Wanna recycle your telephone book? Make flowers

I found these flowers on this blog but I see she now has the photo out for publication. She found the idea on this blog so I decided to look through my old telephone books and make flowers using some of those pages. These flowers are super easy to make. I used my Stampin Up flower scallop punch and punched out 5 flowers. Put them together in a pile and attach a brad in the middle of the flower. Then, crinkle each piece up (see other blog) till you get to the bottom flower. Un-crinkle (is that a word?) the flowers and attach a button in the middle. I sponged mine with a little pink ink to match the paper a bit. Isn't it cute? Hopefully, it will mail ok!

Card size 5x5

Girl stamp by Hero Arts

Paper by Bo Bunny

Recycled phone book pages for flower

Button with thread

Stampin Up flower scallop punch

Oval Scallop punch

Who else loves Martha Stewart punches?

Ok, I admit it... I am ADDICTED to Martha Stewart punches but how many does one need? I have been reading on Splitcoast all the new punches out and I haven't been able to find them. Well, I went to the Michael's in Mooresville and sure enough, they had every single one of them. I had 2 coupons, one at 40% off and one at 50% off so I went back in twice and bought 2 new ones. The ladybug border punches. I can't wait to play with them!!!

Senior project and dinner out with old friends

Emily presented her senior project yesterday!! She has been working on it in her English class since August. Yesterday was the big day and although she was dreading it in the beginning, I think she did much better than she thought she would do. All the prep work leading up to her presentation was alot more work than her actual presentation was I think. In NC, they have to do a senior project to graduate! They choose a topic which has to be approved by a "committee". She chose "Canine Companions" and did hers on service dogs. Dogs who help disabled kids, adults or even people with seizure disorders, etc. These dogs learn to pick up something when its dropped, they can turn on and off lights, and many other everyday functions that we take for granted. Emily had the greatest mentor, Julie, and she really helped her alot with her project. Emily's "paper" ended up being 47 pages long and that included 15 hours (probably more) of work done preparing for it. Yesterday after school she had to present her product to 3 judges and they judged her on her 8 1/2 minute verbal presentation. All that hard work paid off, she feels she did really great.

Last night Emily and I met up with Kim and Erin for dinner at Olive Garden. Kim and I met when we were 16 years old I think. We worked at McDonalds together "back in the day!" LOL Erin is Kim's daughter and Erin is moving to PA next week so I wanted to see her before she moved away. I haven't seen Erin in about 15 years, maybe more. We had a great time!!

I joined a stamp club and we met at Stampers Alley in Mooresville ...

It was alot of fun. We mostly chatted and did alot of laughing (those of you who know me know I do those things best!) HA HA. Anyway, this stamp club has been meeting for 10 years and when I was at Stampers Alley back in November, they invited me to join them so today was the day!!! We were each assigned a month or two to design a calendar page and today we each brought our pages (already done) and then assembled them into a really nice year-long calendar. Let's see if I can get the months to come out in order on this blog. Isn't it awesome???????

This is who did what month:

January - Brenda (owner of Stampers Alley)
February - Me
March - Glenda
April - Carolyn
May - Lesley
June - Sharon
July - Patty
August - Glenda
September - Sharon
October - Lesley
November - Patty
December - Carolyn

Have you tried the technique "faux suede"? Not sure if this is the proper name ...

Not sure if this is the proper name for this technique but these are my cards and I wanted to make their clothes "look like they had some texture". I went with Traci to the Stampin Up Regionals in Cincinnati this summer and we learned this techique. They did it on a dog (I think) to make it look like it had a rough coat of fur but I wanted to use these 2 stamps so I did this instead.

To do the faux suede, this is what I did: Crumble up your cardstock and then straighten it back out. Rub your edges of the paper onto a table (I think a wooden table would work best) and work it back and forth. Then, try and pull the paper apart and you have 2 layers. The layer underneath is the rough side. Stamp your image on that side and paper piece it to your image on your white cardstock. Real easy!! It would look great on dogs, cats, bears, squirrels (Traci did it on a squirrel for my Sexy Squirrel Swap and it looked neat!). I love these stamps by Inky Antics... :)

Blue card - Stamps by Inky Antics

Oval punch

Oval scallop punch

Hand doodling

MS Scoring board

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Purple card - Stamps by Inky Antics

Large octogon scallop

Sponging around the edges

MS Scoring board

My latest circle journal entry ...

Angie at the Stamp Shack is hosting her next circle journal. Its summer themed. (you can click on each photo to make them larger) Mine is "When Summer comes, I can't wait to ...." Here are my pages. I left my cover blank until i get it back and then I can complete the cover then. The other themes in this circle journal are:

Joanne - Childhood Memories

Ellie - Things I like to do in the summer

Patty - How I want to spend my summer

Chris - My favorite thing to do in the summer

Angie - 10 things I love about summer

Terry - Favorite summer vacation

Cindi - Favorite summer recipe/summer food

We each have 3 weeks to finish our 2 pages. Then we pass it along to the next person and they will do their 2 pages. We should get our original circle journal returned around July 1st. I already can't wait!!!

So I went to Michael's today armed with a 40% off coupon

I found these Martha Stewart fringe scissors and thought I had read something on Splitcoast about them so I thought why not buy them. Came home and made this card for a friend who's going through a tough time right now. And of course I will have to use a cute homemade envelope that I recently made to go with it right? :)

Stamp by Stamping Bella Stamps at http://www.stampingbella.com/

Verse by TAC

MS fringe scissors

MS micro beads (in Valentine section)

Paper by My Mind's Eye