Birthday Celebrations with Mugs and Gemstones!

Good morning,

August was a busy time for us, and one event we celebrated was my husbands 65th birthday! Two of our boys are in town, so we all went out for dinner with them and their families. We had such a wonderful time. 

Two of our younger grandkids made us each a mug. I just love these - I’m pretty sure they make our coffee taste even better! 

I also made a birthday card for my husband. He’s a gemstone faceter now - a hobby he picked up before retirement, but that he’s perfected over the last three years. I’ll share some of his stones with you too. In addition, he’s become interested in old pocket watches. When his uncle was still alive, he gave him all his watch making tools. That was my reason for this particular card. 

To be fair, he looks much younger than this bearded fellow, but that’s the image I had. 

These are some stones he’s faceted. He goes by bcstonecutter on Instagram if you’d like to look at some of his other work. 

This owl design is named “Notolla” by Marco Voltolini

The stone is Titanium Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

The cut is a “Round Honeycomb” design by Michiko Huynh

The stone is a Lab Czochralski Pulled Pink Sapphire.

Faceted by Graham Gamble

Design is “Heart and Soul” by Michael Edgett

Titanium Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

Design is “Radiant Eye of Zul” by Arya Ahkavan

Bicolor teal and purple Flame Fusion Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

A modified rendering of “Spellbound”

Lab Flame Fusion green Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

He cuts both man-made and real gems. If you’re interested, please check out his Instagram listed above.

I was going to share same smaller cards I made recently, but I’ll leave those for another post. 

Thanks for visiting,

Carmen

Birdy Anniversary, AI

Good morning,

Just a couple of quick shares. You are probably aware that I’ve been using AI images for my notecards. They’re so quick and easy that I feel like I’m cheating a little bit. They’re great for quick cards and the images are so nice. I can’t help myself. 

So these first two are similar. I have just sent the first one off as an anniversary card. I love the saying because it’s fairly versatile and will work for different types of cards.

This last one is a nice masculine card for almost any reason. Just because, graduation, birthdays, Father’s Day…

I think the biggest struggle with the AI images is that most of them are square, but cards are usually rectangular. I kind of struggled with this card because of that, but it’s ok.

So that’s it for today. When I print these off I use standard paper on high quality, but I put cardstock in the printer. That seems to work best for me. If I use glossy or photo paper, the print doesn’t show up as well. Idk if that’s just my printer, but that’s what I have to do to get a good quality printout. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Carmen

Tweet as Honey Completed

Good day!

I mentioned in one of my last posts that my youngest son got married recently. We decided that in addition to money, we would gift them one of the quilts I was working on. It was near completion and took a year. Mostly because the patterns came out one per month. I had made most of the blocks but had to put the backing on and free motion quilt it. They’re applique quilts and I’ve realized I love applique, so these were fun to do. 

I’ve already shared a few of the blocks on this blog,  so I’ll just link them here. 

Tweet as Honey

Tweet as Honey 2

Tweet as Honey 3

I never did post the last set and side panels, but you’ll see them all here.

This is them laid out on the floor before stitching them together, and before the binding, backing and quilting. 

These were the side panels. All I had done here was cut them out and pressed them onto the panels. Yes, there are three irons in that picture. Yes, I need them all! 😉😉

Here’s my super adorable little iron close up. Isn’t it cute? It’s great for small pieces. I intend on trying some collage work soon so this will really come in handy. 

In addition to applique, this quilt also had quite a bit of embroidery work. I love doing embroidery and took up Brazilian embroidery some years ago which certainly gave me an advantage. I’ve included a few samples below. 

Finally,  here is the finished quilt with the backing, binding, and free motion quilting. You may have to zoom in for the quilting. 

To finish it off I added some information on the back of the quilt. It actually can be machine washed, but since it’s raw-edge applique, I thought hand washing would be better. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Blessings, 

Carmen

Wedding Tags, Favors and Bridal Dolls

Good day! 

It’s been a busy month with a celebration of life, an upcoming wedding, a 65th birthday and a new baby due, with a few other birthdays sprinkled in here and there. 

I was asked to make the tags up for the wedding favors for my youngest son’s wedding. Their theme is flowers, so I used a flower printable. They asked me to make them like some of my cards. Something like this card.

The tags were too small to add brads or gemstones, but the front is raised onto cardstock, and that was the main thing, I think. 

The white cardstock tags were cut on a silhouette by a friend. I did the flowered main piece with the writing on it in Inkscape, but you could easily use Word. I had irridescent cardstock for a backing on the flowered main piece. I taped these with dbl sided tape then put foam tape on the backside as shown. These were then centered on the blank tags. 

I was requested to put the ingredients of the cookies on the back of the tag. I typed these up in Inkscape and ran them off on sticker paper. This was the easiest way to do it. 

I wanted to cover the tag hole so I punched out some hearts to cover it using the irridescent cardstock. 

At first I attached the hearts with the embellishment tape, but realized it was making them too thick, so I used dbl sided tape instead. Prior to placing the hearts, I ran some cord through the hole so I could slip the twist ties through the cord (you’ll notice two knots about a 1/2” apart).

I made the bows with the instructions from a YouTube video using just your fingers. It was actually fairly quick. Unfortunately the bows did not want to stick. I used embellishment tape, and they’re sticking but they’re a bit fragile and can come off. I’m hoping they’ll stick well enough.  

I was going to use three colors of ribbon, but my third color never came, so we stuck with two colors and luckily I had enough ribbon in the two colors.

I had a hard time finding gussetted bags with a square bottom, but eventually I did find some in the right size. They’ll stand up on their own and that’s perfect! So here is a photo of the completed favors.

These cookies are gluten and dairy free and they’re truly delicious! The mother of the bride (Pam) baked up 460 of these right before the wedding. Then bagged them all into 2” gusseted bags. A true feat! They turned out super cute! 

In addition, Pam, who is a fairly new crocheter, also did up these adorable bridal dolls that look exactly like the bride and groom. Aren’t they incredible? I’m thoroughly impressed and they looked so good. Here’s a couple of pictures ~~

With a close up….

Thanks for popping by! I hope your weekend was as amazing as ours was!!

Carmen

Baby Cards using AI

Good morning,

As promised, I’m back to share some baby cards. My son and DIL are having a baby this month, so I made some baby shower cards. These are AI images off a site on FB. 

The wonderful thing about these images is that you can make them any size you want. Many of these sites offer individual pieces that match the original image, as I’ve shown here. Note the envelopes. 

I added some diecut greetings, some brads and some background papers to complete these. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Hope your day is amazing,

Carmen

Lighthouses, Wonky Trees and the Birds

Good morning,

I’m bringing you some more cards made with AI images. They’re quick, easy and fun to make and great for gift giving. There are some wonderful images that make great cards for men too.

While I get some of my images from free printable sites on FB, I got these lighthouse images from a program called Playground. You can search for different subjects, and then images people have prompted AI to make will pop up, and they’re downloadable. These I embellished with dried starfish and hemp rope. 

These came from a free printable site on FB. I just loved these wonky colourful trees and thought they’d be great for my notecard sets. I embellished these with brads and that’s it. I did use background papers, and I put some through my cuttlebug for some definition. 

The next cards are birds. Again, AI images off FB. I love the first set and made them for one of my granddaughters to give away to her friends, teacher, etc. Very simple, and aren’t they super cute? These are great gifts for grammas to send to grandchildren that live in another town.

Then these ones I plan on giving to my DIL who loves cows and chickens. She had a pet cow growing up. I think it was like a big dog, only it stayed outside. They have chickens now. It started with 2 chickens, but I believe there’s about 20 or 30 now. Oh, and two feral cats for the empty buildings to keep the mouse population at bay —-and two goats. 

I found some old papers to back these onto: mesh paper and some texture papers. These you just wet and pull and they leave soft little fibers behind. Can’t think of what it’s called. Talk about old school cardmaking. 

Ok, so I think that’s it for today. I have some baby cards coming up in the next post. 

See you next post,

Blessings,

Carmen

Aliexpress Paper Notecards

Good morning,

I decided to try out Aliexpress for scrapbook pads and a few other things. These two sets of cards were made using the pads I received. They were actually unattached papers, not pads, and not cardstock quality, but still nice.

I used them for my notecard sets, 4 in each set. I used metal brads, metal embellishments and some hemp cord. The greetings were computer generated. 

I needed a bridal shower card, so I made this card with some of the less focus papers. I have some umbrella diecuts which came in perfectly for this card. The hearts were hand drawn and cut. 

All in all a fairly quick card. Very bridal shower-y as well. 

Well, that’s it for today. 

Thanks for popping by!

Blessings

Carmen