Photo Display Board

It could be for any occasion really, any sort of party, but this one that I made was for my nephew’s graduation party last month.  I bought a trifold cardboard display thingie from Walmart for $5, covered with wrapping paper I got at Big Lots made by American Crafts.  Did you know American Crafts made wrapping paper?  I sure didn’t and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it!  haha 

I made the big graduation caps, the stars, and the “Congratulations Graduate 2009″ words on my Pazzles, cutting them out of cardstock.

The above board was done with his senior portraits that I took myself, so I thought it looked spectacular, of course!

I wanted to do another board with his childhood to now photos on it, but I could only get 2 rolls of the wrapping paper and needed both of them for the first board so I came up with another idea for displaying those. 

I took some antique wooden window shutters from my basement that came off of my own windows years ago and used binder clips to clip the photos onto the slats of the shutters.  I used my Pazzles machine again to cut out those words out of cardstock and used Glue Dots to attach those to the top of the shutters.  Can you see it says “Troy Through The Years”?

Another handmade birthday card

I’ve been playing around with the June kit from Creek Bank Creations and decided to take this paper that I didn’t like and make something pretty with it for someone else, so made my daughter-in-law a card for her birthday yesterday.

the inside of the card…..

I took a butterfly rubon and rubbed it onto white cardstock and then cut it out.  I kept trying to find a spot for him on the front of the card but every place I tried bugged me, so I ended up putting him on the inside.

Here’s some closeup shots.   See the sparkly Stickles?  I love the person who invented these.

If you aren’t the crafty do-it-yourself handmade card type of person, you can get all kinds announcements (cards, invitations, save the dates, even wedding invites) that are beautiful and affordable at Vistaprint.  Go check it out.

Ever catch your kitchen on fire?

Yesterday I came close. 

I had a fire in a pan on the stove catch fire and it melted the bottom of the pan.  The bottom of that pan literally disappeared, liquefied and melted onto the burner.  I was cooking water and sugar for hummingbird food and forgot to set the timer.  Which means I forgot about the boiling pan of water on the stove.  And here’s how far my stupidity goes.  We had taken down the smoke detector because it was installed above the sink and every time I drained out boiling water from cooking pasta or something similar the steam would set off the smoke detector.  My stupid ass never thought to just MOVE the smoke detector.  So we took it down.  And yesterday when there was a freaking fire on my stove top I had no smoke detector to tell me about it. 

And here’s more stupidity for you.  I smelled something funny earlier before I discovered the fire and ignored it.  Figured my hubby was doing something in the basement and it was drifting upstairs.  Even smelling the funny smell didn’t remind my brain that I had a pan cooking on the stove.  DUH.  And I know that it could have been much worse.  People have actual ROOMS catch on fire, etc.  But it was scary.  I suddenly realized my living room was full of smoke and even in the daytime all I could see was white smoke everywhere.  It was crazy.  (I can see how fires at night cause people to get disoriented and be killed because they can’t find their way out.  SCARY)  I ran into the kitchen and for a minute couldn’t figure out what to do.  I couldn’t reach past the pot and turn off the burner because flames were shooting out of the pot and I didn’t want to get my arm burned.  I finally thought to get a hot pad and grab the handle of it and take the pan to the sink and put it in there, figuring the fire would go out itself then. 

But the worst part?  The smell.  My house smells SO BAD right now.  After we got all the smoke cleared out of our house I left for a few hours, but when I came back it still smelled terrible.  Anybody know how to remove a smoke smell from your house?  Well, how to remove a half smoke/half burnt Teflon smell?  YUCK.  Seriously, I’m just glad I still HAVE a house, even if it does stink to high heaven!

Happy Birthday to You.

Here’s my latest project, a birthday card for my hubby’s granddaughter (adult).  She likes greens and earth tones, so I went with this My Minds Eye paper that I got at a crop and didn’t like (there’s no pink in there!). 

That scalloped piece is actually chipboard border from My Minds Eye also (it was in a kit with the paper), the flowers are Prima, and the darling butterflies are from Heidi Swapp that I got super duper cheap.  I also got the pretty little green jewels in the middles of the flowers super cheap, a package for a buck at Michaels.  I love when I find stuff like that.  Not bad for something I whipped up literally in 5 minutes, and Danielle told me she loved it several times. 

Notecard set for a teacher.

I made a set of 4 notecards for my daughter’s 3rd grade teacher as an end-of-the year gift this weekend.  They had grown monarch butterflies from larvae last fall and had take lots of photos with the class camera, so I bought a few and cropped them down, printed out the butterfly onto transparency film, cut it out, and applied Stickles to the back of the butterfly.  On one of them I experimented with orange alcohol ink.  I am actually pretty pleased with how these came out.  I used different flowers and different Stickles (some orange and some white) and the antennae all ended up different so each card is just a little it different from the others, and I like that too.

These might make nice notecards for a teacher’s Christmas gift this year.  I think I may put some sets of these in my etsy shop for sale.  What do you think?