With Sympathy Card

     Unfortunately I have the need to make several sympathy cards this week. One co-worker lost her Dad and a friends daughter in law lost her mom. It's always difficult to know what to say as well as making a card that may be somewhat uplifting.
     The usual color scheme seems to be blue, lavender, cream or something serene. However in both the families I am sending these to, the passing of their loved one is a mixed blessing. Therefore I chose to go with something that is elegant, simple and use some brighter colors.
     The paper is somewhat of a damask looking pattern from DCVW "The Mango Frost" mat stack. It has an embossed texture with the hint of glitter. This is the standard 5.50" X 4.25" card that is layered with white card stock on a dark apricot card stock from Provo Craft. The border strip uses a Fiskar punch that mimics the background paper.
     Since this is a simple card with clean lines I used the Spellbinders Labels two and a rub on from My Favorite Things for the outside sentiment. I really love the embellishments from Creative Charms. The soft blue flower and the gradient gems are from this company. I also cut a small flower from one of my nestabilities by Spellbinders.The blue grosgrain ribbon was a left over scrap. (I love when this happens!).

Happy Valentines' Day!

     Just a quick post and a few thoughts on this Valentines' Day. This winter has been a rough one but also a devastating one for the local florists. All the recent snow storms have forced many shops to close in order to clear parking areas. Floral deliveries have been delayed by the wholesalers and shop owners have also endured rising costs on supplies not to mention additional costs on show/ice removal.
     One well known floral clearinghouse has been running ads saying "why use your local florist when we can ship directly from the growers to your home? We will even include a free vase!" Let's think about this for a minute. I live in New England, the land of snow, ice and below freezing temperatures. Who is my local grower? What the ad does not say is that many times these flowers are shipped directly to you from the fields located in South America!!! They are packaged and put on a plane, then a Fed Ex truck where they are delivered right to your door. However if you are at work and don't get home until 5-6pm and your flowers were delivered at 8-9a.m., That means your poor flowers have been sitting in a box, possibly on a snow bank, waiting for you to get home!
     I have been a floral designer for over 10 years now and I have a few insights I would like to share with you. First when we get our flowers in from the wholesaler they are immediately processed. What that means is that they are inspected, given a fresh cut and then placed in a floral food solution with lukewarm water. Once they are hydrated they are again inspected to make sure they are up to our freshness standards. We then begin to design our arrangements. Before the customer walks out of the door the item is again given a fresh cut and water if necessary.
     The drivers call the customer before they take the arrangement out of the cooler and arrange a delivery time. If customer cannot be reached or does not answer the phone the arrangement does not leave the shop. (You won't come home to a bouquet that is frozen!) Occasionally things happen that are beyond our control, ie, a particular variety of flower that does not last as long as it should. In that case all you have to do is call the florist to voice your dissatisfaction. Usually we will send a replacement but we also take back the one that was rejected. The reason a florist will do this is so we can monitor if there is a problem with the flower, the wholesaler that sold it to us or is it that particular grower. If you go through an online clearing house how will you get your replacement and when will that be? Do you really want to come home from work and arrange your own flowers?
     We all could use some bright flowers to cheer us up and get us through the rest of this winter whether it's Valentines' Day or not. I am just so fed up with this ad (ProFlowers, there I said it!) it appears so negative against the local florists that I felt a little prospective on what a florist job entails was in order.

     I sincerely hope you all have a wonderful Valentines' Day and spread the love out there!

Little Dancer The Sequel

     First of all, how do you like the new look? My blog template is from Shabbyblogs.com and they just changed servers so I had to update for a new code. I just love their designs!
     As I mentioned in my previous article I thought the ballet card would make a cute mini album for holding all those dance pictures. (Well some of them anyway, lol).So that's just what I've been up to. Provo Craft has an exclusive cartridge called "Shall We Dance". There are some pros and cons to this cart. First the pros: there are a ton of dance images for all forms of dance as well as for the very young and older dancers. It also has phrases including shadows so this is a definite plus. The cons: some of the cuts are just plain awful. Basically the faces and the shoes. The shoes remind me of the hooves on the 3 little pigs! Sorry PC but they really are that bad.

    See what I mean about the shoes!
       So I got to thinking, what if I used the hide cut feature on my gypsy and blanked out the facial features? Then I could stamp the facial images.  Peachy Keen Stamps has some adorable expressions on their princesses stamps. The shoes could also be colored in.

I Love Dance!

   Hello Super Bowl Sunday! My oldest daughter and I just came from seeing the movie "Black Swan" and it was great. I enjoy a good ballet since all 3 of my girls danced all forms of dance. This reminded me that I had made recital cards for my grand daughter and her 2 cousins a week ago and forgot to share them with you.

As a member of the Cricut Circle we receive 4 exclusive cartridges a year. The latest one is "Shall We Dance" and has many wonderful dance cuts and phrases. This little ballerina was cut @ 3" including the shadow. This 4.25 x 5.50 card is rather simple since I wanted the image to stand out. The one problem with this cart is that the shoes do not match up. It also has ballet slippers but the tap shoes have heels. This was not what I wanted for a 4 year old. As a result the tap shoes are hand colored with a black glaze pen which makes it look more like patten leather tap shoes. Of course you need stickles and rhinestones to jazz her up. The background is swiss dot embossed and I added some prima flowers.
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Just Rite stamps is a fabulous stamp company that lets you choose your own font and sentiments. This was perfect for making the inside sentiment "congratulations on your dance recital". The "Tap" is also from the cart so this was a fairly easy card to make. There is also die cuts for the other forms of dance on this cart. I can feel a dance mini book coming on!

Puuur-Fect!

     Isn't this just the cutest Kitty? Talk about a Diva! I told you that my favorite new cart is Paisley. This cat is a puur-fect example. The die cut has her sitting on a pillow and she has a crown on her head. Its a super simple cut. All the layers were cut @ 3.5" .  The shadow is rather large in proportion to the rest of the cut so I decided not to use it. Of course there had to be some stickles to add the bling factor so Added some to the crown in gold. I also used the lavender stickles on the pillow.
     If the green background paper looks familiar, it should. This is a scrap of the paper by Anna Griffin that was used for the engagement card I made for the Cricut Circle card contest that I won! This paper makes the cat really stand out and gives her a regal look. The other pink papers are also scraps from Anna Griffin. It still needed something so I grabbed a piece of white scrap card stock and a Martha Stewart paper punch and made some "lace. These rhinestones are not Creative Charms, if they were they would sparkle more!