Ode to My Mom, the Gardener

Several weeks ago my beloved and I made a jumbo Jenga game for my son's 6th grade party.  We used 4x4s and I kinda messed up the measurements (forgot the measure twice, cut once rule...) leaving my dearest the job of trimming a chunk off the ends.  What we were left with was a nice little collection of square chunks that I wouldn't let him throw away.

My mom loves to putter in her garden.  Her birthday was yesterday so I made her a little somethin' somethin' with one of the blocks. (Thankfully she knows me well enough to not expect a gift on time!)

I love the mix of the rough-textured block (I didn't sand it except for a smidge on the sides; didn't want it to be splinterish) and the soft, feminine touch of the flower, cheesecloth and swirly bit in the back.

The flower is made with TH's Tattered Florals die cut from a scrap of experimental paper that I had smoodged color all over a while ago.  I also stamped some text over the flowers for a little interest and backed it with spritzed and inked up seam binding.

Love this garden quote.

I am adding this to the Our Creative Corner challenge: Handmade Flowers and Hand-dyed Ribbon here.

Thank you for stopping by today!

Rise and Grind - Starbucks ATCs

Good morning!

I love my Starbucks.  I saw an ATC swap called Spectacular Starbucks over at AFA and couldn't help but sign up for it.

I used a lot of recycled items for these.

Title: Good Morning!

 The recycled bits on this one are the logo and the coffee sleeve on the cup is actually from a coffee sleeve.  The rays are gold metallic acrylic paint.  It's hard to see in the pic but they are very shiny and shimmery.

Title: Since 1971

For this one I ripped up and layered a Starbucks napkin.  I like the texture and random bits of text.  The logo is from a brochure.

Title: Not Just Coffee

 This one is in honor of my daughter.  She loves the Very Berry Hibiscus with lemonade instead of water (try it - it's delish!).  I have a stash of the mix for her at home.  I took the cup and title off the cardboard packaging and then tried my hand at drawing a lemon wedge.

Title: Pike Place Roast

Ultra-recycled!  I have no idea what made me think of doing this (probably because I was running out of ideas and materials), but most of the bits on this one are from a coffee bean bag.  I've been collecting coffee bean bags for a couple of years.  I saw a bag on Pinterest (damn that Pinterest!) made of them and hope to some day make one, but in the mean time I raided my stash and cut one up for this.  I ran the background through my Big Shot to get a burlap-ish, coffee bag-like texture.

Here is a totally random ATC that has nothing to do with coffee.  Corrie over at SDC put up a challenge to use pink and orange this week.  I started with pink and orange on this but then blue snuck in.

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope the sun is shining where you are.  It's thinking about it here in Seattle.

Tattered Florals Wanna Be

There are some really cool projects out there using Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals die.  Unfortunately my budget is limited and that die is not in my collection yet.  Wandering around Pinterest I found a great DIY flower tutorial for making your own by Paul Browning.  They remind me of dogwood blooms.  Here's the one I made:

This was Super Easy.  Here's what I used:

 - Scrap cardstock, white and dark brown
 - Water in spray bottle
 - Chalk ink, Amber Clay
 - Distress Stain, Wild Honey
 - Toothpick (to curl up petals)
 - Sun (mini) punch
 - Chopstick
 - Heat gun

Click on the link to his post to try it!