Seashell Art

Our older son collects sea shells. For quite a while he has had them in a plastic shadow box we bought him when he first started collecting them. A few months ago I saw sea shells displayed in a fish bowl and thought I should try that for his shells. I had an empty fish bowl, but just kept putting them off. When we went on our cruise in February (my husband and I), we collected a bunch of new sea shells for him and he suddenly had too many to fit in his original box. Today I decided to try the fish bowl display, and it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself : ). I crumpled up some newspaper and put that in the middle, so that most of the shells could be seen from the outside instead of having to fill the middle part that no one sees with some of his beautiful shells. I'm sure there are some shells in the middle somewhere, but at least this way, you get to see at least a little of most of the shells. He loves the new way his shells are displayed, by the way.

A top down view of the fish bowl. I'd like to get some sand to mix in with the shells, but it may be a while before that happens.

A side view. I love how the colors of the shells play off of each other.

Another side view. You can see in the bottom left hand corner the crab shell we found for him on the beach in Mazatlan.

A close up of the crab shell we found for him.

The side from a slightly different area.

Another side view.

A close up of the star fish that came in a package of shells we bought him in Puerto Vallarta.

A side view with the star fish in the bottom right corner.

Another side view.

I love the conch shells on the bottom of this view.

A last view of the side.

Birthday Scrapbook Page

I really wanted to get something creative accomplished today, so I sorted through some photos until I found a group that called to me. They were pictures of my opening a present from some good friends of ours for my birthday this year. I used a tag title that I got from Kathy M at Scrapbook Addict for winning a prize at her cyber crop that she held in April. I mounted the tag on some ribbon. I then stamped some candles on a piece of paper (that matched the journaling block). The candle stamps are from the Studio G $1 stamp sets at Micheal's. I also stamped and colored a cupcake stamp. This stamp was originally mounted on wood, but I've unmounted most of my wood mount stamps since I find unmounted stamps easier to store and position. I think I got this cupcake stamp from a dollar store near us. I used the stripe paper because the horizontal stripes mimic what I'm wearing. I included the note that our friend wrote me and the card that they gave me. The big "Danielle" is from the envelope that the card came in. I loved how our friend wrote my name, so I wanted to include it on the layout.

Graduation Card

So much for updating my blog regularly. I just forget about it except when I'm either not home or I'm doing something I can't interrupt.

Anyway, we have a graduation party to go to on Friday, so I made this card today for the friend who is graduating. The school colors are gold and purple. I cut the graduation cap with my Craft Robo using a tri-fold graduation card template I got from one of the Wishblade Yahoo Groups I am on. I had cut out the actual card last year for my sister-in-law's graduation from the same school, and had saved the cap outline in case I made another graduation card. For once my pack rat tendencies actually came in handy : ). The "congrats" saying is stamped with a Studio G stamp from the $1 clear acrylic sets from Micheal's. The gold ribbon was wrapped around as candle holder I bought, so I saved it to use in my crafts. On the gold spotted paper, I ran it through my Cuttlebug, using the swirls embossing folder.