Fruit Theme

As I said in my previous post, I made 4 themes of greeting cards for a recent boutique. Here is one of them, the Fruit Theme. I sell these in a pack of 8 with envelopes, housed in a clear plastic box. If you are interested, please contact me at ediving@hotmail.com. I am also willing to sell them individually too. All die cuts are given a 3-d look using pop dots.

The Apple. Red card base, with white cardstock inside to write on. I embossed the top part to look like leaves, put stickles on the seeds and stamped it with Apple of My Eye.

The Pear. Dark green card base, with white cardstock inside. Embossed with pears, strip of brown cardstock with ivory ribbon and stamp says What A Pear!

Strawberry. Green cardstock, topped with a silky smooth summer print paper. Inside of the card, it is stamped with You're Berry Special.

Grapes. Plain white cardstock, with 2 layers for the grapes. Green paper with white polka dots and purple ribbon. Stamp says Have a Grape Day!

Watermelon. This card screams Summer. Green cardstock, red/white plaid top, ivory bottom and a red/white stitched ribbon. Stamp says You're One, in a Melon.

Cherry. Red cardstock. Black cardstock embossed with cherries. Heart on cherry is covered in stickles. Stamp says Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries.

Peach. Rustic orange cardstock. Green base and a strip of printed rustic orange. Stamp says You're a Peach!

Lemonade. Yellow cardstock card. Light blue base with a summer plaid bottom. The pitcher is made using velum, lemonade is a yellow/white print paper and lemons are two shades of yellow. Stamp says When Life Hands You Lemons...
The detail on each card is amazing. The pictures just don't do them justice, but trust me when I say you won't find cuter cards in the store and you can't beat homemade products.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a boutique. I was one of 12 vendors selling various products. I sold my greeting cards (4 themes), Reindeer art and Santa ornaments. I will post close up pictures of all these items in different posts, but for now I wanted to share my table with you.
Each box contained 8 cards/8 envelopes. I sold a Fruit theme, Animal theme, Girly Girl theme and a Bird theme.
A couple of cards out of the box displayed in a flowerpot.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these cards, please leave me a message on here or email me at ediving@hotmail.com

Oreo Bats

Unfortunately, this is a horrible picture....sooo sorry. I got this idea from bestbites.com, so if want to see the directions or a good picture, check them out. My kids went to a party on halloween morning and I thought these would be cute to bring. The kids loved them! It is just an oreo cookie dipped in chocolate and then bat wings (cut out on my Silhouette) inserted in the sides. The ghost container I got out of the dollar section at Target and I inserted a floral foam inside to hold the bats.

Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops

My 4 year old recently had a birthday party and she decided that she would like an ice cream social theme. The main focus for desert was going to be the ice cream bar, but I did want to to have some cake too. The perfect and easy way to incorporate cake into the theme was by having ice cream cake pops! I couldn't find any small cones, so I had to cut off the tops to make them the right size. I wanted to do them in sherbet colors, but my 4 year old was adamant that they all be blue. lol The perfect thing about ice cream pops, is that you don't have to worry about being perfect, because the drips end up looking like the ice cream is melting.

For the holder, I used floral foam that I wrapped in paper and then used a screw driver to make the holes for the cones to fit into.

I made cake balls out of the extra batter.


The ice cream bar with the cake pops in the background. We had 3 ice cream flavors for the guest to choose from.

I Scream, You Scream...

Here is a sneak peak at what Elsie's party is about. I love how the ice cream sundae stands alone on the white card stock and I really think the swiss dots embossing really adds to it, without taking anything away. The die cut made up with 6 layers, which is a lot for me, but it was actually a very easy design to put together. I pop-dotted the sundae, but glued the cherry stem down to the paper. I like how it really gave it a 3D look.

Engaged!

I attended an engagement party (my first!) a couple of weeks ago and made this simple card for the couple. The couple was cut out with a black sheet of paper into a silhouette, no layers! The white card stock was also cut out on my silhouette machine and then I ran it thru my cuttlebug in the swiss dots embossing card. The background paper is just some left over scrap paper I had. I really wanted to bling up the diamond with a rhinestone, but didn't have any, so I just used some crystal stickles and it turned out perfectly!

My Garden

So I decided to build an above ground garden box and grow my own garden this year for the first time. Turns out that gardening is much harder than I had thought. I guess the biggest frustration are the bugs! As you can see by the tomatoes below, the bugs seem to enjoy eating them long before they are to turn red. I need to research how to keep them off organically. Another problem is my tomatoes were splitting. I learned that is because I was giving them too much water, causing them to grow too fast.

But I have gotten some good produce from my garden. Some have been Cilantro, used on our carne asada's, lettuce, and a bell pepper used in homemade salsa.

Another is Basil. I have a lot of basil!
I also had some pine nuts in my fridge that needed to be used up. So I toasted them in the oven and
then put the nuts, basil, olive oil, garlic and Parmesan cheese into a food processor and made Pesto! The kids and I enjoyed it spread on hoagie rolls, topped with feta and broiled. I also grilled some chicken and spread it on top and then added some to linguine. Such yummy meals!

Another thing that did grow well were carrots. We ate them raw and with a roast.

Then after we had had our fill, I peeled and cut up the rest and boiled them till soft. I really need to invest in a steamer. Then put them into the food processor with a few tablespoons of the water they cooked in.

and pulsed away until they were pureed.

Next I added them to an ice cube tray to freeze. Once frozen, I popped them out and put them into a freezer bag. Whenever I make ground beef, macaroni-n-cheese or tomato sauce, I can add a few squares of carrots for an extra (hidden) veggie.

Tea Party Decor

I was in charge of the decor for my churches Mother/Daughter Tea back in May. We were on a very tight budget, but I still wanted it to be girly and special. I cut out various shapes on my Silhouette, but forgot to get pictures of most of them. :( Then I bought a 2 flats of flowers for $1.99 at Rite Aide and added them to plastic vases I had found at Target (2 for $1) and added the die cut shapes to them.

This first picture here is hard to see the shape, but lets you see the flowers in the pot. The shape is of two little girls sittin at a table having tea.
This next one is a teapot. We also had teacups and the word Mother.

I really like the favors. It is a kit-kat bar wrapped in scrapbook paper and crimped ends. Then I took another strip of paper and wrapped it around and topped it with a fabric flower. Our them was A Mother's Love, is a Gift from Above.

Turtley Awesome

I made this card for my dad's birthday back in February. I love the turtle's big eyes! After I cute out the turtle's two layers, I ran the shell thru my cuttlebug (I forget the embossing folder's name) to give it a more textured look. Then I put orange paper down first, with the desert print paper on top and added the turtle with pop dots. The stamp is from My Pink Stamper.

Boy or Girl?

My brother and sister-n-law are expecting their third child soon and the gender is to be a surprise. So when she had her baby shower a few weeks ago, I made this card to incorporate both sexes. The card turned out cute, but was a royal pain to make. The onesie has so many small details to it that the silhouette just couldn't cut them out on these tiny die cuts. So I had to ungroup the onesie on my computer screen and remove all but the heart and lines around the diaper area. The die cut onesie's were cut out at 1 1/2 inches each.

Cowboy Hat Invitation

This is the last thing I have to post on from my son's rodeo party. This is the invitation that was sent out to all the guests. It is pretty basic, I just cut out the three pieces on my Silhouette and glued them on.

The front of the card flips up to reveal the wording inside, which I printed out and cut with scalloped scissors.

Hogs & Kisses

Just a fun little card I made for my mom. The blue paper on top(resembling the sky) is from my Sweet Treat paper pack and it has a sparkly diamond shape, the bottom (for mud) is chocolate brown and the pig was done in three layers. The first layer is black and you can see the eyes, plus it gives the pig more support/thickness. Then the hot pink, topped with the light pink. I finished it off with My Pink Stampers stamp Hogs & Kisses. I also smugged a little black ink with my fingers on the pig to resemble dirt.

Signs

I made a couple of signs for my son's rodeo party and due to my being in a hurry, I learned a valuable tip that I thought I would share with you.

Normally, I would cut out my letters on my Silhouette and then I would adhere them to my card stock, trying my best to keep them equally spaced and straight. Well, because I was in a huge hurry, I decided to throw away the letters and just place the paper they were cut out of on top of a solid sheet of paper. Here I have the black paper on top of the cream paper.

Then I took the small pieces from the letters A, R and O and adhered them on where they should be. As you can see, this only took a minute to do and the letters are equally spaced and straight. I now know I will be doing all my signs this way!

I did the same thing for my Cowboy Cafe sign, just in opposite colors. Here, I cut the letters out of the cream colored paper and adhered it to the black paper. (please excuse the blue painters tape, I ran out of masking tape and had no time to run to the store before the party. Ooops!)

Cowboy Table Centerpieces

If you read my post yesterday, than you have seen some of these die cuts before. Before I put them into picture frames and hung them on my son's wall, they were used as decorations for his party. Such a simple way to decorate and better yet, I can re-use the hay bales for October/November months!

Here is how I made them. I bought straw hay bales at Michael's, wrapped red/white gingham ribbon around them and fastened the ribbon with quilting needles. Then I cut up bunches of silk flowers and stuck them in the hay bale. The die cuts were made on my Silhouette machine and I taped it to a kabob stick and stuck it in the middle. Easy peasy!

Cowboy with lasso on horseback. (The bag behind it was filled with tortilla chips)
A close up of the boot. I used silver stickles on the spur to make it shine.

A cowboy on a bucking bull was on the food table.

Cowboy on a bronc horse with the wording 8 second ride.

The calf roping required two kabob sticks due to it being wide.

A close up shot if the details.

I can't wait until Fall to transform these hay bales into decorations for my porch! I love that I was able to use the die cuts as party decorations, as well as, wall decor for my son's room and the hay bales can be used again for decor during the Halloween/Thanksgiving season year after year.

Cowboy Wall Decor

One of the things I did for Seth's bedroom remodel was make a collage of pictures for a wall. I started out with four black frames and some scrapbook paper left over from the letters I had modge podged.


Then I cut the paper down to size and put them in the frames to hang on the wall. I left them empty because I had made some cowboy themed die cuts, to put in the frames, but first I was going to use them for his birthday party decor. (you will see how I did this in another post!)

Yesterday, I finally added the die cuts to the frames and here is the finished product!

A side shot picture, without the glare. Just in case you can't see what each picture is: top left - cowboy on bucking bull, top right - cowboy on a bronc horse with the words 8 second ride, bottom left - cowboy boot and bottom right - cowboy on horse with a lasso. I am very pleased with how they turned out!

Happy Bee-lated Birthday

I love this little bee! You can't tell in this picture, but the paper for the bee is charcoal colored with a grain pattern on it, making the bee a bit more realistic. This time I used white paper for the wings, but I will try vellum next time. I used a white pen to add the smile.

Sweet Baby Girl

This is a very simple and quick card I had to make one morning before running out the door to a baby shower. The mother to be was expecting a sweet baby girl, so I opted to make a pink onesie. The card is green, with white/pink diamond shaped pattern paper on top. The die cut is two layered. The bottom layer is solid white and the top is pink. I used crystal stickles in the heart and tied a pink ribbon on the bottom with a stamp that says 'Sweet'.

Sneak Peak...

Here is a sneak peak into a couple of projects I will be showing you in the next couple of days. My son had a rodeo party this past weekend and I was able to make most of the decor.

Let's Go Shopping!

I made this simple card for a friend of my mom's as a thank you. She generously gave me 3 huge bags filled with clothes she had out grown and some things still had the tags on them!

I love how she is simply just a silhouette, but still says so much. I added stickles to the shopping bags for added effect.