Oriental Cards

Everyone has little things that they love. Things they collect that make them happy. For some reason, very much unknown to my hubby, I have a love of Oriental items. I also dearly love pears. (among various other things!) Luckily though, Oriental and Pears, go together!
I was in a creative mood, and made a couple of cards. The Oriental stamps I got before Christmas and are from Inkadinkado and the pears are some that I have had in my stash.

I embossed the pears and the sayings in gold embossing powder. The paper, I found from a scrapbook kit I got a few years ago, it came with a album and all the stuff to make a scrapbook, you know the ones you have to have, but never use? Anyways, I thought that the In Color Suede, went well with the colors here.

Hope you like them!!

Hope everyone has a safe and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Maybe, maybe, maybe it may be fixed...

Maybe my puter problems are fixed. Cross your fingers for me!! Well, I managed to scrap a couple of layouts... thought I would share. This first one is my favorite. It catches Hunter so perfectly. So, I put my song I have for him on the page. I have a song for each of my boys, and this is the one that is Hunters. It is "My Wish" by Rascal Flatts. I printed the song out, so he can see what I hope for him!
This one I used some paper that came in my scrapbook kit from Express the Moment. The rub on was in the kit also... check them out at ETM.

This next one is a two page layout. Sorry I don't know how to make them side by side in Blogger! But, you can get the jest of it!

We got a lot of snow that year!

This next one is also a two page layout. It was from a trip we took to West Yellowstone. When you put the pages in the book, the word Yellowstone, is one word... Check out my son's contented grin, and how dirty his face is! He was sitting with me, at Old Faithful Inn, waiting for Old Faithful to blow!

My other favorite part of this layout is, the round little picture of Hunter. Of course when you hit Yellowstone, it smells like sulfur...I don't know why they forget this every time we come, but in that little circle, Hunter is accusing his brother of passing wind...

Once when Jade was a baby, we went to West, and when we entered into the park, Jade from his car seat, around 2 years old, asks... Who boiled the eggs??

Needless to say, we always joke about it! Its one of our favorite places to go to!

I have not forgotten you!

I have not forgotten you!
I am having slight technical issues!
My kids were playing around on the puter and have messed up how I can download pictures to the computer. At the moment, I can't download any pictures... it goes straight to a mp3 player...
When I figure out the technical things,
I Shall Be Back!!

Hope you are all ready for Christmas!!
Have a Merry One!!

Keersten

Christmas Breakfast

Today we are going to my parents for Christmas Breakfast. I really like doing this. We get to go and I see my brothers and their families. We exchange gifts, and have a really nice big breakfast. Then the kids play for a while and we go home!
On Christmas, so that we don't have to take the kids out and they can have the day to play with their presents, my parents go to each of our houses to see what the kids got.
So tomorrow, is breakfast!

Here is a Cardinal Christmas Card for you!

Monday Monday!

Awhh. I got sick this weekend. I hate being sick. Hopefully I am all better now!
While I was laying in bed, a friend who works at a bank, called and asked me if I would make handouts for a meeting that they would be having. I said "SURE!"

I remembered seeing a stair-step card and thought that would be perfect to sit on their desks. She gave me a saying, "Integrity is being ethical beyond doubt. Anything grey is black." So, I used the stair step card and came up with these for their meeting.

I think they turned out pretty good!

Hope you like!

It was a dreary day...

It really was a dreary day. Yesterday morning I recieved a phone call, letting me know that my good friend Kenneth Herrington had passed away.
I've been a mess all day. So I created a card.
This one is for Ken.

We all here will really miss you!

Keersten & Family

Long Time no See!

Here's a little card I whipped up yesterday because of all the snow! I was just putting a little sunshine back into my world! It was really cloudy and dreary yesterday. Not that I don't like that, but it makes my house really, really dark inside.
I had a lot of running yesterday, hubby's car wasn't working properly, so took him to work, went grocery shopping, and shopping... then came home. Went back to town to take him to lunch... went to my kids school to drop of canned goods, then took him to the doctors for a second XRay on his hand... Seems he is going to be fine! He doesn't need pins in it! Came back home again, and it was time to make supper! Glad someone lives way out here so Hubs had a ride back home!

The other day, I had time to make my own cherry chocolates! My first try at it. The lady showed me how by taking fondant and making a ball, flattening it, wrapping it around the cherry, rolling it smooth. Well, half an hour later, I had 6 balls. Not happening. So, I rolled the fondant out like you would for a cake.... cut little squares with the pizza cutter and wrapped the cherries in that. Lickity split! I had the whole jar done in 15 minutes! It was a few days before I took a picture of them, and they are pretty cold right now...got some moisture on the chocolate from the fridge...so, there is the discoloring... but they taste great! The fondant has already melted in them!

Made some haystacks too. I love haystacks. Forgot to buy the papers for them, so ended up scooping them with the small cookie scoop, and dropping them into my pampered chef's mini muffin tins. Worked great!

then, I had to make another beaded watch band. This one is for me. I got a red face for it. This one I like. I like mine no so chunky... so this one is great for me! I double the cord through the big beads...

So, that's what I've been up to lately. Have some truffle centers in the fridge, so will get to making them today!

Have a great day!

Some sad new, Some great news!

It is with very mixed feelings that I write my blog today! It is sad, because as most of you know, I am leaving Stampin' UP! as a demonstrator. I was with the company for 12 years. I am very bummed about it. But, as anyone will tell you. Life must go on!

And so it is! This is the happy part! I was asked to be a designer for a company! I am sooooo excited to venture into this new project and part of my life! I have been asked to design recipes for:

Express the Moment!

I am giving you a sneak peek of two of the ones I designed!

Here is one, and
Here is the other!

Here is how you get them. You go to their site, you can reach it by their button on my side bar or by clicking here. They sell lots of great things, there is sales for the day and everything. But to get to the recipes, you go to Recipe Kits on the side. It will take you there.

If you sign up to do the recipes, you get 4 different recipes per month. Every month new ones come to you (and I will be designing some of them!) They come in a kit and you make them up yourself, in case you need to change something! There is a binder that they all fit into and there are 5 different categories to have recipes in. There are detailed instructions on how to fit them together. Don't think you can read the directions? Once you buy a kit, you become a member and you can go to their gallery and check out the recipe there. That way you can see exactly how it was made!

While you're at the gallery, check out all of the other neat things people have made!

They also have card kits for the month, and scrapbooking kits for the month.

Check them out!

Mom's Clock

Here is my third clock! My mom loves teapots, and so I searched the Internet for different designs of teapots... my original idea was to have 12 little teapots, but I ended up with this design.
It is after a Mary Englebreit style. My handle and my spout, I put through the cuttlebug and embossed them.

The cherries were quickutz, and I hand cut all of the leaves. I punched white dots for polka dots and then just pieced it all together.

I found cherry ribbon at www.ribbonretreat.com and then I also had a bunch in my stash, so I thought I would ground the pot with the ribbons. The picture makes the look kinda wavy, but they are straight.

My steam for the teapot came from a free download from www.theanglecompany.com it was in the free black and white downloads and I just cut out the swirlys in the paper. I used red rhinestones for the numbers where I didn't use cherries.

Hope you like!

2nd Clock

Here is the second clock that I made. The top photo is of the finished clock. The second photo is the prototype? I made it first, and didn't like it, so I started over and made the top clock. Looks better to me. You can see the little kids instead of them competing with the background.

The lady I made the clock for, has 13 grandkids. I thought I could get them all on the clock, because 2 of them are twins... but I didn't like that they didn't get their own number, because the girls are so different. Then, I decided that the baby that was just born, well, she could have the center of the clock.

My girlfriends kids are in here, and when I gave the clock to her, her kids couldn't wait to find themselves! Each one of them did, even Squirty, who is three! Her oldest boy is the the redhead with glasses...

The second oldest boys is the blondie at 3 O'clock, spiky hair. He said, Keerst, my hair isn't that spiky! (Yes, Kobe! It is!) Abbie, one of the twins, is at 6 O'clock, with the long bright red pig tails.

Her twin, Maddie, is the strawberry blond curly headed one next to her...

There's Squirty at 9 O'clock, with the strawberry spiky hair! He said, "Dat me! Huh! Dat me Earst!"

It was fun to do, and challenging, to make all the kids and make them look like they were supposed to look - only in punch art form!

Anyways, hope you like! Working on clock #3!

Remember that paper you just had to buy?

Well, this is paper that I just had to buy. It has been in my stash for several years. My friend asked me to make her mom a clock for Christmas. Hmmm.... so down I went to the creation room! I was putting it off. (But Thanksgiving is in two days!) I am one who usually has all of her Christmas shopping done, wrapped, by October. Sheesh. I am sooooo behind this year. So enough of putting it off. There was the paper. I really, really liked the paper. So much in fact, I don't really want to send the clock off. Wonder if beyond, beyonds, I happened to purchase another sheet of it...
Nope. That is the rule you know. You must always purchase two of everything. Too bad I didn't have this rule a couple of years ago! (I do now for just such occurrences, also, if you are scrapbooking, you want to make a two page layout... you need two sheets...don't be frugal on me!)

I had to catch up on a couple of ATC swaps I was in.

And, I finished up the one set of Christmas cards... don't worry. I have already finished 4 other sets of cards.... just deciding if I need to make a few others....

But, I have 3 more clocks to make. So tune in, I'll get them done as soon as I can!

Trading Cards

I love trading cards. People ask me all the time though, what do you do with a trading card? They are only 2 1/4 inches by 3 1/4 inches. Well, I'll tell you! There are some that I really like, those, I decide whether I want to keep it for a design, or if I want to use it. If I keep it, I have a folder for them, so I can go through and look at them for inspiration. If I use it, I do something else.
The top pic, is of a trading card. I like it. I want to use it on a card. Sometimes I put them on scrapbook pages as an element... Anyways, here is how I turned "wanted" into a card.

I chose a light brown for the base, and then cut three strips of dark brown and layered them on the card. Then I cut 3 strips of the apricot-y, peach-y paper. I inked the three lighter papers, and stamped a stamp on each of the three. I happen to have this stamp set it was made from, so I used stamps from it. If I don't own the stamp set, I try to pick things that would go with it.

Then I layer the trading card onto the card front. Easy-peasy huh!

Watches!

I've been a busy girl! I love, love, love watches! However, I am very, very picky. I mean it too. Every year I ask for a new watch for Christmas. Hubby has the hardest time, because I only accept watches that I approve of. Namely, they have to be gold, black face, diamond for a number (least one number)...after 18 years of marriage, he has a hard time finding one I don't have!
But then, I saw these beaded watches. It is a craze here. Everyone and their dog has one. Well, we were making them in church. So I signed up to make a couple. Not sure I would like them, because, for one, they are all silver faced, and pretty big. I guess though, that is the idea, a chunky watch. (not on my list...) So I am giving them a try! (branching out?)
The top one had a face to it. (3 of my faces didn't come, waiting for the mail man!) It is green, I really like how it turned out. I tried to make them all glass beads, I am not a fan of the plastic ones....

So here are 3 bands. I know! You see plastic! But it was pretty! I don't know if I will ever wear it, because it is so chunky...but you never know!

This one I made tismorning. My friend Shirley and I went to town yesterday. She wanted to learn how to make the watches. Oh my goodness! We were in town from 10 til 5:30! One should never look at beads that long. (actually, we stopped at a thrift shop too, good finds, good day!)

So here is my yellow one. I love yellow too. The yellow beads have crackling in them...

My purple one! You have to have a purple one right? The face is not here yet.. :( Shirley went over to her step-daughters house, and was telling her about the beaded watches, her daughter says, Oh, I have some of those, and proceeded to show her 20!! See how watch crazy it is here? Who needs 20 watches? (please don't remember I have 18 from Christmas's...)

Ok, here is a closer look at the red watch... Everyone needs a red watch too... :)

Now tell me you don't need to run out and make one for you too!!