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!