Nice Weather -- Not So Nice Garage

As much as I love to work on my crafts, I have had a horrible time these past few days getting motivated to work with paper.  It is soooooo gorgeous outside that I just have to go out to play.  We almost made it to 80 degrees today.  Just 1 degree off.  Wow, it's only March.  So hubby decided to clean out the garage.  Since I have some stuff stored in boxes out there, that meant it was my job for today too.  Not my favorite.  I also did a little digging in the dirt.  Also not my favorite, but better than cleaning the garage.  Can't say how many times I just had to come in the house -- I made all sorts of excuses.  But we finally finished.  (Note to self:  Take BIG can of bug spray next time.  There are some spiders out there that must be from an alien world!  Or maybe just Texas!  BIG!  Ugh!)  (Note to hubby:  Spray a line of bug spray to circle the house.  If one of those monsters gets in the house, my friend Tracy in Washington State will hear my scream!)

Since I have not been spending any time in my craft room, my post for today is something we did at our demo team meeting on Sunday.  My sideline and good friend, Liz, was this month's designated make n take gal.  She always does an awesome job.  This time she CASEd  a card from Laura Haffke (Hi Laura, we all loved your card.  Bet your ears were burning all the way to your house while we were talking about you -- all good things.)   As usual, Liz added a few of her own touches.  Liz is our ribbon guru, so she took ribbon and wrapped it around the front panel and then used a few more scraps to add touches to the front, and to make a bow.  We then curled more ribbon by wrapping it around a little paintbrush and heat setting the curls.  I wonder if I could heat set some curls in my hair with a little paint brush and my heat gun.  Hmmmm.......

The inside of the card is a cute folded panel with an inset birdhouse.  What you need to do is take the vanilla panel and lightly fold in half (Don't crease too hard or the image won't emboss.  You just want to know where the center is.).  Now that you've found the center you can stamp your image to line up the birdhouse, stamp with VersaMark and emboss with black.  (The stamp set is the hostess set, Up In The Air, from the Occasions Mini)  Then color your flowers with markers.  After that cut just above and just below the birdhouse and fold opposite from the center fold, make your creases, and push the birdhouse back.  Glue the vanilla piece to the Poppy Parade by first gluing to one side, then put glue on back of the vanilla piece and fold the entire card closed to glue the other side.  This way it will be sure to close properly.  We glued Everyday Enchantment DSP panels to the inside and colored the front panel with markers.  I added a couple butterflies to cover a few little black smudges -- I was a little sloppy.  Don't forget the little pearls.  They finish it off beautifully.  Here's  the beautiful one that Laura did -- maybe she can explain better.  

 

I hope to get back to my craft room tomorrow, but with the weather forecast, I'm not so sure I'll want to be inside tomorrow either.  Perhaps I'll work on some more things that have spray smooch, spray fixatives, or spray paint.  I can't do that type of thing in my craft room because of my carpet.  That'll get me outside.  We'll see.

I hope you find some time to get outside if your weather is nice.  Come back to visit soon.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy