I Am An I-D-10-T

For those of you not in the techy biz, I-D-10-T is a joke among some Helpless Desk staff when given as the problem code to a hapless caller. But last night I used it in reference to myself. I did.

So last night I posted some cutie-patootie dinosaur cards, and my bloggy and Twitter pal Mary Dawn pointed out a grievous error I'd made. In my post I muttered that I'd forgotten to color the dinosaur's tongue, and she pointed out it's not a tongue at all, but rather the head of a small child - as in "wearing a dinosaur costume", not as in "the dinosaur ate him". So I had another do-over:

I also had a major (MAJOR) mental shift, as I was thinking at least two of these cards would end up in the "Love" category, and the third one would be a good kid's birthday card. Nuh-uh. Do YOU think this is a Looooove card? Look at it now:

Nope. HOW DID I MISS that this is a kid in a dinosaur costume?!?!?

Here's the other Loooove card:

The birthday card actually still works:

And when I whined to Mary Dawn about having to cut out all those teef again, she pointed out they were white, as was the patch I'd be puttin on top of them, and I didn't need to cut them out.

I plead extreme fatigue. I do. But it's all better now. Well, except for the fact that I have no idea what kinds of cards these are. If you have a clue, please let me know.

Thank Gosh It's Monday!!!!! (I kid - where is my 5-hour energy drink?)

Thanks for stopping by!

The Cutest Dinosaur EVER!

The owner of my LSS is a gold-medal enabler. Sigh. I had just successfully NOT purchased several MFT dies and stamp sets because I didn't neeeeeeeeed them, but what did she do? She GOT THEM ALL IN STOCK and PUT THEM ON A DISPLAY with CUTE CARD SAMPLES and they were RIGHT INSIDE THE DOOR and THERE WAS A CROWD and WHAT WERE WE TO DO?!?!? We even whined to each other about the trauma as we selected all the stuff we had just successfully NOT purchased online. We were doomed.

One of the sets (yes, I bought several) has this cutie-patootie dinosaur and some awesome sentiments. Here's one of them:

You've seen this paper recently, and I disappeared the rest of it making these three cards.

Here's the second cutie sentiment:

I love his teef.

And lastly, here is a normal sentiment:

A little sad story about these dinosaurs. You'll notice they've been cut out, and that would be by yours truly. I must confess these were the second round of dinos, as the first one taught me many lessons. (Oh, I just noticed I should have colored their tongues. Oh, well.) I first stamped them on vanilla and intended to color them with a blue marker. I stamped and cut out three vanilla dinos and started coloring. I destroyed the first one when I'd decided Baja Breeze was the right color blue, and then I made his head look diseased, and in an effort to fix it I colored over it and made it too dark, and then he looked dead, but just from the neck up.

The second dino died when I tried a Copic (alcohol) marker instead of a dye ink marker. Better, but he still looked a little sickly. I was 0 for 2. Poor dino #3 had a severed tail, so I left him alone - he was in enough pain already.

Then it hit me- DUH, if I wanted blue dinos, why not stamp them on blue card stock. I am so smart. Not. So I stamped three more and cut those out, and all I colored were the teef and the spikes. I used brown on the spikes, but since it's on blue, they look grey, but I'm okay with that. I would have been okay with just about anything at that point, as the thought of cutting out three more dinos was making me a little crazy(ier).

Anyone who says we don't suffer for our art has never tried fussy-cutting. Ugh. I actually tried them on a die-cut oval. but they are too big and didn't look right, so fussy-cutting it was.

I have several more MFT stamps that need to see ink, plus some Taylored Expressions stuff that I need to initiate, so you'll see some more later this week. Oh, and can you say "creative avoidance"? I have yet to make my first card for my March Stamp Camps. Oops.

Thanks for stopping by!

One More VSN Challenge Card

Just to prove that miracles do occur, I found my Taylored Expressions apron/dress die! Whoot! I actually looked up my order to make sure I hadn't dreamed (dreamt, if you are in the UK) it. Once I read the other stuff on the order, I remembered seeing that stuff in my hunt, so I went back to that spot and voila - there they were! Mystery solved; case closed.

So here is my VSN-worthy (made in under 45 minutes) card with a red dress:

I LOVE THIS DIE! I cut another piece with just the bottom of the die so I could make it look like the dress either had a decorative edge to it, or her slip was showing. That's the flip side of the dress paper. ALL the paper is from my still-out 7 Gypsies Vintage paper pack. The Hero Arts sentiment was stamped on the back of a piece of the background paper. I like cutting up the words so they fit better on the card front.

A little story about that ribbon. I was so sure I was going to make a mess of it (not sure I still didn't) that I took a pic of the card Before Ribbon:

It really needed something. I put a line of red sticky tape on the front, started on the left side, and just looped it every 1/4" or so. Before I took the pic I pushed each loop flat so it looked more "finished", and here is the result:

Okay, the loops are actually sticking straight up, but once I put that baby in a clear sleeve, they'll behave better. Hmph.

Wha, there's videos on how to do this? Really?! I don't need no stinkin' videos. Ptfhftft. Or maybe I do. What do you think?

I've pretty much given up hope of doing any more VSN cards this time, because in addition to the apron/dress die, I found all sorts of other things that need to be used first, so I declare my VSN attention span interrupted.

I'll be posting some more MFT cards next, and I may even show you how I store my Nesties, which is not very well.

Thanks for stopping by!

VSN-inspired

Today's blog post is brought to you by my tired brain and some VSN inspiration. There were a few VSN challenges yesterday that interested me, and I'd planned to work on them today. I actually started last night, and it just bled into today. Hey, when you have a clue, you go with it!

Before we get to that, I offer you a card I call "From the Ashes" because it was created from 5 (FIVE) cards from my UFO pile. Here's the card:

A while back I'd tried to CASE a card to use in my Stamp Camps, but I failed. I failed 5 times, and had 5 cards in my UFO pile. Last night I decided to (1) rip off the backs of the cards to put into the Remnant box, and (2) salvage the fronts, somehow. I punched a 1 3/8" square of the trees from each card, giving me 5 squares that I then mounted on Garden Green (from the Remnant Box). That left me with a spot to fill on the bottom right.

I took a 1" stamp from my Cute by the Inch set and just started layering it until it was the right size. Done! The DSP is from the Island Oasis SU paper set, and I have at least three packages of the stuff. That's one of the down sides of being a Demo. If you plan a project using one piece of paper, and a pack only has 2 sheets of that pattern, you need to either (1) plan a different project, (2) Plan a modified project using smaller pieces of the paper, or (3, my choice) buy a bazillion packs of the stuff. Problem is I have all that other paper left over, and it collects. I actually think it spawns when I'm not looking.

Next up, I bring you several VSN-inspired cards. I call them VSN-inspired because to qualify for VSN they need to be completed in under 45 minutes, and that did sooooo not happen here.

I was taking a Twitter break last night, letting my VSN brain cool down, and one of my tweeps posted some Hero Arts flowers stamped and embossed on vellum. She's done this to me before with this card, at which time she enabled me to buy that stamp set, so I had to use it. (Hi, Libby! *waves*)

Here's my version:

There's more of that Island Oasis paper because it was out. The sentiment is also from Hero Arts.

Okay, I'll admit this card doesn't look like it should take more than 45 minutes to make, and I thought I could pull it off, but then *I* am in that mix, so, um, no. First, I never stamp just one of anything, especially if I'm going to the trouble to heat-emboss it. So I stamped 6 of this flower, embossed it with SU detail white EP, and ... I think maybe one of them came out okay. One. So I did it again. Got one more. I whined.

Libby suggested the beauty of this flower is you can cover up all sorts of boo-boos with BLING! I tried, and I failed. So I embossed SOME MORE, plus I included a few other images from the set while I was at it. The image above is the best of that bunch. So good, in fact, I didn't pile on the pearls ... I left some space so you can see the detail in the flower's center.

Here is the other flower I made using two other images in the set:

This one I also stamped about 52 times, and only got 4 decent embossed images. Apparently I've lost my embossing skillz, which means only one thing: I need to do more of it! MORE. Maybe even for my April Stamp Camps. :)

For the center of this one, I used a technique I learned in a class I took from Jennifer McGuire. I made a circle of pearls, then put some Crystal Effects in the center to hold the top pearl. They look piled on, don't they? But there's just a glob of CE under that center pearl.

The next VSN-influenced item was a prompt for "red dress". Since my die is still missing (LOST!), I had to move to Plan B, which I knew would take me hours. Many moons ago I made this card with some stamps the original post-er enabled me to purchase from England! Here's another card I made with stamps from the same set. In hind-site, last night I should have made something like this one and actually completed the challenge, but I digress.

So this morning, I set out to make a red dress using some embossed fan parts. Here's what came out:

This card actually did take HOURS to make. First I embossed 6 of the fan parts on red vellum, clear-embossed them and cut them out. They were really red, so I stamped and clear-embossed six more on white vellum, cut them out, then layered them on top of the red pieces to mute the GAH red. Much better.

The top of the dress is the top of a stamp from Renaissance Art Stamps that I also embossed on white and red vellum and cut out. The pretty background paper is from a pack of 7 Gypsies Victoria papers.

You can see how bad I am with adhesive and vellum. The reason there is a bow at her waist is to hide not only the seam where the dress parts meet, but to attempt to hide some of the adhesive on the dress' fan parts. I failed. To make myself feel a little better, I added some tiny pearls (SU) around the neck line to distract you.

I opted for no sentiment, because I think this would make a good Any Occasion card. Plus, where would I put it?

That's it for now. I think I'll go focus on projects for my March Stamp Camps.

Thanks for stopping by!

More VSN

I did another VSN challenge tonight because it meant I could use some paper I bought last year and still hadn't opened yet. The challenge was to use something kitchen- or food-related, and, well, I haz that.

This is the one I made first:

The paper is Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety, and I had to open the package to use it. Sigh. The colors are very bright, which may be one reason I'm not drawn to it - I'm more into the muted colors. But you'll have to admit those papers go very well with the Lockhart stamp, non? Actually, the sentiment is Lockhart, too. I even used some yellow baker's twine (baker ... kitchen ... just trying to stay with the theme, here...)

Then I spied some Hambo stamps, still not-yet-used, so I couldn't put them away, and I had to make this one:

(hee hee) Both stamps are Hambo, and I used more paper from the Garden pack plus some orange baker's twine. I really didn't intend to wrap it that many times, but I cut it too long, and heaven knows I don't need to add to the Miscellaneous Ribbon drawer.

I'll check out a few more of the challenges to see if I feel like doing them tomorrow, but more likely I'll work on some projects for my March Stamp Camps. So far, I've got nuthin'.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jingle Belles Rock - Week 9

It's Jingle Belles Rock week #9 - I can hardly believe I've stuck with ANYTHING this long. And I don't even send Christmas cards!!!!! I do sell them, though, so this is a bonus for me. Totally freeing up my October & November! :)

This week's challenge was to "incorporate text into your holiday creations ... it could be a book page, Christmas carol lyrics, a poem, or even a card that features a sentiment as the main focal point of the design. " Text paper? HELLO! I'm there!

I went searching for a beeeeautiful piece of paper that RuffHaven gave me several years ago. I went through ALL of my patterned papers looking for it, but alas, it was not to be found. (But I did find some other cool paper that she used on a many-textured card ... I should sub-title this blog: "Neat people never make the exciting kinds of discoveries that I do." Seriously.)

In my travels through many boxes, I found a strip of text paper and dubbed it "perfect", and then I made this:

That text, in real life, really does match the Soft Suede card stock. I just suk at photography and lighting. You'll just have to trust me.

Please note that, in addition to the piece of text paper, that flower (which I got out of my newly organized UFO drawer) also has text on it. I soooo deserve bonus points for that one. :) I also used a corduroy button I had to have several years ago, and just now opened. Also notice I've managed to use three different colors of red on this card AND, three different colors of "vanilla". Here's #3:

That's a Naturals White (not even Vanilla!) remnant that I cut with my Top Note die.

I think I still have some craftiness in me, and I found some other cool stuff in my search for the still-missing piece of paper, so I'm off to craft some more.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hambo Hoedown #4 - Bird Hero

In this week's episode of Hambo Hoedown, I once again messed up and needed a do-over. Sigh. Last week's players got this cute "Bird Hero - digi" image:

... and this sketch:

Here is my "real" card:

This uses some Basic Grey wander papers. I thought they were PERFECT for a hero card, since they resemble city streets, and I immediately thought of our Men In Blue, like these:

Okay, these are firemen, not policemen, but they are wearing blue, and, um, did you notice I called this photo "eye candy"? Mmmm-hmmm. Not complaining. I sure hope they stop back this summer - it was a very pleasant diversion from all those boring vegetables... just sayin'.

So anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, the sketch. That card above is my official entry for this week's Hambo Hoedown. I colored the bird grey, since I was thinking city birds = pigeons, and pigeons are a dirty grey. Then, of course, I got to the beak and realized - DOH! This isn't a pigeon! Sigh, I need a keeper. But I *did* enhance the "hero" medal by embossing it so it's shiny. :)

Now I'll show you what I made first... before I remembered it was a sketch:

I liked these BG euphoria papers - thought they looked like fireworks. AND, I was so excited to use some small pieces of papers I had left from the last time I used these papers ... that's when I remembered it was a sketch. But hey, I still made two more cards than I needed to, am I right?

In other news, I posted earlier today with three of the VSN cards I made last night. Before I make any more, I plan to work on my card for this week's Jingle Belles Rock challenge. I'll get started on that one as soon as I find a special single piece of paper in my stash. Uh-huh. Just one very special piece I know is in there, somewhere. Oh yeah, I'm busy, busy, busy. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

VSN cards

In the seven years I've been a member of Splitcoaststampers.com, I've yet to play Virtual Stamp Night. For the uninitiated, Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) is a series of hourly challenges on a selected weekend. Each hour a new challenge is posted, and each one needs to be completed within 45 minutes. I've generally been too busy, or didn't want to be under the pressure to create in the allotted 45 minutes per card. I KNOW that's the point - to get a challenge prompt and then see what you can do without taking 3 days. So I played, if only 3 of the challenges so far.

It was fun because I had my laptop and web cam set up on The Captain's Table and had a virtual stamp play date with one of my tweeps, Lisa of Papergrace Designs, and we made the first three cards together. It was a BLAST.

The first challenge was a sketch:
... so I broke out my SU Cute by the Inch Hostess set and made this:

The patterned paper is Basic Grey Curio, the ink is Soft Suede for the hearts and the sentiment (from Short & Sweet), and Cajun Craze for the heart on the sentiment. This one took me under 30 minutes. Yay!

The second challenge was to use a wedding song (or your special song) to inspire you. I don't have a special song, but Lisa is a crazy Rush fan, and her song is "Entre Nous". We talked about that for a bit as we planned our cards, and my thought process took this turn: "entre nous" --> between us --> something between two other things --> Oh, look, my Kim Hughes Monsta set ... I could put a heart between two monstas. So I did:

I stamped the monstas on the back of that patterned monsta paper from my stash, and EVEN THOUGH IT IS PINK, I still like it. The scallop is cut from a piece of scrap textured white card stock with my new MFT scallop die. I cut out the monstas, colored their horns and teef, and nestled a small heart - punched with the SU small heart punch - between them.

Next up was a challenge to use a bird on a card. JUST MY LUCK I had my recent A Muse pile of new stamps out on my table, so I made this:

The paper is another piece of the BG Curio paper (it was already out and cut - what was I to do?) The vanilla papers were stamped with a CHF lace backgrounder before I stamped the crow and sentiment and punched/die-cut them. The lace is SU lace ribbon. This one took like 10 minutes to make. Seriously.

I was feeling puny, so I begged off the last two challenges last night. One was based on "Glee", a word that sticks in my throat and I cannot say it. I even filter out all all tweets that contain that word. Yes, I dislike it that much. So on principle alone I didn't do that one. Oh, the actual challenge was "Mash Up", to use two different techniques on one card. Meh.

The last challenge last night was to use a red dress on a card. I had this one all planned out, since I'd bought a dress die and wanted to use it. Alas, it's GONE MISSING! I'm telling you, I not only went through ALL my dies 5 or 8 times, but I even cleaned the heaplet looking for it, thinking it slipped under some papers. Nope. It is missing, and I am sad. If I find it this weekend, I can still do that challenge later - I just need to stick to the 45-minute rule.

The challenges pick up again today starting at noon, which is in 15 minutes. I think I'll pick and choose which ones to do today. I'll be sure to post any I manage to finish.

Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

A Little Something-Something

I am in another mojo-less week, here, my friends. I get all sorts of ideas, and 99.3% of them ended up in the trash. Seriously.

One thing that DID work was this little matchbook :


Back when I bought my calendars for my classes, I also bought this box of matchbooks:


I stamped the owl from the Punch Bunch SAB set in several different colors and punched them out with the Owl punch and just stuck them on the fronts of the matchbooks. Easy-peasy. I only destroyed 3 of the matchbooks before I realized that stamping and punching the owls separately would be waaaay easier.

Being a good salesperson, I wanted something on the back with my name or Web site on it - you know, like a matchbook has the name of a bar. Or something. Not that I'd know anything about that. ... ... So I used some of the stickers I got last year and put them on the backs, like this:

The lovely ink schmear in the upper left-hand corner is why this particular matchbook will never be bagged and tagged. It is a floor sample only.

But wait! These are not really matchbooks. Oh, no! Look:

Little itteh bitteh note paper! Cute!

So what will I do with these? I plan to include them with my Etsy orders. I do! It's just a little something-something to include with the order that won't break the bank. Plus, my photo printer is acting up and I can't print any more bookmarks until I figure out what's wrong with it, and I need SOMETHING to include with the orders, right?!?!

In other news, it's Thursday evening, which means tomorrow is Friday, and I'm hoping to play at least a few of the VSN challenges over on Splitcoast tomorrow night and into Saturday. I'll be sure to blog anything I actually manage to make. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Fish ... Bicycle

I was on an irreverent roll this weekend, and this is the last one I cranked out last night:

When I shop for sentiments, I buy one if (1) it makes me laugh out loud, (2) I can visualize what stamps I'd use with it, or (3) I wish I'd said that.

This is one of the sentiments for which I knew I had stamps in my stash I could use. The bicycle is from a retired SU set and the fish is from A Muse. The sentiment is from my last Viva Las Vegas Stamps extravaganza.

FYI - shopping at VLVS is not for the faint of heart or for those in a hurry. The first thing I do is look at the new stuff since I have so many of their older stamps. Then I peruse. Their stamps are in alphabetical order, and I think it took me 4 or 5 hours to go from A to Z in the sentiments category. Seriously. But I am very happy with my new stamps, and they are sparking my mojo, so it was worth it.

In other news, I get to retrieve my vehicle from the mechanic later today. Good thing I love that car, since I think I've paid for it twice. But I am admittedly emotionally invested in it after 20 years, and you can't beat 30 mpg in stop-and-go (mostly stopped) traffic. And it only takes 8 gallons of gas. Cheap gas. I love that car.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Secret and Undercover

I made some cards last night using another of my Hambo digital images. This one is "Spy" and it comes with three sentiments, two of which I've used below. The third one is for Valentine's Day, and well, you know, I don't do Valentine's Day ...

So I printed four of the spy image and two of each sentiment, selected a nice brown card stock from Hero Arts (white on the flip side!), then proceeded to use more of the papers from my Kaisercraft paper pad that's still out (but much thinner now) to make these:







I think they are pretty cute. You'll notice I played down the heart on his briefcase. Yeah, I didn't want it to be too obvious ... more subtle seemed to work with these sentiments, anyway. At least for me.

Okay, I have more stamping to do. Thanks for stopping by!

Sketchy Sunday {TG008}

This was not on purpose. Nope, the fact that I did Tiff's Sketchy Sunday sketch on a Sunday, and the same Sunday she posted it, and like 5 minutes after she posted it, was not on purpose at all. Nope nope.

You see, I was playing with one of my new wine images that I bought because one of my market customers suggested that old people drink a lot of wine, and a lot of my customers are old, and she said SHE was old (she was my age, so, well, yeah), and old people have disposable income, and old people still buy cards, so I have a whole untapped market out there with a wine theme, and yes, I bought some wine stamps.

So last night I was trying different colors with the wine and bottle and finally ended up with something I liked, but then I got stuck, so I went to bed to sleep on it.

This morning Tiff posted her Sketchy Sunday {TG008} sketch:

... and a light bulb went off inside my head. I excused myself and retired to The Captain's Table and made this:

The paper was a lucky find during one of my recent trips to Angela's. The wine bottle & glass image is from a Hero Arts set. The sentiment is from my last pile o'irreverence from Viva Las Vega Stamps. The red layer is from my remnant box. The text paper is from the SU First Edition DSP pack that sits at my feet at The Captain's Table. Both of the top layers were sponged with Crumb Cake ink.

The two-layered ribbon was a little bulky, so I made the second card with only one piece of ribbon:

I really like how both of these came out!

At the last second, I decided to cover the wine glass with my Versamarker and clear-emboss it:

Okay, close-up shots in my world are a bad idea, but you can at least see that it is shiny. So there you have it - two wine cards DONE.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ice Hole

The other day while shopping the Hambo digital images, I spied this one and laughed out loud, so, well, I HAD to have it. Check it out:

(hee hee) To the untrained eye, this is just a cute penguin looking in holes in the ice, but to some of us, it is irreverence, fer sure. :)

I used my B0000 Copic (light light light blue) on top of the hills and around the, um, ice holes, and also around the sentiment. I traced under the hills and inside the um, ice holes, with a glitter pen. I also added glitter to the little dots that mark the penguin's path around the, um, ice holes. Then I got carried away and added glitter snow falling, because I could.

That white ribbon? I actually finished (as in: disappeared) the last of that roll of miscellaneous ribbon. Yee-ha!

I'm off to stamp some more. Thanks for stopping by!

Sketchy Sunday {TG007}

Almost missed it! I was reading Paige's blog when I realized I'd printed this sketch earlier this week and still hadn't done mine! EEEP!

Here's Tiff's Sketchy Sunday {TG007} sketch from last week:

and here's what I made:

Yeah, it's a little weird. I was trying very hard to use new stuff so I could put them away, and I actually accomplished that. Whether all this actually goes together is another matter. Da List of ingredients:
1. Very Vanilla card stock (SU) cut 4 1/4 x 11 and scored at 5 1/2.
2. Impression Obsession background inked in Crumb Cake.
3. 7 Gypsies papers for the patterned papers.
4. Nestie for the scalloped circle.
5. Hero Arts stamp in the center of the green circle, clear-embossed.
6. Scallop punch (SU) to make the flower.
7. Vanilla Seam Binding (SU) for the bow.
7.5. I used a Bow-Easy to tie it, so I did three wraps of the ribbon. Shoulda been just two.
8. Kim Hughes sentiment stamped in Memento brown.

Now you have to admit that's a lotta schtuff on one card! Well for ME it is.

And to make RuffHaven really happy, lookie:

I stamped the back of the card, too! It looked nekkid without it.

Okay, I'm off to linky this to Tiff's blog, then I'll be back to post a bit of irreverence for you. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Hambo Hoedown #3 - Trip To The Beach

It's time for another Hambo Hoedown Challenge! But first, I need (NEED) to tell you I "won" the rights to post this handsome badge:

And I said "won" because I was randomly selected from all the entrants for the last challenge, but still, I get to display the badge this week. Whoot!

On to this weeks' challenge. We got a cute pelican image! We were supposed to make a card with the pelican, a beach theme, and use the colors blue, tan and brown. Well, my brain stopped at blue, so this is what I made first:

Let's deconstruct this baby, shall we?
1. Blue card stock is Baja Breeze that was left over from the layer I cut for my Jingle Belles card.
2. The wood post is Basic Gray run through the Big Shot with the Distress texture plate.
3. The waves are from a piece of old old old old self-adhesive vellum I found in my collection of Every Color Vellum But The One I Need. I punched it with a Fiskars edge punch and layered two of them together.
4. The pelican is the image they gave us (people who played last week) and I colored it with Copics.
5. I swiped my Whisper White Craft (pigment) ink pad over the blue card stock to get streaks of clouds.
6. I drew and cut out some clouds from a scrap of Kaisercraft paper I had in the UFO pile.
7. The sentiment is from Kim Hughes, and you saw it here.

Then I went to post it and re-read the Hambo Challenge instructions. I hadn't used tan & brown. DRAT! I was going to try and sneak it in with the colors in those teeny tiny clouds, but noooooo, I like to sleep at night. And since I am Queen for the week, I should do it right, so I made another one:

Pretty much the same (thank goodness I'd printed and colored two of those guys!), but the wood stump is brown, and I used a piece of the Kaisercraft papers for the background instead of blue. Did you notice there is a something-something in the upper right-hand corner? I call it "the sun". I layered it on a piece of Soft Suede and the card base is Kraft. There, it's blue and tan and brown. :)

I'm not too happy you can see through the vellum on this one so that wood post is floating in the water instead of anchored into the mud. ;( Oh, well.

So this makes two challenges tonight. Whoot! I love it when things work out the way I'd planned.

In other news, I'm having my windows measured for new blinds tomorrow. The ones I have are 18 years old, I paid $10 for them, and it's time. The only problem is I have these boxes of stuff from my Dad's house clogging every inch of free floor space, so if the measurers want to get to a window - not gonna happen. I need to triage the books and get some of those boxes out of the way, then move some of the remaining boxes back into the Dining Room since my classes are done for another month. And they're coming at 10 am. I am doomed.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jingle Belles Rock - Week 8

It's Week 8 over at Jingle Belles Rock, and I am soooo happeeeeeeeeeeeee, because this week is a SKETCH! Aaaaand, for those who want to have a chance to win stuff (not me, I'm trying to get rid of stuff), you get a double chance, because this week the Belles are teaming up with Sketchy Thursdays for the sketch, and you can enter your card in both places! Sweet!

Here is our sketch:

As soon as I set eyes on that, I knew instantly what I would do, and I done did it when I got home tonight:

I have so. much. Figgy Pudding papers, in both the 6x6 and 12x12 sizes, that I knew it must be used. This is all Figgy Pudding, well, except for the irreverent sentiment which arrived in my mailbox JUST TODAY from Viva Las Vegas Stamps. It only presented a little bit of a challenge because of its size, but I persevered and slipped a few things left so it would all fit. AND, since the Belles let us be inspired by the sketch (to a point, I'm sure) I took a few liberties. The sentiment is bigger, plus I added a little something-something on the left to balance out all that stuff on the right and fill in the big empty on the white die-cut.

Want a closer look? Here you go:

That button is from an old margarine tub that holds some miscellaneous buttons I have in my Miscellaneous Embellies drawer, and I think it is a perfect match! Maybe if I'd taken a decent photo of the card you could tell, too. ;/

So there you have it - my entry for JBR 08. If you haven't already joined us, it's not too late! We play every week through November!

Thanks for stopping by!