The Best Part of Waking Up...

Anyone like coffee? I'm not a coffee drinker, but I know most people covet their coffee (including my 12-cups-a-day husband). So plain old coffee was the inspiration for today's CAS card.

I'm playing along with Unity's Friends With Flair and used the beautiful coffee stamp from the Livin' and Lovin' Life KOM. Here's a close-up of that awesome stamp:

I first ran the"glorious" image from Ali Edwards's "Thick Awesome Words" set through Photoshop to adjust the color and size. Once I got the right pink (on ivory, the color changed a little), I printed the sentiment and then stamped and embossed the coffee cup. The navy houndstooth paper is from My Mind's Eye Lush 2 collection.

For those of you who read my last post, I'm in the middle of the garage sale. No mob today, but I have made enough to get some new goodies. Pus, I cleaned out my craft room and found some PTI ribbon I thought I had lost. Yeah!

Thanks for looking and thank you for your comments! Have a great weekend!

Tropical Punch & Piranhas

Hi Friends! Just a quick post. I'm having a garage sale tomorrow...I haven't had one in 7 years, so I have totes and totes of kid clothes. Every little outfit makes me go "awwww." But I'm dreading the actual sale...all the pushing and grabbing--last time I had a garage sale, it was like a piranha tank. Wish me luck!

I'm entering a card into the Hero Arts July contest. I've never posted a HA card but thought it would be fun to enter a card into the Summertime theme:

The flower stamp is Hero Arts' Luscious Bold Flowers stamped in blue. I opted to use the Basic Grey Lauderdale tag for the sentiment instead of something more summery...I thought it worked well. The papers are Basic Grey Lauderdale and American Crafts Margarita. It's not traditional summer, but the colors look very tropical to me.

Okay, got to boogie....lots to do today. Have a great day!

Buggin' Out

Hi Friends! Not too much to say today, but I'm blogging to avoid cleaning out the kids' rooms. I am convinced that their clothes multiply on their own (except for their socks, which disappear into some vortex under our house).

Anyhoo, I finally inked up some of my Paper Smooches stamps last week (only 3 months after I bought them--LOL!). I had to make a card for a 3 year old last week, and this is what I came up with:

Yep, another pink and yellow card. I paper pieced the wings on the butterfly and colored the body with Copics. The sentiment is from Harold's ABCs (which I still had on a block from a pub call--talk about lazy!). I decided to do some hand stitching (this was the practice card for this card). Here's a close-up of the hand stitching:

Not the most creative use of PS stamps, but I like how it turned out. For a more creative flair, how about this card?

I just day-glowed the card in Photoshop--hee hee. Doesn't it look like a lightning bug? Well, my son is done with his snack and about to catapult out of his high chair, so I need to boogie.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Take Me Home (County Roads)

Now I'm going to be singing that John Denver song all day. I wanted to include a card in Unity's Friends with Flair today, so I inked up some new Unity stamps. A teacher at my kids' school just bought her first home, and I made a "new home" card for her and her husband. Now I should put the caveat that she is very conservative, so I couldn't make a pink house (like the John Cougar song). Here's what I came up with:

You can click on the picture for a better view. The houses are from the Honey, I'm Home set. I masked the houses in the background to add a gap for the green house (a separate stamp). I paper pieced the bottom of the green house and colored the top with Copics (not sure why I didn't just paper piece the roof, too--LOL!). Here's a close-up of the houses:

The sentiment is from Unity's Life is Fabulous store kit. I finished the card off with some Stampin' Up ribbon and created a little faux-frame using the PTI Edgers #1 die.

Thanks for looking! Have a great weekend.

Here are the details:
Stamps: (Honey, I'm Home, Life is Fabulous) Unity Stamp Co.
Ink: (Rich Cocoa) Memento
Patterned Paper: (Odds and Ends) Cosmo Cricket; (Double Dot Design) Bo Bunny
Cardstock: Stampin' Up, PTI
Markers: Copics
Die: (Edgers #1) PTI
Ribbon: (Jingle Bells) Stampin' Up

Just Me and My Chucks

Well, I don't have any Chuck Taylors anymore, but I had a pair of hot pink ones when I was in high school (to wear with my pegged jeans or black and white polka dot bubble skirt). I married a guy with a pair of old black Chucks, and and when you combine that DNA together, what do you get? Bright blue baby Chucks, of course (can you believe it took me grad Biology classes to deduce that?).

So I'm playing along with the Summer Card Camp's color challenge this week and paired it up with the Cards blog challenge, and this is what I made:

This card was inspired by Jaclyn's pictures of Fancy Pants's new line at CHA (see her pics here).

I have the digital Cosmo Cricket Candy Candy from The Boyfriend line, and this shoe is one of the digital elements. I resized, recolored (it was a red and cream shoe beforehand...hope I'm not violating anything by changing it!), flipped the image, and then printed it. Okay, I printed it twice since I didn't have the color right the first time.

Next, I punched holes where the eyelets are, and I laced Honeydew and Peapod twine from the Twinery. I rolled tape on the end of the twine, which really looks like a shoelace end. If you look, you can see I alternated which twine was on top (because I'm pretty neurotic):

The fabulous sentiment is from the Pocket Full of... KOM from Unity, which I stamped and embossed. Finally, I traced the shoe and added a light blue shadow with a Copic (had to get that light blue color in for the Summer Card Camp challenge). I think the card could work for a guy or a girl.
Thanks for looking! Have a great day!

Now I Want Some Lemonade

Happy Tuesday! I had to enter a card into this week's Moxie Fab World's Tuesday Trigger:

Pretty fab, huh? The card I made is a little different for me, but I wanted to capture the lemonade colors, the bold buttons, and the ruffles in a softer way than my normal style. Here's what transpired:

Yep, I made the flower, and yep, I'm pretty proud of it! I just added some Score-tape to the edge of the May Arts ribbon and wound it over a punched circle. Here's a close-up of the flower:

The pretty pink and text papers are from Authentique, and I have to say their 12x12 papers have the nicest texture to them....I'd love to wear a dress out of those papers....of course 12x12 isn't going to cover much. Anyhoo, I decided the edge between the pink and grey needed something else, so I did some hand stitching. The stitching is not perfect, but I think I like it more that way. Here's a close-up:

If you get a chance, play along with this week's Tuesday Trigger. Thanks for looking, and have a great day!

Here are the deets:
Stamps: Gina K.'s Retro Boutique set
Ink: (Tuxedo Black, Angel Pink, white) Tsukinenko
Cardstock: Bazzill
Patterned Paper: (Splendid and Uncommon collections) Authentique; (yellow from Splash collection) Echo Park
Button: (Stella & Rose) My Mind's Eye
Ribbon: May Arts

The Crafting Rebel

Hi Friends! Thanks for all your sweet comments--I'm feeling the love!

For a couple of months I've been wanting to post a card for Unity's Friends with Flair, and I finally decided to just do it! I actually made the card for a PaperCrafts submission (didn't feel the love), but I still adore this card and laugh every time I see it.

I originally made this card with my aunt in mind. She used to tell people that she was adopted (she wasn't) because she couldn't believe her super straight-laced parents were actually her parents. She was a free spirit who crawled out of her bedroom window the night of her high school graduation and headed to the South (this was in the 1940s...she was definitely a rebel). So while she saw the rest of her family as ultra-square, she was the artsy rebel...the cool one. I could hear her saying this sentiment in a joking way. Okay, I'm rambling. Here's the card:

I used Unity's "One of a Kind" stamp and colored it with Copics. Love that stamp set! I paper pieced the outfits and hands, and I made the tongue-and-cheek sentiment in Word to go with the idea. I gave the rebel girl a tan, too. Maybe she was making cards on her yacht.
Anyhoo, I wanted to share my excitement that Kristina Werner featured my "Head and Shoulders" card as one of her featured 6 for this week's Online Card Camp. She's one of my crafting idols, so I was too excited to sleep (which is why I'm still awake and blogging). Thanks, Kristina!

Thanks for looking! Have a great day and weekend!

Head and Shoulders Above the Rest

I'm playing along with the Online Summer Card Camp color challenge. I went with a graphic approach using some of Ali Edwards's digital words:

I recolored, resized, and cropped the words in Photoshop. I went back and forth about embellishing the card and even got as far as making a bow-tie bow for the top, but I decided I thought the words could stand alone. Agree, disagree? Here's the other version:

If, for some strange reason, you are a major Brady Bunch aficionado, you may remember Peter asking Greg for synonyms for the word "best at his job." [The episode where Peter is a reporter and gets a bad grade in Science.} Greg gives a few suggestions and finally comes up with "head and shoulders above the rest." When I look at the card, it reminds me of that episode. Now I'm going to be humming the Brady Bunch song all day.

Thanks for looking! Have a great day, friends!

It's All About the Inside

Hi friends! First of all, thank you SO much for your kind comments on my last post. You all are the best! I'm still having a hard time, but crafting has been a good distraction.

I haven't entered a Lawnscaping challenge in a while, so I decided to create a card for the "Don't Forget the Inside" challenge. This card went through three iterations before turning into this card:

I'm digging the black and white, but here's the inside:

I used two Lawn Fawn sets: How Delightful and Just My Type. The papers are from Basic Grey's Lauderdale collection (which I don't know how I ever lived without). Here's a close-up:

Yes, it's a pop-up. And no, I had never made a pop-up card before. But, I figured it out without having a nervous breakdown. It helped to make a base underneath the patterned paper to add structure and also to cut the patterned paper after I had centered the pop-up. I could have just figured out the measurements in advance, but that would have required more thinking than I'm capable of doing at 11pm. Here's the side view:

Thanks for looking! Have a great day!

Love You...

Howdy! I took some time today to make a card for the Moxie Fab World Beautiful Borders challenge:

I used patterned paper from Basic Grey, Echo Park (2 or 3 lines) and Cosmo Cricket. All of the patterned papers (and Echo Park borders) were on my craft table {you know it's time to clean when you find papers from the PC Go-To-Sketches 2 call on your desk}. I punched or used scissors to decorate the edges of the borders. The sentiment is from Technique Tuesday's Love Always Wins set.

I opted on that sentiment as a tribute to my dog, Gracie. This weekend, we had to make the gut-wrenching decision to put Gracie to sleep. For the past 3 weeks she had been going downhill quickly, and she spent all of last week in the vet clinic or animal hospital. We brought her home on Friday after the vet told us she would probably would not live through the weekend.

Needless to say, the grief has been pretty overwhelming. It's been hard to undo 14 years of habits. I keep finding myself at the back door trying to grab a leash... I keep looking for her in her bed in the living room... Our cat keeps wandering around looking for her, too.

I got Gracie when I was in graduate school, living in Texas (I always imagined she had a Texas drawl). Hubby came into the picture about a year later, and she thought he was acceptable. :) So, it was the 3 of us for the next 7 years until the first kiddo came along. She was such an awesome dog...zippy but not high strung. She was a trooper through our many moves. I miss her so much. Here's one of my favorite pictures of her; I think she looks like she's smiling:

Thanks for reading....I still haven't been able to talk about her, but it helps to write. It was also helpful this weekend to get lost in the card blog world and look at some amazing cards.

Thanks, friends.

Shine On

Happy Thursday! I've been such a bad blogger lately...but life's just been, well, life!

I needed a diversion today, so I decided to tackle this week's Summer Card Camp color challenge. {As an aside, if you get a chance to take this class in the future, it is awesome and worth it.} Anyhoo, I love sketch challenges, but color challenges...they're hard for me. Here's what I came up with:

I was inspired by Kristina Werner's video on mixing patterned papers. If you click on the photo, you can see the papers better. I used papers from 3 manufacturers (Cosmo Cricket, Echo Park, and We R Memory Keepers), and I tried to match the embellishments, too. It reminds me of my aunt who always matched her belt, purse, and shoes. Yeah, I'm not the matchy type, but I went for it.

Thanks for looking, friends! Have a great day!