Playing with a new technique

I love this technique! It is in the new newsleter from techniquejunkies.com. It is called pastel embossing. I love my chalks, one of my all time favorite things to use in scrapbooks and stamping. So here are three cards using the technique, they all came out very different looking but cool. I have to laugh though, my oldest son looked at the sympathy card and said, "That's not a good sympathy card" and I'm like, "what do you mean it's not a good sympathy card" (miffed voice here) and he says "It's like smiling and saying to someone 'with sympathy' (and he is saying it smiling and a very cheerful voice)". So apparently it is too bright and cheery for my son to feel right about it. I kind of went along with it until he told me it should be in black. Hmmmm this coming from a boy who wears all black as much as he can get away with it! I was going to send this to a gal who's mom just passed away but now I wonder if I shouldn't. Oh well, the cards all were fun to make!

Where did last night's post go?

I must not have saved it or published it LOL! Go figure, I made sure to get that card done so I could have a post for Friday. SO here I am checking for replies and no post! Ahhh some days I wonder. Well that being said I might as well try again. Here is that elusive card :) It is the actual sketch challenge card, I finally achieved victory over this sketch LOL! I have done this two other times and came up with variations that I liked so much I finished the cards that way. So this time I made all the layers first with the sketch and then stamped the image and cut it to fit. I usually stamp the image first then cut the papers. Hmmm learned a lesson there. I also used the mirror image stamping technique on it since I wanted the flowers facing different ways. These are my absolute favorite colors together now too! Sand, bayou blue and sky blue. I put a touch of purely pomegranate in the center of the flowers and I think that would be nice in a small amount with this paper combo. OK off the computer I go to get some stuff done around the house!

Here it is!

My one card for the day! I wanted to do more, life just gets in the way. It also doesn't help that this card took almost three hours to make. That's some ADD kicking in there, I get to a point I don't know what to do next with it so I read some posts in my groups or peruse Splitcoast. Then I remember I was doing a card and go back to it! That only happens though when I am not CASEing someone else's. This was supposed to be the sketch challenge again, however I made the panel too big and once again it didn't work. I liked the scallop frame anyway :)

I got this apple bucket in my new WishRAK group, I have wanted this for a while now! The person who granted my wish sent me 8 of these so I can play to my hearts content. I enjoyed coloring it a lot, I used the watercolor wonder crayons by SU and tried not to over do it. I usually end up with a wet mess but managed to not do that this time! The sentiment is stamped with the Karen Foster snap-together alphabet stamp set, I love these, I have this size and a smaller size, they always stamp straight in a row and other than unmounted stamps that you use on an acrylic block they are brainless. I hate the stampamajig and I can't line up letters evenly. I put the panel on dimensionals (pop-dots) which is hard to tell. OK that's it I am tired of writing LOL! Good night :)

My new addiction

Well not sure addiction is the right word but I can't miss one single post from this mom's blog. She kills me! She is so hilarious in her view point of her 6 kids and their daily antics. They do get into things, so do mine, but I can't laugh and think up funny ways to deal with the stories (much less write about them). She just rolls with the punches and I am sure that is why ABC interviewed her, she just signed for a book deal (which I will buy the instant it is available) and her blog has had a million hits in just over a month. So wouldn't ya like to read it? Here it is! BECAUSE I SAID SO I am now adding to her hit counter LOL!

I will work on some cards later and post them, I just wanted to share the joy above :)

Color Challenge(d)

This was a challenge for sure! It is olive, mustard and bashful blue! Eeek! It works though, funny I couldn't figure out what color to put next to what and in what order so I took out my camera and looked through the lens at it and instantly figured it out! So from now on I will use the eyes of my camera LOL!

I stamped the flower in mustard and then watercolored mustard on the petals. Then put diamond glaze on and sprinkled on dazzling diamonds glitter. Once it dried I cut it out and it came out really sparkley and pretty! The mustard doesn't look too bad.

I ended up busier today than I planned so I only got one card done. This also started out as the sketch challenge but I liked it on the diagonal and then the piece under it didn't show so I went with what I liked instead. Tomorrow I pick up my SU order, small as it is this month I am still excited to get it!

I will do the sketch challenge tomorrow, the right way :)

No time for cards today!

I am going into withdrawals - I have not had time to make a card today! Tuesdays I am not home and by the time I can sit down I am too tired (like now) and am going to bed with my book club book. So no card today but tomorrow I want to try to do color challenge and sketch challenge so I will share then :) I did drop my cards off today and they loved them! I am so excited, it is a temporary thing but I can at least get a feel for it. Someone rained on my parade today and said you cant sell SU stamped cards on ebay per their angel policy. That isn't fair! Not sure what I am going to do then. I am not a demo, but she said it applied to non-demos too.

Oh, back to the book - it is called "What she left for me" by Tracie Peterson and it is about a woman who's husband left her and how she dealt with it and God. I haven't finished but so far it is good! This will be my first meeting in the book club. Ok off I go, goodnight!

Ketchup err... I mean Catch Up

My son drinks ketchup. OK not literally but I wonder. We go through one of those Sam's Club bottles a month and he is the one who uses it. Eeeek! I was told once it is full of sugar. That explains it right there. If he were fat or getting fat I would seriously have to consider limiting it! So I need to go buy more and it is on my mind which is why the pun today :)

I am actually posting several cards I have done since last week to catch my blog up. I didn't realize I hadn't posted since last Wednesday. In my mind I posted every day last week. Funny how that is. I think the return to the 90 degree temps is frying what's left of my brain! The first day of Fall was 91 degrees. OK, hello? It's Fall Mr. Weather! This has been an odd year everywhere for weather so I suppose I should expect it to be odd. I surely wonder what Winter will be like this year! LOL!


This is for the Featured Stamper of the week Kristina Werner aka starofmay. Note that I have had a link to her blog on my site for months now, (giggle) she is a great designer! I love her work because it is so clean and professional. Great use of color too! Apparently the card I cased was on the cover of Cards magazine this Summer. I can see why!


Sketch challenge of the week (SCS) and also my card for my first Survivor voted out. His name is Chicken, he would have done well if he didn't cop a 'tude, why on earth did he do that? I needed to make 3 cards to send for the swap (well actually it's a pool of cards rather than money!).



This card I did for my first WishRAK I am granting. I joined the RAK forum on SCS and finally figured out how to play. This is also a sketch challenge I missed a few weeks back. Oh and it is for the Ways to Use it Challenge last week - use SU's new Basic Gray in your card. It is a nice shade of gray, matches everything!

I got to play today!

I finally got to make some things. I "needed" to make some cards! It sure is a pick-me-up for me. Of course I keep making these kinds that I can't use. Well no matter, I can always find homes for them even if I just keep them for a while :) So without further adieu here they are!

1. Color challenge - river rock, rust, chocolate and as a side note this is a sketch challenge from Captain Crafter.

2. Technique challenge, 2-5-7-10 box. here's the instructions: Tutorial

3. Featured Stamper Zindorf, CASE of her gorgeous card, *sigh* mine doesn't do it justice.

So there we go! Enjoy!

Torncano

My 5 year old is OBSESSED with Volcanos and Tornados. He draws both of them daily but usually he draws one or the other on the paper or dry erase board. However this time - he drew a Torncano! Yes, you read it right a tornado and volcano mixed together as one. The ultimate of his obsession. He is so proud of this. I think it is quite creative myself :) Most kids bring home their classwork each week, you know in Kindergarten they might write letters or numbers or have a piece of paper with things to count but mine, bless his heart, comes home with 7 or 8 pictures of volcanos. I sure hope he can get a job with this some day because he isn't accomplishing much else LOL! I am not worried though, he knows more than anyone I know about them so if he can understand magma chambers and the definitions of Pelean, Plinian, Vulcanian, Pyroclastic, lava tubes, etc. and spews these words out of his mouth like they are normal vocabulary then he can obviously learn! Kids, they are all "different"!

Sorry, no cards today, no time to do one.

Love my coffee

As some of you know I am a coffee addict. I love coffee! I have to tell this story. My sister's love to tell this story often. When I was a toddler and pre-schooler (ok mind you back then they didn't know not to give caffeine to children) I would wake up at 3 am and scream for "coffee-nilk". Which is coffee syrup in milk. You know like that Hershey's chocolate syrup, but this is coffee flavored syrup. So they would get up in the middle of the night and get me my coffee "nilk" so I would go back to sleep (yes, sleep!) so that they could go back to sleep. I must add I did have parents! Their bedroom was on the other side of the house and my sister's bedroom was next to mine hence their disturbed sleep and not our parents. (I now see the wisdom of this arrangement...) I, of course, do not remember this but I still love anything coffee. Now why am I talking about this? You guessed it, a card! The challenge yesterday was featured stamper Zindorf and when I went to her gallery and saw this card I loved it! I had to do it! So this is the CASE I did of it.

Cards for the Week

OK here is what I have done this week. I haven't been real creative, I am looking around and I only have made three cards. The one with the pumpkin is from the sketch challenge and I came up with the colors and stamps on my own. Amazing - actually the color idea came from a piece of scrapbook paper by Cosmo Cricket I had laying on my desk. OH and I had the wasabi on my desk too or I might have picked old olive. I had to hunt down the right shade of purple and the vintage violet from last year's in-colors worked great. That is the first time I have used that color! Then the marigold morning went perfect with it, that one I actually bought extra of since it is perfect for sunflowers. The final color was that cinnamony orange (not rust) which I used on the pumpkin. Let me back up, I watercolored the pumpkin with marigold and it just was boring looking so I got out my twinkling h20's and used ginger peach. Now that is a pretty color! It is nice and shimmery in person.

The teal/pomegranite/artichoke one is, of course, the color challenge this week. I used the sketch from Captain Crafter's blog- cool sketch. I watercolored this one too and well once again didn't like the results so I used a white gel pen on it and then some stickles and then watercolor crayon again but no water and now I like it. The designer paper in the background is from Valentine's. SU last Winter's mini. I used a silver gel pen to accent it also. Weird color combo but it works and it is great for Christmas!

The last one is a CASE, the layout and the colors are totally CASEd but the stamping is all mine. Seeing I am not liking the water color thing I decided to use chalks, my favorite. So this is done with chalks. I even used versamark on the sanded background that is on the guava and then chalked over that. It actually helped it show up much better. So that is it, my pitiful week. I have been feeling yucky all week so not motivated. I am feeling better right now so maybe I should take advantage and get to stamping!

Make n' Takes

Notebook with an acetate cover stamped with Stazon. The word Cherish is a rub-on, yes that is a hairband holding the inked stick on!
This is the box closed, we embossed it with black e.p.
And open with candy in the bottom...
A Die cut box we decorated, there is candy in this also.


Make n' Takes at my favorite store Artist Oasis! They just had their 2 year anniversary celebration and we made these fun make n' takes. I wish I was able to go to more of their classes! They have so much fun and interesting stuff to do, nice to break away from the Stampin' Up! style every once in a while. I like all styles actually but with my close friend being a demo for SU I have really gotten into that. Anyway here are the items. Oh! the round box is by Petaloo, I love their stuff! So cool! Tomorrow I am going to post the cards I have made this week. I just made a pumpkin one for Thanksgiving.

Cuttlebug Storage

I should say supplies for the Cuttlebug! The bug just sits on my table. The dies and embossing folders however are neatly tucked away in this box. I covered it with scrapbook paper and mod podge. The flower on front is a covered chipboard flower. I intend to put ribbon around the edge of the lid one of these days! Haven't found the right ribbon yet.

I made little index cards and wrote the names of the dies on them and filed them accordingly. The A2 embossing folders I just put together in one file. I have an index card with little pictures of all of the dies and embossing folders just to look at for quick reference but I find I never use it.

So that is how I store my Cuttlebug items!

Monday, Monday

That is a 60's song, and how do I know it? My sisters were teenagers in the 60's and played lots of music! I was a weeee one but apparently music knows no age boundaries because I remember a lot of them. Here is what I came up with this weekend. The first and second cards are for VSN - a weekend of hourly card making challenges on Splitcoast. It is so much fun! You have 45 minutes to complete the challenge. Not an easy task but somehow it works.

The first one's challenge was to use texture. So I used magic mesh, hemp, dry embossing (Cuttlebug), clear embossing powder (to make the image real smooth) and I also roughed up the edges to give it a textured look.

The second one was so cool! You were to use a leaf and ink it up and stamp with it. I went outside and grabbed a maple leaf, used one of my multicolor ink pads and after I stamped the leaf (you can even see the veins of the leaf) I clear embossed it and cut it out.

The last one I did for the technique challenge of blending color pencils with Gamsol. I had odorless oil paint thinner but it still worked great! I also went to my stamp store for it's 2 year anniversary celebration and made three fun make n' takes which I will post tomorrow. Until then, have a great day/night!

Another Scrapbook Page done and a Card or two

Here is another layout from Sea World this Summer, I am trying to get some pages done here and there! You can click on it to see it larger. Also the two cards are shameless copies of some I have seen on Splitcoast. Sometimes I just want to make a card without having to think and design and take too much time. Just enjoy. So I don't want to take credit here for them other than I enjoyed making them and they are pretty so I am sharing them. That's about all, I am supposed to be at a Crop right now but I don't have the energy to drive over there. I changed my slide show a bit, hope everyone likes it!

Getting back into it

I made two cards yesterday. I am finally getting back into it! The color challenge this week is groovy guava and always artichoke. Until I saw them I wondered but they are great together! The layout of the card comes from Captain Crafter's Blog's sketch challenge. I turned it sideways to fit the stamp set. Then the other card is the Technique Junkies Flap Fold card, yet again. I love to make this card! I love the colors on this one. I used Basic Grey's Blush papers and then Bayou Blue and River Rock. I have two sketch challenges I want to do but I have a busy day ahead so we will see.

Great laid plans...

to scrapbook all day Labor Day. I had great plans to do oh, at least 4 layouts and well NOT! So there I was scrapbooking away and my 5 year old was begging me to take him to the pool. It was a beautiful day, not overwhelmingly hot (only 90), not heavy humidity and I felt guilty. So off we went for the afternoon. I did get one entire lay-out done, I had started it over the weekend and finished it up Monday. That is actually an accomplishment! I usually do everything but title and or journaling and it sits in the box for months waiting for me to get on the computer and write. This time I just did it all. (Just do it, hmmmm where have I heard that great idea before?!) This is from our trip to the Nickelodeon Hotel (Not Orlando, not Disney, but Nick Hotel LOL!) and these are some of the Sea World pictures. So here it is, thanks for looking!