Bling it on Challenge

Ahh, it is Wednesday and that means the weekend is getting closer and closer. I have this card to show you that I am entering on the Mo's Challenge Blog. The challenge this week is to "bling it on". I realized that my stash is woefully missing a lot of bling. The closest thing I have is rhinestones, and I have enough of them that I could be the rhinestone cowboy! I used the image Prince Edward Island and colored it with Copics. For my bling I added some purple rhinestones and some shimmery, sheer ribbon, both from my stash. Papers are DCWV.

I have a "girl day" planned with my niece on Friday since she is on Spring Break, we are going to spend the day doing whatever she wants to do. On the good side she wants me to bring my Copics, I have been slowly building her a card making and stamping collection and she has a great collection of colored pencils but no Copics. So that part will be fun, but on the more negative side I see mall shopping in my future. I love to shop in craft stores, kitchen stores and book stores and that's about it. I almost never go shopping in a mall because to do all of that walking I have to use my cane. But since the day is about Zoie and not me, I will mall shop with a smile on my face!

If you will please keep my Dad and his Mom in your thoughts and prayers. She is in the hospital, they aren't quite sure what is going on, but she isn't doing too good. My Dad is also having a hard time with watching her go through this. 

Spring with Polka Dots

Happy Monday!! I had a great weekend. I spent some time outside working in my flower beds, finishing my compost bin, I fixed some holes in the driveway and tried to get some pots ready to plant something in soon. I know it is a little early to actually get anything out, but I am going to be ready! We also managed to catch a movie and I remembered to pick up Kip from the airport on time. I am loving our warmer weather we have been having recently. The challenge on the Riley and Company blog is Spring with Polka Dots. For us, spring has tons of family birthdays, it seems like every week or so we are getting together and celebrating with someone. I decided to use this challenge to get ahead of making all those birthday cards and you know me, I love polka dots!

Image is Cake Riley and was colored with Copics, DCWV papers, a Fiskars border stamp and some brads from American Crafts.

Have a great day!

Thinking About Spring

I am seeing definite signs of spring around here in Tennessee; lots of blooms, people readying garden spots, the sound of lawn mowers and tons of pollen coating everything! I love it though. We didn't have much of a winter, but spring is always welcome. The challenge this week on the Sassy Cheryl blog is "Think Spring". I thought this was a perfect image to use for a spring challenge. I know my nieces and nephew are on Spring Break this week and my FIL mentioned he has taken them fishing for the first time this year. I love that little worm crawling along the fishing line. I used an image from Sassy Cheryl, colored it with Copics, papers from DCWV, some twine, a tag and some baubles from my stash.

Thanks for visiting today!

A Lovely Peacock

Good Morning and happy Wednesday. I have a couple of days off this week so today is my last day of work for this week and I am pretty happy about that! I have a peacock card to show you today. I was at Hobby Lobby a couple of weeks ago and found this image. It isn't something that I would normally gravitate to, but something made this little guy jump into my cart. It was a pretty simple card to color but it did take a little time to color in all this feathers. Since those areas were so tiny, I went with bright colors when I colored him. I rarely pull out my florescent  markers, but I did use the FYG markers on here. I do have some embellishments on there but in the photo, they are kind of lost. I loved that background paper, even though it is pretty busy. I didn't want my embellishments to stand out too much and since you can't really see them, I think I accomplished that goal. When you are holding the card, you can see them much better though.

Everything was colored with Copics, papers are The Paper Studio, corners were made using a Sizzix die, and the pearls are from Hobby Lobby.

Have a great day!

And in Color

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. I know a lot of kids were out of school last week for Spring Break, so hopefully your Monday wasn't too bad. We had a great weekend here and now that I have my crafting space organized, I am getting in a lot more actual craft time! I posted another card with this image last week but it was in black and white. I thought I would do another one, but this time coloring my image. I used the same papers and similar embellishments to the other card but this time I colored in the figure in the image. 

The image is a Ching Chou Kuik image from Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copic Markers. Papers and flower are from The Paper Studio and the glittery center of the flower is from a pack of Dress Them Ups.

The Ghost

This image is from Sweet Pea Stamps artist Rebecca Sinz and is called The Ghost. I love this image, I think she looks haunted in some way, something about her eyes is just mesmerizing. This is one of my favorite images from this artist too. Everything was colored with Copics, I used hardware from a Paper Studio pack and Tim Holtz gear die cuts. The paper is from DCWV's Tattered Time pack. I love that paper and it has been one of those packs that I have been hoarding and didn't want to cut up. I know you know what I am talking about too, I am getting better with that because I finally realized that there is always beautiful new paper coming out and that I need to use what I have purchased.

Have a great day!

Sassy Cheryl Sketch Challenge

I hope you are having a great weekend. Mine has had a great mix of relaxation, cooking, crafting and visiting with friends. I have a card to share with you that I made for the challenge on the Sassy Cheryl blog. This week is a sketch challenge. I think more than any other type of challenge, I like sketches the best. I tend to get stuck in a rut with my layouts so and I had fun with this one. I used an image from Sassy Cheryl, and colored it with Copics. The papers are DCWV and the brads are from Jo-Ann's.

I mentioned that I would show how I ended up packaging my notecard set that I was giving to my friend for her birthday. I have two bins of things I can alter that would make great gifts but I have been doing so much rearranging around the house that they have gotten moved and I couldn't get to them so I ended up tying a bow with some pretty satin ribbon and putting them in the gift bag. She really liked the notecard set and was excited to see the variety, especially when she realized they were patterned after quilt blocks.

Kip and I are celebrating the return of Daylight Savings time by pulling out the grill.

Quilt Cards

Wow, I don't remember the last time I made a card with no coloring on it, much less posted a card with no coloring. I know it has been a very long time! We have a friend that will be celebrating her 70th birthday this weekend. Judy, Samantha and Jenna will be making her dinner and I will be making her a German Chocolate Cake. That cake happens to be my Grandmother's specialty so I have never made one before. Kip so valiantly offered to be the taste tester and suggested that I make a practice one today. I have been baking long enough to be confident that it will turn out the way I want it so he will have to wait until the party to taste my cake. 

Our birthday girl is an avid quilter. I knew I wanted to make her a set of notecards and that they had to be quilting related. Clear Dollar Stamps has a designer die set called Build a Quilt, and there is a coordinating stamps set to go with it. When I saw this set, I knew it would be perfect for this gift set. There are only 7 patterns here, but I have made a set of twelve cards, but I duplicated some of the designs. I am not sure how I am going to package them yet, I have a couple of ideas in mind and I will post a picture of that when I get that part completed. 

Here are the rest of the notecard designs in my gift set:

I am also entering this in the Clear Dollar Stamps Clearly Inspired Challenge.

Black and White

Hello! I was playing around with some of my new stamps that arrived last week and decided I wanted to do this image in black and white, and just a little bit of color. I thought this image from Ching-Chou Kuik, called Poppy, from the Mist would be the perfect image to try a black and white color palette. Everything except her eyes and the flowers were colored with the colors from the C series of grays. It was a little challenging to limit myself to only grays for everything, but I was pretty happy with the results.

Image is from Sweet Pea Stamps, colored with Copic markers, paper from The Paper Studio, Fiskars border punch, ribbon and flowers from my stash.

Thanks for dropping by today!

My Dad's Retirement Card

Good morning! We spent the weekend at my parent's house, helping my Dad celebrate his retirement. When I sat down to make his card the other day I couldn't find an image that I really liked for this occasion. I knew I wanted something that represented at least one of the activities that I know he will be devoting a lot of time to during his retirement. I went to Mo Manning's store and found the perfect image. The image is called Big Guy's Garden and the face that he is gathering tomatoes made this the perfect choice for his retirement card. My Dad is a passionate gardener and takes special pride in his tomatoes. Some of the things in his garden, including some of his tomatoes, are from seeds that have been passed down for many generations in his family. After coloring the image with Copics, I remembered I had this fun paper from Cosmo Cricket. I kept the embellishments simple as I do with most masculine cards and just added some twine and some little silver studs at the bottom. The challenge on Mo's challenge blog is "Anything Goes", so I am entering this in the challenge over there.

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I decided to include some pictures from his reception we did at their church yesterday.

This is the oh so happy retiree.

This is my Mom and Dad.

This is my family; my parents, my sister, her husband their son Silas, my brother and his son Cole and daughter Zoie, and me and Kip. Silas has new sunglasses.

This sweet lady is someone I have known my entire life, she was also taught me and my sister in first grade. She is a beautiful soul, inside and out.

This is one of my youngest cousins and her husband and new baby Addison.

 This is a good friend of my Dad's. If you are even in Cleveland, TN you must have breakfast at the Rebel. The best sausage and gravy anywhere. The restaurant has been in their family for many year and is where my parents went on some of their first dates. This weekend when we drove in, we drove straight to the Rebel as we often do and stop there before we see anyone in my family. They have other delicious food too, but we always go for breakfast.

This is my Mom and my Granddad Bill.

Thanks for looking at my photos and really, if you are ever near Cleveland stop and visit the Rebel!!