Our Chinese Visitors!

 This is a very exciting week at my Elementary School!  We are having our yearly visit with our sister school in China's visitors return!

Last year was my first experience with this AWESOME project our school takes part in.  One of our sponsoring teachers asked me to make something for the visitors to remember their visit to our school.  She's been so kind to order gifts and projects from me before, we went through our usual discussion and idea session, and came up with this.

I used green cardstock for Oklahoma, since we live in what they call "Green Country" though it's been pretty brown this year with the drought!

I lucked out that the Hello Kitty cart had a nice Friends cut, and the other letters were cut and adhered individually.  Oklahoma, the names, and the dragon all have gold Stickles accents.  Each person chose an English name to use.  With the exception of one teacher, and two girls that chose Angel; I added their given names to differentiate the booklets so they wouldn't get mixed up.

There will be 15 visitors in all for the week, 10 kids and 5 teachers.  The assembly on Friday will be GREAT!  We had lots of interesting things to see, a gift exchange between the schools, and I got to see a Native American dance in person.  What an experience that was!  In early May, we send students and teachers over to China for a week to 10 day trip.

 Here's one of the booklets close up.... and if I could figure out how to rotate the pictures with this new interface, it would be in portrait format! 

I am thrilled to know that some of my work will go to China....  so exciting!  I hope they like and appreciate their books.


Your comments are treasured!

2011 Calendars; Part 3 of 3 - and an AWESOME Blog Hop!!

So here are the last 4 calendars for 2011! I hope you've enjoyed the previews as much as Mom and I had making them!!


It took me a long time to decide what to use for the September calendar... Labor Day, school starting,... and I already had a patriotic theme for July, so I went back to my ever favorite Hello Kitty cart, and found this adorable cheerleader. Why is she in purple and white?? Kiel Raiders, of course!! Purple and white were our colors, and they were GREAT school colors!


I have absolutely no idea why, but October, which isn't really my most favorite month always turns out so elaborate... I really loved the idea... the black iron gate with a path going up to the castle in the background, with a craggy old tree near the entrance. Martha Stewart's web punch works perfectly behind October!!

Three cartridges to complete November's calendar... Designer's Calendar, of course, Celebrate with Flourish, and the Thanksgiving cartridge... That Harvest Blessing at the top was not so much fun... so many small, teeny tiny, itty bitty, teeny tiny pieces!


Doesn't the December calendar look like it was a TON of work?? Not so much!! The actual difficult piece on the entire calendar was the Merry Christmas! We've got the trees down to a science now, and they went together lickety-split! I added snow this year to the trees.... know what it is?? Flower Soft! That's the greatest stuff!! We also die-cut the stars, and they pop up since it's two pieces together.

BLOG HOP NEWS.....
See the next post below this one for details on our coming blog hop... just 2 days away!!
OR, click on the link below to check out how the hop is going to work.


Your comments are always appreciated!
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Family Reunion Poster - Cricut Lite!!

Mom told me about a family reunion coming up in August, and though I can't be there, I thought I'd send her pieces to make a poster... she said, "Make them big for our old eyes." So, there aren't many pieces, but they're all cut at either 3 or 4 inches tall, so they are quite big!!!

I hope they all fit on the poster board.

The letters are cut from the Hello Kitty cart at 3 3/4 inches, and triple layered...as well as adding red stickles around the borders.



Each of the following pictures are from the Cricut Lite Cartridge Block Party, and cut at 4 inches. I used inking, stickles, and different colors of gel pens to add details to each cut.










I also cut 4 strawberries from the Preserves cartridge to use as corner pieces, or border edges.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Get Well Cards

Here are 2 get well cards I made for a dear friend. My husband and I have a little tradition where we always get 2 cards... one a little silly, and one more sentimental. I did the same for my friend who's going through a rough time, and on top of that, had to have surgery!!!!!

SO, one of my absolute favorite images... the stained glass irises just work so perfectly with the purple paper. I emboss the outlines with lilac craft ink, and clear powder. After they're ready and cooled, I get out the watercolor crayons. It's a time consuming process, but I SO love how they look. This has to be one of my all-time favorite stamps.

For the silly card... Hello Kitty! She's so adorable, and a very sweet way to say I hope you're feeling better soon.

Your comments are always welcome and appreciated!

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

More things FROM the craft fair!

Hello Kitty notebook with matching pen.

Christmas Tree gift boxes - just fill them with whatever you wish, and it's a cute little gift!!



These are the cards with the pop-up Christmas trees... open them up, and WOW!!! Such an awesome thing to watch people open the cards. I love it!!

These are more of the cocoa/cider/drink sleeves. I'm now waiting for my next batch of Cuttlebug embossing folders to make some more of these for stocking stuffers.


The Heart of the Crafter Fair was yesterday, and when I got home, I realized I did pretty well. I had lots of wonderful comments - Cute! Clever! How Pretty! OH! What a lot of work! WOW! Colorful! I could never be that creative! How creative!

Most of the people were very, very nice.

For my very first craft fair, I'm pretty happy.

The very BEST thing is... 2 of my friends here in the area came, and I was invited to be a vendor at a craft fair at the beginning of December! How exciting is that!!??

I also got an order for 2 more notebooks - they are special design requests... so I'll be working on those this week.

One lady also asked me about making Thank You cards for her business. I'm very excited to work with her on colors and designs!!

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Hello Kitty for Get Well Wishes

There's a little girl who's Mom is on our Cricut Messageboard - and she's having some major surgery on Tuesday.. I found out that her favorite character is Hello Kitty and her favorite colors are pink and purple!! SO, these are the two things I made for her.
The card and notebook will be sent separately so she'll get 2 different packages.

Hopefully she'll like them!

As always, click on the picture for a screen-sized view!

Instead of actually cutting the colored paper for the rainbow pieces, I just used my stickles. They're coated so thickly, the glitter actually took most of the day to dry!! It does look GREAT!

Inside the notebook, I used my Hannah Montana cart to cut her name in the Music Staff option. It turned out really cute!! So sorry I won't post it - don't want to give her name... she's just a little one going through a lot!

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

2 More Altered Notebooks!

I had a request to make 2 more of these covered notebooks.

Here they are!

My personal favorite is the pink Hello Kitty.

I started attaching the RSVP pens made to match with paper from the notebooks. I found that attaching them while traveling really helps! It's so easy to lose track of pens when you're moving around so much!

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ *~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Cards for Soldiers "Father's Day and/or Kids" March 16 - April 3

I chose Kids Cards for this challenge. I don't have anything for Father's Day - and I'm not that motivated for "guy" cards... so Kids it is for me!! **Plus, I have lots of kiddie type carts to use. :)

I thought the little girls would LOVE to get these from Mom or Dad.

I promised 30 cards... and made 15 of these Hello Kitty Cards. They turned out cuter than I thought they would... Thanks to Okie for help with the photo corners!!!

When I have the other 15 cards made.. for boys this time, I'll post those as well.

A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Cards for Soldiers Challenge 12/8 -1/5 Valentine

It's been so crazy busy here with making Christmas gifts and all my other projects, not to mention WORK... But since school was cancelled these past 2 days, I knocked out these Hello Kitty Valentine Cards. Aren't they just the cutest things?? Yes, I know I'm biased.

The Hello Kitty's were made with Stampin' Up Wheel Stamp - Hearts as a border around the bottom and some side edges. I used DCWV paper from the Spring Stack as a background. HK was cut at 4 inches, and since some of the pieces were SO small, I just used Christmas Red stickles in her bow for some pieces, and Baby Pink stickles on her nose. Her eyes are sparkly from the Black Diamond stickles, and I again used the Christmas Red stickles on the I Love You sign. It was cut at 2 inches. Since I had some space above the I Love You wording, I used some of my Studio G month stamps - the heart and circle are from the February set.

Enjoy!