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Here are a couple of freebies for you with four samples below of what I did with them.  

I hope you enjoy them!  :)

In this sample I embossed over the sayings with the Happy Birthday Embossing Folder and added some cute sequins.

Here's the girl's sample...I pretty much did the same as I did on the card above except I added some little crystal bling.

This is another sample for a girl...I stamped a saying, some little flowers, and added a butterfly.

And, here's another boy sample.  Here I added a butterfly and a caterpillar.  A little glitter and some bug eyes dressed up this card quite nicely.  It is hard to see here, but there is glitter on the butterflies wings and on the caterpillar as well.

ACETATE BUTTERFLIES

ACETATE BUTTERFLIES:
The butterfly on this card is actually done on acetate.

DIRECTIONS:
You take a piece of regular printer paper and either print out or stamp an image.  I chose a butterfly.  Place a piece of acetate over the printed/stamped image and trace over it with a Sharpie pen.  You decide which size tip you want on the Sharpie.  I chose a wider tip for the outside of the butterfly and used a finer tip for the detail on the inside of the butterfly.  After you trace the image then turn the acetate over and color with alcohol based markers.  It is really important that you color on the opposite side from which you traced with your Sharpie.  On this particular butterfly I used a glue pen in the pink areas and added glitter instead of coloring.  You can use all pens, all glitter, and/or a combination of the two.  (The glittered areas look really cool...I think on my next acetate butterfly I will try only glitter in different colors).  After you are satisfied with the look of your image, then cut it out and mount it up on a card.  The Sharpie side will be face up when you are finished.  Depending on which brand of alcohol marker you use the image will be translucent.  It turned out really cute and was a fun and different technique to try.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

ACETATE BUTTERFLY

Here's another sample of an acetate butterfly.  I didn't use any glitter on this one.

If you enlarge this card you will be able to see the translucency better.

ACETATE BUTTERFLY

This card also has an acetate butterfly on it, but it's a little hard to see in this photo.  Perhaps if you enlarge the photo you'll see it better.

I started out with a piece of paper 8 1/2" x 11" and scored it at 1 1/2" and 5 1/2" and then folded it.  I covered the front panels with background paper that I found online and then I added a couple of hearts which were cut out with the Spellbinder's dies...the largest heart is raised up with foam tape.  I added a Martha Stewart butterfly, a bow, and punched out some greenery and added that also.

This shows the same card as above, but with the front panels closed for mailing.  The right panel slips under the heart for closure.

ICE MOON OF JUPITER: The Fairy Tale

HEY GUESS WHAT?
My brother, Ron, and his friend Artie wrote a book!!!  I am sooooo excited for them.  They've been working on this for quite some time now and it's finally come to fruition.  Ron has done all the art work in the book himself.  They are actually in the process of writing a trilogy and this little book is an excerpt from the first novel.  It is a science fiction fantasy fairy tale.
He just told me tonight that he is meeting next week with Barnes and Noble as they are considering putting it in their stores in the Bay Area (California) and maybe online as well.  They are also talking about doing a book signing in the Dublin, CA store soon.
This was only published right before Christmas and wow all this attention already!  
YOU GO RON AND ARTIE!!!
If you'd like more information you can go to their web site at
http://icemoonproductions.com/

This is an AWESOME little book and would make a GREAT gift for an adult and/or a child.

Merry Christmas 2013!

This is the Christmas card I made for this past Christmas.  

I started out with a snowflake embossing folder and embossed the background.  Then I added a sentiment and some punched snowflakes that I added glitter and a bling to.  

I only hand-make a few Christmas cards as they are sooooo time consuming...although this one was really pretty simple, but pretty.  The majority of my Christmas cards are done in my card program and only a very few 'special' people receive my hand-made Christmas cards.

Here's a little card I made some time ago and just recently sent out.  The image on this card actually came from a greeting card that I received from someone a long time ago and decided to recycle.  The background is called my "Scrap Layering Technique" which is made from small scraps of background paper.  I added a handmade paper bow and a little embellishment on the bow to finish it off.