Peace on Earth

Well my fellow blog readers I received a delightful email over the weekend. Appears that Scrapbook.com is featuring one of my cards in their Top 10 Holiday Cards article. I am both delighted and ecstatic that someone loved my card enough to feature it. If you want to read more about their article you can find it HERE

I have been playing with some warm and cozy flannel and it inspired me to make this card. The greys and reds against the white really spoke to me so I replicated it.

The Peace die and sentiment stamps is from Papertrey Ink. the little house and tree die is from Memory Box and the fallen snow stencil is from My Favorite Things stamps.

Couple of Cards

Happy Wednesday! Hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. I spent most of it making another quilt. I managed to get the top done now the icky part of backing it and sigh the actual quilt part.

I did manage to squeeze out a couple of cards yesterday since I haven't started my quilting just yet.

First up was a simple birthday card using some MFT stamps. This cutie was colored with copics and added enamel dots and washi tape to round out the card.

 

 

Then my bff's brother in law passed away so I needed to make a sympathy card. I chose this stamp from Stampin Ups Thoughts and Prayers. It's a pretty basic card but I did heat emboss it with some gold and die cut the panel with the stitched frame before popping it up with some foam tape. Seems a bit stark but I don't know if you would really want it to be too festive so leaving it as is.

 



Happy Birthday To Me!!!!

Yep today is my birthday, and in honor of my birthday I made myself a birthday card. I used my newly purchased My Favorite Things Cool Cats stamp and die set along with some MFT pp, added a few enamel dots, and from Simon Says Stamps, the Wishing die. I did grab the You from Clearly Besotted Butterfly Wishes stamps. Oh and a Memory Box die for the balloon bracket.

The images were colored with some copics and I used a whole bunch of Fiskar punches for the layering above the balloon bracket.

Now I think I need a birthday present to go with that card.

Mother's Day card

I am trying to stay on top of my card making this year. Up now is my Mother's Day card for my mom. She loves cacti so it seemed that this set from My Favorite Things would be perfect for her.

I have to confess I too like cacti so that was a double reason why I needed to have this set.

Used some water coloring for the background, added some splatters and then colored and cut the cactus. Finished it off with some washi tape and enamel dots.

Sarah Kay - Birthday Love

Still sharing more Expo projects, and this time I have a few cards. Mostly I stamp the images before I go so there is less that I have to take. I have learned to take a 6x6 paper pad to give me the color inspiration and then it makes easy to finish the cards at home with that same pp.

Searching through my stamp drawers I found some of my favorite Sarah Kay stamps and knew it had been far too long since I used them last and decided now would be the perfect time to put them to use.

First up is one of the cutest little stamps I have ever seen. A little girl with her teddy bear, how sweet is that?

I used Teresa Collins pp for the color inspiration and pp. Added the sentiment from a mix of stamps I had on hand. I believe they were Simon Says and Papertrey Ink, cut the stitched die from My Favorite Stamps and then finished it off with some twine and enamel goodies.

A few more Valentine's Day cards

Ever since I was able to finally lay my hands on the Harvest Mouse stamps set from My Favorite Things I envisioned that I could alter them just a bit to fit the holidays. So I took this little guy carrying leaves and changed them to tiny little hearts. They are hard to see but I piled them in and had a few falling from the basket.

This card I designed for my dh. Guy cards always seem to be hard to make for Valentine's Day cards since I would think they aren't too fond of getting a frilly pink cards, or at least my husband doesn't. I do like the combo of grey and pink and found some pp that matched the grey I was using. And for some reason it made me feel a bit of a tropical theme was going on so I did add a few tiny confetti flowers. Hopefully it's not too feminine for him. And if you can keep a secret I will tell you that I purchased tickets to Jersey Boys to see on Valentine's Day. I am kind of excited about giving them to him. I bought the tickets late last summer and have been holding them waiting for my grand surprise moment. I did tell him I had plans but he's probably forgotten about it at this point.

Cute and Whimsical Cards

Continuing on with my online card class I am sharing two cards I made that are supposed to be in the Cute and Whimsical category. I have to say just getting back from Disneyland this was a bit of a challenge to get done. My mojo really wasn't in full swing trying to catch up. This is day 5 and the class is on day 12..yikes!

Up first is this fun little guy from My Favorite Stamps. I really like these little dudes, so fun to color them.

And this other one is using stamps/dies from Lawn Fawn as well as the MTF mountain range die and the Merry die is from Clearly Besotted. The falling snow stencil is from Simon Says Stamp.

Christmas Cards - No Peeking

Keeping it simple.  I am using MTF stamp/die elf combo that I colored with copics and a sentiment die from Penny Black. I also used the MTF stitched die as an embossing element.

I have to say these little elves are super cute and remind me of those elves from the Rudolph The Reindeer movies. I still like to watch those at Christmas Time, they seem so nostalgic.

 

My Favorite Things - BB Santa's Helpers Dies and Stamps, Die-namics Basic Stitch Die

Pebbles  - We Go Together Pattern Paper
Penny Black - Sentiment Die
Other - Enamel Dots

Christmas Time

Halloween is now officially over at my house, all the decorations have been put away and I started on my Christmas Cards. I have to say it feels strange to be starting these but since I also started my Christmas shopping last week I guess it really shouldn't. We all know how time flies and next thing you know Christmas will actually be here so I guess it's best to get a leg up while I can.

Keeping it a bit simple this week. I stamped the sequin tree and die cut that plus two more from pp and of course added a few sequins for decoration. I also added some glitter snow to the background using a falling snow template. And then stamped the sentiment and popped up the center tree.

MFT - Tree Stamp and Dies
Papertrey Ink - Sentiment Stamp, Ink
Simon Says Stamp - Falling Snow Stencil, Stitched Rectangle die
Aleene's - Glitter Snow Paste
Chickinadiddy - Pattern Paper
Other - Sequins

Watercolor strikes again

Hello fellow readers well I was MIA for a bit because over the weekend we undertook a huge task, we remodeled our garage and ai yi yi, it was a lot of work. Took me a day just to recover. My youngest ds and I came up with the idea and were going to surprise my husband when this all started but we quickly realized that wasn't going to happen so we filled my dh in on the project and being in construction lets just say one thing led to another.

If you don't care about seeing any pictures or what not I will spare you the details but for those of you who do just keep going.

So back to scrappy goodness. The My Favorite Things blog has been having a contest using color theory and while my initial thought was to join in on the contests I just didn't get around to it, but their challenge inspired this card. I was initially going for monotone but I think this doesn't quite apply since some of Ranger's Distressed Inks had a green tone to them despite being blue in origin.

 The stamp and die are from Papertrey Ink

 

And for those of you interested in my remodel I hate to tell you that I forgot to take photos when the old cabinets were still intact, but alas I came home one day and my son had removed them. The one side was basically a wall of those white particle board cabinets you find at Home Depot.

 

Most of our garage already had dry wall installed but there were a few places missing and my dh wanted to go back over and make sure everything was properly taped and prepped. That's him below

 

 

This was part of the mess that my ds and I emptied on Friday afternoon.

 

As you can see we had a mess everywhere you looked, part from empting the garage and part from the garage being packed with way too much stuff.

 This set of cabinets over the washer and dryer we left.

 

When I say we had a lot of stuff, we had a lot of stuff..or I should say my husband has a lot of stuff. This is our patio full of junk.

 

 

This is a snapshot of the walls after my dh sprayed on some texture, thank goodness for power tools my hubby did most of them Friday night and what was leftover on Sat am

 

We started painting the walls where the texture was already dried from the night before.

 

 

Now that the painting is done we needed to start emptying the garage so we could lay down the flooring, yeah we put in vinyl flooring. Very easy to do but at this point my son left for work and guess who got stuck with helping my dh lift it. I am sure a few swear words escaped my mouth during this time.

 

 

 It's looking nice and tidy wouldn't you say.

And then as my son slept in Sunday morning mom was out there assembling cabinets as my dh did final paint touchups. Once he was done he put the doors on and leveled the cabinets.

 

Here is half of the garage. After my ds got up and helped he left for work again, I am beginning to think he planned that. So dh and I once again dealt with the other half of the flooring and cabinets. He finally returned to help assemble the last two cabinets. And didn't believe mom did one set correctly so he took it all apart and redid it. I told him feel free and decided this was a nice opportunity for a break. Needless to say mom did them right. The manufacturer had a flaw with them but they were built as designed.

 

Here is the other half, but we still need to install the upper cabinets over the workbench and add a few things like trim around the doors. We basically ran out of time. So maybe this weekend it will get the final steps completed. DS has already started putting stuff back so my patio is returning to normal but there is still much to organize as it goes back in. Can't wait for this to all be done.

And I am thinking of painting these cabinets above the washer and dryer but they are laminate and I guess they need to be treated specifically for painting or the paint eventually blisters. And if anyone cares these were Gladiator Steel cabinets which are made by Whirlpool and the vinyl flooring with a coin pattern. They can hold up to ~50lbs per shelf more or less depending on the overall size of the cabinet which is perfect for all of my dh's tools. 

 

And now you know why nothing got posted on Monday, I was literally worn out. There was a lot of heavy lifting, bending over, cleaning and all the cardboard had to get cut up for recycling the next day. Good news is I lost 2.5 lbs which I am going to attribute to the long days of physical labor.