Prince Charming

It's our 29th Wedding anniversary today.  I made this card for my husband.  I took him to the Dr. recently to have a mole checked and the Dr. ended up burning off 22 places on his arms and face that he said were "pre-cancerous." Tom looked like he had warts all over him!  So I made him this card to tell him that I love him warts and all. :0) 

 

Create A Critter - Frogs, pond, heart, words, grass, lillypad cut at 2.5"

paper from stash, Eyelet Outlet worm brad.  Butterfly stickers.

Cuttlebug Divine Swirls embossing

Challenges

Pile It On - Boyish Colors

Charisma Cardz Challenge - It's all about Weddings

Cute Card Thursday - Challenge 111 Boyz to Men

Practical Scrappers - Stickers

Thinking of you with a Rose

 

 

 

(Interior Rose Detail)

This card for another of the Cricut Card Fairy missions.

Entered in the following challenges:

S- Card - Cricut Cardz Challenge

Elegant Rose Challenge 76 - My Time to Craft

Practical Scrappers Patterned Papers Challenge

Walk In My Garden and George Cricut Cartridge

Allison Pennington papers

Embossing cartridges for pattern and texture

Stash Ribbon

I Love You

This love card made from George, Beyond Birthdays and Cuttlebug folder.

Four layers of hearts (popped) alternating colors, then adding smaller sizes.

Swiss Dot cuttlebug folder for all background layers.

Pretty simple card, (I'm a simple girl) pretty poignant message.

Entered at Practical Scrappers Love Challenge 

Belli Challenge - Hearts`

Crafty Creations Challenge ~CCCW#51 Valentines or Love

The Next New Thing

Crafting is nothing if not the next new thing.  Where would the craft business be without it?  And, I would be bored without it. (smile)  This is my S card another differing fold from my norm.  PLUS it has many many layers of textures, ribbons, papers, etc.  I'm usually a simple girl.  I like a simple (usually funny) message and a pretty simple card.  However, since I got my cricut, I've tried more and more difficult things and a menagerie of contrivances. 

 

Last night while talking with my DH, we discussed how peer groups never go away.  They are just different and older.  I covet some of the talents of my fellow card makers and long for this new thing or that new machine.  Really growing up though is learning to hone your own craft and be challenged to make it better.  I'm really grateful for the Cricut Message Boards, fellow crafters and challenges that teach me to be better at my craft.

George for all the squares and rectangles

Storybook

Cuttlebug embossing folders

Fiskars

Holepunch

Several different ribbons

Stash paper

Entered in the Cricut Cardz Challenge - S Card Challenge # 9

Fruity Colors Challenge #3 - Charisma Cards - Banana and Strawberry Swirl & Sunshine

Pile It On - 3 Ribbon Challenge #2 

The Craft Garden - Something New

Now sets in the Winter of Content

It's cold outside and so the term "Three Dog Night" came to mind.  It is cold and snowy here in Italy and we don't have our dog with us, but we are happily content to be together whatever the weather.

This card is entered in the Practical Scrappers Winter Projects,

Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge #19  Click Here for Peachy Keen Website (trying to win my first Peachy Keen Stamps) and

Just Buggin' Challenge 18 Click Here for Just Buggin

Animal Kingdom, George,  Lyrical Letters, Decorative Scissors, Cuttlebug Swirls Folder.

Weird Wednesday-Red Green and a bit of Bling

THIS CARD WON AN AWARD AT CRICUT CARDZ CHALLENGE #5!  WAAAHOOO! 




(Frosted Designs)This card is made from Joys of the Season, Stretch Your Imagination, New Arrival, and George.   It's shaped like a stocking, if you can see that.  It's kind of a funky woodland santa. I had a blast making it in DS.  

In school today I learned a lot about Italian traditions for the holidays.  And boy there were some funny ones.  Mostly Christmas is the same as the U.S. holidays, but this one really made me laugh and fear:


Santa doesn't fill the stockings for the kids in Italy.  Befana the witch fills the stockings. She does this at Epiphany, January 6th. The tradition is that the ugly but kind witch slips down the chimney on the night of January 5th and fills the stockings that are hung by the fireplace or by the bed with sweet things for good kids or coal for the bad kids. Now, it used to be that they used real coal for the kids, but now, Italy has this sweet coal that kids get if they've been bad kids and you can eat it. The kids who eat this coal end up with BLACK faces from chin to cheek. And they are MARKED as bad kids the whole day.

The tradition with Befana too is that she ends the holiday season. No holiday decorations should remain after Befana. She is the signal to put away all of the holiday things and to get rid of all the old things from the past year. To throw out things that are rotten or broken and put away the past year's pain and sins.

My teacher said, watch the news on the day after Befana comes because it is very macabre all the people who die. "Die? Why would people die?" Because, on Befana, people literally throw out their old things. They throw them right out the window and onto the street, irons, dishes, washing machines. You could be on the first floor having a Befana party and boom, a washing machine lands on your head.  Or people have dishes flying down and cutting off hands. Needless to say, I will not be outside on the day of Befana!

On New Year's day, they light wooden puppets on fire. (to symbolize the burning of the old year and crossing into the new - burning of the fields etc.) But apparently, they will build a giant wooden puppet in the piazza and a man with a fiery arrow will shoot it at the puppet and people will rejoice and eat pancakes as they watch it burn. I can think of the little kids running and screaming now as they watch a giant Pinocchio shot with an arrow and burned up.

I'm looking forward to the celebrations that we will learn about while here. I'll be carrying a fire extinguisher and wearing a hard hat from New Year's until Befana comes. 

Saturday Sooner than it should be...........

My life has been a series of Tom saying hello and goodbye.  From the very beginning of our relationship Tom was saying hello and goodbye.  Twenty years in the Navy of Tom saying hello and goodbye and now more than five years of Tetra-Pak and Tom is still saying hello and goodbye.  Today was goodbye.  I always know it is coming and dread the day it arrives.  The time when he will emotionally separate from me and go into the other room to do the ritual packing and mental departure, while I sit in the other room trying not to be any kind of emotional mess that makes it more difficult for either of us.  There are lots of rituals we go through as he prepares to leave, lots of little routines.... years and years of these.

This Saturday came sooner than it should. I didn't want it to come. He's off traveling the world again. I'm alone again. Just me, my little apartment decorated with the paper chain from all my crafting scraps, the blinking solar Christmas lights that twinkle until they have used up the days supply of sun and my cricut.  I dream about my cricut at night and design cards that never really look like what I actually create in real life.  I've discovered this week that I am not very good, I'm okay at my craft but not great.  I want to be great. So, I'm not going to put up another card onto any of the competition sites or the cricut messageboards until I have one that I think is great.

Like all these years of coming and going, hello and goodbye, if you practice at something long enough, you become accustomed to just what it is, a routine in your life, for good or bad, it is a routine. I want excellence to be a routine. 

So, these are the last of the cards that I have made for my Cricut Card Fairy Army today after Tom left and I went through my normal ritual of his leaving:

 

 

 

 

Routines are good things in life even when we don't want them to be.  They let us set up a pattern for whatever it is we need to accomplish. I'm working on my accomplishments.

 

Onward and Upward,

Brazil Blues

Tom is off to Brazil and so I am alone..... and keeping busy as best I can with creating cards.  I'm behind in the Cricut Fairy Army cards and so I had to get several done.  Plus, I had signed up to do a challenge on a blog and I didn't read the instructions right.  I created the Flaming O card and it wasn't about Flamingo's, it was about using ready-made embellishments.  So, I started over, but since I am "blue" all I could think of is how much some flowers would cheer me up. I don't think MY flowers would win a challenge, but I did enjoy them very much.  I have several kids on the fairy list that need "kid" oriented cards.  I'm not very good with that.  I also have a man card that I have to work on.  Those are the hardest.... do men really care about the cards that they get??   I don't have an answer for that... it's just out there.

Flower & Friendship Card for Challenge
The Friendship tag is chipboard and several of the flowers.
Some flowers are from George, added a corner brad.

Bird & Friendship Card, also included in Challenge

The bird is chipboard, the flowers are from George, the red frame & stems from Home Decor.

The Friendship is chipboard.

Monkey Fun (for a kid)

The Palm Trees are from SYI and the Monkey from New Arrival.  I chopped him all up and turned him and flipped his parts to make him swing from the tree with a sign.  I saw someone's card on the cricut boards where they had a stamp that looked like this.  I don't have a stamp.

This next card I totally scraplifted from a card made with felted flowers.  I just doubled up the paper then folded each petal.  I don't remember where I saw the card or to whom to give the credit.  I like it okay, it wasn't too hard to do and I can get it in the mail quickly.  The colors are my favorite.

And one for my nephew for Halloween.... Jolee's stickers and Lyrical Letters.  The Happy Halloween is computer generated.
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