CASEing one of the Best

 

This card is a CASE of this card: http://beate.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/files/2009/08/friends247wt233vintagebirdbeate.jpg . I just want to make that clear from the start as I certainly don't want to take credit for the creative work of Beate! She has been around for a while now and is one of the first people I saw "higher level" cards from. Very talented gal! Anyway I had to CASE this, I had similar paper and stamps and it is soooo pretty! I did what I could with what I had but it isn't near as pretty as hers. Really, I have no qualms saying that! I did change some things, I didn't have the same stamps, paper or the ribbon and I used the MS butterfly punch to fill the space. All in all the grunge look and the blues and browns together I just love :)

As far as the things my friend and I were going to make Friday, well that was a semi-disaster! We were going to make the gorgeous snowflake ornaments that Becca Feeken has created and we had an awful time with the paper getting stuck in the Pendant Die and then picking out every little piece, yikes! Well after an hour of trying the recommendations on the package, using different weight papers and emailing Becca herself I had the brilliant idea to call Spellbinders! LOL! Why not sooner I will never know. They said use a piece of wax paper between the die and the paper. DUH! What an awesome idea! I was thinking in terms of spraying it with Pam but knew that would wreck the paper. So we ran out of time to make a complete one and take a picture to share with you. At least now it is easy to get the intricate cuts out of there. So keep that bit of advice tucked away if you ever have trouble! I will work on some more projects this week, hope you enjoyed today's card!

Yes! I did a card, it took me on and off three days but here it is :) I love this new sea scape stamp, it is a bit bigger but I cut it down with the Nestie die to fit the sketch challenge. This was a neat sketch, one that would do well with different designer papers so I might just have to use it again! I didn't have the right type of paper for this so I sponged groovy guava and mellow moss on some white card stock and then stamped the net and shells over it. I think it came out pretty nice actually. I usually dont make my own "designer paper" LOL! Thanks for checking it out, I hope you like it. My friend is coming over today to stamp so I will be sure to post our work next!

Loves Me, Loves Me Not

This little "maggie" as my friend calls them is from the Summer Kit. Tilda looks so sweet :) I used the K & Co. paper pack again which matches Not Quite Navy and River Rock SU card stock. The sketch challenge is from last week on SCS. I put a little Stickles in the center of the flower and stamped the stone wall on another piece of river rock CS and put it on the main image piece for her to sit on. Kind of hard to tell.

I need to get makin' cards again! I have run out of cards to post so hopefully I will get time to do some today. I am working out a lot, doing my Couch-to-5K running, doing my treadmill, taking pilates, riding my bike and today is Body Flow which they are taking up a lot of my spare time! Tomorrow is Zumba - woo hoo I have heard a lot about this and it will be my first time. I need my card makin' relaxation time though :) Bye for now!

Magnolia-licious Fall/Halloween Blog Hop

I am just adding a quick note here today to let you know of the Magnolia-licious blog hop. My very talented friend Jacque is giving away some awesome blog candy for her part in the blog hop and you must check out her tri-shutter fold card! Like the two I did a few posts back but on steroids LOL! It is awesome. She used a bunch (11 I believe she said) of Halloween Tilda/Magnolia stamps that are so cute. Also the boxes are so cute, there is a link to make them with a scor-pal (next on my list of bigger purchases to get), I am going to give that box a try. Here is a picture of the blog candy she is giving away and if you leave a comment on her blog you have a chance to win! Go check out all of the talented ladies in the blog hop, she will direct you to the first one, the also very talented Cheryl Rowley starts it out. Go here: Jacque's Joie de Vivre Enjoy!

Sketch Card and a Few Vacation Pictures

This is a nice birthday card I made with the sketch challenge on SCS a few weeks back. I embossed the flower with black e.p. and then colored it in with the water color crayons - gives a real nice look. The paper is from that K& Co. pack I have been using, it has such rich papers in it! Nice blues and reds and a little vintage green but you cant see that here. I used ruby red and buckaroo blue card stock with it. The flowers are from Prima this time and the sentiment is stamped on a die cut from Nestabilities. That's about all on that card!

We have been at Myrtle Beach for the week. We had a condo rented for the week and my nephew, his wife and son came down to join us. We had a great time! I set up auto-posts again while we were gone. I really like that feature on blogger! Here are a couple of pictures from our trip, my 7 year old went parasailing with my 17 year old son and my 16 y.o. nephew. I was so shocked he had no fear! He was grinning from ear to ear from the beginning of the ride out to running over to me when he was done. I wasn't going to let him but I asked the girl at the check-in and she said 5 year olds go up "all the time" so there you have it.

The ocean water was so warm and pleasant, we would just go in and not come out! The waves were just right. No sitting on the beach for us :) Hurricane Bill is out to sea now and I hear the waves are really picking up, sure would like to have seen that - not to get tossed around in the water I just love to watch the waves. I hope it doesn't cause too much damage to the Carolina's coasts (or any coast for that matter!).

We also went to an alligator farm which actually was pretty decent! So there is a picture from there, that dude was huge! They had a lot of really, really big alligators. I included a picture of a sunrise too, yes sunrise. What was I doing up so early on vacation? The fire alarm went off at 5 am and we got up to see what was going on. A sprinkler head malfunctioned and flooded part of the 12th floor and soaked down through to our room on the 10th floor so we had to change rooms. We ended up with a better view though :)

That's about it, if you want to see all the pictures from the trip I posted them with Picasa so just let me know and I will give you the link. Have a great day!

As promised the other day, this is the other Tina Wenke Stamp from Stampavie. Sorry about the bad quality picture, I seriously re-worked this one 7 times to get it to upload in the correct direction. You may remember my complaining about blogger turning my pictures sideways. I really worked on this one to get it to go right. Funny thing is the other card went right the first time. Go figure.

I thought the sunflower would look better with these colors. I used the markers again and on the sunflower I used the white gel pen to make the dots. It kind of gave it some life :) The little dandelion puffs have Stickles glitter on them. The flowers on the right are punched from SU paper, I punched the flowers then wet the paper and crumpled it up and then flattened them out and shaped the petals. I used three different flowers and really like how nice it looks, more like a Prima flower's texture. Also this is the same sketch from SCS - SC240, I made it the next day after the other one. Thanks for looking!

Lori

A New Stamp!

I hope you don't get bored with the adorable Magnolia stamps but just to show you I do purchase other brands on occasion here is a new one! This is the new Stampavie stamp by Tina Wenke. I guess I really like cute stamps. I do flowers on occasion as you have seen but I make mostly birthday cards and these work so well for them. I used the Stampin Up markers to color it this time. I put Stickles on the ribbons and stars and the sketch is from SCS called SC240. This is the same paper as the Tilda card I posted recently. I seem to have a lot of it! The Fall is coming up and these baby blues and yellows just won't fit then and I do love them. I have another Tina Wenke stamp I am going to post next time, with more fall-like colors though :)

Two Tildas

Two Tilda cards today using the Classic K collection - Bailey from K & Co. Ever seen a bench in the water? I needed something for her to sit on and really didn't think about this until it was done and I was looking at her little toes in the water. Well it's cute regardless LOL! I did use this same Tilda with the inner tube, perhaps I should keep her on that. Not a lot to say today, just sharing my creations!

TSSC82 Lavender, Lilac, Flowers, Butterflies

Technostamper Sketch Challenge of the week. I haven't done one of these in weeks, I love them but I seem to run out of time. So this week I did this one before doing the SCS one, sorry SCS! Not that anyone would notice :) I love this designer paper from Stampin Up, ok I love all the designer paper I buy. However I just recently received some of the lilac colored card stock from Dottie from WishRAK on SCS so I can use this paper now. I kind of went nuts with the flowers. I punched them, wet them and crinkled them then layered them and put a little pink jewel in the middle. Then it seemed to need something more so on went the butterflies! If you can tell the background is embossed with one of the Stampin Up embossing folders, I have to say and since I am not a demo I can, the Cuttlebug ones give a better impression. I think it is because they have both the emboss and deboss sides and you put the paper between. So I like them better just like I like the Nestabilities dies better than using punches. Just personal preference. (Not considering cost here.) That's my card for today, posted and made on the same day!

Tilda with Ladybug

Did I ever share this Tilda with a ladybug card? I was using this Stampin Up paper pack a few weeks back and made a quick little card with it. I just had to color the ladybug red but it doesn't really match the paper! I guess I just have to go with the flow on this one. She is rather pale too trying to match the paper but all in all I like the layers and papers together :) Tilda is always a cutie!

I ordered the Fall collection today. I know, I know - I have lost my marbles! I was so conservative, being careful not to buy too much and here I am buying yet another Magnolia collection. The Summer one was so cute I didn't want to miss out on the Fall one though! You can only pre-order it until the 16th of August by the way so if you want to get it head over to Magnolia Sweden. By the way no problems at all ordering from there and shipping ot the US. Have a good day!

Birdhouse Card Set

I went to a Stampin Up workshop a few weeks ago and made this adorable birdhouse card set! She ordered the directions from another demo who creates these things up and sells them, what a cool idea! It took a good 2 - 3 hours but it was fun. It holds the 4 cards you see and the roof opens with a little velcro tab. Just too cute! As you know by now I love making these things, I have another small project I hope to work on this week but I have quite a bit to do before our annual trip to Myrtle Beach. That's it for today :)

Another Cutie Pie

This is part of the Summer collection from Magnolia that I have been using. Isn't she cute in her little bathing suit? The inner tube came with the collection and of course you just set her on it! I love this paper and color combo too :) The ribbon is the new SU Incolor ribbon and the flower is a sticker actually, placed on a circle I punched from card stock. There are tiny little pink jewels on the flower-like circle on the right side patterned paper which actually adds a lot to it in person! On the bottom piece of card stock I punched a row of holes across and stamped the card stock to have that spotted look.

OK that's about all I can think of, I have been busy in my "new life" exercising and eating right which takes up an interestingly large amount of time! I have to plan meals, shop frequently (fresh veggies etc.) and cook besides the time it takes (an hour at least) to exercise daily then shower after etc. which I end up with two showers a day often and with my hair that is no easy task. I had no idea! I guess I wasted a lot of time before :) It is paying off though, I have lost 31.5 pounds :)

Tri-Shutter Card

I always love challenging cards where there are folds and different cuts to make, just fun to me. I also like to figure out how to do them from pictures! This is the tri-shutter card featured this week on Split Coast Stampers (SCS as I usually say). If you would like to try it yourself here is the link to the tutorial.

The first one is my husband's birthday card, which was yesterday. I tried to make it masculine and since he doesn't really like fishing or hunting or any other outdoor activities it is hard to find a stamp to fit. So castle it is! I needed to stamp in the empty space above the castle so I used the French script stamp from Stampin' Up to fill it in. Since the stamp already had script it seemed to fit. I am really happy with how it turned out.

The other one is one I started earlier this week and couldn't figure out what to do with the space on the right. I had everything else done but I didn't want to cover that pretty paper and the flowers on the paper that I painstakingly cut to fit that little "T" area. I sat down this morning and decided to finish it so I came up with the Prima flowers. I used the old in-color marigold morning paper to punch some flowers for the centers, got them real wet, wrinkled them up and then they worked with the Primas. Otherwise they looked odd in the middle of those flowers but I knew I had to bring in that color to make them fit in and match the card. The stamp in the center with the clouds and flowers is also a Magnolia stamp as well as the flowers behind Tilda. I really like these colors and this paper! Hope you enjoyed these cards :) By the way if you click on the picture you can see it larger, then hit the back button to come back here.