Two 50th Birthdays This Year

Both of us have a younger brother that turned 50 this year. Their birthdays are just about a month apart so I couldn't post Tom's until I sent out Bill's. They both got the same card with a few changes.

Tom's had a compass for letterboxing and Bill's had a sleeping bag for camping. Tom's background was black and Bill's was blue. I am trying to use up some of that blue paper that I never seem to use.

Happy Retirement

A good friend of ours recently retired from UPS. I knew the time was coming soon, so when I saw this truck designed by Sue Berker, I added the site to my favorites. Here is where I found the template for the truck.

http://www.scor-pal.com/cart/index_files/Page530.htm

I put some chocolate mints inside of it as a little gift.

Then I needed a card. I had prepared for this too. At Christmas I saw a UPS man dressed up with a Santa hat on Ellen Kemper's blog. http://blinkthinkink.blogspot.com/ If you like punch art hers is a must see blog. I removed the santa hat and made a baseball cap.

I got the UPS copyrighted logo from some coupons that I got in the newspaper from the UPS store. Click on the pictures to enlarge them and see if you can figure out which SU punches I used.

Happy Easter

I made these cute bunnies with Anna. They could very easily become a Mother's Day or Valentine's Day card too. The other card is made using the Sizzix mover's and shapers die. It is suppose to look like Easter decorations in a window.

Summer is Near

Looking at the recent advertisements, bright colors will be in for this summer. This necklace is bright, multi-colored mother of pearl. It can be worn with a lot of different summer outfits that I have seen. It would be perfect to brighten up a white blouse or dress too.

The Bandage Card

Someone once asked me if I had any cards with bandages on them. I really had never considered making anything like that. But, when I got home I made this one. Jim's sister had some surgery this week so this card is for her. The bandages can hold the stitches on her.

Happy St Patrick's Day

I recently met with a group of ladies to make cards. I brought all the materials to make this card for them to send for St Patrick's Day. We had a good time making these and a few Easter cards too. I will post the Easter cards next month for Easter.

Happy Birthday Tom

Today is my baby brother Tom's birthday. It is one of those zero birthdays, so it bothers me probably more than him. My mom wanted him born on St Patrick's Day and his name would have been Sean Patrick. My dad who was of Scottish descent did not want that to happen so he drove my mom over the worst railroad tracks he could find to try to get her to deliver before the 17th. It worked so he is Thomas Patrick instead.

It is also Jim's niece Amy's birthday today. She is not quite a zero birthday but getting close.

Patty and Pi

March 14 is Jim's sister's birthday. It is also pi day. For those of you wondering what pi day is, you aren't a geek. If you take any circle and divide it's circumference by it's diameter you always get 3.14 and a whole bunch more digits. In fact, there is no end to the number of digits making pi an irrational number. So what does that have to do with March 14. Well pi = 3.14 and March 14 = 3/14, where the / means slash not divided by.

Get Well

My friend and Stampin' Up demo Lisa had to spend time in the hospital. Hopefully she is recovering well at home. I wanted to make a card for her, but it had to be something different. I wanted it to be something I learned on my own, not from her. I took her a candle holder that I made along with this card. The magnolia is made from a Christmas ornament punch! She thought it was a non-Stampin Up' product. My goal of surprising her was met.

March Birthdays

The birthstone for March is aquamarine or bloodstone as an alternate. We do not have anything to show you for this month's stone. We do have a few birthdays this month; my brother, Jim's sister, a niece, and a sister in law. Jim's dad's birthday would have been this month too. March is also when us geeky types celebrate pi day.

Garden Flowers Tri-Shutter Album

You may remember seeing the tri-shutter train album I made my brother for Christmas. This one is a spring version with lots of flowers. I didn't make it for anyone specific so there are no pictures in it. The big flower is on the cover and the next two pictures are what it looks like when you open it. I didn't decorate the two side pages so that it can be used for bigger pictures.  I bought this tutorial from Andrea Walford several years ago.

picture jasper

This is another pendant I got on e-bay. It is made of picture jasper with a blue stone, then framed with landscape jasper. This pendant makes it easy to see why it is called picture jasper. I added the little bear fetish below it. The necklace is a combination of large landscape jasper faceted stones and smaller picture jasper nuggets, chips and rounds.

Fishes and Stars

These cards are made from another set that I borrow quite often from Anna. I have a tendency not to use blue paper and the sea life forces me to use some of it. I also like using the cuttlebug bubble folder on any cards that are water related.

Look at all the little details on the cards; the heart for an anniversary and the birthday hat on the fish. Do you see the brad next to the thank you? It is a little star.

Ode to Picasso

The pendant bead on both of these is Picasso Jasper. It gets it's name from the lines across the face of the bead. This stone is a brown color and is one of the most beautiful stones I have used. The other one is red and some of the shapes in the stone remind me more of Dali than Picasso. I got both of these from Hong Kong via e-bay. You have to be careful with stones from e-bay. I have found to buy a few the first time to check out the quality and then go for it. I will definitely buy from this guy again.

Coffee, Tea, or Hot Chocolate

This has been such a cold winter. There has been snow in places that rarely see snow, not here thank goodness. What is your preferred hot beverage? I am a tea drinker, hot or cold, but on cold nights I like a good hot chocolate. Coffee is not for me.

My friend Anna loaned me her Stampin Up coffee set again. The chef is not a part of it but he is holding one of the cups from her set. He comes with all kinds of little things to stamp on his tray. I will be using him again with some of them.

Baby Bears

Jim has been busy making things again. I guess it is the cold weather. We don't feel like leaving the house, not that the house is that warm. These are the cutest little jasper bears. He made a bracelet, necklace, and two different styles of earrings.

Tree of Life

When I first made the tree of life, I put it on a necklace of three strands of chips. My neice, who sells alot of jewelry for me, suggested a single strand would appeal to the younger crowd and thats what I have made from then on. We have had good luck with trees. Selling many in green (rhyolite), brown (tiger eye) and reds and yellows (moukaite). This year I added tree earrings which are hard to make but give a complete look. For most of these I have chip bracelets to match which are three or four turns of memory wire. I had made some bracelets with mixed chips including turquoise and many other jaspers and stones and they have sold well. I decided to try a tree of life to match and put it back on the three strands. We both like the way it turned out and this may be added to my repetior of trees.

Happy Valentine's Day

Do you have your card to send to your valentine? I send my cards early so that people can display them before the holiday. This gives them a little holiday decoration and a longer time to enjoy the card.

I only made a few valentines for sale because we only did one craft show before the holiday. It was that rainy one a few weeks ago. I didn't sell one valentine. So some of them, I took off the greeting and changed it to Happy Anniversary. Unless they read the blog, they will never know.

Quilting with Paper

I have never made a quilt. In fact, I do very little sewing of any kind. But when I taught Discrete Mathematics, each of my students made a small model for a fibbonaci quilt. They then made one larger class quilt using the fibbonaci sequence 1,1 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ....

These cards are suppose to have quilt like

features.

It is a great way to use very small strips of designer paper. If you look close at the yellow card, it was run through the big kick using

an embossing folder. This gives it the puckered up look that most quilts have.

February Birthstone

The birthstone for February is amethyst. 

Sue's great grandmother was born in February, on Valentine's Day and a dear family friend Beulah.