Apple blossoms- butterfly hair clip

For my learners for life group project last night we made hair clips. This is my sample that I made for them. I hot glued a strip of lace over the clip. I added 3 apple blossoms, leaves and a Layers of Color butterfly. The little girls loved making these.

Apple blossoms for Spring

I saw this apple blossom tutorial the other day and knew I had to give these adorable flowers a try. I couldn't find crinoline like Linda used. I tried but my fabric store had none. I did buy some tulle. (I got 1/8th of a yard -$0.14 worth) When the lady went to cut the tulle, the edge was uneven so she cut it off and threw it in the trash can by the cutting table. It was a strip about 1 1/2 inches wide. All I could think of was that I could get several flowers out of it. So I asked her since she had thrown it away if I could have it. My kids rolled their eyes and were so embarrassed. They harrassed me all the way home from the store about the trash tulle. I have made 9 flowers and still haven't used up the trash tulle. I decided to use it up first before I started on the other tulle.

How my apple blossoms differ from Linda's is that I don't have crinoline, so I substituted what I had on hand. These flowers each have a layer of lace, typing paper, coffee filter, paper towel, tulle and cardstock.

This is for the sketch challenge at SCS. The dp was some I got on Saturday. It is from a K & Company pack. The bees and sentiments are from a Mark's Finest Papers set called HAPPY PANSIES. I stamped the bees on the card and colored them in with a yellow prisma colored pencil. I also stamped bees on the inside of the card as well as on the envelope. This is one of the first cards in a long time that I haven't sewn on. My daughter took my sewing machine last night to alter costumes for a muscial that she is in. My sacrifice for her art

Paper Tole Pansies Tutorial

Here is my tutorial I promised on yesterday's post.

This is how I pieced my pansies. This type of piecing is called paper tole.

I started by doing the ink spray and smash technique.

I scribbled several markers onto my acetate report folder.

This is how it looked after I sprayed the folder with water. I placed my cardstock on the marker-water droplets. When it was dry I stamped the pansies image 4 times. Time to cut... I first cut out the whole pansy.

Next I cut out all but the top left petal.

Then I cut it out, cutting the top two petals off.

Lastly, I cut just the top petal out.

I took scraps of craft foam that had adhesive on one side.

I cut the foam into pieces and stuck them to the bottom 3 flowers.

Since the adhesive was only on one side, I added Aleene's tacky

glue to the tops of the foam.

I placed the flowers on top of eachother in the order I cut them out.

To finish the pansy off. I added a pearl bead to the center.

Here they are on my card. I made this card

for the Technique Lovers Challenge at SCS for cutting

along the edge. I cut along the lace. The pansies are from

a Mark's Finest Papers set called HAPPY PANSIES. The

get well sentiment is from another Mark's Finest Papers set called,

AFRICAN VELDT.

Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about ANYTHING, but in EVERYTHING, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

This scripture was chosen for the Stampin' Sisters in Christ Challenge. The two words that really stood out to me were Anything and Everything. I have found in my life that worries or anxious thoughts fall into two categories: Big things and little things.

Big things are things that I know I have no control over. Will my husband loose his job? Will my friend's mom be healed of her cancer? Will the economy get worse? You get the idea. I know that have no control over whether my husband has a job or not. I know I can't heal cancer. I know that I can't control the economy. How do I deal with the big problems? I give them over to my God. I love the phrase that says... I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.

The other category of worries is the little things; You know, the little things that seem to aggitate us and stress us out. These are the things that I feel I do have control over. I find that these can make me more anxious than the big things. I start my day thinking ok I'm handling this but as they add up I start to feel overwhelmed. When I finally reach my breaking point I give those stresses over to God because I say "I just can't take it anymore!!!" How much more peace would I have in my life if when the little things came along that I gave them right away to God.

I was reminded of the folk story about a man who was walking down the road carrying a heavy load. Let's say his name was Mike. Another man, lets call him Joe was driving down that same road. Joe saw that Mike was really struggling with the load and he took pity on him. Joe offered Mike a ride. Mike accepted the ride but continued to hold on to his heavy load. After they had gone for a few miles, Joe asked Mike why he didn't just set the load down. Mike replied that he was so appreciative of the ride that he felt bad about Joe having to carry the load too.

My holding on to the little things and worrying about them makes just as much sense as Mike's logic.

So to not worry about ANYTHING, Paul tells us to pray, ask, and give thanks about EVERYTHING and give those requests to God. The result will be PEACE. The world sees peace as the absence of all problems. To me PEACE is knowing that when problems come, my God is in control and He has promised never to leave me or forsake me!!! What an awesome God I have!!!

The challenge for this week is to make a card with the homonym of PEACE... PIECE. We were to make a project with the technique called paper piecing.

If you have never tried this technique here is a link to the resource section of Splitcoast Stampers that describes it.

I chose to paper piece these pansies. These pansies are from the Mark's Finest Papers set called HAPPY PANSIES. I chose to use these pansies because of the big areas. It is a lot easier to piece big pieces. I started by stamping the pansy on purple paper. I stamped it 5 times for each flower. I then cut the pansies out 5 times. Each time I cut one less petal. To assemble I added a piece of craft foam in between the layers. Check back later this week, and I hope to have a tutorial on my blog showing this step by step.

I made this for a special girl named Ericka. She is one of my daughter's best friends.

Check out what my Stampin' Sisters in Christ have created.

Chris

Grace

Kris

Linda

Lisa

Miesje

Pegggysue

Rebekka

Sabrina

B-day card for Sherry

Tomorrow is my friend Sherry's Birthday. She and I have kids that are in a lot of activites together... band...choir...speech...drama... I wanted a card that had warmth, so I used yellows and oranges. I stamped the sentment with black stazon.

B-Day card in Oranges with butterflies

I made this card for a friend at Church. She is not really into pink and girly things, but I think there is enough orange in this card to overpower the pink. The lace is kinda girly but I couldn't help myself. I have the sentiment hidden behind the bigger butterfly.

Three cards- Three challenges

This is the card I made for Monday's Technique Lovers Challenge at SCS. Holly challenged us to make a card using newspaper. I made the roses on this card out of newspaper.

This is the card I made for Tuesday's Color Combination Challenge at SCS. The Daffodil is from the Mark's Finest Papers set called DAFFODIL AND ANISE.

This is the card I made for today's Sketch Challenge at SCS. I used the butterfly and peach paper from the DCWV Mariposa stack. The rust cardstock that I matted with was from my stash. I added ribbon and lace and a buckle. I usually have only one pair of shoes. They are what I wear to work, church, and everyday around the town. I was saddened when the strap that held this decorative buckle broke on my shoe. It was flapping around, so I cut the strap off. I am such a horder. I kept the buckle thinking that someday it would go on a card. Well today was that day. I put some sheer ribbon through it. It took a little planning to get the ribbon ends hidden in the panels.

Secret Butterfly

"I've gotta secret I won't tell...

who kissed who down by the well...

'till the wedding bells ring out...

diddle diddle dumplin' shut my mouth"

That was a song that I loved singing with my mom when I was little. We would take turns singing the melody while the other sang harmony.

I'll be the first to admit that I struggle with keeping secrets, so don't tell me any. When I was little and a friend told me a secret, I would just about burst wanting to tell someone. The excitement was a lot to deal with. When I bought my mom presents for her birthday, I would try to keep them a secret, but I always ended up telling her before she opened them what I got her. Lately the secrets that were hard for me not to share were when I made design teams and had to wait to tell on my blog or facebook. Social networking really makes keeping anything secret hard, because we tell everyone what we are eating, thinking, doing...etc.

For this week's devotional at Stampin' Sisters in Christ,

Grace chose this scripture about secret...

Matthew 6:6 "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room,

close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret,

and your Father who sees what is done in

secret will reward you."

When I read this week's scripture, I studied the verses that came before and after it. Jesus was talking about giving to the poor, praying and fasting. His admonition was to give, pray and fast in secret instead of doing it as a show for others. It all comes down to our motivations. If we do our good deeds as show for others, we are looking for their approval, and we get all the glory. If we do them in secret, we are doing them as an act of worship to God, and He is the one who gets the glory. I am going to work hard this week to check my motivations. I want God to get the glory for what I do.

To God be the glory, to God be the glory, to God be the glory for the thing he has done.

The challenge that Grace gave us was to make a card with something hidden at first. I made a criss-cross card with a card that pulls out. I used paper from my DCWV Mariposa Stack. I decorated the outside of the criss-cross with two butterflies. The yellow one on the left is a Martha Stewart butterfly. The one on the right is a Layers of Color butterfly from Butterfly Collector Set. I ran the dp through my cuttlebug using my script embossing folder. I stitched the panels together with my sewing machine. On the pull out card. I added lace. I used an embossing pen to draw an outline on the printed butterfly. I added gold ep and heat embossed.

Check out what my Stampin' Sisters in Christ have created.

Chris

Grace

Kris

Linda

Lisa

Miesje

Pegggysue

Rebekka

Sabrina

Secret Garden

The Friday Free For All Challenge at SCS was to make a garden card. The first thought that came to my mind was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was one of my favorite books when I was young. My gate to my secret garden was made of cardboard. I wanted to use cardboard so the gate would be sturdy. I used prisma colored pencils to make the wood grain. I added hardware and a brad as a closer for the gate. I sewed the panels to the card base.

A peek inside my secret garden. The flowers are from GREET THE DAY WITH GERBER from Mark's Finest Papers. The butterfly is from a Martha Stewart Butterfly set. I colored the daisies and the butterfly with prisma colored pencils. I used an embossing pen and gold ep to add that little extra to the butterfly. The dp that is the background was a piece of blue marble that was in a bulk buy of paper. It made me think of clouds. I also stamped the wheat stalks from the Mark's Finest Papers set called THANKFUL FOR YOU. I stamped it with green ink and then put blue colored pencils to the stalk to make it look like flowers.

Close up of the Butterfly.

Sympathy card

Sad that I needed a second sympathy card this week. One of my church friend's dad died this week.

This card made me SMILE

The ways to use it challege at SCS today was to make a card with a SMILE theme. I printed this Smiling Quote using my computer. I sprayed the paper with glimmer mist, that added a little bit of gold with the green. I made another latice and added some gold roses. The butterfly is a stampabilities butterfly. It has been sitting un-inked for over a year. I stamped it with black stazon and colored the red with prisma colored pencils and added gold ep with an embossing pen.

Close up of butterfly.

Close up of roses and trellis.

Close up of the sentiment. You can see the spots of gold if you look carefully.

Sympathy butterfly

This is the card that I made for the sketch challenge. It has the sketch, but the flowers to the left might take away from the sketch somewhat. I debated about adding them, but I ended up putting them because I like these daisies. I needed to make a sympathy for a coworker whose mother in law died yesterday. I used 3 Mark's Finest Papers sets. The butterfly is from Just Dandy set. The daisies are from Greet the Day with Gerber, and the sentiment is from A Walk in the Woods.

This photo shows a close up of the butterfly and it shows the dimension of the butterfly.

Here is a really close up view of the butterfly.