hi

How cut is this bow? I tore some fabric I had into a long narrow strip to make it. The papers are either from October Afternoon's Thrift Shop or October Afternoon's Fly a Kite. I get them so confused, similar colors and awesomeness and all. The "Hi" is thickers letter stickers. REALLY simple card, but cute too.

In the sky

I recently got the hot air balloon set from Papertrey. I love hot air balloons and my mom loves them too, so I figure she might want a set of cards.

This first one weighs a TON so I won't make a set of these, can you imagine having your whole set cost like $2.50 to mail each! haha. But it's fun for a one off! The balloon is shiny with crystal effects, so that's fun. Next is playing with the cloud stamp. For this one I stamped in white ink and embossed with white powder. The stamp is sorta scratchy looking, not totally solid. So of course the clouds are not totally solid. I'm not totally thrilled with the effect, but they stamp ok.

Then I tried it with the clouds stamped in white but no embossing. that's not bad either and was faster of course. I hand cute the clouds for the rainbow, but I did order the cloud die last night so I'm excited about that. I use clouds a lot so I figure it's a pretty good investment. I'm going get some white felt to make a whole whopping stack of clouds with.

And on this one I didn't really do a sky at all, just used the solid images to make a really quick card. I kinda like it too!

In Other News:

If you are a STamp Shack girl watch out. I finally cleaned out the WHOLE stinking craft room. I gave stuff like papers I don't care for and half sheets of stickers to the kid but all the stuff I think might sell is stacked up and I will sell on SS probably starting tomorrow! It's a TON of stuff. You are going to think I'm quitting stamping or something with this much stuff for sale. Really I'm just decluttering in a major way. It's more than half of my stamps though! a ton.

Baby seems to be doing great. No name yet, but that's ok I rekon. (actually it drives me nuts and I want to shake Brian and force him to pick a name, but he thinks it's no big deal.) Baby moves pretty often which I love. I get tired way too easily which makes me feel lazy. I also tend to black out/get faint spells and that's been pretty bad this week. Not really bad like I'm falling out all over town, just a pain. I totally blame the heat. It's CRAZY hot and humid here. Even my POOL is hot, over 90degrees! Like taking a huge bath!

I guess that's it for now, I made a TON of cards yesterday so stop back tomorrow, there should be a new post!

Cool off with Paper Garden Projects.

Its another 4th Friday - so time for another challenge!

This month, we want to see projects that make us feel cooler. Whether that is cool colors (like blue and green), or cool images (like swimming, ice cream or even snowmen). Anything you think is cool goes.

For my project I made a small hostess gift you could bring to a summer party.

A spray bottle is the keeping cool part. Then a jar of candy and a sweet card. All packed inside a strawberry basket. I used papers from the October Afternoon Fly A Kite paper pack. These papers just make me think of picnics!
If you want to take the challange go make your "cool" card. Remember it can be a cool theme, like water or a cool thing, like a spray bottle or even cool colors! Just have fun and keep it cool.

After you make your project and upload it to the internet go The Paper Garden Projects Blog and use the little link thing to enter. You can win this adorable Kraftin Kimmie stamp:

In case you were wondering...

The baby is a BOY!

I mean definately, even I could tell and I kept thinking the baby's butt was his head! (I stink at reading those ultrasounds).

I'm excited. I did think it was a girl so that was kinda shocking to me. I don't know why I thought that. Apparently Brian only makes boys. It was funny, when we came out Stephen was dancing and saying "Boy boy, three boys!" So everyone in the waiting room knew. Brian got high fives from some of the dads. But poor Brian wanted a girl.

Luckily for Brian they did all the healthy stuff first and I saw him fall in love with the baby. I mean I literally saw it happen, he was talking to it by the end and just in love. So when she said it was a boy he didn't really care, he already loved him.

Ethan is bummed. He cried! I don't know why he wants a girl so much, but he did. :( I'm totally ok besides not having a name picked out.

The name problem is that we have a few pretty good ones. But Brian loves his favorite, and I don't like it at all, and I love my two favorites but Brian doesn't care for them. We have no name we agree on. I'd say we are both liking Lincoln, but it's the second choice for both of us. It's weird, in the past we were SURE of the names.

Someone please have a girl and name her Lily. I'll buy your little girl cute dresses if you do!

new art!

If you don't read my family blog, you might want to read THIS POST. It's about me nesting/redecorating. I'm having a blast. I think the family is in shock, I keep changing things. Brian is thrilled though because I'm also a cleaning FOOL right now.

Anyhow I bring it up because I made a new art for the room.

How cute is it? Sorry the colors are a bit too dull, we are about to get our daily thunder storm, so it's very cloudy in there. (well not IN the room, we have a roof and all, I mean the light is cloudy.)

I got the template and directions on Skip to my Lou HERE. It's designed by a guest blogger over there named Larissa. It was super easy. It does use a TON of pop dots.

Celebrate. Twice

I made two careds with my new Scarlet Lime kit and made them both into "celebrate" cards.

Similar colors, very simple cards. easy goes to peasy!

Paper Garden Projects Summer Stroll Garden Walk.

Welcome to the Paper Garden Projects Summer Stroll Garden Walk
Take a stroll through the blogs of the Paper Gardeners and enjoy some friendly inspiration. This month we are focusing on some big summer fun.

While you visit, subscribe to each Gardener's blog and take note of each designer's name and their special summery garden walk word in their blog post. Once you finish your garden tour, send an E-mail to custserv@papergardenprojects.com with the list of designers and their garden walk word.

Everyone who sends the correct list of designers and words will be entered in a random drawing to win a prize. You need to send an e-mail to the address above; please don't leave your list as a comment. You have until midnight (EST) on Tuesday, June 22 to send your list.

And the prize? How about this fun summer unmounted stamp set from Kraftin Kimmie - Mae (love that hat!).

So enjoy the garden tour (don't forget your sunscreen). Here is the garden tour guide list:

•Cathy
•Amber
•Tangii
•Erin You are HERE!
•Andrea
•Alyssa

So on to my project! I made this card using some stinking ADORABLE Beach Bum Summer Penguin stamps. I can barely handle the cuteness of these penguins enjoying a vacation away from their southern frozen climate. I also used the Cover-a-Card Bubbles Background stamp on this card. I stamped it just one time on a scrap of turquoise paper for the card. I then used a craft knife to cut it in waves and just overlapped them until I was happy for the bottom portion of the card. The cover-a-card line of stamps are HUGE by the way. 5.75" square, so any of them can be used vertically or horizontally on a card. Didn't really matter so much with this bubble one, but GREAT for other designs. Love it! I did my coloring with watecolor pencils. I hope you are enjoying him.

If you are doing the blog hop you might be looking for my special word? My word is picnic. Best of luck to you!

kwernerdesign case

So you may know I'm a huge Kristina Werner fan. When I saw today's Finally Friday post I got up RIGHT AWAY to make a similar card.
I don't have any black glossy paper with white flowers on it. I tried to make some with white glossy paper and embossing and inking with black, I made a huge mess. So I went in my scraps files. At some point I had stamped this flower over and over on black cardstock with white ink. I decided to use it! See the corner of the Thank You part, where it's sticking up a bit? I fixed that. I'm sure you were very worried. *wink*

I don't too often so clearly CASE stuff. I try to take elements or ideas from things, but this is VERY similar, even same colors. Of course I'm glad I did because I LOVE the original. Oh I want to say that my gray is the SAME gray she used, she's just a way better photographer than I am. I mean she's a way better cardmaker too, but THAT issue is photography, not ability to pick up dark gray paper.

So just for fun:
I went though aLL my stuf lately. A few weeks ago and again today. I first got out some of those huge zip lock bags. I filled up SIX of them with embelishments, papers, stickers and so on. I labeled each one with one of my kid's names. Well it's been the BEST. They make "cards" all day long every day if I let them. Of course they have good stuff, great stuff even. It's just stuff I was tired of or knew I'd never get around to using. But GOOD stuff. Oddly they get the most excited about letter stickers. STephen is starting to read and he likes to use them to label his art. VERY cute. Ethan uses them randomly. I have a stack of stuff for Brian for Father's day, Stephen SOLD an art piece to Roniece for a whole DOLLAR the other day! I think next week I'll do a post with all their art so far, some of it is pretty cool, all of it is CRAZY creative. Stephen even figured out how to make a pop up table on a card. haha, Ethie just brought me a "card" which he literally stuck hundreds of stickers on. I can't really tell what's going on, but he tells me it's a Dinosaur Eating the City. I can see the dinosaur and the city,I guess the rest is wreckage? hahah.

Check back tomorrow for my Garden Walk blog hop. I have a fun card for ya!

LIfe is better

Today I have a super simple CAS card for you. I had been eyeing this "life" set by Papertrey for months and finally purchased it last month. Pretty much to make cards like this one. A few colors of ink, rounded corners, nice cardstock. done and done.

Martha Stewart Doilies

So there are these little paper tag thingies, they look like mini white doilies by Martha Stewart right now. They are the hotness for creating your own embelishemnts. Like a good little crafter I had to jump on board! For the pink one I inked it up with pink ink, then covered it with glitter embossing powder, did the same with the little white prima. Otherwise this is a very simple card. You can't see it on my photo but the black piece is embossed with Papertrey's woodgrain embossing die.

Both of the above I just inked them in black then used this yummy red to make paper flowers. I used one of those HOT buttons I got on Etsy a few weeks back on one of them. Delightful.

Looks like I got fancy on this one but it ws super simple. Inked the doilie brown, added premade flower. I did stamp the background paper with a Cornish Heritage Farms background stamp. Easy goes to peasy.

I really do like working with these. they fancy things up very easily. I think they work with my generally CAS style too. I've seen them on VERY fancy cards and they look good there too.

Purse Card and camera woes

Did you ever make a card you just can't get a good picture of? That is the case with this purse card. I'm going to include all three of my stinky shots. I can't reshoot because Brian it out of town again and he took the camera.

The thing is that the card is not nearly this washed out looking in real life.

Anyhow it's the next card from my working my way though Go To Sketches bookazine. I'm still enjoying that challange. Shaped cards are HARD for me. The next one is a pocket! Jeepers!

I used papers from the October Afternoon Thrift Shop collection and the stamp is from Penny Black's Salutations stamp set.

I rearranged some of my craft room yesterday. Just minor stuff. I have this strong itch to rearrange my whole house. Welcome nesting! I want to put my TV in the corner, get a second couch and arrange it on the current TV wall. I did move my kid's furniture all around on them. I just can't seem to stop! We are having a kid from church come paint my bedroom this weekend so that should fill up some of my nesting need.

Sweet Kids

I know I personally have the sweetest kids. At 5 and 4 they are actually helpful, they let me sleep late, they are fun. I love them to pieces.

So when I saw the Sweet Kids stamp set at Paper Garden Projects I knew it was for me.

For both cards I kept it soft by using watercolor pencils on the kids. I wanted to have them be soft and dreamy. I stamped them in brown ink for the same reason. I love the sayings on this stamp set, so vintage!