Way to go!

Sorry I was absent yesterday. It was a rest day at the Tour, so I also took a small rest. ;-) But today I'm back with some cows holding up a fancy, golden bike. Or are they pigs? It's really quite hard to tell.

I dug out an old Close to my Heart set from my stash for this one. They are pigs, but I colored them as cows. I'll tell you why below. And you guys!!! This is my first ever shaker card!!! I am so excited. I filled it with a beautiful sequin mix from sweet Lucy Abram's shop. That sentiment is from Hero Arts' Enjoy Today set - one of my favorite message sets!

As for the cow-pig-whatever-you-want-to-call-it... I was inspired to make this card after Sunday's team time trial. Team BMC rode to victory, and also retained their lead in the team classification. When they had their presentation on the podium, the hostesses gave them stuffed... somethings. I assumed they were cows, but my friend Leslie thought perhaps they could be pigs. I apologize for this poor quality photo, it's a phone pic of my tv, so, yah, not so good... but can you tell what they are??

So I made my card, and was getting ready to post it, when by some kind of miraculous coincidence, this tweet appeared in my Twitter timeline!!

our new Addition to the family from the tour. I will call him Moo. @ReinvanRensburg pic.twitter.com/vEFXVckPCi

— Leilani (@Leilanitjie) July 14, 2015

They named him Moo. The Great TDF Mystery has been solved. Case closed! I know you all were worried.

Miracle & Wonder

I was able to sneak away to the stamp room for a little quiet time this afternoon, and this is what happened. :-) I wanted to make a card for my little sister - she's having a baby, and found out this week that's it's going to be a girl! Yay!! Courtney can't wait to have her first cousin close in age that she can play with!! :-) Laura isn't too into pink, she's more of a purple girl, so I decided she needed a purple teddy bear on her card! I told you a few cards ago that I was bummed I hadn't been able to play the last few Color Throwdown challenges - well here I am catching up on another one! This is from the previous week, Color Throwdown #44, and the colors were Bordering Blue, Elegant Eggplant and Barely Banana. I pretty much NEVER reach into my Bordering Blue drawer, so it was fun to give that paper a little love! The yellow is actually PTI, not Barely Banana - but close! This Stampin' Up teddy bear from "Bundle of Joy" is one of my all-time favorite baby stamps! For this card I stamped him in Black StazOn on Confetti White paper, and used the lids of my ink pads to color him with Bordering Blue, Eggplant and a little Pretty In Pink on the cheeks. I cut him out when I was done - and would you just look at what he's mounted on!!?! I SEWED IN A CIRCLE!! I was so proud of myself!! It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good! LOL! The sentiment is one of my all-time faves too, it's from the Close To My Heart set "Celebrate Life" and I adore it, for one thing, because it's a Paul Simon lyric and I looooove me some Rhymin' Simon! And, I just think it's so fitting for a baby card - especially a first baby card - those truly are days of miracle and wonder! I'll never forget our first night home from the hospital with Carter, it's was like we were in our own magical world, trying to figure out the new little person in our house. I can't wait for my sister to experience that! Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Bundle of Joy from SU, Celebrate Life from CTMH
• Paper: Kraft, Confetti White, Bordering Blue, PTI DP
• Ink: Black StazOn, Palette Noir, Elegant Eggplant, Bordering Blue, Pretty in Pink
• Accessories: Janome Sew Mini, Cuttlebug & Swiss Dots folder, Marvy punches, SU slit punch, Eggplant grosgrain ribbon, aquapainter

Make Your Own Happiness...

I made today's card to play along with a couple challenges. First of all, it's Beate's latest sketch challenge (WSC63). Such a fun sketch!! I chose to make mine a square card, it measures 5.5" on each side. This card was also made to play Karen's Lilacs and Lupines Random Act of Kindness challenge. Karen is a great stamper with a huge heart - she already donates cards to brain cancer patients, and now she's started this challenge to get bloggers sending more RAKs. Every Tuesday she posts a new challenge, including a special "rule" for the week - this week the rule was to incorporate a circle in the design. The challenge runs until 8am Sunday morning - if you want to play this week, you better act FAST - otherwise look for her new post on Tuesday! :-) I made this card to surprise a friend - I picked up a little something for her at the stamp show I went to last weekend - she's not somebody I would typically buy things for, but this just called out her name. I cannot say more than that in case she's reading this!! I used the sentiment "make your own happiness" on this because that little giraffe is sitting there with a party hat on, even though this isn't a birthday card. It just seemed like he was making himself happy. :-) Plus giraffes happen to make the person I'm sending this to happy. Oh no, I've said too much!! LOL Ok it is waaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy past my bedtime, I better post this and hit the hay!! Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Nursery Bash from CTMH, Happiness Messages from Hero Arts
  
• Paper: Brocade Blue, Georgia Pacific White, Marcella by K DP
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Adirondack Espresso, Copic markers for coloring
• Accessories: Janome Sew Mini & brown thread, Spellbinders die, large brads from JoAnns

Spotted Elephants!

I made this card for our friend Derek's first birthday yesterday. I just love this Nursery Bash set from Close To My Heart*! And yes, I am thoroughly addicted to polka dots!! I paper pieced the elephants, balloon and "1" on this card and mounted them on dimensionals. This card has some fun texture IRL. When I saw the announcements last week about a new challenge blog starting, I was excited - the challenges are coming from some of my absolute favorite stampers! To paraphrase some classic Rene Zellweger - they had me at Laurie Schmidlin! heh heh So that's where I got the sketch for this card, from the first Our Creative Corner challenge. I have to admit, I really love how this card turned out! I made it yesterday afternoon during naptime - good thing I like it because it seems to have sucked away all of my mojo! I was so excited to get to hang out in my stamp room last night, but I had such stamper's block once I finally got to! Boo! Tomorrow I'll show you one of the cards I made, but it's not my favorite. I also need to show you the cake from Derek's birthday party! I helped his mama decorate it - the party theme was trains (yes Carter was in heaven!) and she found a super cool cake pan that has a bunch of different train cars - it turned out really cute! I forgot to bring my camera yesterday though so I'll show you if I get a photo from Derek's mom. Well, Courtney just woke up and there's a rather unpleasant odor coming from Carter so I guess I better go tend to the kids...! Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Nursery Bash from CTMH, Polka Dot from SU
• Paper: Bashful Blue textured, Ballet Blue, Whisper White, SU Prints DP
• Ink: Adirondack Pitch Black, Craft White
• Accessories: Copics, 1" circle punch, May Arts ribbon, hemp twine, Waterfall Stickles, white & black Glaze pens, scissors & dimensionals

* Sorry about the elephants Carole...!