Congrats and Good Luck Cards

Quick post of some cards I made recently. One of my colleagues got a new position and had her last day on Friday. Saturday was another co-worker's audition for a masters program in viola. So naturally I stayed up super late on Thursday to make some cards :)

The Good Luck card is on the left and features a music paper background and then watercolor paper with Distress Inks and stamp. The Good Luck card is on the right and is ink and watercolor paper as well. All of the stamps were from Tim Holtz collections.

Sam Sparro - We Won't Need Anything But Love - Lyrics

My whole life I had this feeling
What we see is not the ceiling
Must be more than what they're teaching us
Thought that all we needed was love

Nights I lie here contemplating
Why we spend our lives just waiting
For something that might be saving us
When all we really needed was love
Was love

Maybe when the world stops spinning
It will only be beginning
Galaxies are spirits living above
We won't need anything but love
No we won't need anything but love
But love

12 Tags of 2016 - January!

So this year Tim Holtz is doing a "remix" theme on his tag challenges where he takes two older techniques and remixes them together to create something a little new. I don't know if any of my readers are tag makers (or, like me, just do this challenge) but I have a ton of tags and nothing to use them for. Or so I thought...

Here is my tag:

Not only did I remix the techniques, but I took my thriftiness to a new level. Here are some fun facts on this tag:

• I didn't have any black paper, so this is a blue chalkboard. Get over it.
• People always jokingly ask if I'm going to reuse my holiday paper...I did. In fact, the person that gave me that present then received this tag made from the paper out of spite so I hope he noticed :)
• I needed a birthday card and also a way to make this wonderful tag disappear. So I turned it over, added some calligraphy paper and wrote a nice message on it. I then slipped it between the gift and some yarn. Ta Da! Birthday Card, One less tag, and no need for an envelope!

Here is the tag that inspired this:

Hope everyone had a great New Year and I'm excited to share a bunch of new things this year. I've taken up calligraphy recently so expect a ton of writing samples to randomly pop up.

-Steve

First attempt at Quilting?

Okay, so there was a contest and a sale at Joann's so I figured it was a sign that I needed to try something new. I have a friend with a sewing machine and I had some free time so all the pieces fell together and I got to try my hand at making a "quilt block." After some searching online for what the heck that meant and how to make a quilt and thinking about what I wanted to do, I got to work. I really wanted to use my die cut machine to do some shapes. So I made some coffee cups :)

Things I learned:
1. The fancy tools for quilting are probably really helpful.
2. Cut everything too big and measure a lot.
3. If you needed a 12x12 square and it comes out too short, just add a border.
4. Embroidering (maybe? Is that what I did? eh...) is actually sort of fun.
5. Buy good thread. My thread broke and required re-threading the needle like 50 times. Grr.
6. There are some cool tricks to make multiple squares at once. I made four extra triangle square things in case I don't win anything from this contest and then i can just turn this into a small pillow.

Here is the quilt block!

12 Tags of 2015 - December - AND MORE!

Okay first off -- HOORAY! I DID IT! I made a tag every month and even managed to win one of the months. YES!

Okay, with that out of the way. Here is my tag along with adorable snowglobe mason jar thing that Tim inspired.