Sites of the week

Greetings all! It’s a beautiful fall morning here in North Texas. There is certainly a little chill in the air, which is perfect because I am having a garage sale this weekend. Apparently, I am a glutton for punishment! Hopefully it will all be worth it. I had a dream that no one came today. Let’s hope that is not the case because I have 9 boxes of preemie-3T girls clothes to unload. That’s a whole lotta clothes, not to mention everything else.

Other than that, I am continuing to work at Ellie’s school. No more “major” incidents like pulling out “business” in the middle of class, etc. I am also teaching and working at Scrapper’s Boutique. Everything with Baby Boy del Muro is going great! I went for my check-up yesterday and all is well. He’s a feisty lil’ man in there! Even at 24 weeks I can feel him kicking HARD! I can only imagine what it will be like in the later weeks/months. I am getting pretty hugs, too. He’s a del Muro boy for sure…Tony is 6′7″!

Of course, I have been crafting here and there, too. It’s really hard to find the time to get things done these days. I was so used to having a couple days a week when I could truck through stuff. Now that I am working through those same hours, I am beat down and just want to rest when there is a free moment. I did; however, find the time to make this SPOOKY banner… {click on the smaller images to make them pop up larger}

I made the banner using Bazzill Swiss Dots black cardstock, along with Prism and Papertrey cardstocks. The font is cut from the Slice Spook Alley design card {lovin’ that card!!}.

Ok, well that’s it for today. I have to go get ready for this garage sale. Wish me luck!!

Happy Monday All! I had a great time this weekend. I taught at Scrapper’s Boutique on Saturday and then on Sunday we went to the Fort Worth Zoo with some friends and their kiddos. Ellie scraped up her knees pretty good when she was running around after lunch, but was cheered up quickly with a chocolate ice cream cone and front row seats to the animal show.

Today I am excited to show you a cute lil’ project featuring another one of the Organizer Boxes from Glue Art & Paper Studio. I turned this one into a sweet candy holder for Halloween. It doubles as decor for my front table…BONUS! Just don’t ask how long the candy will last between now and Halloween!

The lettering is from the Slice Spook Alley design card {love this card!} and is cut from Bazzill Swiss Dots black paper…

A couple more detail shots {I couldn’t resist posting the lollipop one!}…

Since the box comes “bare,” I started by painting it black with a foam brush. I like using a foam brush because I am less likely to get streaky lines that are sometimes left behind from a bristle brush. The pumpkin paper on the front is from Reminisce and is matted with white cardstock for a tiny bit of “pop.” The green paper that is punched with a Martha Steward border punch and stitched on is from My Little Shoe Box {such a cute co. name!}. The black polka dot paper on the sides is from Martha Stewart. On top of that black polka dot paper I die cut a couple of spiderwebs with the Spook Alley design card. Finally, I dumped put some colorful lollipops in to make it complete. Before I forget the itty-bitty details…the bat punch is from Martha Stewart and I covered them in black Stickles and the black rhinestones are Taylor’s Tiny Twinkles.

Today is the first day of the Verve Project Parade. Each {week}day until September 11 a DT member will be posting a creation to go along with this month’s theme, Happiness for Hostess, on the Verve blog. Today is my turn and this is what I made for a hostess gift…

I have had this travel coffee mug in my stash of alterables for a very long time. I knew that the perfect time to use it would come sooner or later! I chose to do a matching tag on glassine bag filled with chocolate goodies, too. I used the sets Delightful & Delicious and Cup of Life to create this gifty set. Here are a couple detail shots…

I got the idea of doing the stitched ribbon rosette from THIS post on Lisa Johnson’s blog where she uses this ribbon to create a ruffled edge. I broke out my hot glue gun again to attach the ends, and to adhere it to the tag. Gotta tell ya, I love my hot glue gun. I use it A LOT!

Be sure to check out the Verve blog, and all the details about chances to win gift certificates <--plural-- to the Verve Stamps store.

Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that Jessice Griffin is giving away a DAR-LING gift tin away on HER BLOG. Super duper cute!

No, I am not switching over to ABC Monday, but it just seemed fitting for today since I have a couple ABC projects to show. These are from the new releases from Verve Stamps. Some of you may have seen these if you were at the Verve release party.

This first one is from Delightful and Delicious…

My inspiration for this project is Starbucks {duh, right?}. I wanted to use the coffee theme with their {general} colors to create a gift set to give a girl friend. Inside the cello bag are chocolate covered espresso malt balls {say that five times fast!}. Oh boy do these smell DE-LISH! I made tag to match the card and then attached one of the key fob Starbucks gift cards with a ball/chain. You’ll notice that I mixed fancier embellishments {the frosted bonbons from Stamping Bella} with a button tied off with twine. I like the look of mixing these two styles! Note that it really can’t be done on a large scale. For the card, I broke out my crimper to create “wrap” like you would put around your cup. You’ll notice that I paper pierced just the bottom half of the circle, using a plastic canvas circle.

This next project is a gift set using the set, A Cup of Life…

This gift set is really quite simple. I made a fancy tag to dress up what otherwise might be a pretty dull giftie. I found the tea cup at Goodwill for 75cents and then added some shortbread cookies and a couple bags of tea. the shortbread cookies were already wrapped in cellophane, but I went ahead and put them in another cello bag so that I could easily tie on the tag. It’s kind of difficult to tell by pictures, but on the tea pot, I cut out the center part and mounted it on dimensional glue dots. Also, you can see that I used some of the same paper {Papertrey polka dot} and embellishments {Bella’s bonbons and buttons with twine}. I had a lot of these elements sitting on my desk from the coffee set and figured if I liked them on that set, that they would go well on this one. I mixed up placement and use a little to create an original project.

Like many of you, I am relishing this last week before school starts. Lots to do and gotta get all that summer fun in before the madness starts Have a great week!

Happy Friday Everyone! I am posting a little later today because of swim lessons and general craziness this morning. I am actually at Susan’s house right now prepping for my Copic class tomorrow. Hopefully I will get that all done so I can stamp some more stuff, too.

As promised, I have a couple {I forgot that I already showed several at the release} The Cat’s Pajamas projects to show you and a Bella-rific Friday card, too. So let’s get started with all my TCP creations using all the new sets and embellies…

TCP Banner…

Better Get Better chicken soup packet holder…

Here’s my card for Bella-rific Friday! Be sure to check out all the other Bella Babes’ creations HERE on the Bella Blog…

As you may have seen, I will be stepping down from Bella team at the end of the month. Why in the world would I be so crazy enough to do that? Well, with the new baby on the way and me picking up some hours of teaching at Ellie’s school, I need to ease up on my commitments. Bella will always be near and dear to my heart {and wallet}. I love Emily and all things Bella and I wholeheartedly appreciate the opportunity she gave to me to be a Bella Babe. Thank you, Em!!