Miss Pinkie

 

Today is the second week of our Newton's Nook Favorite stamp set challenge at Inky Paws. While I love my sharks, I have to say my absolute all time favorite stamp set is "Sweater Weather". The cute, sweet kitty reminds me so much of my precious girl Miss Pinkie who we lost in August. A holiday hasn't gone by that I haven't used this stamp set.

 

 

My card not only uses  "Sweater Weather", but I also used "Whispering Pines", Snowfall stencil, and circle frame dies.

 

It has been fun seeing your favorite Newton's Nook stamp set used for or "favorite" challenge at Inky Paws! You have two weeks week to play along at Inky Paws!  We will chose a RANDOM entry to win a $20.00 Newton's Nook store gift certificate. Our favorite entries from each challenge will be highlighted the following Monday, so all entries have a chance to be featured on the blog.

The deadline to enter today's challenge is  Friday, November 20, 2020 at MN CST. The winners will be announced on the following Monday at Inky Paws.

Her Peaceful Garden blog hop

I am on the homestretch of my Master's thesis and have a bit of time here and there to play in my studio. I ran across this great blog hop for cat lovers. Janis at Her Peaceful Garden has been hosting this hop for several years, but this is my first time coming across it. Newton's Nook gave me the heads up.

Well everyone who knows me, knows my old gal Pinkie is my heart. At 19 years she is still going strong despite some bad hips and being totally deaf (ain't nothing wrong with her eyes or nose!!).

As you can see Pinks loves spending time in our studio. Must be because I got her when she wandered into my local stamp store when she was about four weeks old.

My card for the hop uses an older Avery Elle stamp set. Of course it had to be a pink card. This is going to Miss Pinkie's favorite guy- my DH George.

Check out Janis blog hop and play along. She has some great sponsors and lots of give aways!!

Where's Pinkie?

Well fall arrived on Saturday at 9:54 and the weather turned chilly. I am sitting here typing this with a warm leggings, a long sleeve tunic, and a sweater, drinking a cup of very hot tea. It seems like yesterday I was sweating in shorts and a tank. How is that possible?

Do you remeber as a kid one of the best things about fall was jumping in piles of leaves? Tell me, you all did that didn't you? Well Miss Pinkie my old girl, isn't too old to play in the leaves. She might not be jumping around, but she will bat a few around. Can you see her? She's hiding behind that pile of leaves.

You still have time to join in the fun over at Inky Paws, for the "Fabulous Fall" challenge.

For my card I used the "Autumn Newton"  set. The background is the "Serene Stripes" stencil and turned it around create a"plaid " background. My base card used my go-to die set "Frameworks".

 

Head onto over to Inky Paws and join in this fun sketch challenge. We will chose a RANDOM entry to win a $20.00 Newton's Nook store gift certificate. Our favorite entries from each challenge will be highlighted the following Monday, so all entries have a chance to be featured on the blog.

The deadline to enter today's challenge is Friday September 28, 2018, at MN CST. the winners will be announced on the following Monday at Inky Paws.

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!

The Male Room Challenge # 28 Oriental

Wow!! That was quite a response to our last challenge at the Male Room!! I guess you all have a lot of wee boys and babies to create cards for. That was fun huh? 

Well this week we are going to have you think a bit. Don't be scared, it is gonna be fun! The theme is 

oriental.

I have to admit, back when I first started stamping, Asian was a very popular theme, but I have since purged myself of many of those stamps. I was happy to discover this set from Lawn Fawn that fit the bill perfectly.

There is a story behind this cute cat. It is a called the maneki-neko- the Japenense lucky cat. the traditional color is white, black and orange.

A calico like my sweet Pinkie Pinkston. Many of maneki-nekos have their paw raised. What this means varys quite a bit, but the higher the paw is raise the more luck it will bring.

The Asian symbol stands for good luck that I hand wrote.  Black red, white and red seem Asian so I went with that color scheme.

So dig through your stamps, think outside the box and show us a male inspired oriental card at The Male Room.

My little maneki-neko:

 

Great Minds....

I have spent this whole week not thinking about school. Next week I am off and will spend the week studying for my psych test, so I will be keeping a low profile. I spent last Sunday and Monday getting all my blogging obligations in order. 

This week at Just Us Girls, Sharyn has a technique challenge- Weathered wood background.

I have to say, I watched the video and remembered a photo I saw on Pinterest and thought yeah, that's it. I am going for a blue background. When I went to put my card in the blog, I noticed 2 of my fellow designers had the same "great idea"!!

This was the original card. I really like it  but it was just to similar to others.

Well, I needed to go back and rethink this whole thing. I made another background with grey tones and die cut circles and played with them until I was happy with the composition. And another guy card was created.  Even Miss Pinkie liked this one. She is a sucker for neutral tones.

Try this fun and easy technique and show us what you created at Just Us Girls this week.

Awesome Birthday

While it is still warm and humid it is overcast and the trees are beginning to yellow. Fall keeps creeping into my art and cards. This card perfect for my brother Bill's September birthday was in response to a couple of challenges, especially for Shopping our Stash where the theme is "for the boys".

CASE Study is featuring the last week of inspiration from Jennifer Maguire. Here is the inspiration card: 

I took a few liberties with the sketch. I thought of adding an embellishment or two, but I like the simplicity of the sentiments being the total focus. 

Over at CAS-ual Fridays they are celebrating new design team members and the challenge is kraft and text. I thought it appropriate to use CAS-ual Fridays's RAD stamp set.

I am going out on a limb entering this card at Just Add Ink, where the challenge is to just add coloring. I did add coloring, using Distress and Momento markers. I used a technique I showed in my last post.

Every now and again Miss Pinkie insists on taking center stage. For some reason she really liked this card and wanted her picture taken with it. Must be the coloring on the card!

Have a fabulous Labor Day weekend and if you must labor I hope it is with an ink pad in one hand and stamp in the other!!

P.S. Chana over at 613 Avenue Create asked me to post this card. Chana, I am happy to do so, Hope everyone enjoys it also. The theme includes spotlight stamping, well... its kinda like a spotlight, I am spotlighting the words- hee hee hee..... :)