Just an Update!

I have new artwork to show you as soon as I get my computer back. My brother in law is working on it and I should get it back next weekend. So hang tight and I will have some more to show. I also will be starting my summer next weekend (I teach 7th grade) so I should have more time to keep up with this blog again.

My firstborn is 2!

 My firstborn girl M turned 2 Monday. This was the spread I made for her spring themed party. We had cake and donut holes (bought from publix) Fresh fruit, candy covered marshmellows, and birds nest cookies (made from scratch).

This was one of the crafts I did in preparation for the party. It was my first time making this tissue paper pom pom, and I LOVED how they turned out. I think I may hang these in my scrap space now.

 Here is the full effect.

 The fruit on a stick.

Close up of the birds nest cookies (peanut butter, choc. chips, and chow mein noodles mixed together and shaped like a nest with candy eggs on top.

I saw the inspiration for this here. This blog was great! I wanted to make my own birthday banner like they did, but I ran out of time.

 My 7th grade girls named these marshmallow pops "cloud pops".

These were marshmallow on a stick, dipped in vanilla candy melt, and while wet dipped in sprinkles. Then I placed them in the freezer for a few minutes to harden again and presto, marshmallow pops.

The cake, there is a story with this. I was not overly impressed with out publix cake. I mean, sure it's cute. However, I ordered an 8" round cake covered in fondant with fondant polka dots, pastel colors, and half chocolate half white. I got an 8" round cake covered sloppily in fondant (creases, cracks, etc),  these bright colors, and layered choc, white, choc, white. The taste was not the best either. I think it worked and it was cute, but did not fit my vision and I was upset about the quality of the look. I know it looks pretty good here because I found it's best angle and took the picture. Don't get me wrong I tried to take it as a glass half full kinda gal, but it just still irks me a bit.

 The spread again.

My birthday girl in front and my little one in back.
I would love to hear your comments and critiques. What do you think?

Yes...I am alive.

Sorry everyone, I know I kind of just fell off the face of blogland for a while there. I have begun a new hobby, couponing. It is saving me a ton of money, but it takes a lot of time. With two girls two and under it pretty much has taken all my free time lately. But I am getting a handle on juggling it with everything else now. Just had to convince myself I did not need every deal and that yes, it would go on sale again soon. :) Well, my daughter turns 2 Monday and her party is this next week. I am going to attempt to craft some things for her decorations. If I am able to find the time I will post them here soon.

blog candy

 

Leisa  over at Big Red Scraps is giving away this awesome blog candy! She hosts a searchable blog of CTMH crafts and products.

My newest layout showcasing my favorite feature of my girl

I love how this layout turned out. I got the sketch idea from my scrapbooks etc. magazine. This layout showcases one of my favorite features of my little girl...her eyes. They are my eyes. Some how, even though my husband has dark brown soulful eyes both my girls have my blue eyes. After M had such powerfully blue eyes I thought for sure my second girl E was going to have her Daddy's deep rich brown eyes, but nope. We defied the odds and have two blue eyed girls. Having a husband with brown eyes I did not think it would be likely I would have any blue eyed children, but here they are.  I love that I can see myself in their eyes. So to steal a line from Harry Potter....

 This is a picture of my firstborn girl when she was about 6 months...now she is 22 months...where does the time go? my second one is even older than this now, she will be 8 months! She is a petite little thing though and still in 3-6 months clothes so it makes me feel like she is still a little baby. 

That pink lace you see on this layout started out twice a wide and white with a blue ribbon in it. It was not the look I was going for, so I pulled out the ribbon, cut it in half, and used my spray inks to die it pink and let it sit overnight. Worked like a charm. You can see from the picture I used one of my homemade shimmer mists. I challenge you to look through the supplies you have and don't use. How can you re-purpose those items to make them new again?

Blog Award!

Janice from cricutology  awarded me with this lovely award! Check out her blog !

Thank you so much Janice! You are too sweet!

When you receive this award you are to:

1) thank the person who gave this award to you and link it back to their blog
2) share 8 things about yourself
3) pass this award to 8 other individuals that you have recently discovered
4) leave a comment so that they can pass along the recognition!

Now, 8 things about myself.

1. I am a Christian, wife to my college sweetheart and mother to two beautiful baby girls (age 22 months and 7 months).
2. I teach 7th grade social studies full time.
3. I enjoy sharing my passion for paper crafting with others.
4. I love crafting with my friends, but don't get to do it often enough.
5. I want to start teaching scrapbook classes, have a scrap club that meets regularly, and do and host more crops. Now I just need to find the time to do it.
6. I am a Close to my Heart Independent Consultant.
7. I love to shop for deals on scrapbook supplies online.
8. I am currently obsessed with finding extremely good deals on items to use as storage for my craft room. I am currently looking for 30 slot scrapbook paper racks (recently lost out on a craigslist find for $30 by getting in touch with them a 1/2 day sooner...so sad.) I am also looking for rotating greeting card holders, mainly a small one.
Here are 8 fabulous blogs I have recently discovered in no particular order:

http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/2011/02/decoupaged-back-splash.html

http://bethybrat-bloomingwhereimplanted.blogspot.com/


http://cupcakescreations.blogspot.com

http://tmasonstudio.blogspot.com/

http://alittlemcd.blogspot.com/

http://www.crapivemade.com/

http://isntthatsweet.blogspot.com/

http://livingorganizedchaos.blogspot.com/

Valentines Tutorial and Cricut Crawl Blog Hop Entry

Are you tired of the cold weather yet? I know I am. I teach and we were on our 15th snow day today.  So I decided to have a Mommy Day today and sent the girls to daycare to play while I got somethings done. The day started off great. I ran to Wal-mart then came home and got to work in my craft room making my girls Valentines Cards. Now my girls are only 21 months and 7 months old so I made the cards myself. Monday at daycare their classrooms are trading valentines and being into crafts I thought, "I can make them!" So after several days of intending to do them, I spent today getting them done. Anyone who knows me, knows I take FOREVER when I do projects. So one thing that excited me today was that I finished them in record time. The designs popped into my head and I went with it instead of second guessing everything and I LOVE how they turned out. Hope you like them.

Today I am going to show you how to make these sucker toppers.

For my older daughter I bought a $1 box of 4 suckers for the kids. Her class has 4 students in it including her so this was a very affordable project. I kept the packaging to keep my suckers in, but I altered the front and sides of the box to make it look nicer and not like a cheap box from the store. I random stamped the CTMH colonial white cardstock with blush and tulip inks and heart stamps. The smaller heart is from Close to my Heart from the Hello There set. The larger one I believe is from a Fancy Pants set. The Love sentiment is from Paper Studio and I did first generation stamping and then shadowed it with a second generation stamping both in tulip ink from CTMH. To do generation stamping is easy, stamping after inking is 1st generation, then stamp a second time without inking and that is 2nd generation, then stamp again without inking is 3rd generation, etc. I also made my own shimmer mist filling a bottle 2/3 full of water, adding reinker to liking, and then a dash of perfect pearls powder and spritzed my random stamping.

 To make the valentines candy toppers I used my Cricut Expression and the Accent Essentials Cartridge to make the hearts and the scalloped circles. The hearts were cut out from CTMH tulip cardstock at 2" and the scalloped circles were cut from a scrap of CTMH colonial white cardstock at 1.5".

 

I used my embossing pen to hand write the words "From: Mayli Milburn" on the back heart and then as seen below poured white embossing powder on them and used my heat gun to set it. I LOVE how this worked.

 

  I also stamped the letters "U R" in versamark ink using my CTMH Alphabet set that came with my Felicity Campaign Set. I did the same embossing technique as seen above to set these letters as well...really easy and very quick. I would stamp and pour embossing powder on each heart then set them all at once with the heat gun. (p.s. like my stamping mess?)

 Here is a shot of my other supplies, you can see I also stamped all my scalloped circles at once for easy assembly. The circles going on the front of the hearts were stamped with the sentiment "so sweet" from the CTMH stamp set Just for Girls. The circle going on the back heart was stamped with the sentiment "Handmade with Love" from the CTMH stamp set Made with Love.

 Here is the finished sucker from the back. I pop dotted the scalloped circles on each heart for dimension.

Now I have a 7 month old girl as well and she is one of 8 in her nursery classroom.  Since the babies don't eat suckers, I just made cards. I had these 4.5" circle cards laying around left over from a previous project. I had made them using my SCAL software and my Cricut machine. I used CTMH chocolate ink to distress the edges, Bazzil Basics Black textured cardstock, and the dot border is from the CTMH stamp set Jingle Borders. Other than that the front was made the same way as the suckers except I pop dotted the heart and the scalloped circles this time.

 Can you read those names? My girl is Emersyn, but this just goes to show you that people are trying to be more unique.

 Close up of the front. I did my daughters first and used a first generation border, but thought it was a bit too strong and took away from the heart.

 So I changed it to second generation stamping for the others.

 Back of the card. Stamps from CTMH sets Made with Love and Angel Policy.

 Inside of the cards were stamped with the Felicity Alphabet stamp again and hand written salutation was done with my embossing pen and black glitter embossing powder.

What did you think? Was it tacky to give myself a shameless plug? I just wanted people to know where to find my other artwork ideas, so hope it was not a bad idea to include that.

Now I am sitting in my very cold living room writing this post. After this amazing day of getting projects done I managed to have enough time to visit an antique store in search of cheap things I could re-purpose. Went to the library, picked up the girls and when we got home....discovered my HEAT WAS OUT AGAIN THIS WEEK!!! Only this time we could not get it going again and heating guy can't be reached for some reason (we have his work and cell #'s). So I am sitting here getting colder and colder and hoping my girls don't get any sicker from this. Little one already has a cold. We may converge into one room tonight with room heater. It is probably 50 something degrees in here right now. Well, at least it was a good day...cause tonight is going to be rough.