Saving Money

OK so it's not actually me who's saving money hehehe. Money slips through my fingers way to fast because I spend it on craft supplies! So instead I'm going to help the baby learn to save by making her her first bank!

At the CDAC Progressive challenge, the second image was a rainbow by Back to Paper. I struggled with this image. Not because it was hard to work with but because I didn't want to just do a card like everyone else. Yeah I know, I have a problem with liking to be different but that's part of what makes me fun right? Anyway it took me a long time to come up wit an idea and actually Eva;s mom Krystal is the one who gave me the inspiration. She said, "what about using it with Noah's Ark?" The light bulb went on and I was off and running! I had been saving the formula cans to alter, not knowing what I would do with them but knew that they would come in handy for something. Well this was it! My chance to recycle (happened to start the project on Earth Day, not intentionally but hey...), finish one of my DT projects for CDAC, and make Eva a cool gift. Wins all around!

First I found a Precious Moments coloring page of Noah's Ark and merged it with the rainbow to make it the right sizes. I printed it out twice so I could accentuate the BTP rainbow. I colored it up leaving it on long strips to wrap around the can. After I colored it, I masked off the ark and painted the rest with Chandelier Glimmer Glam to add a slight shimmer to the background. Then I spritzed and blotted with two shades of Glimmer Mist (Aquamarine and Cornflower Daze) to give it that sort of just rained look to the sky.

When it was completely dry I ran it through my Xyron to make it adhere to the can nicely. Then I added some Petaloo ribbon to cover the seams on the sides and around the bottom edge. It was looking really cute at this point. Time to start on the lid.

The lid is plastic of course so it couldn't have been painted easily and I didn't want to cover it in paper. Another light bulb moment...a cloud, I wanted it to look like a cloud. I pulled out the cotton balls, stretched them out and stuck them on the lid and edges of lid with hot glue. I had already cut a slit in it for the money to go through. I sprayed the heck out of it with hairspray so that it wouldn't "shed" or get pulled apart easily. Then I finished the edge by adding more ribbon, popped the top on the can and tied the bow at the top. I added a chipboard circle covered in paper that I inked up with ColorBox ocher and then stamped with an old StampinUp stamp that I had. I added more of the pom ribbon to that, glued it behind the bow and added two little resin glitter shapes. LOVED IT!!!! And Krystal teared up when she saw it. Mission so accomplished!

Front

Top

Close up of stamped image and resin animals

Back

Are you gonna make one now?

Love ya,
~Deb~

The Other ATC Swap

As I said in my last post, I joined two (2) ATC Swaps. This one was hosted by me on CDAC and I was a bit disappointed in the turn out. Only three of us signed up. Baby steps...if people see the fabulous creations posted maybe more will join! The theme for this was there was no theme LOL I wanted to see their style of work. For example, altered art, vintage, whimsical, funny, whatever their favorite craft venue was. For mine I decided to a shabby chic look. I love anything vintage and shabby.

I used DCWV in light shimmer blue for the card base because I found these wonderful blue birdcages by Recollections. I used a combo of flowers from Michael's and Alpha stamps. Some bird Washi tape i had gotten from Pick Your Plum, and a wooden tag by Little Yellow Bicycle. the pièce de résistance (probably not spelling that right) was a bird image from the Graphic's Fairy that I printed on to Shrinky Dink paper, fussy cut, and then shrunk. It was the statement piece on the ATC.

Now before you look I have a confession to make. I haven't used Shrinky Dinks since I was a kid. I printed 4 large and 3 small birds and cut them all figuring I would use the others for something else later. Start laughing at me now...I didn't leave them in long enough and the curled up and were unusable  Only two turned out. One large and one small so the birds are a little different on the two cards but still both are pretty I think. So with out further ado here are the two ATCs I created for my CDAC Swap mates.

Both swaps were so fun! I wish I had had time to embellish as much   on the last set as I did on these. I'm really loving how these turned out. So are you going to join us in the next swap? Whatever we make it will be fun I promise!

Love ya,
~Deb~

Wow that was fast!

In one day I made it to 100 followers. Woo Hoo! Welcome to all the new lovely crafters and thank you for following. A big warm hug to all my older followers, so glad you're around!

So I promised extra goodies for every two people so that means two more items. Here they are:

a set of wood tags with sentiments

and a set of unmounted rubber stamps from Flower Soft

Now for the moment you've been waiting for, drawn by Random.org

Lady Anne! Congratulations!!!! Please email your address to hrspecdeb@yahoo.com and I will get these in the mail to you.

If you didn't win in either of the two drawings, I'm sorry, but I am grateful that you are a follower. If I could I would send everyone a gift. Alas I'd need to win the lottery for that and since I don't play, I'll never win! This won't be the last giveaway so stay with me and you'll get another chance soon.

Love ya,
~Deb~

ATCs

I have joined two swaps recently. The first was a swap through the Gecko Galz Yahoo group. Eleven people signed up and they were due Saturday. Well I was late. UGH!!! I hate being late but all the new responsibilities just haven't given me the time I like to create. Oh well...I live close and they went in the mail today so she'll have them by tomorrow.

My inspiration came from a beautiful tag I received as a gift from Angela Holt of Angela Holt Designs. I already had a general idea of what I had wanted to do but her gift just made my idea more concrete. I wanted to do a vintage looking angel. I didn't have a Gecko Galz image that I thought was right for this so instead I used an image from the Graphics Fairy. I used the two smaller sections of the TH Layered Angel Wings Die to create wings for her that would fit on an ATC. I sprayed the wings with three different Tattered Angels sprays; Viva Pink, Silver Sugar, and Suede. I added some ribbon and some mini roses in cream and pink that I bought at Alpha Stamps. The card base was made out of a DCWV Shimmer Matstack. They ended up being pretty simple but I was in a time crunch. I only had them partially finished when the deadline hit. If I had had more time I would have added some accents to the flowers and her ribbon on the image. Next time...

Do you like them better with the maroon or black background?

Today I'll work on the other swap. A little easier since there are only three of us in the swap and I still have time before the deadline so I'm not feeling rushed.

Love ya,
~Deb~

Fledgling Artist and More Candy (Closed)

So I told you yesterday about Eva's mom making some art. She's been hanging out with us in order to spend time with the baby and since Jen's birthday was yesterday she wanted to make her a card  I gave her free reign in my office and told her to have fun. She created a beautiful card and then continued to create. She came over today again and got her craft on some more! So here's her creations:

Jen took the pin off and wore it before I could get the picture :(

An today she created this:

She did amazing don't you think? She's having fun so I'm sure she'll be making more and more over the next few weeks. I plan to show her how to use die cuts and some new techniques. I'm sure she's going to bloom!

Now, I am 5 followers away from 100 so I think it's time to go ahead with candy. Once I actually reach 100 followers I will draw a name so be sue to sign up with the linky at the bottom of this post. Here's what's up for grabs...for now.

I will add another item for every 2 followers so If by the time I see it's at 100, any extras will still count. I only check the blog once a day now so that is totally feasible! It might be 2 more items or it might be more. We'll have to wait and see :) So good luck in the drawing!

***Closed, thank you for entering***

Love ya,
~Deb~

And the Winners are...

Well before we get to that I have to show you a few others things :) Sorry you'll have to wait a bit to see if you won. I spent the day with my surrogate daughter, the baby's mom. She helped me bake the cakes for my daughter Jen's birthday today and then we created a card. She mostly created and I assisted when she needed help. So first let me show you cake pictures.

Jen loves cheesecake but her fiance' hates it so we made two cakes. A blueberry cheesecake and an orange chocolate cake with salted caramel topping.

After the cakes were done, she wanted to make a card for Jen. She picked out the paper and decided on the design. I helped her only with the cutting board since she had never used one, and the making of the pin she wanted to add. She designed the pin and just needed a little guidance in securing the beads. The rest was totally her and I think she did a fab job. I'll show you the images in tomorrows post since this one is already loaded :)

The baby had her first taste of cheesecake - minus the blueberries (we picked those out). We let her eat it by herself.

I think she liked it. In fact she liked it so much she tried to eat the plate too!

Both cakes were delicious!

So after cake we did the drawing. First the one for my International followers. Jen did the drawing.

And the winner is Sindhu! Congratulations and thank you for being such a faithful follower! Please email me your Paypal account address so I can deposit your winnings. My email is hrspecdeb@yahoo.com

Next came the drawing for my US followers. We decided to let Eva do the drawing.

And the winner of the punch is Sharon Swain! Congrat's to Sharon and thanks for being such a wonderful follower! Please email me your address so I can get this shipped out to you. My email address is hrspecdeb@yahoo.com

What an amazing journey it has been with all of you and I am so very grateful to each of you for all your kind comments, encouragement, and inspiration from your work. Now, I am 5 followers away from 100. So come back tomorrow and I will have a new drawing for when I reach 100 followers! Two drawings back to back...pretty cool! Never thought this blog would grow this quickly! You guys are awesome!!!!

Love ya very much!
~Deb~

Candy Time!

Yesterday was my 6 month anniversary of blogging. I didn't want to interrupt the fun hop I participated in though so I waited until today to post this. I have met some amazing people in the last six months. Learned a lot, shared a lot, and feel completely blessed that I have the opportunity to do this. My wonderful husband has been so supportive and my followers are the best in blogland! I am so thankful for all of you. So here's the deal with the candy.

Postage has gotten ridiculous, we all recognize that. So I am going to do two (2) giveaways. One for people in the USA and one for all my followers overseas. Please make sure you sign up for the right one as they are not interchangeable.

For my USA followers:

I am giving away this great Martha Stewart Punch All Over the Page Punch. It's new and purchased just for this giveaway!

To qualify there are a couple of steps.


1. You must be follower.
2. Put this in your sidebar.
3. Leave a comment here telling me you did that and how you follow me.
4. Link up with the Linky tool below.


That's it! Pretty easy but...you get an EXTRA chance if you invite a friend who is not currently a follower of mine to follow me here. If that friend leaves me a comment telling me they are following because of you AND leaves 3 separate comments between now and when the drawing ends, you will get an extra entry.



The link will be ate the bottom of this page. Please put USA after your name.

For my Overseas followers:

I will put $20 in your  account for you to purchase your own punch! Since the punch is so heavy it would cost me more in shipping then the punch actually costs so I thought this was a nice alternative. You can buy a punch anywhere you like this way and hopefully your shipping will be much less.

To qualify there are a couple of steps:


To qualify there are a couple of steps.

1. You must be follower.
2. Put this in your sidebar.
3. Leave a comment here telling me you did that and how you follow me.
4. Link up with the Linky tool below.

That's it! Pretty easy but...you get an EXTRA chance if you invite a friend who is not currently a follower of mine to follow me here. If that friend leaves me a comment telling me they are following because of you AND leaves 3 separate comments between now and when the drawing ends, you will get an extra entry.


The link will be ate the bottom of this page. Please put your country after your name.


OK this Ends on April 19th which is my daughters birthday. I'll have her choose the winner randomly out of a hat and I'll post the winner at midnight!

Love ya much! Good Luck...
~Deb~

To be a College Grad again...

I loved school. I loved college. Basically I like to learn. If I could, I'd be a perpetual student but boy college costs a lot. I have my degree and I'm not really using it anymore so it seems like a waste to spend more on school. So I guess I will live vicariously though other's LOL.

My best friend has tow (2) kids graduating from the University of Mary Hardin Baylor this year. No, they're not twins, on just took longer to finish then the other. Even at that age, life can get in the way of your goals. So I'm creating the party for her and hosting it in my back yard. One will be a nurse and the other majored in  computers. I'll definitely show you the pictures of the decorations after the party. Today I wanted to show you a card I made for one of them. It has nothing to do with nursing, but it is the UMHB colors. I think she'll like it. I'll probably make them each two cards cause that's just the way I roll! :)

For this first card, I used an image by NanaVic. The University colors are purple and gold so I made the card base gold and then used my Xyron die to cut out a purple background, then used the next smaller die in the set to cut around the image. I layered them together and put them on top of some cool yarn I found and wound around the card base. The yarn is made by Voila Print. To the image I attached a mini chalkboard and to the yarn I added an owl and a key charm. I decided to make it an easel card so the layered parts are only partially attached.

Inside, I layered the same way, used a frame from Dover Publications and a sentiment I borrowed from my blog buddy Glitterbabe. I hope she doesn't mind. When I saw it I knew it was perfect for my friends daughter who is precious to me.

I apologize for the length between blogs again. Life got in my way this week! I should have another post for you tomorrow though and of course Friday is the day we draw! Plus there is an extra surprise that I will tell you about on Friday.

Love ya,
~Deb~

CDAC Pin Swap Part Deux

Okay so yesterday I told you about the Pin Swap at the CDAC. What it's all about, what our theme was, and invited you guys to join some swaps. I also promised to show you the other 7 artists pins so let's get to the beauty of these!

In order of sign up...

The entire group of them. That's 18 pins. Woo Hoo! Think of all the fun stuff we can do with them.

ohhhh ahhhhh....aren't they beatious! Trust me they look waaay better in person. For some reason my camera (brand new expensive thing) takes exception to shiny things. It thwarts the colors around it. Everyone did a fabulous job and I had a ball with this swap. I'm loving being the moderator of them for now and hope that we get so many members that want to swap that we have to have help. So again I say what are you waiting for? COME PLAY with us! The link is in the top right corner.

Love ya,
~Deb~

How to Find an Image Source

We've all done it, forgotten to tag our images when we save them and then we go to use it later and don't know who to credit. I was terrible about that when I first started blogging. Probably because I hadn't planned on blogging, just crafting but well...you know how that goes, best laid plans. Well I enjoy blogging, joining challenges, and being on DTs so I need to credit the designers plus, it's just the right thing to do. So here is a tutorial on how to use Google Search to find the source. I must tell you that someone (Karen over at Graphicsfairy) passed the info on to me, not the tutorial, but the information. It has come in handy more than once for me. It is not a guarantee by any means. Sometimes it cannot find the source, but I would say it does about 75% of the time.

OK here we go:

How to find an image source in Google Search if you don’t know where it came from                   

Written by Deb Ochs-LaGrone of A Look Through My Eyes

1. Go to Google Search and then click on the images tab.

2. This is the screen you will get when it loads. See how it says images.

3. Bring up the file that you have saved and need the name for. It must be saved as an image in some format and cannot be copied and pasted into Google.

4. Drag and drop the file into the area where the search bar is. It will say “drop image here” if you are doing it correctly. As you see in the picture it looks like the outline of my image is there but that does disappear while it searches.

5. When the results come up if it found a match for the image, you can scroll until you find a site that is familiar to you that you may have gotten it from. Often it is the very first result as most digi’s are only sold by one entity. In the case of my image, it’s actually from an old author so there are multiple sources. I will scroll until I find the website I used.

And that’s it! Easy Peasy. Good luck with the images. It turns up results bout 75% of the time so it’s definitely not always the answer, but it does help a lot! Hope YOU find this helpful!

Love ya,

~Deb~

CDAC Pin Swap

Hi Everyone! It's Friday and I bet you are all doing the happy dance! Is it crafting time for you on weekends? Well I wanted to give you a sneak peek at what I've been up to at the CDAC as a DT member. If you like it, I hope you'll pop on over and join if you haven't yet and then sign up for a swap. They are so much fun and you get some cool stuff from different people in the group. Believe me when I say everyone is creative in their own way and no two items are ever the same! We all see art differently. Today I'm giving you a look at Pin Art through my eyes. Tomorrow I'll show you what it looks like to 7 other artists.

The theme for the March Pin Swap was the 5 Elements; Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Spirit. I started out originally doing just water, but someone dropped out who had signed up for all 5 so two of us picked up the slack. Hopefully dropping out will not be a problem in the future and I didn't mind picking up this one since I love making pins. So in the end I made 4 of the 5 elements, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Here's my take on them:

Fire - the image is from a Fireman's Calendar and the sentiment is from Ginger's House.

Water - I used some tags I bought at Michael's, heat embossed them and added the initials of the recipient.

Earth - I used a Save the Earth image and half a mini styro ball covered in moss.

Air - Okay this is similar to one's you've seen before but how could I NOT use feathers for air? The image is by Constanza Ehrenhaus and the sentiment is another of Ginger's.

And here is a pic of the entire set...

So did I pique your interest? Do you want to see more, have one in your hands, create some things to swap yourself? Well come on! What are you waiting for? Go to the top right corner of this page and click on the picture of the feather pins. It will take you there and you can play with us! Hope I see you all in the swap room!

Love ya,
~Deb~

CAS? What the Heck is That?

CAS or Clean and Simple for those of you who don't know the acronym should be a pretty easy concept. Well it is if your not me! I just can't seem to make it work. I started this card with every intention of it being CAS. So I colored and built a couple of layers and voila, a CAS card. Problem is, I didn't like it. So I printed it out a couple more times, colored, cut,  and pieced it using UTEE to make the wings stand out on the last layer. Not happy with it still so I added just a little, a butterfly at the top to accent the ones on the letter. Nope still didn't like it, so I added a few May Arts leaves but got carried away and added them all the way down on two sides. Well when you add leaves you have to have flowers, I mean come on! They go hand in hand right? So I popped on some flowers from my fabulous package of goodies that came in today from Anna at Cuddlebug Cuties and Angel at Sew Crafty Angel. Better but not quite there yet, soooo I added a bow and a sticker sentiment. There! Finished. Now I think it might be too much LOL. Oh well. I suck at CAS. I like my bling as you all know.

The image was one of the freebies for playing in the challenges at CDAC last month. It's from Gingerloft and is called Butterfly Letter Collage.

So here it is, my not so CAS card:

And here's a view showing the dimension I did on the wings of the butterflies and leave of the image.

I'm entering this into the Anything Goes Challenge over at CDAC. It runs for three months so you really should join! You'll have plenty of time to create.

Love ya,
~Deb~