Birthday Card

Another set of cards completed for the reunion! This one actually has a little pocket inside to tuck cash, a check, or a giftcard into. If you want to make your own pocketed card, here's a link to my template in PDF format:

Download Pocketed Card Template
Download Adobe Reader

(The edge of the template lines up with the edge of the paper so that you don't have to do so much cutting.)

Handy Tip:
For another variation on distressing, try brushing the surface of an ink pad along the edges of your paper. This works especially well when the paper has a slight texture. I used a sepia colored ink pad for this card.

Photo Shoot

When my good friend Lindsey asked me to take some pictures of her and her daughter Sadie I was excited, but terrified! I'm really only an amateur. Thankfully they are both great models! I had a blast and learned a lot.

I did a little touching up in Photoshop afterward. I warmed up the pictures by changing the curves on the blue channel to add more yellow. (Sunlit pictures tend to be blue.) I didn't have to do much else in the way of color correction, everything was already pretty saturated which I liked, but I did mess with the levels to bring out the lights and darken the darks.

I smoothed Sadie's skin on her close-up on her mom's skirt to enhance her baby-soft skin. I did this by duplicating the image and then applying a Gaussian blur of about 5.3 pixels. I then erased around the sharp edges and details like her eyes and nose and such using a soft-edged brush. I may have also changed the opacity of the blurred layer to allow more of the original picture to shine through. I just can't remember.

Birthday Card

Here's the card I made for my brother-in-law's birthday.

Handy Tips:
-For the scalloped circle on this card I drew a 2 inch circle on the backside of a yellow plaid paper using my Circle Ruler from EK Success. Drawing on the back keeps me from having to erase pencil marks later. I then cut along the drawn circle using a scalloped edging scissor from Provo Craft. If you don't have such a handy tool as a circle ruler, trace around caps, lids, plates, and whatever you can find. You'll be surprised at how many round objects you can find!

- Distressing paper. To distress the blue plaid rectangle and the yellow scalloped circle on this card I just rubbed them along the edges with 220 grit sandpaper. (That's pretty fine grit.) You can also get some fun distressing by crumpling the paper first and then sanding it and also by sanding the paper on top of textured surfaces like a wrinkly paper grocery sack or a rock.

Robert Munsch

My favorite book from Kindergarten was Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, and it has become even more dear to me since having Liam. It's such a sweet story. It's fun to read it now that I understand a lot of the absurdity of a mother crawling through her grown-up son's window to hold and sing to him. Somehow, that just seemed normal as a child!

I've also greatly enjoyed The Paper Bag Princess which I found hilarious. A fun take on the generic princess story. Maybe it's because my mom, who my dad still brags about for fixing the dryer, always taught us that women could do things just as well as men could, but I really enjoyed this book.

Check out more of Robert Munsch's Books at robertmunsch.com.

Jane Yolen and Mark Teague

Liam and I just finished reading (again) How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mark Teague. We love this and the other dinosaur books from this duo. What a clever idea to have dinosaurs play children's roles in human families! I really appreciate how they model good behaviors for children.

I love the simple way the stories are told. The words just seem to flow right off the page; there's no wondering how a word should be emphasized to fit the right meter for the rhyme.

Liam and I both LOVE the pictures. They are perfect for telling the story and holding the interest of a toddler. Mark Teague does a fantastic job of having a lot going on in the background without it becoming too distracting. His color is clean and vibrant while still maintains the details in the pictures to keep them from becoming too flat.

You can find out more about them at janeyolen.com and Scholastic Books.

Dress Make-over

Before/After

I watched an episode of this show called "I've Got Nothing to Wear" where three designers take an existing wardrobe, cut it up, and make new outfits, and I got so super excited to try it. So...I took this maternity dress that I knew I'd never wear and used the fabric from it to make a skirt that I absolutely adore. All it cost me was a 1/4 yard of black fabric and a little lace.