WINTER is in the air!!

Winter is here and Christmas is right around the corner, so get ready to shop, make cookies and candy, wrap the gifts, decorate the house and tree and make Christmas cards to send to family and friends. I started making Christmas cards, my first card is called a hexagon Christmas, the red hexagons are red glimmer cardstock you can also use silver glimmer cardstock. Hope you like.

I think this is fall?

Fall is in the air… well almost.  Summer is still hanging on with its last grasp.  Today in Chicago it is overcast with storms threatening to descend upon us and drive everyone in doors this afternoon with a humid temp somewhere in the high 70’s.  Really? What happened to those cool, crisp autumn days? 

Trying to stay in the fall/Halloween spirit, despite the heat and humidity I created 2 cards this week.  The first one was an idea I got from this month’s Paper Craft magazine.  It is made from washi tape. I had never worked with it before but I’ve wanted to. I just needed to find the right inspiration and this was it.  I could not believe how easy and fast this card went together, nor how cute it is.

 

 

Boo!!

The next card I crafted came more from me wanting to work these colors and paper I found on sale at Michael’s a couple of weeks a go – I love it when I unexpectedly find cool stuff on sale!!  The patterned paper is from the Recollections paper pack, Harvest Delight, and I used the vine embossing folder from Stampin Up which is borrowed from my sister and I may actually have to buy for myself one of these days?!?!  

 

 

Have a great week - thanks for stopping by.

Apples to Apples

Yesterday was Applefest in Long Grove, Illinois which is one of our favorite fall outings. Even now that both the girls grown (almost?!) it is still a family favorite.  We had lunch at the Long Grove Café down by the duck pond.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous so we at out on the deck, it was hard to believe it was the last weekend in September.  After lunch we headed out to explore the booths, stores and listen to some great music.  It was a great day!

Today I was inspired to head up to the craft room and do a little papercrafting with...you guessed it, Apples as my theme.  So I made this cute taffy apple card and then I remembered seeing it done up as a treat bag so here is my take on that.

The Taffy Apple Card

Taffy Apple Treat Bag

Fall

Today is the first day of fall and it’s feels like it too. It is 50° here in Chicago this morning and while the sun is up and the predicted high is 64° it definitely feels like summer is gone for another year.  It was a strange summer this year; while I didn’t get much crafting done we did have a lot of fun at Country USA in Oshkosh in June, even with all the mud and rain.  Then there were lots of trips to Green Bay to help my Mom when she got sick and it was very hard to watch her slowly fade away; she is in a much better place now, although I miss her dearly.

Now that school is back in session and my family is drifting back into their routines, fall is in the air and definitely in my house.  My youngest daughter got “autumn-fever” last week and dragged out all the fall decorations and decked out the house.  Last night when we got back from Fond du Lac visiting my in-laws the girls had a fall themed jigsaw puzzle out on the table and with music blaring they were happily puzzling away.  I think that is part of fall I like best – when all the outdoor games and activities come back inside.

This card is my first ode to early fall, I love the colors – the grays, blues and gold.  Almost like a gentle slide into Autumn.  The paper is Bazzill Ocean Breeze and The Modern Meadow Stack from DCWV and the leaf design is my own and cut out by hand. The original design I saw used a die cut but since I didn’t have a leaf one I improvised.  I used the sentiment – "sending you warm thoughts" (Hero Arts) for this card but I really think you could use almost anything.  There you go – my ode to the beginning of what I hope will be another magical fall season!!

We are back!!

Thank you all for your patience, after a long hiatus (long sad story and a different post) my sister and are now back on-line creating cards and sharing our adventures.  Thanks for visiting today and hanging in there after almost 4 months with no new posts.  We promise more in the future.

New Birthday Card idea

This is a new birthday card I made today, for a friends birthday. I think it is very striking. Hope you like it as well. Card making is very relaxing. I love to share the recipes of the cards I make. My partner in this also loves making cards just needs to post more often.

New cards

This what I have been working on the last several weeks. The last image is something I had in my album, it is a Stampin Up image. The first two are butterflies in flight, a note card then a triple stamping card followed by a flip card and birthday banner card. I also made a wedding favor.

Craft Fair

Our first craft show was a dud, but the weather was gorgeous and warm. So for warm and sunny in Wisconsin in April is heaven. I would do another craft show, and keep trying until we reach our goal of success.

Craft Fair

We are going to our very first craft fair in Kimberly, WI.  At the High School 9 am to 3 pm If your in the area stop in and check us out. I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

All things in life should be this easy!!

Don’t you just love it when a design (or recipe) comes together in absolutely no time and is prefect the first time out?  That’s the way it was with this card. 

  Last Sunday I realized I had taken all of my cards up north to Wisconsin in preparation for our upcoming craft fair at the end of the month so I had absolutely no birthday cards anywhere and of course I had no time to run out and buy one either as I was supposed to have lunch with my older sister in a couple of hours for her birthday.  

As grown siblings we have pretty much gone down to seeing each other only a couple times a year - Christmas, special events, etc. and we both live Chicago?!?!  But one of the things my older sister and I have gotten in the habit of doing is to get together twice a year for lunch on each other’s birthday.  It’s nice; we pick a restaurant, meet and have a nice 2 hour lunch where we catch up on all sorts of things – our spouses, kids, jobs, etc.  One of the other traditions we have is to exchange birthday cards, no gifts, just a card with a couple of lottery tickets tucked inside.  Neither one of us has ever won anything but it’s simply a nice gesture.  

I had the lottery tickets – amazingly enough I had thought that much ahead and picked them up on Saturday while running errands but I had no card.  So I rifled through my stack of recent card designs I had pulled from various places – Pinterest, blogs, magazines, and in my head - all waiting to be put into my sketch book, hoping to find something cute, quick and easy.  

I loved the simplicity of this card and that it only had a few elements so it went together very quickly plus it gave me a great opportunity to try out my new Paper Smooches stamp set, Simply Said.  I know I bought this set for a reason but I can not remember why, however I thought the “Happy Everything” stamp fit right in to the style of this card.   The paper is from the Dots, Stripes & Plaid stack from DCWV.

Who are we?

We are 2 sisters; one is from the Chicago suburbs, the other from a small town in Wisconsin.  One is a stay at home Mom, the other is more career minded.  One is married and the other divorced.  One of us a cat person while the other lives with 2 dogs. One likes to read romance novels and the other prefers true crime.  While our lives sound are very different we are also a lot alike, besides having the same parents.  We are passionate about family, our kids, food and most all paper crafting. 

The last one is what this blog is all about.  We hope to share with you our paper crafting adventures, the successes and the failures, offer you a little wisdom here and there and most likely a recipe or two.  We can’t promise you it will always be about the paper because we both know life is messy and sometimes you just have to vent every now and then.