Giveaway and new sponsor

Good morning everyone! Have I got a treat for you all today! We have our first sponsor and a giveaway to go with it! Crafty Girl's Workshop is going to give one lucky winner a $20 gift certificate to their store! She has some awesome fabric - I know I just got some from her in the mail, and the shipping was super fast! She is having a special on jelly rolls right now - go and check this out!

To win the $20 gift certificate all you need to do is the following: leave comment for each entry
*Be a follower of Iron Violet Designs - mandatory
*Stop by Crafty Girl's Workshop and say hi or subscribe to her blog through email.
*visit Crafty Girl's Workshop and tell me what you would get with your money.
*Share what you would sew with the fabric you could win.

This giveaway will close on May 14, 2011 at 5 pm Mountain time.

Good Luck - I know that I would sure love to win free fabric!

Mother's Day Cards

 Happy late Mother's Day to all you mother's out there! I hope that you all had a relaxing and enjoyable day. I sure enjoyed my day!

I wanted to show you the Mother's Day cards that I made, and also some that my friend made. One thing I love about this design is that you can change the sentiment and you have a different card - super cute and easy!

I made the pink and yellow one for all the mother's in my life. I made the flowers out of tissue paper. I punched circles - about 6-10 sheets at a time. Then I glued one on at a time. This is best with glue dots - less mess. Then when I had about4-5 of them on there I crinkled the edges up to give it a little bit dimension. I totally got this idea from Martha, just so you know. ;)

Here is the similar card that my friend made. She wanted to do a circle one because she wanted everything to fit into this circle container that her and her kids made cookies to put in. What mom would not love to get a cute card and cookies from her grandkids!?

 I am keeping it short today because I have to get a ton of laundry done, and everything else. But check back tomorrow for an awesome giveaway I will be having!

Fantastic Friday #18

It is F.R.I.D.A.Y.!!! I am super excited about this! Well except for the fact that Conan has to work tonight, oh well, the world will be safer! And the weather is finally nice! It seems like every weekend here the weather will turn super cold and windy! But it is not supposed to this weekend, so we are going to a BBQ with some friends.

Anywho . . . last weeks party was awesome! I want to thank all of you for linking up. I love looking through everything you all link up! It is great! I have a very large list of things I want to make now! This week I chose to feature this beautiful Menu Chart by Creative Mommas. She gives excellent instructions how to make your own. And it is just beautiful, I like the classic black and white. I also love this because I have no wall space in my kitchen, and I love the idea of a menu board. This is perfect - now I just need to clean off a space on the fridge for it!

Grab a button to let everyone know that you were featured!

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Now for the real reason you are all here - to share everything Fantastic that you have been working on this week! Share with us your latest and greatest stuff and start linking your FANTASTIC creations up!

Rules:
*become a follower of Iron Violet Designs, I like followers - it makes me feel good. But I won't delete your link if you don't.
*link up anything that you have made - sewn, cooked, crafted, etc. family friendly of course.
*must link to a blog post, not your home page, another linky party, etsy shop or giveaway.
*link back to this post so that others can join in on the fun. Grab a button or do a text link either one is fine with me.
*visit a few of the links and leave comments! Everyone needs a little comment love!

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Let's get started:

Scrabble Pendant Necklace

Do you ever have those days where you are just so busy, but you still don't get done what you want? That was my day yesterday. I had craft group and I helped a bunch of people make Mother's Day cards, but now I still have to get mine done! I did get them started, hopefully this morning I will be able to finish them and get them into the mail.But it was a lot of fun visiting and crafting with my friends.

Today I have probably the easiest piece of jewelry to show you. And I love how it can be so personalized. I have mentioned before that I work with the youth in my church. Last week for an activity we made these scrabble tile pendant necklaces.

I got a bunch of images for them to choose from and they followed this tutorial. Here is the picture of all the ones that they made.

The only time consuming part of it was that you had to wait for the glue to dry between each step. I then added the glaze at home because it takes so long to dry. Due to time I ended up getting Allene's Paper Glaze, from Michael's, to use instead of ordering Diamond Glaze. It seemed to work good. Here they are all glazed and with the bails attached.

Another lady who works with the youth has a jewelry business so she supplied the bails and chains for them. This is the one I made for me, because I love music. Though my oldest thinks that those ones from Peanuts are pretty cool.

These girls loved this because they could have something so unique and personal as jewelry. And aren't all teenagers trying to stand out and be unique? Most of the girls I work with are! Now I am off to nurse my wounds from ice blocking with them last night. Fun, but unfortunately I am not as young as I used to be! Have a great day!

Another Winner

The last winner of my 200 follower giveaway never contacted me so here we go again!

Our new winner is  . . . number 2!

Rachel said...

Been a follower for a while now!

Contact me within 72 hours to claim your fabulous ring!

Spice Cheesecake

Happy Monday all! I hope that you all had a very enjoyable weekend! I had a fabulous weekend, very relaxing and enjoyable. We went to this family fun day in our community and the kids had the time of their lives on the bounce house. But Crocs had a booth there and Thing #5 scored these awesome crocs for free! I am such a sucker for shoes, and little kids shoes can be so cute. I just love the little croc guy on these. But the reason I really love them is because he loves to wear them . . . all the time!! I know this is not the great picture, but he did not really help me out much, I took a ton and this is the best!

Onto to topic of today's post: Spice cheesecake. I enjoy sweets probably a little bit more than the next person, and so when I saw this recipe over at Frugal Homemaking I immediately printed it because I knew that this was one that I would be making!

She made it in chocolate, but after Easter I had already had enough chocolate . . . can this really ever happen? I just wasn't feeling like making something chocolate, so I thought that I would try this out in spice cake. And it turned out so great! I love spice cake - it is a tie between that and carrot cake for my favorite.

Here is the recipe I used to make this divine cheesecake.
1 box cake mix - chocolate, or spice
1/2 C oil
1 egg
filling:
1 8 oz bar cream cheese
1/3 C sugar
1egg

Instructions:
*Combine the cake mix, oil and egg. Set aside 1 Cup of this cake mixture for topping. Press the remaining mixture into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.
*While the bottom layer is cooking, mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth, then add egg and beat well. Remove pan from oven and pour the cream cheese mixture over the top and spread evenly.
*Sprinkle reserved topping over the cream cheese layer. bake for an additional 18-20 minutes at 350 degrees.
*Allow to cool completely before serving.

(If you make it with chocolate cake, you can add mini chocolate chips to the reserved topping mixture - I am sure that I will be trying it this way soon!)

 This was so good - so chewy and it had that awesome spice cake taste! It was so good. I wished that I did not have to share them with my kids! But for my sake I did and they loved it just as much. Well Thing #4 did not really care for them, but plenty of people opted to eat his! 

ENJOY!!

Linking to the parties in my tab at the top.

Fantastic Friday #17

Can you believe that it is Friday all ready?! I hope that you have all had a great week, and that it has been productive. I have a quilt up on my frame that I am super close to finishing quilting, and when I get close to the end I just get a little bit antsy and just want it done! At this rate, I should have it done to show you next week!

Last weeks party was huge! It was so much fun to browse through all the links and look at all the inspiration and craftiness of all you guys! I just loved it - and I probably spent way too much time looking through all of your blogs! But boy I had a good time doing it!

This week I chose to feature these awesome bathroom signs from Turbo Bubble Gum. I have a really hard time decorating the bathroom. It is so hard for me that I just don't do it. I basically just hang the same pressed flower pictures in the guest bathroom and call it good! But anyway, she made these signs as a knock-off from Land of Nod, and I have to say that I like her version a lot better!  These signs are great - I happen to have a couple of boys that could use this reminder - just about everyday!

Grab a button to let everyone know that you were featured!

<center><a href="http://ironvioletdesigns.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Iron Violet Designs" src="http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/m599/IronVioletDesigns/featured.png"/></a></center>

Now for the real reason you are all here - to share everything Fantastic that you have been working on this week! Share with us your latest and greatest stuff and start linking your FANTASTIC creations up!

Rules:
*become a follower of Iron Violet Designs, I like followers - it makes me feel good. But I won't delete your link if you don't.
*link up anything that you have made - sewn, cooked, crafted, etc. family friendly of course.
*must link to a blog post, not your home page, another linky party, etsy shop or giveaway.
*link back to this post so that others can join in on the fun. Grab a button or do a text link either one is fine with me.
*visit a few of the links and leave comments! Everyone needs a little comment love!

<center><a href="http://ironvioletdesigns.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Iron Violet Designs" src="http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/m599/IronVioletDesigns/FantasticFriday.png"/></a></center>

Let's get started: