New York, New York

I didn't mean to be absent for so long, but July turned out to be incredibly busy! I started a new job, spent a week in NY, finished up loose ends in the "paper suite" for my sister's wedding--including making 2 different sets of favors--and got addicted to HBO's Entourage. I could have gotten a lot more accomplished had it not been for that.

I have to start this post with a picture of my niece Violet. She is TOO CUTE! The last time I spent a good amount of time with her was last August and she was about 16 months old and didn't want much to do with me. She loved my husband, but was happy to ignore me. This year was a completely different story and I ate up every single thing she did! She is 2 now and talks so much and does so many cute things that she's hard to resist. Here we are blowing bubbles:

She kept popping them and I kept getting sudsy water in my mouth but she's so sweet I didn't even care.

Sweet? Look at that face! As my Grandma Peg would say, "She's a sketch!"

And here's Violet's Mommy, Emily, and "Muck" (the rest of us call him Mike) on their wedding day:

That picture pretty much sums up the tone of the day: The wedding was casual and fun, and everyone was really happy. They had a beautiful day and got married on their property--30 acres of wooded area in upstate NY--it was great!

This is Emily, my mom, and me. (Oh, did I mention Arvin was the wedding photographer?)

And here is a picture of the invitations I made for them:

I will, at some point, have more detailed pictures ready for show and tell, but for now, this will have to do. Their colors were fuchsia and different shades of purple (can you guess why? Hint: Miss Violet) and I think they turned out really well (yes, if I may be self-indulgent for a moment). I have a lot more photos of the individual enclosures, as well as the favors and, someday, I will do a great big blog post all about them!

The day after the wedding, my mom's side of the family had their annual "Pool Party" up at my Grandma Peg's house. It's the first one I have been able to go to in years (since moving to CA) and I was so, so excited to be there this year. Each year, "Granny" (as she is called by her great-grandchildren) gets her picture taken with her great-grandchildren on the diving board and I like this shot because everyone (except for Violet who looks a little confused about what is going on) is laughing, including "Granny!" (From left to right: Grandma Peg, Violet, Sam, Gracie, Mallory, and Marty.) Remember Mallory from this post and how innocent and quiet she looked? She was totally hamming it up for these pictures, shouting "Cheeseburger "at the top of her lungs and laughing like crazy!

On our last full day in NY, Arvin and I (that's us!) took a drive out to Bully Hill Winery for lunch (we make it a point to go there each summer). They have great food, great wine, and an amazing view of Keuka Lake.

I took this photo on the way back to my parent's house in the moving car! I can't believe how great this picture came out--and Arvin was surprised, too. He has no faith in my photography skills. But those are vineyards in the foreground and Keuka Lake in the background. It really is beautiful there in the Finger Lakes and I miss it a lot. Our trip to NY was way too short--only a week--and it was both wonderful and sad but I am grateful we got to go and see everyone, especially my 2 grandmothers.

Hope you all have a great evening!

Oops!

I'm glad the last 7 days are over! They haven't been bad or anything, just busy. I made 60 wedding invitations for my sister and her fiance and as it came down to the last, I had all sorts of computer and printing issues. Luckily for me, my husband's an IT guy so he can fix anything like that, but it was still a huge annoyance when I was relying on the computer to finish these things. But they're all done and in the mail and next week I'll do a blog post about them. (I don't want to post pictures before my sister has even seen it in person!) So I am posting a picture of a random card instead.

My husband has a co-worker who buys my cards from time to time and last Tuesday night as we were getting into bed, my husband handed me a Post-It note with some details on it and said his co-worker needed the card and a gift card holder by Thursday. Even though I had many other things to do on Wednesday (Emily's wedding invitations, a Dodger game in the evening, Father's Day cards), I never like to turn down requests. So I spent most of Wednesday working on the card--the co-worker wanted to spend $15-$20 on the set and that meant a lot of details, customization and even a custom envelope. Not an easy nor quick job! So this card was for "Georgie" who was 16 and graduating from high school. I got the card mostly done, did some laundry, and a couple of other things, and we left for LA at 3pm.

{Side note: We live in Orange County and it takes 45 minutes to get to LA when there is no traffic. Thing is, there's ALWAYS traffic! That's why we left so early for a 7:10 game. However, we made excellent time and got to Dodge Stadium at 4:30. At the gate, they told us to turn around and come back at 5:10! So we did and it was really cool because we got to watch both teams (they played the Oakland A's) warm up and take batting practice. We had pretty good seats, too--close to the field--and the A's used to be my favorite team so I still root for them. I don't know too many players by name anymore, but it was still cool when they won (although, with all of their dropped balls, they really shouldn't have!}.

I digress...We didn't get home until 12:30am and I still had to finish the gift card holder so I stayed up until 2am to finish it. I gave it to my husband to take to work the next morning and he saw the flowers and said, "It's for a dude!" I just assumed "Georgie" was a girl (his coworker has always gotten cards for girls, never guys). So it's true what they say...Never assume! Oh, well, I still love this card and fortunately, de-customizing it was pretty easy. I hand-stitched on felt for the first time which was pretty time-consuming but I really love the way it looks and the soft texture that felt adds to the card.

{The cardstock and ribbon are from Papertrey Ink; the orange paper is Doodlebug Design, the "journey..." paper is K&Co., and the flowers are from Petaloo.}

Black is the Colour

This is the color challenge for the week over on Dawn McVey's Raspberry Suite blog:

It ended up being a really great color combination and here is my card (click on picture for larger image):

My card is soft and romantic and the black tulle even makes it a little sexy, I think. I used Leaf from Paper Source as my green shade and used some 7 Gypsies decorative paper and a piece of old sheet music. The black glitter letters are from American Crafts and the pearl stick pin is Maya Road. I made the cream flower out of wire ribbon and some black tulle circles, plus a button and some adhesive pearls from Kaisercraft. For something a different, I cut a piece of black tulle a little bit bigger than the size of my card and hand-stitched it to my decorated papers.


That's all for today!

Sweet Violet

My sweet niece Violet recently turned 2 in April and she's already a total ham. I don't get to see her much since my sister (Emily) and her family are still on the East Coast while I am on the West Coast, but I get lots of pictures and hear lots of stories. She always gets on the phone to say "Hi" to me when I'm talking to Emily and the other day I was surprised to hear that she had picked up a southern accent somewhere. They have always lived in upstate New York so I don't know how Miss Violet developed her southern inflection, but it sure is cute! "Hi Aunt Beck" suddenly became "Ha Aint Back."

Here is a photo Arvin took of Violet and me when we visited a month after she was born:


(He was experimenting with a new camera and I was wearing a salmon-colored shirt! He LOVES his cameras!)
And here is Violet a couple weeks ago:


What a silly little tomboy! Emily said she makes that face a lot.

Emily and Mike took her to the Buffalo Zoo on her birthday this year and coincidentally, I made her a card with an elephant on it.


I used a Basic Grey chipboard elephant, a journal diecut from Making Memories, and a "happy birthday" stamp from Pink Persimmon. I stitched a piece of lace onto the diecut for some texture. I don't think Violet's old enough to appreciate this kind of stuff yet, but she is one of my most favorite people to make cards for.

Hope you had a great weekend. I can't believe the stupid Lakers won the NBA Championship. I HATE them! It was so great when they lost last year. Ah, memories...

Tickled Pink

I decided to participate in another Pink Persimmon challenge. This time we had to make a card using pink and orange (you know, like a persimmon!) and I love that color combination. I really wanted to use some of their stamps and in the course of my card design I tried a few different things. In the end, however, I ended up using just one of their stamps and it's really small! But it's very fitting ("tickled pink"). It's from the Ric Rac stamp set and it's curved, but I straightened it out (ah, the beauty of clear stamps).

Here is the card I made:


{I used supplies from Maya Road (chipboard butterflies), Doodlebug Design & Sassafras Lass (Paper), Stampin' Up! (word window punch), K & Company (flower vine stamp), Papertrey Ink (pink button, ink)}


I also decided to do a quick tutorial on painting the chipboard butterflies from Maya Road. It was pretty easy and I probably don't need to talk anyone through this process, but I know that when I started out making things, I always liked how-to's and getting tips from other crafters--I still do. (Click on any of the pictures to view a larger image.)

1. I started out with my plain butterflies...

2. The light pink acrylic paint is from Plaid and it's called "Ballet Pink." The darker, glittery pink is from Making Memories and it's called..."Tickled Pink!" Perfect!
3. My sponges are just foam makeup wedges. They work really well and you can wash them out and re-use them when you're done. I also use a piece of cardboard underneath and squeeze a little paint right onto that, then dip the sponge into it. Really convenient and nothing fancy.

4. I applied 2 coats of Ballet Pink as my base. It dries pretty quickly but I used the overturned lid of a yogurt cup to rest it on. If there's any wet paint on the underside of the butterfly, it will stick to the cardboard.

5. Next I applied 1 coat of the glitter paint. You can apply more if you want--the amount of coverage you want is up to you.

6. Just let dry (I placed it on the yogurt lid again) and then you're all done!


Because this chipboard piece has little cutouts in it, I decided to adhere it to an old book page (another of my $1 books!). Then I cut around it with pinking sheers and inked the edges of the paper with Raspberry Fizz ink.

I hope you enjoyed my card and my easy tutorial. Have a great weekend!