Guess Who's Back.... Back Again, LOL!

     Hello Everyone! I know it has been quite some time since my last post but things have been absolutely crazy!!! Since my last post we have had several holidays such as: April's Fools Day, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Firefighter/Nurse/Teacher Appreciation Day and quite a few other holidays - so I hope you all had wonderful, blessed, and fantastic ones! 

     I had fantastic holidays all the way around, plus celebrated a ton of birthdays including my own, but sadly I also had a couple of deaths as well as memorials to deal with, which despite the unbelievable amount death I've experienced in my life, it never becomes bearable. 

     I was very blessed for my birthday this year as my kids and hubby had several surprises planned for me. They took me to a Brett Eldredge and Michael Ray concert, which they had also set up a "meet & greet" for me with Michael Ray :)  Then, while we were waiting for the concert to start, our local radio station called my name for a "meet & greet" with Brett Eldredge. I tried to keep my cool, but I think the grin on my face from ear to ear gave away any coolness I had, lol! So I was pretty stoked, but that wasn't all they had planned for me. The next day they took me to a local "BikeFest" which happened to have some of my favorite people from the Michael Ballard's Full Throttle Saloon, stunt performers Cory Dady and Joel Hickman, as well as Uncle Kracker. All of that alone blew me away not to mention made numerous things on my bucket list happen. Those types of things are a rare opportunity, so I am still in disbelief that I was blessed with so many all in one short weekend! 

      Since I have so many health issues, all of that awesomeness unfortunately caused me to be bed ridden for over a week, so for the day of my birthday party, "I was snug as a bug in a rug" tucked away in bed. So no birthday party took place in the end but I was perfectly o.k. with that, as I of course was not expecting anything else because after all, I had just been totally spoiled. Having such a wonderful husband and children, just when I thought they couldn't spoil me any more than they already had, the 3 of them come into my room carrying this huge box. Can you believe those little stinkers got me a Sizzix Eclips machine! I had already shed so many tears with all the surprises and blessings they had given to me that I thought my fountain was dry, but nope.... the fountain kicked on full force and the tears started streaming full force! 

      You just can't imagine what my heart felt receiving all those blessings! My birthday ends up getting treated like a normal day. Since I have so many medical bills, I usually make my husband and kids promise to not buy me anything because we spend more than enough on me as it is throughout the year with doctors appointments, tests, and medications so I usually just get a verbal "Happy Birthday". I can't imagine what I did to receive such wonderful and amazing blessings this year but I am savoring each one of them and thanking God every chance I get!!! 

       So, since my family got me this AMAZING cutting machine, I've been quite busy making all kinds of goodies, which I will be sharing some of them with you today :) This machine is literally so easy to use that I made these crafts right from my bed. How cool is that!!! 

      Another project I will be showing you today is I a storage unit for my ink pads. Making that was pretty intense and challenging to say the least. Just as I was feeling better from all the birthday craziness, the ink pad storage unit had other ideas and felt it should send me back to my bed... Apparently you can develop an allergy to cutting Styrofoam/foam board, so that came with a fun little reaction, just kidding! The allergy was actually quite awful! However, despite the allergy, I was pretty pleased with how the storage unit came out so I am thinking about building one for my markers. This time I am wearing goggles, a mask, and making it in a well ventilated area... outside ;) 

     Anyway, enough of my blabbing ;) Thank you so much for listening and letting me share my past couple months with you! Now, lets get on to showing you my creations. I hope you like them :) Have a blessed and wonderful weekend!!!!  P.S. A quick update on the Design Teams I applied for: Unfortunately, I was not picked this time, but I will try again upon the next open call. In the meantime I have been making creations with the intentions of entering them into certain challenges but then I am always a bit hesitant on entering once they are completed. So I ponder on it for a bit and then remember.... where's the fun in that :) So have decided to follow through... "go for the gusto".... and enter my Saturated Canary "Celebrate Your Day" card into the Spectrum Noir Challenge for May. Fingers crossed :)

For these 3 adorable bunny treat boxes I used the "Trio of Bunnies" - Bunny Box - svg file from My Scrap Chick. The "Trio of Bunnies" file actually comes with this bunny box, a card, and a tag but I only used the Bunny Box for this project. I cut them out using my Sizzix Eclips machine, to decorate them I added some sponging ink touches, pattern stamps, a bow on the girl from a My Creative Time die, and then before giving them to the kids, I filled them up with tons of Easter candy :)

I made this Easter card using the Framed Frills Easel Card svg file and the free Easter Cross file from My Scrap Chick. I cut the card, cross, and words using my Sizzix Eclips machine. I also found some cool stamps and ink to add a few little designs.

  My entry for the Spectrum Noir May Challange

The card above is the card I will be entering into the Spectrum Noir Challenge for May :) 
 I love this card!!! I made it for my mom for Mother's Day. For the base of the card I created a standup card by cutting pink cardstock 11" long by 5 1/2" wide, scored the length of the cardstock at 5 1/2, then folded (so at this point the card should be 5 1/2 by 5 1/2). Then on just the top portion of the card I scored it at 2 1/4 (this made the stand up portion). The beautiful girl is "Fancy"a digital stamp from Saturated Canary. I colored her with Spectrum Noir markers. I used Sizzix dies for the swirls, and the background shapes. I used some embossing folders to emboss the shapes, I made flowers out of pink, lavender, and Stampin Up coastal cabana cardstock. The larger flowers are the Die-namics Hybrid Camellia flower dies from My Favorite Things, the corners dies are the Die-namics Four Corners dies, and the small flowers are the Rolled Flower dies from My Creative Time and the banner is the Stitched Party Dies from My Creative Time as well. The sentiment came from the Celebrate Big stamps set from My Favorite Things. (The word mommy was just handwritten by me with a lavender sharp tipped marker). Lastly I blinged it out with the Stampin Up clear rhinestones and Studio G lavender rhinestones.

This is the ink pad holder I made using foam board. It cost me less than $5 to make this ink pad storage and I so much foam board left that I will be making marker storage. I purchased the foam board at Walmart as I found it was the least expensive price for the size. The size I got was about 4 feet by 4 feet (because some pieces were a little bigger than others), they were 1/4 inch thick at least and the cost was under $1 per piece. There are only a couple areas that needed to be secured which you could use a hot glue gun, liquid craft glue, contact paper or even tape.

Birthday card I made using the Cake Easel Card svg file from My Scrap Chick. I cut this file with my Sizzix Eclipse machine. This file included all the pieces I needed, the only thing I had to add was the name "Dylan" which I was able to cut with the letters provided on my Sizzix Eclips eCal Software.

Card closed 

This is one of the sympathy cards I made. To make this card I acutally used some left over paper I had. For the butterflies I used the Die-namics MPD Fancy Butterflies from My Favorite Things as well as used the Clearly Sentimental About Sympathy clear stamp set from My Favorite Things. (Outside of card - card closed)

(Inside Card)