Graduation 2012

It's that time of year.  Yup, the time of year that makes you feel old as you watch children that you've watched grow up graduate from college!  How does this happen?  I'm certainly not aging at the rate that they are, right?
But, it's a wonderful and joyous time, so congratulations to all of you graduates!
The patterns for this gift came from my favorite place, SVG Cuts (as if you couldn't tell from most of my posts).  It's from their Graduation Day SVG Kit. Here's the card.  It is designed just a tad different, and I have to say that I swiped this design and the poem from a fellow paper crafter, Brigit Mann.  She's so talented.  You can visit her blog to see her brilliance at Brigit's Scraps.

And, this is the graduation cap box.  It's surprisingly easy, and just adorable.  I filled it with black tissue paper, some little candies, and some $$$, which I rolled up like a scroll and tied with ribbon.

SVG Cuts provides tutorials for their projects, which include instructions to make the tassel.  I added the charm with the Epiphany Crafts tool and charm settings.

And, that's it for today.  Best wishes to all of you graduating high school and college students.  May your future be bright with opportunity.

Here's to the Future!

For My Brother

My wonderful brother, Marty, went to live with his heavenly Father on April 20, 2012.  He had ALS, a horrible disease that took a man who lived life with love and joy every single day.  We had his memorial service on May 9, 2012, and of course I had to make something for the service.  Instead of a little hand-out, I decided to make bookmarks so that friends and family could actually use it and remember him often.  His favorite place was the Huntington Beach Pier, thus, the photo of the pier on the bookmark.  I designed the bookmarks in Photoshop, then had them printed on glossy cardstock.  I then punched the corners and the hole, and inserted some bookmark tassels.  Here is what they looked like.

We had flower arrangements made in reds and white, as Marty was the biggest Angel baseball team fan ever.  He had season tickets right behind home base for over 30 years.  I made some cards to back photos, merging the Angel "A" to the top.  Then I cut out the white outline A and the red A, as well as the silver halos.  I ran all of the A's (over 40 total of each) and the halos through my 9" Xyron Creative Station.  It took 2' to 3' of adhesive.  I was able to take this sticker sheet with me out of town, and had family members help me assemble them.  The Xyron worked so well, and made it easy to transport the stickers and them put them all together.  I then put the photos on the backing with the tape runner, and added a floral wire between the photo and the backing. We inserted all of these into the floral arrangements.  Here is what they looked like:

The horizontal photos had the Angel's A, and the vertical ones were just backed in red.  The A's were on both sides, as were the photos.  All of the photos were different, so over 40 different photos were displayed.  You can get a glance of his life by seeing his slideshow by clicking here.

RIP my dear sweet brother