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! 

Calligraphy with Quilling and a weekend St. Louis visit

We visited old friends in Saint Louis this weekend and visited all our favorite places of nostalgia--Forest Park, St. Louis Zoo, our old church, Tortillaria. We also stopped by a couple of new additions to St. Louis that arrived after we left: IKEA, Jeni's Ice Cream, and Lonas Lil Eats. It was the best way to spend 3 short days in St. Louis!

B & T were our amazing hosts and fed us/cooked for us/drove us and let us play with their adorable kids! B ordered a custom quote of Joshua 24:15 embellished with quilling, inspired by a previous project. I hand-carried the framed print onto the plane and was quite relieved when I was able to deliver it safely to St. Louis. This was another collaboration between Karmomo (the brushlettering) and me (quilling).

Since I'd made gifts for B&T's 2 boys in the past, I decided to be fair to their 3rd child and make her a personalized gift---another log branch slice ornament! B&T plan to use it as a door sign for her room.

Thank you card for B&T's generous hospitality during our lovely St. Louis weekend visit!

Easy patterned pencil cup organizer

Recently I've been feeling motivated to organize my office and craft supplies, partly because Andrew returned from his out-of-town rotation. This meant clearing out all the paper and pens and markers and half-finished craft projects invading his side of our shared table area.

In the process of organizing and labeling everything, I decided to jazz up my pen/pencil cup organizers with gold and white chevron leftover wrapping paper. This was literally the easiest less-than-5-minute DIY project ever and I would do it again a heartbeat!

Supplies needed:

• Spray adhesive (or glue)
• Wrapping paper or wallpaper of your choice
• Tin cans--washed/cleaned and dried. I used cans from my clam chowder soup obssession

Step 1: Cut the paper in a rectangular shape to wrap around the can

Step 2: spray adhesive all over the exterior of the can

Step 3: Carefully press the paper down onto the can and smooth out any wrinkles

 

And...that's it! 

This can is the perfect size for my Tombow dual brush pen markers!

Birthdays and babies

My coworker have been keeping me busy recently! They ordered 4 greeting cards from me this week and I finished them just in time for my trip to New Orleans. I used my new Cricut Expression 2 machine to cut out the Scottish terriors, banner, baby carriage, and to stencil out letters. My learning curve is still pretty steep right now and I'm spending more time choosing and designing the cuts than it takes for the machine to actually make the cut. I'm loving the crisp edges of the machine cuts though!

One hot mama! Gold glitter washi tape, scrapbook paper, and I used the end of a pencil eraser dipped in gold inkpad to make the polka dots!

A little blue quilled heart for a baby boy!

Hand-stamped bluebird, banner and Scottish terriors cut by Cricut machine, and washi tape (Elmer's designer masking tape)

English bulldog greeting card

My neighbor recently gifted me an old Cricut machine--the Expression 2 model, to be exact, because she bought the Explore and no longer needed this one. It's probably one of the most generous gifts I've ever received! Having used a Silhouette machine before, the Cricut Expression 2 is less flexible because it's only compatible with Craft Room software, which requires that you buy the whole set of images in each cartridge (about $10 per set). Whereas Design Space, which is compatible with the newest Cricut model, Explore, allows you to just buy single images (99 cents) and to create your own too. In any case, I'm happy to have any paper-cutting machine to cut out intricate designs like the bulldog below!

My coworker asked me to make this card for her sister, whose English bulldog recently passed away. While Googling images of English bulldogs, I came across really adorable pictures of baby English bulldogs! Only bulldogs can make wrinkles look so cute.