Hi,

Well, I've been wanting to make some of these Kusudama balls for a while...Two of my friends, and part of my upline, have made a few of these and I got the bug too.....Well, the bug took a while to become reality, as these things take a LOOOOONG time to make! I counted the flowers in Agnes's ball, and when I realized i needed 60 petals for one ball, I thought it would take me a LONG time to actually start making one....(5 petals to each flower and 12 flowers to make a ball....yeap, 60 squares to fold).

Well, a few more peaks at MICHELE'S Blog and at her great tutorial and I thought I would give it a go. I still am not sure why my centers are not as neatly folded as Michelle's, but I am working on that :-).

Michelle has gotten slightly Kusudama crazy over the years and she has a FEW of these around, as you would, for any ocassion! Oh, and some to give away too....as you would.

Sweet Pea Kusudama Wreath
Christmas Wreath
Valentine's Day Wreath
TUTORIAL

I am not as savvy to do videos yet, so I cheated and shared her tutotial, which is fabulous!

Well, here are my pictures of the 2 Kusudama balls that I made. The first one went to Tin, a really good friend of mine, for her birthday, simply because she appreciated it :-). I would have never thought of offering it to her, but once she said she liked it, it was hers...and then I had to make another one to have for myself.

Hope you like them. Once I have more free time I would like to start a wreath....but I am yet to get over the "HOW MANY Petals did you say I need for one of those????"

Hugs and hope you have a blessed week,

Renate

Hi,

Some of you might know that I like to use sketches for my cards....A lot of sketches! Sometimes I have my crafting mojo and do everything from scratch and other times I love the sketches! It just makes it a tad easier! And there's those dreaded times when it does not matter how many sketches I look at, I simply get NO ideas.... Well, this was not the case in January! I was super excited and humbled to be picked as the winner for the January VIVA LA VERVE SKETCH CHALLENGE! And this coming only a few months since the last win, in the OCTOBER CHALLENGE.

And the prize was $100 gift card to go crazy in the VERVE Store.

And here are the goodies I chose....Can't wait to use all the Bible verses I got! One thing that I was wanting to get from them, and this is great! And the cute Baby set!

The first 3 pictures are the stamps I got back in October and the last 4 are the stamps I just got in the mail! Can't wait to get to use them!

Hope you have a good week! We are freezing here in California, it's been 9 degrees Celsius today! I still can't wrap my head around this Fahrenheit business despite living in the states for 5 years (3 year stint in CT 03-05 and since 2011 in CA). So I have my phone tell me the temperature in C so I actually know what to expect...although I did not need the phone to tell me it was the Arctic today!

Hugs,

Renate

Hi,

Just a quick post to share the cute little valentines day treats we made for friends and school. It is quite amazing what a big deal Valentines day is at schools in the US! They take it seriously over here! I thought it was just mooshi newly gotten together couples that celebrate the most....but no, schools over here it's a big deal!

Well, we were told no sweets, which caters perfectly to my health obsessed self....But I was actually planning on baking on something sweet...:-(. Now don't get me wrong, I am NOT against sweets! Quite the opposite actually! I am against the wrong sweets, the artificial colours and preservatives kind! I LOVE a good sweet, I love home made cakes and pastries and pies and the like! I could never say no to a home made good dessert. Well, anyway, no sweets it was, so I had to come up with a new project.

So here it is the cute little kangaroos I made for the kids to assemble:

And this is Alina's take on my kangaroo :-). Oh, and on the kids one I stamped the LOVE stamp from the You Are Loved set:

And then we made this little M&M's treat bags for our friends. I saw these treats on other SU deomnstrators blogs and thought they were super cute! And yes, OCD did do the lollies in an order, until I ran out of the white ones and that kind of messed up the order. 

Well, in the end the kids could not care less if they were in order, they thought they were pretty "sweet"

Hope you all had a lovely week!

Hugs,

Renate

Hi,

Yet another day with 2 posts...so, this is me, it's either 2-3 posts a day or none for ages! I should try to be more consitent....Should be on my list for 2013 of things to get done!

This will be a quick post, I just wanted to post these cute little baby tags I made for a friends baby shower. Unfortunately I was unable to make it, but the little cuties did!

I used the Ciao Baby Set from the Spring Catalogue and the Two by Two stamp with Noah's ark. This has been my go-to stamp for babies recently! The last one I did for my sister in law in England was coloured with Copics, and it turned out GREAT! This time I simply did not have the time! For those of you that know Copics, you know it can take up to 1hr to colour one image! And for those of you that have not coloured with Copics before, I have 3 things to say:

1. Yeap, it seriously does take that long! All that blending takes ages to get perfect...I'm still not there yet, but getting more practice

2. Where have you been??

3. Seriously, don't get into them, they are EXPENSIVE! Trust my (my husband's) advice, your husband will thank you! Mine is seriously really supportive and wants to make me happy! Love you hon! (I know he reads my posts) You're awesome, and yes I do really need them! ALL of them

Now, I digress, where was I? Oh yes, the baby tags!

Hugs and hope you like the cuties :-)

Renate

One of my really good friends is a piano teacher and she is doing a piano recital in March. She asked me to do her invites and recital programmes. If you have been reading my blog for a while you might remember Last Year Programmes. They were really cute! And I loved them! And so did she.

But after doing such a cute programme and invite, could I really beat that? Or even come close? It would be hard! That Designer Paper I used is probably MY Favourite so far, and for some reason Melon Mambo and Wild Wasabi just mesh really well!

Well, I did a mock up of a spring programme for my friend, with s spring theme of course (recital is in march). She liked it when she saw it but she said she wanted something different....more like winter themed programmes....really? I can't wait for summer to come and you want winter? Ok, that's ok, I can work with that....I might be slightly cold working with the dark blue paper and snowflakes though :-)

So she came over and looked at all the papers and stuff!!! and chose what she wanted and we designed something. Here is the finished product. I have to say, I LOVED it! I LOVED IT! It turned out so much better than I thought, I am super happy. And that glimmer paper is just perfect touch for the invites.

 

 

 

Hope you like the recital invites and programmes :-).

Hugs,

Renate