Baby Shower Card

One of our married couple friends, Joey & April, had their baby shower today. In just under 6 weeks they are expecting their son, Kenai, to enter the world.

Just for fun I thought I'd come up with a card to attach to the present George and I got for them. Using a template I had the Craft ROBO cut out the design.

Then pulled it off the carrier sheet.  Which is the sticky sheet that holds the paper firmly while the blade cuts out whatever design you've asked it to cut.

I tested it out to see that it would pull together just right. I didn't have any old shoe strings so a thin ribbon had to do.

Then using some of my metallic paint pens and some star brads I decorated it. Using the green and gray from the diaper bag they'd asked for I put silver on the front of the shoe and green for the sides

I think it turned out well and really only took about an hour to do. I could see these being used for putting in gift cards or money for baby showers too. Also could use them for the first few years of a child's birthdays as envelopes. So I'm certainly going to keep this design and possibly use it for other ideas. Not to mention there are plenty of other pregnant ladies in my church.


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Practice Practice Practice

In an attempt to learn and fine tune a new crafting interest of mine I've been playing around with a few gadgets and looking around for hints and tricks online on how to use them. My first find was the Sizzix Big Shot. I mainly liked the idea of being able to add embossing and impressions to cards and envelopes that I send out.

My second find was the Craft ROBO. I liked the idea of not having to take an exacto knife to everything I try to design. Also this machine is great with cutting out vinyl which I could also use when it comes the the small details of decorating my future daughters nursery.

One thing I soon found was that the Craft ROBO was not so easy a contraption to learn. I had to do a lot of searching and reading to find good worthwhile tutorials on how to create the lines that it knows to cut vs. the lines that it just dots for easier bending. Just figuring out the loading of the paper was my first real challenge.

Last night I did some looking into more information and finally tried out a large pillow box design. It worked! haha. Just for fun I ran it through the Sizzix Big Shot embossing to add a little design and finished it off with some color and a ribbon.

Nothing special but yet I'm happy that I've succeeded in making at least 1 pillow box using cardstock. Next task is to try out various types of paper!

Finally have my Art Area setup!

When we'd first moved into this house I saw that we would have an extra bedroom and I declared it would be my arts, crafts, office room. Well, you know how it is. You unpack the things you need right away and then all the little knick knacks and decorative things remain in the boxes. We slowly piled all those boxes along with all my college art supplies in the spare bedroom. It became more and more filled with half empty boxes.

About 7 months later we decided to try for a child and were instantly successful! So now we're looking at this spare room and realizing we need to clear it out to turn it into a nursery. I was a little disappointed that I'd never gotten to turn it into my art room.

I first started thinking about trying to turn our outdoor storage shed into my art room but soon as the weather warmed up and we stepped into there I realized that I would roast during the summer and freeze in winter. I started looking at our front room where our pool table was. With a little house rearranging I could claim the back wall area!

So our first step was to find a reasonable craft table that I wouldn't feel overly guilty about getting stuff stained onto it or accidentally knicking it with the exacto knife. Using an old Staple giftcard from my aunt we got a nice large 8ft table! My husband then helped me move some of the furniture around and now I have my own art area set up and ready for crafting.

I've started using it test out ideas of mine for things I'd like to create and start selling in Etsy. Below I will show you the progress photos over the couple weeks that this task took to complete. It's really not complete yet. But mainly I just have to organize the items I want on the shelves and table.

(Click each thumbnail to be taken to larger view)

I'm Pregnant!

For those who haven't heard I am pregnant. Which means a lot of my time has been devoted to trying to set up the house and prepare ourselves for the pitter patter of little feet.

April 8th we were told that it is a girl!
We are going to name her Eva Catherine

Note I posted on Facebook:
What will her name be?

I just found out today at 12 weeks 1 day pregnant that I am having a little girl!
Her predicted due date is October 20, 2010 (10-20-2010)

George and I had thought long and hard over the years of what we'd like to name our future children. We knew we weren't ready for them yet (at that time) but we also knew we definitely wanted to have them.

Ever since listening to a song by Nightwish I'd loved the name "Eva"
We considered trying for a longer version (Evangeline or Geneva or Evalynn) and using Eva as a nickname but nothing really seemed to be what we liked and decided to keep as just Eva.

our next step was to think of a good middle name that went well with Eva. I got to thinking about my aunt who'd passed away unexpectedly. Catherine Ladd. That just flowed and sounded perfect. We loved it instantly so that was our first choice for if we had a girl.

So I would like to introduce you all to our future daughter - Eva Catherine Brewer


Ultrasound Photos

Here's the album for her 12 week photos
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2101324&id=54604368&ref=mf
What I'm going to do is show the original photo and then if you click to the next photo I'll have the one I took into Photoshop and pointed out her parts. I know if you weren't actually viewing the moving image of the baby it's sometimes tough to decipher those still images.


At the 12 week ultrasound

First thing the doctor tells me is "well there's only 1 in there!" Talk about a sigh of relief! Twins supposedly run in George's family. And I'd actually poofed out a bit fast.

He zoomed in and there she was moving her fingers, moving her arms. She would bounce a little on her back. She was laying on her back and he couldn't get her to face him so that he could get a good measurement or a look at her gender. He would gently poke at her and at one point we swore it looked like she pushed back. Finally it looked like she was going to move the right way but then she decided to turn on her other side with her back to him. But we got a good look at her spine then!

Dr. Thompson decided that it might help if we gave her a break and allowed me to stand up and stretch and move around with hopes that she would flip around herself.

So we tried again and this time she finally adjusted herself just right and he was able to say for sure that she was a ... well SHE! I don't want to go into deep specifics on how you know but if you Google it you will see what doctors can look for.

There have been many new mothers lately and most of them who've talked to me have had Dr. Thompson as their doctor. They've told me that whatever gender he says it will be, then it WILL be that gender. No one has yet told me that he's been wrong. So I trust what he says!

He was able to see that she's very healthy and has less then 1% chance of down syndrome and other diseases that they're able to look for at this point.

There was one point it really looked like she had the hiccups. It was such a moment and I wish I could have somehow been able to keep the video to review of the ultrasound. I can't wait for the 21 week ultrasound!!

Setting up an Etsy Shop

Wow, I haven't written in this blog for forever. Things go way too hectic!
I'll try to get better at this.

So I've been watching a couple friends of mine crafting their own things and have been feeling the itch to start doing some personal crafting and selling myself.

I'm currently looking into Lampwork beadmaking. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding a class to learn it (and see if it's something I really will enjoy doing) that isn't over an hour's drive from where I live.

But I've still set up a shop that has nothing listed in it haha
StormGazerdesigns.etsy.com