A dog's point of view on the RV trip

Our furbaby Inu has been having some new adventures on our RV trip....The KOA campgrounds we usually stay at have added new dog areas, so  she has been checking them out.  Here are some pictures of her experiences at them - Guess where this KOA was?  Here she is learning to play checkers lol.

Now remember Inu LOVES bunnies, but since they are far and few on the trip, she discovered chipmunks and squirrels.  But this chipmunk was a little scary...

Inu encountered her first rocking horse - wasn't quite sure if it was alive or not, since I would touch it with my foot and it would move!

Here are some pics of Inu checking out the dogs parks at the KOA campgrounds...  She knew exactly what to do on the mini-dog agility stuff as she is used to full-sized obstacles....
      










Inu tries to tell us she's ready to go back  into the RV!

                                                She got to spend some good times with her big "brother" - isn't this a cool pic of them?

                                                                                             And we all went to Hubble Lighthouse in Maine:

   




Alas, there were no bunnies, squirrels, or chipmunks in the dog parks or at the beaches!   I will post more pics later of Inu visiting her doggy cousins....

What can you do with a clothespin? You won't believe this...!

After my husband so kindly spray painted all the clothespins for me in white, black, and red, I had to do something with them....he did such a great job....I had brought along a book on our RV trip that had lots of punch-out flowers in it - got it on sale a while back at one of the local craft stores, so played with them, punching them out, and mixing and matching them.  I actually amazed myself with what I came up with - see what you can do a plain ordinary wooden clothespin:

       

 





Since they have a tie at the top, you can hang them up and use the clothespin underneath to clip something with it - here I clipped my grocery list, but you could clip a picture, etc.  This is one of the flower clothespins by itself - the clothespin is black so I edged the flower in black.  Here is the pale pink flower before I put glitter on it:

It is pretty with the little bow at the top and ribbon ties at the bottom, but I thought it needed some bling, and here it is after I applied glitter to the flower, dragonfly and ribbon - I think it looks a lot better....besides I love glitter!!

Isn't it surprising how much a little bit of glitter can add?  Here are the flower pieces for the pink and aqua flower - I edged them in pink and curled the petal edges with my bone folder - it definitely adds more dimension.

  I also used my metallic gel pens to draw lines, color in the butterfly body - added more sparkle!

 

I laced the ribbon ties through the clothespin and glued the top of it down to the clothespin, then laced the top tie through the clothespin and tied it in a knot (on this flower I tied a knot, for the pink flower I tied a little bow, and on the purple flower I arranged the knot so it was under the flower and didn't show).  Here are the ties on the pink/aqua flower, and the back of the other flower clothespins:

To make sure I glued the flower in the right placement on the clothespin, I lightly marked the back of the flower so I could put the double stick tape in the right place.  I also put double stick/tacky tape on the clothespin so it would stick really really well.

One flower clothespin is pretty, but I usually go a little overboard, so ended up with three....!

Course, if you don't have anyplace to hang them, you could always clip them to something, or even use them as a bookmark, or on a present. Since I have several Stampin' Up! flower punches which are back at our house, I will have to try making my hanging flower clothespin clips with them and use their cardstock and designer paper....The new catalog comes out on July 1st so it will be fun to try making these with some of the new colors.  Can never have too many flowers, especially low-maintenance ones!  Hope you enjoyed my flowers...If you have any questions about these, feel free to email me.

    

Gingersnap Creations challenge: Something with wings

Well I had set a mini-goal for myself - to try and share more of my projects online....and Gingersnap Creations is hosting a challenge for any projects that use "wings" -- I thought of my fairy lite and how it has 'wings' - with both the fairy and butterfly on it....so I am entering it in their challenge....Never done anything quite like this before....The directions are:

http://gingersnapcreations.blogspot.com/2010/06/gc57-chestnut-theme-wings.html
1) Make a paper crafting or mixed media creation using wings as your theme or inspiration;

2) Post your creation to your blog or online gallery with a mention and link to this post; and
3) Come back to this post and leave a comment including a DIRECT link to your creation or use Mister Linky below. Remember to make it a link to the specific post or picture and not just a general link to your blog or gallery. We need to be able to find your art!
For more information on our challenges and directions on linking, please check out our FAQ page.  One random winner and seven Ginger Gems will be announced from the qualifying submissions on July 6, 2010. You have until July 4, 2010 to enter!

I've done #1 above, along with the "mention and link to this post," and here is my creation:  Fairy Lite (actually a  couple views of it - it didn't say that we only had to post one picture and I think you really need to see several views of the Fairy Lite to really appreciate it)

Okay, I think I did #1 and #2, now on to #3 to post a comment and direct link back to here.  You might want to check out the other posts other people did - they are beautiful!  All this is still new to me and I continue to learn, so appreciate any comments and feedback you might have....Thanks!!  P.S. All items used in the fairy lite are Stampin' Up! except for the battery operated tealite.

Recycled chocolate cherry containers-fun to eat!

Even though I have limited stamping/crafting supplies while on our RV trip across country, I am finding little projects I can keep busy with....we bought some dark chocolate covered cherries that were sooo good, we ended up buying 3 containers of them - they were on sale, and plus dark chocolate & cherries are suppose to be good for you, right?!  I hated to throw away the see-through plastic containers....and after I bought some sugar-free fudge to give to my father and sister-in-law (they are diabetic) I got the idea to cut up the fudge and decorate the containers to put them in with the crafting supplies I had at hand.  I had picked up some pretty gingham plaid ribbon on sale, so used one of them for the color combos and the designer paper scraps I had with me.  This is the front of them - one has a "masculine" bow and the other a "feminine" bow.  I used reversible Designer Paper so they look pretty from the top, bottom, and inside!

The flowers on top were punched out using the Stampin Up large flower punch.

Inside there were 3 types of fudge:  coconut, chocolate, and chocolate & vanilla layered.

Since I didn't have my circle punches with me, I traced circles from the containers, etc....you know, what we had to do before all those time-saving punches were available lol.

Course I had to taste the fudge to make sure it was tasty enough to give....they passed the taste test!!  And that I was recycling....even better, don't you think?  Hope you had a great day...

Projects made during RV trip; Furbaby's first beach

We're still on the road and since I brought along some of my cardmaking items, I was able to keep on craftin'....Using brown bag wrapping on gifts, I used my stamps to decorate them, and make a matching birthday card.  Can you tell they are for my father for father's day and his birthday the following month?

I used brown ink to distress the card to match the brown bag wrapping paper....

Our furbaby has been fussed over by everyone, and is getting totally spoiled with all the attention and petting she has gotten!  I think her most exciting adventure so far has been her first time on a beach - even tasted the seaweed on the beach and dug a few holes in all this dirt - she pranced in the sand and climbed the rocks.  We could hardly keep up with her!  Here are some pics of her enjoying the Atlantic Ocean in NH and Maine.

She didn't care for the taste of the seaweed!  We celebrated her 2nd birthday too.  Hope you all had fun with graduations and the long holiday weekend.

Graduation cards & turtle cards with bling

Well, it’s that time of the year – graduations from college, h.s., etc. Since one of my sons was graduating from college, we travelled to it cross-country in our RV along with our furbaby. Today was both the graduation and our furbaby’s 2 year old birthday. I brought along some items to make up graduation cards (also a niece is graduating) and even make a couple cards for a swap. Here are the two graduation cards – can you tell which is for my son (his school colors are hunter green and gold; his program's color is orange...I got lucky and had put in an orangish colored piece, not knowing this in advance!) and my niece? Something about turning 21 yrs old and those keg parties lol. Boy was the town busy with students, parents, family, the campground was full too…and the weather couldn’t have been nicer for it. It was worth the 6 hour ceremony to see my son walk across the stage to get his engineering degree.

And here is the card I made for the card swap, which had an animal theme. I started with a simple design (my upline created these cards that I started with - she does the greatest combos of color that I would never come up with in a million years) with a turtle (they are considered an "animal," right?) and added bling embellishments to it – it was fun punching out the leaf and flowers and then adding a glitter/twinkle on top of them before attaching to the card. I also outlined the card shapes with one of the Sakura glitter gel pens. I think you can see some of the bling sparkle in these pictures….

All the punched out embellishments have twinkle glitter on them now & waiting for them to dry...

Don't think you will ever see a real turtle in these colors though - light green and razzleberry lol.

So did you have anyone in your family or friends who had a graduation? And feel like I do, that the 4 years of college go as fast as them growing up? It is so great that with the internet, they can even broadcast the event live for those who can’t actually attend. It has a bit of a challenge to stay in different campgrounds with a good reliable internet/wi-fi connection though…Thanks for stopping by!