Well Hello!

Just wanted you to know that I am still alive. I have been very busy and haven't been able to make many cards lately. But I should have several to post in the upcoming days. I stole this stamp from my BFF one day when I was babysitting her doggies....I do that a lot....not babysit her doggies but steal her stamps..hee hee Isn't it great to have someone to steal stamps from? Anyway I have since returned it thank you very much. I colored the stamp with markers and then spritzed with water. Needed more color for me so I chalked the flowers to give them a halo and did the same with the Hello. Very simple card as I most always do but liked the outcome. It's rather different and a one dimentional card which I rarely ever do anymore.

Am I Lucky Or What?

Check this out! Ok so I got a call last Friday from a girl I don't even know but who knows someone I work with. Anyway you know how stampers and scrapbookers are so we talked about everything under the sun and turns out she stamps but is going to school and has no time to use them right now so check this out.....she sent all of her stamps up here to work for me to use. Yep that's right probably over 150 stamps and she just boxed them up and sent them to me to use for a while until she gets time to get back into it. How cool is that? I still have not ever met her except by phone. Wow! So I have laid them all out and will sort them eventually by theme and start playing. I'm still in shock. I mean how crazy is this? How sweet of a person does she have to be to let someone she doesn't even know be in charge of her stamps like that? Of course I'm a little OCD so I will most definitely take extra good care of them but this is AWESOME! So thanks a bunch Lisa and I hope to meet you soon! Aren't stampers and scrapbookers like the easiest people to get to know? Have you discovered that? I'm in stamp heaven right now!

Time Spent With Friends

I have been trying to download this card for months and it just didn't want to do it for some reason. Anyway.....tadah...it finally worked. The theme was time and at the time (ha get it) I didn't have any clock or time related stamps except for the sentiment. So I found these cute clock faces by Spare Parts and so I put them in the center of the flower with a heart brad. All of the stamps used are from Stampin' Up! Also at the time I didn't have the spiral punch so I used a business card punch that allows you to put a business card in a rolodex and tried to eyeball it to make it as even as possible since I needed more than two slots. Worked like a charm. I colored in the friends and flowers with a marker and added Glossy Accents to make it shine. Also added jewels to the flower centers, the I, and on the ribbon for added jazz. The large flower was ebmossed with Copper EP and then colored in with Prismacolors and blended with Gamsol. Enjoy the time you spend with your friends and cherish every moment. Life goes by too quickly.

Butterfly Congrats

Well I have to say that I'm not too proud of this one but was running out of time. This is for the shoebox shuffle tomorrow and I have to make 12. Well actually you make one prototype but then cut the paper and bag up all of the embellishments so that each person can make the card themselves using your stuff. Anyway it's lots of fun but as I said a few days ago have been having daily headaches and so I have gotten majorly behind. So I was going to dup a previous layout and change paper but am not really excited about the end result but like I said it's tomorrow and don't have a lot of time left to get it done. I may try to tweak it a little bit more tonight if I get time but for now this is it. I thought it might be a cute graduation card though. I will post the cards that I make Sat. next week. I'm sure they will all be adorable. We have a group of really talented ladies. The butterfly and congrats are embossed with Cranberry embossing powder.

I Dream Of Paris

Gettin' down and dirty on this one as you will see below. I made this card for our local monthly card swap. This is the one where I had the ideas floating around in my head for a month but couldn't put them all together. Well, here is what I finally came up with. The theme was "in your dreams". So I thought what better dream does a person have than of Paris. The Eiffel Tower is actually embossed with Black Diamond embossing powder which makes it sparkly but you can't tell that in the pic. I started out with a 4x6 cardstock and embosssed the tower. Then I stamped all of the major stamps clock, girl, postage, key masking each one as I went along. Then I went back and added the background script and diamonds. Stamped journey in remaining open spot and then added color with my distress inks. Very involved and got very dirty. I had ink everywhere. All over my hands up my arm, on my nose...because you know your nose itches every time you get your hands dirty right? I printed the I dream of Paris on computer and cut strips and folded them in half. Added color with inks to highlight dream and Paris. Then I added color to girl's lips, eyes, cheeks with Prismacolors.

Size: 5x7 Stamps: Stampland, Stamp Camp, Cornish Heritage Farms, Stampabilities, Inkadinkado, Just for Fun, Dawn Houser; Ink: Distress inks- Old Paper, Scattered Straw, Aged Mahogany, Pine Needles, Memories Black; Accessories: Black Diamond Embossing Powder, Ribbon

Told ya I got dirty. My BFF is LOL right now and shaking her head because it was not but just a few months ago when I saw cards like this that I said...."I'm not doing all of that....that's too involved." Be quiet Tanya!!!!! I hear ya! :)

Way Behind

Well I am waaaaayyyy behind. I haven't stamped in a week. I have a card swap on Friday (6 cards) and a Shoebox Shuffle on Saturday (12 cards). So I guess I better get busy. I'm having stamper's block I guess and then there is the whole time factor. I've had ideas floating around in my head since the last swap but I just can't seem to put them together. When I try to "stamp" out my ideas they just don't work out like they do in my head. Then I have been having headaches every day so that doesn't help. So I'm hoping that this week will be a productive one and that my ideas come together on a card. Otherwise I'm going to be in big trouble. I would love to hear any suggestions of how you get yourself back on track with stamping when you get out of the mood, unmotivated, or just plain stamper's block. Hope everyone has a great week and hopefully I will have some more stuff to post at the end of this week.

Bright and Simple

I was needing something cheery and bright to send to one of our client's who found out she has lung cancer so I started playing around. To do the circles I colored the end of a pencil eraser (unused of course) with a marker and then stamped it on the card. It makes a perfect circle every time. The flower stamp was also colored with markers and then spritzed with water before stamping. You can't see it very much but I scored the card on both sides of the circles to give it more definition.

For the card on the right I did the same thing with the heart stamp and here you can see the scored lines better. This was a medium size pencil. I need to find some larger pencils but I love using a pencil eraser to make circles. It's fun, fast and easy. You'll love it once you try it.

Please add Wanda Roberson to your prayer list as she battles this horrible disease. They have given her about a year.