Martha Stewart craft

We have lots of sparkly things going on here at my home, inside and out. For starters I thought I would share some of the crafts I’ve been working on the past few months. We also got a surprise snow storm here in Texas! What a thrill. Hope your season is shiny and bright!

My wire Basket Ornaments

Hobby Lobby ornaments

My tinsel Basket Ornament

Gerri Plummer Sugar Plum Wreath

Snow Fall Texas 2008

Tons of flakes falling

My lens frosted over!

I weeded through my colossal stash of artchix goodies and was inspired to make some cards in traditional red and green for Christmas, but with a non-traditional twist! Like the bathing beauty and the girl with the Easter sheep. I just went with the flow and the Pearl Ex salmon pink Pigment and the Heidi Swapp Sea acrylic paint along with my Art Chix Bubble Chixies collage images. I had some of my bubble images featured on the pink bubble chixies collage sheet! So Fun! I hope you get some good ideas for the coming holiday!

one of the Chixies Bubble collage sheets

I was so excited to find out that the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas Oct 30th-Nov 2nd 2008 will be host to a Make It University with Cloth Paper Scissors magazine! Make it U is an open studio area for collage arts and crafts with demonstrations and participation in the art process. Also, what really excited me is a large Artist Trading card swap, ATCs, that will be going on at the show so I cracked open my Atc goodies and got to work making some Holiday inspired cards. My mom and I go every year and hope to see some of you Pinkdilla fans there!

After playing around with all of my alice in wonderland images and stickers I turned them into some cute cards. I had the most fun with my Stampington’s Angel of music stamp, I just cut the wings out of the image and dabbed some alice blue ink on her gown. Voila! She is a really good alice impersonator! I adored her sitting on the edge of the windows, I painted and inked a silver german dresden arch and cut out a window from a playing card and placed them over a stamped tree image. What’s really fun is sticking her with all of the different characters and sticking some teacups and teapots in there too.

Arches in the sky

Little Band of Refugees sitting around the campfire

Well, I just don’t know what to say other than our lives will never be the same and everything is changed. We evacuated from the coast area 30 miles from Galveston, Texas and came home on Sunday night. There were no stores open, no lights, no Power, and lots of debris for several days. As our city began to return to normal we sat with our family of refugees who can’t go home to Galveston now. That childhood home is gone. We sat for 7 days without power scrounging for ice and food whenever we could find a pod or store open. Our families in Lake Jackson, Alvin, and Galveston, Texas are all still without power and trying to clean up the messes of what was left behind. Thank God for the fabulous neighbors of mine that traded ice and food back and forth between us. And the sweet Friends that had power who let us do laundry for our big family. I thought to only share the photos of peace and strength that I have from that return home. I love how the night sky seemed to be under arches of Rainbows! It was a little solace of Peace to be found in what was a very dark night.

I thought I would share this Birthday card I made for my sweet friend Renee, it was very therapeutic to have a creative outlet for my stress and sadness. I called this one "Looking Up, not Back". I am always looking up. Looking up in admiration of nature. Looking up at the created night sky. Looking up for a glimpse of peace. A sign of change. A hint of what is to come.

My daughter was turning 8 and loves music, Hannah Montana, and the Jonas Brothers so we decided at the last minute do have a rock star birthday party! First we made the invitations using the blue, pink and purple color scheme we were using for the decorations. Next we looked up Rock star party ideas online at Kaboose.com and decided to incorporate some of those ideas.

For the party we hung a large outdoor Christmas net of lights, Christmas Lights Direct even sells purple and other fun colored lights, behind our white curtains and made this a "Stage" area for the kids to play dress up. No need to buy a bunch of party stuff, we just took out all of the scarves, jewelry, shiny shoes and glasses we had and placed them next to the stage area. For the next bit of Rock star fun we broke open the Glo-sticks and the kids had a blast playing with these.

We also used free Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana coloring pages to decorate the room and to give out as party favors. We even came up with our own version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey game by hanging a Poster of Hannah, Secret Star, with a guitar on her shirt and printed out little pink guitars for the kids to "pin" on her shirt! Simple game and ideas but they ended up being so much fun!

Last week here at Pinkdilla I spent my time Hatching up new ideas, making cards and spending time with family. The first card I made is a Wizard of Oz Birthday card using a Breygent Collector card on the front, and the second one is a just hatched New Baby card using vintage scrap images and the turquoise German dresden wings. Hope your week is bright and shiny!