An Absolutely FAB-ulous Manicure Birthday Party!

HI! Remember me?? So sorry I've been away for so long my fellow crafters. I have been crafting, but life has been a bit crazy lately so I haven't had the time for posting. Hopefully the summer will get better for me to get back into the swing of things. Until then, my posts may be scattered. Please bear with me! :)

I've had a few birthday parties lately that I've been crafting for. The most recent was my younger daughter's manicure birthday party.

Here are some photos from it:

The 3D Nail Polish Invitations!

I got this idea from the following :

meandmyinsanity.com and Announce Your Day Etsy Store

The party info side

I used the Cricut Forever Young cartridge for the

nail polish bottle and Quarter Note cartridge

for the lettering throughout the party.

The 3D invite in action!

That's a Q-tip for the polish applicator!

These cupcakes were made by my work friend's mom.

They truly were absolutely FAB-ulous!!

I didn't have any left after the party!

I made cupcake toppers for all of the

DE-lish cupcakes to match the party theme.

The stamp is from Scrappy Moms'

"Sweet Somethings" stamp set.

The sparkles on the cupcakes happen to match

the sparkles on the nail polish bottle top! LOVED that!

The birthday girl requested a banner from me after seeing

the ones I made for my 2-year old twin cousins recently.

I will post those party details hopefully soon!

I used the Cricut Black & White Imagine cartridge

to make all of the zebra-patterns for this party.

Worked out really well!

I hung 3 nail polish bottles from the banner.

I thought these could easily be removed when

the banner becomes a permanent fixture in

my daughter's room if she so desires.

Had to add in the absolutely Fab-ulous stamp

again from Scrappy Moms!

Ahh, the favors. I spent the most time on these little babies.

I used the Forever Young cartridge again for the purses.

And as recommended by a crafty co-worker,

I used velcro as closures on the purses- worked great!

All 13 purses!

Each purse was personalized with a tag

thanking each guest for coming. Also,

the guest's initial was on the back of the purse.

The contents of the favor purse: nail polish (of course!), 

a mini nail file, a Bath & Body Works Pocketbac

(hand sanitizer), a Charms Blow Pop,

and a few pieces of Bazooka bubble gum.

I used to love the comic that came with each Bazooka

piece when I was a kid, and now my girls love them!

Here's a close-up of the bling! I used gun metal & magenta 

Stickles, but then I ended up adding the stick-on gems later.

It needed more BLING!! I added a mini glue dot

behind to make sure they stuck to the glitter glue.

Here's a view of the initial side of the purses.

Here is my daughter opening presents while her guests

enjoyed the cupcakes at the fabulous little nail place near us,

Cosmos Beauty Bar!

There's the birthday girl with her banner behind her!

Here are the spoiled pre-teens getting pampered!

Cosmos was decorated so nice for the upcoming Summer season.

And here's the gang showing off their

freshly manicured nails!

This is one side of my postcard-style thank you note.

Here is the other side of the thank you.

I had a photo with the birthday girl and the guest,

and then the girl getting her nails done.

And then I did a simple nail polish bottle as embellishment.

Thank-yous - DONE!

Thanks for popping by! Happy crafting all!!

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!!

In God's Eyes, You SHINE! Baptismal Bday Cards

Happy almost Friday, my fellow crafters!

I must say I am a much happier camper on Thursday and Friday when the weekend is in sight - especially with how busy work has been. I did manage to create the cards I've had in my head and in my Gypsy last night, though, and I'm so excited that they turned out the way I imagined them:

Supplies:

• Two Forever Young hand mirrors welded together on my Gypsy and cut at 7 inches in height to form card base
• Pewter mirror cardstock from JoAnn's individual cardstock sheet racks
• Purple and bright pink cardstock from Butterfly Wings Recollections pack sold at Michael's
• White Georgia-Pacific cardstock from Walmart
• Darice sticky cross and round gems from JoAnn
•  "You Shine" Sentiment from Scrappy Moms' Sweet Somethings Stamp Set (embossed with black Versamark ink and Ranger clear embossing powder)
• 2 Peas Champagne Font for "In God's eyes," and inside wording
• Scrappy Mom's Lilac and Pink Sorbet Baker's Twine 
• Fiskars scalloped scissors for the tag

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. My girls and even my husband commented on how great they looked - Wow! I'll be sending these off next week with ice cream gift cards for my Goddaughters' upcoming baptismal birthdays. Yes! Another  couple of cards off my list! :)

I linked this project up to You Had Me At Craft's Made It Myself Monday Linking Party:

Come link up, too, and join the fun!

Have a great weekend all! Hopefully I'll be crafting some more during it.

Mother's Day Card 2011

I have to give credit where credit is due. I have to thank Gigi of The Cricut Bug for helping me along with my Mother's Day card design this year. I already had it in my head that I wanted to use the doily card on the Cricut Wild Card cartridge (pretty much the main reason why I bought that cartridge recently!), and then of course I had to use the color palette from this photo of my girls:

So when I saw Gigi's Mother's Day easel card, I knew how to proceed with my card. Thank you for your creative guidance, Gigi!!!

The funny thing is that I starting flipping through my DCWV paper stacks and found the green pattern paper that I ended up using in the All-Occasion Ultimate Stack. When I went back to my PC to look at Gigi's easel card, I noticed that the paper I picked and the pattern she used were EXACTLY the same!! I really didn't mean to do that! I didn't even know the brand of patterned paper she used. My oldest daughter and I looked at the sheet in my hand, then looked back at the photo on my PC monitor, and boy did our eyes pop out!! Pretty funny, huh?

Here are the cards I made:

Supplies:

• Doily card base from Cricut Wild Card cartridge cut from white cardstock
• DCWV green patterned paper from All-Occasion Ultimate Stack
• Flowers and emblem shapes cut from Cricut Forever Young cartridge from Stampin' Up Marina Mist and white cardstock
• Crystal Stickles for flowers (on all other cards except my Mom's)
• Dew Drops on flowers for my Mom's card
• White ribbon (Stampin' Up for my Mom's, Offray for other cards)
• "Wonderful Mother" sentiment from Well Scripted Stampin' Up stamp set (my Mom's card only) embossed with black Versa Ink
• 2 Peas Blessings Font by Jennifer McGuire  (all other cards except my Mom's) and utilized the Center Point function on my Cricut Expression

So, now my Mother's Day cards are done - YES! I do have A LOT of cards to still make, though - anniversary, graduation, baptismal birthdays, and then of course Father's Day cards for next month - Ugh!! Breathe, Jen, breathe!! Crafting truly is my sanity-saver, though, so although it seems like a lot of crafty projects on my plate, I will enjoy it. :)

Have a wonderful Wednesday everyone!

Cards of Mother's Day Past

I can't believe I've only been stamping and into serious card-making since 2003! It feels like it's always been a part of my life. My Sister-in-law invited me to my first Stampin' Up gathering in the Fall of 2003 and I've been HOOKED ever since!!

As I was just adding photos of my 2011 card to my Mother's Day folder of crafting projects, I got all nostalgic and looked back on my past cards. So, I thought it would be fun to post my cards from past years!

2004 ~ Newbie Stamper

2005 ~ Could have used the Cricut a lot sooner, huh?

That hand-cutting gets old!!

2006 ~ Awe! My girls were so cute! Can you tell I loved

dressing them in Gymboree outfits???

2007 ~ Yep, more Gymboree outfits . . .

2008 ~ This was the year that all 3 of us had matching

Gymboree dresses! Yep, I 'm one of those!

2009 ~ The oldest outgrew Gymboree this year, so it was onto

Justice outfits. Not as nice to me, but these were ok.

2010 ~ Cricut enters my Mother's Day card-making scene!

(Forever Young cartridge)

3-Card gift set made for my sister/Godmom using

the Cricut Forever Young cartridge in 2010

As you can probably tell, I'm very big into photo cards. Every year I include a photo of my daughters, but some years the photo was not the main part of the design. The colors from their outfits, though, always dictate my color palette. And that goes for all of the other holidays I make cards for, too.

Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed the walk down my crafty Mother's Day Memory Lane. Now I have to get my 2011 card posted! BRB!!

Valentine Teacher Appreciation Luncheon Favors

This week my daughters' school is having a teacher appreciation luncheon, so I made these little favors for it with my daughter! The theme of the luncheon is "comfort food," so there are a lot of yummy dishes being made! Thankfully I'm not doing any cooking, but I thought that being able to take a couple of chocolate mints back to their desks afterward would be nice.

I used the following:

•  Forever Young Cricut cartridge to make the holder (pg 72, purse creative feature cut at 5 1/4")
• Red cardstock
• A sheet of Recollections white glitter chipboard-like cardstock from Michael's for the hearts
• Designer's Calendar Cricut cartridge to cut heart
• Valentine ribbon from Michael's
• Ziggy Zoe font wording printed on white cardstock and punched using the Stampin' Up small tag punch
• 2 Andes Mints per holder

There is a bible verse on the tag, which is Colossians 3:23:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.

Then below the verse it says:

Thank you for caring for our children with all your heart!

All 36 favors plus an extra for me to keep are all done and ready to be delivered to school this week. These were very fun to make!

Have a good week fellow crafters!!