Birthday Celebration w/ Lots Of Crafting

We recently celebrated my sister, Maryl's birthday with our usual activities: eating, crafting, laughing & playing! Below is a picture of all the projects we made.

As you can see, we worked on a variety of items: Anna Griffin pop-up cards, Catherine Moore paper dolls and wire heart necklaces.

Below are some of the paper dolls we made with the latest doll stamp from Catherine Moore's, Adventure in Tea line.

 These are some wire heart necklaces everyone made...

My sister Frances was generous to let us use her supplies of Anna Griffin pop-up cards to make these beautiful greeting cards. We added some of our own images as well.

 

Maryl made this beautiful and delicious angel food cake...

Frances made our mom's famous walnut cookies...

We all had a great time together...love the laughter!

Happy Birthday Maryl! Frances, thanks for hosting a great party!

Now onto another note, I'm still into planners and I used the Kate Spade Wesllesley planner last year - see picture below. It was lots of fun buying all the planner accessories and decorating each page.

Then I purchased several new ones this year from Heidi Swapp and Target, as I've shown previously.

Now, I'm hooked on watching filofax planner videos and building yet another planner. I recently purchased the Filofax Pocket planner in patent duck egg.

Love the color, mint green and the size is very small, something I can carry in all my purses. Now, I'm on the hunt for matching accessories and to my delight - the Target dollar spot had these items to match my pocket filofax perfectly.

I just love all the coordinating items from pens, to sticky notes to file folders - which will be transformed into dividers in my pocket planner. I've used planners on and off for the last 20 years and it's amazing how they've evolved and become not only an organizational tool, but a creative outlet as well!

Have a great weekend!

Character Construction Tag Art & Valentine Paige Dolls

This week I dyed some white tags and stamped them with all my Catherine Moore Character Construction stamps and this is what I created...

As you can see, I just focused on the faces - it's fun seeing them grouped together like this. Below are a few steps of how I created it.
Start with dying some white tags in Rit tan dye mixed with walnut stain.

Then stamp the faces using brown ink onto the tags.

I then glued the tags to a piece of canvas covered with some brown paper and covered it all with beeswax.

That's about it, I finished it by tying a muslin bow at the top.

 With some of my extra tags, I also created these paper dolls.

Thanks Catherine for making such beautiful stamps, so fun to play with!

And last, I also made the following Valentine theme Paige dolls..

If you're interested in any of the doll images in a digital format, I'll sell them for $1 each, just email me and I'll send you a PayPal invoice and send you the jpg file. I made the cards below with the images, pictured in my daughter's kitchen studio.

And if you need some Valentine recipes to make, watch my daughter's YouTube videos.

How To Make Hostess Cupcakes

How to Make Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Wire Heart Necklace...Just in Time

I made these simple wire heart necklaces this weekend, just in time for Valentine's Day.

You just need a few supplies...

19 gauge dark wire, vintage lace, vintage photo, buttons, ribbon, mica, tape measure, beads, pliers and wire cutters.
Steps to make the heart: Cut a piece of wire approximately 8" long. Make a loop in the middle. Bend the wires down to form the heart. Make one twist at the bottom of the heart. With a pair of round nose pliers, twirl up each wire end.

Cut a piece of ribbon, about 24" long and tie each end to the top of the heart. I used sari ribbon, which has a nice soft rustic look.

Cut a small piece of lace and glue on vintage photo and piece of mica. Sew the lace onto one side of the wire heart.

Embellish with button, beads and tape measure piece. The necklace below I used two hearts.

This is a quick simple project to make for your friends.

Have a Happy Valentines Day!