Spartan Baseball Birthday Card

Well, it's baseball season again! Today marked the offical opening day of Little League here in New Hartford and another birthday party tonight! My son's travel baseball team-mate invited him to his birthday sleepover, so I of course had to make a card. I love that my kids' friends are expecting a special "Mrs. Moran" card, lol. My son wanted me to make his friend a "spartans" card. The t-shirt image is a stamp from TooMuchFun Rubber Stamps and really does come in handy with 2 sports maniacs as kids. I stamped the image in versamark and clear embossed, then colored in the fold lines with brilliant blue ink. Then I highlighted the trim with my white gel pen. I tried to cut the spartans baseball part with my cricut, but didn't have enough time (or patience) to continue, so I resorted to stickers and a hand cut swoosh thingy. I'm not sure if you can see or not, but I even added 2 "buttons" covered with crystal effects. The back was kept simple with letters cut with my serif alpha from Stampin up and more stickers for the #. When I was all done, I also covered a piece of white typing paper with coordinating stamps (used inside the card) and used that to wrap the gift (a movie sized box of candy and an i-tunes card). Hope he likes it! Thanks for peeking at my blog :)

My Digital Studio - Pee Wee Hockey Scrapbook

I have spent the better part of 3 days working on this digital scrapbook for my son's hockey team. They were an AMAZING group of kids this year and pretty darned good hockey players to boot! They participated in several important tournaments including our own Travel Tournament, a Thanksgiving International Invitational, A Northeast Regional qualifier and the Silver Stick International Finals in Michigan, Pre-Sectionals, Sectionals and ultimately the New York State Championships! Wow - how's that for a bit of a brag :) The scrapbook was made using My Digital Studio and is the first real project that I've done with it. It was so easy. A bit time consuming (83 pages), but that's because I didn't have all my stuff together and I had to scan a bunch of newspaper articles and clippings in. I've pulled a sampling of pages to show you here. The best part of this digital scrapbook is that when the players are viewing their copies, they can click on the "hot spots" and see the articles written about them! The program even has the ability to record (we read in some of the coaches emails) and add audio bytes as well as video bytes. Unfortunately, my video camera wasn't cooperative this weekend so that will have to be next year's scrapbook! Enjoy the pages and please let me know what you think! CLICK ON ANY OF THE PAGES TO SEE MORE DETAIL!

I'm bummed that the coach wears purple page got messed up during exportation. The fonts didn't transport, so it screwed up the placement. It is supposed to read "Our COACH rocks... even in PURPLE". It's one of my favorite pages. He obviously didn't know the reporter was coming to do a story on the (red and blue) team.

Note: These awesome photos were purchased and downloaded from http://www.myhometownsports.net/ articles Jeff Pexton at http://www.photoreflect.com/
Jeff does an awesome job covering local sports and highlighting them online. Thanks Jeff!

This page features grandma and grandpa with the "fatheats" that I made of my son and his friend (the goalie). Also pictured are the fans holding up their kids' heart during the game. Believe it or not, for playoff games, we are not allowed to bring noise makers to the arena. What kind of hockey is quiet?!?

New Hartford Hockey headed to Michigan!

I found a use for all that leftover packing paper from my SU deliveries! Here I've used it as a base for a sign that I made for my son's ice hockey team. They won a regional tournament and are headed to compete for the finals in Michigan soon. I used my Cricut machine to cut each players' name and the big letters. I left it so that I could fold it down the middle for easy transport (hopefully). It got approval from the 12 yr. old as "not embarassing" so hopefully it will be okay to display it, lol!

I try not to do it often, but sometimes I just gotta brag on my kids a bit! These are pictures from our recent home travel hockey tournament. Both of my sons competed at different levels. The best thing about being the tournament director is that I get to hand out trophies and since my kids both got them this year, I get to give them a congratulatory kiss instead of a handshake like the other players all get. It's my special treat for all that hard work :) It's a family affair too - that's my hubby holding the box of trophies to be distributed. Wish us luck in michigan and when I get back I might have some some Mini Catalog samples to show you as I'll be taking some stamping on the road with me!

Jones School Fall Fun Fair Fundraiser Event

Tonight I am doing a fund raising event at a local school. I was asked to provide some quick make & take projects for adults and kids to complete. This is what I came up with. The adults will be making the triangle treat box with the ornament punch tag. The kids will be offered the bookmark in a variety of colors with either the boy or the girl Build a Bear stamp. I think my station will be next to the build your own teddy bear station, which is why I selected the BAB stamp set.

Below are just some of the samples that I will be taking with me to show what can be made with some paper, stamps and punches! It should be noted that many of these are not my original design, but rather found on blogs and sites featuring papercrafts. How fun are they!

If you attended the fair and are here, thanks for stopping by my booth, please feel free to contact me for any of your stampin' needs!

another baseball card

Are you sick of baseball and baseball stuff yet? I'm getting there! Today DS has to attend a birthday party (actually they were both born on the SAME day) and we needed a card to send along with him. I figured as long as this one wasn't being mailed, that I would make it special by using up a 6 x 6 envelope I had and making the card to match. The baseball is cut using a pot lid just off the top of folded white cardstock so that it could open. The lacing was drawn on using the same potlid as a guide for my arches. I think it turned out pretty cute. The whole thing is then mounted on a 6 x 6 red base. Who knew potlids could come in so handy - lord knows they are clean from lack of use :) Thanks for stopping by - have a great one!

Home Run Derby - whiffle ball party today!

Today is Tyler's birthday party. Here's a pic of him opening one of his presents on his "real birthday". For his party, we've installed a "homerun" fence in the backyard. What a great feeling to hit one over the fence!!! Anyway, it looked just a little too plain for me, so I made some "sponsor boards" to hang on the fence. They look really cute IRL, the picture doesn't do them justice, but I wanted to share anyway 'cuz I think I'm pretty funny putting the SU sponsor board up and my kids say that that's the one they are gonna aim for during the homerun derby! Have a great day... I"ll be "partying" in the backyard with around 20 kids!!

my little stamp campers

WoW... Another busy weekend gone already! I really wanted to work on something spectacular to post for you all, but didn't have much time to spend in my craft room. So instead, I am sharing a photo of my most spectacular creations ever - well, I can only take credit for 2 of them, but they are all spectacular! My boys have their cousin spending a couple of days of spring vacation with them and they really wanted to craft with me. We made bag tags earlier in the day and then after dinner, I promised them that I would hold a special session of stamp camp just for them. They often see the kitchen filled with ladies enjoying some stamping time, and they deserve a session now and then too. You probably can't tell from the picture, but I love that they all put their own spin on their cards. The "little" one on the left is my "baby" (7) and his card says "I'd rather be fishing" and has a turtle riding on the inner tube. The middle one is my nephew and his card says "life under the sea is great" and has a dolphin jumping out of the water. The one one the right is my oldest son (10) while, he's very creative, he didn't deviate much from the orginal design, and in fact, even noticed that they didn't have the river rock mat on their card! After this, they all made bookmarks. Just like us crazy crafters, once we get started, they didn't want to stop and they are already planning tomorrow's project! I think this beats the hockey game we went to last night hands down:)