Thanks!

What a beautiful weekend it has been here in Colorado! The sky is the perfect shade of blue and some of the trees in my neighborhood are turning a little bit gold. It's been a fun weekend too! Yesterday I got to drive to Fort Collins to meet up with my daughter for lunch and a little shopping. She lives in Laramie and FoCo is just about halfway for both of us. It was great to spend a few hours with her. While we were gone, my sister was on call to let my dog in and out of her kennel since we didn't know how long we would be gone. Well, she was having such a fun time with Lucy that she just stayed here! Above and beyond dog watching so I made her this little thank you card.

I originally intended to stamp the background circles but found that none of my green inks were the bright green I was going for so I decided to use some patterned paper. When I was done I realized that I didn't use any stamping at all on this card! It was fun to make and I succeeded in getting sticky fingers (from the glue) instead of inky fingers so it's all good! 

I also played along with a couple of challenges while creating this card.

The first was The Cas(e) this sketch challenge .

And the second challenge is the Cupcake Inspirations Challenge which is a fun color challenge inspired by cupcakes! 

Thanks for stopping by! 

NBUS!

Hi all! 

Wow! I am so excited that I actually got to play in the NBUS Challenge #5! All the stars aligned this time for sure. Thanks, Darnell, for such a fun challenge. I've wanted to play for a long time. 

My NBUS (Never Before Used Schtuff) on this card was Swanky Snowdudes from Paper Smooches. I got this set last March in order to get a head start on my Christmas cards. Ahem. So yeah, not much of a head start, huh?

The other NBUS was a recent purchase of Prismacolor colored pencils and Gamsol. I'm super new to coloring but I think this first attempt with something other than markers wasn't too terrible!

Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks! (Er.... I think?)

The last year has been a tough one for us with our dogs. My best boy, Scout passed away suddenly in August 2014 and then Molly, the dog with nine lives, died in April.  We had them since they were puppies and they were 12 and almost 13 when they passed. Our house apparently just does not feel like home without a dog so just one month after Molly died, we decided we needed another dog. This time we decided that we wanted a more seasoned dog instead of a puppy so we applied at Mile High Lab Rescue to adopt an older lab. Well. Our adoption contact just happened to be expecting a yellow two year old that week and thought we would be a perfect fit for her. Two was a little younger than we had hoped for but we decided we would "go look at her" to see how she was. Anyone who knows us knows that we can never just go look at a dog without bringing them home. :) And so Lucy (who it turned out was really closer to one than to two) became our newest family member.  I mean who could resist this face?

She really is a sweet girl even though she has WAY more puppy in her than we were planning for. It will keep us young, right? 

I made this card for our adoption coordinator to say thanks for keeping her for us and taking care of her for the week we were out of town when she arrived in Colorado. 

Often I have a hard time imagining how different stamp sets can work together but I actually used four different sets on this card and I think it turned out kind of cute! It was kind of thick with the dog bone ribbon I used so I hope it made it through the mail with the extra postage I put on the envelope. I have had several cards go completely missing in the postal system lately, even some that were flat so who even knows. 

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Welcome Sweet Baby!

Hi there! Last week I attended the baby shower of a daughter of a good friend of mine. I have known this young lady since she was just 7 years old and it doesn't seem possible that she is now old enough to be married and expecting her first little daughter! How can these "kids" be getting so old when I am still so young? LOL! 

This card is a complete CASE of a card by the talented Lynn Put. I totally used her design and the same stamp set. The only changes I made were to the sentiment stamp and the color scheme. Her card was perfection and I just had to copy it. 

The stamp set is Fox and Friends by Stampin' Up! and the sentiment is from Making a Statement by Verve Stamps. The colors are Pumpkin Pie, Tempting Turquoise and Daffodil Delight. 

 And since I'm sure many people can relate, here is the craftermath of one single, solitary card. How does this even happen??? But it does and is the reason I have to clean up after each and every card before I can start on the next one. 

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Button Bear

Happy Wednesday! Oh my goodness this has been such a crazy week at work. I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round and any minute I'm going to lose my grip and go flying off the edge. That's one of the reasons I like crafting. I can just come home and kind of go into a creative zone where I have no deadlines and no one clamoring for my attention. Well, except my dog but she is a great crafting buddy! Good thing my husband isn't the clamoring type either. :)

Today I am sharing a card that I made for the latest challenge over at the Retro Rubber Challenge Blog and this time it was a sketch challenge. For my card I used one of my oldest stamp sets, Button Bear from Stampin' Up!. I remember when I bought this set that I really had to think long and hard about if I wanted to buy it. It was at the top of my budget and buying it would mean I couldn't buy anything else from the catalog for awhile. I was glad to be able to pull out this little bear and show an old stamp set some love. 

I hope you can still see the sketch somewhat as the little bear lends himself more to a square than a longer rectangle. 

This card really highlights how much I need to learn how to color! How about you? Are you a good colorer? I am reluctant to spend a ton of money on the huge variety of markers it seems I would need to do a lot of shading. I need to look for a website that offers recommendations of markers to start with that will give me some practice to decide if that's a direction I want to go. Any advice?

Thanks for stopping by today! 

OWH #245 and a Chopped-style challenge

Do you like to watch cooking shows? I like some of them, others not so much. But one that I DO like to watch is Chopped. In case you haven't ever seen it, the contestants are given a mystery basket with four ingredients and they have to use everything in the basket in some way. They can use a lot or a little but everything in the basket must make it onto the plate. 

A couple of years ago, one of my work friends and I were talking about how we were in a rut of using the same stamps and accessories and how we wanted to get out of it. The idea of a chopped-style challenge came up and sounded like fun. I have all my stamp sets typed on slips of paper in one bag, all my accessories in another, and all my punches in another. I draw out one of each and whatever shows up is what I have to work with. I can add other "ingredients" but each one of the slips of paper must be represented. 

Today, I decided it was time for a Chopped-style stamping challenge since I haven't done one in a while. 

So what are we working with today?  My mystery "ingredients" are:

Stamp set: Flower Fest
Punch: Spiral Border
Accessory: Rhinestones

And this is what I created:

I used a sketch from Operation Write Home (sketch #245). I love their sketches since they give dimensions. Does anyone else ever struggle with that? Some days I do fine and some days I cannot get the scale of all the pieces to work well together when I am eyeballing it. 

Today was a miss you card since the founder of OWH, Sandy, said they were a little low on those. I hope one of the service members will choose this and whoever they are missing feels the love they are sending. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Back in the (card making) Saddle!

Gosh it feels good to be back in my craft room. We finished our basement this summer and while I absolutely love it, it has taken awhile to get everything put back together again. And even then, I set my room up in a completely different configuration so I don't really have a feel yet for how my space works best for me and where all my tools are. I find myself reaching for something in it's "normal" spot only to find that it's not there which is exactly what happened when I started making this card. I am playing along with the Retro Rubber Challenge Blog challenge to use my crimper. I swear it took me longer to locate the crimper in it's new home than it did to make the card!

I am new to reading the Retro Rubber Challenge blog but I know it will become one of my favorites. We all spend so much time and money getting our new stamps and then they languish in our cupboards. Or is that just me? So this card not only used the crimper for the challenge but also one of my older stamp sets, Best of Everything.  I am also submitting this for the sketch challenge over at Sunday Stamps. I turned the sketch onto its side to make it work with the stamp set I chose. I really liked this sketch and know that I will keep it in my arsenal. 

Thanks for stopping by!