I had some really quality craft time the past two days.  I've been able to make my Mother's Day cards, Dad's birthday card, and even (early I know) a Father's Day card!  It was so much fun to hang out in my craft room and just create, sometimes I wish this was my full time job!  Until that becomes my reality, the next best thing is to share all of my creations here on my blog.  So with further ado, the 2 Mother's Day cards I recreated from some Stampin'Up! mailers.  The one on the left is from March 2012's Stampin Success and the one on the right (if you're looking straight at the screen) is from the Occasions Mini catalog.  I put a few twist on each project as well as changed up the stamp sets but overall they are pretty exact.  I'm excited to give them out to the two fantastic "mothers" I have in my life.  I just realized that I didn't make one for my Nana!  Yay, now I have a reason to hide away in my craft room tonight and create another fun card for Mother's day.  The other 2 cards are for my future Father in Law.  His birthday is Saturday, and while I was feeling inspired I created a Father's Day card too!  His two loves are golf and flying...hoping I hit a "home-run" with these cards.

Besides the missing Mothers Day card I have one more card I need to make before the busy weekend gets here.  It's for a college grad, my little cousin Matthew.  He will graduate on Saturday from Widener University with a Civil Engineering degree.  I'm so proud of him!  He already has a full time job lined up.  I can't wait to take him shopping for things to fill up his bachelor pad, of course I'll be the voice of reason...hmmm You definitely need that fuss ball table! hahaha!  It's such an exciting time in his life!  Sparks my nostalgia of my college days :-)


Okay I'm signing off, check out the cards and feel free to leave me any feedback, praise, criticism....I love all comments!!!

Happy Crafting,
Nicole

Give-away over at Cricut Blog in celebration of NSD!

Hi All,

Cricut is generously giving away an Expression machine in celebration of National Scrapbooking Day and all you have to do is take a picture of yourself in your craft space.  I already own the Pink Expression but my sister really would like to join me in the scrapping world so I'm going to enter in this give away and hopefully (if I'm lucky enough) I will be able to surprise her with a brand new machine!!!

Earlier this year I wanted to re vamp my craftroom, I was sort of using the communal office space to do crafts and was hoping to be able to create a space where I could do my thing and feel inspired.  I went to IKEA and located a few pieces that were affordable and set off to do some re-vamping.  I love pinks and purples and envisioned the room to be cozy and inspiring, I finally located the perfect color at Home Depot: Malt.  A perfect mix of purple and grey, I was estatic.  I'm not good at painting so my AWESOME boyfriend helped to make my dream of a cozy personal craft space a reality!  He worked extremely hard and it turned out amazing!     To top that he surprised me with a chair I originally located on Target.com but was hesitant to buy.  I loved it and it really made the room pop!  He is the BEST!

So now I have my very own space where I can go and create that is chock full of cozy details and tons of scrapping/card making supplies.  You can check out the pics below...I'm going to link this to the Cricut blog and keep my fingers crossed for my sister!  Good luck to everyone participating!

Until then...Happy Crafting!
Nicole

My Pink Stampers NSD Designer's Choice Blog Hop

Helloooo and Happy (post) National Scrapbook Day!!!

As usual I'm a day behind but this time it isn't due to obligations, just due to poor sewing skills!  I came across Rockin' Renee's blog:  I Came, I Saw, I Created during the MPS blog hop yesterday in celebration of NSD and found a fun challenge!  You were allowed to create anything you wanted it just had to contain a flower made of fabric and or ribbon.  A while back I bought a magazine that demonstrated how to create flowers by cutting a piece of fabric 1-1/2" wide then pinning in 1/2 and cutting slits every 1/4"  or so, you then had to sew along the pin line pulling the fabric together with the needle/thread until it formed a U, then you were to fold the edges and sew it together.  Viola! Instant flower....hmmm for those of you who do not know me well, I (unfortunately) failed the sewing portion of Home Economics in High School, a shame to my family, as I come from a long line of women who toiled in the sewing mills for decades. 

So yesterday I was in the midst of creating a memory board with some SUp! fabric I received during their SaleABration event and thought why not add a fabric flower!  Not only would it add a little something to my memory board but I could enter it in the blog challenge at I Came, I Saw, I Created (in case you lost my trail of ADD thought...).  Well the first attempt failed and then after a laborious 2nd attempt I semi-mastered the art, however I'll let you the reader decide??  Should it stay or go?  I have it secured to the board using hat pins that doubled as center attraction.  Please let me know what you think, I'm not scared of criticism....or suggestions (please, please).  I'm learning as I go and if you could help me along my journey I would be forever grateful.

Now I'm off to the other 2 blog challenges I came across during My Pink Stampers NSD Designers Choice Blog Hop....one is embossing (yay!!) and the other is something highlighting physical movement!  The second one excites me as I've been meaning for 2, yes 2, years now to scrap a Mud Run my boyfriend and I participated in during that summer.  I can't wait to see what I use to fully document the fun!  All the blogs along the MPS blog hop are offering fun giveaways in honor of NSD, if you haven't checked out My Pink Stampers blog or her talented designer teams blogs,  do so today!

Until then...Happy Crafting!
Nicole

the board...if you are interested in step by step directions, eamil me nicolepudvah@yahoo.com

close up of the flower (maybe I should have used a different fabric????)

So Many Projects, So little time!

Hi All,

I've been away for awhile but I'm back!  Last weekend I managed to squeeze in 2 cards between cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. and I wanted to share.  The first card I'm sending to Alex at You Had Me At Craft,  I entered one of her give-aways and won!  I was so super excited to receive my "My Pink Stamper" Veggie Puns set that I wanted to thank her back and what better way then to create a card using the stamp set.  I hope she likes it!  I had a ton of fun coordinating the cut with the pun!  The second card I made was just for my stash.  I was on Cricut.com last week and noticed they were having a sale...and I'm a sucker for sales!  I picked up the Best Images of 2006.  This was the inspiration for the second card which is a welcome baby card using an image from that cartridge.
I hope this weekend I can get some more time to create some fun projects I've had on my radar for some time now.  One is a recipe book using From My Kitchen and another is some fun Mothers Day cards/projects using some Stampin' UP! blossom stamp sets and punches.  I only have one more day to grind out and then I can get to work!  I will definitely hope to share some fun projects before Monday.

Until then I hope you all are having a great week, Happy Crafting!
Nicole

boo kinda hard to see the stickles on the cloud in this photo :(