Liebster Blog Award

Thanks to Sue of Sue's Crafty Mess for awarding to me the Liebster Blog Award. She actually awarded this to me several days ago, but it all the busyness of life I did not take the time to thank her or post my award. Her blog can be found at  http://suescraftymess.blogspot.com/.  This is such an honor to receive.

 Liebster" is German for "Dearest.  The award is a Share the Love Arrangement, given to inspirational bloggers with less than 200 followers.  

I follow a lot of blogs. I will be passing this award on soon and will add their links to this post. Stay tuned for an update of those who I find inspiring.

Bonnie @ http://www.maketime2craft.com/
Lisa @ http://craftylam.blogspot.com/
Karen @ http://kaleidoscopicsparkles.blogspot.com/
Katie @ http://ktsangels.blogspot.com/

Flowersoft Card #2

CDAC will only let me use a link once, so I am putting these pics in a seperate blog so that I can link them also. They are the same pics that are in the previous blog. Here's the link to the challenge: http://priscillastyles.ning.com/group/cdac-progressive-freebie-challenges

Flowersoft cards

I have been wanting to try flowersoft for a long time. When I got these basket images from CDAD I thought that this would be the perfect excuse to go out and buy some. I picked some up when I went to the Memories Expo on the 23rd. These are the creations that I came up with. I needed thank you cards to give to those who sent flowers to the funeral home, so I used these to make the thank you's. I just got my Vagabond, so I tried it out to on the square cards using a Tim Holtz embossing folder. Here are my creations:

These cards will be in the progressive challenge for CDAC at http://priscillastyles.ning.com/group/cdac-progressive-freebie-challenges.

My next cards will be done using the products and ideas I got from PK Glitz. Stay tuned.

Memories Expo 2012

I had so much fun this weekend! I attended the Memories Scrapbooking Expo at the Ohio State Fairgrounds in Columbus, Ohio with my sister Angie and a couple of ladies that she works with on Friday. We had lots of fun looking at the wonderful products that were for sale. We did a couple of Make & Takes. I learned how to do iris folding and made a pretty necklace. Of course I spent lots of money! I found some good deals on die cuts (half off original price). Since I just ordered a Vagabond I was extremely excited about that! I am new to die cutting and can't wait to try it out. I only have a cricut right now.

I went back by myself on Saturday and spent the day working at the PK Glitz booth. I conducted the Make and Take and showed a lot of women how to make a beautiful card using 4 of their products. It was so much fun, and the day flew by. I was covered with glitter, but I love glitter-so that was okay with me! If you haven't heard of PK Glitz you should check out their on-line store (http://www.pkglitz.com/) . They have the prettiest glitter I have ever seen. It is a microfine glitter and feels like velvet when you touch it. It covers great! They also have coordinating embossing powders and embossing glitters. They have a great line of double sided sticky tape that tears with your fingers so that you don't have to gum up your scissors and some great double sided sheets of adhesive called Wonderfilm. I love their products and can't wait to show you projects using this beautiful merchandise. The card we made at the expo used their printed acetates, glitter glitz, wonderfilm, and double-sided sticky tape. I got lots of free merchandise-fun, fun, fun!

I am working on cards using some of the products I bought. Stay tuned for pictures:) Until next time-happy scrapping!

Easter Lily Card with variation

Thanks to all who offered their condolences on my last blog on the passing of my father. We are still adjusting and trying to keep mom busy. I was able to do one card. Unfortunately I did not make the deadline for the some of the contests I was going to enter. I did two variations by changing the background paper. The lily is a digi image from Ann Fort of Peacock Feathers. She has a store on Etsy, but I got this image courtesy of her group on CDAC. She wanted to see what kind of Easter creation we could come up with. Here is my card with two different backgrounds:

The crosses came from the cricut cartridge New Testament. This is a great cartridge, but it seems to work better for bigger images. The verse on my card also came from there, but I had to type it on Word and print it because it would not cut well enough on the size that I needed. I tried both 1 3/4 " and 2" and the blade would not cut through and ended up ripping the cardstock. The yellow cardstock is from a 6X6 glitter pack. The ribbon is just some ribbon I bought a long time ago from the local craft store. I have no idea where the gems came from-probably Walmart. I colored the lily using copics. The sketch idea is last weeks challenge from Cardz TV. I didn't make the deadline for that one. I chose the green background because of last week's Die Cutting Diva challenge-missed that one by 2 days:( Oh well. I am entering the following challenges:
http://reasonableribbon.blogspot.com/search/label/challenges
http://www.annabellestamps.blogspot.com/2012/03/say-it-inyellow-and-white.html
http://queenofmycraftroom.blogspot.com/2012/03/digi-stamp-challenge.html
http://decoratetocelebrate.blogspot.com/

A Goodbye Tribute to my Dad

My blog has been silent for a couple of weeks due to the sudden passing of a great man-my dad. He died suddenly at Cleveland Clinic and will be sorely and sadly missed by all who knew and loved him. This past week has been crazy and I have not been able to do any cards to upload for challenges. Instead, my sisters and I worked on posters to place in the funeral home to share a bit of dad with all who came to call. Below are the two posters that I put together. There were so many pictures that it was hard to choose. The one poster dealt strictly with the interaction between my dad and my children and grandchild. The other had pictures of him with his kids (my sisters and I), old school pics, army pics, etc. I don't know if you will be able to see his gardening pictures but he had an incredible green thumb. He grew a 19 pound sweet potato of which he was very proud. We have a lot of great memories and are thankful for the time we had with him (of course we want more). God is good and now dad is with him in Heaven. He is no longer sick or in pain-for which we are also thankful. I do have one card which I will share. I was working on it when dad was having his surgery. I finished it last night because I needed a St. Patrick's Day card today.

Here are my posters:

 

I'm not sure why the one poster uploaded sideways. But as you can see, my dad was very devoted to his family-especially his grandkids-and he adored his only great granddaughter. He never let on just how much he suffered. He always said he was fine and never lost his sense of humor. He joked until the end. When dad said he was having a bad day, I knew it was truly a bad day because he would never admit that he felt bad. I was afraid the end was nearing, but thought the procedure he had done would help like it had in the past. We never dreamed going into the cath lab that we would never see him conscious again. This experience has given me a lot to think about. Goodbye Dad. I love you and I miss you, but I will do my best to make you proud! I will try to be a good Christian so that I can see you again someday. I know you're at the foot of the throne praising God and smiling. Thank you God for giving me such a great man to call Father!

I know this post is long, but here is the card that I finally completed:

 I was going to enter this in some challenges but unfortunately, the deadlines are past. I found the leprechaun and pot of gold by doing a google search for them. I don't know where they came from, but they were already colored. I just had to cut them out. I did change up the pot of gold though. I cut along the lip of the pot and glued buttons over the existing gold. I covered them with stickles to make them shine. The sentiment was from CDACs progressive challenge number 12. I can't think of the artist right now and forgot to look. I will change this when I find it out. I just pasted different papers on the background and added a strip of ribbon for texture. I colored the sentiment and added stickles to make it sparkle. I think that all of the paper were from Creative Memories shades of Olive. I was able to find the following challenges to enter this in:

http://useittuesday.blogspot.com/

http://www.thescrapbookingqueen-challenge.blogspot.com/

http://decoratetocelebrate.blogspot.com/2012/03/challenge-20-st-patricks-day-party.html

http://www.thepoodlesparlour.blogspot.com/

http://cardztv.blogspot.com/2012/03/cricut-cardz-challenge-104.html

Hopefully my next blog will be business as usual. Have a great week!

Spring Smiles

To those of you who checked this out before I got to the actual blogging, I apologize for only having the picture and the links. I only have dial up and it is very difficult to even do any of this. I am at the mercy of the public library and my church secretary when it comes to uploading things. I had to very quickly upload the picture and links at church and then come home and finish the blog. I also have to apologize to Diana Larson and Creative Time for Me for not following their challenge to the letter with this picture. In my haste, I forgot to add a bow and to not use my cricut. So to fix that I will be posting pictures tomorrow night after work to remedy that. Hopefully it will not be too late.

Spring is in the air and at Deep Ocean they had a Spring challenge. I love this color combo. I think it fits into the spring theme. The cardstock is just some I had on hand. I cut the ovals out of the yellow and green  using my Creative Memories cutting system. I used scallop-edged decorative scissors around the green frame. The flowers I colored using Copic Markers. I tried a technique using an aquabrush filled with alcohol to "wash" out the color, but it didn't work very well on this brand of flower. It worked a little though on the green ones. The sentiment and watering can are from a poly clear stamp set from Hero Arts that also includes an adorable girl with rubber boots, flowers, grass, and a spade. The butterflies I made from a precut set sold by PK Glitz. They are made out of their double-sided wonderfilm. I peeled off one layer, covered it with PK Glitz embossing glitter and heat set it. The first sentiment is cut out using the Lacy Labels Cricut cartridge. But then I remembered that Creative Time for Me's challenge was to go Cricutless. I had to take that sentiment off and use something else. I got out a scallop punch and made a new one that you can see in the third photo. Rhinestones add to the sparkle. Finally, the digi image used is from a CDAC progressive challenge. She is called Miss Beth and is compliments of Back to Paper. I added a bow to her hair in the second image for Diana Larson's challenge: Layers, Bows, and Bling.

Have a good week! Here are the challenges that I entered:

http://www.thescrapbookingqueen-challenge.blogspot.com/

http://deepoceanchallengeblog.blogspot.com/

http://diecuttindivas.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-54-try-this-recipe.html

http://www.dianamlarson.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-1-2012thursday-dlart-thankful.html

http://www.creativetimeforme.com/2012/03/thowback-thursday-cricut-less-challenge.html

http://priscillastyles.ning.com/group/cdac-progressive-freebie-challenges

A Purrrfect Birthday Card

One of the things I like about creating these cards for online challenges is that I can usually create a piece that fits into several challenges at once. When I first saw the digi images from Ann at Peacock Feathers that she had given me for her challenge on CDAC, I wondered what I would do with them. I decided to check my regular blogspots to see what was happening there and the inspirations just kept coming: color schemes, layers, blings, a past sketch that I missed. It all added to up to the following card that I made for my niece's 12th birthday:

Stay tuned for more-I have to leave off here for now. As soon as I get lunch for everyone-as Arnold Swarzenager says-"I'll be back!"

Okay, I'm back. As I was saying earlier, this card fit into several contests. I used dotted Bazzill cardstock and punched holes in the scallops for Diva By Design  Use spots or stripes. The cupcakes were for CTVs birthday card w/ cupcake. The color scheme came from Annabelle Stamps Use Olive, Mustard, and Brown. The layers, bow and bling qualify my card for Diana Larsons Thursday challenge and also Celebrate the Occasions birthday with bling challenge. The green and ribbon are for RRRs challenge. The digi image and green meet the criteria for TSQs challenge. There are a couple more challenges that I can use this for as well-but you get the jist of how I roll when deciding what to make. Thanks to Ann at Peacock Feathers for the cute image! Here are all the challenges that I entered:

http://www.birthdaysundaes.blogspot.com/2012/03/birthday-sundaes-challenge-46-birthday.html

http://dianamlarson.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-1-2012thursday-dlart-thankful.html

http://cardztv.blogspot.com/2012/02/cricut-cardz-challenge-103.html

http://reasonableribbon.blogspot.com/search/label/challenges

http://www.annabellestamps.blogspot.com/2012/03/say-it-inbrown-olive-and-mustard.html

http://www.divasbydesignchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/02/challenge-24-spots-andor-stripes.html

http://celebratetheoccasion.blogspot.com/

http://www.thepoodlesparlour.blogspot.com/

http://www.thescrapbookingqueen-challenge.blogspot.com/

Creating From the Heart Giveaway

Melissa is giving away some great stuff over at Creating From the Heart. To enter, click this link: http://keepsakesbymelissa.blogspot.com/2012/02/giveaway-time.html. She is giving away the following items: Echo Park Graceful This and That Collection Kit,  Echo Park Graceful Element Stickers, Echo Park Graceful Brads, a $50.00 Visa Gift Card, and 
20 yards of her hand dyed seam binding ribbon in assorted colors to match the above kit. Sounds like some blessed winner will be enjoying some great items. You have until March 14, 2012 to enter. Good Luck!

Srapmaster's Paradise Giveaway Party

Another great giveaway is happening at Scrapmaster's Paradise. She's giving gift certificates, stamp sets, a paper pack, and glue dots. You have to hurry. The giveaway ends tonight Mar. 1st at 11:59 pm. Here's the link: http://www.thescrapmaster.com/2012/02/giveaway-party.html

Sorry I found this one so late!

Pause Dream Enjoy Cartridge Giveaway

When checking out the blogs that I follow, I found this great cartridge giveaway. Janis is celebrating the fact that she has over 1200 followers. Head over to her website before March 6th to enter and become a follower.

http://pausedreamenjoy.blogspot.com/2012/03/cartridge-giveaway.html

Good luck!