Recipe Card

I've seen some lovely altered recipe cards online lately, and decided to start a collection of my own. Hopefully having pretty cards with recipes on them wiill make me more likely to cook! ;-)

Here's the first card I've done - for a yummy oatmeal recipe that can be made into cookies or bars. I saw Sara Snow on an episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8 and she made some oatmeal bars with Kate. I did a search online and found what I *think* is the same recipe.




I used some pretty Basic Grey papers from one of their 6 x 6 pads -- turns out they're perfect for recipe card bases, cause you can get two 3 x 5 cards out of one sheet, and you're left over with a 1 x 6 strip to make into inchies!

Beading Kick

I've been doing lots of bead-y stuff lately. Found a magazine that I bought last year and have done a few projects from it, super fun! Here are a few pics:

Cheerful Picture Frame

I was home for about two weeks for the holidays and got in lots of crafty time with my Mom and my BFF. Here's a shot of the supplies that I packed up to take. Maybe I went a bit overboard!! I packed all this up WAY before I even thought about packing clothes, so I guess that shows something about my priorities :-)

And here's a pic of one of the bigger projects I did while I was there, a bright happy picture frame. We found wooden picture frames at the craft store and worked on them while our guys were watching a movie.
The first thing that I did was the checkerboard pattern in the lower right corner. I penciled in a grid, then used a woodburner to go over the lines. Then I used Portfolio water-soluble pastels to add color. I colored hard, then used just a bit of water on top. I drew the flowers and swirls with colored pencils and the pastels, then used gel pens and acrylic paints to add accents. Finally, I slipped in a picture - that's me and my husband right after we got engaged. Here's a close up of the woodburned section -- I really like how the burnt wood looks with the white pastel.

I had so much fun with this frame that I picked up a couple more to play with. This square frame comes with an extra piece of wood that lets the frame stand up, but I also found some rectangle ones that I think would be nice hanging on the wall.

Random Music Video

I don't understand a word, but this song made me smile:

Surprise Ball

I saw the instructions for making surprise balls a while back on Go Make Something, and have been wanting to make one for a while. I finally got around to it over Christmas and took pics of the process.

First I made up some ATC blanks to put in the center of the ball. I cut the blanks from white cardstock and used black permanent ink to stamp the ATC blank - it's a great stamp from Catslife Press. I wrapped the blanks in some ribbon to keep them together.

Then I added the other large-ish items: a rubber eraser and mini compasses on one side, a few stickers and red electrical tape on the other. This 'yarn' is more like ribbon, but stretchy. I decided to use different fibers to wrap this ball because I'm trying to tempt my friend into doing chunky books with me. I figure she'll be more likely to do it if she has a little stash of fibers to chunk up the pages. After these bigger items were securely attached, I switched to another funky yarn.



I used some birght, fuzzy yarn to stick in a few small things - scrabble tiles and mini dominoes perfect for altering and some fabric flowers to use in ATCs or cards or other projects. Once I started using the fuzzy yarn the ball really started to take shape. It began to get rounder and rounder, and the corners of the ATC blanks started to get covered up.



The corners disappeared for good with the next layer - blue sparkly yarn. I stuck in a few more flowers in this layer. Then it all got covered up with pink. I sprinkled in a little star confetti too.

It was fun to make, and also fun to watch my friend unwrap it all.