So Proud of my Chem major son!!

Whew - it was a busy, but fun Thanksgiving break this past week!! I had all my kiddoes home with me and we did a lot of visiting, shopping and eating!! I've had this layout sitting on my desk finished except for the journaling since before Thanksgiving week. I've known what I wanted to journal, I just needed to find the time to sit down and get all the words and feelings figured out just right before I typed them up on the tags. This was a bittersweet moment for me when I took this picture of my son. I tear up every time I look at it and think about how very proud he was to show off the research that he's been involved with for the past 2 years involving Super Critical Fluid Extractors (I've heard about it an awful lot from Jonathan!!) and the work he, his team, and his teacher are doing with Aboriginal cave paintings in Australia and the Chauvet cave paintings in France and carbon dating. From what he's said, they've come up with a technique to completely remove impurities without harming the samples they are testing. Very cool stuff!! I'm so very proud of him, but I'm also a little bit sad, because I know next year he will be going off to Grad school and I will miss him so very very much!!

I used my Nov Handmade Studio Calico kit to make this layout - with some punches (the plaid border punch by EK Success and the Medallion Martha Stewart Punch) and some extra goodies I had sitting on my scrap table - LOVE those wooden Prima buttons!! I did a lot of misting and used a few star SC rub-ons that I've been hoarding!! TFL!

Something Cheerful for Mom

This is my blogpost this week at the Just Imagine/Kreaxions blog.

It's been such a gloomy week weather wise here I decided I needed to work on something bright and

cheerful! I like making cards ahead of time so I'm not scrambling last minute for one, so I made a Mother's Day card for my Mom and it's got nice, bright and cheerful colors in it to brighten my day (and hers too when Mother's Day comes around!!).

I used two punches to make the rows of flowers on the top tag - the base flower is made from the 603 Lotus punch and the centers of the flowers are actually the punched leftover from the 4 in 1 902 Daisy punch. I just used the little leftover daisies which were punched from the glitter paper available here.
To make the repetitive punches of the flowers so so much easier, I used the Punch Mate tool. It was the first time I used that tool and it was so easy to use and made punching several of the same shapes so very quick! Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous Thanksgiving!!

Weekend Crop Fun!

I had a blast at the crop I attended this past weekend! It was fun catching up with people I hadn't seen for a while and I actually got some things accomplished that I planned to do! That's always great for me since it usually takes me forever to make one page!! I made these two pages using my November Studio Calico kit and I also worked on my December Daily album - I got the foundation pages made. I will share my progress on that in the next day or two! I love the 3in1 heart punch by EK Success that I used in the bottom layout. So much punchage out of one little punch!!! And on the "reflection" layout I used the packaging from the MME buttons that were in the kit - I always save and use the beautiful packaging! TFL!

Pumpkin Love

Just a quick layout I made yesterday for my blog post for Just Imagine/Kreaxions punches using one of the 4 in 1 border punches which I backed with some green cardstock to make it pop on my layout. I used my November Studio Calico kit to make this! Check the blog out to see all the details!! TFL!

Nov Theme for GCD Studios

I was inspired by the color inspiration to make this layout of Rusty! My Golden Retreiver LOVES the fall season - it's nice and cool for him to run in our backyard - and he loves to pose for pictures for me, so when it turns colder I take him out to have his pictures made! He's so pretty when he starts growing his thick winter "coat". I love how this year he's starting to get a white beard..LOL! I used papers from the Soul Food collection as well as the Homespun Chic collection and the chipboard accents and letters are from The Great Outdoors collection.

Supplies: Patterned Paper -GCD Studios: Vintage Birdie, Homespun Chic ; Brown Mod, SoulFood ; Lovely Green, Soul Food ; Chipboard Letters, Great Outdoors ; Chipboard Flower, Chipboard Stickers, Great Outdoors ; Twine, Twinery; Punch, EK Success; Artisan Tape, American Crafts; sticker letters, Sassafras.

Brother/Sister/Friends

I'm really having fun using my new Silhouette Machine!! The images I cut out and put on my layout are the birds on a wire and the camera. I used my October Studio Calico kit for this. TFL!

Faking Mercury Glass...

I got this fabulous idea off of Pinterest one day when I was searching for Christmas decorations on how to make faked mercury glass looking items (sorry, I don't remember where it was or who it was that I got the idea from - it got lost in the sea of Pinterest items!) and I thought I could easily do this!! Mercury glass items are all the rage in the Pottery Barn catalogs this season - but this is done at just a fraction of the price!! All you need is some Krylon "Looking Glass" spray paint, some glass items, and some black paint. I got the Krylon at M's using a 50% off coupon (I got the last two cans of it on different days) and I scoured my local thrift store and bought all my glass pieces at $2 each or less (the glass Christmas tree was only $1!!).

You simply have to spray several thin layers of the looking glass paint on the inside of the glass pieces (If possible - I wasn't able to do that to the candlesticks, so I just sprayed the outside of them). It takes a while and several coats of paint - making sure that it's dry between each coat. The small candlesticks took the paint the best - they are 25% leaded glass (still had the tags on them) so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. The Christmas tree was the hardest to do because the paint just kept sliding right off of the glass. I finally just sprayed a whole bunch on the inside, set it on it's side and rolled it back and forth for several minutes until it got coated. It's not perfect, but that's ok - mercury glass has an imperfect look to it anyway! After the pieces were coated how I wanted them to look, I took some black paint (which I already had) and sponged little spots all over the pieces, making sure to kind of rub it in with my fingers so the black wasn't so sharp and crisp looking. After the black paint dried, I sprayed one more thin layer of the silver on top of it.
I love the way these turned out, and all I spent was $22 in total which includes both cans of paint and all the glass pieces!! I can't wait to start decorating for Christmas now!!

BTW - the red is not on the pieces - it is just a reflection of something that was sitting next to them!

TFL!!