickles - shocker, huh? :)

I'll attach this berry-shaped card to a bottle of the Berry Vanilla lotion and add either a gift card or cash to the inside of the card. I haven't decided which one yet since this is for a grammar school graduation.

Well that's all I've got for now. I'll be back soon with my card for Scrappy Mom's Terrific Tuesday Challenge - YES!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thursday!

Lots and Lots of Graduation Owls!

As promised (for a while now- Oops!), here are my graduation cards that were all owl-themed. It was the classic choice since owls are associated with graduations and the fact that owls are so in style now, right?

The first set are traditional graduation cards made tall to fit the checks inside and accented with each graduate's school colors:

I added a strip of cardstock to hold the checks on the inside:

The next set of graduation cards aren't your traditional cards. They are candy wrappers! I purchased my Godson's favorite candy (Kit Kat), and his best friend's favorite candy (Swedish Fish), and created these especially for them:

The opening of the wrapper has the check on one flap and then the conGRADulations message on the other piece. I used a small amount of repositionable adhesive so that the wrappers could be reopened.

The owls from all of the graduation cards/wrappers were cut using the Straight From the Nest Cricut cartridge. The graduation caps were from Everyday Paper Dolls, and the patterned paper was in my stash from many years ago.

I was inspired to make the candy wrapper-style grad cards after seeing Gigi the Cricut Bug's graduation pillow boxes. I really liked that idea, but thought wrappers would better serve my candy than a pillow box. Gigi's were absolutely adorable, though!

Well, I'd say that's it for graduation, but I do have one more card to make that snuck up on me. Since I'm SO DONE with the owls, I had to go with a different theme for this last addition. I will post it soon.

Have a good weekend, fellow crafters!

Irresistibly Sweet!

Apparently Tiffany from Sparkled Memories thinks my blog is irresistibly sweet! How very SWEET of her! Thank you, Tiffany! She bestowed this adorable award on my blog:

And might I add how yummy the photo in the award looks!!

The rules for the award:

1.) Send a thank you to the person who nominated you and include their link.

2.) To accept this award, answer 7 random facts about yourself.

3.) Pass the award to at least 8 other blog buddies.

Random facts about me in no particular order:

• I love Bath & Body Works, particularly their scents that involve some type of vanilla. Right now I really like Apricot Vanilla! And ya gotta love that their semi-annual sale is going on right now!
• Along those same lines, I like Yankee candles, especially their food scents (they also have a sale right now!). I mostly burn tarts because I like to mix scents and be able to change the scents often. Fireside and Vanilla Cupcake make a great s'more at the campfire scent!
•  Speaking of campfires, sitting at them are some of my favorite moments of summer and fall.
• I hope to live in Colorado someday. I just love the mountains and the great odds of seeing sunshine on any given day!
• Diet Coke is continuously pumping through me. No joke.
• I listen to K-Love Christian radio station daily. I like that it helps keep my focus on God on days other than just Sunday in Church.
• I originally purchased my Cricut for scrapbooking, but have done VERY LITTLE scrapbooking with it - for myself anyway. My plan is to get caught up on upcoming card needs and then tackle some scrapbooking. Wish me luck!

Ok, I know I'm taking the easy way out, but I just love ALL the blogs I follow! I get so much inspiration and encouragement from them. Blogging has truly become my Happy Place! My BLOGS I LOVE list is to the right. If you're on it, please take this blog award with pride!

Zebra With Polka Dots Birthday Card

So I still have all of my grad cards to post, but I just made this fun zebra birthday card for my almost 2-year old niece that I wanted to share:

It was inspired by this adorable 2-piece outfit that is a part of my niece's gift:

Isn't this outfit so stinkin' cute?

I sure miss dressing my girls in cute things like this.

Does the card match the outfit well? I think so!

The patterned paper on the # 2 is a pink polka dot

(Stampin' Up), just a smaller pattern.

The zebra shape was welded on my Gypsy using the Create A Critter cartridge. I also cut another zebra so I could stamp and write on the inside. The # 2 is from the Cricut Sweet Treats cartridge and the inside sentiment is from my favorite Scrappy Moms stamp set, Sweet Somethings.

I am entering this in the Scrappy Mom's Terrific Tuesday Challenge - Sweet Treats. I know I only used Sweet Treats for the # 2, and I even cut off the flame on what should have been a candle, but we can't have the poor zebra's mouth on fire - LOL!

Have a wonderful remainder of the week my fellow crafters!

We're Nuts About You Father's Day Cards 2011

It's Father's Day already - yikes! And it happens to be my birthday today! I received an e-card from a local radio station this morning and it said, "Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional." Got that right!

So sorry for the long delay in posts! I have been crafting, but just haven't gotten them posted. I've been flying by the seat of my pants with getting cards made for all of the events that have occurred lately. I figured today would be a good day to get back into action, though, and post my Father's day cards.

These cards were made using the 'Nuts About You' phrase and squirrel from Cricut's Just Because Cards cartridge. And of course, I had to bling them up a bit and avoid cutting those TINIE TINY pieces for the nuts by using Cinnamon and Platinum Stickles. And then some Scrappy Mom's Cappuccino Bakers Twine and a wiggly eye for my squirrel finished these cards off.

Well, about to head to church. Enjoy your day everyone! Hopefully it will be spent enjoying the wonderful Dads in your life. And then maybe some crafting?? :)

Wrappin' Up the School Year!

My kids FINALLY finish school this week!! I don't remember school ever going this far into June, but I guess we have to account for those blizzard days we had back in February. It is so hard to still be doing homework, though, when we have these nice summer nights going on!

Here are my remaining teacher candle gifts all finished and ready to be given with gift cards in a couple of days:

All were done similarly to my red candle gift using the Cricut Country Life cartridge for the cherries (see original post HERE) except for the pink flower one. The pink flower was from the Cricut Forever Young cartridge.

One of the teachers borrowed my Cricut Mickey & Friends cartridge in the beginning of this school year, but she's been so busy that she hasn't been able to finish her Disney trip scrapbook from last summer. I figured that the cartridge would be a nice end-of-year gift for her instead of a gift card, so she is getting the blue candle with the photo of the cartridge on the gift tag. And lucky for me, I was able to take advantage of Memory Miser's recent garage sale and scored the Mickey cartridge again for myself at $25 with shipping - YES! It was a win-win, I must say.

Also, you might have seen in past posts that we do little gifts for my girls' chapel buddies in school. Here are the end-of-year gifts to them:

We bought everything from Michael's at $1 each: the pail with shovel, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and a package of 15 glow bracelets. Such a cute gift for only $4 each, right?

I have to credit Scrappy Mel for this idea. She assembled sand pail gifts for her kids to celebrate the start of Summer break for them- how fun!! Now if I had that Sun Kissed stamp set from Scrappy Moms I could have made a cute tag like she did, but I had to settle on snatching a sun graphic from the internet and adding it to tags. My daughters also made pinwheels for a nice finishing touch on the pails.

Well, now I need to move onto graduations. I have 2 parties coming up next weekend - ugh! I really need to get busy!

Have a fabulous week, my fellow crafters!!