You Were Born Trailing Clouds of Glory

I’ve LOVED unicorns since I was little. Not the cartoonish ones around today, but the regal, majestic ones.

So when I had the chance to do a shower gift bag for a precious baby girl, I thought unicorns and I’m so glad I did. I’m kind of excited with how things turned out.

Some of that excitement comes from trying new things and realizing those ideas worked 🙂 Like modifying bag designs, digitizing hand lettering, and playing with glitter HTV 😀

Also, babies. Those little bundles are pretty exciting. I love holding and snuggling them. There’s something miraculous about a new born. Something heavenly. So I also included some William Wordsworth words (the trails of glory).

This post is kind of picture intensive, but there were quite a few things.

Ready? Let’s go 🙂

I like giving mommy gifts. Those usually consist of thank you cards. But recently, I’ve been going nuts with vinyl, so I included that insanity in the gift as well. But I had to figure out how to package it all. So here’s what the gift looked like packed up.

I made the bag, using a design from SVG Cuts that I altered to fit my needs – that was the first thing that excited me. It worked 🙂 Obviously, the bag and mom’s card coordinated. But I wanted the unicorn on the bag to be a little more dramatic than the one on the card. To do this, I used my prisma color pencils to define and enhance some of the shading.

Here’s the next exciting thing. The words on the card front are from William Wordsworth, but the lettering is mine. See?

I scanned it into the computer and into my Silhouette Design software where I could clean it up. I’ve been practicing my hand lettering for 5-6 months now. I haven’t perfected it, but it’s fun to play with. After I cleaned the lettering up, I used it in my Craft Artist 2 software where I created the card above.

This is the inside of the card. I rarely decorate the inside, but this one just seemed so fitting. This was mom’s card. It was a 5 x 7.

I duplicated these cards and made a dozen 4.25 x 5.5 size cards for the new mom to use as thank you cards. I transferred the card design into my silhouette workspace and really made my print & cut feature work. But those cards needed a box…so I made one. Or two. Each box held 6 cards and their envelopes comfortably.

The saying is one I found in a book but had no author’s name attached to it.

So now, I have two sayings. I also happen to have two 0-3 month onsies just waiting to be vinyled. So, using the hand lettered saying, and the one I found for the front of the card box (I used vinyl on that, as well) I played with some red glitter heat transfer vinyl…it’s amazing. It looks like someone skinned Dorothy’s ruby red slippers and made HTV out of it it was so sparkly.

Here’s how the onsies turned out.

Now I had onsies just kind of floating around in the bag. It was not cute and this bag was all about cute. So, I found baby themed boxes in the design store that held the onsies perfectly.

Here’s what it looked like all laid out.

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Links to the projects:

Carousel Horse Bag (mine looks like a unicorn bag), Card Box, Onsie Box

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Cousins’ Valentine Party

I’ve been sitting on this for a bit! Now that everyone has their things, I can share it 😀

The younger cousins got together and had their own Valentine’s Day party this weekend. They colored Valentines I cut out on my Cameo, did a craft, had a treat then played.

But I played well before they did when I put together matching shirts for the kids.

I like how they turned out and the kids were cute in them.

The white onsies are for the girls and the red shirts are for the boys.

Thanks for looking!

Babies Are Great Excuses to Make Awesome Things!

Like this bag! I used the same papers I used for their baby shower gifts (you can see that, here and here).

The bag was pretty easy to make (there’s a video tutorial on the site) and seems super sturdy.

I added a little extra to the sides by embossing them because I could 😉 Inside was a Royals jumper for the baby and candy for the parents and big sis 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Babies, Part 2

Here’s the second set of baby cards. I have to admit, I’m kind of in love with this set. It turned out better than I thought it would 🙂

The designed the card in Craft Artist 2 and imported it into my silhouette work space to do a print & cut. I used my prismacolor pencils to better define the flower.

Here’s the difference he pencils make. I like the added contrast 🙂

For the umbrella bag (this was an adorable design in an Easter kit, but it worked well for this) I added the digital papers I used to design the card into the Patterns folder in my library so my bag coordinated with my cards. I had some extra vinyl left from my Father’s Day project, so I used that instead of paper for baby Finley’s name 🙂

I absolutely love how this project turned out. Hopefully, my sister-in law will, too!

Thanks for stopping by!

Xoxo

CA2 Digital kit, Umbrella bag

Lots and Lots of Babies Which Means Lots and Lots of Baby Showers

This is a busy baby year! One shower last week. One tomorrow and another couple in a couple of weeks. I don’t usually give baby gifts. I try to give mommy gifts, and usually, it’s cards she can use as thank you cards if she’d like.

Here’s the first set.

 

I designed these cards in Craft Artist 2 then transferred them into my Silhouette work space to do a print & cut before attaching the card front to the actual card. I also used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the little coordinating butterflies to add to the card for a little bit of dimension. Then I made a coordinating box to hold them all.

Thanks for stopping by

xoxo

Box, CA2 digital kit, baby feet

I’m More than Art…

…even though you probably can’t tell from my blog because it is so art focused. But I use art to cope with some of life’s stresses.

I’m also a mom to a couple of children I didn’t give birth to. Luckily, six out of my seven children are legally mine. We’re hoping and praying that the seventh (a nine month old we’ve had since he was three days old) will also legally be ours; but that’s still up in the air.

It’s one of the hardest paths I’ve ever had to walk.

I’m not good with uncertainty. I need the control of having things planned out so I know what needs to be done and when so I can make sure everything gets done.

The first two years we were foster parents showed me that I’m really not a great candidate for this. We have to cede too much control to the state, and it rankles. But when we found out about this little guy (he’s a bio sibling to a couple of our other children), there was no doubt in our minds that we needed to bring him home. In nine hours we rearranged our entire lives and at the end of the day we were smitten with this adorable little boy. We knew he needed a family, but we had no idea how much our family needed him. He’s been a huge blessing to us all from day one.

But babies aren’t easy and seven kids is crazy, but we’re managing. But every three months these last 9 months we’ve had court. We have no idea what will happen those days because the commissioner who has our son’s case has not been predictable. It seems everyone leaves the court room scratching their heads and wondering what just happened. Except one of the attorneys who probably walks out thinking, “I can’t believe that worked.”

So every three months my stress levels amp up. Not only am I managing the normal things of life, I have to prepare myself and my six other children, just in case we go to court with a baby, but come home without one. It has happened to others, so we know the possibility exists. Every three months I have to tamp down my anxiety so I’m not a puddle on the floor. I have to find a way to be okay around our court date. I have to find a way to see something good in the people who may one day leave the court house with their son, who has been my son since he was 3 days old. I have to find a way to see something good in the people who were not able to parent three other children well enough to keep them. These children, two of which are now mine, did not have an easy past and these are the people who should have made their lives better but didn’t. I have to find a way to see something good in them because my children carry them in their hearts and heads all the way down to their DNA. When my children look in the mirror in the future, these are the faces they may see looking back at them. My children need to know that there is good in them regardless of who they look like. They need to know that I love them, no matter who’s eyes they have, or who’s DNA. If they see me finding good in those people now, I hope they’ll believe me later.

To help me gain that perspective, I’ve been making books for them each month of what’s going on in the baby’s life. They’re missing so much, I hope this helps them not miss everything. And I find that when I can put my fears aside and do this, it’s easier to see them simply as parents. Parents who are missing out on their child’s life. I put myself in her shoes and I know this is how I would want to be treated. It’s the right thing to do, so I do it. Then my eyes are opened a little bit more and I realize she’s not the enemy. That although I think this precious little one will be safer here, she still deserves respect. And art does that.

Art brings things into focus for me. It distracts me when I’m trying not to think about the upcoming court date, or when I have too much nervous energy to sleep the night before court (I didn’t fall asleep until about 5 am this morning).
When I’m stressing out about all the other things on my plate (I have 4 teenagers – two are graduating this year, a tween, a preschooler, and now an infant, and each one can be classified as special needs) I can sit at my desk and lose myself in the quiet of the night and de-stress.

Art makes life better.

I’m including the book I finished today for his 6th month. I purposefully didn’t include his pictures. I made a deal with myself when I started this blog, that very few, if any, of my childrens’ pictures would show up here. It’s too public of a space. Thanks for understanding and thank you for stopping by.