A boy learning to share.
Fun times with the grandparents.
New adventures in art.
Wishful thinking.
A Stanley Cup.
The start of a challenge.
Being part of a team.
Firetrucks.
Ambulances.
Train, trains and more trains.
A family vacation.
Firsts.
The election.
Potty training.
Celebrity encounters.
Treasured holiday memories.
Happy New Year! May 2009 bring you many treasured memories of your own! I'll be back in a few days with some new cards.
FireCracker Designs by Pamela has two new sets available this month, and I just LOVE both of them!!! The fruit set is great - love the images, and some of the sentiments - OMG - so funny! And the gorgeous French set was drawn by my mega-talented design team friend Marie! Such a PERFECT set with Valentine's coming up right around the corner!! Both of these sets are available for preorder, NOW through December 31!!! And here's the fun part...
Three years ago today the sweetest baby boy came into my life. I cannot believe it's been three years already! My baby boy has grown into a sweet, smart and hilarious big boy in the blink of an eye. I am so proud of you, Carter. Happy birthday my love.
This is probably the last card you'll see from me for a little while - tomorrow morning we head up to Michigan for the holidays. Well - hopefully we do, anyway! We're supposed to connect through Chicago, and last I heard not too much is coming in or out of O'Hare! One way or another, I sure hope we make it to Detroit tomorrow without too terribly much delay! Ugh, the thought of lots of delay with two little ones... not pleasant...! But I guess there's no sense worrying about it (or boring you with my worries) - whatever is going to happen will happen! So on to the card - this is my final card with this month's FireCracker Designs by Pamela set Season's Greetings. I love this snowflake stamp, it's so delicate and gorgeous! For the main image panel I used the "Magic Snowflake" technique - seemed appropriate for a snowflake image! :-) For the background snowflakes I used some heat & stick powder and Martha Stewart glitter. Notice anything odd about this card (for me)? I didn't use any patterned paper! That's pretty rare these days. I couldn't figure out what to put on this for a sentiment - none of my FCD sentiments were fitting right. So, I busted out some Making Memories metal that's been in my stash for ages! I chose "dream", because Carter has been dreaming of playing in the snow (he's soooo excited to see his first snow!), and I'm dreaming that we'll actually make it up to the frozen north. :-) And speaking of dreaming, I better hit the hay so I can have some sweet dreams myself - we're waking up at 3:30am in order to make our 6:00am flight (assuming it's not canceled!). I still have about a zillion things I had wanted to do tonight, but, I just have to let go of the guilt and say "I didn't get them done and that's ok!". And... hope Pamela doesn't fire me since several of the things were for her. *sigh* So who knows, this may be the *last* FCD design team card you see from me...! LOL Take care y'all and STAY WARM!
Some new designs have arrived at Hambo Stamps!!! Check them out, they are soooooo cute! I'll be playing with some of them as soon as I'm back from Michigan!
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, my absolute favorite of all the Hambo Fractured Funnies! I'm not sure why, but this one just CRACKS ME UP!!! You see what the outside of the card says... on the inside, the sentiment continues "Thank goodness for Neighborhood Watch!" HAHAHAHAHAHA Isn't that hilarious? And believe it or not, I know JUST the person to send it to... hee hee. I also love this little Hambo skunk - that smirk on his face definitely makes him look like he's up to no good! I decided to pop him up, and then pop up his flowers even more and give them rhinestone centers. The skunk himself is embossed, and white fun flock is on his tummy. And why a brown skunk, you ask? (yes, I heard you!!) I was playing along with the last Color Throwdown challenge - to use Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip and Riding Hood Red - the green was "optional" but I took full advantage of that option. Alrighty my friends, I must leave you now and go make dinner. Thanks for stopping by today!
I have to admit - I really love how this card turned out! It's another using the FireCracker Designs by Pamela set Season's Greetings. This time I focused on the little solid holly leaf included in the set, and created a wreath. I traced around one of my (many!) glitter bottles sitting on my desk to get the circle and just stamped the leaf all around, first in Certainly Celery, then in Always Artichoke, and erased the pencil line when I was finished. For added dimension I stamped a few more on a separate piece of paper, cut them out (which was slightly tedious!) and glued them down. I did the same with the corresponding berries. The sentiment is from the Holly Jolly Christmas set - I thought it went well with a holly wreath! And I know you all are concerned that I just haven't been myself lately - not one of the recent cards I've posted has had any polka dots!!!! *gasp* So, I made sure to include some here. :-) But... I picked out this paper, and then realized the polka dots were white and I had used Very Vanilla paper for the wreath. Argh. So, I pulled out some Creamy Caramel ink and sponged it over the dots to dirty them up a bit. Worked like a charm! Now for the good news - I know you all are itchin' to order some of these super cute FCD sets yourself!! It so happens that from now until December 25th, you can take $5 off your order by using coupon code 5$OFF (all one word). A minimum purchase of $15 is required. What a sweet deal! AND - Pamela's throwing in a free gift with every order through the end of December!! Yowsa!! What a great time to order yourself a little Christmas present. :-) Alrighty, off to wrap some presents...! Thanks for stopping by today!!
I've decided to start uploading my cards as "large" rather than "medium" on Blogger - what do you think? Too big and obnoxious? Or large and lovely? :-) Anyway... here's another Hambo funny for your Friday! People have already started posting Valentine's cards on their blogs - ack - I am still making Christmas cards!!! I am so NOT one of those on the ball, ahead of the game type of people!! But... I decided on my last Hambo DT order to include some of the fun Fractured Funnies sentiments that I love - and this one fit the bill to make a Valentine-y card! The inside says "Just remember that math isn't my strength!" hee hee But I do have to admit, that is not true AT ALL about me - math was always my BEST subject in school! Are you all rolling your eyes at me?? What can I say, I'm an enginerd. :-D I've taken so much math, actually, that at times I've considered taking a few more classes to earn a math degree... just for fun! HA! Now you know the truth about me. I like numbers. And I *heart* math! But I also like making cards... so let me tell you a little about this one. The sketch is Jen's latest Sketch For You To Try. Me likey - it's a fun sketch! Since I've been on a glitter kick lately, I went ahead and coated my sweet little piggie with StarDust Stickles, because I do silly things like that! He also has a pearl in the center of his flower. Good stuff! Ok I better get this finished - I'm letting Courtney play with Carter's books while I type this, and she just ripped a page out of a Thomas book - I see a bad scene in my future unless I apply some tape, pronto! Hope you all enjoy your weekend, and yes, I will be back tomorrow with ANOTHER card! Wowsers I'm on a roll!!
This card has sooooo much sparkle in real life!!! I played with *real* glitter again - LOVE IT! This time I busted open my huge pack of Martha Stewart glitter that somehow slipped into my cart one day while "grocery" shopping at Walmart...! (still assuming the hubby doesn't read this...!) *wink* All the glitters have gemstone names - this red is called Garnet. The Christmas light image is from the FireCracker Designs by Pamela set called Season's Greetings. I stamped the light three times, then drew the little string between them. The layout is this week's sketch challenge on Splitcoast (SC207). I also played along with the Stamp Something challenge to use red, green and gold on a card. I don't remember the last time I used this much gold on a card! :-) The tops of the lights were colored gold with a Sakura paint pen. I'm guessing the paint pen had a nasty smell to it - but my head is so stuffed up, I didn't even notice! HA! The bright side of stamping with a cold!! Alrighty - hoping to get this posted and still bust out another card before Courtney wakes up - thanks for stopping by today!!
I can so relate to this card! I used one of my favorite Hambo "fractured funnies" on it - as you can see, the outside says "I've kept my figure!". Open it up and it says "Unfortunately, this is the one I started with." hee hee! *sigh* So sad, but true. Now if only I had a sparkley blue leotard, maybe I'd be as self-assured and content with that fact as this super cute hippo seems to be! :-D I made this card last week and never got around to posting it, which is unfortunate because I played along with a couple of now-expired challenges to create it! The sketch was Julee's Mojo Monday #64, and the colors were the SCS Color Challenge (CC196) to use Taken with Teal, Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze and Whisper White. 
I struggled quite a bit trying to figure out how to add the sentiment on the front - and was quite pleased with myself when I came up with stamping right on some white taffeta ribbon! You can't tell in the photo, but I went over the black ink with my clear Spica glitter pen, so the sentiment has a little sparkle IRL. And I just LOVE the sparkle on the hippo!! You all know I love Stickles, but when I actually take the time to get out some glue and fine glitter - WOW. Soooo sparkley!! It just makes me happy. Even though I probably had it in my eyebrows by the time I was done! :-D Ok, I need to wrap up this post and go take a nap - thanks to those of you who left well wishes yesterday! I'm thinking I may have bronchitis, it's all in my lungs today. Yuck. I'm crossing my fingers some MucinexD will fix me up!! Thanks for stopping by today!
Hi, remember me? I used to post stuff on this blog, but then I vanished! Is anyone still out there, or have you all given up on me? I'm probably just talking to myself - but that's how I usually feel when I'm typing on here anyway! :-) Things are still a bit crazy around here - Joel is out of town, I have about a zillion things to get done before next week - I can't believe it's Christmas next week already (!!!) - and now I have a nasty cold. Boo! But I put all of that aside and did some stamping therapy anyway. :-) I actually have several cards queued up to share this week, can ya believe it??? First up is this lovely swan from FireCracker Designs by Pamela. I just looooooove this image!! So pretty and peaceful. For this card I was inspired by the amazing Michelle Zindorf - I used similar coloring as I did on my snowgirl card a while back, and I also followed this tutorial for the brayering. I'm actually digging the brayering, it's quite fun and not nearly as scary as I used to think! And it's so exciting to finally use that Versamarker I bought a zillion years ago and have had collecting dust in my stash - turns out it's an essential tool when doing brayered backgrounds, you "color" with it over your stamped and colored image, and then emboss it in clear EP so the brayering can just be wiped off! So nifty! I wasn't quite sure these colors would look good on the swan - it worked well for the toasted marshmallow look on my snowgirl - hopefully he doesn't just look like a dirty swan. :-) Well, I do like how it turned out, and I'm so very happy to have finally stamped something!!! Hope you all are doing well and have more of your shopping done and house organized for the holidays than I do at this point!! :-) Thanks for stopping by today!
Well a week has gone by and I've made no cards! Yikes! Between sick kids, sick mommy and general holiday season craziness, I just haven't had time to stamp. And, I don't see that changing too much between now and the end of the year. So... I've decided to go on a little From Courtney's Closet vacation. I'll be back after the first of the year with fun new cards inspired by Courtney's outfits - and hopefully with some cute *new* outfits after spending Christmas with Grammy and Great Gramma, who can't resist buying new clothes for their sweet grandbaby! If you're not sure what I'm talking about - you can view past challenges here and get excited about joining us after the holidays!! And please don't give up completely on my blog the rest of the month, I will be posting other cards!!! :-D
Sue's neice Katie played along too, yay! So cute! I love that she added other animals in addition to the sweet elephant, and her layout is super fun!
Anita's daughter Katie made this cutie! I'm a lucky duck to have Katie joining my challenge nearly every week!
But my favorite this week is Sharon, because she buttered me up by choosing polka dots over stripes (that paper is soooo cute), her elephant image is just too cute, AND she started a brand new blog so we need to give her some love! :-) Sharon, email me your address at stampinlibby at gmail dot com, and I'll send a little something your way.
Thanks ladies for playing along, I know it was a hectic week to squeeze it in. And thanks to the rest of you for stopping by today! I look forward to sharing more cards inspired by Courtney's outfits after the first of the year. :-)
This sweet Bella card was given to me by my sister Laura on Thanksgiving! Look at the fabulous paper piecing she did! And I just love how she stuck to the... hmm... duochromatic color scheme? Is that a word?? :-) She doesn't have a blog (yet!) so I can't link her up...
Anita sent this super duper cute Thanksgiving card - I just love how she had fun with the colors. I mean, what's NOT to love about a pink turkey?? She also included a couple images of him so I can play myself (I'm thinking purple turkey??). :-) Thanks Anita, you are so kind!
And this last one - holy moly - Kathryn sent me THE SWEETEST RAK! She spoiled me with all of these wonderful goodies! And look at those Pink Poison Anya images! YAY! Can't wait to play! (that is, if I ever find mojo again, and finish my DT commitments that I'm hopelessly behind on...!) Thanks Kathryn, it was such a happy surprise to find this in my mailbox!
Now, if you are dying to send me a RAK yourself, you can contact any of the ladies linked above and I'm sure they will be happy to share my address with you... LOL!
Well this is typical of my luck. The Duran Duran concert was canceled. Stupid Nick Rhodes has an ear infection, cannot travel and is stuck in South America. The nerve!! Doesn't he know how much I was looking forward to my "day off"!?! Not to mention meeting the one and only Carole Burrage?!?! This is precisely why John Taylor is and shall remain my favorite. Now I better get back to my regularly scheduled programming and fix lunch for the kids... *sigh*
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