First wedding anniversary --paper gift

A few months ago my friend asked me to make a quilled Golden Gate bridge for her first wedding anniversary. They had their honeymoon in SF last year and they loved it so much that they are going back to California again this summer! Since it was their first wedding anniversary, they decided to follow the wedding anniversary tradition of gifting something made of paper. I made a similar quilled project last year for my sister and decided to make one for them too.

Read on for more details! 

April blooms and birthdays

Last year I planted iris bulbs from my coworker's yard, and after 14 months of waiting....they bloomed this month! It's so lovely to come back home to these colorful flowers. The colorful petals seem to open and close more depending on the time of the day, and the earliest bloomers have shriveled up and new ones are catching up and blooming now.

I also made a few April birthday cards this month:

 This card was for our secretary--a nod to her black cat!

And this sunflower card (letters cut out with Cricut) was for my mother-in-law!

Under the Sea baby shower banner

About 5 years ago, I met the Macaron Whisperer, also known as Amrita, after eagerly perusing all of her wonderful dessert and food recipes at her blog, The Sweet Art and generally being a fangirl. I loved being her neighbor and how it meant long walks at Forest Park with her dog Mila, eating the leftover macarons from her dessert business, taste-testing desserts like Shrikhand, Oreo ice cream (I love ALL her ice creams), Earl Grey Cardamom Pound Cake, and Clementine Cake with Chocolate Ganache, and doing Wii Just Dance in her apartment (to work off calories from eating all her desserts). 

Fast-forward to the present: we sadly no longer live across the street from Amrita & Joe, but they happen to be visiting NC this weekend to throw a baby shower for a friend! She needed a banner to fit her Under the Sea theme so I put my new Cricut machine to use. 

Amrita purchased the sea creature graphics from Etsy, and I bought the Kraft paper and cardstock at Michaels. I used my Cricut machine to cut scalloped 6-inch circles and 5-inch patterned/color cardstock, which has little fishies in the background. I then cut letters out of navy cardstock and adhered everything together with double-sided tape. To hang the banner up, I strung twine through the holepunched circles and taped it all into place in the back of each circle, so that the space between each circle is uniform.

Farewell music-themed card

Tomorrow our church is having a farewell party for our worship pastor and his family, who is transitioning to a new position and moving away from NC. I used my Cricut machine to cut out the music note for this farewell card. His family and worship ministry will be greatly missed! 

Materials used: Kraft cardstock, scrapbook paper, Daiso brush pen, and Tombow dual brush pen

Next up on the blog will be the 2 orders that I'm currently working on--a baby shower banner, and a quilled Golden Gate bridge!