Take me out to the ballgame...

Baseball season is finally upon us. I am not a big sports fan but I do love baseball! Oh, and I really like to watch hockey too. ;) Our oldest son, Brian, had played ball since he was 4 but wasn't able to play anymore when we moved to Prue 3 years ago. There was no school team and we are more than 20 miles from town so with work and life we couldn't commute back and forth for practices and such for private league play. Thankfully, this year, the school got a new teacher who was willing to coach baseball so we're back in business. Now I need some flair to wear to the games. :) I decided to make myself a bracelet. Here's a peek...

 

I really like how it turned out and can't wait to wear it! I am in the process of making myself a matching necklace. I decided Shelby needed some flair too so I whipped up a cute Baseball Sis necklace for her...

 

We both also got blinged out tee shirts from my friend, Amanda. Shelby's says "There's no place like home" and mine has lots of flourishes and says "Baseball Mom." And, lucky me, I already got a few orders for some necklaces and of course, I added them all to my Etsy shop.

Missing You

Some of you probably know this but I have been caring for my mom since late last year. She is 72 and has a number of health issues. Last week she decided that maybe she should seek out a nursing home that could help to care for her. While I think she made this decision to lighten the burden on us, she does appear to be happy and thankfully the facility we chose is close to us so we can see her often.

 Mom asked me to "pick up" a dozen or so missing you cards that she can send to her friends back in Mississippi and family back home in Texas. Of course, I wasn't going to let my mom send store bought cards so I asked her if I could make them...reminding her it might take me all week to get a 12 cards done. LOL! She was more than willing to wait and I was able to get started yesterday.
Here's the first one I made...

 

This card was relatively easy to create and after the coloring was completed it came together quickly. I started by stamping the flower image from the Heartfelt Creations Daffy Daffodil Precut stamp set and coloring it with my Copics (Y00, Y02, Y04, Y08, Y13, Y18, Y19, YG63, YG67, 0). After I finished coloring I trimmed my white cardstock down to just under 4.25 x 5.5 (sorry, I didn't measure exactly!) then trimmed the bottom edge using the new Spellbinders A2 Curved Borders One dies in my Grand Calibur. After tying off the ribbon under the image I stamped the sentiment from the Heartfelt Creations Classic Message Precut stamp set and added a few Want2Scrap Black 72 Count Pearls. I attached the card front to a black A2 card base and that was that. See, told ya it was easy. :)

One down, eleven to go!  Ha!  Hope you're in a mood to see some more cards.  

Let it Snow...

No, not really. I am about ready for Spring. How 'bout you? Thought so. However, I DO LOVE the Norland collection from FarmHouse Paper Company and even though I'm dreaming of 60 degree weather and flip flops I couldn't help but play with my wintry goodies.

Two years ago when I worked the Indy show I met to amazing sisters, Kay and Joyce. Now whenever I travel to Indy (Kay's home) or Atlanta (Joyce's home) I get to stay with them instead of in a hotel. This year, Kay and some of her friends were getting together to play and crop on Friday so I worked super duper fast and finished with set up before noon. After meeting for lunch we headed to Archiver's to crop. Kay had shared this link to a blog that had a wonderful little vellum tag with stitching and thought it would be fun for us to make some. She had bought a new mini-machine but due to technical difficulties we didn't get to sew our tags. Soooo, today I pulled mine out and finished it up.

I used paper from my 6x6 Norland paper pad from FarmHouse Paper Company and cut it into a little banner shape.  Next I topped it with a chipboard element then cut the vellum tag using the Tag & Tie die from Tim Holtz.  I used some temporary adhesive to keep the element in place then sandwiched it in the vellum and sewed a small zig zag stitch all the way around.  Now, I have tried like a billion times to sew on paper and never had any luck with it.  However, after getting the tensions and all straightened out on my machine, I think I have it down now.  ;)  So, after stitching the tag, I added the little chipboard mittens with some twine connecting them then sprinkled some Want2Scrap 72 Count White Pearls on top of the snowflakes and in some random spots on top of the vellum  I added some white seam binding then tied it off with some twine and finished it off with some mini jingle bells.  Here's a closer view of the details...

I am sure you will be seeing LOTS of stitched projects from me for quite a while.