I hope you all had a great Christmas! I certainly did. The best part was being with all my family!

At the request of my youngest grandson, I made a pan of lemon squares. As you can see from the photo, we are a family of edge eaters! lol Well, I do have a daughter in law that likes the middles, but most of us fight over corners and edges. My daughter gave me an all edge pan to make brownies so we always get at least two edges. I should have used it for the lemon bars. Uh oh, too late smart once again.

In case you would like to have some lemon squares at your home, here is the recipe:

Lemon Squares

1 C butter, softened
2 C flour
1/2 C powdered sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 C granulated sugar
1 tsp. lemon zest
1/2 C lemon juice
5 T. flour
1 tsp. baking powder

Beat butter, powdered sugar and 2 c. flour until smooth. Spread into greased 13X9 pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Beat together the eggs, sugar, lemon juice, 5 T flour and baking powder. The mixture will be thin. Pour over the top of the baked crust and continue to bake for 25 minutes more. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, cool and cut into squares.

Thanks for stopping by.

Busy, busy, busy!

Here is a card I want to share with you today. Does it, brighten your day? I hope so. Butterflies are always so cheery aren't they? I used a cotton scrap from Crafty Secrets on this and then added the butterflies which are reverse embossed. To do this, ink the inside cutting side of your Spellbinders™ die template before cutting and embossing, then add your embossing powder and heat emboss. It gives a great look to your finished projects. The background of the card was created using the die template as a stencil and airbrushing! I love how it turned out.

I am very busy getting ready for Christmas and my daughter's wedding on Jan. 2! Yikes, so much to do. Actually I am doing pretty well, but it doesn't leave much time for creating. Sorry! I will have more surprises for you. I have some tutorials I want to create and share with you and I will be doing them in the very near future, so keep checking back.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Hugs,

Karen

A great resource

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by my blog.

I want to share a great resource with you. I'm sure you love your Spellbinders™ Nestabilities, Nesties™, and other die templates as much as I do, so here is a chart that lets you know which dies are compatible with which JustRite stamps! It also has some punches listed as well. What a great resource. I hope it helps you out:

Punch and Die Compatibility Chart

Boys n Ice Cream

Two things that go together oh so well - boys and ice cream. Can anything be better for these boys than a nice warm day, no shirts and unlimited ice cream just so Mom could get pictures of them?



Here is how I created the ice cream cone: Use computer to print “ ice cream” onto vanilla cardstock. Cut/emboss using Spellbinders blossom die template, aligning text. Leave cardstock in die and emboss with Spellbinders Snowflakes Impressabilities. Emboss 3 ½ X 2 rectangle with diamond and stars Impressabilities. Leave cardstock in place and airbrush with Copic airbrush system and Sketch Marker E43 Dull Ivory. Cut into cone shape and adhere to page with cone overlapping photo. Use foam squares to pop ice cream up and attach to top of cone. I used Spellbinders Labels 8 to cut/emboss the photo.

Thanks for stopping by! Please come again soon.

Hugs,
Karen

And colder!

Last night my husband and I went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Extravaganza in downtown Salt Lake City. The doors were to open at 6:30 for the 8:00 performance. We wanted to get a good seat, so we joined the line at about 6:10. I don't know how cold it was, but I'm sure it wasn't more than 20 degreees, and for this Phoenix girl, that is COLD! We were there a few minutes when a lady lined up behind me. She did not have on a coat or scarf or gloves or anything warm. She thought the doors opened at 6:00. She said she didn't own a coat, as she usually just drives somewhere, gets out and goes into a heated building. Well, we had at least 15 minutes to wait there. Another lady near her put her own scarf around her neck. I turned and gave her my gloves. She kept insisting she was all right, but . . . she was freezing! We all huddled up around her trying to share our warmth. What a wonderful thing to see, so many giving and sharing people around this woman who resisted but was given warmth from strangers. I hope we can all look outside ourselves this season for those around us needing a little warmth, whether it is a smile, a kind word, food or a coat! Let's open our hearts and share the blessings we have been given.

Hugs to you all!
Karen

Coldness!

So here I am in Utah with lots of snow outside. Luckily I'm toasty warm inside. Brrrrr! I don't do snow, ice and cold very well at all! I'm on "vacation" so I didn't bring my own computer and trying to just relax and enjoy some quiet time. I thought I would update my blog and post a new photo for you.

I created this card for my daughter's bridal shower. It's kind of over the top, don't you think? Lots and lots of layers, but keeping it all white. I love the elegance of an all white card. I used shimmery white cardstock for all the layers except the top blossom which is vellum cardstock. I added lots of pearls too. So pretty on the Spellbinders Fleur de Lis pendant and the Labels One. This card is 5 1/2" X 5 1/2 " and very thick. I couldn't just put it into an envelope, so I used it on top of the package as the bow, adding some white organdy ribbon. Delicious!

I hope you like what you saw today and will stop by again soon! Stay warm everyone!

Happy Birthday Erinn!

I had such a fun time last night. Jamie asked me to do a surprise birthday party for her daughter Erinn along with two of her friends. She got a Cuttlebug for her birthday! She was so excited. She is a really great crafter and enjoys making cards for friends and family. I had three projects for the girls to create. They had a great time and were such good students.

Project One: Sour Cream Container

Erinn likes bright fun colors, so we used a great paper to create the fun containers. Inside are three Hershey nuggets. Candy's always a hit. The girls thought these containers were a lot of fun and easier to make than they thought they would be. I'll bet they will make more of them.

Next each of them made a personalized notecard with their own initial. They used the cuttlebug for the texture on the bottom of the card. Embossing is a blast.


After the Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream birthday cake - oh yum! We did our last project which is a little mini album to preserve the memory of the night. It is just a square of cardstock with folds. The outside has a cuttlebug embossed front with a fun flower and a ribbon which wraps around the whole thing to hold it closed.

Now open it up and look! We stamped some fun images and colored them and added a photo of the girls. We even did a little heat embossing on the blue square. Lots of ooohs and aaaaahs on that one. lol It's like magic! The blank area is for them to journal about the evening.

They got a little crazy by the end. Was it a sugar high? Or being up late? Whatever it was they laughed and had a great time and that is the point.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon!

Published!!!

I just got back from Wal Mart where I picked up a copy of Scrapbooking and Beyond. Just inside the front cover is the Spellbinders ad with my very own layout featured. Wooo hooo! My name and project are in a publication. I'm feeling veclempt. lol

Here is the layout used in the ad.

Holidays!

Holidays are so much fun with family and lots of good food. Oh yum! I had a great Thanksgiving - I hope your's was too.

I'm sharing a layout I did for Spellbinders. My friend Christen has these four cute little boys and she took photos of them eating ice cream cones. What could be better?



Can you pick out the Spellbinders Die Templates? It might surprise you what I used, but I love how it worked out.

Instructions: Tear strip of red cardstock approximately 2” wide. Attach 3 metallic brads on each end of strip. Cut letter B and corresponding mat from gold cardstock with classic rectangle. Cut O from alphabet and mat onto dark brown mat cut/embossed with deckled rectangle. Cut/emboss square using navy blue cardstock. Cut Y using Tags Trio and mount onto navy square. Place brad through hole. Cut/emboss rectangle from kraft cardstock and apply S. Ink edges with Chestnut ink. On computer, print boys’ names, & and journaling with blue ink and B-o-y-s with brown ink onto gold cardstock. Cut/emboss & with oval die and ink edges with Chestnut ink. Apply title to red strip and attach to top of page. Cut boys names into strips and ink edges with chestnut ink. Cut brown letters and ink edges with chestnut ink. Use foam square to pop up in proper place on each name. Cut two strips of red cardstock 8X4 and emboss with Paisley Impressabilities. Glue together to form square and cover seam with ¼” strip of red cardstock. Attach to page. Stagger names to align brown letters in each name to spell boy down left side of red square. Cut/emboss photo with Curved Rectangles die template and mat with blue and brown cardstock. Adhere to red block. Cut/emboss journaling block and mat using rectangle die template. Attach brads in journaling block and attach to red mat. Use computer to print “ ice cream” onto vanilla cardstock. Cut/emboss blossom aligning text. Leave cardstock in die and emboss with snowflakes Impressabilities. Emboss 3 ½ X 2 rectangle with diamond and stars Impressabilities. Leave cardstock in place and airbrush with Copic airbrush system and Sketch Marker E43 Dull Ivory. Cut into cone shape and adhere to page with cone overlapping photo. Use foam squares to pop ice cream up and attach to top of cone. Glue journaling block to lower right corner of photo and red square. Cut/emboss doodle part from Gold cardstock. Leave cardstock in die template and airbrush with B24 Sky and then E44 clay. Remove from die and attach to bottom left corner of red panel. Cut/emboss three of the smallest circles from classic Circles Small. Punch hole in center. Using 12” length of twine, thread through circles and tie knots above each. Apply glue to back of circles and adhere to left side of page.