Evolution

Good Day Friends,

today is a special day as it is my youngest son's 15th birthday.  I cannot believe how fast time goes by.  He has grown into such a special young man.

Many of you guys know he's an avid golfer.  He's come so far in the last couple of years.  As a freshman he qualified for the Varsity golf team.  He did quite well in a lot of the tournaments last summer!  Because of where we live he's taking indoor lessons over the winter months to keep his game sharp.  It's kinda hard to golf in 20 degree snowy weather.  His coach praises him quite a bit!  He's gained a lot of strength and that should help his swing even more this summer.  I couldn't be prouder of him.

Anyway, I wanted to make him something for his birthday golf related...I know, I do that quite a bit.  I get enjoyment out of creating for him and he actually seems to love what I do!

I had seen a plaque a while ago and put it into my "to do" file.  I actually had forgotten all about it until I was going through some pictures looking for something in a particular.  Needless to say, I didn't find what I was originally looking for, but I did find a picture of the plaque that I wanted to recreate.  This is the picture of the plaque I saw, but I did want to change it up a bit and

here is how I made it:

I searched "evolution" in google and found this image

and added it to my SCAL2 program.

I searched "golfer" in google and found this image

and added it to the first image in my SCAL2 program.

I wrote out the word Evolution ... and added that to my image

 in SCAL2 and grouped everything together.

I searched "fairway" in google and found this image

and printed it out at home.

so from this

to this 

Cutting everything with my cricut and SCAL2 in black vinyl all at once

I added it to the front of the glass of a simple picture frame and together I created this.

I just love how this turned out.  

I hope you've enjoyed my quick and easy peasy birthday gift for my son.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

My Birthday Wishes Blog Hop

Welcome to the Birthday Wishes Blog hop.  Hi every one I want to thank you for joining us today for MY Birthday hop.  Today I turned, 40 something and I have  a lot of wishes right now.  My first and foremost wish is that you all had a great time hopping through and seeing the amazing talent these gals have.   Please make sure you leave some bloggy love at all the stops today.  If you post on all the hops and follow hers and my blog you will be entered to win some blog candy from me!!!  If you've just popped in to visit my blog or are reading this via email and you'd like to join our Birthday Wishes blog hop, then please start here at the beginning with Rhonda. My blog will be the last stop, so make sure you are commenting on everyone’s post before you come back here.

Now, as I said I do have a lot of wishes, but my main wish is to find a job.  It's been a bit crazy here being unemployed and not being able to contribute to the household as much.  I'm not going to whine anymore about this because I do know there is something "Fabulous" waiting for me, but ...  Nope, done ...  Which brings me to my project.  Now, not having a lot of money right now I've been forced to use up what I have.  Scraps, ribbons, odds and ends...you know, the stuff you have lying around and never use because you don't have to...well, right now I do have to and this got me to thinking.  I wanted to give each of the ladies something for joining me on this special day and it had to be inexpensive since there are 13 of them celebrating with me...A few years ago I was doing a lot of craft fairs and I would spend all winter making stuff to get ready to sell in the spring.  I would search all the dollar stores for inexpensive items to add to my "crafting" and started to accumulate a lot of stuff.  The one thing I went way overboard on were these office clips.  

and having worked at the casino, I accumulated

a lot of these types of coasters (unused of course)

and scrapbooking and card making 

I have A LOT of these

So put that all together and you get this

and here are the fronts:

Now I layed them out randomly and I had each of 

the ladies in the hop enter their name randomly in 

a document on facebook and their number will coincide

with each Post It note holder and that is how I chose

which one to send them...because there was just no

way for me to figure out who got what...I hope 

they like the choices they made...hehehehe

Now I also wrote them each a personal note

thanking them for attending my Birthday Hop and I

hope you left them all a bit of bloggy love.  They

did a fantastic job!!!

I adhered my pattern paper to the front of the coaster,

plain paper to the backside.  Then I added a piece of

paper to the office clip and clipped the post it note

to the coaster and added a ribbon...DONE!!!

Just think how quickly you can deplete some

of your scraps and odds and ends.

Now I will be giving away a set of 4 of each coasters (unused), office clips and post it notes for you to embellish your own post it note holders.  Now the only way you can win, is if you left bloggy love and became followers of ALL of the ladies.  I will be picking a winner and checking with them to make sure you left a comment on their blog...

NOw Since I was the last stop, if you came here first remember to start with Rhonda and then the rest of the lineup is here:

Rhonda http://scraphappenswithrhonda.blogspot.com/
Kari - http://purplefuntastickcreations.blogspot.com/ 
Amy - http://www.lovetocrop.com/
Lisa - http://indymermaid.blogspot.com 
Lynne - http://slasewcraftiness.blogspot.com/ 
Kathy - http://the3esblog.blogspot.com/ 
Audrey – http://cuteandsome.blogspot.com 
Tami - http://tamiscraftconnection.blogspot.com 
Kathy - http://www.scrappingfelkatz.blogspot.com/ 
Susan - http://susanascorner.blogspot.com/ 
Kacee - http://www.youhadmeatscrap.blogspot.com/ 
Christy -  http://christybladehandmade.blogspot.com/ 
Erika - http://www.craftysprouts.com/ 
Brenda - http://createbyburffrau.blogspot.com  
 

Decorate to Celebrate #9, Birthday

Good morning and Happy Wednesday, everyone! I am so excited to be a guest designer over at  Decorate to Celebrate again!  Decorate to Celebrate is a super-fun challenge blog dedicated to showing off decorations for every celebration.  This is my second guest design spot over there and I am hoping for many more to come.
The theme for today's challenge is: BABY BIRTHDAY (anything having to do with a baby's birthday or even "birth" day.  So, I thought I'd take you back in time and show you what I had done for my little Miss Bella's 1st Birthday.  I just love being a grandma and celebrating lots of milestones with her.  I wish I had been "this" crafty when my babies were little, but now I get to decorate and embellish for her and the new baby, (in March).

So here we go:  First when Miss Bella was born I made her a "Birthday" cake plate.  This way each year for her birthday we can set her cake on it. 

Here is a picture showing how I used the vinyl on the backside of the plate with the etching cream.  I know the vinyl is cow patterened.  I had gotten it on clearance somewhere.  Its a huge roll and I use it mainly for etching purposes. 

Here is the picture of it completed.  We will use this plate every year for her birthday cake or cupcakes.  Depending on what we have.

This is the diaper cake I had made for her shower

Then for her 1st birthday I made this:

I used my Cricut and my SCAL.  First I created a triangle shape and welded circles onto it to create the scallop look.  I cut this at 4.7 by 5.4 inches (Pink).  Then I created another triangle (Green) and fit it inside.  I cut a scallop circle (Brown) in SCAL at 2.42 inches.  I used the Bernard MT Condensed font to spell Bella's name (Green) and then again with the Shadowed Blackout (Rounded)(Pink).  I used my ATG gun to adhere all the pieces together.  I also used SCAL (game pieces in the shapes library) and broke apart and cut just the crown out of pink cardstock.  I added some rhinestones to the crown for some added bling.  I then used my ribbon punch to punch holes in the triangles and slipped this cute pink and brown ribbon through it.  The best part of this whole project?  I used everything from my stash.  YEAH!!!  I just love the look of this banner.  

  Our theme for her birthday is Princess and Frogs.  Frogs you might ask?  Well, all of my kids had a special theme as they were growing up and you always received something of that theme for each birthday, christmas or special occassion.  My daughter picked tree frogs for Bella.  I know you might think that's kinda weird, but really there are a lot of frogs that are super duper cute.  I am really loving it.  Anyway, this post has nothing to do with frogs.  Hehehe.

I used SCAL and a plain cupcake wrapper to dress up her cupcakes.  I welded Bella's name onto the cupcake wrapper and then I used my new Cri-Kits (green glitter pen) that I won over at Joy's Life to write Princess on the wrapper.  I used the font Fiolix Girls with my SCAL.  This is probably one of my favorite fonts.  The pens really work great.  Then I cut Bella's name out in the DCWV All Dressed Up Glitter Stack in green and adhered them to her name.  SO stinking cute, if I do say so myself.  

 

I also made the party hat for Bella.  All I did was took a piece of paper 6 by 11 and formed it into a party hat.  You know the ones you can buy for a birthday party.  I adhered both sides together with my ATG fun and formed the party hat.  Kristal over at Kandrewdesigns had made a crown a while back for the Knock out Breast Cancer.  She gave the file for free and I snagged it up.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but now I am glad I grabbed it.  I altered it a little bit by making it smaller top to bottom and then I adhered it to the party hat.  I used the same letters that I had used for the cupcake wrappers and adhered them to the crown.  I then punched two holes on either side of the party hat and added some elastic.  I didn't go too overboard on embellishing it or adding too much detail because, she won't leave it on for long anyway, she doesn't like anything on her head. 

And here are just some random pictures showing the cake and cupcakes.

I made a cake just for her to dig into

And this was the frog for the big cake.  Isn't he just the cutest?

and here she is after digging into her own cake.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and thanks again Amy and Rhonda for letting me be part of your fabulous blog as a guest designer! Don't forget to make your own decorations for a Baby Birthday or "Birth" day and link up at Decorate to Celebrate  I can't wait to see what you create!

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