What's all the Hoop-la about?

Several years ago, I was garage sale-ing with my mother in law Joan and found a big bag of wooden embroidery hoops for $1. That's right, 20+ hoops ranging in size from 3 to 40 inches. Whoo hoo! Did I know what I wanted to do with them? No. Does that ever stop a crafter? If it does, than you lose the right to call yourself that. So much of art is instinct, and something about these simple wooden hoops called me. I instantly used the biggest one to make a canopy over my daughter's bed. The rest, hibernated on one of my craft shelves until the need for some cheap wall art for Lissie's room arose. Take the above hoops, some craft paint, scrapbook paper and vinyl skulls...(drum roll please) and presto! Cheap wall art for my pirate crazy princess! The best part is that when she is tired of pirates (according to her that will be never) I can change it out.I used a great embossing powder called ultra-thick pewter on the chipboard scrolls and flowers so that it looked old and pitted. Stamped a little flourish on the skull. The paper is a rich chocolate brown flock. Drop a little diamond in the center of the flower and you're done.

This great paper needed nothing more than a frame. There is a little bit of glitter on the butterflies. I added the littlest skull to some black paper filled with pirate sayings and drawings. On the butterfly paper I traced in some of the silver and free handed the other. I added glitter to the butterflies in black, chocolate and pink.
Just in case we forget who Lissie is. :-) I combined two great papers and then added the banner. I threw on some flowers with rhinestone brads and added pearls down the side.
This one was easy, I punched circles from various scraps from the other hoops and then added the word pirate over top of it.

This one is my favorite. :-) When Lissie is tired of it, this one will go in my scrapbook room. The crown is done with the ultra thick embossing powder again, with pearls added. The wings are a material called grungeboard. It had a great texture already and I just rubbed ink over top to bring out the pattern.

Here they are hanging on her wall. Pretty fun art for a $1's worth of embroidery hoops and supplies I had in my stash.

Fleeting...

How quickly time passes! I found these pages I did a couple of years ago of Joey. He was only seven. I think I am biased, but man, is he a cute little boy! :-)

A little birdie told me...

I found this picture of Toby when he was two and had to throw together a quick layout to show it. It is pretty simple, just some doodling and that cutest boy. Can you believe he is turning nine?

I am starting to photograph more layouts, so we'll see some more on the site. With spring in the air, there have been all kinds of projects flying around! I have been appliqueing some owl pillows, making wall art and of course, scrap booking. Watch for some updates!