Fabric Flowers!

Hi everyone! I thought I'd stop by and show you a card I shared with my friends at my card class this past weekend. I was inspired by Julie Campbell's fabulous fabric flower tutorial (HERE) to give it a try!I was also itching to use some fabric I had recently picked up at a super fun local shop called The Stitch Lab. My friend Lisa and I had gone on a little shopping trip a couple weeks ago, and the fabric was calling to me... "use me... use me...". So I did! Here's me with some of the yummy fabric!And here's Lisa, darn phone made her a little blurry - but you get the idea, she found just a few things she couldn't live without, too! :-)Thanks for stopping by today!

Vive le Tour!

For three weeks now I've been thinking "Hmm, I really should make a Tour de France inspired card!" and today I finally did it. On the very last day of the Tour! If you've been with me for a while, you know that I'm a bit of a fanatic, although I'm not sure I've actually said anything about it on here yet this summer!? My husband is a bigtime sports fan, he'll watch pretty much anything! Back in the summer of 1999 he tuned into a bike race and told me a guy from Austin was riding, and he was a cancer survivor and used to ride for Motorola - the company we were both working for at the time. Actually, back then there were photos in the lobby at work of some guys on bikes, but I had never really thought much about them. But I was intrigued by this story. So I watched it with him. AND LOVED IT!! And of course I went on to watch Lance Armstrong win seven consecutive Tours! The man is completely amazing, I believe the greatest athlete of our time. Some speculate he's doped - the sport has been plagued by many scandals - but I choose to believe he's clean. He's just super human. :-) After his 7th win in 2005 he decided to retire, and I was very, very sad. I watched the next three summers, and though I still loved it, it just wasn't the same (plus more doping scandals left me very frustrated with the whole thing!). And then - Joel told me (he's the one who actually reads the sports page, not me!) - Lance was going to make a comeback this year!!! He wanted to ride again to continue to raise awareness for his foundation, which provides tremendous support for people battling cancer, encouraging them to LIVESTRONG. I tried not to get my hopes up too much - three summers off from the Tour, and now riding against some really great younger riders (Lance is the same age as me - an old fart in cycling!!) - but then the Tour happened and Lance was amazing and *sigh* all was right in the world once again! It was tough not seeing him in yellow this year, the color of the race leader, but fighting his way to a 3rd place podium position in Paris, while also showing great sportsmanship and working hard for his teammates - AMAZING! As his team shared on Twitter: "Congrats to Lance for 3rd in his amazing comeback to cycling. He's shown athletes & the world what a true champion he is."

So the way I celebrate such happy things? Why, making a card of course! This is more of a Lance-inspired card than a TDF-inspired card. Lance has worn an awful lot of yellow in his lifetime!! I used the "inspire" definition from the Stampin' Up set "Define Your Life" - because he does indeed inspire me - it's stamped very subtly with Versamark. I think of roses when I think of Lance - one of his fundraising events is called Ride for the Roses - so I used Fifth Avenue Floral, again very subtle on Kraft paper. I stamped the roses in Summer Sun then watercolored them in with very watery lid ink. I created the "be strong" sentiment with my Karen Foster snap stamps.

Another thing I love about the Tour de France is getting to spend my July living vicariously through the cyclists riding across the beautiful French countryside. We were lucky enough to visit France back in October of 2003. I have a dream of *someday* watching a mountain stage of the Tour in the Alps! But here is a photo from Paris - the view from atop the Arc de Triomphe. Oh how I wish I was in Paris today!!Thanks for indulging me if you read this entire post (!), and thanks as always for stopping by!

• Stamps: Fifth Avenue Floral, Define Your Life, Polka Dot from SU, Karen Foster snap stamps
• Paper: Yoyo Yellow, Kraft, White
• Ink: Summer Sun, Versamark, White Craft ink, Memento Tuxedo Black
• Accessories: SU scallop edge punch, Making Memories DP, SU library clip, yellow embroidery floss, Janome Sew Mini

From Courtney's Closet #46 - an inspiration challenge

Hi y'all, welcome to this week's edition of From Courtney's Closet, where I make a card based on one of my sweet baby girl's outfits and challenge you to do the same! Well I don't know what it's like where you are, but I am DYING from the heat here in Austin, Texas!! Yesterday's high was 105!! C'MON MOTHER NATURE, IT'S ONLY JUNE! Usually late July or August is when it's really scorching here - so I'm totally not ready for what this summer has in store for us. I live near Lake Travis, our big lake outside of Austin - everyday I drive by it and see more and more "beach" and "island" popping up - the water level is lower than I've ever seen it!! I'm going to do a rain dance!! I am really tempted to make some Christmas cards today - maybe stamping snowflakes would make me feel cooler??? Anyway... today's card... I just bought this top for Courtney, because it's so nice and cool! (although, it does expose an awful lot of her fair skin to that brutal sun - but that's what SPF50 is for!!) This isn't the card I thought I was going to make when I sat down to stamp - since there's yellow in this shirt, I thought I was going to make a chickadee card using "my birds" :-) see here for the story! but instead felt like stamping some flowers and pulled out my uninked FireCracker Designs by Pamela set Forgive Me?. And it's funny - I spent some time creating masks for the flowers and originally had the center flower "behind" the other two, but in the end stamped it again and cut it out and popped it up! I always have to make things as hard as possible for myself, it seems! The colors on this are some new In Colors from Stampin' Up - the yellow is called Crushed Curry, and the orange is Dusty Durango! I colored the flowers yellow with the new IN COLOR MARKER!!!! Hello! About time SU did that!! The flower centers have rust-colored rhinestones surrounded by a little bit of Stickles. I automatically reached from my beloved StarDust Stickles when I was making this, then realized the glitter flecks really didn't go with this card - the Diamond Stickles were much better (for once!). :-)

So what do you think, do you want to play along?? I surely hope you will!!!! If you do, leave a comment back here so I can come and find you! Thanks for stopping by today - STAY COOL!! :-D

• Stamps: Forgive Me? from FireCracker Designs by Pamela
• Paper: Brocade Blue, Crushed Curry, Dusty Durango, Confetti Cream
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic & Stampin' Up markers for coloring, Chocolate Chip ink for sponging
• Accessories: Spellbinders Labels 1 die, Cuttle Swiss Dots, Martha Stewart Doily Lace punch, Diamond Stickles, K&Co rhinestones

Reminder - now through end of day tomorrow, get 15% off your entire order at FireCracker Designs by Pamela when you use code LIBBY1!!! And come back on Saturday, we're doing our monthly FCD blog hop!!! Yay!

From Courtney's Closet #45 - Courtney's Playdate!

Hi Everyone! Welcome to another edition of From Courtney's Closet, where I make a card inspired by one of my daughter's outfits. Remember way back in April, I claimed I'd start doing a monthly playdate, where one of Courtney's best blogging buddies would come and visit and we'd all ooh and aah over the friend's cuteness and make a card inspired by the friend's outfit?!? Wellllllll... we are finally doing another playdate!! This month we are playing host to Katie Brooks' *adorable* little munchkin, Sophie!! Could she be any cuter?? And YAY, Mama Katie put her in blue for this challenge, which I love!! The first card is what I was inspired to make from Sophie's cute photo. I played with my new Unity stamp set called Floral Friends - it was a doorprize at the recent SCS shoebox swap I attended in Dallas! (the bonus of having stamping superstars in attendance - they gathered up an AWESOME table filled with goodies from lots of wonderful stamp companies!!) It's hard to read in the photo, but this flower's stem says "friends are the flowers in the garden of life" - so nice! :-) I'll be giving this card to one of my sweetest friends who's birthday happens to be today (we'll see if she reads my blog, hee hee!). I stamped extra copies of the flowers on scrap paper so I could cut out and pop up the flower and then the flower center. The very center has a little AMuse rhinestone, and the tiny background flowers have dots of Stardust Stickles in their centers. And next is the super duper adorable card that Katie made! Make sure and head over to her blog and let her know how much you love it!! I think she's waiting on me to post, and as usual I'm being a mega-late-slowpoke, but I'll update with her direct link once it's up! (Here's the link to Katie's gorgeous card!!) Thanks SO MUCH for playing along Katie, and for letting us be inspired by your beautiful little girl! The flowers on your card are soooo cool, I just love them!! And the bottom half of the card is such a perfect match to Sophie's outfit!If you're as inspired by Sophie's outfit as I was, please make sure and let me know with a comment on this post and a link to you, so I can come and see!!

Last week's challenge only inspired a few of you to play along, but the ones who did made such CUTE things!! Sue made an adorable tag that matched the pattern on Courtney's outfit so well! And I was soooo excited to have Spicey Cat Chick play along for the first time with a sweet card with an image I *love* of the House Mouses sniffing lilacs!! (and isn't Spicey Cat Chick the coolest name ever??!) :-) But, my favorite this past week was Chris!! As she often does, she blew me away with both her creativity and her computer whiz skills!! She took the photo of Courtney and made patterned paper out of it, which she then used on her cards!! So of course she had an EXACT match of the outfit!! Sooooo cool! She made several cards, make sure to check them out here! I love them all, but I'll say this was my favorite:So Chris, I'll send you my little "featured" button that you can display if you'd like, and thanks to all of you for playing along! And thanks to everyone else for stopping by today!!!

And now, if anyone is curious about my tardiness, I have to tell you about my fun day! First I had a dentist appointment in the morning, which no, I don't completely consider *fun*, but I do like having nice, clean teeth! :-) Then I went to a morning scrapbooking outing with my friend Brenda and some other really nice scrapbooking chickies, and then later in the afternoon I went on a quick little shopping excursion at Archivers with non other than my sweet stamping friend (and hero) Shannan!! And then Melissa also showed up!! Yay! So, today was fun. :-)

• Stamps: Floral Friends from Unity Stamp Company
• Paper: Ballet Blue, Bashful Blue, Stampin' Up DP (from SAB)
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers for coloring
• Accessories: Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, SU Scallop Edge punch, AMuse rhinestones, Stardust Stickles, Chatterbox ribbon