Crafting is such a beautiful thing.  What a way to unwind and let go of the days hassles.  Nothing better than hanging out with my two pups, listening to music and making and learning new things!

I’ll be back sooooooooooooo soon – with pictures too!

xoxoxoxo

3D fish and seashell at the bottom. Love the school of fish and his 3D bubbles coming from his mouth. The edge details are made by using glitter pen.

3D Fishies on a very colorful background. 3D fish bubbles and 3D glittery seaweed at the bottom. The fish outline is adorable and made with a colorful glittery pen too!

SCHWEET SCHWEET! Look at this big sea turtle. What you cannot see from a simple scan of this card: Mr. Turtle is 3D and raised, he also has 3D air bubbles and the seaweed in this card is glitterfied Gosh, I LOVE GLITTER! Love the accent drawn around the card, it’s done with a glitter pen.

Two sweet sea horses. What you cannot see from the picture are the different textiles used to create this card. Thick glitter stock for their bodies and googly eyes. The seaweed is 3D and she uses glitter pen around the edges. Their fins are also 3D.

YOU WANT MORE?  Ok, here ya go!

Above is a more nature themed card with 3D butterfly- her purple floral accents are beautiful, metallic, and glittery.

This scan turned out good but what you cannot see is the iridescent skirt this little fairy is wearing!

Look at her flowers- they remind me of gigantic sun flowers that are pink; we should have those in real life!  Oh so cute!

Last but not least, a floral design.  Both sets tied with pretty ribbon just for ME!

All of these cards are 3D which is hard to see by just a simple scan of them.  Some stickers were used to create these cards but her favorite type of card to make is an Iris folded card that she learned from her Aunt.  What she is known for are her “Iris” hand folded greeting cards, looks like she’s even getting ready to post a tutorial soon   Happiness!  Thank you again Mel!  I love my cards and will cherish them!

*~*~*~*~ If you are looking to have adorable, affordable, quality custom cards for any occasion, please visit Mel at her blog to contact her:    http://pupkinstuff1027.wordpress.com

Here I’d like to pass along an EXCELLENT website called “All Recipes“.  It is a FREE site which you can become a supporting member with a few additional benefits if you like.  I signed up in 2005 and have been loving it ever since.

Basically, people submit their recipes and folks try them out.  They can rate the recipes and also leave feedback (i.e. things they’ve done to tweak the recipe and helpful tips to make it even better).  If you like a recipe you can “add it to your recipe box” and save it there for future use; this would be ONE of my favorite features.

The thing I love about it, there have been many times when at a party I love a dish and ask for the recipe and the person “kinda” tells me what’s in it.  I can go to that site and search it out and find the recipe!  Always!  For example, the brownies my sister makes with German Chocolate cake mix…. I found the recipe there and made the brownies this morning.  I am including the recipe here if you wanna make the world’s richest brownies EVER!    :0)

I’ve discovered the BEST BEST BEST part of their site – as I plan out 4 recipes I wanna make for the week, I simply click “add to shopping list” and it adds all the ingredients I need to buy at the store for the recipes I want to make!  I print it out and take it along to the store and that week while cooking, I ALWAYS have the exact ingredients I need without calling a neighbor to “borrow” a cup of this or that.  I have found this to be the best feature, money saver, and time saver ever… and it’s free.  I have recently joined as a supporting member because I believe in the site that much!

There are kid friendly meal ideas, vegetarian ideas (*my daughter is a veg head), and healthy cooking too.  Check it out, it’s free, what do you have to lose?

CARAMEL BROWNIES:

Ingredients

• 1 (14 ounce) package individually wrapped caramels
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1 (18.25 ounce) package German chocolate cake mix
• 3/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

I help to decorate desks at work for people’s Birthday.  My very good friend will be celebrating her big day on January 26th so I decided to do something different for a change!

I went to Walm*art and stocked up on base colors of felt for only 20 cents a sheet.  Then I wanted MORE colors so I went to my local Michael’s Craft Store where the colors selection was plentiful albeit a little more expensive.

So far I have cut out all the felt multi-colored dots and just need to sew them together.  I have purchase all the supplies including the transparent thread *who knew there was such a thing?*

Also, my husband bought me a new *inexpensive* sewing machine so I could get my craft on!

I’ll post a picture  just as soon as I decorate her desk in the coming week.  You could use this idea to decorate for any occasion.  My son just joined the U.S. Air Force.  He also graduates High School this year so we’ll have a big party for him before he heads out to boot camp.  I suspect doing this very same project for him, in the Air Force colors of course

**update**  1/27/10

Here is how my friends desk turned out:

Just a few things.  After taking hours to cut out the felt dots it would be a shame to discard them.  However, if not folded properly could become a big tangled mess.   I found that by folding a thick newspaper section in two and wrapping the dotted garland around and around *like they use to do for Christmas lights to keep them neat and tidy* they will not become tangled.

My son found this dotted wrapping paper used for her background walls at the dollar store.  The balloons were also purchased at the dollar store to add some more happiness   Zachary came to work with me and helped me jazz up her desk.

This was a fun project.  Cannot wait to do more!