You Can Do It!

I made this card for my sister-in-law, who is running/biking/swimming the Ironwoman Triathlon next week.  Ok, well, to be truthful, I made this card for the Viva La Verve challenge but it just so happened I liked the retro bike image (and the Moxie Fab Bicycle challenge)so that's how it ended up being for my SIL.  I was inspired by the patchwork quilt in the third bedroom.  I punched one inch squares from all sorts of scraps--October Afternoon, SU, Jenni Bowlin.  Some of them I even punched from the small pictures that they put on the front of paper packs.  I didn't plan ahead too well so two of the cuter squares are covered by the image, while you end up seeing that not-my-favorite bird paper. Oh well, that's the joy of quilting, right?  It's a 4x5 grid, so that means 20 squares and I inked the edges of each square which means...80 edges to ink. My chalk ink pad is in rough shape right now!  After adhering all of them to a 4x5 base, I sewed all the seams on my Sew Mini. 

The image is from Unity's August '09 Kit of the Month, stamped with Memento Rhubarb ink.  I love this color, it's a nice red without being too loud.  The sentiment is computer-generated using Rockwell font. The ribbon is SU Kiwi Kiss.  The "quilt" is foam mounted and the image panel is double foam mounted.

So I "splurged" and picked up the Fiskars cutter I mentioned yesterday. I say "splurged" because check out the deal I got: all Fiskar tools were 60% off at JoAnn's, then I get an additional 15% off with my teacher discount card.  So I picked up the $30 trimmer, $6 refill, $10 star punch and another $16 dollar star punch for...wait for it....wait for it....$23!!  And then we saved $25 at the grocery store, so it's really like it was free, right?

Speaking of "free," I have to work locker sign-up at my school today, which is 10,000 times better than working registration, which is when we collect fees.  Note to parents: "I thought this was a free education!" was funny the first 318 times we heard it never.

What annoying "joke" could you live without hearing ever again?