A Bunny Birthday

Good evening all.  I hope your week has gotten off to a good start.  Ours has been really good.  I started the week by making a couple meals including enough breakfast burritos to last two weeks.  This week should be really easy with all this prep!!

So today I have a craft done for a good friend.  Her son's 2nd birthday was last week and she asked me to make a banner with the words " Some Bunny is Two".  I think the banner came out really great, one of the best ones that I have done.  I also wanted to do a card for the birthday boy in the same theme.  Below is what I came up with.

Banner Recipe:

• Card stock from DCWV stack
• Font from Kate's ABC's cut at 2.5"
• Bunny from Kate's ABC's cut at 3.75"
• Circle banner from Birthday Bash cut at 6.25"
• Triangle banner from Birthday Bash cut at 6.35"
• Ribbon from Michaels

Card Recipe:

• Rabbit from Create-a-Critter cut at 6"
• Used the Craft Room to create two rabbits, one flipped horizontally and then both welded together
• Sentiment written with a brown calligraphy pen
• Card stock from DCWV stack

Hope you all have enjoyed the crafts.  I am entering the bunny card in a challenge over at My Craft Spot.  Thanks for joining me.  Until next time

I Know How to Use My Camera Now!!!

Good evening.  Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.  I got a day to myself today thanks to my great Hubby.  He took the girls to see a Monster truck show and they had a really fun time.  It is funny to hear my two year old excitedly explaining how high the turtle truck can jump.
So I spent the day learning how to use my DSLR camera.  I came across this great blog called It's Overflowing a few weeks back.  Aimee started a class that is free explaining how to take beautiful pictures with your DSLR.  She breaks down the principles of photography over a series of lessons and shows you how to use the camera.  Here is the link to her photography class.
Each lesson has an assignment to help you learn the covered topic.  I decided to do all the lessons today and I really learned a bunch.  I am confident about using my camera in manual mode because of this.  Here I will show you my photos from each assignment.  This is a really techy post so if you are not interested just stop reading!!!  I will be back to my crafting next week. 

Aperture :  In the photos below I went from the lowest f-stop to the highest f-stop which corresponds to letting the most amount of light into the camera to letting in the least amount of light.  This is also how you get those cool photos with the blurred background.  If you look carefully at the first photo, the letter G is a little blurry.  In contrast, the last photo clearly has all objects in focus.  The first picture is also crisper than the subsequent photos.

Shutter Speed:  In the photos below I used a water faucet to demonstrate that a high shutter speed can show the individual water droplets.  The slow shutter speed depicts a continuous stream of water because the shutter stays open much longer.  The photos are ordered from highest shutter speed to lowest shutter speed.

ISO:  The ISO controls the sensitivity of the camera to the light.  A low ISO would be used when the light is very bright and a high ISO would be used when your lighting levels are low.  The downside to a high ISO is that the photo may be grainy.  The pictures below are with the ISO values from lowest to highest.  You can really see the noise from the high ISO in the last picture.

Metering:  This is what you do once you have your camera in manual mode.  You can set your f-stop, and ISO then used the meter on the camera to select the best shutter speed.  This helps you get really crisp photos while choosing what lighting quality in aperture and ISO you want from your photo.

White Balance:  This is a setting on the camera that helps add the proper coloring to your photos based on the type of lighting you are shooting in.  Each of the different settings adds colors to balance the photos to make them look as your eye perceives them.  I was shooting inside next to a window with no external lighting.  I think based on these photos I will keep my white balance on auto for the time being.

So that is all the lessons so far.  I have really learned how to use my camera in manual thanks to this class.  It will give me more creative freedom with my photos.  Thanks to those who made it through the post.  I realize it was a long one and not my normal post.  Aimee really explains these concepts much better in her class so I would highly recommend it.  And it is FREE!!!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Okay I know Valentine's Day is Over

Good evening all.  As the title says I know Valentine's Day is over but I do have a few more related crafts to show you.  I mentioned in my last post that I would show how I used the treat toppers and so here they are.

I made 12 of these great Red Velvet Whoopie Pies for the kids goody bags.  I got the baking inspiration off of Pinterest.  The actual recipe site is here.  I changed up her filling recipe a bit.  Her cream cheese filling was absolutely delicious on its own but I thought that for a whoopie pie it needed to be less dense.  So I made some whipped cream and folded it into the cream cheese filling,  This made the whole desert have a lighter feel to it.  They were great and I may make them every year.
Here is a pic of my girls showing off their Valentine's from mommy.

And on a final note I wanted to post the Valentine's Card I made for my 2yo class party.

I had to make 13 of these cards so I kept them pretty simple, but I do love the handwritten sentiment. 
Card Recipe:

   * 3" x 3" red card base
   * Heart from Plantin Schoolbook cut at 2.5"
   * Bee from Create-a-critter cut at 2"
   * Ribbon from Jo-ann's
   * Frosted Lace Stickles
   * Embossing from Simply charmed Companion set

Hope you enjoy.  I also wanted to mention a great score I found at Tuesday Mornings.  I walked in there the other day just to see what they had in their crafting section and I saw a Zutter Bind-it-all V2.  The set came with the wire and some chipboard for a price of ..... $25.10!!!!  I could not pass this up.  I already have a project lined up to use it with.  Hope you have a wonderful evening.

Valentines Treat Toppers - MPS Blog Hop Challenge

Good afternoon all, I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend.  I found some time this weekend to work on some treat toppers for my girls class Valentine's party.  I am making Red Velvet Whoppie pies for her class and wanted some cute packaging for them.  I also did the My Pink Stamper Blog hop and wanted to use the challenge guidelines as the basis for the treat toppers.  The challenge was to make a project with a circle, the color red, pink ribbon and two stamped sentiments.  Here is what I came up with.

Craft Recipe:

• Red card stock cut at 5" x 7", then scored at 2.5" on the 5" side so it can be folded in half
• Scalloped hearts from Craft Room Exclusives - this is a free digital cartridge for everyone
• Ribbon with pink and red hearts from Michaels
• Sentiments on outer hearts both from My Pink Stamper Sweetest Cupcakes
• XO just an alphabet stamp set from Michaels
• Polka - dot Cuttlebug folder

So I think I did pretty good with the challenge rules.  If you haven't found my circle it's the embossing on the red card stock.  Pretty clever huh.  I will try to post a picture with the whoopie pies inside the bags.  Hope you enjoy and your week gets off to a great start.

Valentine's Love

Good evening all.  It has been a crazy week here but for good reason.  We have one extra toddler in the house, my brother's daughter.  We are taking care of her while my sister-in-law goes to meet my brother who just came back from Afghanistan.  We are so glad he is back safe and sound for good and are really grateful for his service.  A house with three children 4 and under does make for a little chaos but alot of fun.
The project I have for you tonight is the boxes I made for my 4 year old's class valentines.  I decided to make little match boxes to hold candy for the kids.  She loves them and very proudly wrote her name on the back of each box.

Craft Recipe:

   * Matchbox cut at 4" from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More
   * Heart cut from Create-a-Critter cut at 1.5"
   * Sentiment from My Pink Stamper Love-alicious
   * Swiss Dot cuttlebug folder
   * Xmas Red Stickles
   * Ribbon from stash

I just used a standard tape runner for the adhesive as I figured they would get torn apart while the kids were trying to get the candy.  I am entering this in the weekly challenge over at Fantabulous Cricut, which was to use a heart on your project.  Hope you all enjoy and have a great end to your week. 

Valentine's Card for Kids

Good evening.  I have been working on Valentine's cards for my kiddos this week.  It is only right around the corner!!!  This is one of my favorite holidays because it is all about expressing your love.  I decided to use a dimensional gate fold card that I haven't done before.  I think the cards came out great and the kids are really going to love them.  I also made a video showing how I created the cards.  Here they are.

Here are some pics of the other card I made as well.

Card Recipe and Supplies:
 Owl Card:
   * Start with a 5" x 12" piece of card stock - K & Company
   * Start at one side and score at 2" 4" 8"  and 10"
   * Should have an inside card dimension of 5" x 4" with two 2" folded flaps
   * Elegant Edges Hearts1 oblong feature cut at 4" - then cut in half
   * Plantin Schoolbook heart cut at about 1"
   * Create-a-Critter Owl cut at 3"
   * Ribbon from Jo-anns
   * Crop-a-dile used for the eye-lets
   * Cotton Candy Stickles

Love Bug Card:
* Start with a 5" x 12" piece of card stock - K & Company
* Start at one side and score at 2" 4" 8"  and 10"
* Should have an inside card dimension of 5" x 4" with two 2" folded flaps
* Elegant Edges Hearts 2 oblong feature cut at 4" - then cut in half
* Simply Charmed Love Bug 2 cut at 2.75"
* Simply Charmed Love Bug Sentiment cut at 1"
* Ribbon from Jo-anns
* Crop-a-dile used for eye-lets
* Cotton Candy Stickles

I have also entered this card into the Anything Goes challenge over at My Craft Spot.

Have a great weekend!!!

Winner

Good Morning.  I am so excited because I just found out that I won a challenge.  I entered into a weekly challenge over at the Fantabulous Cricut blog and out of 77 entries I won!!!! So excited.  I submitted the Valentine's card I made for my hubby.

Please hop on over to thier blog and look at all the fabulous entries I was up against.  The other entries were fantastic.  Hope you have a great day.