Lasting Memories Challenge #33

Good morning everyone

this week's challenge over at Lasting Memories is journaling. I tell you, I am not much of a journaler.  I know, I know, it's important, but I never really know what to say.  I have to remember that just cuz I know what happened right now, doesn't mean everyone else will later on or me  for that matter...LOL  Hope I don't forget...never mind.  Also, I am not very fond of my handwriting but I also think it's important to do some journaling in your own handwriting to preserve something of yourself for generations to come.  So anyway, this week's challenge is all about journaling.  I have a couple of shoes boxes of pictures in them and I am trying very hard to scrap all of them.  With "most" of the pictures I have an index card listing when the event happened and what was special about it.  Like I said, "most", but these pictures I actually remember well and the index card is helping me a little also.  LOL

The journaling reads:  Your first tooth had been wiggling for weeks.  We kept telling you to play with it with your fingers and tongue.  Saturday morning you came running to tell me you had lost your tooth.  "Great, where is it?" I asked and you replied: "No you don't understand...I LOST IT!"  You really had lost your tooth.  The toothfairy still brought you $1.50 for a "lost" tooth.

I hope you like my LO and now I can't wait until next week.  I am submitting all my LO for the design team challenge also.  I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed.  (also my personal challenge to use up my stash)  This week I used up some old papers, (don't even know where they came from) and those slide frames.  Can't ever remember what they are called...wowzers...and I just told you I remember "most" things...ouch.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Sympathy

Good morning

This is the hardest card to make for me, even worse than a man card.  If you at all follow me on facebook you know that I've picked up a few extra shifts at work.  I am currently going on a 15 day stretch.  You see one of my manager's mom passed away Sunday night.  She had had a massive heartattack and just never recovered.  The worst part about it, if there is such a thing, she was only in her late 50s.  Wowzer.  My manager is an awesome lady and I love her to pieces.  This is the card I came up with.

I used the "With Sympathy" cut at 3 inches from Jasmine in black and shadowed it with pink.  The pink flowers were cut in SCAL at 1.25.  I curled the edges of the petals with my styles and added a bit of bling to the center.  I added a stamped image that I got from the $1 bin at Michaels and stamped it in white.  I should have stamped the bird first and then layered the wording, but it's okay.  I really liked that I added a stamped image.  I'm getting better at that.  Simple but elegant.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Mom Monday

Good evening,

Well, I must say I was so happy to see some of you comment on my mom's wreath.  She, needless to say, was awed!!!  She said she hasn't gotten that many compliments in a long time.  So a great big thanks to all of you who commented.  Today she sent me another picture of a Spring wreath she made and that started the idea for me to feature her on Mondays.  I will be posting Mom Monday...she thought that was really super.  I did tell her however that she can't flake on me.  She needs to send me something each week that she created and I will post it here.  I don't care what it is...like I told you in my last post about her, she has a lot of crafting abilities and her fabulous cooking is to die for.  Maybe I can squeeze a few recipes out from her.  She does tell me all the time that she doesn't follow a recipe, she just goes with it...I can't figure that one out.  Anyway, so here is my mom's Spring wreath.  If you can, she would really love some blogging love and leave her a comment.

This is my favorite so far...love the colors, MOM.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Simply Sundays "I'll Sing You a Song"

Good Morning Cricky Crafters and Friends

Welcome to another Simply Sunday over at Getting Cricky.  As most of you may know, I am not a guest designer over there anymore...I am now a full time designer (well, for 3 months anyway...hehehehe).  I am so excited.  So this week's challenge is "I'll Sing You a Song".  As soon as Kristal sent me the email with this week's challenge it got my creative juices flowing.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  See my FIL will be turning 80 next month and he is an awesome man.  He builds pipe organs for churches (the old fashioned ones, with wood) and travels 4 states to install them and/or maintain them.  He builds the organs in his workshop on the farm and then pieces them out, loads them in his truck, drives to his destination and installs them piece by piece onsite.  Usually my MIL travels with him and helps him with that also a bit.  My DH used to install them with him when he was a teenager and in college and loved traveling with his dad.  Anyway, my FIL plays the organ beautifully also.  He gets asked by the churches where he installs them to come and "guest play" one Sunday a year.  We've been to quite a few concerts and they are all so beautifully done.  Pipe organ music is so lovely...Anyway, enough about him and onto his card.  So since his birthday is coming up I made him a music based card.  I downloaded the sheet music to Happy Birthday for the organ and printed it on a 4.5 x 5 piece of white paper.  I glimmer misted it with a goldish/orange and used my heat gun to speed up the drying process.  In doing that the paper wrinkled a bit, gave it kinda of an aged look.  I then adhered a piece of vellum over it, inked the edges in black and tore a piece off of the bottom right.  I attached the vellum and the music paper with two crystal brads and glue dotted a bow under the "Happy Birthday" title of the sheet music.  I used my SCAL to cut out the "80" Baroque Script at 1 inch and then copied that, under style Blackout Shadow Round at 5. and welded it together for the base.  I cut the base out of black card stock and the "80" out a tan.  I also glimmer misted the layers.  You can't really see it in the picture but it does shimmer nicely.  I had the musical notes in my stash and adhered them to the bottom of the card.  They come in all black and it seemed a bit drab.  I used my silver paint pen and added some design to them and also faux stitched around the 80 just to make it pop a bit.  It really has an antique look to it and I really like that.  I really, really like this card and I know my FIL will love it.  He loves all the cards I make him.  That's what he tells me anyway.  I hope I've inspired you to make a birthday card for someone special and would love to hear your reaction to my card. 

As always, have a great day and god bless.

My mom

Good morning -

My mom and her morning glories
at her old house.

Today I want to brag about my Mom a little.  My mom is originally from Germany and speaks fluent German.  She is also the best cook ever (didn't get that from her).  She is also a crafter (did get that from her).  She sews (not me), crochets (I can a little), knits (I can't) and makes beautiful flower arrangements (yeah, I can do that too).  She did my DD's flowers for her wedding and several other people's also.  She also does other miscellaneous crafting. 

She has not figured the blogging thing out yet, although she just recently got a computer and isn't puter savy YET.  I am going to try to feature her creations when she has something she wants to show off.  I hope you all don't mind...I didn't think you would.  Hahahaha 

She is currently into making wreaths.  At her old house (where I spent most of my teenage years) she had grapevines growing along her house.  She recently had to move to another house and when she left she took alot of the grapevines with her and now forms them into wreaths.  She has made regular round ones, some heart shaped ones and even square ones.  I got a beautiful wreath last summer from her and just have not made anything with it yet (probably should get on that).  Since the Easter season is upon us, she made an Easter wreath.  She also likes my favorite store (The Dollar Tree) and there she bought the plastic eggs.  She has also accumulated many silk flowers over the years from making flower arrangements.  She made this wreath using up her stash...(like daughter, like mother, hehehehe).  With just a bit of hot glue a wreath is born.

I love the Easter colors so bright and cheery.

I hope you enjoyed visiting my mom's creations.  Leave a comment and tell her what you think of her wreath.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

InkLinkz Party

Good evening all,

If you are looking for Festive Fridays, please scroll down to next post.  This is my second post of the day...

Getting Cricky is hosting a Link Party.  If you have never been to Kristal's blog, please hop of over there.  She is an amazing talented person and a very dear friend also.  She has videos, tutorials, and she gives away some amazing things almost daily. 

So if you wish, Link up down  below and go over to Kristal's blog and link there also.  Grab the link from my blog or Kristal's and follow suit. 

Leave a comment here telling me something unique about yourself if you wish also.  Thanks for sharing

NOW COPY and PASTE this code into your blog post!
get the InLinkz code


As always, have a great day and god bless.

Festive Fridays 4-8

Good morning and welcome to Festive Fridays,


Welcome all to another Festive Fridays. If you are new to us, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, relax and enjoy some wonderful Christmas Cards. Yes, I did say Christmas. Festive Fridays will be every other Friday with samples of Christmas cards. This way, you can be making your cards all year long and you will avoid the mad rush when you could be enjoying the Christmas Season. You should have just come from Debbie. If you stumbled upon this post you can go back to Terri and start at the beginning. I will also have a complete list of the Festive Friday hop at the end of this post in case you get lost along the way.

I love making cards and I really love detailed ones, but sometimes I just need a really quickie for one reason or another.  This card literally took me about 5 minutes to make.  I used my SCAL of course and cut out a shape of a snowflake from the Christmas & Winter Glitter Combo stack from the shapes library at 3.5 inches.  Then I copied that shape and used the shadow blackout rounded feature in the style tab and sized it at .50.  I then copied that shape, flipped it and welded it to the other shape and cut it out.  Using my ATG to adhere the snowflake to the front added a blue giant rhinestone with a glue dot and adhered another piece of plain white paper 3x3 inside.  DONE!!!  I know this is super, super simple, but sometimes we just need a quickie card and this one takes no time.


Scroll down to the next post if you want to see how I
made this brilliant card holder  LOL

I hope you enjoyed my festive friday card and hope you join us again in 2 weeks for another great hop and now onto your next stop... Angela 

Here is a complete lineup for all the next stops in case you get lost along the way:

Terri Sproul

Chris Hurley

Cheryl Lindsay
Laura Davidson

Amanda Marks

Debbie Buckland

Brenda Lee Burfeind (That's me)
Angela Bodas
Yolonda
Becky Conley
Fabrizio
Debbie Feist

As always, have a great day and god bless

Cardholder FORK???

Good morning all -

Well I've recuperated after my exciting day yesterday.  Wow, I am still in awe...if you missed my exciting news, click here and you will see what I am talking about.

Okay, onto today's project...I love making cards and I love taking pictures of my cards.  So what's my problem?  I could never get a good picture of them especially for shaped cards.  Laying them down didn't always help either.  I've seen a lot of people use these cute little prong thingies to insert their card into and they stand up nicely.  No idea where people get these things though.  I guess, as I am writing this, it dawns on me, to maybe comment or email these people and ask them where they got it...duh!!!  Well, too late now, cuz I came up with a brilliant solution.  Brilliant in my eyes anyway.  It's a FORK.

See me in the background  LOL  I didn't even realize you could see me till I posted the pic

All you need is a fork, just a little muscle, a vice and a pliers.  Bend the outside prongs backwards a bit, depending on how much angle you want and bend the tips up a hair.  Bend the inside prongs the opposite dirrection and bend the tips up a bit also.  Wasn't too difficult, but next time I'm gonna ask hubby to help me.  These nails I got yesterday are not for bending metal...LOL



Fork in action...See Miss Bella on my computer as my background page? 
She was only 5 days old, hard to believe she's 15 months now.

Isn't this card beautiful?  I belong to a swap over on FB and this month was either a cut or a spring card.  This card came from Felisa.  Check her blog out (she's an amazing card maker plus more) and give her some love and tell her Brenda sent you.

I hope you like my brilliant idea and shoot me a comment and let me know what you think...good or bad.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Have you heard???

HELLO

Can you tell I am excited about something?  Do you want to know why I am so excited?  So let me tell you...Nah, gonna have to wait...

So today is not even a crafting post.  I had mother and daughter day today.  We went to the mall...I know, I hate the mall, but that's where we went.  Got my very first pedi, never again...See I have a scar on my big toe from where I had it broken and when she (the lady at the salon) was massaging it, it hurt like the dickens...Really.  The pain shot up my entire leg and it went numb.  Ouchies, so no more pedis for me.  Toes look cute though  LOL  Then got a mani...love it, but I forgot how hard it is to type with nails...LOL  Wonder if I will be able to craft...wouldn't that just be horrible if I couldn't?  Don't fear, if I can't do it, the nails are coming off.  Just felt really girlie today...hehehehe.

Okay, okay, I will tell you why I am so excited.  As most of you know I've been a guest designer over at Getting Cricky.  I've had such a wonderful time over there.  Kristal is the most amazing crafter...I just love her.  She is so inspiring and talented, and sweet, and kind, and adorable...and the list goes on and on.  Anywhooo...LOL she loves owls and I have to throw a little hoot in ever once in a while.  Anywhoooo, she sent me an email yesterday letting me know that I am nolonger a guest designer...how sad is that?  Right?  Nope not a guest designer anymore...now I am a permanent DESIGNER....woot woot.  See here's my proof:

Isn't that just amazing.  I will be on her Design Team from now until June.  I am soooo excited.  So please, if you have never been to her blog, which I can't believe would happen, because everyone knows Kristal, go over and check her out and give her some love.  She is the funniest and craziest girl.  Her videos are amazing and her excitement gets me going all the time.  She has truley inspired me to do most of what I do.

So to celebrate this accomplishment I am going to give away some blog candy. 

You will get

1 pack of Rub-On Sentiments

I pack of Vellum Stickers Ocean

I pack of Vellum Stickers Butterflies

and

1 Skeleton Scroll cuddlebug folder

You do not need to be a follower (although it wouldn't hurt my feelings if you were), but please do leave me a comment and head over to Getting Cricky also if you've never been there.  You won't be dissapointed.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Lasting Memories Challenge #32

Welcome all to another challenge day for me.

Lasting Memories posts a new challenge every Sunday and I've been trying to do as many as possible.  This month they are also choosing another member for their DT.  The first thing I do on Sundays is check the challenge out over there.  This Sunday was no exception and when I found out it was a Spring challenge that really got me going.  See, we were going out for breakfast to a Pancake Feed for a group called Achieve;  it's a program for Mentally and Physically Challenged Adults.  We try to support programs like this all the time.  Both my older children work at a camp every summer that also deals with Mentally and Physically Challenged Adults and Children.  Anyway, I knew we were going to be going downtown to the coliseum for the pancake feed and I thought maybe afterwards we would go and check out the falls.  We have the most beautiful falls around.  We've had a lot of snow melting and some rain so I knew the falls would be running fast.  When we got there we found a really neat spot where a tree had fallen over and I thought it would make the perfect spot for a picture.  I couldn't get my camera to use it's self-timer, so a very nice lady stopped and offered to take the picture for us.  She did fine, but I should have checked because she did only take one picture and it wasn't the greatest, but it is what it is...

So as you can see the picture itself was pretty far away.  We look so tiny...LOL, well I guess the main focal point was supposed to be the FALLS.  Isn't that log cool looking though?  Look at those rapids.  The water was crashing like crazy.  Miss Bella really loved seeing that water rushing. 

So I cropped each of us out and cut the heads at 2 x 2, then I rounded the corners and used my giant Marvy Uchida punch and punched the flowers out and adhered our faces onto them.  Remember, I don't throw anything away so I used the zip strips remnants from the other day after making my "door hanger" and used them as stems.  I also adhered leaves from silk flowers to them and created a bouquet.  Kinda not my style, but I think it worked just fine.  I added a couple of flowers to the left side of the layout for balance and these cute little pink birdies.  The dragonfly and butterfly were from a "swap" I participated in and were my cuts for this month.  I also added a couple of metal swirls for added bling.  I added a sheer ribbon to all four sides and the title in sticker letters.  I am not much of a sticker person, but I've been trying to use up my stash and found these cute letters stickers that had butterflies and dragonflies.  The colors just seemed to all go together.  Really honestly, the LO looks much better in person.  I can't wait until my light box is fixed and maybe that will help with my photographing of my layouts.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about our Falls and like my Spring layout.  Feel free to leave a comment, telling me your favorite thing about Spring. 

I am going to try out for the DT team, but even if I don't get picked I've enjoyed participating and creating more and more layouts.  It's really been an inspiration and has gotten my creative juices flowing again.

As always, have a great day and god bless.