Mom

She is in my life every single day.  Today, I decided to take a couple of her paintings and turn them into cards.  I think she would smile.  She loved scripture.  I know for a fact that she read the Bible every day of her life.  In the last few days, we read it to her.  So I added Bible phrases to each painting.

I love this painting.  Belgium work horses.  Her dad raised them.  They used to farm the land with them.  I remember mom saying that we had "House" blood in us and we were sturdy, strong stock.  Or that we "had strong bones."  She said we were built like work horses.  I think it was good to let her children know that they were strong.  Both physically, mentally and emotionally.    Nothing else, just the scripture added to this card.

This is a painting mom did years ago of the George House homestead.  It's where she grew up, where I lived until I was 5 when dad built a house on the corner of the farm.  I lived on this land until I was 16 years old.  When I was little, and my legs were short, this lane was forever long!  It flooded, the water froze, we ice skated down the lane.  We ran to catch the bus, we rode our bikes up and down it.  When the house was first built, the road was in the opposite direction, down by the creek, so that lane was even longer!  We used to "hike" back to the creek as kids.  Over the years, God has shown me my path in life.  How blessed am I that He started that path with one this gorgeous!

 Not one to leave things alone (it's really hard!) I added some glitter to the trees and grass.  I love what it did….turned the painting into a card.

Mom loved her flowers.  I loved her Iris paintings.  She once said to me she thought the flowers were praising Jehovah.  Thus the verse I picked for this painting.  You know, she did over 400 paintings and I have photos of all of them.  I could do this for quite some time to come!!!  The legacy she left her children is something I haven't begun to wrap my head around yet.  But the legacy of our faith, our belief, our trust in Jehovah Jesus Messiah is the greatest gift of all.

He doesn't care how I make the noise, just so long as it is noise and it is joyful!!!  Does He "hear" my art?  There are moments when I just want to shout it out.  I know it's in me, I just have to get it out!!!  Not only did I add some glitter, I added some die cuts.  Definitely changes the painting!  

He has given me this path in life, He has kept me strong, and in return, I am making such a joyful noise, praising His name all the day long!!!

Without you.....

Two sets of Monkey stamps by "Talk About Images".  And Lucy.  I'm learning.  I used a medium weight copic paper....too thin to layer.  But I still like the concept.  Color the images with copics, then cut out and layer, then adhere to white cardstock and distress ink the edges.  The paper would be fine for just plain coloring, but it just doesn't work for layering.  

"Without you it's just a barrel...."  isn't that just the truth?  I went through a phase last summer of collecting ladybugs and putting them in a corner in my garden.  I think I'm going to collect sock monkeys this winter.  They are just so cute and they remind me a lot of my childhood.  Grandma Moore made me one once.  I'm sure it got loved to pieces!  We went to lunch at Cracker Barrel today and I found this little guy.  Wrapped him around a pen in my craft tool tote.

Did you know that Cracker Barrel has Moon Pies?  They taste just like they did when I was a kid!  Always good to find things that remind you of your childhood.  :o)

Some non-dolly cards

Design U'R Memories offers numerous card-making classes each month.  I try to take them when I'm here.  They cost about $20 and I figure I walk away with enough stuff to make 20 - 25 cards.  Well worth it!  But I do need to get current with my blogging as I can't remember which cards I made in class and which ones I made at a crop!  I think this was from a class...but then they wouldn't have used the diecut on top, so maybe not!  LOL!!! Oh!  Where did I leave my memory???

The background for this card was a class....but everything else I added!  Lots of Graphic 45 paper on this one.  I did love the secret garden series.

I demo'd distress inks and how you can make the sky and grass and then stamp trees.  So easy to turn these demo samples into cards...

I did a challenge once on how to make 20 cards in 20 minutes.  This would be one of those.  The card is actually a tag from the secret garden line with 2 layers of paper cut for the mats, then stickles on top and a peel-off sentiment.  I am really liking peel-offs these days!

So, how many cards can you make in 20 minutes?  I can't do that many any more as I need to break for chocolate way too often!  :o)

...and more cards.....

It never ceases to amaze me how differently Crystal stickles looks on the various background papers.  It is the only shade of stickles that I've used on all my cards.   Just go back the last few blogs and check it out!  Here you can see the difference in just this single card!

and by using stickles, you can make layers pop.  I buy 5 bottles at a time!

this card just makes me smile every time I look at it!

and if I were ill, I'd love to get this!  The entire background is stickled!

What on earth do I plan to do with all these cards?  Well...stay tuned as there are even more!!!

All those empty cricut boxes

Now that Michaels sells this nifty little organizer to put your books and cartridges in - what did you do with all those empty boxes?

I set off to decorate a few of mine!  I loved the old dioramas that we made in grade school and these boxes are the perfect size for them!

Here's the front of the box.  diecuts, flowers, pearls, bling.  Love this paper!

a diecut dressform and then Jolee's stickers - really!  And prima velvet flowers. 

So my cricut box is now a perfect closet!

But then I found some old battery operated lights and decided I needed to do something to use them.  This was a bit more difficult as I literally built a faux back to the box to hide the battery and wires so I still had the full depth of the box to play with.  This one has to stay open, the first one can be closed.

The lights are on the top left side of the open box.

The deer are die cuts.  The 3D snowmen are ornaments from the thrift store.  Tim Holtz trees.  The snowflake border diecut across the top, ok lots of die cuts.  You'll have to look at these closeups...and I made the tissue paper tensile  on the bottom.

The deer are cut in glitter paper, and there's loads of crystal stickles glitter that just doesn't show up.  vintage blue rayon ribbons.  Even a tiny little bird in the tree.  It's so much fun to have to hunt to find all the little things buried in this former cricut box!

I do think I love doing dimensional paper art like this and diecuts just make it so much fun!  Most of these are from Memory Box.  Even the paper in the background is gorgeous.

So once again, what did you do with your empty cricut boxes???