Wood grain Valentine ... and random art!

Happy Valentine's Day Eve!

Argh!  I SHOULD be horizontal on the couch right now ... I'm exhausted (what else is new?!) and I have the house to myself for half an hour!!!  I've been propping my eyelids open with toothpicks all afternoon (I just don't think it would be right to take a nap whilst being paid to watch my neighbour's son!) ... but I have slowly been chipping away at little projects and now seem to have caught a small second wind.  Oh well ... "they" say sleep is over rated anyway!

So today I just HAD to share a few projects with you.  You know what I'm going to say, right??  Yep .. I LOVE THEM!!!  I wanted to post them sooner but I ended up prepping for my Technique class all day Tuesday and then I was at the school all day yesterday helping Rebecca's teacher with a project that was stressing her out ... so here we are 3 days later!

First up ... Random Art!

You know that this year I haven't scheduled the girls in any "formal" extra-curricular activities, right?  Right.  We just schedule Mom/Daughter Dad/Daughter time.  (I highly recommend this!  Yes, it's a SAD statement of our times that we have to schedule time to be with the ones we love but that just seems to be the reality of 2014.  If it isn't on the calendar it doesn't happen!)  Well!  Monday as Alicia/Mom night.  She ALMOST bailed on me.  She wanted to play Monster High dolls with Rebecca.  Rebecca doesn't often WANT to play dolls with her so she was chomping at the bit.  She asked if it was ok if we did it another night.  The exhausted mom in me said "Sure!  Fine with me!"  but then I changed my mind and said I really wanted to spend time with her, if that was ok.  I stressed the importance of making time to be together ... and she agreed.  When I asked what she wanted to do she gave it some thought and asked "Can we paint?".  Sure!  Her little face lit up like a Christmas tree!  So down to the craft room we went ... to paint.  FYI - I don't paint *lol*.  We had SO MUCH FUN!!!  Here is what Alicia made:

 LOVE IT!  I particularly like the eyelashes she put on the smiley faces :)

... and here is what I made:

LOVE IT TOO!!!  Seriously!  The last painting I made was 2 summers ago ... with the kids.  I'm thinking I want to take a class - it's FUN!!!  I had NO idea what to do ... so I just started globbing different colors all over the canvas.  Befor elong it looked like something the cat yacked up ... no problemo! ... I just covered the whole dang thing in red paint ... and the cat-yack images underneath showed up as a hint of black/dark grey.  I loved it!  I kept going!  I grabbed a Q-Tip and made random swirls all over it - and then splotched some yellow, blue and white paint here and there ... and then dragged the Q-Tip through those.  LOVE IT!  20 minutes later I was done ... and sad that I didn't have any more canvases on hand!  Here is the one I made 2 summers ago:

I guess I'm an abstract - shape kind of painter, eh?  Anyway!  I had fun trying something new.  I highly recommend it!

Wanna see a card project now?  OK ... here is the Valentine I designed for My Love:

This was also one of the cards we made at class Tuesday night.  It's a perfect card for Craig.  No fuss, no bling.  Clean and simple.  SO easy to do too!  The base is Very Vanilla - matted with Baked Brown Sugar and then Early Espresso Core-dinations card stock that was run through the Woodgrain embossing folder and sanded.  I then took my heart framelit and cut out the hear shape.  I cut out another heart from the Very Vanilla cards stock and taped it in the heart space (make sense?)  I didn't want the vanilla heart to carry all the way through the Baked Brown Sugar mat ... not a big deal but I wanted the BBS mat to layer the whole piece.

I stamped the You & Me sentiment from the Perfect Pennants set (page 27 of the Occasions catty) in Early Espresso.  THEN!!!  LOOK AT THE LITTLE ARROW!!!  I just got these little Essentials Wooden Elements last week ... and only because I needed to spend a few more dollars to earn a free SAB item ... they didn't blow my hair back when I saw the picture in the catty ... but when I got them it almost blew my hair right off!!!  I LOVE THEM!!!  They are super thin and light ... and you can stamp on them - eeeeeeeee!!!!  I used the "forever" from the Fabulous Phrases (page 70 of the main catty) - I inked it in Espresso and used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to line it up perfectly.  I attached it with 2 mini glue dots.  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!  The finishing touch was a little linen thread wrapped around the wood grain layer.  Quick, easy and fabulous!!!

Right!  Craig just called ... he got stuck at the office so if I hurry I can still get 20 minutes on the couch ... so I'm outta here!  Have a stampy night, a stampy Valentine's Day and a stampy weekend!


Tam