Grandparents Anniversary Card

Last week, my grandparents celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. I think that is pretty amazing. don't you?  As soon as I thought about making a card to commemorate their special day, I thought of this image, Young Love from Mo Manning and I knew this image would be perfect for them. I love the look of contentment on their faces, they seem to be content with life and with each other. I colored the image with Copics and used some paper that has been in my stash for quite a while. I kept the layout and the embellishments pretty simple, because I know that is what my grandmother especially enjoys, it seems to bother her is I put to much stuff on cards that I send to her. I wish I had been there to give this to them in person, but it just didn't work out. I hope they both liked their card!

I am also entering this in the Mo's Challenge Blog's Anything Goes with a Mo Image challenge.

Happy Anniversary Kip

Kip and I celebrated our sixth anniversary on Saturday and this is the card I made for him. We have a tradition of doing something new and hopefully different every year and we alternate years planning. With an anniversary the week before Christmas we put more thought into our activity than our gifts. As far as the gifts so, we give each other something that somehow relates to the "traditional" gift for that year.

This was my year to plan our anniversary activity. I started thinking a while back and came up with dance lessons. I do not dance at all. Ever. I have two left feet and am not the most graceful person in the world. But Kip enjoys dancing. We have never danced together because I do not dance. I arranged to have us go in to a local dance studio for a private dance lesson together and unknown to Kip I have also taken a few lessons by myself so that I can feel more comfortable. He was very shocked that I had planned this because of my precious reluctance to dance at all. We haven't had our lesson yet, but I can't wait to show him what I learned.

Since our activity revolved around dancing, I wanted an image of a couple dancing. It took me forever to find one that I really liked. I found this one called As You Wish from Tiddly Inks that I thought was perfect. It is colored with Copic markers, papers are from my stash and the flowers and pearls came from Michael's.

The traditional gift for the sixth anniversary is iron or candy. Kip gave me a cast iron tea set with a tea pot and two tea cups. It is gorgeous. I look at these all the time but never with the intention of buying one. I love it though, it is the most beautiful shade of blue. I gave him a cast iron Korean BBQ plate and a copy of Iron Man 2 for his movie collection. His BBQ plate can either be used on the stove top or on the grill. We just bought a grill this summer and he has had a lot of fun learning how to cook on that.

Thanks for reading all about my anniversary!

Happy Anniversary Kip

Yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary. I haven't had a lot to post this week because I have been hard at work on my gift to my hubby and since he does sometimes take a peek at my blog, I didn't want to spoil any surprises. This is my anniversary card to him, I wanted to give him a little something special, and since he knows that the Sweet Pea images take a little more effort from me to color, I decided I wanted to use one of those images. I wanted to use one of his favorite colors, blue, as the main color for my image. I realized I don't color just blue a lot either! I am very happy with the way that this turned out and even with the bow, I managed to make a card that wasn't too girly for him. 

One thing we do is for our gift, we play along with the "traditional" gift each year, don't spend a lot of money and then try and do something fun. The first couple of years he planned and then last year we decided to alternate years. I planned a trip to see Star Wars in Concert which was amazing. This year we went and saw The Nutcracker, which neither of us had seen before.

The traditional gift for year five of marriage is wood. I made Kip this wood shadow box. Our last name is spelled out in the top of the house. 

Here are a few close-ups. For this panel, I took a mini canvas, painted it and then stamped the flower onto the painted area, edged it with a brown and then wrote in the year of our wedding at the bottom.

This is a verse from Ecclesiastes 4. I chose this passage because it emphasizes that being alone is not always better. The cord was chosen because of the end of the passage says "a three fold cord is not easily broken". I loved that this cord had three distinct colors and even better, it matched the color combo and paper that I had already picked out. 

The center sections of photos are just pictures that I love of Kip and represented different things that I love about him. Clockwise: the first picture was in Chicago the year we went there in February on vacation, this is us at the end of the Star Wars concert, a picture of Kip with my cat sleeping on him and finally a picture of Kip with my Aunt Ella.

This is a copy of our wedding vows.

And this is my favorite picture from our wedding.

We had a great time. I will show you my gift from him in the next day or so, it was very impressive! Thanks for stopping by!

Grandparents Anniversary

Another goal I have for myself this year is to make sure that the cards I make actually make it to their intended recipient and that they arrive on or before the event I have made the card for. Not a week after! I am great about remembering birthdays, anniversaries and other important days. I am not good about putting said cards in an envelope, attaching a stamp and then making sure they get mailed. My first test of the new year is my grandparents anniversary which is on Wednesday. The card is made and ready to drop in the mail in the morning. They are celebrating what I believe is their sixty fourth wedding anniversary, isn't that just amazing? I decided to make this card more in my Grandmother's taste so it is fairly simple and has flowers on it. A lot of my childhood memories of spending time with both of them at their house revolved around the garden and the flower beds. The papers I chose are from DCWV and the stamps are from an old Provo Craft set that I have had for a long time. The paper flowers are from Joilee's and they originally had a silver center but I wanted them to be pink so I took my pink Spica pen and changed them.

I have spent part of the afternoon going through things in my craft room. I swear I have enough paper to cover all of the southern states! I keep trying to convince myself that I do not have to buy paper in every store I walk into. Last week I went to my LSS and she had new Basic Grey paper out and I had to have a sheet or two. Ok, maybe 6 or 7 but who's counting? I found most of my Christmas themed paper today. Just a little late, but, hey I will be ready for next year. I am starting to work on some Valentine's Day projects and didn't think I had any paper for that, but I found about 60 sheets. Organization is our household goal for the year and since we will be moving my crafting area soon, I am trying to sort my things and pass along the things I no longer use. Thanks for stopping by tonight!

Happy Anniversary Kip

Thanks for all the anniversary wishes. Today is our actual anniversary, we have been married four years. I have had this image for a while, as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to use it for an anniversary card. This is a digital image from Mo's Digital Pencil and is called Jack and Ginger. There are some pretty incredible drawings in her collection and there are new ones all the time. After printing the image, I colored it with Copic markers. I decided to sponge around the image because the bright white panel was just a bit much with the paper that I had already picked out. The patterned paper is from the DCWV Once Upon a Time pack and so is the sentiment.

One thing we like to do is play along with the "traditional" wedding gift for each year and come up with something creative to go along with that theme. The gift for this year is fruit or flowers. Not the easiest thing to come up with a gift for a guy. I finally came up with making this tin of candy covered Oreos. They have a flower on the top! They were a little hard to get a picture of though. We are off to dinner now!

25th Anniversary

This afternoon, Kip and I are going to an anniversary for a couple celebrating their 25th year of marriage. I wanted to make something a little more formal than I normally make. I stared with this paper from the Paper Company, it is black on one side and on the reverse it is this pretty silver/gray color. The white panel is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, the scallops were punched with Marvy punches. The sentiment is from the CTMH set, For every Occasion. I love that set and use the sentiments in it all the time. I embossed the sentiment with silver Ranger embossing powder. The ribbon is from my stash and the flowers are Petaloo. I buy flowers all the time, but rarely use them. I think I just have a hang up about their placement, I make it much harder than I am sure it really is. There are very few craft related things that I don't dabble in or do to some extent, with the exception of floral arranging. I've tried but they just never look good. So I think putting flowers on cards makes me think of that. 

I am having a great visit with my parents this weekend. My mom and I went to a few yard sales yesterday and we also paid a visit to Hobby Lobby. Her favorite craft right now is making ornaments. She makes a couple of different kinds, some with these tiny little beads and others with sequins and stuff. I think she has a few with her, I will have to take a some pictures and show you later. Well we are off to church now, have a great afternoon.

Grandparents Anniversary

One of my goals for the coming year is to make my cards and get them in the mail in time for the occasion that I am making the card for! My grandparents will be celebrating their anniversary on Jan. 6th. I believe that it is their 62 anniversary. So the card is all done and ready to go in the mail. I am so happy with myself, at least I am starting off the year on the right track! The colors on this card match a little better IRL, the stamped part looks much brighter on this picture. I used CTMH With Love stamp set and CTMH inks Hollyhock, Spring Iris and Sweet Leaf. The Happy Anniversary stamp is from Michael's dollar bin and I have had it for a while. The paper is from My Mind's Eye, not sure about the ribbon though.

Several people have asked me to let them know how the cooking went. I will post more tomorrow. I got almost everything done today, except for one recipe. I grabbed tomato sauce instead of tomato paste so I will finish tomorrow afternoon and take a picture of my full freezer.

Serious Bragging on my Hubby

Okay, so yesterday was our third anniversary. I got a phone call from Kip while I was at work asking where my Scor-Pal was. I thought he had probably ran out of blank cards so he was going to make his own and then I didn't think anything else about it. He has been making me cards for a while now and I love them. When we sat down to exchange gifts though, I was blown away. I couldn't believe what was in my bag. I think I explained before that we don't spend a lot of money on anniversary gifts. What we do, is go by the traditional gifts for that year. Year one was paper, I got a book I had wanted. Year two, cotton, and we both got each other shirts. I also took "cotton" and expanded on that, he got a fresh cotton air freshener and a bag of Cotton Candy. This year was leather and you saw the book that I made for him and here is my gift from him: He needed the Scor-Pal to make those little jewelry boxes. He made those completely on his own, he wasn't following a template or anything. The bracelet and necklace? He made those too! He took leather cord and initial charms and made them. You can't see the clasps, but they are in the shape of a heart. He said he got some help from other people at Jo-Anns that were shopping in the jewelry making aisle. I think he is pretty amazing and I am going to keep him! You can also see the card that he made me. I also got a Blu-Ray copy of Mama Mia that I can watch over and over and over again! What a guy I have, huh?

Happy Anniversary

Three years ago today, Kip and I got married. I can't believe it has been that long, the time has just flown by. The traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather. I covered a 4x4 coaster with a strip of leather that I got at the craft store. The coaster with the additional thickness of the leather almost did not go in my Bind It All. Then I stamped directly onto the cover with CTMH Cocoa ink using a journaling set that I got from Repeat Impressions. I also stamped the sentiment onto several of the pages and wrote lots of mushy, lovey stuff!! Actually, several of the pages mention specific things in our individual pasts that lead us to meeting each other and just imagine what would have happened if we skipped that one portion of our life. Anyone of those steps could have meant that we would have never met. Then the second part is imagining the rest of our lives. I love you Kip, more than I could ever express!