Gotta luv pinwheels!!

This week's Ways to Use It challenge on SCS was to use colored pencils... a no-brainer for me!! I love my Prismacolors and use them all the time!! I'm even showing my hostess club gals the joys of coloring with them, gamsol and stumps at our meeting in a couple weeks! I had spent quite a lot of time coloring my Halloween card earlier this week, so I linked that to the challenge thread - but had to promise Julia I'd make a new card to play along as well. So, I did this one last night. Funny though, I chose a tiny image with hardly any coloring! Ah well. I also tried out this week's Sketch challenge - I really liked this layout! I am all about sketches lately!! I'm hoping if I keep doing sketch challenges, I'll eventually get better at putting together a nicely arranged card myself! So the color scheme of this card started with the ribbon - some super cute $1 ribbon from Michael's. I was inspired to dig it out after seeing this ADORABLE card by Charmaine! Isn't her's THE CUTEST?? My ribbon is different colors, but very similar. Funny thing though - this ribbon also has green spots that look very close to Celery - but I managed to cover them all up! But that's why I chose Celery as the base! So I pulled out my sweet little You're Neat set - saw the kitty with the pinwheel - and decided I had to try and make a pinwheel myself to add to the card! What fun! I just put "how to make a pinwheel" into Google, and voila - instant pattern. How did I live before Google?? :-) Not that making pinwheels is particularly complicated - but it was easier to just look it up than try to think through it last night! I made this pinwheel with the Flowers for You DSP from SU. The other cardstock colors on the card are Taken with Teal and Lovely Lilac. I had fun with this card - thanks for stopping by to take a look at it!

By the way - I still intend to keep doing Flower Fridays! I just wanted to post this card since I had actually stamped, rather than digging up something from the past with a flower theme - and of course it didn't occur to me last night that it was Thursday and I should stamp something flowery! But I did use the Flowers for You paper - so it may be a lame excuse for a Flower Friday, but I say it counts! :-) Have a great Labor Day weekend!!

Carpe Diem!

I created this card to play along with the challenge over at Pink Tulle with Feathers and Sequins (I love that blog name so I felt compelled to type it all out!) :-) - Shannan challenged us to seize the day and use a stamp in a way that it was not intended to be used. What a fun challenge!! I had Fall Whimsy sitting on my desk - I'll tell you why in a minute - so I decided to play with that. At first I was going to use the big leaf stamp to make a flower, but I watercolored it with blue (Soft Sky & Cool Caribbean), and in the end it looked like a snowflake to me. So, I went with that! A nice, glittery snowflake with lots of Patina Stickles! I wish I could figure out how to photograph a glittery card to make it sparkle as much as it does IRL! The snowflake ended up humongous, so the card is big - 6"x6"! I couldn't actually mail this to anyone because I don't have envelopes that big! I used Sage Shadow & Soft Sky textured cardstock, and DSP from the Wintergreen pack. The brads are the new SU rhinestones, and the ribbon is May Arts. I'm not 100% crazy about the layout of this card - I should have found a sketch to follow!! Oh well. So... the reason I had Fall Whimsy out... it was my "test run". I mentioned a few days back that I've been toying with the idea of pulling some of my rubber from my wood - well I DID IT!! Before diving in head first, I just did one set - this set. I wanted to try stamping with it to make sure I like how it feels (although I knew it would be fine b/c I've been using Bellas the same way!). I didn't use any cling foam on it or anything, I just painted it with the repositionable glue. Well, it worked fine for me!!! I was inspired to do this by Mimi - she also mentioned that some of the more detailed stamps need the foam - so if I pull apart any of those I may have to invest in some foam. I think this will be a slow process for me - maybe I'll make a goal to redo one set a day or something. (I have a lot of stamps!) It makes me so happy though to think about how much space I'm going to save when all is said and done!!! I sure hope I don't regret it though......!

(I was going to add a photo of my pulled-apart Garden Whimsy in a cd case, but for some reason blogger isn't letting me add another photo! Argh! Anyway, this set is small enough that I can actually fit another similar-sized set in the same case!! Talk about space reduction!!!)

Designer Series Paper Colors

My upline sent this out, thought you all might find this useful - according to this, Cutie Pie is Rose Red. Mystery solved! :-)

DESIGNER SERIES PAPERS:

Brocade Backgrounds: Always Artichoke, Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, River Rock

Cerise: Real Red, Very Vanilla

Charbon: Basic Gray, Very Vanilla

Creepy Crawly: Basic Black, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Really Rust

Cutie Pie: Bashful Blue, Basic Black, Certainly Celery, Rose Red, So Saffron

Darling Doodles: Brocade Blue, Groovy Guava, Rose Red, Wild Wasabi

Dashing: Old Olive, Real Red, River Rock, Very Vanilla

Fall Flowers: Old Olive, Really Rust, Sahara Sand, Soft Sky

Flowers for You: Certainly Celery, Lovely Lilac, Regal Rose, Tempting Turquoise

LeJardin: River Rock, Soft Sky, So Saffron, Very Vanilla

Linen Prints: Apricot Appeal, Cameo Coral, Close to Cocoa, Old Olive, Pink Passion

Notations No. 2: More Mustard, River Rock, Very Vanilla, Wild Wasabi

Outlaw: Chocolate Chip, Creamy Caramel, Really Rust, Sage Shadow, Very Vanilla

Petals & Paisleys: Certainly Celery, Cool Caribbean, Rose Red, Old Olive, Pretty in Pink, So Saffron, Taken with Teal

Porcelain Prints: Blue Bayou, River Rock, Wild Wasabi

Uptown: Almost Amethyst, Basic Gray, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi

Wintergreen: Always Artichoke, Certainly Celery, Sage Shadow, Soft Sky

Color Challenge CC129

I made this card to play along with this week's Splitcoast Color Challenge. The challenge was to use Purely Pomegranate, Pretty in Pink and Old Olive. If you didn't have Purely Pomegranate you could substitute Rose Red. Well, I'm not sure which one I went with! I used the patterned paper from the Cutie Pie pack, and I just couldn't tell which it was!! Anyone know? But either way I didn't break the rules! First time this week I followed the rules on a challenge card!! :-) This time I pulled out my favorite Living Large girls - don't know what it is about them, but this is one of my all-time favorite sets! I colored her in with Prismacolors, gamsol & stumps. I doodled the little frame and sentiment. The Old Olive piece is some of the new textured cardstock - I'm so happy SU finally came out with this!! The ribbon is two different May Arts ribbons layered on top of each other. The basic layout for this card was inspired by this one from Leslie's blog. I wanted to write something more witty or entertaining this morning but my son is begging me to read a book to him (for some reason that is standard procedure when I sit down at the computer - he either needs me to read a book or he bring over every pair of shoes I have by the door and wants me to put them on. Or he puts them on himself, which is particularly funny with some platform sandals I have.) So I better go - thanks for stopping by today! :-)

Another birthday in the Hickson household...

Today was my husband's birthday! We're born the same year, so yes, I am five days OLDER than him. Luckily he's not the type to ever point that out. Perhaps he'll enjoy it a few years from now when I turn 40 before him! :-) So anyway, this is the card I made for him. I used the SU retired Summer by the Sea set. I bought that set specifically because I loved this image so much - it's so completely romantic and sweet. But when I looked at the set yesterday when making the card, I noticed there's also a little boy making a sand castle! I didn't have a little boy who makes sand castles when I bought it, so it never registered. I think I'll have to use that one if I ever get around to scrapping our Michigan trip, Carter was all about playing in the sand! Ok back to the card, I got sidetracked for a minute there...! :-) I've realized that using sketch challenges REALLY helps me put together a card faster, and better - figuring out a layout is always such a challenge for me! I'm more about the coloring than the actual designing I guess! So this time I tried Julee's sketch challenge! It was lots of fun! Julee has an awesome blog, I'm sure you've been there, but in case you haven't - check it out. She did the sketch challenge to celebrate 75k hits! Wowsers!! This time I tried a square card - I like venturing beyond the standard 4.25x5.5 sometimes! I used the new Outlaw DSP from SU - love it! The image was colored with watercolor crayons & my aquapainter, and I used watercolor paper. I really do love the watercolor paper - it took me a while to order it, it's rather pricey, but it feels so much nicer when watercoloring, IMHO. What else? CS is Sage Shadow, Chocolate Chip, Creamy Caramel & Really Rust. I finally used my fun spiral punch - I loved that punch as soon as I saw it and had to order it right away, but for some reason I never think to pull it out! The clippie and brads are from my aged copper hodgepodge kit. And the sentiment is from, of course, Fancy Flexible Phrases. Can ya tell I love that set? Thanks for stopping by, I think I finally have a little stamping mojo back, I hope anyway - so hopefully I'll keep this posting roll going!

ETA: Forgot to mention, I turned Julee's sketch on it's side! (which you'd quickly figure out if you look at Julee's sketch!) Hope she doesn't mind! Ok two sketch challenges in two days, and I couldn't manage to follow either of them as written! Turns out I'm a rebel - who knew?!?! :-)

Beate's WSC16

Here's the Halloween card I promised yesterday! For this card I tried Beate's sketch challenge WSC16, but I turned it on it's side and left off the sentiment. Hopefully Beate won't mind! I decided to size the card to fit in a regular business-sized envelope, which is a size I've never played with before - lots of card to fill! But if fit Beate's challenge perfectly! The images are from SU's retired Sweeter Treaters. I just love these little cuties! And I had so much fun coloring them, although I have to say it took a looooong time! I used my Prismacolors & gamsol this time, and added some dots and stripes on the little witch with a white gel pen. The patterned paper is from SU's new Creepy Crawly pack, and the CS is Pumpkin Pie and black. I stamped the sentiment from Fancy Flexible Phrases, and the ribbon is from Michael's. Thanks for stopping by today!

Storage Solution Sunday - Scrap Bin

For today's storage solution, I thought I'd share with you one of my storage solutions that I'm most proud of - my scrap bin! It's not rocket science or anything, but still - I came up with it myself a few years back, and it completely changed the way I use my scraps - in that I actually do USE them! I used to keep all my scraps in one big bin. I'd have to dig through them all to find the color I was looking for. It was a pain (or maybe I'm just too lazy), and in the end I rarely used my scraps! And of course, I always kept generating more and more scraps (that I couldn't throw away, even though I never used them!) and generally wasting a LOT of paper! So one day I was feeling ambitious (this was pre-kid, I'm rarely ambitious anymore! LOL!) and decided to sort out my scraps. I had some girls over to scrapbook and instead of working on my pages, there I was with 48 little piles spread out across the table - they thought I was rather nuts. Once the paper was sorted I needed something to do with it, so I found something I happened to have on hand - page protectors! Each color went into a separate page protector. I found a clear box intended for file folder storage that worked perfectly for storing all of my little page protector envelopes of scraps. At first I didn't have them labeled, but I would get annoyed when I'd pull out the wrong color (is that Lavender Lace or Almost Amethyst??) - and I'm also a tad anal about having my colors in "order" - so I quickly decided to add labels! Nothing fancy, I just took out a trusty old Sharpie and wrote the color on each one. I also found numbering each envelope makes it fast and easy to put them back in "order", which makes me happy. :-) I haven't always done this, but I now have a rule that if there's a good half- or quarter-sheet of paper left, I put it back in the drawer with the full sheets rather than in the scrap bin - which also makes me more likely to use it! If I'm ever ambitious again (HA!) I should even go back and re-sort my scraps, and pull out the larger pieces that really still belong in my drawer. I also have a similar bin for all my non-SU scraps.

So there you have it - nothing super fancy or elaborate, but it definitely works for me! If you haven't found a system for organizing your scraps, I highly recommend it - being able to pull out the envelopes of the colors I'm using for a particular project makes using my scraps so much easier!!

I also just recently discovered Nancy Riley's awesome blog, iSTAMP (where have I been?!?). Her cards and projects are always fabulous - but I've especially drooled over the shots of her stamp room & storage solutions. Her stuff is all so neat and "pretty". I'm more functional than pretty. :-) Check it out:
Introduction to Nancy's room
Nancy's cardstock storage (My drawers look the same! Shopped from the same eBayer!)
Nancy's pegboard (My dream stamp room will have this!)
Nancy's chipboard (So cute!)
And this concludes my Ode to Nancy... :-)

Thanks for stopping by today, have a great week.

(PS... I actually stamped tonight too!! (gotta luv insomnia - NOT!) Check back tomorrow for a Halloween card (Laura I think you will love it!).)

Another fun blogthing...

I saw this on Flossie's blog, what fun!

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

New life for my wheels??

Check out this post from Jen at Pieces of Me - this is so BRILLIANT! I *never* use my wheels, but I think this would breathe new life into them for me. I'm totally doing it. Plus it will save me a bit of space (just a bit - since I rarely use wheels, I have not gone wheel-crazy. One of the few things in this hobby I have not gone crazy with!)! Although I'll probably just paint the backs with Aleene's Tack-It, I use that on my unmounted rubber rather than Cling Foam. And ever since I saw this post from Mimi at Stamps-a-latte Stamp Cafe, I've been considering doing this to my mounted stamps. I just haven't been brave enough...!!!

Happy Birthday to...

... me! Yup, it's my birthday. And even though I *really* should have used today's nap time to get some housework done, instead I decided to allow myself a little rubbertime! And now my son is waking up, but I'm going to ignore him for a couple minutes and get this posted, because hey, it's my birthday, and it won't kill him! :-)

Remember this post? I professed my love of orchids, and wished that I had an orchid stamp. Well I found one!!! It's from A Stamp in the Hand. Yeah!! I got it back in July, but today's the first time I've broken it in. I need to play with it some more, I'm a bit rusty on coloring directly on the stamp, so it didn't turn out exactly as I envisioned. But it was so fun to actually stamp with it, I've waited too long!! I also used my new Thoughtful Phrases from Verve Visual for the sentiment. I'm so excited that Julee has started her own stamp company, I know there's going to be some AWESOME stuff coming our way from her!! The patterned paper is from my Basic Grey Infuse pad that I ordered from Flourishes. And most importantly - I used Dina's sketch challenge for the design!! It was a fun sketch to play with, you should check it out. (although now that I think of it, maybe you shouldn't, it will decrease my chances of winning her contest!) (KIDDING!!!) :-)

Ok Carter is not happy with me now, I better go... Happy Wednesday!

Thoughts of the Yucatan Peninsula

Waking up this morning to hear that Hurricane Dean made landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula as one of the strongest Category 5 storms in recorded hurricane history, it made me feel the urge to share my wedding photo with you. This is me and Joel, back in July 1998, just married on the beach of Cancun. We eloped, and obviously did not have a traditional wedding (but hey, I can still wear MY wedding dress!) :-). The crystal blue waves of the Caribbean couldn't have been a more beautiful backdrop for a wedding! So, the Yucatan has a special place in my heart. From what I can tell from the updates on CNN, Cancun missed the worst of it, with Belize and the southern part of Mexico getting the direct hit. I hope the people of this beautiful (and most definitely less fortunate) part of the world are not suffering too much this morning, but I imagine they must be.

Another fun blog game...

... I'll play along - why not? I saw this on Rose Ann's blog (among others), it looked like fun. I'm supposed to answer these all starting with "L", since it's the first letter of my first name..

Your Name: Libby

Famous Artist/Band/Musician: Lyle Lovett

4 letter word: Love

Vehicle: Lumina
TV SHOW: Lost!!!

City/Town: Lansing, Michigan

Boy Name: Lance

Girl Name: Leigh
Occupation: Lumberman

Something you wear: Legwarmers (ha!)

Celebrity: Lindsay Lohan (ugh)

Food: Leg of Lamb
Something found in a kitchen: Liquid Soap

Reason for Being Late: Lost (oops I used this already, but it's different...!)

Something you Shout: Land Ho!
Cartoon Character: Lightyear, Buzz :-)

Storage Solution Sunday!

So yesterday I was cleaning my stamp room. Have you heard me say that before? Yes, it's a never ending struggle for me to keep this little room clean! But after a couple friends at my last hostess club meeting pleaded with me to let them look at it, disaster area that it was, I decided I needed to get it neat & organized before NEXT month's meeting, so they could see how it's SUPPOSED to look! :-) Plus I've felt like stamping and once again could not access my desk...! So as I cleaned, I found some shopping bags - purchases that I hadn't even taken out of the bags, just deposited somewhere on the floor in my room and more or less forgot about. How sad is that?? One thing I found was this great little caddy from Fiskars that I had found at Stamp Salado back in July. I had been storing my Prismacolors in the box they came it - which is a very nice box, but I wanted them sitting on my desk where I could easily see them. I knew this caddy was exactly what I wanted for this purpose the minute I saw it. I'm sure it's the same with many who read this - but I just LOVE art supplies! Looking at them makes me so happy. Walking into an art supply store is pure heaven to me. So seeing these beautiful colored pencils setting out on my desk brings a big smile to my face. And it makes me want to use them even more!

When I let my friends see my terribly embarrassing stamp room a week ago, they were actually impressed with some of my storage solutions - which is somewhat funny considering they could barely enter the room due to all the junk on the floor! But it's true, despite being a slob, I'm also quite organized, if that makes any sense at all!??! :-) So I thought a fun Sunday feature for my blog would be to either highlight a storage solution that I use and love, or point you to something cool I've found on another blog. I'm sure a lot will be old news to many of you, but you never know what might be a fun, inspiring idea to somebody out there! So I hope you enjoy my Storage Solution Sundays! :-)

Long Overdue!

Isn't this card GORGEOUS?!?! The nicest blogger I know, Rose Ann, sent this to me about a million years ago, and as most of you know I haven't been very good about blogging the past few months, so I neglected to ever get a proper thank you posted! I just *LOVE* everything about this card! I loved it when she originally posted it and told her so, and I was absolutely thrilled to receive it in the mail! This was her first time trying the Featured Stamper challenge over at SCS, and she CASE'ed a card by another of my all-time favorite stampers, Kirsten DuBosque. I love the colors & papers Rose Ann chose for her card, I love her adorable scalloped border, that flower is just stunning, and of course I cannot resist anything stamped with a Bella! I love my Bellas!!! Thank you so much for sending this to me Rose Ann, it made my day (months ago....!). :-)

New Catty CASE

I loved the card on p.21 of the new SU catalog, featuring the Garden Silhouettes hostess set, so when I was looking for a cute, simple card to CASE for a new catalog party last weekend, this was the winner! I used exactly the same colors as the catalog - Certainly Celery, Wild Wasabi & Bashful Blue, but only changed out the stamp set. I used the completely adorable Big Celebrations - one of my new favorites! I also changed the ribbon, simply because I don't have the double-stitched wasabi (yet!!). Simple, cute & fun - my favorite kind of card. :-)