Moving ON

This card was created for a girl at work who was leaving our office for a better position. She will be missed, but we are glad for her to be moving on to something better. And that's how I came up with the title of the card, "Moving ON". I started with an aqua blue card base and topped it with a map patterned paper matted with black cardstock. I cut out the scooter and girl from the Cricut several times to get all the layers I wanted (this cut only has one layer to work with), then attached it with foam dots. I embellished with flowers, pearls, glitter alphas, and Stickles. I had our department sign it and it was a hit!

Miles of Smiles, 

Valentine Ornaments

This is the Valentine Tree I created this year. I start with a crystal vase and painted white twigs. To be honest, the vase was a wedding gift and I got the branches at a craft show like a gazillion years ago. I use these branches to accent TONS of things around my house throughout the year. As a matter of fact, it will soon become my Easter Tree. :) But this year saw it's debut for the Valentine holiday. I had a set of 10 wooden heart ornaments that I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby last year. For each heart, I covered the edges with assorted washi tapes. That was really easy to do and I think it gave the edges a nice clean finished look. Then I traced each side of the heart onto patterned paper and embellished away!  It's important to realize that each side of each heart has it's own imperfections, so to trace one then duplicate that would not work. Each side needed it's own pattern, but that was no biggie. I decorated both sides of the ornament too, as you can see in the photos. I really had fun creating these and now I have very unique ornaments for years to come!  As you can see, I added a few other Valentine-y picks to the display just for good measure! 

Miles of Smiles,

Wish

I created this card for my Aunt's birthday in February. I started with a pearlescent teal cardstock, stamped white swirls around the edge, and layered a pink border punch with embossed chocolate brown cardstock. The tag is from Graphic 45 tied with a pretty lace ribbon. I embellished the card with flowers, pearls and a "Wish" dimensional sticker.

Miles of Smiles,

Calendar

This is the start of my annual calendar. For the past few years, there was a group of us that would each pick a month and design duplicates of that page, then trade pages and create a calendar. It was fun and I loved seeing everyone's artwork each month throughout the year. This past year, none of that happened (sadly) as people have moved on in varying directions in life. But I still wanted a handcrafted calendar, so I just started making my own.  It's kind of nice only having to make one of each design, and I don't have to make the whole year all at once.  I started my January page in the middle of my Christmas break, and actually, my friend Heidi and her daughter made one too!  So far I've made January, February, and March (no pic of March yet). I designed the monthly dates pages in PowerPoint, printed them out and trimmed them down. The pages are 8x8 and all I do is slide them into the scrapbook page protectors and use fancy brads to connect the page protectors together.  Voila!  Instant calendar!  I can slide the dates section out to write on it when I need to, and each month I replace the top and bottom pages with the current month.  I also can keep two pages in the sleeves, so I have the current month on one side and the following month on the other side. I can just flip it over if I need to see the next month. This works perfect for me, and I really like my pages so far.  I have to admit, I totally love February cuz I made it look like me and my hub under the stars enjoying a glass of bubbly. Of course our Spooky dog is included as well!  I will show more pages as I create them (and remember to photograph them!)

Miles of Smiles,