Grandma's Mother's Day card

Has anyone seen the new (I think?) Designer Mat Pads from K&Company that they have at Michael's these days? I just *love* them! The papers are heavy-duty, textured and oooh so pretty! The DS paper on this card is from the "Roam" pad - just gorgeous! I made this little card for my grandma for Mother's Day. Grammy loves birds, so I used the retired Feathered Hope set that I bought a while back, specifically for making cards for her! I also used some lace crocheted (I guess?) ribbon and pearls, thought they were both somewhat grandmotherly. I'm still having lots of fun coloring with my Prismacolors & gamsol, but I think my watercolor wonder crayons are starting to feel neglected on the shelf, so I better pay them some attention soon. :-) I'm not sure this card will survive the trip via the US Postal Service up to Michigan - I'm thinking a padded envelope may be in order or Grammy may receive a card with little lost pearls floating around the envelope! But anyway - I'll get this and my mom's rose card below in the mail tomorrow, and maybe *for once* I'll actually get cards to people on time! It's so sad how rarely I manage to send cards out to people, even though I often intend to! What's the saying? Something about the cobbler whose kids have no shoes?? That's me. :-( Or at least the old me, it's been one of my new goals lately to send out more cards!! (but I did just miss my friend Renee's birthday last weekend, darn it! But I was definitely thinking of you Renee!!) Ok I'm starting to ramble - thanks for looking & have a great night!

• Stamps: Feathered Hope, Everyday Flexible Phrases
• Paper: Sage Shadow, So Saffron, Naturals Ivory, K&Co Roam Mat Pad
• Ink: Palette Noir, Sage Shadow, Brocade Blue, Walnut Distress ink
• Accessories: Aquapainter, Prismacolors, Gamsol, Stump, Joy! crafts pearls, ribbon, SU ticket corner & small oval punches
  

I want candy!

Ah yes, in the immortal words of Bow Wow Wow... I want candy!! Blog candy, that is! But alas, I never win blog candy... but that's ok, maybe YOU will! I had thought to myself that I would offer up some candy once I got to the 1000 hits mark, and low and behold that happened this morning! Only problem is, it happened much sooner than I expected! I really can't believe people are actually taking the time to look at my silly little blog. I know I'm not in the same league as the incredible stampers I have listed to the left (and I am discovering & adding more and more wonderful stampers everyday!) - but I'm just having so much fun with this! For one thing, it's getting me into the stamp room more regularly, and I am *loving* that!! I went into this with two goals for this little blog... 1) to work at improving my own stamping by trying to do the SCS challenges as often as possible, visiting the blogs of all these people who completely inspire me and trying the new ideas I learn from them, and "just doing it!" - having the blog is extra encouragement to make time for stamping, since I want to have something new to post! And 2) to get others, whether it's my friends, customers, or other random stampers who stumble upon this little blog, as inspired and excited about stamping as I have been lately! I got this awesome email from my friend Leigh this morning, which confirms I'm at least achieving #2:
Alrighty- I just feel the need to share the ripple effect of your little blog...
So, I bookmarked your blog when you sent out the note that you had started it & thought it was great, I like it, I'll visit it often. Well, now I visit it every day religiously and view not only your posts, but the posts of your heroes, your inspiration blogs, etc. where I will inevitably find products that I *need* and seek out to find them either in a store or online & purchase them. I went to Archivers during my lunchtime yesterday - and OMG!!! That's all I have to say about that. All this to say that this is sheer madness & I love every minute of it. NOW...if I could just find the time to make cards or work on my scrapbooking!

How cool is that?? This just cracked me up, and made me happy to know others are as excited as I am!!

So, without any further adieu... I would love to offer up some blog candy, as a great big THANK YOU to whoever is out there actually reading this silly little blog. I have up for grabs some papers from a super cute little DCWV "retro" mat pack, some Bazzill flowers, and a couple yards of ribbon from a few of my favorite recently purchased spools. Since I'm a child of the 80's and started this post off with a Bow Wow Wow reference, I'd like you to leave a comment and tell me your favorite 80's song or band (if you had one)... so I can relive my youth! (I know who Diane will say if she's reading this! Can you believe this girl actually has a Duran Duran rubber stamp!?! How cool is that!?) I'll randomly choose a winner on Sunday night, 9pm CST. Good luck! :-)

And a little 80's fyi: I had my husband's vehicle today as he took mine in for service - he has XM radio, I do not - so of course I had to turn it to The 80's on 8! I heard that every Sunday at 11am CST they are going to replay old Casey Kasem American Top 40 broadcasts from the 80s!! How fun!! I used to be glued to the radio every Sunday in junior high... except of course when I'd turn off the radio to head to Skateland for some rollerskating! :-)

Country roses

This is my little test to see if my mom reads my blog...! I probably shouldn't be posting this yet, it's her Mother's Day card. But I just love how it turned out and couldn't wait until next Monday to post! My mom is very country, so I was trying to reflect that in this card. I know everyone has seen about a zillion Roses in Winter cards, but this is actually my very first time playing with this set! I borrowed it from a fellow demo, to see if I have to buy it before it's retired. I really like it, but the jury is still out. So here are some creative details... there is so much more going on with this card than you really can tell from the photo! First of all, the roses are showing up way too vibrant - they aren't quite that bright in real life (I need to start using IRL instead of "in real life", I'm just not hip enough to the computer lingo for it to come naturally yet...!) (I'm still stuck in the early-90's world of sideways smilies!! :-) :-) :-)). The roses are stamped in Regal Rose, with a little Rose Red marker added along the edges on the stamp here and there. The leaves & card base are Mellow Moss, and there is a little So Saffron in the little stamped flowers and also the thin cardstock layer. I used my handy-dandy color coach for the Mellow Moss, Regal Rose and So Saffron combo - it also told me that Brocade Blue is a coordinating color, so I added a little of it with some Itty Bitty Background splotches, and also a tiny bit of blue marker along the edges of the paper before distressing. The edges of the rose block are also sponged with moss. If you think I suddenly got brave enough to use my sewing machine, you are sadly mistaken! The stitching is some super cool Studio K rub-on stitching I picked up at Archivers yesterday. I used my paper piercer to add little holes to the stitching, as if a needle had actually gone through the paper (well, in fact, a needle did - that's what I used to poke the holes! heh heh!) I used the Canvas background on the card base, and added some Michael's polka dot ribbon and some SU gingham. Oh and one other little detail - I used my clear Glaze pen to accent the roses, which you absolutely cannot tell from looking at the photo! Mom if you're looking, hope you like your card! :-)

Awesome stamper alert: Bad Sherry looked at *my* little blog!! Eeek!! She left a comment on my messy desk post. Ugh, of all the things for her to see...! By the way, she inspired me to want to borrow Roses in Winter when I saw her beautiful rose card. Totally love her blog, check it everyday - her cards are beautiful, and she is sooo funny & seems like she would be so much fun to know in real life! Er, I mean IRL!!!!

Happy Scrapbooking Weekend!

That's what I had... a happy scrapbooking weekend! I did the day retreat yesterday, and it was fabulous! I worked on my Ireland scrapbook - didn't get nearly as much done as you'd think a girl could do in 12 hours... I actually went into the retreat thinking "this will be great, I'll get the ENTIRE trip done, woohoo!" HA!! I wasn't even close! Oh well, it was lots of fun and that's all that really matters! I really enjoyed spending the day with my friend Karen - she is such an amazing scrapper, I'm so inspired by her! Maybe even inspired enough to finally start scrapping my son's first year, after seeing what she's done for her *adorable* son's book!! I have a couple more crops & retreats planned for the coming months, so hopefully I'm getting back in the swing of scrappin' after a *long* hiatus!!

So yes, it's been a good weekend - scrapping all day yesterday, and today I got in some more gardening, watched the Amazing Race finale (although I'm not thrilled with who won!) and most importantly *wink* I also got to do some fun shopping - hit Michael's this morning to return a couple things, and had to check out the new Martha stuff and all the rearranging and restocking they've done with the other things in my aisles. I had Carter with me so I had to hurry through a little more than I would have liked. Martha has some cute things, but not much I just *need* to buy, ya know?? One thing about her stuff that I think is really smart, though, is that her stickers & other embellishments all have holes in the bottom of the package, so it can all be stored in a big craft binder she sells. Not that I'm going to buy that much of her stuff to need that, but I'd love it if other companies all did that! Very cool for keeping organized! But the REALLY exciting shopping came later in the afternoon, when Carter was napping & I got to leave him home with Joel. I checked out the new Archivers up by Lakeline! OMGoodness!!!! It's AWESOME!!!! Those of you in Austin, you need to go & check it out. I'm going to state for the record right here and now, if anyone ever needs to get me a gift, for whatever reason, a gift certificate to Archivers would be just perfect! hee hee! I do feel really bad for Scrapbook Crossing though (my favorite LSS that's not far from Archivers) - they have to really hate that this store has opened!! But, I for one manage to do my part to support *all* of the various stores around Austin! (and sometimes Waco, or San Antonio, or online......!)

And finally, I thought I'd post a photo of my desk - since I need to redeem myself after sharing how horribly messy it was before! As of right now it's still nice & tidy - mostly because the only creative stuff I did this weekend was at the retreat, NOT in my stamp room!! We'll see how it survives the coming week of stamping, and preparing for Thursday's hostess club. :-)

Now I need to go clean my messy kitchen & get to bed at a decent hour for once. Have a great week!

Send a birthday card today!

I just stumbled onto this website from Shane, a little boy with leukemia. He has made a wish to break the world's record for the most birthday cards ever received! His goal is 350 million, and his birthday is May 30. I encourage you all to send a card (or two or three) to this little sweetie and help him reach his goal!

Flower Friday!

I've decided to do a new weekly feature on this little blog - Flower Friday! Every Friday I'm going to try to post either a flower from my garden, a flower from somebody else's garden, or a flowery card! A couple things inspired me to do this - looking at Leslie's AMAZING garden today on her blog, and also snapping this photo tonight of my newly blooming passion vine! The vine itself is in sorry shape (see post below with the rose photo - too much neglect in my yard the past couple of years!), but despite that the sweet little vine produced this amazing flower, and is on the verge of just bursting with blooms - this particular flower opened yesterday, and there are many more buds about to open. If it is covered with blooms sometime soon I'll try to snap another photo (perhaps next Friday?). :-) My little garden is still pretty sad, but it's coming along, slowly but surely! Joel also surprised me this week with a new umbrella table and chairs for the yard, so this evening after putting Carter to bed we were sitting out there enjoying the cool May evening (I did a little gardening this afternoon and it was REALLY hot and humid! Ugh, here comes summer!) and the songs of my Purple Martens - Joel with his Newcastle, and me with my Fine Gardening Color Combination issue, trying to figure out what to plant next. In one corner I have a Victoria blue sage and a white jasmine vine already blooming - I'm thinking it needs some yellow or orange to compliment... but hmm... not sure what to plant! Maybe some daylilies? Anyway... hope you all enjoy my Flower Fridays. I better get this posted and hit my stamp room - still a little more organizing to do, plus I'm doing an ALL DAY SCRAPBOOKING RETREAT tomorrow, yippee!! And I need to get things organized & ready for that. It's from 9am-9pm: twelve whole hours of toddler-free, uninterrupted scrapbooking! I cannot wait! I plan to finally do our trip to Ireland from fall of 2005. Yes, I am VERY behind on my scrapbooking (also still have to do Switzerland/Austria, China, Hawaii, and I haven't really even started anything for Carter yet, and boy do I take lots and lots of photos of my sweetie!). So - hopefully I can crank out my Ireland book tomorrow. Happy National Scrapbooking Day, and enjoy your weekend! :-)

Pretty frogettable card!

Last Friday I went on a little shopping spree at my LSS with a gift certificate - fun! I saw this paper from Heidi Grace and just knew I had to combine it with this little froggie! But unfortunately I am just not skilled at using patterned papers on cards (beyond basic patterns such as polka dots on the last card...)!!! I really don't like how this card turned out. Patterned papers just seem to be too busy to work well on cards. I mean, when *I* do them!! My favorite stampers to the left use them skillfully all the time!! And even though I study & admire their cards, it's just not sinkin' in how to do it myself! So if anyone has any pointers on this, please let me know! :-) So anyway... the stamp set is Unfrogettable, which I also had to use today because my silly little sister didn't remember that this set was in the catalog - she thought SU was retiring the only froggie set (Frolicking Frogs)! Remember him now, Laura? :-) I used my Prismacolors, gamsol & a stump to color him. The cardstock colors are cameo coral, creamy caramel & ruby red, in an attempt to compliment the Heidi Grace paper - and I inked all edges with close to cocoa using a dauber (I *really* didn't like this card before the cocoa inking, which made it a little more tolerable!). I used a cute ribbon from Michael's, which I thought complimented the little froggie, but I don't think overall it works on this card. So anyway... there ya go, I'm postin' crap but at least I'm postin'! :-)

ETA: Yes, I was in a crabby mood when I made & posted this!! (guess I should have played with Crab & Co instead, hee hee!) Feeling a little better about this card after some nice comments on SCS, but still not my fave. :-)

Playing with my new toys!

Well, I accomplished a lot in my room tonight, but I'm not quite ready for the "big reveal" - still more cleaning needed! But, I did find my desk (yippee!) so I had to play a little more before going to bed. First off, I had to use my sweet little Living Large girl, because I am *so* sad she is being retired!! What is SU thinking?? I've also been collecting a bunch of new toys lately, but finally tried out several of them for this card! First and foremost, as you can probably guess - I gave in to all the Cuttlebug lust I was having and got one for myself!! I used it for the super cute Cool Caribbean happy birthday embossed panel. I'm really excited about it - I bought a Quickutz several years ago, but I rarely use it because I hate that stupid squeeze handle (Anyone want it? Leave me a comment if you do!). The Cuttlebug works with the Quickutz dies I already have, so I feel it was a good investment! Plus I have been just lovin' all the embossing everyone has been doing on their cards!! I had held out on getting one b/c I was incorrectly under the impression that Michael's wouldn't take 40% off coupons for them, but they do! Another new "toy" I used tonight are the gamsol and stumps I ordered from Inky Antics. I kept seeing references on different blogs (most often on TayloredExpressions) about coloring with Prismacolors, gamsol & a stump. Huh?? No idea what they were talking about, until I finally found a tutorial on SCS. Well... I WAS EXCITED!! I bought an amazing box of Prismacolor pencils many many MANY years ago (again, a 40% off purchase!), when I was first starting to scrapbook and would copy the hand-lettering they'd feature every month in Creating Keepsakes, a la Becky Higgins. Then letter stickers got to be a lot cuter and I gave up on this (as did CK!)! So my beautiful pencils, all 120 of them, were sitting on my shelf, gathering dust. I just never liked how they looked when I colored with them - I could see too many pencil marks. But the gamsol and stump works sooo well to blend it smooth & nice! I still need to get the hang of it - I have so many colors I need to figure out which pencils look good with the various SU colors, but I'm very happy to play with them!! Debbie Olson uses Prismacolors a lot too, but I asked her if she uses gamsol, and she does not!! Ohhh to be that talented, to blend & shade so perfectly without any extra help!! Someday... :-) The other new things on this card are the cute ribbon which inspired my color choices - a cheap wooden spool ribbon from Michael's. And the green polka dot paper is from my new Palette O' Prints pad from SU! I am totally loving the papers in that little pad - so cute!! Ok that's it for tonight, it's way late and I have no business being awake at this hour!! :-)

A bit of happiness among the mess!

I am cleaning my stamp room as we speak... ok, ok, I'm procrastinating a bit and posting a new card! But check this out... I was cleaning off my DISASTER of a desk, and was making a little pile of scraps or other elements that I didn't want to throw away, and both this stitched patterned paper and cut out doodle flower found their way into that pile! The stitched paper was what I started off with which eventually led to the stitched teddy bear card, and the flower was when I was playing around with the Jenn Balcer design, both below. Sitting next to each other on my desk, they screamed out to me "put us together on Kraft paper!!" - so who am I not to listen to my scraps??? Especially when it means a break from dealing with my massive mess! Ok, I'm going to do something very embarrassing now and show you what I'm dealing with tonight... here's the "before" photo of my desk. *UGH* I don't know how I let it get this bad - I guess I'm just a messy person when I'm being creative... (um, ok, don't know how to explain the rest of my messy house, but it was worth a try... on second thought that DOES explain it, I've been more interested in stamping than cleaning in general lately...!) :-) But alas, I had better stop procrastinating and get back to it... the desk is just one small part of the mess, my floor in there is absolutely COVERED with stuff, I have to carefully step around things to even make it to my desk! So overwhelming... I hope I find more scraps that I *just have to* take a break and play with soon... :-)

So long, old friends!

Stampin' Up! has published the retiring stamp set list today - you can find it on their website. Soooo many of my old favorites are going away - *sniff* - but how exciting, this means LOTS of room for great new sets in July!!

Wasn't able to stamp last night - opted for an early bedtime instead! But wanted to make sure you heard the big news today about the retiring sets! :-) Happy Stampin'!