Friendship Frames

I made this card over a week ago and FORGOT TO POST IT!!! That is just craziness, letting days go by with no posts when this is just sitting in a folder on my laptop, unloved. Geesh!!


Actually I know why I forgot - I had planned to take a better, less crooked photo before posting. Meh. Good enough! :-) I made this card to play along with a "90 Minute Scramble" in the Hero Arts Flickr group. But, I joined in with only 20 minutes left to go, so I was REALLY scrambling!! The theme of the scramble was to use a frame on your card. I had these die cut shapes already sitting on my desk from another project, and somehow got the idea to make them look like framed art hanging on a wall on my card. I like how it turned out, and I like even more that I was able to pull it together so quickly. For the record, that is not like me at all!! I am a sloooooowwwww stamper!

Thanks for stopping by,

• Stamps: CL371 Essential Messages, CL495 Blossom Art from Hero Arts
• Paper: Hero Arts Brown Bag Kraft, SU Blue Bayou, white
• Ink: Vintage Photo, Broken China Distress Inks
• Accessories: hemp twine, pearls, foam tape, Spellbinders die

Project 365-ish: Week 4

I bet you thought I'd already given up on this little project, didn't you? Nope! I'm still inflicting my photos upon you every Sunday, you're not getting out of it that easily! I'm late posting today because I spent a fun day up at Stamp Salado taking a Watercolor Crayon Techniques class with Joyce Meyer! But I'll share more about that on (Texas!) Tuesday, today I have some photos from our week...

The biggest highlight from our week - MUCH NEEDED haircuts! First my little jinglebug...


And then big brother too...


Monday was Uncle Jon's birthday so we made him some cupcakes...


Tuesday was veggie pickup day - here Carter poses with them as if he likes them and he'll actually EAT them, but HA!!, not so much...


Speaking of eating, Super Princess went looking for a little something in the fridge...


One of Carter's favorite things as of late is playing cards. We play a game that's similar to Spades. Carter likes keeping score, which is good practice writing his numbers. One afternoon I wasn't able to play, so he got a game going with Cheetah. Much to my surprise, Cheetah won!


Courtney begged me to let her wear her hair to ballet class this week...


On the way home from ballet, Carter snapped this super cute photo of Courtney!


It was his only good one out of about 180 tries. Most looked more like this...


Speaking of photos, Carter also helped me get my piggie photo for the Hambo announcement this week. He wanted a piggie photo too...


Carter had a homework assignment this week to create a bar graph. We decided to collect data on "favorite fruits". Along with calling some family members, I also posed the question on Facebook, so we ended up with quite a bit of data to chart! We were surprised to see that strawberries were by far the favorite fruit, and nobody loved pears the most. Poor unloved pears!


By the end of the week the weather was fantastic and the kids enjoyed a lot of time playing outside.


Until next week...

The Play Date Cafe Challenge #66

It's my favorite day of the week once again - the day I get to play along with The Play Date Cafe challenge! This week we have a color splash to inspire you. Here's how it inspired me:


Yes that's right, the color is a gorgeous light purple! Swoon! In case you haven't figured it out by now... I love purple!


I kept my card pretty simple. I embossed one of my favorite new Hero Arts stamps, Classic Fabric Design, in black. I found some satin ribbon in my (embarrassingly massive) ribbon stash that matched the color splash really well. And voila, a card is born!

Now you need to go check out what my PDCC sisters were up to this week!

Julie Ranae * Sarah Anderson * Savannah O'Gwynn * Ruby 2 Shoes * Andrew Ewen * Fiona Shultz * Jaclyn Miller * Jinny Newlin * Michele Gross * Tracey Kuzniak * Colleen Dietrich

I hope to see your card posted in The Cafe! Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: CG245 Classic Fabric Design (background), CL325 Paris (message) from Hero Arts
• Paper: GP white, Bazzill purple
• Ink: Versamark, Memento Tuxedo Black
• Accessories: Black embossing powder, purple satin ribbon, SU scallop edge punch, key charm

Hambo Guest Designer - Lydia Fiedler!

Hi all! Remember me mentioning my new gig as Guest DT Coordinator for Hambo Stamps??? Well today my first guest - LYDIA FIEDLER - posted a fabby card on her blog! And it is A-dorable! Please go check it out and leave her some love. Thank you Lydia, you are such a sweetiehead!

I'm a Top Chef Designer!!

So did any of you notice the new little block over on my sidebar? My sweet, talented, and all-around wonderful friend Linda asked me to join her Catered Crop Recipe Challenge design team!! YAY! And best of all - I get to call myself a Top Chef! Do any of you watch Top Chef on Bravo? It's one of the few shows I cannot miss. I'm loving the all-stars this season, although I was sad to see the man I love to hate get booted last week. (I have no doubt I am in the minority on that one!) :-) When Linda announced her new team, she said we were the "Tom Colicchios and Paula Deans of the paper craft world". Oh she has no idea how that made me beam with pride! :-) The other ladies on the team are MEGA TALENTED. I'm not at all sure I can hang with them. But I shall do my best. And on that note, here's my card for this week's challenge!


Linda's challenge is a recipe challenge - for each new challenge she picks one of the entries from the previous week to use as inspiration. The card this time was an absolutely ADORABLE creation from Jeanie Witmer, who's has also now become a Top Chef Designer. Oh my goodness do I love this woman's stamping!! Here are the things from her recipe that inspired me:

- Polka dots (Go figure. I'm a polkadotcrazyfanatic!) Also a flowery background paper.
- Stitching. I watched her fabby tutorial and broke my habit of almost always doing a zigzag stitch and did straight stitching instead this time, even though zigzag is FAR MORE FORGIVING of my crooked tendencies. :-)
- I also tried sponging with chalk inks and watched another great tutorial from Jeanie. It's pretty subtle on this card, but I really love what it added. AND I love that I actually USED my chalk inks that usually just sit in a drawer, unloved.
- Paper piecing.
- I also borrowed quite a bit from the layout of Jeanie's card.

I used my What's Cookin'? set from Taylored Expressions for my card. Do you like how I kept the recipe/Top Chef theme going? hee hee I won this awesome set from playing along with a TE blog hop. Thanks Taylor!! And also, do you like how I put the butter up in that circle? It's like it's floating on high, and angels are singing the praises of butter...! Oh, and the sentiment - OMG it CRACKS ME UP!! The entire reason I picked this set.

The way Linda does her challenge - a new challenge goes up every other Sunday (yesterday!). On the following Thursday (this week!) she will post the DT cards for inspiration (me! yay!) and then the challenge closes the following Thursday, in this case February 3. So there's still a TON of time to play along, and I really hope you will! Linda truly is one of the sweetest ladies I know and I would LOVE IT if you'd support her and her fun challenge! Oh yah, and there's a prize too. :-) (The Stamping Boutique!! The images are GORGEOUS!)

Happy Stamping!

• Stamps: What's Cookin'? from Taylored Expressions
• Paper: SU Real Red & Vanilla, October Afternoon DP
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic marker (on butter)
• Accessories: Spellbinders dies, black embroidery floss, machine stitching

Project 365-ish: Week 3

It's been another interesting week for the Hickson clan! I'm going to start off showing a couple things Carter and I did last Saturday. First, we put together a birdhouse! I held the nails as Carter pounded them in - can you believe he didn't hit my fingers at all? And can you believe I even took the chance? LOL! Here's Carter working hard at painting the finished birdhouse...


Carter and I also did a little "mad science" kit we picked up at the Children's Museum. We made a bouncy ball! Carter got to pour the different color bits into a round mold, which we then placed in water. My silly boy doesn't pose nice for the camera all the time...


And here's another silly face with the finished ball!


We had hoped to go see Tangled on Saturday but the timing didn't work out. To help appease two disappointed kids, I decided we could have a "princess picnic dinner" at the coffee table while watching Cinderella. This went over REALLY well. :-)


Although everyone seemed happy on Saturday, it all took a turn for the worse Saturday night. The kids both had fevers and complained of sore throats and tummy aches, so I decided to take them to the after hours clinic on Sunday for strep tests. The poor sweeties zonked out almost as soon as the car started moving...


This is what their ragged mom looks like after a sleepless night with sick kids. Ravishing, isn't she? Ack! (I have no idea why I'm showing you this, LOL!)


Whatever they had, it wasn't strep and after another sick day on Monday they were feeling better. Well, sort of. Courtney was still a grumpypants, no doubt partially because she wasn't feeling 100% and also because she was missing her Daddy, who was on a business trip to Korea. Here she was throwing a MAJOR tantrum on the floor - a big part of our week. Sorry for the rotten photo, I took it with my phone.


Eventually everyone was feeling well enough to finally go see Tangled. The kids loved it, and even dressed up for the occasion...


Carter's favorite show these days is the old 1960s Batman series. He also loves acting out the fight scenes, beating up the pillows. In his undies. :-)


The kids were so happy when Daddy got home from Korea!


Last night Daddy took Carter to his first professional (minor league) hockey game! His favorite part was when they scored (go figure!).


And Mommy enjoyed a pretty Texas sunset.


Thanks for stopping by!

Speedy Cards!!

This weekend there's a mini VSN on Splitcoaststampers - Virtual Stamp Night. For ages now I've been wanting to play along with one of these, and FINALLY I DID IT!! Woohoo!! What happens is they post several challenges - a different one each hour - and you are supposed to complete your challenge card within 45 minutes. You can play along as they go live, or you can do it when you can throughout the weekend. So first of all - 45 minutes??? I *never* make cards that fast. I am a major slowpoke stamper. So that in itself is a HUGE challenge for me!! To help speed things along, I set a few ground rules for myself. First, try to use similar supplies on all the cards. Second, use all Unity stamps (mostly because I have a ton and I don't use them nearly enough and they make me INSANELY HAPPY so I wanted to give them some VSN love!). In the end I made all the cards in LESS than 45 minutes - I made 5 cards on Friday night in 2.5 hours. WOW. And then I finished the 6th project - a luminary - in about 40 minutes this morning. I had a blast. And I stepped WAY outside of my comfort zone. If you've never tried one of these, I really highly recommend it. AND - this particular VSN is open until 8pm EST on Monday, so there's still tons of time to play along!

So here's my card for the first challenge - "Punch Your Heart Out" - it was a color challenge, a sketch challenge, and we were to make a flower out of punches or dies. I used my fabby MFT rolled flower die. Actually, I used some felt rolled flowers that I had already made a while back and happened to be sitting on my desk! Time was of the essence, you know! :-)


Next - "What SHAPE is your heart?" - yup, you guessed it, a heart shaped card was required! I had these heart-shaped doilies, so I used one to trace around and create the card. And I loooove this Unity stamp!


The 3rd challenge was "Light Up Your Life" and that was the luminary I made this morning. I followed this great tutorial from Beate, which made it a piece of cake. I guess I went with the songbird theme since she had quoted an entire song in her challenge post, hee hee.


Next was "Paper-Piece Your Heart Out" (hosted by my sweet friend Donna Baker!). I did some pink & blue paper-piecing on the soda bottle. And btw, being a Diet Coke fanatic (although, recovering - I'm trying hard to give it up!!) - I love love love this Fizzy Feelings set!!


The 5th challenge was "Two Hearts Beat As One" and we were supposed to have "entwined" images on the card. I went with entwined clouds raining down hearts. I hope that's entwined enough, LOL! I was inspired to pull out some rain clouds after catching a peek at my friend Lisa's AWESOME sketch book project!!


And finally, "Slimming Down" - the challenge was to make a "slimmed down card of encouragement". It was a limited supply challenge with only 2 layers of cardstock allowed, and she wanted it to include Kraft, which obviously was not a problem for me, LOL!! She also said to include something about motivation - well, she told a story about slimming down herself, which I found very motivating, which inspired me, hence the message I chose to use. :-)


Whew, that was a ton of stamping for one weekend! My desk is a WRECK, but it was so much fun.

Thanks for stopping by!


Card #1

• Stamps: City of Love from Unity Stamp Co (message)
• Paper: Hero Arts Brown Bag Kraft, SU green, American Crafts DP
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic multiliner, Copic Pale Olive marker
• Accessories: MFT Die-namics Rolled Flower, pink felt, circle punch, SU Slit punch (to make scallops), American Crafts caramel twine

Card#2

• Stamps: ?? sentiment that I love from Unity Stamp Co
• Paper: American Crafts DP
• Ink: Vintage Photo Distress Ink
• Accessories: Heart doily, pearls

Luminary

• Stamps: Could I Be Any Cuter? (bird), Nothing But Blue Skies (message) from Unity Stamp Co
• Paper: Hero Arts Brown Bag Kraft, white, vellum
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers, black Stazon
• Accessories: Spellbinders die, SU scallop edge punch, Star Dust Stickles, hemp twine

Card #4

• Stamps: Fizzy Feelings from Unity Stamp Co
• Paper: Hero Arts Brown Bag Craft, SU Baja Breeze, BoBunny pink, white
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
• Accessories: SU Slit punch, machine stitching, hemp twine, heart sticker

Card #5

• Stamps: a pocket full of... (clouds), Could I Be Any Cuter? (message) from Unity Stamp Co
• Paper: Hero Arts Brown Bag Kraft, GP white
• Ink: Broken China, Tumbled Glass, Vintage Photo Distress Inks
• Accessories: American Crafts caramel twine, heart stickers

Card #6

• Stamps: a pocket full of... from Unity Stamp Co
• Paper: SU Brocade Blue, Hero Arts Brown Bag Kraft
• Ink: Barn Door, Vintage Photo Distress Inks
• Accessories: Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder, Spellbinders die, hemp twine

Lots of Hambo Happenings!!

Ok friends, I have a ton of stuff to share with you and you will most definitely want to PAY ATTENTION but first I need to show you a card I made. I went a little crazy with the embellies on this one...


Isn't that little guy THE CUTEST?? He makes me smile. Errr, she. Whatever. It's one of the latest images over in the Hambo digi store, called Hamster Heart. So what do you think, too many embellies? hee hee


I played along with Jen's SFYTT for January, yay!


So now let me update you on all the Hambo news, in case you missed it. It's lots of GOOD STUFF!!

- The Hambo Design Team Call is coming to a close TONIGHT!! So if you want to join us, get your submission together ASAP!

- There's several super duper cute new digis available at the site. But just a reminder, Hambo Stamps isn't just a digi store, they have wonderful, high quality red rubber stamps as well!

- The new Hambo challenge blog - Hambo Hoedown - is starting up on February 2! In the meantime, head on over there for a visit and grab the Hoedown button and follow the blog - it could earn you a free digi!! Then read this post from Monica's blog with all of the challenge details. If you like digis, and especially if you like FREE DIGIS, this challenge is for YOU! :-)

Thanks for stopping by today! I have some more design team news to share with you, but that announcement will come on Monday! Yay! (Although if you can't wait, you can always peek at my sidebar today, hee hee) Have a great weekend!

The Play Date Cafe Challenge #65

First of all, I want to say a heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone for the warm welcome I received last week as I officially began my journey with The Play Date Cafe! Your comments made me feel so good!! Last week's colors were so soft and pretty, but this week is more fun and funky! Here's what they inspired me to create:


I played with my new Hero Arts set Just Saying Hi. This telephone is just too much fun. It's hard to believe that my kids will grow up having no idea what a rotary dial is, craziness. :-) (actually some of you stampers are so young you probably don't either, LOL!) To give this sweet old phone a little more somethin'-somethin', I coated it with Glossy Accents. Yes, I may have to admit one of these days that I'm completely addicted to Glossy Accents...!


Sarah chose the color story this week, and was inspired by a cute piece of fabric. Love those birds!

I hope you'll all play along this week, the challenge is being sponsored by Cosmo Cricket! Yay!

Look at the wonderful paper up for grabs! This mini deck is just as fun as the colors of this week's challenge!

Be sure to check out all of my fellow PDCC designers!

Julie Ranae * Sarah Anderson * Savannah O'Gwynn * Ruby 2 Shoes * Andrew Ewen * Fiona Shultz * Jaclyn Miller * Jinny Newlin * Michele Gross * Tracey Kuzniak * Colleen Dietrich

And I hope to see your creation linked up at The Play Date Cafe this week!!

Thanks for stopping by!

• Stamps: CL502 Just Saying Hi, CL492 Typerwriter Letters
• Paper: SU Tangerine Tango, Basic Gray, The Paper Studio DP, GP white
• Ink: Palette Noir
• Accessories: Spellbinders die, machine stitching, brads, Glossy Accents