See you at the Pole 9-23-09

Yesterday was National See you at the Pole day, where students gathered at the flag poles by their schools and prayed. This year there were 34 people at our high school's pole. That was 3 times as many that came last year. The kids were persecuted though, there were people, including school staff that said "You shouldn't have the right to do this" It was totally student led, and before school, and they were non confrontational. It made me sad that this is the state of the schools. What made it worse is that our school supported bi-sexual day yesterday. Teachers and students were allowed to wear shirts and pins supporting that lifestyle. But praying shouldn't be allowed? Please pray for the future of our nation.

Out of the box

For today's ways to use it challenge, we were to make a card that was outside our normal card making. I made mine long and tall, I used patterned paper, I didn't color my butterflies and I used rhinestones.

Tea bag pocket card

This card has a little pocket in the front that can hold a tea bag.

Two more marquee cards

I made this card for my friend Nancy. I tried to make the one side look like a quilt.

I made this card for my friend Cindy. She is going through a rough time and won't be doing Tuesday Teaparties for awhile. I made this card to encourage her.

Monday's Card

This is the card I made on Monday for the Technique Lover's Challenge. We were to make a 5 layered punched button. I made a punched out leaf. I did the leaf print technique and used the magical marquee technique to make my card. I made it for my friend Amy. She went dumpster diving to get parts of musical cards for me to use in my card making endeavors. Now that is a friend.

An adventure with butterflies

Yesterday was a busy one for me as a mom and a scout leader. In the morning I lead a group of cub scouts on a butterfly tagging expedition. A lot of children in our area spend all their times on their computers or game stations and getting out into nature is so foreign to them. For the past few years I have been bringing not only my own kids but others, including my cub scouts to an event hosted by our local conservation office. Monarch butterflies are caught and tagged, and released. The conservation officer said that of the butterflies that have been tagged only one in the past few years has been tracked all the way from Iowa to Mexico. That butterfly flew over 2,000 miles. That is pretty impressive. We had been hunting the butterflies for about 15 mins when we caught one. It was a little female. Here is a photo of the boys as they are getting ready to release the butterfly. My son is the one in the turquoise colored shirt.


Here is a photo of the fearless butterfly wranglers!!! They would have liked to catch more than the one butterfly, but after hiking around in the open field of flowers for 2 1/2 hours they were ready to go get some lunch. I hope it is a memory that the boys will have forever.

After the parents picked up their boys, my son Kaleb and I went to the park to enjoy more of God's creations. We both had our cameras and we wer taking photos of the flowers in the gardens there. Here are a few of the flowers that I took photos of.

The irony of yesterday was that after spending all morning looking for monarch butterflies, that after we were done looking, that we would find one. Kaleb and I saw this male monarch butterfly sitting in the garden. We approached very quietly and were able to get very close. We both got photos of him.

What made the rest of the day busy was marching band competitions. My daughters had 2 band competitions yesterday. Their band took first place for their division at both competitions! YEA!!!!! We didn't get home until late though... Next week's band competition is even farther than this week's one. I guess I can catch up on sleep when they are grown. Sleep is overrated anyway...

WOW medallion

Kelly's word of the week or WOW, was Expend. to pay out,spend, consume by use, or use up. I had been hoarding this paper that is at the top. I would think that hoarding would be the opposite of expend, so the only way I could expend was to use it up on this card. I cut out the medallion. I colored parts of it in with my prisma colored pencils. I added some pearls from my friend Anne Ryan, and I added a hot glue pearl to the center. I added ribbon at the top which disqualified me from following all the rules of today's limited supply challenge to use only 4 embellishments. I tried to argue that the center was really not an embellishment since it was only hot glue and fingernail polish and everyone knows that glue is an adhesive not and embellishment. I don't think anyone bought that excuse. Oh well, I did get the other part of that challenge to use spooky, fall color combos.

Apple marquee card

I learned how to make this card by watching a really neat video tutorial that JanTink did on her blog HERE.

Closed view of my card. I drew blue horizontal lines with a ruler and a blue prisma colored pencil. I drew one red vertical line with a ruler and a red prisma colored pencil. The scissors and pencil were made with punches. I was inspired by this blog HERE.

Here is what it looks like opened up all the way.

In this view you can sort of see how the red curtains move and open up in the circle.This card was also for the Ways to use it challenge to use numbers somewhere on the card. I got my abc's and my 123's

Honey Bear and Teddy Bear Picnic

Here is a picture of my little honey bear that I made for Mothermark's Tuesday Teapot Challenge. She had the cutest little bear with a picnic basket. My little bear wasn't interested in the picnic basket because he had found a pot of honey. I made my dimensional honey by using hot glue, chalks and clear fingernail polish. I made my little tear bear out of black cardstock. I stamped a pine branch from a Christmas set to make my trees. I drew in ants, because what is a picnic without ants? I drew in Loulabell and I drew in a bee. I hope he doesn't see my little bear eating honey and get mad. I felt like my tree needed a little something else so I added a cardinal.

Here is a close up of Honey Bear.

I experimented with wiggle eyes before making them

out of cardstock. Big wiggle eyes were cute, but not what

I was going for.

The little wiggle eyes looked kinda goofy to me.

This is the other card I made for the teaparty. These little bears wanted to make sure that there was enough food, so they are bringing a bag of chips (which was a sticker) Also stickers were ants with watermelon and a hamburger.



If you go out in the woods today... click HERE to see the lyrics for the old song called

TEDDY BEAR PICNIC.

Faux Enamel Butterfly

Today was a very stressful day. My job had me on the verge of tears several times. I needed to make a comfort card for me today. I used my favorite colors, and my favorite image... a butterfly. This was for the technique lovers challenge to make a faux enamel embellishment. The color for the butterfly was made using melted crayons. I used my electric skillet lined with foil. I placed my cardstock on the foil. I then drew on the cardstock and the heat melted the crayons. I removed it from the heat and covered it with glue.

This technique made me think of my cousin Alissa and my sister Shari. When we were little and lived in Phoenix AZ, in the heat of summer we would take rocks from our Granny's garden. The rocks would be so hot we would almost burn our hands touching them. We then would draw on the rocks and the crayons would melt making them so colorful. We would cover the rocks with glue to make them shiny.

After the glue was dry on my butterfly I spray painted it with a clear shiny acrylic spray. I glued glass beads for the body and added two thin strips of black cardstock for the antenea.
The base of my card was made using the retiform technique.

Fall Leaf Print Tutorial

For this technique, I used a green leaf

that was moist and pliable, my brayer and post it notes.

I have a limited supply of ink,

but what I used was yellow, green,

orange, red and brown (cabin fever is my brown).

I also used my acrylic block.

I inked up my brayer using the brown.


I placed my leaf with the top side of
the leaf face up on my acrylic block.
I brayered over the leaf making sure
that the whole surface of the leaf was inked.




I cleaned my brayer. I placed the leaf, ink side
down on my cardstock. I then used the
brayer to push the leaf onto the paper.






I carefully pulled up the leaf and reapeated the steps
a couple more times.

After inking the leaf, it was time to make the

masks for the leaf prints. I traced around the

edges of the leaf with a pencil.

I cut the leaf masks out.

I made tape loops to put on the back of the

masks. To make the tape less sticky I put the tape

on the back of my hand first.

I place the masks over the leaf prints. I then used the post it

notes to do the retiform technique that I described in

a previous tutorial. I used the inks in this order:

Yellow, Green, Orange, Red and lastly Brown.

Here is what it looked like when I removed the

post it notes.

I stamped little flourishes with the brown ink.

I used my itty bitty background stamp with

brown ink to add some texture.

These four cards were made with this technique.

Retiform Tutorial

I have a very easy technique to share with you.

To do the retiform technique you need

3 to 4 different inks that are complimentary

and vary from a dark to light.

The other materials needed are a brayer,

an acrylic block and post it notes

Ink up the brayer using the lightest color of ink.


After putting ink on the brayer, I roll it over the acrylic
block to make sure the ink is spread evenly.




Then I roll the brayer over the cardstock.

I place 3 post it notes randomly on the cardstock.

Ink up the brayer with 2nd lightest color of ink.
Roll on acrylic block(not shown again).

Then I roll the brayer over the

post it notes and cardstock.

I add more post it notes. Randomly placed.

Ink up brayer again with next to darkest ink.

Roll over the post it notes. You get the idea. Add the last

few post it notes and use the darkest ink using the

same steps as the other inks.

After using the darkest ink, pull the post it notes off

and you have a geometric looking paper.

Wasn't that easy?

Here is a card that I made for today's limited supplies challenge

using the retiform technique..

We were to make an opposite card. We were to use our:

oldest set... my roses are my oldest set.

newest tool... my brayer is my newest tool.

favorite colors... turquoise and peach are my favorite colors.

least favorite embellishment... mine are the swirly clips.