card making craftiness

The month of June is front-loaded with anniversaries, followed quickly by Father's Day. That means a lot of card making!

Here are some of the results:

These two anniversary cards turned out pretty cute!

This poppy-inspired one was fun to make - I first tore red music-printed scrapbook paper into four petals, ripping so that some white showed along the edges. Then, I cut a circle of dark purple-gray metallic paper into a circle, and cut fringe all along the edges. I put it all together with a black brad in the middle. Ta da!

This one is for my good friend, Sarah, and her husband, Stephen. See the little glittery "s" sticker I used for each of the birdie wings? I drew a bird silhouette on the back of a piece of (bunny print!) origami paper, and then cut two at a time (right sides of the paper together to make the birds face each other). I must have been in a fringe-y mood that evening, because I decided that they needed to sit in a bed of green grass.

And now, the Father's Day cards!

These two cards were time intensive! I made two of the tree cards - one for my dad, and one for Hubby's dad. We were planning to see Hubby's grandfather that weekend, too, so he got an extra-special card, as well.

For the tree card, I drew a leaf shape on the back of a piece of card stock, then traced it six times on a scrap of textured green card stock. I saved some time by cutting out of three types of paper at once - that's a lot of leaves!

I then free-handed a tree trunk, fashioned from brown textured card stock. Cut two! The next part - gluing all the little pieces in place - took some time.

The argyle Grandpa card was the most time-intensive card I've ever made, I think! I first had to look up the proportions of a rhombus. Geometry was a long time ago! For those of you who are like me and maybe don't remember, a rhombus, or diamond shape, can be created by four right triangles. I used four 3-4-5 triangles (Pythagorean). Do you remember this formula? a² + b² = c²

It means that you can figure out the length of each side of the triangle, because the smallest side, multiplied by itself; plus the next largest side, multiplied by itself; equals the longest side, multiplied by itself: 3²+4²=5² (ahem, 9+16=25). This is derived from the Pythagorean theorem, fellow math friends.

I kept it simple, and decided to follow the formula rather literally. So, each one of my triangles was 3/4" on one side, 4/4" (1 inch) on the next, and 5/4" (1.25") on the longest side. Bear with me as I sketch a drawing in Paint to explain.

 

There we go. You can see now, I hope, that a rhombus is made up of four right triangles. I showed the dimensions of mine in this picture (3/4", 4/4", and 5/4"). If you do what I did, you'll end up with a diamond shape that's 2" high, 1.5" across, and 1.25" on each diagonal side. Cool, right?

I traced my rhombus template onto four colors of card stock (these colors remind me of golf clothes - buttery yellow-cream chinos, orange polo shirt, brown saddle shoes, and blue caps), and cut away! I like the way the design turned out. To make the gold dots on top of the diamonds, I measured the center of each long side, putting a pencil dot at the 3/4" mark. I then used my trusty ruler to keep the dots 1/4" apart, and dotted away!

Do you like it? Would you try it? In a box, with a fox? (Seuss reference, friends.)

museum of play

To celebrate our anniversary, hubby and I went to a museum in a nearby city - the whole museum theme is play. How fun! Most of it is geared toward the much younger set, but we had a great time at the butterfly garden. It was amazing - one of the butterflies even landed on my finger!
some very pretty orchids - they look kinda like butterflies, themselves!

here's the butterfly that visited me personally:

so delightful!

birthday/anniversary goodness

We celebrated my birthday last weekend, and we were with my parents and family, since my sister was leaving for a mission trip on that following Monday. My hubby was super-sneaky and surprised me with these!

Three red roses - one for each year of our married life, and because I love getting flowers. He had gone to four different florists (a lot of driving in this area) to finally find one that was open on Saturday and able to fill his order.

He told me that his birthday present to me was "too big to bring" and that I'd have to wait until I got home. You can imagine how curious I was! He told me that he had been working on it all week, and that it was pretty special.

So what was it?

After I had been gone for three weeks, teaching at a summer music school in my parents' hometown, he had taken the time to clean the whole house! And bought a bottle of nice wine and set up a little romantic display with one of my Willow Tree figurines. So sweet! He usually doesn't think of doing household chores like that, though he's willing to do something if asked. He had even washed the dishes and put them away - something he hates doing. Reason? Because he wanted to give me a day off when I came home. Happy.

I am loved.

it's so weird...

...that I'm 25, married, going to grad school, the owner of two kitties, furniture, dishes, appliances...and I feel like I'm not fully an adult yet. When does that set in? I have responsibilities galore - caring for my wonderful husband, paying bills, work, pets,teaching. Do we ever start feeling like adults? I have to keep telling myself, "you're an adult; you have to ____," but it doesn't feel real. i've been pretty good at doing the things that I have to - it's just how I'm wired. But how do you balance work and relaxation? I have trouble with this. DH helps me to slow down, which is good!

on another note, tomorrow is my second wedding anniversary! DH and I are going to go get a couples' massage, spend some time looking at photos, planning and dreaming, and then we'll go out to dinner somewhere. celebrating a good start to our lifetime together, and looking forward to the rest of it!