She who swore she'd never have a blog...

that she is me. And yet, here I am. First things first. Random facts. Just because I like 'em. And because this is my blog, so I can if I wanna. (I'm starting to see that having your own blog is a bit like being the ruler of your own personal universe, isn't it? Huh. Who knew?)

Previous jobs include roller-skating carhop, basket maker, cake decorator, script writer, etc. And let me just say that carhopping is far underrated, my friends... $20 an hour when you're in high school is like swimming in a giant pot of gold. The script writer (and to be clear, that is far overstating my actual responsibilities in that job, but it's a pretty difficult job to just sum up, so writer is the easiest way to put it) fact is important to you because it affects what your're reading right now... at this very moment. What's great about script writing is that you need to write how people actually speak, which is not necessarily grammatically correct. So, I am embracing that ideal for blogging. I think it's brilliant because I love incomplete sentences. A lot. However, I cannot spell. At all. So, I use google as my own personal dictionary. In fact, I have already googled decorator, underrated, and affects even while writing this post.

4 out of the 5 people in my immediate family share birthdays. As in, my husband and I have 3 kids - kid #1 (Eli) and kid #3 (Noelle) share a birthday. I share my birthday with kid #2 (Zeke). And no, none of that sharing was planned. (Puhlease... like I would choose to share my birthday... ha! Although, now that it is what it is, I look forward to many sports/video game/Star Wars themed birthday parties.)

To be honest, my favorite hobby is not paper crafting. Or I should say, it's not my only favorite hobby. Ah, how do I love junking? Let me count the ways. Junking would be the red-headed stepchild of antiquing. I cannot afford antiquing, therefore I junk. Junking is a bit harder to do now that I have the 3 previously-mentioned (birthday-stealing) children. The same children that like to creatively "rearrange" all the items in my home. There is no space that is safe. Nor a space that is out of reach due to the dare devil nature that has been imparted to them by someone other than me. So, all that means that I don't get to go junking as often as I would like. And that breeds this whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" issue.

I am technically challenged. I did not own an ipod until a few weeks ago and I can assure you that I have not figured it out yet. I can Tivo, but that's about the limit of my techy-ness. Chalk any blogging errors up to this fact.

My style is lazy clean and simple. Not to say that clean and simple is easy. It's just that generally, when I try to add more patterned paper and more images and more embellishments and more, more, more, my hands literally rebel against me. I find myself adding, adding, adding, then removing, removing, removing. I so envy all of you who can add just the right embellishments and layers and lots of them. And then some more. Layers scare me. So do embellishments. Except ribbon. Ribbon loves me.

Yeah... I'm wordy. Verbose. Long-winded. But you already knew that, didn't you? I know some of you just want to get straight to the project pictures. So feel free to skip all the words. I won't be offended. I mean, I would be offended, but I'll never know, will I? It's a win-win, my friend.

This is my new gig! Yeaaaaah... trust me, I was surprised, too. And thrilled. Dream-come-true kind of thrilled. Cool, huh?

So, to celebrate the "birthday" of my new gig and my new blog, I'm going to go with a little birthday card for today's project...

I tell ya, I thought I was downright *brilliant* when I realized the glassine bags were the perfect size for a regular A2 card. I could do a little matching glassine bag envelope for every darn card I ever make, I like it that much! And you could totally just do a simple closure for the envelope instead of the button wrap do-dad, although I rather like the do-dad. The candle stickers come all lined up just like that so I just folded the backing sheet back a bit, the pressed the bottom of the stickers onto the cardstock, then gently peeled the backing away while I kept pushing the stickers down. Wa-la... all lined up and evenly spaced! I strung the buttons along the twine for a bit of a different look.

All righty, kids... that's all she (me) wrote for today! Thanks for stopping by for my inaugural post!*

* Yup. Just googled "inaugural." But who can blame me? That word is seriously hard to spell.

Eat Cake card

Candles & Cake Frost the Cake Pattern Paper by Art Warehouse Candles & Cake Epoxy Stickers by Art Warehouse Candles & Cake Cardstock Stickers by Art Warehouse Tiny Brown Ledger Alpha Stickers by Making Memories Solid Color Baker's Twine by Martha Stewart Crafts Gusseted Glassine Favor Bags * everything is from emma's paperie