On a Mission

Good Morning! I have a card to show you that I made for a card drive that Card Cupids had asking for some birthday cards. One of the girls will be celebrating her 15th birthday. I am not sure what 15 year old girls are into since all my nieces and most of the daughters of my friends aren't there yet. I hope this isn't too young for  her. The stamp is from Inkadinkadoo, papers are from my stash, the sentiment is from a Clear Dollar Stamp set and it was colored with Copics.

I am on a mission right now to use some of my older stamp sets, especially my clear ones, because some of them were MIA. Way back in May of 2010 the Nashville area dealt with some major floods. We were lucky, we didn't flood like so many I saw but we did have water come into our downstairs area including my craft area. Fortunately we were home and we just madly threw things into boxes to keep them from getting ruined. My craft area was one of the areas that was hastily packed. I store most of my clear stamps in CD cases and those go into plastic cases. In the craziness of moving everything from downstairs to the upstairs I forgot that my MIL offered to take a few boxes to her house. I knew I was missing some stamps and a couple of other things but I could not find them. Evidently we both forgot about those boxes because they have been over there since. So I found my missing stamps and some socks and a missing shoe. I am not an organized packer under the best circumstances, but that day was insane and all the boxes had random stuff in them. In the next few weeks you might be seeing lots of older stamps make their way onto my new cards!

Have a great day.

HELLO!!

Wow, I am back with a card! I taught a Copic class this past weekend at my LSS. We were focusing on things in nature and this was one of the cards I demonstrated. I chose this one because it had a bird and the flowers. Everything, including the acrylic drops was colored with Copic markers. I went with a basic white background and then matted my image with pink and black card stock from Hobby Lobby.  I used W1, W3, W5 and G21 for the bird, RV000, RV02, RV04 and RV14 on the flowers, but I can't remember what I used on the leaves. The stamp is from Inkadinkado. 

I want to thank everyone that has sent me so many kind words and all the people that have checked on me over this past month. I am truly touched by your friendships. Most of my craft stuff is still packed away right now. I am hoping to have a post at least every other day from now on and then as soon as I can get to the rest of my stuff, I will go back to posting 5-6 days a week. I do have my Copics and finally got some paper to stamp on and I have some DP. I want to say a special thank you to Angela and Judy, both of these ladies have given me some supplies to work with. Angela is my crafting friend and we also work together and Judy sent me a box full of goodies--I felt like it was Christmas! I don't have a lot of embellishments that I can get to, but other than that, I think I have found enough to keep my busy for a while. Several other people have offered to send me things to replace what I lost, but I mostly only lost paper and some completed projects. The rest of my stuff just got moved and/or packed. We are going to take advantage of having to pack everything up and then redo the downstairs the way we wanted. Thanks again!

Happy Birthday Kip!

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. We went out and ate with his family and some friends on Sunday and I have him his gifts then but I waited to give him his card until his actual birthday. Well, his actual birthday according to his Mom and the hospital where he was born. When he requested a copy of his birth certificate a year or so ago from the state of Texas they have him being born one week later, on the 25th rather than the 18th. I am going to go with his Mom's date, I think she would be the one to remember! Actually he said we could get him gifts for both dates or we could make it a week long celebration. So here is the card I made for him. I started with this image that I think is from an older Inkadinkado set. After stamping it, I colored everything with Copic markers and then covered the puddles with Glossy Accents. I love this paper from DCWV, I think the colors are just great. For the strip in the middle, I simply trimmed a piece of one of the green stripes. The buckle is a stamp from Clear Dollar Stamps, from a set called Embellish It. I embossed it with Expresso embossing powder and then cut it out and slid it onto the green strip. 

Wow, it's almost time for me to get up and get ready for work. I woke up around 2:30 and couldn't go back to sleep so I got up and started working on some craft stuff. I have cleaned my desk some, colored some imaged for some invitations that I am making, cut out some stuff and blogged about this card, all before it is time for me to actually get up. Work is going to be hard, because i will probably be ready to crash around 9:30! Thanks for visiting!

Fall Leaves

Good evening! It has been a long day for me. Are you getting lots of rain? We are here in Middle Tennessee, it has rained off and on for the past three days. I did notice on my way home today that I am starting to see the beginnings of some color changes on the trees. I love the colors that fall brings each year. I know it probably sounds a little strange, but there are several trees in the area that are my favorites, they are large older trees and are always so beautiful as they change each year. My card tonight uses a set from Inkadinkado. I had some trouble capturing the colors of this picture for some reason. The main leaf was embossed with cooper embossing powder and the leaf border was stamped with Brilliance Rich Cocoa ink. The rhinestones in the corner are some that I got from the dollar area at Jo-Ann's and the ribbon is from Michael's. Stay dry!

Zoie's Birthday and 10,000 hits!

Wow! I have now had 10,000 hits on my blog! Thank you to everyone that visits me here in my little world and an extra huge thanks for all the encouraging comments that you leave. They really do make my day!

This is a card I made for my niece Zoie, her birthday is Monday so I need to get her card in the mail today or tomorrow. She will be eleven. I can't believe it. My brother wanted me there when she was born and I told him to make sure they called me when they were heading to the hospital so that I could make sure that I got there on time. I had a bag packed and ready to go. He called and I told my boss I was heading out as soon as I got that call. It is a three hour drive from here to there and I got to the hospital 27 minutes before she made her arrival. She gave us all a scare and spend a week or so in the NICU, but she has been a healthy little girl since then. Zoie is definitely tween and likes everything sparkly and all those other girly things. I thought this Anya would be the perfect image for her. Her favorite colors are blue and green so I picked out this paper and then colored everything to match with Copic and Prisma markers and added some sparkle to the hairband and purse with a green Spica pen. Want to know a trick I just learned? See those photo corners? I didn't have the right shade of blue paper to go with everything else so I colored a piece of paper with the same marker that colored my image with and then punched out the photo corners! Voila! Perfectly matched accents! The sentiment is from an Inkadinkado mini set and was stamped with CTMH Crystal blue ink and then I went over that with a Sakura glitter pen. Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Father's Day

Good afternoon! I hope you are enjoying the day with you Fathers or the other important men in your life. We went out with Kip's dad last night and we won't see my dad until this weekend. This is the card that I made for him that I wanted to give him in person. I was very fortunate to grow up with a wonderful man as a dad and I have tons of great memories of doing things with him. It's funny what we remember about our childhoods. One of my favorite things that we did was our weekly trip to the dump! When I was little I would go with him a lot on Saturday mornings and after we were done, we would stop at a convenience store and get a snack. As with most of my memories with both parents, it wasn't memories with material things that stick out, it was the things that we did together. Giving time to someone is the most precious thing you can do. We all have different talents, different monetary abilities and different ways that we can touch someone else's life. But we all only get 24 hours in one day and to bestow that gift to someone is priceless. 

Anyway back to my card here! One day were we driving somewhere as a family and my dad says "Hey look!" and he pulls over, gets out a camera and everything and starts pointing out and taking pictures of this owl on a billboard. You guessed it, it wasn't real, only a decoy to scare away birds! To his credit, it was a very realistic one, not like the ones that are obviously plaster. Now owls show up periodically in gifts and things that I give him. I made this card using the owl from a mini Inkadinkado stamp set. The sentiment is from the same set and is broken into two pieces so you can use one part on the outside and the other for the inside. I can't remember what the other part says, I only wanted this part because I wanted to write my own thing on the inside. The outside says "A wise man once said.." and then on the inside I wrote "Hey look at that owl". He will get a kick out of it and that's why he is getting it late so I can give it to him in person. Stamp is Inkadinkado, paper from DCWV, image colored with Copics, and brads are from Making Memories.

If you have visited my blog before you know that my husband makes his own cards to give. Not only does he make the cards, he also has his own stash of supplies. This is the stamp that he made for his dad. I am not sure of all the supplies, but I think the mountains and maybe the tree came from one of my SU sets and the boat is from Stampscapes. He stamped those onto his paper and then drew in his lake line and then colored everything with his Prismacolor pencils. 

Cole's Birthday

By far, the hardest cards that I attempt to make are for teenage boys. I am okay with little boy cards and am getting better at cards for men, but those in-between ages are hard. I almost just went and bought a card instead of trying to make one! Tomorrow is my nephew Cole's birthday. As he turns fourteen, he is past the age of cute little dinosaurs, robots and trucks. I decided to use the Inkadinkado Rock Star stamp set. The image was stamped with Versa-Mark and then embossed with black embossing powder. The Happy Birthday was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink using the Martha Stewart Gothic alphabet set. After stamping the letters, I went over each one with a black Spica Glitter pen. I used two different patterns of DCWV paper, cut into strips for my background and added those jumbo silver brads to finish it off. What do you think? 

SPeaking of that Inkadinkado stamp set, that was a birthday gift from my friend Allyson. I have to tell you, this was the year of the stamp for me. I have tons of new stamp sets to show you over the next few weeks (or months!) so check back often.

Celebrate

Good evening! I had some trouble getting a good photo of this card. I normally only have crafting time at night but prefer to take pictures in the daytime but that doesn't always happen. I have been enjoying making these clean and simple cards. It's funny, when I first started scrapping and making cards, I had a hard time combining colors and patterns and filling up all that white space and now I am trying to do designs that have a lot of that white space.  For this card, I used the Inkadinkado cupcake set for the cupcake and the sentiment. The sentiment is stamped directly onto the card base using CTMH Kiwi ink. I think DCWV made that ribbon, it is from "the stash", so I am not completely sure. I used Liquid Applique on the frosting and Fun Flock on the flowers. I let the fun flock blend in a little with the Liquid Applique to give it a pinkish tint. Thanks for stopping by!

Beautiful Fairy

Hello, how's your weekend going? Mine has gone pretty good so far. I am still excited about my trip that I took yesterday to Precious Scraps. Today, my friend Angela invited me to attend a Spring Fling at her church. I had a great time there. Some of the ladies had signed up to decorate the different tables and each table was decorated with it's own theme. We're talking full table settings too and they were all so beautiful. After I left her church I decided to run by the LSS in that town. I was there for just a little over two hours! I met a couple of really nice ladies that were working on projects in the back of the store. We ended up talking and they showed me several very cool projects. One of the ladies offered to get me a copy of her instruction sheets so maybe I will have some things to show you soon. 

This card took me a very long time to do because I decided to stamp the image twice. The first one was stamped onto my main image panel and then colored with Prisma/Copic markers. Then I stamped the image again onto another piece of paper and colored that image. After the second one was colored, I cut the wings apart from the body. The body was then attached to the first one using foam dots. the main wing over her left shoulder was glued down and then the edge furtherest away from her body also has a foam dot under it. Since I had the two layers of colored paper onto of my layer of white paper I decided not to mat my main image, instead, I inked the edges of that panel with a green ink that matched the green paper. The stamp set is from Inkadinkado, paper is DCWV and the rhinestones are from Jo-Ann's dollar area. Have a great one!

Bird Silhouette

I picked up this bird silhouette stamp at Jo-Ann's one day. It is from Inkadinkado and was one of the single dollar stamps. I thought it was pretty cute. I really need some photography lessons!  It is a little hard to see some of the details in the card. The black card stock is mounted onto a white base and the white behind the image is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder. All in all, this was a pretty simple card, but I really liked the way it turned out. Hope you like it too! The weekend is almost here and I don't know about you, but I am pretty excited about that. 

Simple Pleasures and I won some Blog Candy!

I don't know about you, but this card makes me want to whistle the theme song from "The Andy Griffith Show"! I have always been a big fan of the show, the black and white ones, anyway. I think I had a small crush on Andy when I was younger! Truth be told, I really love all the old sitcoms from that era. I always show Kip the cards that I make and when I showed this to him, he said the same thing about whistling. The stamp is by Inkadinkadoo, I stamped it using Palette ink and then mounted it onto the brown card stock and then onto the black paper. I took a black pen and drew in the dots surrounding the image. Since I was thinking that this would make a great card for my grandfather, I decided to leave it fairly simple so it would look masculine.

The past couple of weeks have been a little crazy. Due to the cold and wet weather, my pain level has been pretty high which makes me a little irritable and I have been working extra hours which doesn't help anything. Imagine how happy I was today when I got home today and found a box sitting on the kitchen counter. I followed a link from SCS one day and found Carrie's blog and have been reading it for a while now. She makes some really nice cards and I love her photos that she has posted. I try not to complain too much about the cold after reading her posts of how cold it is there in Alaska. I won some blog candy from her blog and this is what she sent me:
So a million thank yous Carrie and you made my week! I can't wait for the weekend to roll around so that I can get busy will all my new things. 

The forecast here tonight is for freezing rain and ice. I hope everyone is safe and warm, no matter where you are. 

Polka Dots and Ribbon Challenge

This is my entry for the first challenge in our SCS Blogger Group. Sara issued the challenge to use polka dots and ribbon. I needed to make a card for a baby shower next week and decided to combine the two. I really liked this challenge because using polka dots is definitely not a hard thing for me to do! Even my cute little horse has spots. The horse stamp is from Clear Dollar Stamps and is part of a set called Cuddly Critters. The sentiment stamp is from the Inkadinkadoo baby boy set. Both are stamped using CTMH Lilac Mist ink and all papers are from DCWV. The ribbon is from my stash, not sure of the origin, but it probably came from Hobby Lobby. Speaking of Hobby Lobby, after we went and voted this afternoon, my husband took me there. He was looking for supplies to make a tabletop display for his business, but he let me look at long as I wanted. Their Nestabilities were on sale this week and they finally got some of the long scalloped rectangles in stock! I can't wait to use them.

Stamp Something For the Birds Challenge

What do you know, more polka dots! Anyway, this is my entry for the challenge this week at Stamp Something. The challenge was Something for the Birds and we were to use a bird image, any size, shape or color. I have no idea what kind of bird this is so I decided to make him a little on the colorful side. He is colored with Prismacolor pencils and OMS. The picture makes him look a little on the dark side, but you can still see the brighter colors in his crest. I think that saying is funny. The stamp set is from Inkadinkado, flowers are Marcella by K and the brads are from The Paper Studio. I am not sure of the maker of the green paper, but the navy blue is DCWV.

Is everyone ready for Halloween tomorrow? I am, I have my candy all ready to pass out. This is my third Halloween living in this house and I am so excited that we actually get trick or treaters. This is the first place that I have ever lived that I have gotten more than five! My favorite is when the little boys come up and try to scare me. I hope everyone else has a great time!

Onesies

This was a fun project. My cousin and his wife recently had a baby and so did a childhood friend. I wanted to try and do something a little different for a gift and decided to try making personalized onesies. It was pretty simple after I got the hang of it. I called my friend Julie (she knows how to do EVERYTHING!!) and she wanted to try making some too. So we got together for a stamping "playdate". We used PTI hybrid inks for these and Art Wear transfer paper. The little chick and the little diva are both colored with my Prisma markers. All you do is stamp the image, color if needed and then cut out the image. You have to be very very careful coloring on the transfer paper because it will come up easily. After I got mine stamped and colored I had a slight moment of panic when I thought I was going to have to iron on the image face down and my words would be backwards! But after rereading the directions, I saw that you ironed it image side up. For the set on the left I used an Inkadinkadoo stamp set and the butterfly and dragonfly are from the CTMH set Whimsical Wings. Julie was also kind enough to let me borrow this set to make my matching card with. I was quite impressed with my self that these turned out so well. Here is a close up of the Little Diva:

Thanks for stopping by!