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Hi Everybody!
Wow - spring is here! The robins are back, the spring showers have started - I'm so excited! It's going to be a very busy spring, we have Easter, taxes, 2 weddings, 3 birthdays and Mother's Day coming up! I can't wait - except for maybe the tax part.. lol
It's been a while since I've posted so I have quite a bit to share. I totally missed sharing Valentine's with you and I've almost missed Easter.. lol but today I'll try and catch up a bit.
First a funny story... some of you may recall, that my hubby and I are staying at my DMIL's. She has dementia - suspected Alzheimer's. After a terrible infection in her knee which left her wheel chair bound, she has been working very hard for the last year and half to get some standing and moving back. She has gone in for regular shots in her knees which have been very painful but she has been a real trooper in putting up with it. She has been working very hard on strengthening her legs and using them. Well, she has finally gotten to the point where she could stand for a few minutes, and we've been trying to work on taking a step or two... just enough to move from the wheelchair to a seat or her bed. She's making progress on this but it has been a very slow process. For a little more background, mom has what's called a high-low bed. That's a bed that has a motor on it which can be used to raise or lower the actual bed plus it has bars on both sides which prevent her from accidentally rolling out of bed. The bars span the length of the bed except for maybe a two foot area at the head and foot of the bed that is left open.
Well now, here's the funny story part... the other morning I went in to get mom out of bed and low and behold she was sitting in her wheelchair! You could have knocked me over with a feather! The bars were still up on her bed, she had her shoes on and had almost made it to the door when I found her. I was so amazed! I asked how she did it and she didn't know, acted like it was an everyday kind of thing and she let me know that she was ready for breakfast! How on earth she wiggled out of her bed and walked to her wheelchair, I'll never know. I guess all I can say is that the body and the mind are amazing things! This hasn't happened since and I truly hope that it doesn't, it scares me to death that she could have fallen and hit her head or broke a bone but I'm still amazed that she accomplished this great feat and I didn't even get to see it! It was a nice surprise but she's given herself away now, we need to push her a little harder because now we know she can do it. She's blown her cover! lol
Ok, since I missed Valentines with you, I'd like to backtrack just a little and share the Valentine cards I made for the grand kids. This year they got to go to Disney for 10 days and they didn't get back into town until Valentines Day. With their trip in mind, I decided that their cards would have a Disney flair - what would be better than a Princess and Peter Pan.
I had the Princess and Peter Pan images but I wanted a castle and a tree house for the backgrounds, so I went searching on the Internet and found a coloring page with a castle and a how to draw page with the tree house. I had some Disney scrap paper that had Captain Hook and his helper so I was ready to put it all together. I colored the castle and the tree house with my acrylic paints and blinged up the princess with lots and lots of Stickles, added some dimension and here's what I wound up with.
I had a lot of fun creating them and the kids really enjoyed them. Would you like to create your own Princess or Peter Pan cards? You can find the images in my ArtFire store, for Peter Pan, click here , for a pink princess, click here , for a blue princess, click here .
Can you hang out with me for a little longer? I think I've already told you that my youngest son is getting married in May, well I've been working on creating a memory book for him and his bride and I'll share that with you... no not all of it today, but over the next few posts. I've been working on it for the past month and presented it to his new bride at her shower yesterday, so now I can share without ruining the surprise. Here's the very first page in the their memory book.
I love this rose image, it's so life like and it lends itself very well for a dimensional image. I used three different layers for the rose itself and two for the leaves. I added some diamond Stickles to the highlighted areas of the rose and leaves and some gold Stickles to the border - my printer doesn't print the color gold it always turns out green. For additional bling, scroll work with a black flower was added at the corners - the bride has selected black and purple as her colors. I left a pocket behind the rose image and inserted a tag that can either be used for journaling or a photo. The tag has a charm that says "love", but in the picture it's turned around so you can't see it. I wanted the memory book to have lots of places to add photos or journaling, so between each page I added a pocket that has a two-sided insert. Both sides have room for additional photos or journaling. On the insert I attached 3 little black flowers and another charm that says "I Do" and some black ribbon . I really liked the way it turned out.
I appreciate your staying and hopefully reading to the end of this post... lol and I truly think you should receive a reward for your due diligence. So I thought I'd share my dimensional rose with you. I hope you create something awesome with it and if you're so inclined, email me a picture of your completed project or share the link if you post it, so I can see your awesome creation! The image is all set to print on a 8.5 x 11 sheet so that all the images will stay scaled correctly. Don't forget to click on the image before you save it.
Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy
Hi Everyone,
How's your new year going? Great I hope! It's been pretty busy around here, seems like I'm always saying that lol... but it's true. Now that we have a little extra "free" time, with visitation being drastically reduced and the hustle and bustle of Christmas activities completed, we've been able to focus on some things that have been ignored.
Are you totally tired of Christmas? I hope not, because I have a couple of last minute Christmas photos to share with you. One of my favorite Christmas traditions is creating a new ornament for the tree. Every year the grandkids and I try and get creative and make a new ornament for the tree. This year we chose to create designer snowmen. Jordan, Kaiden and I had a great time making them.
Kaiden was really into the zebra print!
Jordan insisted that her snowman had arms and a lot of bling. lol
Grandma was really into pink! lol We had a lot of fun and of course created a lot of memories to go with our snowman.
This was our second Christmas staying at mom's. Last year, we only put up a couple of stockings because I couldn't find a way to hang all of them. I tried using the removable hanger thingies but either I wasn't attaching the holders correctly or the adhesive didn't like the surface of the fireplace, but either way they didn't work for me. This year as we were shopping, we happened to wander through the bath area of a department store and my eyes landed on the shower tension rods. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I could use a tension rod to hold the stockings and the S-hooks typically used to hold the shower curtain would be perfect for holding the stockings. So I purchased what I needed and happily went on my way.
This worked perfectly! I was able to put the tension rod between the mantel base boards and the S-hooks held the stockings! I was a little afraid the weight of the filled stockings would pull the tension rod down, but it held like a champ and believe me we have lots of stockings with lots of weight by the time they're all filled.
I covered it with garland and decorated the mantel. By the time I was all done, you couldn't even tell that the shower rod was there.
I got to thinking about this and it dawned on me that the idea could be used by all the folks that don't have fireplaces as well. You could use it in window frames or in doorways, or in kitchen/den areas where there's a cut out between the two of them. If you need something not quite so heavy duty as a shower rod, you could use those little gold extension rods that are made for curtains. I bet they would work just great for a couple of stockings. Anyway, I think this was my best Christmas idea for the year! lol
Are you working on your valentines? I've been browsing through my cards trying to decide which image I'll use this year. At the moment I'm kind of partial to this darling little puppy. The original sentiment refers to him as being a gingham puppy, but in my opinion, I think he's more of a plaid vs a gingham. What do you think? Make sure you click on him before you save him.
Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!
Peggy
Valentine's is one of my favorite holidays. I guess because it's a day full of love. A day that helps us re-enforce the love we have for our family and friends. I think sometimes we get so busy that we forget to stop and say I love you to the ones that mean the most to us.
So I thought we'd have a little fun with it and I'd sponsor a little contest. Here's one of my favorite heart images. Use it in any kind of craft project you like - card making, fabric transfer, decoupage, whatever. Leave a comment and include a link to your finished project or email an image of it to me by midnight CST February 12th. A randomly selected winner will be able to choose any 2 cutouts from my store.
I decided I'd make a digital card. I used Photoshop Elements 6 to complete the images. I just love this package and all the flexibility it gives you for editing images. What I don't like about it is the color of the drop downs and the text. Why on earth they would select a dark grey background with black text I have no idea. It makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see what's contained in the drop down.
To start, I added the two frames. I don't know how most folks do it, but I use the crop function and of instead of making the image smaller I make it bigger :). I used the eye dropper to select the pink from the center of the heart than I used the paint bucket to assign it to the new cropped area. I then repeated the crop to create the red border and used the eye dropper to select the red from the rose buds and the paint bucket again to assign the color to the new border. The clone utility was used to copy the corner rose buds and the ribbons from other card images to the pink border. Instead of using shadow brushes to create the drop shadow on the text, I selected the text using the rectangular selection tool and created a duplicate layer. Then I used the magic wand tool and selected the text, changed the color of the text and then drug it to the appropriate spot on the main text to give it the shadow affect. In the red border I used the Faux Finish Brushes- mesh to create the little squares. Once I had them all created I used the heart custom shape tool to put the hearts in the center of the square mesh. Last but not least I just used a small round brush to create the white border around the pink frame. I think it turned out pretty good.
For the inside, the only thing I've done so far is assign a 70% opacity to the main image and typed in my sentiment. I'll add more before I finally attach it to the card.
You may have noticed that I haven't finished my card yet :) I intend to add some lace and then attach them to card stock. I'll include a picture of the completed work next week.
So come on now, get busy and share your project by leaving a comment.
Hope your week is full of smiles!
Peggy
