Save The Date Invitations

SO my cousin is getting married this spring and I offered to make her Save The Date cards. This is the style she chose. Pretty simple, which is nice since I am making 250 of these before I go back to school next week. The colors are Navy cream and silver. Here is the card with out the Vellum on top so that you can see the print. On the Vellum I have embossed Once Upon A Time from the Ever After SU set and the swirls are from the Always SU set in Midnight Navy.

Christmas Trees

I actually made these last year and had said I would make a million more, or redo these, but after my class made a ton for a craft sale I got burned out on them last year. Fast forward to January and Erin and I said we would make topiarys like these for all the seasons using round balls or other shapes, I have seen a bunch online I like, but did I do it??????Nope, so here you go! Christmas trees from last year revisted, well I guess they are new to you since I did not have my blog last year :) I am feeling crafty right now, even though I am sick, so I guess I am going to research some save the date cards, since I am making my cousins Save the dates cards for her wedding in June. I am very excited.

Blue bonnets revisted

SO I made some bluebonnet glasses for my mom a few months back, it was my first attempt at bluebonnets, which takes a little practice to get the hang of getting the combinations of blue right so they actually look like bluebonnets. Unfortunately, they do not photograph well. Well they might photograph well if my photographer husband took the pics, but he is never around when I need them taken. But I digress, ohhh big word, tee hee, Anyway, several people have seen the bluebonnet glasses and asked for some, so I have now made 5 different sets of Bluebonnet glasses for people, but a friend of mine through Cub Scouts saw my blog and wanted some for her mother for Christmas, and she also wanted some bluebonnet dessert plates. I thought, sure no problem and well they weren't BUT I was painting on clear glass and snowmen are easy, you just have to realize you have to paint the details first. Easy enough, except on bluebonnets! You really need to get the blue on there and then add the highlights. SO needless to say, after 1 failed attempt, (Hey look dad, I learned after the first time not the 5th!) I realized I needed to paint a template and then model it on the plate. I have to say. I love the plates. I changed the design slightly from the glasses and added cute little white flowers in the grass, which do not photograph on a white backdrop OOPS!

Anyway, enjoy, I am really enjoying the painting right now, it is so sad I only seem to do it around Christmas, because no one wants my stuff except this time of the year.

Oh yes, I better add this...Mom, I know you saw this and you are going to want dessert plates as well to go with your glasses. I will get right on that so that you can have them hopefully for your birthday in February.

Purple because of LJ

Many of you know I lost a dear friend last month by the name of LJ. Well, it did affect me deeply as I had known this man almost as long as I have known my parents! So after he died my mother asked me to make her some thank you cards for her to send out to those who had extended condolences to them. As I felt I had not grieved completely, I decided to make these all in variations of purple since LJ loved the color purple and called it his signature color. At first, I was like PURPLE......HMMMMM... not sure I could pull it off, but I went back through many cards I had done in the past and actually found several that it worked well on, see I could not do these in say orange or yellow, but I think they are perfect in Purple. Matt came up with a a saying and designed a back logo for me to put on all these cards,as I was not going to sign my name, it said: IT had Purple because of LJ and his birth and death year then it said, It is not what you gather in life, it is what you scatter. LJ scatter both love and happiness.

Hope you enjoy these, I think I have decided I might include a purple section in all the cards I do for craft shows from now on.

Vino

SO matt's work is having an auction and I had plans to make lots of thing to auction off, but fortunately I have run out of time and can only make these and a cheesecake. Fortunately, you say? Yes fortunately I have sold quite a few things this season and have orders for others so I said paying crafts beats just for fun ones! LOL So this is the wine glass set I made for the auction, I even made the packaging. I took 2 Starbucks Frappacino carrying cases and duct taped them together and then covered with some cool wrapping paper I have. I then embellished it with some ribbon and made a cracked glass label"VINO" to go on the front. To finish off all my handmade painted items I have also made "CARE" tags stating that they should be treated as fine china and be hand washed. That is the Fleur Dis Li tag you see the pic of. Oh yes and I also beaded the stems of the glasses. The stem wraps are removable for cleaning and can be put back on or taken off permanently if needed. These are my OTHER grapes I have done, but I think I now like the smaller ones on the decanter.

OK, Now I must go do ARD paperwork and then work on a few more orders.

CHEERS!

Grape-a-licious Decanter

Ok so here is the decanter I sold. I made this for a lady who is very particular about where she gets her Williams Sonoma Wine glasses and who only buys the best. So, needless to say I was very nervous when I took this on and I had to make sure it was perfect and I have to say I like these grapes the best out of any grapes I have ever painted. Ok, you may say how hard is it to paint grapes, but believe me, it is way easier to paint bad grapes than good grapes. I think these turned out very nice. To add a little more pizzaz I decided to also bead a cuff to go on it with crystal beads, I tried to bead a cluster of grapes and I looked all over online for directions on how to do that and I found 2 different ways on how to do this, but I think my hair may be too blonde or maybe I just need an instructional video on how to do this because I could make it to step 3 on both sets of instructions(that had visual diagrams I might add)but I never could get any further, so I gave up. It does not look too bad though. I wish I could have sent this to work with Matt for him to photograph but I had to deliver it too soon. I hope she likes it, I am sure I will find out soon enough, well after Christmas since it is a gift!

LET IT SNOWman...

OK, so last year I made a ton of personalized glass plates with snowmen and Christmas these, I also made 14 sets of wine glasses in various holiday themes and just plain grape things. I made them for a craft sale at school. I sent them all to work with Matt, since he is a photographer, so he could take nice pictures of them. He took them and kept them in his car for a week and then brought them home having never took pictures of them! Well I just happened to snap pics with my iphone of a couple of the plates I made at school, so the quality of the picture is not real good. The one with the polka dotted border and the snowman holding the stars were just a couple of them. Fast forward to this year and a lady I worked with loved them so much she ordered one for her husband to give to his classroom paraproffessional and she chose the snow family since I had a pic of it on my phone, so I recreated it and I think I made it look better than the original. Unfortunately since these are clear plates I put them on white paper to photograph so you cannot see the snowflakes I had painted on the clear part. But Oh well. I think I really like painting snowmen, there are so many types of snowmen, just like real people. I also painted a wine decanter and beaded a cuff to go on it and a set of wine glasses. I have pictures of the decanter that I will post later and Matt took the wine glasses with the beaded stems to work to photograph, let's see if he does it this year. I painted the glasses for an auction they are having at his work and I told his coworker that she could not accept them until he took the pictures.....OH OH OH! Stop the presses! Matt just walked in with a disc with the pictures he took. OK well here these are, I 'm off to view these pics and then post them! Cheers!

Ho Ho Ho And Joy!

Ok, So I have been working on a few Christmas items. Mom gave me these really cute frames that she got for free, well I know why, they were crappy, on one the leg that makes it stand up was broken and the other the little prongs that held the backing on were warped as well as the wood. I did a little magic on them and got them to work, but then I added too many embellishments that I could put the glass back in them. But I think they did turn out super cute. I found this new website called www.scrapnfonts.com and each month you can down load some free fonts for your computer, and someone on their team makes a page of sayings for that month, all laid put nicely for cards or gifts AND they have a gallery of things other people have made using the fonts and my newest addiction...DINGBATS! They are like stamped images, except you print them out on your computer, so my HO HO HO, the O's were made with the CK Ornaments dingbats, I did buy that font.

So...Anyway I wanted to make a few Christmas decorations, and I had these frames and I found some old scrapbook paper from last years Stampin' Up Christmas Bundle and and a few little embellishments and a snowflake I re-beaded 3 times to get it to fit exactly, you have these!

This weekend I have been working on wine glasses, a decanter and a plate, they are all drying while I try to figure out how to bead a cluster of grapes, I am about to give up on that one, no amount of directions I find is helping me out, I need a step by step video so they may go without grapes stem wraps. I should have pics soon to follow. Until then, enjoy the season and HO HO HO!