Wishing You A

BFF Open House Link Party # 98

It's time for weekly fun here at The Answer Is Chocolate. Thanks to all the regular and new linker uppers for continuing to make this such a fun party. Winner of the "Dear Lizzy" cards I had up last week is: Linda from Our Mush Push!   Second order of business: a few of the highlights from last week: 

Can you guess what these are? If you guessed gorgeous grown up fun bubble blowing wands, you're right. Is there anything more fun at any age than blowing bubbles? I think we could all use some more bubble blowing in our lives. Visit Rena at Jewelry Making Journal to get the how to details. 

This paper medallion from Laura over at The Shed would be a great addition to any party...birthday, shower, Mother's Day brunch. You can blow bubbles at your party too with the wands you make from the first link :) 

It might be too late for this Easter but you can definitely pin this for next Easter. Make your own gorgeous chocolate egg. Aimee from Twigg Studios will show you how. Swoon! 

My "baking bucket list" includes Macarons. Check out these Cadbury Creme Egg Macarons that new linker upper Tried and Twisted shared. New blogger, so let's give a warm bloggy welcome. 

OK, now onto this week's fun. Following is not required but I love finding new blogs so if you are a new follower, please be sure to leave a comment and I will be over to visit and follow back. 

Got Dry Skin? Then You Want To Read This. Oh and Giveaway!

Yep. This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Carmex. The opinions are my own. 

You might be wondering what the heck a crafty chocoholic  blogger is doing writing about a company that’s known for its lip and skin care products. Well I have lips and skin.

In this case, it’s about Carmex Healing Cream and Hydrating Lotion. I have had dry skin my whole life and have tried just about every product there is. These are definitely among my faves.

Being up to my elbows in glues, paints, glitter ( not to mention chocolate on my fingers)  needless to say, I wash my hands A LOT. But working with paper A LOT, I also want something that doesn’t leave my hands feeling greasy and is bad for my paper projects. Have you ever put on lotion and then felt like you have to wait hours for it to dry?  I hate that.

The Carmex Healing / Hydrating lotion is great! It is filled with Vitamin E and concentrated aloe and absorbs quickly. It’s also man friendly. How do I know? Because Mr. Chocolate steals mine! He got all excited when he saw who the box was from and I was all “back off buddy or write your own blog and become a Carmex blog squad blogger”.

In addition to the Hydrating Lotion, they make a Healing Cream which is wonderful if you’ve got some really dry skin. (Me!) The Healing Cream is thicker and more concentrated and a little goes a long way. With Spring upon us, sandal weather can’t be far behind so time to get those heels looking good. Great for knees, elbows, those areas that like to be a little stubborn.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Sure Carmex sent me some goodies but guess what? They want to send one of my readers some too! And no Mr. Chocolate, even though you follow me and I love you and everything, you don’t automatically get picked. Nice try and no you still can’t have mine.

Simply follow the Rafflecopter instructions and a winner will be picked and notified by 4/4.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Bird's Nest Easter Cards

Sometimes the least expensive materials have the biggest impact. I saw potential in this “nest of eggs” stamp I found on sale at Michaels for $1.  It was perfect for my Easter cards.

For these cards I went back to my card making roots and stamped the nest on white paper with clear embossing ink and embossed with gold tinsel embossing powder. I went back and forth deciding whether to color the eggs in or ink up some papers before stamping,  but ultimately decided on the simplicity of a white and gold heat embossed image. I wanted a fresh Spring look so decided on Robin’s egg blue and Kraft papers.

I cut my 5x7 cards from plain white cardstock, then panels of the blue and kraft. Ran the blue panels through my Cuttlebug using a honeycomb embossing folder and then a scrap leftover from the card through a border folder from the same package. All by Cricut.

I mounted my embossed nests onto matching blue glitter paper by American Crafts , scraps from the kraft paper, and added a strip of gold metallic American Crafts glitter ribbon to the white embossed panel. Layered as shown and finished with a strip of gold and white washi tape.

I thought my cards needed just one more thing and remembered this fun shabby Melissa Frances ruffled ribbon I picked up at a scrapbook show, and made a bow from some color coordinated ribbon I had on hand.

Sharing At:

Silver and White Multi-Strand Necklaces

I sent these back to school with College boy as gifts from me to two of his friends who like my stuff and have asked me about an Etsy shop ( someday!).

For both of these I used supplies from my Blue Moon Beads design team stash, along with some other beads I had on hand. Long before I was on the BMB design team, I was a huge fan and regularly picked up their products on my forays into the craft stores.

I laid out the basics I would use. Silver and pearl chain, crystal cup chain, findings,

I used the oval shaped jump rings from the Butterflies and Insects pack since they went with the elongated shape of this pendant piece. The pendant piece is from a BDT ( before design team) purchase. Using more oval jump rings, I attached wire wrapped beads to the pendant piece ( opalite and crystal)

I combined a couple types of chain and then added the pendant using more jump rings.

For the second necklace, I used a pre-strung BMB silver and pearl chain, antique silver chain and a pearlescent glass necklace, all joined together with a jump ring and again using the Butterflies and Insects jump rings, connected a pendant I made from opalite, crystal and a Blue Moon Beads cup chain pendant.

I figured this silver and white color combo was one that could be worn with anything.

Sharing At:

Green Craft: From Chocolate Box to Guest Book

So we have an upcoming family birthday celebration and I was asked to bring a guest book. Doesn’t everyone automatically think of an empty chocolate box as a guest book?

For this project you will need:

• Recycled cardboard box
• Scrapbook papers
• Strong adhesives ( I used double sided carpet tape)
• Embellishments ( I used vinyl scraps, some corkboard cutouts I picked up for $.97, washi tape, and a key sticker)
• Paper for your pages 

I opened up my box and immediately saw a book in the two main panels and cut them as follows:

The spine was from a scrap piece the same length as the two sides. I covered each of the cover pieces with scrapbook paper from my stash. Sealed the paper with Mod Podge.
Since I’m a borderline hoarder, I save scraps of everything and had some gold glitter vinyl leftover from a previous project. I decided to use this as “book cloth” to cover the spine.  Applied the carpet tape to the underside of the vinyl , then lay the spine piece in the middle, the two cover pieces on each side and then folded the top and bottom of the vinyl. Since I was using up scraps I couldn’t cut my vinyl piece long enough so that when folded over, it met in the middle but I had enough to cut another piece to fill the gap.

Fold over and this is the front of my guest book before embellishing. I added the washi tape and cork accents ( they were on clearance @ JoAnn) , a metal key sticker, and then College Boy reminded me: “What’s a guest book without a pen” so I made one. 

Well I didn’t make a pen but I embellished one. Just a plain stick ink pen covered with a scrap of paper from my book. Mod Podged it on, added a strip of washi tape and then hot glued some paper flowers (you can find bunches of these in bridal aisle) on the top. Left the wire stems on and just wrapped them around the pen.

For the interior, I cut regular copy paper to size , clamped it together with binder clips and coated one of the short sides with PVA glue. Glue to a chipboard panel cut the same size to make a pad and then glue the "pad to the back cover. 

BFF Open House Link Party #97

It's party time again! Such fantastic ideas shared at last week's party so we'll start with a few of the highlights from that.

Looking for ways to repurpose plastic Easter eggs? Check out these chalkboard eggs from R&R Workshop. Is there anything you can't paint with chalkboard paint? 

Rhonda from The Messy Roost has another idea for those plastic eggs: 

Don't they look like real eggs? 

I am so in love with washi tape. Almost as much as I love chocolate. Bethany from Pitter and Glink has a great way to use it  in personalized stationery. What a great girlfriend or just because gift. 

I don't know what it is about things in jars but I love those too. Maybe it's how the glass gives dimension to whatever's under it? Like this adorable Spring and Easter perfect idea from Michele at The Scrap Shoppe: 

Or maybe it's that looks good enough to eat "chocolate" glitter lamb?  Speaking of chocolate , how about some healthy chocolate bites? Yes, I used chocolate and healthy in the same sentence. Lots of antioxidants!

Whip up a batch of these to keep your crafting energy level up. From Taste of August: 

Now time for this week's fun!