Updating!

OMG... my last post was Feb 14th!!!
This will be an update so beware of a long post!
Lots of things happened that kept me out of blog land a couple of months... work most of them, a visit to my country after seven years, time well spent with family, personal issues hard to solve (life is never easy...) and added to all of this a completely lack of inspiration. I hope that breaking this inertia will help me to start creating again since it has a therapeutic effect on me and right now I really need it.
Do you want me to share a few pictures with you? sorry if not! I was going to post them anyway but it´s polite to ask first ☺
Work first because it´s what took most of my time, first picture of my poster presentation in Baltimore, MD (my first time in that beautiful city) and the second one me giving a scary talk at a scientific meeting in Budapest, Hungary (another beautiful city!)

Next serie of pictures are from my trip to my country: Argentina. How I missed the beauty of the plains! gorgeous place...

La Pampa plains

My beautiful niece Sofia turned 15 this year, and she is turning into a nice and beautiful lady, isn´t she gorgeous?!!

and we celebrated it with a huge party! Here are a few of them just about to leave to the party and some at the party itself. My sister Daniela made Sofia´s party dress all by herself and hers too!! she is so good at sewing, both dresses looked amazing! click on them to enlarge ☺

Sofia, the party girl!

Sofia´s mom (my sister Daniela) and brother (Facundo)

 

 

 

 Brother and sister: Facundo and Sofia

Rosa (my mom), me and my little sister Popi

Me and sweetheart having fun

Me, my brother Jorge and his girlfriend Erica, and my sweetheheart

And I got to help with a few things for the party: party invites (you can see them in this post) and place cards with the name of each person invited to the party. I didn´t have any of my craft supplies but I managed to do something: I made two different kind of flowers using scraps of the fabric my sister used to make my niece´s dress

everybody helped here: my sister Popy glued the manes in place, my mom made the leaves you see behind the flowers and I put it all together. A picture of the before and after (me celebrating I finished them just in time, whoo hoo!)

Here is how they looked on the tables

And to finish a week of complete madness before the party, my sweet sister Daniela ask me 10 minutes before she was leaving for a wedding party to make a card for the newlywed couple. My first reaction was: WHAT???!!!
this is what I created for her

a very simple card, sorry about the picture... it looked better in real life, the image is from Beccy and I colored it with colored pencils (my sister has a gorgeous collection of them and that helped a lot), no glitter, no ribbon... we wrote a nice sentiment on the inside and off to the party she went!
Thank you for stopping by, I hope I can start creating again and sharing them with you because looks like I´m missing all the fun! have a great day and a Happy Easter!☺

more than chocolate...

I love you

more than chocolate

This is a gate fold card-wall hanger (something like 2 in 1) I made for my sweetheart for Valentine´s day. I gave it to him just a few minutes ago after we had a wonderful dinner I made for him: cheese fondue with boiled vegetables, and for dessert: chocolate brownie-like cake with strawberry ice cream.

Back to my card! I´m using here two images from Glitterbabe: Lacy Heart and HugsNKisses. I printed the heart on yellow cardstock (the reverse side of another patterned paper) and shaded it with colored pencils, then I glittered it all over.

The kisses were printed on scraps of chocolate cardstock and I added a tiny red heart sticker. The outside kiss was placed with foam tape on the heart to give the card a bit of dimension.

The front of the card is made with acetate to show the pretty patterned paper I used on the inside, I drawn stitches with white gel pen around the gate fold card and on the outer side of the piece of cardstock (another left over of the file folders) that forms the wall hanger. I added a piece of ribbon from my stash where it can be hung.
I almost forgot! The sentiment on the heart is a freebie I had for ages from Heavens Dreams.
This was very easy and a lot of fun to make! hope you like it and thanks for stopping!

I´m playing with this one at:
The Outlawz at their Saturday´s scrapbooking challenge: add a heart or the word love
Catch the bug: different fold

Digital scrapbooking! again...

I´ve started organizing my craft room... do you know what that means???????? now it looks like a bomb had exploded in my tiny room! but this is something I need to do, for my sanity first of all, second because I need to put back everything again, third because I don´t have the slightest idea of what I have... I did my first step and I´m very pleased with the result: I sorted all my digital stuff (papers, embellishments, templates, etc...) and I´m almost done with all my scraps of paper! the only problem I have now is I can not play as freely as I want, so maybe for a few weeks I won´t do much of crafting (but I hope will do LOT of organizing my place!).

Meanwhile, and just to keep my creativity flowing I made a digital scrapbook page to play at The Outlawz on their Satuday´s scrapbooking challenge group. This time we have to follow a recipe: 1 solid cardstock, 2 photos, 3 patterned papers and 4 (or more) embellishments.

I´m scrapping my favorite recipe: Magdalenas (a Spanish cupcake). Well, actually it´s not the recipe, just the picture of the yummy cupcake, I´m planning to scrap the recipe on a second page (stay tunned!! but if you don´t want to wait I already posted it last year, here).  On this layout I used a lot of digital goodies from wonderful creative people that give their time and amazing work for free: Summer Driggs, Deb from The Stampin Cop and Designs by Angelica.
Thanks for stopping!

What I´ve been up to...

Hi there! for those who are wondering I´m still here!!
These past weeks I´ve been very busy finishing my niece´s Sweet 15 invite cards. I started making them a few months ago but when you have a deadline and you need to give the finishing touches everything get hectic. So here are the 100 invites I´m sending today to my niece, she chose three different designs:
Card 1

I tried to use a simple design inside and outside: an image, a ruffled ribbon and an embellishement. The image is a colored lineart I found at deviantArt and I cut dragonflies with my cricut machine and glittered them after.

Card 2

On this one I used some PS brushes to make every part, then I cut by hand the main sakura flower and the inside sentiment and curled their borders before placing them on the card. I chose a very pretty ribbon that I hot gued to the front as the embellishment.

And finally card 3

For this one I used an already colored medallion from Fred she said as the main image. I cut the center part of it and used foam tape for dimension. Because this one is a very simple card I gave it a few touches: I used pearled white paper as the base and I embellished the main flower with a nice, beautifully sparkling rhinestone. The black border on the front is made with my cricut and the patterned paper is also from Fred she said, the colors match perfectly!

And while I was finishing these cards, just not to loose my mojo I made a couple of digital scrapbook pages to play at The Outlawz Challenges on their Saturday´s scrapbooking challenge group.
For this one we had to use swirls and butterflies:

I´m using here a kit Cosmos from Akizo Designs to scrap a picture of my daughter on our last summer vacations.
And on the second one we had to add stitches and fabric:

this challenge got me thinking a couple of days how to use fabric on my layout but (lucky me!) I found a pretty digital kit with a cute lace envelope (Cold as Ice from Fantasy Moments). I´m not completely confortable how I used the colors, I played with this layout at the color challenge group at The Outlawz too, and the challenge was celadron, lavander and white; if you have any suggestions how to make it look more balanced I will really appreciate it. The sketch is from Lasting Memories Layout challenges but I didn´t finish my layout on time to play at their challenge. The title is a sentiment from TlcCreations.

To finish this long post I just wanted to ask you forgive my spelling today since the "check spelling" feature of blogger is not working today for me... Thanks for stopping! have a great day ☺

I {♥} U

It was ages since I didn´t use a digital image on my cards... I like how this one turned out, very easy to make too!

This weekend I was lacking of inspiration so I decided to make some flowers and embellishments while my mojo was getting back to me. I made this heart to try this yo-yo heart embellishment I saw a while ago here. I printed the letters on cardstock, cut them and glittered them with white chunk glitter.

I cut a strip of embossed vellum paper from my stash and glued it to the bottom part of the card (not sure if you can see it from the picture...), glued a scrap of red net and on top I ruffled a piece of white sheer ribbon from my stash too. Finally I hot glued the letter and heart.
Thanks for stopping!

I´m playing at:
The Outlawz at their Sunday´s Clean and Simple challenge: sketch
Cupcake Inspiration challenge #95
Pile it on challenge #4: love is in the air!
Waltzingmouse challenge #31

Celebrate with a pretty dress...

 I´m loving this image! it´s Put on your party dress from Michelle Perkett. I colored the cute dress with colored pencils (no blending this time), glued some iridescent pink sequins and added tiny dots of pearl paint on the center of the flowers.

It might look a time consuming card but surprisingly it´s not; it took me less than one hour to finish it all, stitches included! So here is how I made it: I took a scrap piece of patterned paper and layered it with pink cardstock, then I added dots of pearl paint around the DP and added a few on it. Because I´m following Michelle Perkett Studio challenge sketch, I faux stitched strips with white gel pen and I real stitched light pink glass sees beads on their centers.

Then I placed the DP with foam tape on the center of the card, and on top of it I placed the image (with foam tape too), and added a sentiment that is an old clear sticker.

It looks better in real life, but I don´t have good light at home to take pictures at night... Thanks for looking!!

I´m playing at:
The Outlawz at their Thursday´s Prismas and other medium group: anything goes
The Outlawz at their Tuesday´s Color challenge group: pink and brown
The Outlawz at their Monday´s Birthday cards: pink brown and green
Michelle Perkett Studio challenge: sketch
Pollycraft challenge #76: pastel colors
Inkspirations color challenge #54

{LAVA} U!

How cute is this image??!! it´s Lava lamp from Glitterbabe (check out Stef´s art shop here!) This card is very simple and here is how I made it: I colored the image with colored pencils and blended them with mineral oil. I wet my fingertip with glue and touched slightly the image, then sprinkled glitter on the lava to add sparkle! Cut the image around and placed it on the card with foam tape.

Then I took a scrap of paper to stamp the sentiment with alphabet rubber stamps (from Image Tree), cut one end and curled it a bit before attaching it to the card.

The flower is made with a piece of an old ribbon I had on my stash that I ruffled by pulling at the white thread on one side, tied it with a knot on the back and glued it to the card, then I attached an iridescent flat bottom pearl on its center. And that´s it!

I´m playing at:
The Outlawz at their Sunday´s Clean and Simple group: Recipe -> color Red and one embellishment
The shabby tea room challenge #45: white and bright
All that scraps: early valentine ideas
Little red wagon challenge #64: one layer wonder
For Fun: everything glitter

Funny frames

I supposedly had to finish these funny frames a week and a half ago... but well... better late than never, right?! And here they are! I made 7! (click to enlarge)

I wanted to make a little something for my sweetheart co-workers for The three wise man´s day (it was the 6th of January), that´s the day where all presents are exchanged instead of Christmas Day, so I thought it could be nice to give them something to make them smile since they are very nice people and the hard work they do is not always acknowledged by most of us (myself included), until you have to do it (or like me, you have someone very near you doing it)... they are operators for an insurance company and I know sometimes it can be a very tough job.

All images are from Bugaboo Stamps, Jodie has an amazing creativity and sense of humor, she does wonderful images for us to enjoy and laugh and has developed several funny characters like Stella I like so much. I colored them with colored pencils and blended some parts with mineral oil. The sentiments are all hand written in Spanish but they are translations of the sentiments that come along with Jodie´s images, not only from the images I´m using here but from others that fit well with the message I wanted them to have.
What I did is a frame to stand at a desk (for example...), I found the pattern at Peet´s blog (another amazing crafter!) and used some file folders I saved from the bin at work some weeks ago... the patterned papers are from a very old stash I have, I finished them with some glittery touches (rhinestones, glitter glue, clear decoupage glue for glass effect) and faux stitches made with white gel pen. Here is the back view

And here a front view of each one, click on them to larger if you want to see them better ☺

And I made a simple envelope to wrap them with thin craft paper, a piece of thin raffia tied with a knot and the recipient´s name written with marker on the front.

My sweetheart gave them to his friends today and my funny frames were a success!!! I´m so glad they liked them because these crafts are unique and personalized (I did some research about the personalities and likings of my hubby co-workers before starting), and I made them just for each of them!
Thanks for looking!!!

I´m playing at:
The Outlawz Challenges at their Thursday´s Prisma & other medium group: Prisma and petals
Pollycraft Monday Challenge #76: pastel colors
Meljen challenge #41: square or round shaped card (they are not actually cards so you are free to remove my entry if it doesn´t fit ☺)