And she'll want some string

Hey y'all!  One more post for the If you give a girl a lighthouse series!  There is at least one more project, but it isn't finished yet.  Something to look forward to later. :)

Before I show you the goods, I thought I'd share a quick pic from this weekend.  We have a summer rental property in Maine that we clean every Saturday.  On the way back we "drove through" the Portsmouth Air Show.  I say "through" because the Blue Angels fly right over I-95.  We've gotten to see the planes the last couple of years and it is WAY COOL!  My shot is terrible I know.  To be fair I was in a moving car and these plane are "flyin".  :)  At one point 4 of the Angels were so low I swear I could see the color of the pilots' eyes.  Takes your breath away!

These are smaller tags made from the leftovers of the frames from these cards.  The to/from is from one of the PTI Christmas tags sets and the flowers are prima.  Luscious!  I have some great design news to share with everyone tomorrow and some lovely new stuff to share the next few days.

Yesterday would have been Mom's 64th birthday.  I still miss her every day and even think once in a while "oh I gotta tell Mom about this".  To celebrate her day I spent it her favorite way- crafting and watching sci-fi & mystery shows.  She would have LOVED Netflix streaming on an iPad!!!  I got a bunch of fun stuff created and I actually have an Anniversary card ready to give my hubby tomorrow.

Make sure to stop by tomorrow for the fun news and a tutorial!!!

Then she'll want some flowers

Well my goodness, the day certainly got away from me!  I meant to post this first thing, but Cad did so well at his water therapy session today that we stopped by one of the locally owned pet supply stores and got him a bone (lots of customer love and some free treats from the staff).  They are collecting supplies for the GI dogs.  I can't believe I never thought about the military canines before!  There was a big list of needs so I bought some eye cleaner to donate.  Not as fun as a toy, but probably way more needed with all that dry desert sand and grit.  Now that I'm finally home and settled here's the next installment!

So these were the frames originally I thought I was going to use on the Mad Men in the Summer inspired and Mid Century meets Asian inspired cards.  I had each card with the daisy mae  paper at the same time 'cause the dies can go through multiple layers.  It was AFTER I cut that I realized that the frame wasn't going to frame anything because they were the same size.  Back to the drawing board...

I went back and cut these 4 Memory Box cards and this time I made the card window ONE SIZE SMALLER.  Ya know, so this frame could be glued AROUND the hole.  LOL!  Of course then there is the leftover set of shapes had after cutting the card window and the hole in daisy mae paper, but I'll show y'all that next week. :)

The envies got some pretty dressing too!  The mum I used on the insides of these cards was still out, sooo, I got out 4 different inks.  Each card has a different sentiment and it seemed like a fun idea to make each envie different.

Bless your hearts if you could follow all that!  Hope you have a great evening.  I'll be posting something July 4thish tomorrow! :)
 

She'll have to get out wicked old stamps

And so the If you give a girl a lighthouse series continues!  Today I have the other four cards that had windows cut into them.  Totally CAS style- so now I have CAS and mid-century going on here.  Soooo outside my box!

The stamps are from SU and must be at least 12 years old, probably older since I was living in SC when I got them and I've been in New England for 11 years.  This set makes me think of white wrought iron lawn furniture with over sized bright floral fabric cushions.  Alas, I wax nostalgic.  They were a little too simple initially so I added the three lines of embossing on the bottom to anchor card.  The left side inside is lined with paper that matches the stamp on the envie (you can see it in the first pic).

So when I was cutting the mat/windows I thought "hey I'll cut some of the uber gorgeous flower paper at the same time and use it to frame the window".  The thought that failed to occur to me was that I was cutting the mat/window with the largest die.  That meant that the frame I was going to use was NEVER GOING TO FIT.  Ugh.  So tomorrow's post will be how I used my mistake to create another set of cards. LOL!

You'll need to give her a die

Here are 4 of the cards that I cut windows into to have the lighthouse mats for these cards I posted yesterday.  The BG pb&j line makes me think of the late 50's early 60's a kind of Mad Men on summer vacation vibe.

I was going for urban/kitschy/classic with this quad.  I jazzed up the chipboard flowers and twig with Stickles.  Everything is better with glitter, right? They each got a bow or knot in a red/white ribbon.  Except the twigs.  That one got a red twine bow.  It just begged for a red twine bow.  Eeek!  I just love how these turned out.  Who would think from these cards that mid-century usually gets a Snoopy style blechk from me!

So since I cut the hole for the window I had to fill it, but I didn't have enough paper to make it look pretty.  Then I got the idea to use a different pattern for the inside of each card.  Then I cut another cream paper to use as the liner for writing the message.

Not one for leaving paper white, I just had to stamp this mum on two corners of each liner before I adhered them to the inside.  The stamp is from PTI's year in flowers mini set.  This is about as clean lines as I can get...until you see tomorrow's post!!!!

If I'm going to go nuts with all the inside details I couldn't leave the envies naked.  There's nothing sadder than a NAKED ENVELOPE.  This stamp ended up getting used for the envies because it was still sitting on my table from when I made this boxed set.  I don't get it.  Where are the cleaning fairies I ordered years ago?  Did they get lost in the mail?  I keep making messes and I end up being the one to clean those messes up.  Well I guess being messy has paid off this time. LOL!

I plan on putting on my pearls and heels to wander blogland and spread love to y'all today.  I can't wait to see what inspiring creations you've posted today!!

If you give a girl a lighthouse

 I have been a crazy woman in my studio these last 24 hours!  I've had today's post in parts for a lil' bit now and DH reminded me that he needed the cards for Monday.  So I finally got to work. :)

These are for Administrative Assistant Day.  Yeah I know it was a LONG time ago, but it isn't my fault.  DH has had to travel so much that he had to postpone their luncheon somehting like twice already!  It worked out well for me though. :)  These are stamps from JustRite and are band spankin' new to me as of last week.  Couldn't get the stamps and not get the coordinating dies now could I?  It would be breaking up a family- and I'm not about to break up a crafty family. LOL!

I tried to make them the "same but different" so it dodn't look like he was playing favorites with anyone.  Also we bought treats for everyone that were "same but different" and I was trying to coordinate with the treats.

Have you ever read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?  Well the title of this post comes from the fact that I decided I had my own little mouse experience.  It started when I decided that I HAD to frame the lighthouse with the same color as each card base.  That meant die cutting into card bases.  And that meant I should make window cards.  And that meant I would want to frame the windows.  And then I forgot that the window I cut couldn't be framed with the frames I made because the hole was too big.  And that meant I had to figure out new ways to use the shapes I cut.  So I have something like 5 other projects that came out of this one.  Some are photographed already and you will be seeing a bunch of them this week. :)

There are 7 Administrative Assistants in his group, but I made 8 because I forgot that when we bought treats we got an extra in case he forgot someone by accident.  Each box of candy has a chocolate seashell, seastar, or lightouse, and a bunch of  candy coated chocolate "beach rocks".  Believe-it-or-not I made each card to match the colors of the "beach rocks" in each box.  I know, I know, OCD table for one right this way! 

 Hope this made you smile today!  See y'all tomorrow with the next installment of If you give a girl a lighthouse.  'Til then happy sails to you!