I'm baa-aaaack! Let the Crafty Year resume!

Yay! I'm back! Whew. It's been a whirlwind in my neck of the woods for the past few months... my mom was suffering some horribly debilitating pain in her hip for months, from about Thanksgiving to March, and when she couldn't take it anymore, she made an appointment for hip replacement surgery. We were expecting a wait of a month or two based on how busy the hip docs are in our area, so imagine our surprise --and my mother's relief-- when they gave her a date of a week after her consultation appointment!  The surgery went really, really well, she's done with rehab now and feeling great, and she's working on strengthening her legs for the double knee replacement she's expecting before the end of the year. (Yikes!)

I must say, not the best way to make it happen, but it was kind of nice spending that much time with my mom.  Unfortunately, all that time with my mom ate into my crafty time, as did some other work-related activities in April.  Life hasn't slowed down much, but the obligations-to-others to-do list is dwindling down so I am starting to get some me time. Hurrah!  My birthday is coming up in early June; I told some of my coworkers that I am declaring June as the Month of Me. I will attempt to be as selfish as possible with my "free" time. LOL  Yeah, right... we'll see.

I did have enough time to craft out a pretty simple Mother's Day card at the beginning of the month, and this week, I created a giftcard folder.

First, my Mother's Day card... I took my picture outside because it happened to be one of the few sunny days we've had the past month. The colors were much more muted and mossy indoors at my Mom's house where the card now happily resides, but my Mom has very little overhead lighting, so pictures taken there tend to be flash-blown. =\

I bought some Magnolia stamps early this year and this one more recently, but this is the very first one I've been able to ink up. She's totally sweet.  I also got to play with my Promarkers which I haven't done since my Bugaboo girl-bear birthday card in February.  I'm looking forward to learning how to shade properly and getting in lots of practice over the summer. Coloring by the late-night summer light. =)

This was also my first use of the K&Co papers I won in the blog candy drawing for Michelle O over at Stamps, Papers, Scissors & Donkey Smiles. I love the coordination of these dark brown stripes with the rose paper. And I have just the right amount of each to do the opposite (2/3 stripes, 1/3 roses) on another card. I'm liking this 6x6 thing. Great way to maximize papers and 12x12 cardstock. =)

Another first - my first Martha Stewart border. I fell in love with this lacy border seeing it on so many Magnolia and hAnglar cards over the past months. I can't believe I'm oohing and aahhhing over lace these days. My 12-year-old tomboy self would have a cow. LOL Had to turn into a girl sometime, I guess! =) Anyway, I used the same paper for that and the tag, on which I had to hand write my sentiment because I cut it out before I ran it through the printer and I don't have any Mother's Day stamps in the collection.

My second creation was a giftcard folder.  We were purchasing a giftcard from Broadway.com (which turned out to be a big 4.5 x 9 certificate in a cool pearlescent black folder) and a Visa gift card for dinner and possibly a hotel room for a night in NYC for someone at work. Rather than just slap a ribbon on them, I made up a card with pockets to hide them in. Everyone who'd donated money had already signed a separate card, so I didn't need to leave room for signatures, just a little space to write our group name in. 

This is what I came up with, using a lot of clipart from office.microsoft.com.  I hardly ever use clipart exactly as is.  I'm always prying it apart, recoloring it, resizing, deleting bits, adding other bits and recombining. =)  Microsoft Word can do an amazing amount of things if you know the secrets to unlocking its potential. Some day I'll probably end up getting Photoshop or some program that's actually MADE to do these things and I won't know what to do with all the time I don't spend messing about with the art. LOL 

Anyway, I recolored the sky of the city skyline and added stars and a moon; created a plate (you can't see it well, but there's a gray crescent shadow and I embossed the plate to give the center depth); took apart a set of silverware; deleted all the other bits in a dinner scene to get the wine bottle and glass; recolored and squished up a big brown curtain into my burgundy stage curtains; modified a border in two different ways; stole an audience out of another clipart and layered it into several rows; used WordArt with some of my fonts together with rectangles and a clipart frame; um, borrowed a photo of a staircase (http://www.creationsfantastic.com/) and altered it to look like a painting for the stage backdrop; added a colored rectangle for the stage and found a dude in a tux to stand upon it. I used a black rectangle and a gold-lined rectangle with no fill and a text box to make my Menu. Then I cut everything out of cardstock and double-stick taped or pop-dotted it.  I made the menu into a pocket for the giftcard (fitting since the giftcard is for dinner) and a large white pocket behind the stage and audience for the Broadway.com gift certificate. 

You can see in this closeup how I used a gold ribbon attached to the card and certificate as pulltabs.

I like it. I wish I had more than one night to work on it; I probably would have found digital stamps and tried to color in my stage myself instead of using clipart, but I knew I likely wouldn't like the results and it was safer to go with what I've done best in the past.

So, the Crafty Year resumes and off I go!  Be back soon with more fun... I'm looking forward to joining some challenges finally! Thanks for visiting! (And love ya, Mom! XO) =)