UHC #8

Today's Under-Appreciated Holiday Challenge celebrates Golfer's Day, which is observed each year on April 10th. I, personally, am not a golfer, though I did play one on TV. Oh, wait a minute, that was not me. But I did play in a golf league many, many moons ago.

Back at my very first job, the second in command in my Department (a woman, by the way) strongly suggested to me one night during happy hour that I really should take up golf. (She played on the Co-Ed Softball Team, too, just so you know this was nothing unusual. She was a lot of fun, actually!) Even though I'd caddied a bunch for my Father when I was growing up, I'd never actually played at the sport myself. I took lessons, once, and it did not stick.

So listening to the advice of my superior, I coerced a fellow non-golfer to be my partner, we went out and bought clubs, and the first time we teed off for the league was the first time we'd ever played. Ever.

Let me just say that we got the two highest scores that day, which I knew enough to know was not a good thing. It was a par 27 9-hole course, and we got 100 and 105 respectively. And our arms were really, really tired.

The funniest part of this whole story is that as we improved over the course of the season, we consistently had the Most Improved scores, so we kept winning all the prizes. It was really pretty funny! By the end of the season we were down into the 50's, and quite proud of it. We did not join up the next season...we knew when we were out of our league (I had to say that!)

So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Happy Golfer's Day, everyone, and I hope you live somewhere where it is nice enough outside right now to play!

Are We There Yet?

I do believe I am starting to get sick of that Scrap Heap. That may be influenced by the Waning Mojo I posted about earlier today ... and I think I've found a method to allow myself to persevere. Mix 'em up, man, mix 'em up! I do have Stamp Camps that need projects, and since most of the stuff in The Heap is non-SU, or retired, or I do not have enough of it to go around, or {insert excuse here}, I allowed myself to step out of the zone momentarily and use other things.

But first - here is my re-done card from this morning...all I did was add some ribbon, and I think it makes it look more finished. After dissecting the cards (I made two of them), and adding the ribbon to both, I bagged & tagged them, then I pondered the back side of the remaining BG papers - so pretty. But I'll come back to them later this weekend. Maybe.

Here is a project that has been in my head for a while now, and I might even use it for my April Stamp Camps. It uses only Whisper White and Pacific Point. For this card, I allowed myself to take a 1/2 sheet of Pacific Point card stock not from The Heap, but the rest of the card stock is from The Heap. I stamped the images on the WW, then on scraps of WW (I'm using up a ton of those babies!) and cut them out, then stuck them on the stamped images with mini glue dots. What looks to be ribbon is NOT! It is two strips of Pacific Point card stock. NO KIDDING!!! I tried the ribbon there, but opted out. Must be lack of nourishment or something. At the last second I decided it needed a little color, so I used my Ruby Red and Basic Black markers to color the lady bugs then stamped them in some white space. Done!

Back to the scraps. Here we have some pink striped double-sided papers, some pink paper-weight paper, and I pulled out two spools of mint-y green ribbon I thought might go. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon making the following:

Another image from the SU Golden Oldies set available April 1st. I tried every-which-way-from-Sunday to put those card parts non-centered, but it finally came together dead center. Whatever. Her dress is paper-pieced using scraps and the reverse side of the double-sided paper.

She still looked un-finished (even with the ribbon ... I know!) so I added some pink pearls to both the top edge and bottom corners (with just the top edge, it almost looked like a row of blinking lights ... or maybe that was the lack of nourishment, again). She is definitely blingy-er now!

Then I took another diversion from all that pink and used these three scraps that have been on my work spot for several days. I just stuck them on a white base, then rummaged through my Every Color Blue But The One I Need box of ribbons because I just knew I had this yummy blue in there. And I did! I got this (and some red just like it) at my last {sniff... sniff} trip to Recollections before they closed. (Ya know what? I read somewhere that Mike's is not doing so well. Hmmm ... I wonder if that's happened since they closed Recollections in favor of focusing on Aarons. YA THINK!?!?!?!?!) ANYway, the ribbon luckily goes with the papers so I added it (and fondled it) and called it DONE.

Okay, dokey, back to the pink. In my blog surfing the past few days I saw someone had done pieces where the ends were rounded but the middle was not. I made a mental note to try something like it when I got the chance, and wouldn't you know it - I got that chance! I cut a few of the remaining pieces of the striped paper into 1" strips, then slipped only one end at a time into the SU Key Tag punch to round them. Then I measured and did the math, and cut them into pretty-close-to thirds so the white layer would show through.

I tell ya, at this point I did a lot of staring and futzing and pacing. For example: as pretty as the half-pearls looked in those three sections, they could not be mailed unless in a bubble envelope (or with a lot of padding), so I put them away and thunk some more. I finally ended up with this - just one Pretties Kit flower attached with a rhinestone brad. I did not want to add any more layers or parts to the bottom, so I ended up just stamping the HB sentiment directly on the striped paper. It was bold enough if I used Black ink to not get lost in the pattern.

Oh, but there's MORE! I still had one of the band-aid shaped parts left over, and I refused to put it on the UFO pile, just to have to look at it again another day, so I used it. Done!

And this is all I have left. Not bad, not bad, even if it did take me all afternoon. And you know what? There is still no visible reduction in The Heap. Sigh ... I'll dig in again tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by (and for reading this far!)

Waning Mojo

I am still working on the ole Scrap Heap, but my mojo seems to have taken a week or so off. No matter what I make, it's just not quite right. Did you ever have a period of time like that? I thought after last weekend, I'd still have some creative juices left, but apparently not. But I have not stopped trying!!!

This guy is one of the images in my pre-ordered Golden Oldies set from the SU Occasions mini catalog. One of the comments I hear a lot at my markets is how I have a lot of 'old ladies' making smart remarks, but not a lot of 'old men', so you see why I needed to get this set. :-)

This layout was my lame attempt to follow this week's caardvarks sketch. I was not attempting to enter the contest (heaven knows I do not need any more stuff!), just simply following the sketch. I tried ... what can I say? I'm just not lovin' this one. (But he is cute, isn't he?)

Here is attempt # 2 using the same images and scrap card stock pieces (I have a ton, okay?) I used bling (it was out), but it may be too girl-y for an old fart. Maybe it needs ... I dunno ... ribbon? :-) So I gave up and moved on.

I grabbed some of this pretty Basic Grey paper from the Figgy Pudding line and thought it would make a nice, feminine, non-Christmas-y card. I pulled out the Old Olive marker for the tree since there is some Olive in the distressing in the paper. The tree is from the ever-so-versatile SU Lovely As A Tree set that I hope they never retire, and the sentiment is by Impression Obsession, and I selected it from my cache of Almost Every Sentiment stamps in The Other Room. The pearls are from my last stop at Angela's, and they are so pretty! This card is still missing something; maybe I'll add some ribbon...

I am still using 100% card stock and paper from The Heap, so even if my dent is smaller, it is still a dent. I must find my mojo so I can make a bigger dent - I must!

Didja notice my header way up above there? I was playing with a photo I took in Florida many years ago and thought I'd try the crop-and-drop Blogger we'll-shrink-it-to-fit-for-you plug-and-play. The sentiment was a bit of a challenge, but I did make it crooked on purpose. ;-) I still have much to learn, but it was fun trying.

I'm off to play some more in the Scrap Heap. I'll let you know if the ole mojo returns. Thanks for stopping by!

For My Next Trick ...

Remember when I said you'd all be sorry that I took my camera to work? Here is an example of why. Check out this pile of stuff from the Heap:

It is mostly Sahara Sand and some pink (dunno which one), but on top of those is a sheet of Voo Doo Dolls I just printed out on my 'puter's printer. I have that voo-doo doll on my desk, which explains the cube-y-ness in the background of the image.

I took some polka dot paper off the patterned paper pile in the Heap and made this.

Other implements employed include a pair of deckle-edge scissors and some red-edged orange ribbon from my Box Of Every Color Red/Orange/Pink Ribbons that I frayed (poorly - needs some clean-up work), but I liked the splayed effect of the ribbon ends vis-a-vis the doll's arms.

Okay, okay, I s-u-p-p-o-o-o-o-o-o-s-e I could have cut out that image to make it a little cleaner, and I still might. Maybe.

On another note, I opened a fledgeling Etsy store tonight. I think it may be a better idea than my Blog Store, which I simply cannot keep updated. With the Etsy store, I'll only upload one of each card, and as they sell, they take themselves down. I'll see how that goes. I put the link in my right menu bar (so *I* can find it!) :-)

I'm off to cut up some more voo-doo dolls. Thanks for stopping by!

Show & Tell

Time for a little Show & Tell.

Here we have two different unmounted stamps. On the right (that skinny little thing stuck to the top of the other stamp so you can see it) is a true unmounted stamp - just the rubber. (Some companies like Viva Las Vegas Stamps sell their stamps with three mounting options: Unmounted, Foam-mounted, and Wood-mounted. If I am feeling particularly guilty about my purchase, I'll opt for unmounted, since they are about half the price, but I digress.)

The thin rubber stamp part above would be mounted on EZ Foam. The thicker stamp (this one is from Hambo Stamps) in this photo came foam-mounted, so it was silly to put it on more foam, so I asked BR #2 if they (you know, "they") make just the cling part of the EZ Mount, and not only DO they, but she had a stash AND brought it right over. Saved my sorry rear, she did!

This is the package - Cling Vinyl. Who knew "they" made this stuff?!?! Well, #2 knew! This is the stuff used to make those cling window stickers. And apparently it comes in colors, too, but that's another show.

See that silly little red arrow? That points to the sample we snipped off to test. And the test worked.

So the other night, I actually mounted all my unmounted Hambo stamps, and tonight, I used two of them. Shocking, I know!

Here is what I made (still 100% scraps off The Heap, thankyouverymuch). They also had a plumber, but it was sold out, so I got the gardener. Still quite effective, and I think this will be a big seller this summer at my markets. :-)

That's all for this evening... I need to go make peace with kitty. She is still a little hissy about no wet food for dinner.

Kitty Update

Thanks to all who have asked for a kitty update.

Kitty had her follow-up visit with the Vet this morning, and let me just say she is not very happy right now ... not even close. Can you say "hissy fit"? The good news is her nose looks much better, so it was probably just the latest manifestation of her seasonal allergies. She can be very creative.

But on the matter of her weight loss, not so good. She started out at 10.5-11 lbs; last week she was down to 10; and now she is under 10 lbs. Considering I put her on wet food this past week cuz she gobbles it up, then has some dry food to snack during the day before her evening feeding frenzy, she should not be losing weight. (Hmmm .. eating more, losing weight ... why can't that work for ME?!?!) The Vet (plus 2 techs) got the fun job of trying to take a blood sample. They took her into a quiet room, and all I heard was a lot of kitty screeching. They came out a short time later, with full vials in hand, and no visible blood on their persons, so that was good, but the Vet said from now on she is a 'sedate to get blood' patient. Sorry ..... Not only was she pissed off, she was pissed on (told you she was upset). The Vet said she was not going anywhere near kitty to clean her tail, and I totally understand.

Kitty was still hissy with me after we got home. Just wait until she finds out the Vet wants her to go cold turkey off the current brand of wet food for a few days. Kitty has some 'digestive issues' which may or may not be contributing to this week's weight loss, and to switch her to a different food, the Vet wants me to get her back on just her regular dry food before I introduce anything new. Oh, are we looking forward to that ... NOT!

I escaped and came to work. Hopefully she'll be calmed down by this evening. I hope she lets me in...

UHC Challenge #7

This week's Under-Appreciated Holiday Challenge celebrates Sorry Charlie Day, which will be observed on April 6th. This is a day for all of us who have been spurned, and yet somehow survived it.

For me, when I hear "Sorry, Charlie", I think of a puppy we got when I was a kid. A neighbor had found a 6-week-old pup by the side of the road, and my Mom agreed to take him. We cut down a box for him and filled it with towels for a bed. The box was a Charmin TP box, and we called him Charmin' Charlie. Turns out he was a sickly pup, and he was at the Vet a lot his first few weeks, and we changed the Charmin' Charlie to Sorry, Charlie. He did get better, but the name stuck, and he was in our family for over 13 good years.

So when I saw Sorry, Charlie Day, I thought of my Charlie, and did not feel like making a card about being spurned at all! 'Tis much better to make a happy card, dontcha think!?

So here is my Sorry, Charlie Day card (yes, I've added the comma, because it needs a comma).

I got this stamp in Florida one year, along with the sentiment, and I really like them. I sell a lot of cards with these images to dog-lovers, because really, no matter how bad your day was, when you get greeted at the door by your furry family beast, what could be better than that? Except maybe snuggling on the couch with the furry one. There's no better way to end your day!

The sentiment reads: "There is nothing better than to end a bad day covered in dog slobber."

A Heap More Stampin'

I spent today working on the Scrap Heap some more, and this time kitty helped. She decided the Scor-Pal needed guarding.

Actually, it was the only place to sit on the entire table... surprise.

She looked right at me when I called her name. BTW, her name is Koshka - that's Russian for 'cat', and it was her name when I adopted her, so I just kept it. She is such a sweetheart.

Today I started with this piece of altered glossy paper and some coordinating purple card stock. I cut the piece into 4 and double-mounted them on the Pale Plum and Elegant Eggplant. There were two pre-folded stamped-on-the-front cards in that stack, so I cut them into parts to get 4 pieces for layering onto white bases.

I made two of these (plain front) ...

... and two of these (patterned front). At some point in the past year or two I'd stamped the CHF Victorian backgrounder in Pale Plum onto the Pale Plum, then changed my mind, or something.

The ribbon is from my stash and is really old. I used almost all of it on these four cards. Yay!

The three purple gems are from a cell phone sticker thing I got a ACMoore eons ago. They should be larger, but it's all I have.

I rubbed the flower petals in Pale Plum ink, and put one of the SU Rhinestones in the center. The layers of 1/2" + 3/4" circles gave it enough heft to hold the brad and support some glue dots on the back.

Next up, I grabbed these stickers from my Mike's what-was-I-thinking stash and used them as a guide for color selection: Navy, Celery and White. Four stickers = four cards.

These cards took a while to come together, but I like how they turned out. One of my challenges is: just because the papers go together, now what? So I stew a lot.

I Cuttlebugged the white for interest, and I thought the bird folder worked with ... the bird sticker. The celery ribbon is from one of my gotta-have-em-all RABOM purchasing frenzies. The gems are from a dollar pack from Mike's (I think). The green shape behind the bird sticker is cut from the back of the sticker package. I am sooo loving that these are being packaged so well!

I was going to stamp a sentiment in Night of Navy, but opted instead to use up some of my rub-ons and I like the white on the green better.

I used Navy behind the circle stickers for contrast, since they were already green-polka-dotted.

This bird was a challenge because of the direction he is looking, but I just put him on the right side of the card and put the gems on the left.

Here is your cuteness for the evening (or morning, if you are in Oz). I picked up this Hero Arts set while shopping last Tuesday because of a very enabling post on someone's blog. And since I have some Washi paper in the Heap, it was a logical move to introduce these little lasses to some ink. The only problem was stamping them on Washi paper. This paper is real textured and uneven, and no matter what I did I could not get a clean stamped image. So I decided instead to use the pretty paper as the background and just stamp their bodies on colored card stock and cut them out. I actually cut out all of the images, and just layered the kimonos on top of them. The faces are colored with a Copic, and I went over their hair with a black SU marker since I stamped them so poorly.

I also made my card for tomorrow's UHC, but I'll let you go now so you can rest up from all this reading. I promise not to be so long-winded tomorrow! :-) Thanks for stopping by!

A Mostly-Blue Saturday

It all started out so innocently with this pile of materials:

I had a crazy idea that if I put the flower paper and the coordinating card stock next to the Spirelli pieces from the UFO Pile, that I would be miraculously inspired to join them all into one marvelous creation. Not. But I did manage to eek out the following projects.

This is Teal on Lilac, but the Lilac looks like Brocade Blue in this shot (I really must speak with that photographer).

For the Spirelli star, I thought I'd try Certainly Celery for the base. I also broke out my new EK Success border punch. Ugh - I need to go to the gym. That baby was tough to punch! But being in the moooood to use up stuff, I saved the punch-outs because they were so COOL and used them to make the background on the base. I did need to punch out a bunch more than came from the border, which is probably why my wrist and hand were throbbing. I am weak, in many ways.

I am not loving this next one, although I do love that I rescued my Teeny Tinies set from the way-back of a drawer to use to make the background. And in case you are wondering if I stole this idea from the card Lauren sent me, I did not (even though it does look very suspicious). I had these letters left out from the b'day card I made for my boy, and I even had the 'happy' letters all picked out in a tidy little pile. The 'a' and the 'y' were burgundy, so I sanded them with my SU sanding block (took all of 5 seconds), inked them up with my Taken With Teal craft spot, and embossed them with clear EP. In theory, these match the Teal layer of card stock. In theory. I was not gonna re-do them.

Now THIS one has been in my head for over a week! I have wanted to make a forest out of that tree! I really, really like the Pacific Point with the Kiwi Kiss. Note to self: commence the hoarding process.

I picked up these flowers on my field trip to the ribbon outlet last Spring. I rediscovered them in The Other Room yesterday, and I thought they'd look cool with Pacific Point. And they do!

This card is a study in Blue, or more specifically, an example of 'what the heck color is this, anyway' study in Blue. I was so excited I had so many scraps of Pacific Point in the Heap, and when I added the vase and the patterned paper to the card base, I was just tingly with joy. Until ... I put the Pacific Point ribbon across the card, that is. Then it hit me: this is not Pacific Point; nuh-uh. It is Brilliant Blue! This is good news for those who looooove Pacific Point, but do not want to hoard it and have it around post-retirement. The Brilliant Blue 'goes' okay with the Pacific Point DS papers; Not the ribbon, though. I pulled out some old, retired Royal, and it is passable. Better than the PP blue ribbon, anyway.

PS: I am not sure if this will actually fit in an envelope, but I still like it!

This card came out of the UFO pile intact and ready to go. I may stamp a sentiment on it. Or not.

This guy was mostly made, too. The base was stamped and the pieces were stamped, layered and corner-punched. All I did yesterday was mount the parts to the card and add the ribbon. (This is a TAC set, in case you wondered.) Oh, and he's not blue.

That's what I did yesterday, and I am still 100% from the Heap, including card bases. The really sad part is you cannot tell I've taken anything off that table.

What else ... oh, I have updated my SU Stuff For Sale in the Shameless Commerce section of this blog. Go check it out and see if there is anything you need to adopt. :-)

Okay, I am off to do something creative again today. I'll need to bag and tag all of yesterday's stuff before I can get started, though. I may dig out some of the Washi paper in that Heap and break out my new Hero Arts stamp set. Cuteness Alert! Hopefully I'll get around to posting it later this evening.

Happy Ides of March, and look for tomorrow's UHC post! Thanks for stopping by!

More Cards From The Heap, and Some Happy Mail!

My s-crap adventure continues, and I have been a busy girl!

This is what I ended up with from that marble-made scrap. I went in a bad direction, then I kept going. What can I say? I am not excited about it, but I did use up some more SAB rub-ons. ;-)

This card uses a bit of Basic Grey patterned paper. I love the colors in it, and I am sure I have more of it hoarded... somewhere.

I even forced myself to use the remaining piece so it did not go back into the Heap. I really like that splash of orange in the pattern, and I did not want to put anything over it, so the obligatory ribbon went to the side, and the sentiment went below.

Here are my lonely hearts. Way back when, many many moons ago, on an entirely different project (stay with me, here) I tried to match a green-with-brown-dots ribbon to green card stock. I realized the folly of my thinking, and instead paired the ribbon with brown, thus eliminating the green part of the challenge altogether! I took the same approach here, by giving up on matching the red and instead used the red as an accent with the Vanilla & Basic Gray papers. Ta-da! I did go back and add a layer of red to accent the top of the card, but it is far enough away so you cannot tell it is a shade or six off.

This is the other version of the card. This set of hearts had a Vanilla base, so I needed to add something for contrast so it would not disappear into the background. I chose Pomegranate, then I hand-cut the shape.

These are the last two cards I made with the remaining scraps of this piece of DS paper. I rummaged in my brad stash cuz I just knew I had some big red ones, and I did! I layered the brads on 1/2" + 3/4" circles. Done!

And so far, I have used 100% stuff off the Heap - nothing card stock or paper-wise from The Other Room!!! I am very proud.

Then I took a break. I actually put on shoes and left the house, because I wanted to get my arse over to Hancock Fabrics to drop off my scissors so they could finally be sharpened. DONE! They will be ready Monday evening. Yay!

I checked my mail before I came back inside, and ... I have Happy Mail!!! Yes! I got mail from Lauren!!!!

She stamped a bird on the envelope. A bird with a flower on its butt! LOL!


And this is the *amazing* card there-in! Oh, man, I LOVE this!!!

Aaaaaaaand, look what else she included! Check out that packaging! Look at the pretty bow and the really, really cute pin attached to it. The chocolate is gone, and it was yummy! Sigh ...

Okay, I think I'll go back and make some more cards, then maybe work on my Stuff For Sale list for SCS and Da Blog. I hope you are having a great weekend!