speedy summer

I am having the busiest summer ever! I have spent 2 whole weeks at the beach (Florida then Alabama) and have been working in between. I have hardly been home since I have "been home" from school. I am very excited to finally start slowing down and start crafting again. This week may be a little crazy, but soon after I will have time, or make time! Sorry if you have been trying to keep up with my business, because I have not been posting anything. Hope that everyone is having a great summer so far.
 ~Taylor

Finally Home

So I finally made it home for the summer. School went really good this semester, I don't have my final grades yet, but I am pretty sure I did good in all of my classes. YAY! Hard work really does pay off sometimes :) Unfortunately being at home means poor internet connection and a mom who doesn't like a mess- making it hard to craft. Glamour's word of the month is craftermath. And my "craftermath" is pretty bad. I will try to post as much as possible though. My hope is that I can learn to be a neater crafter, maybe more like Martha! haha.
  Thats all for now, just wanted to write a little update.

NSD Challenges!

Here are some of the challenges that I participated in for National Scrapbook Day. I had a lot of fun doing these, and I can't wait to find more challenges to do. It is really nice to have someone give you something to work from- if you know me, I spend 30% of my craft time getting all of my stuff out, 50% trying to decide what to make and only 20% of my time actually making the craft. I really need to adjust this!

These challenges were from the MyPinkStamper blog hop on Saturday http://www.mypinkstamper.com/

This first challenge was from Renee over at http://icameisawicreated.blogspot.com/  It was to make any project using a fabric or ribbon flower. I made this flower out of a strip of fabric and just added a button. I really like the colors black and turquoise right now, so I just went with that color scheme. The stamp is one I picked up at Walmart for only $1. It actually works really good- it left a very clear stamp. I hope that you enjoy this flower card Renee!

The second challenge was from Missy over at http://quickchickdesigns.blogspot.com/  It was to make any project involving physical activity. I made this hula-hoop girl out of the cricut cartridge A Child's Year. It is cut at 3.5 because of her arms extending out so much. I really like these bright colors right now, they remind me of summer!  I also added the tiny tag and girl to some foam tape adhesive to make them stand up a little. I hope that you enjoy this active card Missy!

The last challenge was from Carissa over at http://www.sprinkledwithglitter.com/  It was to make any project using embossing. I was definitely out of ideas for this one. I love embossing, but I just didn't know what to do! I thought about doing a girly birthday card because I have a girlfriend with an upcoming birthday. I made the happy birthday cut out of the cricut cartridge A Child's Year. The black cardstock embossed really good, but I had to make it stand out more by adding some light pink chalk ink. For the finishing touches I added some sparkly glitter glue to the happy birthday and found some felt flowers that I had picked up at Michaels for $1. I hope that you enjoy this embossed girly birthday card Carissa!

Birthdays cont.

Here is the other card that I made. I made two of them just alike because I had to get them in the mail quick. I did personalize the message though so don't worry Shannon and Susan :)  This was pretty simple to make, it just took a while to figure out all of the small paper dimensions and get them cut and glued. I used paper from a really old pack that I picked up at a Tuesday Morning (mom's favorite store).  I really like the bright colors and patterns that it has. You can really tell in the last picture that it is kind of a 3-D type of card because of the way it folds. It did fit in a regular A2 envelope with only 1 stamp. I plan on making more of these!

So Many birthdays!

Hey yall, I apologize for not posting anything in such a long time! I found some new card-making videos online and have been consumed by them. They are the Finally Friday videos from Two Peas in a Bucket- be careful they are addicting! Okay, so this week has been a very birthday week for me. Two of my sisters had birthdays and one of my aunts did too. This called for some very special cards because I love these people so much! I wanted to do something unique for these so I decided to do some special folding. I just looked up different ways to fold cards on youtube and my thoughts were answered. 

For this card I used some double sided cardstock from MyMind'sEye. I actually won this pack from a blog hop, and it really is so pretty. I love the blacks and yellows. There was also some brads and dimensional stickers and elements too. You can see I used several from this collection. This card is a double folded tab card. It doesn't open so the tags are what I wrote my messages on. I really like this idea because it is not just your regular card. The stamps I used came from the Michaels $1 bin- they work great! I am really happy with the way that it turned out. 

Busy as a bee

Lately I have been so busy, but things are finally calming down a little. This is known as the calm before the storm because in 2 weeks we will have finals and then my junior year will be done! Wow, it has just flown by. I was able to make a card using some of my scraps of paper and of course my cricut :) I also used some scrap fibers to add a little texture.



The trees were cut out at 4 inches from the Give a hoot cartridge and I just layered a fussy cut on the middle. I used a martha stewart punch around the page for the loops on the left. The words and music paper behind the trees were from an old hymnal I picked up at a book sale. This card has many layers and took a while to make, but it was a lot of fun.

Simple card and product review

So my boyfriend is always complaining about how I "love" pinterest more than him... well what can I say? (haha) He is a special education major here at A&M and he was starting one of his placements at an elementary school. He got sick, which always seems to happen when you spend a lot of time with little ones. I am always looking for an excuse to craft and pull out the cricut so I decided I would make him a simple get well card. It turned out kinda girly, but he didn't care. The longest part of making the card was definitely picking out the colors. I mean it was sooo easy! The owl is cut out of create a critter cartridge at 3.5 inches. 

So I recently won tickets to go see a performance of Unsinkable Ladies, stories from the Titanic. This was a really different show, a one-woman show. I really enjoyed it though. I thought that I would post pictures of the "hair clips" that I used to fix my hair with. If you are looking for a really easy and simple way to curl your hair these are excellent! You just plug them in, twist your hair up in pin curls and then clip them. The clips have ceramic plates in them and that is how they curl your hair. You just wait like 10 minutes for them to cool then unclip! This is a link to the topstyler website http://www.topstyl er.com/howto.html  and this is what they look like

  Here are my results