Jingle Belles - Joy to the Earth ..... One More Recycled Card

My tidying up yesterday had me finding lots more goodies in my craft room that I had forgotten.  There's a meme about that somewhere, I know because it could be about me!  

One more card for the Jingle Belles Earth Day challenge.  This card was made with a flyer that I picked up on a day trip to Princeton last December whilst we were doing some Christmas shopping.  It was in a little shop that sells all kinds of kitchen utensils and I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the store.  It was an advertisement for a new line of linens I think.  I cropped it to fit a 5x7 card front - unfortunately that meant cropping off the tallest goose's hat because of some print that ran through it, but if I hadn't told you, would you have known? 

I found a piece of scrapbook paper with the same colors and a added that and a strip of cork at the bottom.  The last touch was a wooden snowflake (another one of those goodies forgotten but no longer lost).  

Once again I thank these ladies for this challenge allowing me to use those bits and bobs of Christmases past.  I do find it rewarding to be able to repurpose things and make something usable from them.  

Join me over at the Jingle Belles blog to see what all the others have come up with this fortnight.

Jingle Belles - Peace on Earth Day

One of my favorite Jingle Belle challenges is the one that happens right around Earth Day.  We try very hard to keep up with the mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and by the looks of the stamp cave, you can tell that there's always something to be repurposed.  If only we could recycle time so that those lost minutes that occur in our everyday lives could be put to better use.  Oh well.  Let me not waste any more of your time fantasizing about that.  

HWNSNBP received one of those "tower" gifts last Christmas from someone he works with.  The kind where every box contains some nice little treat.   We shared the treats and I saved the boxes because they were beautiful royal blue metallic boxes with gold, pewter, and white dots of varying sizes on the various sized boxes.  I used the largest box to make not one, not two, but three cards for this challenge.  (I actually have a picture of the box before I used it but I'm having the darndest time transferring photos from my phone to my computer.  The computer seems to pick and choose the pictures it wants to download and I wind up having to duplicate the ones that it didn't take the first time and doing the process all over again.  The most aggravating thing is the next day, when I go to my photos on my computer, I have 3 copies of each picture.  I just didn't take the time today to duplicated the box pic - sorry.)

The first card is based on this card from Mary Fish that I found on Pinterest.  My recycled bits, besides the royal blue metallic panel, are the Bethlehem cityscape that I die cut out of some tissue paper from a gift and the circle is cut from an envelope insert that I had saved.  

First I adhered the tissue paper to my 6" roll of double-sided sticky tape and then stuck that to some white cardstock to give it some sturdiness.  In the picture below I hope you can see how the first row of buildings was popped up.  Once again, taking pictures of glossy backgrounds is pretty tricky and I haven't mastered that yet.

The second card used the panel that had the most dots and also had two slits on either side which I believe had some ribbon in it originally - don't really remember.  I could have cut it down and omitted those slits, but instead I found a length of gold ribbon that fit through them.  JOY was die cut from another card insert that had been saved.  The stars were punched from a scrap of gold glitter CS.

The last card uses a smaller piece of the box.....with the smallest dots too.  I found this metallic stocking gift tag from a coworker that I had saved and added to that the one gold pointsettia that I had left.  The holly and berries are cut off of some wired ribbon in the scrap box and joy was die cut from a scrap of red metallic fabric paper.  The cardinal is an Eyelet Outlet brad (I keep forgetting about those things - so glad I remembered this one.)

I also used a gold gel pen to outline the metallic panel on this one.  I just might go back and do the same to the other two.

So there you have it.  Three cards from one box.  

I've got some tidying up of my craft table to do and then I'll be over to the Jingle Belles to see all the other recycled wonders.  You should check it out too - Lauren and Steph always have such beautiful inspiration cards for all the challenges and these are no exception.  

Since I'm posting on Earth Day I'll add this piece that I did in my large sketchbook for the #everythingcircles challenge.  The tree contains all kinds of circular tags, stamps, logos and stickers that I had saved I guess for just this reason!

Happy Easter

Our grandson's Easter card.  Biker Bunny and His Peeps!

Little Boy Birthday

Our little guy turned 3 earlier this month.  This is him before the chocolate face!

He's really into Paw Patrol and that's what the theme of his party was.  Here is the card that I made him inspired by this pin.  I could not find instructions for the pattern so I just winged it with what I had on hand.  

There were many gifts but mom and dad had asked for a limit to the toys and everyone was good with that.  It is so helpful to have a wish list, even for the littles, so you know what they can really use.  We got him a little cash register that he had loved playing with at a friend's house and some water shoes and sun protective shirt for the beach and water play at school.  Here he is playing with "Steve" (their name for it), a battery operated puppy he can take for a walk.  His dad is highly allergic to dogs so a real dog is not in their future, but they're okay with that.  

He's growing up much too fast!

Everything Circles Art Challenge

Here I go, er, went again....... down another challenge path.  It seemed pretty simple, and it is really - incorporating circles into your art.  The everythingcircles challenge hosted by Birgit Koopsen. I kind of hemmed and hawed deciding whether to do this or not, but then I remembered this page in my large blank book that I had added all these circles to and the quotes that I had intermingled sort of helped me make my decision to move forward.  The limitation is circles. (BTW - this is much more colorful IRL, but being that the page is so large [8 1/2 x 11] I have to really pull back to be able to photograph the whole page making it fainter than I would like.)

And the icing on the cake was a visit to the opthamologist - photo taken whilst I was waiting for my exam. 

(As an aside, I went through this about two years ago with my right eye and now it's my left - and it's supposedly very normal for someone of my age - the vitreous in my eye is pulling away causing liquid to get in there and when it first does, you see flashing lights.  Mine remind me of the lights on a spinning ferris wheel.  Well, the lights subside but usually then you have a new "floater" of which I do.  The serious part is that if it pulls away too much, it can put a tear in the retina and that, if left untreated can lead to blindness.  Thus the trip to the opthamologist to make sure there is no tear.  And that's my PSA for that.  The picture that I've added just below is a photo of the inside of my eye.   The bright spot is where the retina is attached and if you look closely you can see the horizontal dark line which is the floater.  This has turned somewhat over the last month and now is up and down in my eye.  I thought it was pretty and the eye dr. probably thought I was nuts when I asked to take a picture of the screen.)

At this point I also made a decision that my circles were not just going to be drawn or painted.  They would be in photos - found circles.  This below is a collection of circles that I punched from reclaimed plastic pocket folders I use at work for homeroom attendance.  I give the teachers a new folder each September because even though they're made of plastic, they still get pretty beat up by June.  You know me and throwaways that might have another life......

This heart below is based on a design that I worked on about 20 years ago when I was still subbing in the classroom.  I would use the free/prep period that I might have to first go over the work that I would have to do, and if there was time, doodle.  Back then I used felt tipped markers.  This is done with Posca Paint pens.

Another Posca Pen circle design.

And yet another.

This one fell on Draw A Bird Day.  I punched some white circles out and drew some crazy sea gulls and a flamingo and added them to a scrappy collaged background with the quote "Be a Flamingo in a Flock of Seagulls".  

The one below may be deceiving.  It is less than 4" around and comes from the inside of a security envelope that I have used all shades of blue and green markers to color in.  (I've since glued it into my little 3.5x3.5" Pink Pig sketch book.)

And another small drawing for that book.  RBG and her circle of pearls and pearl earrings.  (I saw a cool card someone had made with a stamp of her but the stamp was out of stock so I decided to draw her on my own.)

Just some floating circles done in Zig brush markers and Micron pen.

A little paper collage courtesy of the mail of the day (The trees are punched from the envelope of a thank you note, and the dotted background is the inside of a security envelope.  The "ground" is a pieced of scrap paper in my scrap box.  The trunks and branches are drawn in with Zig's.)

And a quickie from last night on the road - what I'm calling some Flair Pen Caviar.

This may or may not be the end of the line for the circles.  I have a few birthdays coming up that need attention, Easter, and we're on call awaiting the birth of our second grandchild, so I'd better get busy with those other things right now!!!

Jingle Belles - We Three Kings

I know.  You're saying "what the heck?".  Look closely though.  Those cacti are bedecked in their Christmas finery and all ready to celebrate.  I've even given you the date - Dec. 25.  Going through some papers I came across this package of Christmas cactus stickers and, well, that's when I remembered that I hadn't yet made my card for the Jingle Belles We Three Kings Challenge yet.  I tried, believe me, to come up with a different sentiment, but aside from Feliz Navidad, I couldn't think of one.  Who will I send this card to?  Not sure right now, but probably someone a little prickly.

(It is colorful though, dontcha think!)

Thank You in the Round

This is a CASE of a sweet card made with Unity's Going Wild stamp set and Gina K's Wreath Builder.  I needed a couple of thank you's recently and had all the right ingredients to put this together in multiples.  It's nice to see that this wreath builder can be used with stamps other than those made specifically for it.  There are so many possibilities.

90th Birthday

My husband's aunt recently celebrated her 90th birthday and they had a nice party for her.  Two of her favorite things are donuts and wine and there you have the theme.  

She embraced the whole party with the spirit that she has embraced her life.  Her family (4 daughters and a son) gave her the sash, crown, and boa to wear and she wore it proudly. The girls all had outfits on that donuts on them.  Here she is pictured with her two nephews (my BIL and HWNSNBP).  

There was a donut display board and we each came home with a package of powdered sugar donuts as favors.  We all played a little game of The Price Is Right 1929 ..... do you know what a gallon of gas or milk went for back then?  Not many did.

One of her grandson's and a family friend rewrote the lyrics to "Forever Young" and had us all in stitches.  And she in turn, got up to thank everyone and kept the laughter going.  It was a great way to celebrate!

I made HWNSNBP slow down when we got to the corner of the street where the restaurant was so I could take a picture of ......

these mannequins that were all dressed up and staged all around the property of this house.  Kind of creepy for March.  At first, we passed them on the way in I thought there was some kind of event going on until I realized that they weren't moving and they were most definitely there on the way out. Here's a little news blurb about them.