TE Blast from the Past Blog Hop: Sending You Sunshine!

This month's Taylored Expressions Blast from the Past Blog Hop Theme is Sending You Sunshine! What reminds you of summer? Flip flops, the beach, bright colors, sunshine? Capture the essence of summer in your project!

Well, that's easy. I would say Lazy Days of Summer but that's not even a concept that anyone does anymore, is it? Summer means vacation to me. Vacation means beach, water, island, reading for fun, boating, sailing, crafting for FUN, sleeping past 6am, staying up later than usual, swimming, and of course, fun drinks with little umbrellas in them.

Here is my card that I think captures the essence of summer for me:

I'm sending this card to my friend, Heather. I have a feeling she thinks I have no idea how to chill-ax. 🙂 What does summer mean to you?

Be sure to check out all the great inspiration for this blog hop for Sending You Sunshine below!

Have a great day and I'm sending you some sunshine! (Seriously, I'm sending you sunshine, you send us RAIN, please?)

 

A VIP, Jordan Knight, and Etch-a-sketch

Interesting title, eh? I'll explain. First, I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE my Silhouette machine. This was all done on that machine using their vinyl for a stencil.

I'm so very excited. I have been working on a surprise for my dear friend (the VIP) for a couple of days. No reason for it except that I wanted to try to make this and it sounded like fun. With the help of a long distance friend, Kathleen, I was able to put it all together last night. The VIP, Amy, is my neighbor so after I finished it, I had to deliver it. I'm sure she thought I was crazy for coming over at 9:30pm!

Anyway, Amy is the biggest NKOTB fan I know. She recently went on their crusie, went to the Dallas concert, and to the San Antonio concert. After the the Dallas concert, she had VIP tickets to the meet & greet, where she got to meet Jordan Knight. Photos were taken, of course. Well all great photos need a frame, right?

As I mentioned in a previous post where I said "Keep your glass away from me", I have been looking for stuff to glass etch! My son calls it etch-a-sketch! Why, I have no idea but it sounds cute.

Originally, I thought I'd just do a song title or something small and simple in the corner. Kathleen had sent me some of the lyrics from JK's solo song, Catch A Wave, that seemed fitting for such a photo. Lyrics seemed like too much lettering but after thinking about it for a while, I decided I've always wanted to try my hand at subway art! So, with the help of Kathleen and google :), I found some more words to put on there. You know what the hardest part of designing this was? FONT SELECTION.

So, here's what it looks like:

close-up of etching

Finally, one thing I re-learned with this project. Etching creme GOES BAD. It gets old and it turns brown/gray rather than white/off-white. YUCK. I applied a bit of this and realized that it wasn't right. I was too scared to see if it would actually work so I scraped it off.
 
Here are some pics of the process:

Vinyl all weeded out and placed on glass

Etching creme applied to vinyl & glass

So, what do you think? I see lots of customized frames in my future. So easy to do! Although weeding out all those letters was a bit of a pita! But worth the effort!

Happy Wednesday!

Big news…

I posted this on my facebook page and sent an email to many of you but somehow forgot to mention it on my blog:

BIG NEWS!!!! I am so excited to tell you that I am now a Unity Stamp Company Endorsed Teacher and I'll be teaching at Scrapology in Lakeway on Saturday, August 13th at 10am. Spaces are limited so call 512.609.8188 and reserve your spot now! Hope to see you there!

And to celebrate, here's a Unity card we did at a class I taught in June. That class was a silent auction item that I donated to my son's elementary school. So much fun to get crafty with some of my PTA friends!

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Items used:

Unity Stamp Co Rockin' it Unity Style

A Muse ribbon, A Muse notecards

Copic Markers

Judikin's DG3 (like diamond glaze)

Kiai!

Or Hi-Yah! Take your pick!

My silhouette SD machine is working hard to become my best buddy. It certainly jumped up notches in that category after I figured out how to print and cut and manipulate a design into what I wanted. WOW! What a tool and so easy. I really could be a spokesperson for Silhouette. Can't tell you how many people I've told to get this machine!

Okay, so back to the story. Hi-Yah! My nephew turns 7 in a couple of weeks. He is having a TaeKwonDo birthday party. He takes lessons and absolutely loves it so he wanted to have his party at the TKD place. Well, I always like a challenge! No time to find karate/martial arts stamps so hmm… what to do? Silhouette to the rescue!

This is a tuxedo card and looked very tuxedo like. With some tweaks to the "lapel" and editing some of the points of the tuxedo I made it into a ghi. And a black belt one, at that! After I figured out how to do the cutting part, I had to try my hand at the printing on the inside. Again, another wow. I didn't know that I could print stuff before cutting and then have it all work together. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. SIMPLE. Love this machine. (so some of the inside is blanked out for privacy issues… you know the drill.)

So, what do you think? You know how simple this was? Well, I took my laptop, silhouette, and printer in my new SD bag to the lake this weekend and got it all working. Must be easy if I did it while traveling, right?

Anyway, I'm in love with this machine.

image used:

tuxedo_shape_card_C00211_21585