Announcing...

 Our very first grandchild, a boy, arrived yesterday at 9:00 pm.  Carl William weighed in at 8 lbs 1 oz and is 19.5 inches long.

Mom, Dad and baby doing fine.

 

Having his first shampoo and bath. He has so much hair they needed to use a brush!

 A few hours later we finally got the chance to hold him.  We are absolutely thrilled to welcome this little guy into our family!

I Won!

I love to enter blog giveaways and I seem to be a bit lucky in winning some of them too! Just found out from Lorraine on Creative Daily that I won her gorgeous fabric collage on giveaway #4 (see it here).  I recently discovered her blog and her work is beautiful, so take a visit and check it out for yourself! Can't wait to get my beautiful piece.

Ready for Spring

This is what I was up to today. Took some time to finally get a much-needed pedicure so I'll be ready for flip-flop season.  It felt so good to be pampered.  Note to self: do more often!

Happy Spring!

Inspired by Hero Arts

This card created by Tami Harley was featured on the Hero Arts blog today. You can check out the post here.

I was instantly inspired to make something similar, but instead of a card I did a page in my art journal.  I already had a page gessoed and had decoupaged wrinkly tissue on it so my background was ready to go.

I don't have any of the stamps that were used, so I substituted what I did have.  The background was painted with blue and green acrylic paints and overstamped randomly with a text stamp.  I loosely painted a flower with white and red paints and then stamped a Claudine Hellmuth flower over the paints.  I stamped the leaves from the same set onto dark green cardstock, cut them out and glued them to the background, drawing in a stem.  I punched a yellow circle from cardstock and glued it to the center of the flower and added a button.  The sentiment is an old clear stamp that I stamped on white cardstock, inked and glued to background.

This was a quick and fun project for a very rainy, stormy day. Brightened my spirits!

New Classes for Spring

Last weekend we released our new LBH classes for spring. To see the entire lineup, go to the LBH blog and click on the Buffet Class tab at the top. There are still openings in all classes, so reserve your seat now.

Here's a spring canvas I created  (which is similar to the one I created for the Front Porch Kit projects last week) using a burlap canvas and lots of natural elements.  It showcases one of my favorite photos of my youngest daughter.

And I created this double-page baby layout from the new Graphic 45 baby papers (Little Darlings).  I borrowed photos of a friend's baby for this but am looking forward to replacing them with my own grandson's photos (two weeks to go!).

Used a G45 metal butterfly embellishment

Love these tiny onesies with Ideology metal hangers

Tiny baby buttons and an embossed butterfly

Hope you're starting to enjoy spring weather wherever you are. It's been in the high 70's here all week and everything is blooming!

Welcome to the new Front Porch Design Team

We've just added eight new designers to our Front Porch Design Team! They all bring unique talents and styles to the team and I'm looking forward to getting to know them and create art with them. They will be creating projects for the very next Front Porch Kit due to be released in about six weeks.

Check out the announcement of the new team on The Little Blue House Blog today and be sure to visit their personal blogs to get to know them better.

WELCOME GIRLS!

LBH Open House

It's been a very busy week, finishing up all the design projects for spring classes and then hosting our Open House on Friday and Saturday. The Open House was a blast - it's always fun to see all our customers/friends, and we always have great refreshments to eat and a fun make-and-take too.

Our friend, Lynette, took charge of decorating the kitchen and making all the goodies - she did an awesome job on both! Take a look for yourself.

Cute little "Quakers" - darling vintage decor

Yummies - can you say sugar heaven? White chocolate coated oreo pops and peeps dipped in almond bark!

These were our sweet make-and-take Easter tags featuring Honey Pop honeycomb paper and the new Stampendous Color Fragments and Halo Glitters.  I think Elaine and I taught over 100 of these tags!

And here's Kristen with the fabulous prizes we gave away.  

And now begins the prepping for all the classes sold...