Happy Birthday with a Cherry On Top

When I was six years old, I was a flower girl for my cousin's wedding. This honor is among my earliest memories of a life-long relationship with Sharon and David. My cousin, Sharon, is a faithful card-sender who lavishes love through snail mail on her many fortunate recipients. As the rest of us have lazily moved to email, then texts, Sharon has resisted and instead spends her early mornings faithfully writing notes, sending birthday, anniversary, get-well, condolence and congratulations cards. I can't even conceive of the amount of time she has given to her personal ministry of care over the years!

When you receive a card from Sharon, you know that you are adored and valued. The warmest woman I have ever known, Sharon pours all of her loving intention into each card, making the outpouring itself a most precious gift.

My dear cousins and I have both aged and I am not so faithful as Sharon - particularly to David. Mostly I have missed his birthdays. This year, I was determined to do better and make David a special card. I selected a file from the Silhouette store, 'a2 Cupcake Shaped Card' by Lori Whitlock.

I used the print and cut feature to add a birthday sentiment before cutting the card base. The font I used is AMTypical. After cutting the 'icing,' I ran the pink cardstock through my Cuttlebug embosser using an all-over swirls embossing folder. I made multiple copies of the cherry embellishment for heft, stacking them one upon the other, finally popping up the last copy for dimension. Lastly, I glazed the icing swirls with Stickles.

I am confident that David is secure enough in his masculinity to receive a pink iced cupcake for his birthday card.

 

 

On the back of each card I make, I stamp a tea bag as a signature and add my name and the year.

 

 

Bittersweet Valentine

In Southern California, the weather remains reasonably mild even during the winter. Because of this, the cemeteries are enthusiastically decorated for each holiday. I make a seasonal decoration for my daughter's grave. Alexis was just 25 years old when she passed away unexpectedly in December, 2012. Being creative with my Silhouette has proved to be very therapeutic in coping with my extreme grief. When I do something for her grave, I enjoy remembering how she would sit close in my crafting space, perched on the window sill as my Silhouette was busily cutting. She loved to see what I was making. Today I enjoy providing her with something very special, unique and lovely - just as she was.

I often make something to add to the flowers we take to the cemetery every week. One of the files I like best is simply 'Dove' by Hero Arts, available in the Silhouette store. I cut them in multiples of two and sandwich bamboo skewers in between the layers. I stagger the height of the skewers and sometimes 'extend' their length by taping more than one together. A clutch of three doves looks very nice. The adhesive I prefer for this is: TomBow Mono, Multi Liquid Glue. It doesn't warp the cardstock and provides a very strong hold. I shape the wings to make the doves seem to be taking flight and, as they weather during the week, the wings curl on their own. Doves are a very lovely addition to graveside flowers and appropriately remind us of the Holy Spirit.

 

This week I made Alexis a Valentine-themed decoration. I selected 'Devil and Angel Heart' by Megan Hardy from the Silhouette store. I scaled it up as large as my 12" by 12" cardstock would allow the angel wings to be. Then ungrouped and deleted the devil bits. I cut 3 sets of wings for strength and stability and layered them together with the TomBow mentioned above. Then I cut 4 sets of the heart. I arranged two bamboo skewers between one pair of hearts and the wings, extending the pointy ends outward in order to poke them in the ground. I buttressed the skewers with pop dots and loaded on a generous bead of TomBow glue. Allowing half an hour to set, I then flipped the wings and repeated the process with two more skewers, taping each pair of skewers together with washi tape for stability. What I have then is a double-sided decoration with hearts on either side, wings in between, and four skewers to support my decoration to stand up the ground.



Before I cut the halos, I added two very small holes to the file and created a compound path. This is so I can suspend the halo between the two angel wings seemingly in mid-air. I cut 10 copies of the halo out of gold cardstock and stacked my sturdy little halo, clamped it and let it glue dry.

When it comes to having grave decorations endure the vagaries of wind and weather, monofilament (fishing line) is my best friend. I hung the halo between the wings with two threads of monofilament.

In the meantime, I began cutting a variety of hearts out of 4 different cardstock plain and patterned papers. I wanted to make two valentine totem poles for either side of her headstone, so I sent my husband out to Home Depot to pick up 3" wide garden pickets. He spray-painted them white for me and I layered on the hearts. A few of them I embossed with my Cuttlebug to give them texture and a very few I curled by using a bone folder. I overlapped them randomly and allowed them to sometimes extend sideways off of the wooden picket. (For this I used Scotch brand Quick-Dry Adhesive.) My husband hammered the picket posts into the ground on either side of Alexis's headstone.

Of course we always bring flowers and because Alexis was so young and innocent, I prefer bright daisies to roses for Valentines' Day.

Below are photos of my efforts. It was a gloriously sunny and warm day at the cemetery and I was very proud to have created a remembrance for Alexis which was youthful, joyful and representative of her big, fun and pure spirit. She is our angel.

The monofilament is invisible so that the halo seems to float mid-air.

 

Left side picket

Right side with another grave's balloons visible behind.
The cemetery is building crypts on the hill below and the construction supports are visible.



Next week, I will fetch the pickets home, remove the hearts and store the pickets for future use. I can imagine they will work beautifully for Memorial Day or 4th of July with a banner hanging in between.

 



Geeky and proud of it

I love this little valentine I made from the Silhouette online store. It's a Loni Stevens design. It takes advantage of the print and cut feature for the quirky text and teal background. It also includes a cut file for the glasses. I resized it to suit my taste at 5.5" by 4.25". I used vellum for the eyeglass lenses and then added some real first aide tape for the geeky bridge of the nose repair. The glasses frames are popped up for dimension. This valentine is just right for a couple of my fun and funky friends.

Signs aplenty for Valentine-themed Fudraiser

The signs I made for our silent auction donations to the church Valentine dinner and dance were such a hit with my husband who is a part of the group that is putting on the dinner, dance, and silent auction, that he asked me to make some simplified version for several of their other 'big ticket' donations.

When I was making my own signs, I noodled over how to get my signs to stand up on a table behind a bid sheet in order to be attractive, visible and valentine-themed. On a visit to my local Michael's store, I discovered 7.75" by 7.75" unfinished wood picture frames in which the photo window is heart-shaped. I liked them because they stand up with the aid of a small dowel. All very low tech and simple. Best of all, they cost $1.00 each!

 

 

For our signs, I had covered the frames with printed cardstock and attached the details of our items. For these frames, I didn't want to put a lot of time into them and wanted to keep it simple, so I decided to cut some patterned cardstock as an insert into the heart window and attach another heart onto which I had printed the item's details.

To get the exact shape of the heart window, I took the cardstock insert that came with the frame, scanned it, saved it as a jpeg, and imported the jpeg into my Silhouette Studio. I used Silhouette's trace feature to find the correct heart shape (You'd be surprised how different hearts can be!) and then cut out the hearts in a few different cardstock patterns. These formed the base background.

To make the scalloped hearts that have the details of each silent auction item, I selected a scalloped heart, made an internal offset to highlight the cute scalloped edge, selected a font that I liked, filled it with a pinkish-red color, adjusted the line settings to give each letter a black outline, then used my Silhouette's print and cut feature to first print and then cut.

I've created several different hearts to embellish the frames a bit more. Some of them I popped up and some I embossed with my Cuttlebug.

I really do like popping embellishments up, but I find the pop dots to be kind of pricey for what they are, so I make my own. It's very simple and very cheap. I purchase the sheet foam (12" by 18") from Michaels and use an ordinary hole punch to make dozens of little circles. Then it takes just a dab of glue on each side to affix and pop up my little embellishments. I also have a teeny tiny hold punch and have made those too for when something tiny is in order.

I'm so proud of my signage! I hope they make the silent auction attractive and festive.

Valentine-themed Fundraiser Signs

This weekend, our church is having a youth scholarship fundraiser that is a family Valentine dinner dance. It's a lot of fun for everyone. Part of the fun is a silent auction.

We are donating a bubble-gum pink beach cruiser bicycle with a basket and bell. Also my husband was able to solicit a round of golf for 4 at our local golf club where he is a member.

I offered to make the signs. My hope is that my signs and banner will attract the attention of eager bidders.

I loved this project because I could mix and match patterned paper and cardstock, embellish with Stickles, try different techniques on my Silhouette, and impress myself with what I have learned over the year and a half I've been tinkering with my Silhouette Cameo.

I can see that I still have a long way to go before I reach Silhouette nirvana, but I really had fun in the process of creation.

Isn't she a tempting beauty?




These will sit above the bid sheets.

 

Another Valentine

I attempted to create a Valentine card using a couple of the Valentine-specific files I purchased from the Silhouette store. I began by drawing a rectangle, sizing it to 11" wide by 4.25" high. I drew a line 4.25" high, centered it in my rectangle, opened the line styles and perforated the line. My card opens side-ways. The innovative thing I was attempting is to have my cut file wrap around to the back of the card so that my card is as pretty on the back as on the front. I chose 'Love' by Tanya Batrak from the Silhouette store and sized it to a height of 4.25", so it would fill my side-ways opening A2 card top to bottom and spill around the backside.

I selected a honey-comb patterned pink and ivory cardstock which was single-sided. The length of the cut file is about 10" so it looks pretty good wrapping around to the back of my card. The stark white of the inside of my Valentine made me sad, so I covered it with 'Heart Background/Template' by Sarah Hurley in pink. That was laid over the same red coverstock that I had used for the exterior 'Love' cut file. The heart background is only 6" by 6", so I duplicated it and welded them together, then positioned this very long template where I wanted it in relation to my card, opened the modify window and cropped it to fit within my card. Better. This also created an abundance of pink heart confetti that I could scatter around the card. Some of these I popped-up. I also added an arrow and its offset and popped it onto the front.

I created an offset and also traced another Valentine themed cut file: 'Love is All you Need' by Jennifer Wambach in order to get two shades of pink and an ivory backing. Then I made a sunny yellow sunburst, 'Circle Burst' by Silhouette, to put behind it in order to balance all that red and pink. A heart tag from '3 Layered Heart Tags' by Kollette Hall, which I popped up, with a butterflied heart inset just seemed right. I tied pink and white bakers' twine around the fold.

I may add some Stickles glitter touches inside and on the back before I'm fully satisfied.

I had so much fun with this and learned while creating it.

This is the front of my card

 

 

I like how the 'Love' cut file wraps around to the back of my card.

 

Inside view

 



 

Beginning

It's here I hope to post photos of my projects.

At the moment, I have several things in the works:

• A chunky 'Gaptastic' cowl for my eldest daughter.  
• A set of fingerless mitts for my youngest daughter in a soft grey.
• Over 20 Easter eggs in a variety of colors that I will be felting and then embroidering for gifts at Easter, like these . . . I hope mine look half as fabulous.
  

All patterns are free downloads from Ravelry.com which is a free online knitting and crochet community. Check it out.

I have set myself a challenge to participate in Silhouette America's weekly blog challenge. This is what has caused me to create this blog. I noticed that most of the entrants have a blog and post their projects from there.

Last week I posted the following project in response to a Valentine themed challenge:

This is the outside of my Valentine. I called it, 'Love you to Infinity and Beyond'

 

 

This is the inside of my Valentine.

 

This week's challenge was to create something using "your Silhouette and your favorite font."

This is what I entered this week:


The front of a never-ending card I made for my husband's 63rd birthday.