Hambo Hoedown - Extra Fold

I confess: it's been FOREVER since I last played the Hambo Hoedown, but I'm baaaaack! I think it's because I got up, showered, dressed and out of the house by 8 am, so when I got back I was already moving and didn't feel compelled to sit on the couch and drool.

So this week's challenge asked us to use a Hambo image and add an extra fold to our card. This is what I made:

 Yes, I know - it's PINK! But what else would a ballerina be? It did give me the opportunity to use up some pink paper, so there's that ...  I colored her with Copics, then die-cut her with one of my oval Nestabilities, but, well, see that handsome ribbon? Ribbon covers a myriad of sins, including the use of a too-narrow piece of card stock. Yes, ribbon is good, and floofy, and girlie, so it all works.

Here's a peek at the inside and my extra fold:

All I did was fold the top of the card back on itself, and those pieces of green paper were already cut, just waiting to be used. I did cut into a virgin piece of the pink for the layer under the piggie, but it was pink and it deserved to die.

Alrighty, then, I'm going back in for more. Thanks for stopping by!

A Road-Trip Inspired Card

I do a lot of driving. Not so much any more now that my kids are grown and off doing their own thing, but I've spent a ton of time behind the wheel of a car. My favorite thing to pass the time is listening to books on CD. I have a few favorites, and I listen to them over and over again. My top two are The Rule of Four (sooooo good) and Pride & Prejudice (*swoon*).

Oh, and lest you worry, I never ever ever evereverever listen to the books on CD while driving around HERE. Oh, no no no. I would be stabbier than stabby, and maybe dead. I reserve the books on CD for road trips.

Speaking of which, I had a road trip this past weekend. Driving TO Atlanta was quite nerve-wracking since I forgot it was Spring Break and all 850,000 people from the DC area were ON MY ROAD!  Pffth. So I came home a different route, taking the winding roads through the Western part of Virginia and the Blue Ridge mountains. Sooooo pretty. The trees are that pretty spring green, and they were interspersed with a bright purple tree - dunno what it is, and I'm too tired/lazy to look it up. There were also pretty yellow flowers/weeds along the ground.

So on this trip, in addition to mentally redesigning my craft room to hold all the Tim Holtz Ranger products I've purchased as the result of taking this "Oh, it's only $35" class *ahem*, I also designed a card based on the colors I saw along the way. This is the card I made:

Yeah, it's dark, so you might need to embiggen it to see it clearly, if the mood strikes you. I used an image from SU's Pocket Silhouette set, linked it in Lucky Limeade, used my finger to wipe the ink off the stems, and stamped it. A lot. I stamped it a few times along the bottom in YoYo Yellow, then went back and stamped it some more in Versamark and embossed those with some long-retired lavender embossing powder. Some sponged clouds, some twine, some tags, a button, and the obligatory birds - done.

Here's a close-up of the embossed images:

It came out okay, I think. :)

I hope to get back to playing with my Tim Holtz goodies, maybe later this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Birthday, Korin!

I'm a day early with a very special birthday surprise....tomorrow is Korin Sutherland's birthday! A group of her friends got together today for a fun early birthday party, since tomorrow is the April Release Blog Hop for Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps, and we didn't want to take the spotlight from that. So please join us as we celebrate Korin's birthday a little early! After all - you can never have too much celebration, can you?!?!

If you've arrived here from Dina Kowal 's blog, welcome! (Well, welcome, anyway, but you know what I mean.) This hop started at Taylor Usry 's blog, so if you landed here first, you can start at the beginning and hop all the way through! The list is also at the bottom of my post for your hopping pleasure. 

For my card I used my new SNSS stamps and papers to make this:

I love this kitteh so much I have her in both digital AND the clear stamp set. :)

Feel free to leave Korin some early birthday love, either on her blog, her Facebook page, or the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps Facebook page!

Your next stop is Lisa Hjulberg, and here is the list of all the participants:

Taylor Usry

Beate Johns

Bridget Finlay

Holly McMillen

Lydia Fiedler

Chrissy Dickinson

Dina Kowal

Leslie Hanna (you are here)

Lisa Hjulberg

Kim Schofield

Jessica Fick

Julie Ranae

Monika Davis

Jessica Diedrich

Cathy McCauley

Makiko Jones

Kim Singdahlsen

Mary Faus

Deb Felts

Lori Craig

Giovana Smith

Kim O'Connell

Wendy Jordan

Julie Smith

Michele Single

Jeanne Streiff

Lee Murphy

Thanks for stopping by!

SOS Challenge 46 - Punch It Out (sorta)

Yes, I'm late with this week's Shopping Our Stash challenge. Actually, I was out of town this past weekend and did it from memory, and, well, when you are as old as I am, memory fails you. This week's challenge is Punch It Out, and you must have at least two punched elements on your project.

So ANYway, I had a spur-of-the-moment road trip to visit my stampy pal Libby, and we planned to do our collective Creative Chemistry 101 homework together. We got quite messy! Along the way, I used one of my samples to make a card using punches for this week's challenge. This is what came out:

I'm fairly certain this would not count for the challenge since I used the same punch twice - not two different punched elements. So don't be like me, and make sure to add something else punched, too, okay?

The colored piece was one of the alcohol ink techniques from the class. I stamped over it with two stamps from a Hero Arts set, then layered it onto a piece of black on which I punched two rows using a Fleur de Lis punch (EK Success, I think). As a final touch, I stuck on two pieces of polka-dotted paper tape I picked up on one of our crafty shopping sprees. *ahem*

Now that I'm home, I'll try to get organized and post some more of my homework samples. They were a lot of fun to make, and I may have collected enough Ranger product to make me need to rearrange my craft room. I even played around and created a technique of my own by combining two of our lessons into one. :) So watch for them over the next week or so, or when I get to them.

Thanks for stopping by!

SOS #45 - Circles

It's time for another challenge at Shopping Our Stash! This week we ask you to use circles in your design. Alternatively, you can use a Bugaboo image, since they are our sponsor this week. Circles - you can use Nestabilities, punches, hand cut circles, polka dots, paper with circular designs, etc. So many possibilities!

For my card, I ended up using a lot of the above. :) First, here she is:

Now, anyone familiar with SU knows how old this paper is, am I right? I have about four pieces of this cut and layered on either Night of Navy or Old Olive, and just lounging in the UFO pile, waiting to be used. As I hovered over The Captain's Table, pondering my options for this challenge, I spied a corner of the paper and a card was born! :)

I added a MS doily tag, because it was round. It got lost in the background, so I added a circle of Old Olive under it that I cut with one of my circle Nestabilities. I stamped the sentiment in Night of Navy, then punched it out with a 1 1/4" circle punch, and layered it on a piece of Night of Navy punched with the 1 3/8" circle punch. That's a lot of circles. I tried to cut it all with the horizontal Navy ribbon. (Did you also do the dance of joy when SU came out with Navy ribbon many years ago? Did you hoard it? I'm just asking, for a friend.)

Now it's YOUR turn! Go into your stash and look for anything round or circle-y - patterned papers, polka dots, doilies, circle punches and dies ... Then use it to make a card, and come back over to Shopping Our Stash and link us up so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

More Distress Ink Homework

More Creative Chemistry 101 homework ... I'm still trying to get the hang of the whole Distress Ink blending thing. My bloggy and tweety pal Lisa of PaperGrace Designs even went so far as to make a video showing how she blends. She totally has this skill, and I do not, but I'm trying. I'm also challenged with the Wrinkle-free Distress technique, as my samples keep looking like mud. Fortunately, some of my other pals are taking the same class and having some of the same challenges, so at least I'm not alone! One classmate posted about her challenges with card stock and has some really great observations. Sometimes it's not YOU. The teacher always makes things look so easy, though, huh? ;/

So I went in again today and tried the Wrinkle-free Distress technique, and this is what I made with it:

I used lighter colors than my last attempts, and I also used less water, as I think - at least in my world - it works better for me. The rub-on is from Bo Bunny, the black lace is from SU, the black bling is from my stash, and the sentiment is Clear & Simple Grunge. And yes, that is a pink layer, but I dirtied it up with Distress ink, so it's okay ... no need to panic. It's only there because the rub-on was too big to fit with just the blue layer. Uh-huh.

I also tried the Blending thing again with the Spritz & Flick (I may snicker every time I hear or type that now and forever), but haven't made it into a card yet:

I think it's a tiny bit improved over my last 12 attempts.

Last, I did a card for the watercolor technique, which is the Distress ink version of coloring on your stamp and spritzing it with water before stamping to give a watercolor appearance. Here's mine:

I inked the bottom of the stamp in a green, the top with a blue, then went around the edges of the image with (I think) Persimmon and just touched the tips of the flowers. Spritz & stamp.

You can see some detail here:

It's actually not (too) out-of-focus - the stamped image is blurry because the water makes the ink schmear. Kinda neat. :)

It's now taken me all weekend to do Day 2's homework. I'll eventually get to the rest of the assignments once my goodies arrive nest week. And tomorrow (Monday) is the first day of Week 2. I think we learn how to use our Distress markers. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Distress Ink Homework

So I'm finally working on my Creative Chemistry 101 homework, and I've mostly made a mess. We're supposed to make a manila tag for each technique. but I've taken a techniques class before, and I'm pretty sure I've lost my tag book. Nope, I do better with making something out of the piece of paper I'm using for the technique, or like today, the 18 pieces of paper I burned through. Yeah, like I said: a mess.

I did manage to kinda sorta do two of the three techniques from the second day, and here's what I've made -->

First, the Blend, Spritz & Flick. {snicker} I dared Tim to say that fast three times. I hope he does it on camera in one of next week's classes. :D I'm so bad. ANYway, you're supposed to blend several colors of Distress ink onto a tag (or in my case, a piece of Very Vanilla card stock), then flick some water onto it to get a wet-with-rain-drops look. Here's mine:

I chose poorly with my colors, but I am very proud that I finally opened my Distress Fall limited edition pack of inks (brown, purple and orange) and used them! I added a green from the Winter limited edition pack.  I think I'd have done better with lighter colors and more of them. And I didn't actually "blend" much. I know I still need practice.

I stamped over the thing with some Clear & Simple Grunge images, layered it onto Early Espresso, tied on some brown twine, and stuck it onto a Kraft base.

Here's a closer shot so you can see some of the water marks:


Yep, they're there! :)

My next technique was the Wrinkle-Free Distress technique, and let me tell you: this was messy. We were supposed to schmear several Distress inks onto our craft mat, spritz with water, then press the card stock (or tag) into the inky mess. Tim's looked fantastic, of course. The following is the only one of mine that I'm willing to show you:

(Sorry that pic is so dark. ;/)  I didn't have enough water on my surface for this one, which may be why I like it best of all the 10 or 15 I tried. I cut it up and layered the pieces on a piece of Perfect Plum. I saw the birds-on-a-wire thing somewhere in my blurfing - I think someone used a MS punch. I used two black birds from an OMG I NEED THIS box of Maya Road felt birds and set them on top of a very skinny piece of black card stock.

So yeah, I like these better when I've used them on a card. There's one more technique for this day's lessons, then I need to wait for my shipment of goodies next week to finish the other assignments. Whaaaaaaat, aren't classes supposed to be shopping excuses? Well, I will tell you there are several techniques I do not plan to try, nor do I plan to get the supplies for them, so what I did get I do plan to use, so there. :P

I'll share more as I do more of the assignments. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Acrylic Resist Birthday

Instead of hunkering down and doing my Creative Chemistry 101 homework, I got distracted by the Acrylic Resist tutorial over on Splitcoast and decided I needed to give it a try. Here's what came out:

I opened and used my Adirondack Pearl acrylic paint dauber to ink the flourish from my SU Baroque Motifs set. I stamped it on Very Vanilla, then heat set it to dry.  I sponged over it with a few Distress Inks, stamped a few flowers from a HA set in Antique Linen, then sponged the edge of the die-cut piece with Antique Linen, too. Some Crumb Cake seam binding, a HA sentiment, a miscellaneous button, and done!

Okay, NOW I'm going to do some homework. Or maybe make a cherry blossom card. I guess I'll find out when I get going, huh? :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Paybacks

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated! I'm not dead, and I haven't been very stampy this week, either. Why? Well, it's certainly not for lack of supplies! Nope! I'm taking the online class by Tim Holtz called Creative Chemistry 101, wherein he's trying to teach us all how to use the Ranger products most of us already have. It's actually quite embarrassing.

But no, I'm not going to show you anything from the class since I've been waiting for the weekend to play. Instead, I'm going to show you a card I made with one of my Sweet 'N' Sassy Stamps digi images:

I thought these two were too cute! Now that I look at it, though, that sentiment was meant to be spoken by the poor kitteh who's had his dinner stolen. I'd like to think in the next frame he'd be glaring at his brother, thinking those three little words. So this card makes no sense, much like the rest of my week.

In other news, the annual DC cherry blossoms are at their peak, like, TODAY! Here are some photos of the Tidal Basin which is famous for its cherry trees. I particularly like #2 and #5. I drive by a few neighborhoods every day whose streets are lined with these trees, and they are gorgeous. It's also the 100th anniversary of the year the Japanese gifted DC with some cherry trees - 3000 trees, to be exact!

So you'd think I'd make a cherry blossom card, right? Maybe tomorrow. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

PS: The Honors Gallery is up at Splitcoast. If you played the VSN challenges a few weeks ago, or the mini VSN back in February, the hostesses have each selected a couple of their favorites from their galleries. Go check them out, here!  And thanks to everyone who played!

SOS #44 - Buttons & Bows

It's time for another challenge at Shopping Our Stash! This week we ask you to use buttons and/or bows on your card. You can use either one or both.

Ribbon. OMGosh, do I have ribbon, so of course I planned to use the bow part of the challenge. Knowing that, I went in search of a sketch to use and decided on this one from The Friday Mash-up:

 Then I needed a mojo jump-start, so I used this inspiration picture from the Moxie Fab World: Tuesday Trigger: Simple Elegance:

From this photo, I took away the pattern on the carpet, the pattern and color of the drapes, and the touch of (gah) pink from the throw. I dug through my Basic Grey capella papers and found a piece of paper that mimics the carpet, and one that I declared to be inspired by the drapes. This is what came out:

It all started with that bottom paper (carpet) and even though the stripes are going in the wrong direction, that top piece is "drapes". The ribbon started out as a piece of off-white seam binding that I died with some SU Blush Blossom re-inker. Hey, it's as a light pink as I could get, and it's blotchy, er ... distressed, which I really like.

I layered everything with Always Artichoke card stock; button was made from AA, too, using 1" and 3/4" circle punches; MFT scallop die; Nestabilities circle die; SU rub-on sentiment. Done.

Here's that button and bow, up close and personal:

Now it's your turn! Go into your stash and dig out some buttons, or some ribbon to tie a bow, or a faux bow, or already-made bows, or make your own buttons, or all of the above. But please do play, then come back to Shopping Our Stash and link us up so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!