It's My Blogiversary!

[If you are looking for my SOS post, please scroll down, or click here.]

I think a lot of my original bloggy pals started their blogs around the same time I did. There certainly have been a lot of blogiversaries happening in my Feedly feed the past week or so. One of my pals, Libby, celebrated SEVEN YEARS of blogging on the 18th, and I realized she was just five days before me. Can you believe I've been blathering for SEVEN YEARS?!

So I plan to copy Libby and re-post my first card. It's actually from my second post, since my first post was "um ... hello? ... tap tap ... this thing on?"

There were two cards in my post. Here's the first one:

(I was clueless in the beginning about sizing photos, so I can't really embiggen it for you and still have it in focus and viewable. But if YOU click on it, you can actually see it.)  I was already a bit twisted back then, as I used punch-outs from the SU Spiral punch (I think that's the name) for the frog's dumb-bells.

Then I went off on a tangent - a sign of things to come - and posted this one:

It's the rubber molecule (roughly) made out of the rest of the punch-outs. I can no longer find the page, but the background of the card was a copy of a school's Web site about rubber and it contained the diagram I tried to mimic. And mine is crooked. You'll notice the chemical thingies don't line up with the straight printed text. Le sigh.

Coincidentally, Libby has a chemistry background, so this is kindof perfect. :)

Many thanks for sticking with me all these years!  I'll be back soon with something NEW!

Thanks for stopping by!

Gotcha!

Because I screw up enough for more than one person, part of my responsibility is to share with you so you can ALL learn from my mistakes.

Remember this lovely card?


Pretty, huh? and it was loads of fun to make, especially since I got to play with some new stuff.

But after I showed you this card the first time, I attempted to get it into an envelope, and this is where the lesson was learned.


I'd call this officially a 'tight fit'. Uh-huh. Lookie:


Look at the size of that knot! Okay, I had already decided this was too fat for regular postage and I was going to slap on two stamps (which I eventually did), but first I needed to get it into the envelope. The problem: the knot was too close to the edge of the card. If I'd tied it just a bit to the right, it would have been less of a struggle.

So today's lesson is: If you are going to tie a big, honkin' knot on a card that you just KNOW is going to cost you extra postage to mail, at least tie it AWAY from the very edge of the card so you stand a chance of getting it into the envelope without tearing said envelope.

Lesson complete.

I hope to be back later today with something more interesting for you. I hope.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blame it on Stefani (aka: I Tried Something New)

That's right - it is all Stefani's fault. If she was not so fabulously talented, I would not have been driven to try this myself. Things like this card ... and this one ... and OMG - THIS one ... See why I want to be like her when I grow up? Well, maybe not, but I thought it would be cool to incorporate a finger-full of that technique into what I already do.

I learned to embroider as a young'un, then graduated to cross-stitch, and eventually moved on to counted cross-stitch. Then I got old and had trouble seeing the patterns in the tiny little squares, so I packed away my every-color-floss (organized by DMC color number) and put it all behind me.

Well, I'm baaaaack! Lookie what I made today:

I made the template for punching the holes all by myself! No, they are probably not even, but this is my first try, and it's close enough for me, for now. I poked the holes through the template with my paper piercer onto the top-note die-cut piece...pretty simple.

Here is a close-up of the corner pattern...

... and here is a close-up of the center piece. I did not measure at ALL on this one! I just used a pencil to mark where I wanted the stitch to land in each scallop, then I went back and marked a spot for the in-between stitch, then punched all the holes. At the last second I decided to introduce another color, so I picked an apricot-y one and stitched it before I did the Ecru stitching.

Boring? Maybe. No sentiment? Where would I put it? I am pretty happy with it as a first attempt. I am not too crazy about that center thing ... maybe I should just stitch the corners and stamp the rest. Next time.

On the home front, I did my first pass at my taxes, and once again I get money back from the State which will go towards what I have to pay on Federal. Drat. I hate when this happens, but at least I do not have to pay out for both.

I think I'll go rustle up something for dinner, now, then maybe stamp some more and hopefully figure out card #4 for next weekend. I thought about doing a stitching one, but The Ladies might revolt. Maybe I'll go play with marbles ... those have a pretty high entertainment factor. ;-)

Thanks for stopping by!

ETA: Don't forget about my ribbon g-i-v-e-a-w-a-y I posted earlier today!

MCA - Master of Creative Avoidance

I am the Master of Creative Avoidance. I was supposed to spend the rest of today cleaning and setting up for my workshops tomorrow. But noooooooo. Okay, I did cut all the card stock for the kits and collate them, so that is done. I even have one of the stations set up, and a bunch of stray stamps and ribbon and punches put away. But then, well, let's just say I think I am officially channeling June. I kept looking at all the stuff I've started and set aside, or pieces of paper that could be used so as to avoid the Clean Sweep, and I just lost track of time. But oh, what I've accomplished!! Let me show you!

I had a pile of cut-and-scored white card stock that I was going to use to make Thank You notes, and I did not want to put them in the scrap pile. I also had a bunch of flower images I'd mistakenly stamped on white instead of cream. I also had a still-shrink-wrapped Tangerine Tango ink pad. I thunk and I thunk and this is what came out:

Yeah, the Thanks is a bit thin in spots, but trust me, I tried many others before I came up with 5 good ones. I actually resorted to using the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to get them even this good. I made one pack of 5 and put them in the For The Market box.

What about the failed orange Thanks efforts? Well, I looked at them and almost threw them out in utter frustration, but then I thought I'd save them. I hacked off the bottoms of the card fronts to remove the words. Then I grabbed a scrap of some cool textured blue that was left from my Brother's b'day project. I cut it into strips, scalloped one edge, and lined it up with the rest of the card front.

Much to my dismay, I'd cut them all exactly the right size to replace the cut-off part of the card front. Unfortunately there was nothing with which to attach them to the front (no overlap.) Pooh! I was determined not to give up! I am stronger and smarter than a stinkin' piece of card stock! So I cut strips of the same blue and glued them to both the front and back seams to hold the two pieces of card stock together. That's where I am here:

In this photo, you can see, um, you can plainly see that I have not changed that piece of grid paper in a very long time. You can also see the patched card with the blue pieces stuck to it and the crooked orange Thanks I'd hacked off earlier. I then cleverly wrapped a ribbon around the seams and called it good. I went to my stash of Thank You stamps and found this generic one:

And those silver things? They are there because I had a speck of something on one of the cards, and I could not get past it. I dug into my sticky things stash and put two of these silver jobbies on each card to make it look like I meant to do that. Now I have five cards all the same, and no one will be the wiser (except you guys.)

Now this next card makes me really proud. I had four small strips of this Basic Grey paper left from last week, and I could not bear to throw them out. I saw Bordering Blue. I saw Always Artichoke. I clawed through my scrap piles and found both. This is what I made with all of it:

That Happy Birthday stamp is one of the first stamps I ever bought, and I just love it! I played with the layout a lot until I decided to actually center everything (well, centered is a relative term, isn't it?), or should I say I decided to not go for an asymetrical look. The brads, however, are skewed on purpose. Really!!!

But wait, there's more?!?!?! I told you I lost track of time. I had three scraps of Bella Rose DS paper. I had four scraps (read: mis-cut) of Riding Hood Red from my kit-cutting exercise. I played and cut and trimmed and came up with these three cards:

I did cut into virgin Whisper White for the bases, and one piece of Kiwi Kiss. I also broke open both the Kiwi Kiss and Riding Hood Red ribbons, and they are both wonderful! I would go so far as to say the Kiwi Kiss ribbon is to DIE for! It is thick and double-sided and scrumptious.

And then she rested. But now I must push the vaccuum around; I must clear off the Living Room table so it can hold all my retired stuff that I have to retreive from the closet in The Other Room; I must Clean Sweep what's left on the tables so I can finish setting up the stations for tomorrow. But I feel good! I fell a sense of accomplishment! I created something!!!!!

Okay, I must leave blog-land now and go forth into real life. I'll come up for air again early in the week. Thanks for stopping by!

What a Weekend!

This weekend is not one I plan to re-live any time soon. Let's recap, shall we?

Saturday was a very long but rewarding day. Most of the day, the sky looked like this:

Then it would go back to a blue sky with fluffy white clouds and a blazing sun, then back to this again. The third time it looked like this greyness ...


... this happened. It was just a little rain. We were under a pavilion, so most of us were okay, but we did get rained on sideways. Then it stopped and the sun came out. Crazy, I tell you, just crazy! Unfortunately the humidity did not go away, so damp and hot, we packed up and left, and our Saturday market came to an end. All in all, it was a good day, though.

One aside for which I am giddy with glee... The corner at the pavilion is a three-way stop, and the word 'stop' is used here very loosely. The wacko drivers do provide us with limitless entertainment while playing Chicken in the intersection and arguing over who was less in the wrong, but we are just waiting for someone to actually die. We are sure it is only a matter of time.

So Saturday I spied a City policeman on a bicycle right outside the pavilion. Their squad cars have bike racks, and they often park their cars and bike through the neighborhood, chatting it up with residents. He was stopped and talking with someone, so I went up to him, waited my turn, and told him he could get a month's quota of traffic violations if he would only stand on this corner on a Saturday. So he did!!! And not 3 minutes later he pulled someone over. He pulled a LOT of people over and ticketed them for not stopping. He left for something else he had to do, but he came back and stopped even more people. Man, did we feel good about that!

Okay, back to business. Have you ever seen garlic plants?

This is what garlic looks like when harvested. You probably only see the bulb parts in the stores. Sometimes you will see braids of garlic, where they braid all those tops. Those are very cool.

I also picked up some blackberries in addition to the cherries I got in my CSA. Check out this monster. I had a bunch of them in my basket.

And peaches, oh the peaches! Some of them got rained on, and the farmer was going to toss them since they were not going to last the night, so I took some home and made fruit smoothies for my dinner guests. They were yummy!

Speaking of dinner, I had to do this to have people over:

Look now, because I have not seen the naked top of this table in about 18 months, and it may not be seen again for another 18 months. I took the opportunity to oil the table (which is why it is so shiny), kindof to give it a drink after the long drought.

Dinner went well, and we sat around and ate too much, as we always do. I used paper plates and plastic cups, so cleanup was a breeze. ;-)

Sunday morning I packed up and went to my Sunday Farmers Market, and most of the day the skies looked like this:

Look familiar? And it was stinkin' hot and humid, too. The market was slow, but my special order was picked up, and by the end of the day it turned out to be a pretty good day sales-wise. I cannot remember being so dripping hot, though.

Oh, and the BBQ guy was there! And he got a standing ovation when he showed up - it was pretty funny! Since we also had an Italian Ice vendor (OMG, it was good!) and I'd just finished a very large serving of Strawberry-Lemon Ice, I was too full and too hot to contemplate eating hot BBQ, but it sure smelled amazing. I will definitely save room for some next time.

When I got home Sunday, I showered to wash off the hot, then laid down on the couch to rest my eyes. Two hours later, I woke up and decided I'd seen enough of the table top, so within 10 minutes it was covered again, and I made this:

I first saw these on SCS, and I Favorited this one. The tutorial for these can be found on Diana Gibb's blog here. The directions are very easy to follow and they are really cute. I think I grabbed a too-busy piece of DS paper, but I think I may offer this up as one of my five projects for my July classes.

In real life, the Wild Wasabi card stock really does match the DS papers....just remember who took the picture.

As if this was not enough excitement for one weekend, I got my new SU Decor Elements order today. Woo-hoo! I got the Flourish Frame, the lower-case Alphabet and an extra E and C. I'd planned to put up the frame and then spell out 'Create' inside of it. Having today off, I decided to put the items up where I'd planned, but, well, let's just say apparently I cannot handle anything larger than my head.

I started with the frame. All went well until I realized there were actually three parts to it, and I wanted the middle part of the frame. After much wrestling with the bugger, I got it off the backing as instructed, and then I promptly forgot the rest of the instructions that said to be careful not to let the rub-on fold over onto itself. I was left with this sticky mess:

Okay, the wrinkled-up part was my frustration, but inside this wad of paper is a much-stuck-together former Flourish Frame. So sad.

Then I proceeded to Plan B, which was to just put up the word by itself. That came out pretty well, I think.

It is almost straight, too. I drew a pencil line with a ruler and a level, and the line was straight. Except for the cockeyed capital 'C', the rest of it came out okay.

One of the reasons I got the whole lower-case alphabet instead of just the individual letters I needed is I did the math, and even though it worked out to be a little more money, I got all those extra letters to use somewhere else, so I could do this:

This is where my customers sit when they place their orders. A little gauche, I know, but it will drive home the point that these can be used almost anywhere.

THEN, I remembered I also got the white Baroque emblems, so I did this:

I originally wanted to use them on the Bathroom mirror, but they are larger than I thought they'd be (I totally ignored the measurements given in the brochure ...) so I opted for this larger wall instead.

Then I rested.

The rest of today will be a lazy day. Maybe a little laundry, some feeding, and definitely some creating. Actually, my little Brother turns 50 in August, and I am planning his very special gift. Guess I should get started on that, too.

Creative Avoidance, Part 36

Part 36? I made that up. Pretty much everything I stamp is helping me to avoid something else I should be doing. It just goes without saying! I am surprised the cat has not run away from home, yet, though I do buy her food and treats, and keep her watered, and she has her sun beams, so I guess she can put up with me. It is probably a good thing I am single, though ...

Anyway, today I am supposed to be working on finding the Living Room floor, but, as I suspected, I got totally distracted by all the things I was touching. I have a policy to never put a stamp away before I use it at least once, which probably explains all the boxes and bags of things laying around here.

First up is my card inspired by the Berry-wearing market customer from yesterday. I took out my new Berry Sorbet card stock and the coordinating patterned paper from PapertreyInk and started to play. One thing I like about the PTI colors is the two pinks not only coordinate with each other, they also go with the other colors that have been released, which makes it very easy for people like me to know which green to use with that pink.

The first thing I did was cut a strip of the patterned paper and match it up with the green. That was boring, and such a Leslie thing to do, I felt I needed to alter it a bit, so I cut it into pieces to get the green to show around the patterned pieces. I went back and forth with the pink ribbons, trying to decide between the light and dark pinks. The light pink is a perfect match, of course (oh, how punny!) but I opted to use the darker pink for more contrast. I played around with the ribbon, trying for this look, and No, I have no idea how it is supposed to be done. I guess I'll read up on that before I try to show anyone else how to do it!

I pulled out my retired SU sentiment - one of the ones I will never, ever, sell - and stamped it in the Berry Sorbet ink. Oh, are you surprised I got the ink, too? I'm not. These are Palette inks, and I am starting to love them.

The coordinating flower stamp set is one I have not bought, so I used a small image from Baroque Motifs to stamp on either side of the sentiment. I also broke out my Dew Drops and tried to stick them down with green Stickles, to get the green to show through the clear dome. That sounds easy, but I struggled with it. The green dot of stickles sat nicely in the center of the flower, but as soon as I stuck on the dew drop it spread out to where you could almost not even see it. Maybe I need to let it dry a little bit before I stick on the embellishment. If anyone out there knows how to do this, please enlighten me!!!!


See - you can kindof see some of the green Stickles through the dew drop, but most of it squished out. ;-(

So then I moved on to this card:

It was inspired by this post on SCS. I was very impressed with how she used so many images to create a scene, and I thought I'd give it a try. I also wanted to use the sentiment before I put it away. :-)

The dog started out on the couch, but it looked too busy in one spot, so I moved him. Now it looks like the furniture does not even belong there, but I was going for "the dog cannot be trusted", so if you are one of those people who never lets the dog on the furniture, he looks guilty on two counts. :-)

I am pretty proud of all the stash items I used here...A Muse card and striped pieces; neglected A Muse stamps; funky ribbon; and even scraps of the patterned paper from that first card, used for the lamp shade and pillows.

I must apologize for this next card. I have no idea where it came from, and it is not my intent to offend anyone. Okay, I do know where this card came from - from the stamp that I just had to buy because it called to me. It is one of the items from my recent Viva Las Vegas Stamps shopping spree, and I needed to use it before I could put it away. I may never use it again; it all depends on how many customers love it or leave me once they see it in the "A Little Out There" section of my boxes.

It also uses a piece of ribbon sent to me by a beloved reader who, for some reason, felt I did not have enough ribbon. I made three of these cards, which used all of this piece of ribbon. Can you say, "Gone."? One less thing to put away!

I now have a small stack of new cards for next week's market, and one load of laundry done. Not too bad. Let's see how long it takes me to actually put anything away today.

Panic Sets In

The first Farmers Market of the season is this Saturday, and that's not very far away, seeing as it is Thursday night right now. Every year I plan to be stocked with a good selection of new cards by this time, and every year I fail. The Winter months seem to get overbooked. I want to work on my South Dakota scrapbook. I want to clear out the wanna-be craft room so I can walk in there. I want to finish painting the Craft Room. I want to repaint my Dining Room and Kitchen, and all the ceilings. I want to do a lot of things, and here it is May again, and I am behind, with almost none of the above accomplished.

Sunday evening, as I lay immobile on my couch, contemplating how early I could go to bed and not look like a wimp, I realized I had only 5 days this week to get my act together, so I needed A Plan. Here is The Plan I devised:

Do you remember these:

Do ya? They are called Quick Strips, and Stampin' Up! used to offer them in the catalogs. They are 12" sticker strips that match long-ago-retired Designer papers. I bought a ton of these once I discovered them in the Accessories section, and I've used most of them. Each package contains 6 sheets, 2 sheets of each set of patterns at 3 to a sheet. That's 9 different patterns of sticker strips, or 18 strips, which equals a lot of possibilities.

I decided use these to make a bunch of quick cards for this weekend, so it looks like I was prepared. I cut each strip into two lengths of 5 1/2". In short, I got 4 cards out of each pattern. If I have not lost you, or even if I have, just check out some of the quick-and-easy cards I've made this week.

First up is the green strip that coordinates with the now-retired Paper Pieces punch. All by itself it makes a really nice border. As is my mode of operation, I stuck on the strip, found some matching ribbon, and looked at it.

Eventually I opted to stamp the Happy Birthday sentiment in Craft White and white-emboss it. Done!

Does this one look a little different to you? This is a perfect example of a "save" of a really ugly mistake. I initially embossed the white craft ink with clear embossing powder, thinking the white Craft ink would be white enough. It wasn't.

In desperation, I thought I'd reheat the EP and re-emboss it with white EP. This would be one of those "it seemed like a good idea at the time" moments. Let's just say the next thing I did was cut off the part of the front that had not been destroyed and stuck it on a lighter green card base. I actually like this one a little better than the other. Oh, well. So I got 4 of these done, then moved on.

Here is a pattern many of you might remember. I love the Navy and Olive combination, but I did not want a Navy card base, so I trimmed it and layered the Navy on a white card base.

I originally wanted to put three Olive eyelets on the card front, and except for the fact that these are not straight (surprise!), I think it was a good idea.

What was not a good idea was working on one of the other cards at the same time. On the other card I was using little flowers with the brads, then laying the flowers on the card front to line them up.

I got distracted, as I often do, and managed to put the three brads on the front of this card too far apart - as if I was planning to put the flowers on, which I was not. That far apart they looked really stupid, so I had to recover. Check out the bottom corner of this puppy - you can see the three eyelets across the middle of the group; I went with the "more is more" theme and just added more eyelets until it looked like "I meant to do that". With all the uneven circles in the sticker pattern, I think I might just get away with it, too.

Here is a really close look at my screw-up. I dunno - it kinda grows on you, don't you think?

The really sad part is I did it on another card, too, so I have two of each with this pattern. Time to move on to the next one.

More pink! Gotta use it up and get it outta here! This is for all the people who go with the current fashion and know the 'In' colors of the season. That would not be me. And if these colors are no longer in vogue, oh well.

Those measle-looking blobs are stickles. I thought the front of the card looked boring, and not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I stickled it up. It is glittery in real life; just poorly photographed.

Here is our old friend, the Mother's Day stamp. I thought the flowery borders could be used for Mother's Day, so I did. I opted to go with Eggplant ribbon, because once again, in all that ribbon in my stash, not one of them went with the purples in this sticker strip. Sigh. The sentiment was done with Eggplant Craft ink and clear EP. It really is closer in color to the ribbon than it looks in this photo.

I blew the dust off my Three Flower punch and punched some white flowers. They are small and come in threes! Perfect!

My order from Pink Hedgehog Paper Crafts was waiting for me when I got home tonight, so I felt compelled to use some of the purple brads here. More on that order in a moment.

This is the same pattern in blues and greens, and it is absolutely my favorite of all of them color-wise. Again, I went through all my blue non-SU ribbons, and not one matched this blue. I ended up using the now-retired French Blue from SU. There is something to be said for all the color coordinating SU has built-in to their product line. :-)

This card is the culprit for all my screw-ups with the Navy ones. I was lining up the flowers for this card and mistakenly spaced the brads (sans flowers) on the Navy Blue card the same way. Sigh .....

This card also demonstrates I am capable of making a Mother's Day card that is not pink.

So all in all, I've made 20 cards this week, just from this one Quick Strips kit. Not too shabby, since I also managed to use up most of this item from my stash. All I have left to do is stamp the backs of the cards, put them with an envelope into plastic sleeves, and put an inventory number on the back of each one.

Oh, about that Pink Hedgehog order. I was weak and got over 20 different colors of brads, three bags of eyelets, a huge bag of Antique Brass brads, some Dew Drops, and, um, some ribbon. Striped ribbon. Hey, I was enabled! They had a "click here to buy them all" button, so what was I to do!?!?!? But you know what? I deserve these moments of weakness. No, really, I do! I am not a clothes horse, I do not have a weakness for shoes, I do not go out to eat, I am saving regularly for my retirement (which will not be soon enough!), I do not drink or smoke or anything else that costs money, so if I buy myself some stampin' supplies once in a while, I have NO GUILT! So there! Man, do I lead a boring life, or what ....

Well, I've got to go put the stuff from the washer into the dryer so I have dry blue jeans so I can go to work in the morning. I love Casual Fridays!

A Card Is Born - Part 1

It is official: I am a business. No, I still have not made any money, or more truthfully, I have not taken in more than I have spent. BUT, I did just buy Commercial insurance. COMMERCIAL! I am now officially covered for when people come over for classes, or if someone trips at one of my Farmers Markets and lands on my table, or if my car is in an accident (with or without me) and my stuff is damaged. I feel so good now. But I'll need to sell something in the neighborhood of 50 more cards to pay for it. Whine, whine, whine, I know. Maybe I'll get my Online Store going. Right.

My card for today is an example of the card evolution process. If you are a stamper reading this, you already know this stuff, so you will probably be bored to tears. If you are not a stamper and you are reading this, first let me say THANK YOU, and you will hopefully see that this whole card creation thing is a labor of love. (Actually, THANK YOU to everyone who is reading this. Really!)

One of the take-away, partially-finished cards I made at Sunday's get-together was this piece of very pretty paper on which I had stuck a scrap of brown textured card stock.

The paper is very "artsy" and old-looking, and poorly photographed, and I saw a lot of potential with the green and blue and brown dots. I just KNEW I had card stock and ribbon at home that would match it and make it complete.

I started with my Papertrey box o'stuff that is still out and needing to be used up. These were actually the two colors I had in mind when I thought I had something to match.

I took out the Moss and Aqua satin ribbons, put them on the paper, and did one of those hmmmmm things where you tilt your head to see if it looks any different (it never does, it just looks crooked.) I opted for the Moss, though the Aqua does have potential. I thought the Moss looked better with the brown.

Next decision: Satin or Grosgrain? Since the look was "old", and the brown scrap had a rough texture, I went with the grosgrain.

I know some people would not have these dilemmas, as they would either have only one of the colors, or only one of the textures, but nooooo, not moi. I had to get them all. Sometimes I think if I had less stuff this would be a whole lot easier. .... .... Nah, don't think so. :-)


Put it all together and you have .... a half-finished card. This is where I usually get stuck in the creation process. The papers and ribbon look great together, then what? Then, my dear readers, I do one of two things. Sometimes I set it aside and look at it for a few days, or else, as I did today, I head on over to StampingCritique.com. No, this is not a commercial, but I do love that site. Most of us do get stuck at some point and just need some constructive suggestions for all those questions rolling around in our heads: Wrong colors? Should I have gone with the Aqua? Too busy? Not busy enough? Ribbon too wide? Needs brads? Needs another layer? Speck of dirt in this photo? Whatever - you will get lots of great feedback there.

End of Part 1. Once I get some feedback, or stare at it for a few days, or maybe get a good night's sleep, I'll think on it some more and finish the card and post the final result. There will probably be some in-between versions, too, so stay tuned. Oooh, did I just create a cliff-hanger? Yeah, like you were hanging on my every word...

To kill time and use more bytes, I thought I'd share something I learned today. I now bring you: Blogger trick du jour. One of the things that makes me crazy about Blogger is the time it takes to edit the durn thing! Yeah, I know, it's free, so you get what you pay for. One of the more irritating things is uploading an image after you have already typed some text. The image always appears at the top of the post, then you drag it to where you want it. This is fine by me! But once you do that, you get a lot of extra mystery space between paragraphs, and you might even end up with so much blank space that you think your next sentence rolled off the face of the earth! This is where I spend a lot of time - reformatting a post to eliminate that unwanted space.

Today on SCS I learned how to fix that! Once you do your initial post creation, and it looks pretty good, go into "Edit HTML" mode and type an open div tag as the first line in your post and then type the close div tag as the last line of your post. For those not conversant in the ways of the Web, here it is in writing:

The first line (which I cannot actually type in the context of the blog or it will mangle the whole post) is the "open div tag", and the last line is the "close div tag". Enough techno-babble.

These two tags effectively wrap your whole post in a snug blankie so any more editing you do will not skew your previous content beyond recognition. I love learning these sorts of tricks!

I also learned that if you run the washer so you have clean clothes for tomorrow so you can go to work, you need to remember to put the stuff in the dryer. Sigh...gotta go be domestic now. Hopefully I will figure out how to finish that card in the next few days and I'll show you how it ends up!

A Flurry of Activity

It is Saturday, and I am in my usual flurry of creation. First I set some must-do activities for myself... move some IRA money around, fill in the deposit slip for some checks, do some insurance paperwork ... you know - stuff. Once that was all done, my reward was to play!


I am proud to say I used a piece of ribbon that has been sitting on my table for far too long! When I first took it out I thought it was green (I love green), but alas, it is a bright yellow and blue so it just looked green. Bah, I said, and tossed it aside. Until now!

These cards are also a bonus, because not only do I use one of my new stamps, but all the cards stock except the card bases are scraps. Double-yay! And the brads are from the same pack I used for my dog cards; they are just about half gone. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to use up the purple ones. Another day, another day.

Here's a close-up of the sentiment. Love her!








Then I tried a few different things with my Whine Journal cover. I replaced the paper flower with a punched jobbie; I printed the sentiment on the computer. I like that I can pick a font and change the look of a sentiment any way I want. I am such a control freak.

I am not sure if that ribbon will work if I also use Jumbo Eyelets as a closure for the book. I'll keep playing with it.

For this version I changed the printed message under the the title since I thought it sounded more whiney. The original Wine (without an 'h') Journal says "Because life's too short to drink bad wine." which is how the original Whine (with an h) saying came about. This new one just seems more appropriate for a good whine.

I also spent some time playing with the binding aspect of the book. Turns out my friend no longer has her RubiCoil, so I am trying to get better with the tools I do have. I have not bound any more, and I will not until I think I have a saleable version or two.

Then, on a break from the action, I did some blog reading and I found this item on Heather's blog: Is this a mumu? First, I had to laugh because I have not heard that word since I was a little kid! We had a neighbor that wore mumus all the time, and one year for Halloween my Dad wore one when he took the usual passel of kids around house-to-house. What a hoot! Anyway, I was impressed with Heather's variation of Lauren Meader's Onesie that I also did in an earlier post, so I had to go off and try it and then make it my own.

Here's my first pass, and it is sooo not "me". It's got flowers, and it's turquoise! I used two flowers from Stampin' Up!'s Fabulous Flower set, inking the larger one in Tempting Turquoise and the smaller one in Taken with Teal. The belt is a strip of Turquoise card stock and I just tied a small knot in some turquoise ribbon to make it look like it was a tied belt.

The one on the left was my attempt to make a square neckline. Unfortunately SU does not have a scalloped square punch, so I used a Marvy one. But the one on the right is all SU and therefore may find its way to a class one of these months. You just never know.

Next I tried it with Barely Banana textured card stock. Love it! I also used up - USED UP - that piece of ribbon from my stash. Yay! Baby steps.

It still needed something, so I had A Moment and thought to use the flourish from the retired Noteworthy set in my Glue Pad that I almost never use. I did that because I wanted to use the green SU Fine Cosmo glitter to tie in the green in the ribbon. I really like how it turned out!


These are the two yellow cards side-by-each. I decided to round the corners of the shoulders to make them more feminine.



And this is my attempt at "a little black dress". Not so sure I like the ribbon belts, but they were really boring with nothing. I used Stickles to make "gems" near the neckline. Eh ... I'll see if they sell. I will have to make a template for a piece of white for the inside. Later.

Moving on, here is another one of my new stamps. I am also trying to use my Papertrey shipment of paper and ribbon so I have less to put away next week. There's gotta be a plan in there somewhere ...

I am getting better, I think, with pairing the two greens...they at least offend me less and less. I got lucky looking for brads to use in the bottom corner. I thought I had some white flower brads I could use up when I discovered a pack of retired SU floral brads that had a color that looked like it matched the Papertrey Moss. They were Barely Banana, but I think they look great! And I only mangled two pieces of card stock before I got them aligned. They are not quite straight (surprise!), but you will also notice I only used two, not three. I decided to stop while I was ahead!


And here is a closeup of her shirt, which is the whole point of the card. I laughed out loud when I saw it and I had to buy it!

That's all for tonight. I think I need a break and will go to bed and read for awhile. Tomorrow is another day!