Marine Corp Decoupage Table

My (almost) 20 year old nephew is a proud Marine. He is stationed in Afghanistan and scheduled to return in October. We are very proud of him.

I found this great material at Wal-Mart and wanted to make "something" for him. I used the folding tables earlier for other homemade projects and thought this would be great for him. Not sure why I thought it would be good NOW because he can't take it with him! Guess I was thinking about the future, he can use it in his own apartment when he gets home.

After spray painting the table top and legs, I cut the material so it would fit the top perfectly.

I think it turned out pretty nice, he was excited about it.
Thanks for looking.
Have a great day.

Quote for the Day

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
~~ Albert Einstein

Fabulous Flowers Card Swap

I needed a card for a Fabulous Flowers Card Swap. SplitCoast Stampers (my all time favorite stamping site- has the best ideas EVER!) has the biggest variety of swaps, and this was for one of them.
The only requirements were that it had to have a flower on it, 2 layers, and at least one embellishment. Buttons are my favorite embellishment, and seem to use them on all my creations!
I never know if the front of the card should have a sentiment on it or not. Here, I like the word Wonderful because it is in Close to Cocoa ink which matches the brown card stock. The card stock is from Michaels, not Stampin Up.

This was a "flip up" layout. I added a white card stock to write on. As I look at it now, I think there should have been something there. The pink shading adds a little dimension though.

Thanks for looking.
Have a great day.

Quick Baby Gift Bag

I needed a quick gift bag for a friend who is having a baby. Luckily I keep a stash of plain white gift bags to be easily decorated. I knew that my friend was having a boy so that made the color selection easy.
With some of the scraps I made a matching envelope, so cute.


I stamped CELEBRATE in 2 shades of blue to give a shadow effect. Unfortunately I couldn't find my congratulations stamps, so had to use the celebrate. I think it turned out pretty good. Buttons are my favorite embellishment, they are pretty cute with the polka dots on the paper.

Thanks for looking.
Have a great day.

Baseball Team Banner

This year my 8 year old son wanted to play baseball for the first time! I'm so excited because it is such a great sport and a way to experience teamwork. He has the BEST coach ever, he expects a lot from the kids but is also so supportive! I'm so happy for him! In only 4 weeks of practice, I've seen so much improvement, such a proud Mom!

At the parents meeting the coach was looking for a "volunteer" to make the team banner. It is used when the team walks in the opening day parade. At the meeting, I was trying to be very quiet and shy, the new parent who didn't want to make waves! Well, all the duties had been handed out and they were still looking for a banner-maker. You can see where this is going! Yes, I was the ONLY Mom with nothing to do! So I reluctantly volunteered myself to get this done for the team.

As soon as the meeting was done, I thought and thought and thought. Our team is the Phillies, and the banner had to have the team name on it along with all 11 kids' names. I had only 1 week to get the project done and no big creative ideas. BUMMER! I did some minor research, found the Phillies logo and then it hit me (Ouch!), just use the logo for the banner.

The team banner started out with a "bunch" of felt from Joanne Fabrics. Forgot to add the blue felt in the picture, but bought a couple yards of that too. Also bought a couple styrofoam balls because I thought I could use them (in some way) to create baseballs. Phillies has 2 i's so in the back of my mind I would dot the i's with baseballs.

Next I printed out the Phillies logo and took it to Staples to make an overhead transparency. Knowing that my sister owned an overhead projector, (how weird is that!) I knew it would be easy to make the cursive word on the felt. I traced the word backwards so after cutting I was sure not to have any of the ink showing.
The total length of the banner is 6' 6" and is 3" tall. I wanted the name to take up most of the space, the letters look pretty good at this point. This is the first part of the banner.
Next I cut out the blue and red for the background. To help the letters stand out I used blue stamp ink to shade the edges of each letter. It might be a little hard to see here, but I think it helps gives a little depth. To dot the i's I cut a styrofoam ball in half and painted it white. To make the red stitching I used a red dry erase maker - cute.
Creating the red, blue, and white bell was next. It was not to bad with the overhead projector. I think the worst part was placing all the pieces on the actual white banner making sure it is straight and gluing it down. To do this I used our king size bed! It was just enough room to spread everything out and not be crawling around on the floor! I glued (used Fabric Tac for the big pieces) all the background pieces first then attacked the kids' names.

My Sizzix die cut machine was prefect for the letters. I used the shadow letters (not sure of the exact name of the set) to cut out each kids' name. Also used the circle die for the baseball. I also used very light black ink to shadow each baseball so it stood out a little from the white background. To adhere the letters and baseballs I used my hot glue gun, that was much easier than the fabric glue.

PHEW!! TA-DAAAaaaa...Finally done. I bought a 10 foot PVC pipe from Home Depot so the kids could all hold it when walking in the parade. It was a huge hit with the team. At each baseball game we will hang it on the fence.
Go PHILLIES!!!

Cricut Card Swap

I was involved in a CRICIT card swap on SplitCoast Stampers. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone (try not to use stamps on a card) and use Cricut cut outs. It was quite a challenge for me, but I liked it! My library of Cricut cartridges is not very extensive which (I feel) limited my choices. Of course my first reaction was to run to Michaels or AC Moore and purchase a couple cartridges, but the hubby said NO to that idea!!

While looking through my cartridges I spied an example of a card in one of the manuals. Walk In My Garden had a cute Thank You card that I copied, oops - of course I mean used as my inspiration!!! My other obsession right now is to use the embossing folders as as embellishment. The background looks nice and I tried to use the same folder on the middle of the larger flower. Finally I used Crystal Effects to enhance the middle of that flower. It isn't really that shiny IRL, but the lighting makes it look that way.

This was my final product, I feel it turned out pretty well. Thanks for looking.

Have a geat day.