Give Thanks - BBTB2 Challenge

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Monday is off to a great start. I am anxiously waiting to hear back from hubby's chemo office. We got the results of his CAT scan and it wasn't good. The aggressive treatment didn't work at all. The cancer grew some, not a lot, but it still grew. So now doc is going to try a new drug that cost $10,000 for 21 pills a month. Shocked?!! Us too! So we are waiting for the paper work to be done and to see if our insurance is going to cover the cost. If not there are supposed to be programs that will help with the cost. This drug is for people with color cancer who have tried chemo and it didn't work. I am so praying that this drug works for my husband.  He does have youth on his side and he is healthy except for the cancer doc said. So please pray with me that this drug works and that insurance will pay for it.  We are getting to the end of options, have one more after this and that was the first chemo he did which did shrink on tumor and kills two others. But they came back when he went on the chemo pill, and have since grew with this last treatment. Thank you for all the prayers you have prayed so far, they really mean the world to us.

Ok, now onto this weeks challenge over at BBTB2. I also want to give a shout out to our sweet Jayne, today is her birthday!!! Happy Birthday Jayne!!! Emily is our sweet and talented hostess and she has challenged us to make a Thanksgiving card.  Well this is a great challenge because I needed a couple more cards for Thanksgiving so I can get them out in the mail today! So off I went to my crafty room and made a CAS Thanksgiving card. It was Pinterest inspired and you can see the one that inspired me here. I used my CTMH Cricut Art Philosophy to cut out my leaves,  used a snippet of colorful paper to but behind my leaves. I then used MCT products to cut my layer with the leaves for my card base.  I then stamped my striped border with another MCT stamp set, using orange soda Hero Art Shadow ink and my sentiment also a MCT stamp set. Then using the leaf from one of my negative cut outs, I stamped that too with the striped border as well as another border on the inside mat. I popped up my outside and inside layer with foam tape. That is it folks, I told you it was a clean and simple card!  I hope you like it, cause I love how it turned out. So come on and join us in this Thanksgiving card challenge.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to stop by and visit me. I know it is only going to get even more hectic with Thanksgiving and Christmas that is right around the corner. All of us have much to do in a small amount of time to do it in. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Hugs, Brenda

Since I used a snippet of paper I can go over and play at the Snippets Playground. Di is a lovely person and it is so fun to join in over there. Some fabulous prizes as well and I should know, I won one last week!

Card Organization

Hello crafty peeps, I hope you are having a fabulous Saturday. Today I have a two or three parter for you. I will bring you half of my project this Saturday and then next Saturday I hope to finish it up and show you the finished product. I don't know about you but I'm always late with my birthday cards that get mailed out. It's really been bugging me so I thought I'd make a book to place my finished cards in. With each month having a pocket for those month's birthday's, anniversaries, etc. Maybe this will help me get my greetings out to my loved ones on time. Hey stranger things have happened!! lol Besides it can't hurt to try, right?! So I sat down and designed on paper what I wanted to do. I figured I would keep my pages 8 1/2 x 11 inches and I would have two months on one piece of card stock, and I knew each month would have to have a pocket to hold the cards. Next I would need a place to write each month's dates on and whether it is a birthday or anniversary, etc...So I planned that out in Microsoft Word to be printed later and added to the pages. I got my pages assembled and started putting my papers on each month. I used The Paper Studio "All Seasons" paper from Hobby Lobby. I cut out my months with Designer Calendar Cricut cartridge along with the shadow. I took a 1/2 inch strip of white paper and stamped sentiments from Card TV Stamps. Some you will see don't have any stamping on it, that is because I don't have any stamps for that month. I will have to be ordering them from Mary to finish my stamping. Now what I didn't plan on was my binding when I stamped my sentiments. So some of my sentiments on the left hand side might get a hole punched in it. I plan on binding all my pages along with a front and back cover with my Cinch. I may or may be adding some additional decorations/embellishments to my pages as I go along. So this might turn into a three parter, so I hope I don't bore you!! I have Jan. - June for you today. This is just the page with the paper and sentiments done. The embellishments haven't been added yet, and it hasn't been bound. The Cardz TV Stamps used on today's pages are: Sugar Rush, St. Patrick's Day, Easter Punnies, Easter Blessings, and Think Spring. 

I hope to see you back next Saturday to see this more done on this card organization. I also hope this has inspired you to make a card organization book for yourself! And as always, your comments warm my heart so, so thank you for them. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Gather Together - BBTB2 Challenge

Hello my crafty friends! I hope your Monday is off to a great start, well as great of a start as a Monday can be. lol It is cold here today, I don't think I'm liking this polar blast very much. lol Oh well we can't control the weather, so I will suck it up and stay warm!! I am anxiously waiting for Thursday to come, hubby had another CAT scan done and we will get the results on Thursday. I want to know but I don't want to know. I pray that it is good news this time around. If you pray, would you please say a little prayer for my hubby that he gets good news and that this cancer is reigned back n? I would so appreciate it!

Ok on to our challenge this week at BBTB2. Our sweet and talented Diana is our host today and she has given us free reign with ANYTHING GOES!!!! How fun is that?! So I'm trying to work on a few gifts for this  year. Nothing fancy or anything and things that are pretty quick to make. So I decided to start with soap bottles. Yes, soap bottles. lol I did one for Christmas and one for Thanksgiving. I plan on making some with monograms as well for the DIL's. For my Thanksgiving one, I used a lot of carts, Freshly Picked, Inspired Hearts, CAC, WIMG, AP and Lacy Labels. Since the words are small, I was able to use scrap pieces of vinyl, which I love and keep all my scraps no matter how small they are. You can always punch or die cut something out of scrap vinyl! Then I glued some ribbon around the neck of the bottle and then made a bow and glued on. I love how this turned out!

My Christmas one is pretty simple.  I just took some Christmas words and made them into a tree shape with a star added to the top. It was hard to get a good picture of this one. lol Once again I put ribbon around the neck of the bottle and then glued a bow on. I hope my soap bottles have inspired you to get crafty!! As always thanks for stopping by today, your sweet comments always warm my heart. Stay warm if you are in the polar blast!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Since I used snippets of vinyl, I am going to enter this in the Playground. It's always fun to go play at the Playground!!!

Mixed Media Tag

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Saturday is off to a great start! Mine is, I went to my church's annual Christmas bazaar this morning with a friend. I love going to the Christmas bazaar's, they are so fun. Spend an hour looking around there and bought some handcrafted wooden spoons and that was it. I was a good girl! lol 

Loll from Stamping with Loll had a 12 Tags of Christmas where she made 12 tags that were mixed media. She also had 12 guest designers as well. And let me tell you those tags were amazing!!! She had a link up so we could play along too and it is open until tomorrow, Nov. 16th. So I thought  I would give mixed media a try. I don't know if I've ever done any mixed media stuff before and if I have  I didn't know what it was called! lol I started with a tag sized at 2 1/8 x 3 5/8, that was the size tag that Loll used so I thought I would use that size too. I laid a stencil on top of my tag and did some inking using Broken China, Weatherwood and Sapphire distress inks for my sky, but leaving an area at the bottom white. Next I took embossing paste and put along the bottom for snow. While it was wet I placed some glitter on it. Once that was dry I stamped a cute little fawn from My Creative Time and colored him with my Spectrum Noir markers. Put some wink of stella on him to make him shine.  I then used some air dry SU clay and a Martha Steward mold to make a little snowman. Colored his hat, eyes, buttons and nose with my Spectrum Noir markers too after he was dry. I popped up my cute little fawn and glued my snowman down. I used a white Viva pearl pen to make snow dots in the sky so it looked like it was snowing. I wanted to do splatter paint, but didn't feel like finding where  moved my paint to. lol  I had some seam binding that I had won and used a piece of that to put through my hole. And that is it. I think it turned out pretty cute, and I hope I used enough stuff on it to be mixed media! Now I'm off to link up with Loll's tag challenge. I hope you will go check out the lovely tags made by Loll, her guest designers and the ones that have linked up. They are stunning!!!

As always thank you so much for stopping by and visiting a spell. I hope you had a lovely visit. It always warms my heart with the sweet comments you leave me. Hope you have a crafty weekend! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Even though this is blurry you can see the wink of stella shimmer.

Showing the depth and dimension

You Are Amazing

Hello my crafty friends! Are you all staying warm here in the lower 48?? Believe it or not it is snowing as I am typing this up! Yes, SNOW!! lol Sigh  I guess old man winter has arrived, and early too.  I don't think it is going to lay any because the ground hasn't gotten cold enough yet. Thanks goodness for small favors. lol

Ok enough, I didn't call you here to tell you that it was snowing at my house. Some area's have gotten a foot of snow, I'm just thankful it wasn't us! I do however have a couple of cards for you today. They are simple little cards that didn't take much effort on my part. Love that, don't you?! First one is for my son who is at college, think he will have a fat head after receiving this card?! lol He is amazing, courageous, lovable and awesome, so I had to tell him so. The second card is a birthday card for my granddaughter. I can't believe she is 6 years old! Time marches on doesn't it?! My cards were created using My Creative Time Products. Love Emma's products!! Her products make it so easy to create with. So that's all I have for you today. Thanks for stopping by for a spell and as always your sweet comments warm my heart so! Stay warm and I will see you again soon! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Pumpkin Pickin'

Hello my crafty friends, I hope your Monday is off to a great start! My, my isn't this year ticking by at record speed?? I can't believe we have turned the calendar over to November and are all but half way through it! The holidays are almost upon us and next thing we know it will be a whole new year! I just don't know where this year has went. Well enough of the ramblings of an old lady!

As you know if it is Monday then it is time for a new challenge over at BBTB2. Our sweet and talented Caroline is our host this week and she had chosen for us to use a pumpkin Cricut die cut. At first I had no clue what I was going to do. Then this idea popped into my head and I went with it. It actually turned out pretty much how I thought it would, so I am happy about that for that rarely happens for me. lol I did goof on welding my shapes together to make a shaped card and I will explain that in a minute. 

I took two pumpkins from Create A Critter Cricut cartridge and welded them together using my Gypsy to make a shaped card. Now this is where I made my mistake. I should have welded them together along the side and not by the stem at the top! Welding the stem together makes for a "flimsy" card. Trust me on this one and weld from the side! lol It does stand though so I'm going for it. I then took stamps from two stamp sets and stamped fall words/sentiments all over my pumpkin, which didn't turn out to bad, not perfect but not bad either. I then took some burlap and glued onto my stem, then placed some leaves that a blogger friend gifted to me on and then a little bow. I took the die cut, "grateful" and die cut it out once in dark brown and then 3 times in vanilla paper and glued them all together with the brown cut on top. This gave me a ""chipboard" sentiment. I took some distress ink and inked around the pumpkin and then inked lightly in the pumpkin, over the words. It doesn't show up well in my photo's, but looks great in real life. Stamped a sentiment on the inside, added some more leaves and called this one done. Like I said, I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. How about you, do you like my pumpkin shaped card??? So how about making a pumpkin project of your own and join us at BBTB2. Need more inspiration? Well then look no farther than the BBTB2 design team, I promise you won't be sorry. As always I appreciate you stopping by and visiting for a spell with me. I hope you will come back again sometime. Thanks for all your lovely comments. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Heartfelt Wishes-Cardz TV Gallery

Hello crafty friends, happy TGIF to you all. I want to thank you for stopping by today and checking out to see what is new on Cardz TV Gallery. Goodness for sure!! Are you loving all these fabulous projects each and everyday? I know I am! Mary has many talented designers and they are oh so creative. Be sure to stop by Cardz TV to see what the 3D team and Card team has in store for you as well as Mary! You won't be disappointed!

Today I have some little boxes, kinda like a bag in a box if you will and they are made with the envelop punch board. If you want to see how to make these cute boxes, watch here. My husband goes for chemo ever other week, so with Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I would make these little boxes for all the nurses, staff and doc for all they do for us and many other people. I will add a little treat in the box before I take them over on the 20th of this month. Just to let them know how much we appreciate all the good care they give hubby and others getting chemo for the day. I will also bake a goody for everyone to enjoy as well. The Cardz TV stamp set that I used is Heartfelt Wishes. Great sentiments in this stamp set! The tag and the leaves are dies from My Creative Time.

I also needed to get well cards, so using the same Cardz TV stamp set, Heartfelt Wishes, I made two get well cards. Once again the leaf, tag, heart dies are from My Creative Time and my image on the second card is a SU stamp set. Thanks so much for your sweet comments and for visiting Cardz TV Gallery and my blog! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Winter Wishes

Hello my crafty friends, I have a few winter themed cards for you today. These will go to OWH as they are looking for some winter themed cards. I used My Creative Time dies and stamps for make my cards. I made them while having a crafty day with a friend of mine. I hope you like cause I had a lot of fun making them. lol  Thanks for stopping by today and leaving me such sweet comments. You all really make my day complete! Crafty hugs, Brenda

If it's FALL, it's FOOTBALL time!

Hello my crafty friends! Happy Monday to you all. As you know Monday is the start of a new challenge at BBTB2 and I'm the host this week. My challenge to my DT sister and to you is football. My house was always filled with all guys since I have 6 boys and my hubby, and let me tell you it is all about football once fall rolls around. Me, not so much so, but I'm out voted. lol So I watch a little, not really getting football, but know when a touch down is made and such. lol So I surf the net while my guys watch it. A few of my son's played football. My youngest son played from pee wee league to 9th grade. So I am working on a football album for him. He saw a football album one day in AC Moore and wanted me to buy it to make him an album, so how could I say no?! So here is a layout that I will add into his album. It looks a bit plain because I only put one photo mat on it. I haven't decided on what pictures I am going to use on this layout so that is why I only put one mat down. I hope that once I get the pictures on, it will look better to me. But it is done and it is going in his album anyway no matter how it looks with the pictures, he will still love it. 

I used Artbooking, Gypsy Font and Plantin Schoolbook for this layout. I used fall colors since it is fall. So let's see your football projects, make sure to check out my DT sisters projects, you will sure to be inspired by them!  Thanks for stopping by today and sittin' a spell with me, I always love when you stop by! Here's wishing you a crafty week this week. Crafty hugs, Brenda