An UNFROGETABLE spinner card tutorial!

Okay, I'm feeling like I'm back in action. Just in case you've never made a spinner card before, I thought I'd share a step by step tutorial on making one. And trust me, it's going to be UNFROGETABLE (somebody please stop me!). I'm VERY sad that SU! is retiring Unfrogetable. It's one of my favorites. And the funny thing is, it's not my typical type of stamping. I usually am not drawn to the cartoony type of stamps but I have used this one a lot. I think it might be because I have 2 boys and the frogs were easy to work with. Anyway, this card's origin starts with my great upline Kristin, quite a while ago. But it's an oldie but a goodie. I started with a piece of paper that had been cut down to 5 1/4" x 4" to accommodate being back layered later on. Start by taking your window punch and pushing it all the way in and leaving about 3/4" on the edge. Punch once. Now you will move the window punch over and overlapping your previous punch. Punch again. Now you will move it over one more time, leaving approximately 3/4" on the other edge of the card. There is no exact measurement that looks right, whatever you think is fine. Here is what your completed gutter should look like. Now I stamped over the gutter with the flowers from this set. Then I added the dragonfly and the "Hoppy Birthday". Now I lightly sponged with Bashful Blue around those images to make it look like a nice blue sky. This is what it looks like completed and colored. Now I took a piece of Certainly Celery and got out my new Scallop Edge Punch (coming in the new catalog-RUN to your demo and get one!)and punch a scalloped edge along one side. (Sorry the photo isn't totally crisp) Next I used a sponge with Certainly Celery to add texture to that piece, make it look a little more grass like. Next is coloring and cutting out two of the jumping frogs. Turn your frogs over and adhere a stamping dimensional to the center of their body. (Again, sorry for the photo, it looked good on my little screen but then on the computer I can see the quality isn't so great, but you get the idea) Now you place a penny over that dimensional and place another dimensional on top of the penny. Now you sneak that penny right into the gutter-it fits just perfectly. Now add another penny over the top of that dimensional to look like this. Last step is to add your other frog over the top. Here is your completed card. I added a 5 1/2"x 4 1/4" piece of Bashful Blue as a back layer. Now tip your card side to side and your little froggy should spin.

Photocube

So, as I mentioned before, I took 195 pictures on our vacation to Myrtle Beach 2 weeks ago. I already made my Shutterfly hard cover book of the vacation and got it today. YEAH! So that leaves me time to "play" with some of the pictures.

I have the best of intentions of scrapbooking, but I get a little overwhelmed to be honest. I'm better with smaller projects. So here's what will get to adorn my shelf in my craft room to remember the trip. It's a cute little wooden photocube.
My brother in law is a woodworker and made some cubes out of scrap wood for me. I started by covering them with some retired SU! paper that I cannot remember for the life of me that name of it. I think it was "weathered"-maybe. It was all these photographic pieces of like antique doors and plaques.


This is my oldest, Joe. Growing up to fast...but that's another story. I wrapped it with linen thread, and see those little shells, I picked them off the beach in S.C. and nature made a handy little hole in each one for me to put my thread through.


This is my second, Alec. His very first wave in Myrtle-how do I know-look the hair is dry. He's about to get pounded by a wave. It's hard to see in the photo, but if you look at the lower left of the picture there is a shell adhered with Crystal Effects to the corner of that photo. IRL it's really easy to see.


Here's Joe heading back to catch a wave. Have I ever said that I love rub on's. Well I'll make it official "I LOVE RUB ONS". The little saying is a part of the "A Perfect Day" rub on kit from SU! out of the summer mini. Made the perfect little addition on the side of his picture.



Here's Alec heading back out for a wave. Just some more linen thread wrapped around there to add a little something.


Here's a picture of the top of the cube. Again using the "A Perfect Day" rub ons, and more shells from sunny Myrtle Beach. I adhered them with Crystal Effects.


I had to show you the shells close up, because I LOVE that little pointy shell in the middle. Of all the shells we brought home, it was my favorite. A perfect little work of God's vast art. Loved it!

Yippee!!!! A completed stamping project!!!

My Mom

I love my mom. She's 70, HIGH energy, and go, go, go.

Okay I admit it, she drives me crazy too, but well....she's my mother...that's just how it is.

But, she and I have been working on a little project. Over at Shutterfly, you can make your own picture books for $29.99. I'm sure you can probably do this a bunch of other places, like Kodak and Snapfish, but I'm a Shutterfly girl. Mostly because I can upload my digital pictures to there site and have them printed off, and go pick them up at my local Target after an hour!!! Anyway, my mom and I have been going through all her old photos to make a book about her family. All people I never knew. Her dad died when she was 16 and her mother when my oldest brother was 3. So it's been so fun to go through all of her old pictures and learn about her family and her childhood.

But there is one picture of my mother that I love. And that's hard because she has all these great photographs that are vintage 1950's. You know, great little dresses with heels and perfectly done hair.

But this is my favorite:


I just love this picture. I think she's 19 and in Hawaii with her sister. I don't know what it is. It's something about the youthfulness she's exuding, and that great big smile.

And well, she and I look at lot alike. At that's pretty much what I looked like at 19, except I was riding horses and working on a ranch instead of taking a trip to Hawaii.

Aloha Momma!

LIFE HAPPENS

Okay, I'm done saying that I'm back. I'm still planning on being better about the blogging, but seriously, how do people do this every day? I was so good in the beginning...but life is really busy with the kids home for the summer and feeling like a taxi cab driver. And we just got back from a week in Myrtle Beach, and trying to get back into normal life and tell my brain that it isn't on vacation anymore, well....my brain likes vacation.

Vast nothingness..........and ocean waves...........ahhhhh...........

Oh wait...I have 17 loads of laundry, a garden that needs a little love, a weeks worth of mail to go through, 8 newspapers, Stampin' Up order to place, Stampin' Up website to read, good Lord-new stuff at Paper Trey, 221 vacation photos to upload and or print.........and then there is more poor little neglected stamp room and my blog.

Well, I'm going to try people, I'm really going to try. I'm putting the blog at the top of my list. Who cares if my kids don't have clean underwear....I'm all about the blogging..........well it sounds good anyway.

Here's the best I can do for today. We made this card at my last card class. The flower images are from Stampin' Up's Heartfelt thanks, and the words are from SU!'s Full of Life set. And well, I made it a month ago and I think I got the idea from somewhere, except now....my brain has been on vacation and I don't remember. So I'm sorry if you made a card like this on your blog and I copied it....I had every intention of crediteding someone........but I went to the ocean and lost all of that information.

GO TEAM!!!

I don't know about you, but sometimes I struggle with making a good boy card. It's easy sometimes to make a "little" boy card, but with son's that are 8&9, I'm getting out of the pirate and froggie phase of life.

Thankfully SU! doesn't make stamps that have anything to do with burping and farting, which seems to be 2 of the things that bring the most enjoyment to boys that age.

Luckily, we are raising 2 sports freaks, so using the Sporting set seemed liked an okay option. So I was inspired by the card using this set in the catalog on pg. 79, but mine really ended up looking nothing like it. It's a really simple card that I ending up liking the layout for.

Happy Monday All!!!



Recipe
Paper: Wild Wasabi, Chocolate Chip, Brocade Blue, Very Vanilla
Ink: Garden Green, Chocolate Chip, Brocade Blue
Set: Sporting

Fresh Strawberry Pie

So one of the things I'm going to do with the "new" blog is to share some of my favotrite recipes here and there. Though I love to cook, baking is really my thing.

Now, there is a good chance I posted this recipe last summer, or well I meant to, maybe I did...maybe I didn't. But here is the thing....it is the best darn pie ever. Super easy to make, and so very refreshing!!!!!

Sometimes, when I'm feeling totally crazy, I make it with raspberries and raspberry jello--only when I'm feelin' crazy. Which for me, means I've made it that way a lot!

So if you want your husband to adore you, your kids to thank you, your sister to envy you, and the neighbors to be in awe of your Martha Stewart-like abiities, then go get some strawberries and strawberry jello and whip one up tonight. You won't regret it.

Make in the tin pie crust:

1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 c. oil
2 tbsp. milk

In the pie plate mix dry ingredients. Measure 1/2 c. oil and add 2 tbsp. milk. Mix together. (there is probably some fancy name for this process, like emulsification, or something but I just call it "mixing" :) ) Pour over flour mixture in pie plate and mix together. Press around pie plate and form crust. Poke with a fork. Bake 350 for 20 minutes.

Fresh Strawberry Filling

1 c. sugar
1 c. water
2 tbsp. cornstarch
3 tbsp. strawberry jello
2 c. sliced fresh strawberries


Mix sugar and cornstarch in saucepan. Add water and boil until thick. Add jello. Stir well. Stir in strawberries and pour into pie crust. Chill until set and serve with whipped cream.

Fairytale Ending

Oh my goodness! I'm back!!!! I really mean it. I have cards made, photographed and uploaded them to the computer. Now I just have to get here each day and share.
And the blog is gonna change a little. More personal stuff here and there. Maybe some of my favorite recipes. And whatever I feel the need to rant about, like Caitlyn the cashier I had a Walmart last week-that was an interesting experience-but that will be another day.

So here's my first card back. I got to borrow the Full of Life set (SU!) from my wonderful upline Kristin and well, I fell in love with it!!! So many great little saying. I even made some artwork for my living room with it, but I'll share that another day. So I was inspired by a card I saw on Splitcoast that well, now I can't find to give her credit. (Does that ever happen to you, where you just click here and then there, and then again, and pretty soon you have no idea where the heck you are?)Anyway, I also used the Boho Background (SU!), the flowers out of there and embossed them with white embossing powder onto vellum.
Ended up with a pretty wedding card!

Good to be back, I've missed you all, and shhhh......I see blog candy in the future next week!!!!!



Recipe:
Paper: Basic gray, black, whisper white, vellum
Ink: Black
Sets: Boho Background, Full of Life
Accessories: Basic Gray Taffeta Ribbon