Miracles

I truly believe in miracles. For one thing how can you not wake up in the morning and find the dawning of a new day a miracle. I am celebrating a small but long prayed for miracle today. For those who know me or have followed my blog, you all know that my muse is Pinkie my sweet calico kitty. She spends her days hanging with me in my studio inspiring me to create. 

Poor Pinks has been pretty sick over the last month or so. Not unexpected I suppose in a 16 year old girl. She has been quite a trooper through, hospilizations, IVs, sticks, xrays etc etc. She is on multiple medications and the poor thing has been not eating and losing weight. 

Yesterday morning after yet another visit to the vet, a small miracle happened and Miss Pinkie woke me up asking for food. She scarfed down a small bowl and cooperatively took her meds.  I tried not be to excited until I awoke this morning and she was waiting for me in the studio asking to eat. She is now a member of the clean bowl club!

In honor of this small miracle, I created this card using a fav sentiment from Simon Says Stamp.

I die cut an old die from Memory Box and lightly traced the flowers onto the water color paper. I then just created a watercolor wash just trying to stay within the confines of the image. When I was happy with the water-coloring, I adhered the  die cut and stamped the sentiment. 

I am submitting this card to three challenges:

My old teamies at Just Us Girls are hosting a watercolor challenge:

Just Add Ink inspired my flower colors:

Muse has a card by Tracy McNeely.  Her colors and flowery card inspired mine:

I hope you all find miracles every day!

Pocono wrapup

If you read last Saturday's blog posting, you will know I spent a long weekend in the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania for a stamping weekend. A few of my girlfriends and I get together at least once a year for this big crafting, eating and chick bonding time. We get up and start stamping before the coffee is poured and we don't stop until its time for dinner. Well everyone else stamps till dinner- I stop at 5pm to make dinner. I love to cook, so it is my job to feed everyone.

We always try to have a few projects in mind when we go up. I had lots of challenges to stay ahead on since I started my first class in my Master's program this past Weds. 

This week at Just Us Girls is Marisa's last challenge with us as designer. I will really miss her, she has always left the nicest and inspiring comments on my blog as well as being a talented stamper herself. This is a wild card week, so she got to pick any challenge she wanted to. She is asking us to create anything EXCEPT a standard A2 size card. What fun! I love this nestabilitie set from Spellbinders. i wish i could tell you which one it is- I don't know and I couldn't find it. The stamp set is brand new from Mama Elephant's August release- Carnival Cupcakes and Carnival Toppers. I think my husband is gonna love this card for his birthday.

I rarely am able to combine challenges, but this week at Just Add Ink their photo challenge is a rainbow of colors and I thought my cupcake fits right in.

Now here are some pics from the crazy crafting weekend:

Jude- whom is dubbed the "Angel" because she is just so darn nice- unlike me! :) Her plan was to watercolor all weekend and that's what she did.

Bevy B. my "it's 5:00 somewhere" partner spent the weekend making up ink swatch cards. Needless to say she brought up just about all the inks she owns!

Patricia, my bestie and co-pilot did a bit of this and a bit of that. Her CAS style was an inspiration to me over the weekend.

I was pretty tired on Saturday and took a wee nap. when I awoke my buddies had this set up at my place with two cards they made for me to celebrate my graduation! The sign "This is my happy place" is on my wall in my studio at home that I brought it up to the Poconos.

Here's my spot working on some challenge. I know its still morning because there is a hot cup of tea at my spot.

Hope you enjoyed my recap, but more importantly please show your support for Marisa's last challenge and play along at Just Us Girls!

Place mug here...

I have been so busy working on school, holiday stuff and challenge team commitments that I have not had any time to participate in other challenges. 

Over at Just Add Ink they are having a "Just Add Your Christmas Project" and I thought YAY!! I have a gift project I make every year with my niece and nephew for their teachers. The art teachers go gaga over these!

 I color stone tiles, easily available at Home Depot or Lowes with alcohol inks or in this case copic markers. I then stamp my image on tissue paper. I spread a layer of Future floor finish by Pledge on the tile and lay the tissue paper on top and it embeds itself into the tile. If any areas seem dry, I add more floor finish. I tear off the excess tissue paper. (by this time everything is so saturated it tears easily.) When it is completely dry, I spray it with a few layers of Krylon triple thick crystal clear glaze. I adhere cork to the bottom of the tile and the coaster is ready to use. 

One of these day I will make a video or photo tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them.

Exciting News and Happy World Card Making Day!

First off Happy World Card Making Day everyone!! Isn't it great that card makers have their own special day! I hope you all get to spend some time creating today. This is such a big day at my house. I even get flowers from my husband! 

Now the exciting news! I have been invited to join the Just Us Girls Challenge Blog design team!! Every Saturday they have a different challenge. Here is the monthly schedule:

 Week 1: Sketch

        Week 2: Technique

Week 3: Color

                  Week 4: Photo Inspiration

        Week 5: Wild Card

This week is a sketch challenge. I took a few liberties with the sketch. I hope I don't get booted off the team for bucking the system right from the start. There is a reason for my madness, that I hope will put me back in my teams good graces.

It seems a wee birdie told me it is Just Us Girls (JUGS for those in the know:)) 4th birthday. So for my first challenge card, I knew it had to be a birthday card and I had to have 4 macaroons. One for each year! Am I forgiven girls? 

I used a great set from Avery Elle called Bonjour. Oh the possibilities!

This card features some tips and techniques that i find myself using over and over again. Have you ever pulled a sentiment from your stash, to find it does't fit the space you have? If you have acrylic stamps, do what I do. Just carefully cut up the sentiments into individual words and rearrange them to fit your card. I have been doing this for years. it makes your sentiments much more versatile.

Here is the original saying. (sorry for bad photo.)

Here it is cut up. as you can see from my card, I made the saying into one line.

My technique is making your own baker's twine. How often do you make a card and you don't have any twine to match your card? This used to happen to me all the time. I adapted this technique to make my own from this video.

  

I start with plain baker's twine and a piece of chipboard 3 inches wide. The length doesn't matter.  I put a notch at the beginning and the end to hold the twine and I wrap it around the chip board.

Next using any kind of permanent marker, color diagonal stripes over the twine. put on several layers of 

color, make sure you cover both sides of the chipboard.

Unwrap the twine and you have your own custom baker's twine.

Please join us at JUGS to celebrate their birthday and World Card Making Day! Our sponsor this week is A Walk Down Memory Lane. they will be offering a $15.00 gift certificate.

Thanksgiving

T

For some reason, Halloween has fallen off the radar in favor of Thanksgiving. I think it is the autumn colors I am feeling and they lend themselves to Thanksgiving. 

This card uses a technique that Jennifer McGuire showed us at the Insider card class. It uses a resist with white pigment ink and strips of dye ink on top of the pigment ink. What a cool look!

Over at Just Us Girls they are having a photo inspiration challenge. You all might remember how difficult these are for me. I chose to focus on the pumpkins and the green hills of the photo. I kinda wimped out, but I still like the simplicity of the card.

The sketch at Less Is More was my basis for the card. I don't usually make square cards, but try as I might, I couldn't make this sketch work for an A2 card.

So glad school is done for a month! I am gonna stamp like crazy!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Summer Card Camp Week 1, Day 5 Inspiration

 

I got up early and caught up on day 5 at Summer Card Camp 2.  While Jennifer's card technique was cool (I will try it soon) it was Kristina's card with the embossed acetate window that caught my eye. i used one of the new color combos suggested, not ones I usually work with.

You know me, I just love acetate and I have embossed it before, but never as a window. The card was a bit time consuming but so worth it. A CAS card that takes time. I used an old spellbinder's fish die and die cut them using polka dot paper. I just love polka dots and over at CAS-ual Fridays they are featuring polka dots for this week's challenge. 

Don't you love how the acetate is embossed with swirls just like ocean waves? The fish are swing around in the ocean with a backdrop of aqua polka dot paper. The base card is embossed to represent the bubbles fish blow in the water.

Other challenges that I am entering this in are: Just Add Ink- featuring cards using water literally or as an inspiration, Addicted to CAS, featuring water as the inspiration, and Crazy 4 Challenges, featuring marine life.

I wished I had one of those cute little fish sayings like Happy Birthday Fishes so I had to be content with "don't forget to have some fun today".

I apologize for the not so perfect photos- just one of those crazy lighting days.

Have a great weekend!