Farm Fresh Challenge

I realize I'm surprising many of you with the frequent posts, but the fact is that this week has allowed me to focus more on my stamping and blogging and I'm enjoying it very much. I don't know if it will last, but while I'm able to I am going to participate in as much as I can.
Flourishes is having a Farm Fresh challenge prior to their new release. I decided to color one of my Apple of My Eye images and set it off with papers in my favorite colors from my Stella and Rose "Gertie" papers. The little bit of blue behind the image is from K & Company's "Americana." Flourishes does have awesome fruits and veggies to color up, so I hope you can at least get to smile at the gorgeous cards the DT has come up with and join the challenge if you can. Thanks for stopping by.

Flourishes Star Spangled Challenge

Flourishes is have a Star Spangled challenge using red, white and blue and the happy winner gets the new releases, which look quite fabulous. You can get all the details here. To see a sample of the new releases, check out Leslie Miller's blog here. I decided to make a Father's Day card for my entry, and the images I used are from Flourishes "A Man's View." My DP's are K & Company and my letters are from my Martha Stewart Alphabet punches. The new releases are really grabbing me and I have no doubt they'll grab you too, so be sure to check them out. Thanks for stopping by.

Bring Back Beautiful Challenge

I have another card to add to my Christmas stash and also to enter into Flourishes' "Bring Back Beautiful" challenge. The challenge is to show how you wrap up your cards with ribbon. My card features an image from the Christmas Classics set from Flourishes and papers from Basic Grey's "Jovial." My image is colored with Copics and hung with Red and White Twine, also from Flourishes. The large scallop was cut with PTI's Large Scallop Border die. I added some "holly" from a MS punch. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I'm loving this image and colored up another one to feature with a Spellbinder's die of another shape. This has been a busy week for me so I haven't done any blogging or posting......so sorry about that. Hopefully I can catch up with your blogs soon. Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful week-end.

Halloween Tilda

I've been waiting a long time to ink up this combo and I love it. These are both Magnolia images and when I saw the quilt (Picnic Quilt, from '08) I decided that this Witch Tilda with Hat ('09)would look so cute sitting on it. I used Cosmo Cricket's Pixie-licious papers, but I didn't choose them until after Tilda was all colored. I must have subconsciously memorized that color scheme in my head because it was a perfect match to the papers. I chose some leaves and acorns from Flourishes' Falling Leaves set to surround her with instead of flowers. Once again I used my PTI wool felt and their Beautiful Blooms II dies for a flower for the corner. The tiny leaves stamped on the sentiment and the sentiment are from PTI's Mailbox Greetings set. I've taken pictures several cards I've done recently so hopefully I can post more cards for you than I've done in awhile. Thanks for stopping by. I hope this month of October has been an enjoyable one for you. It's such a beautiful time of year.

Flourishes Sketch Challenge and Chance to Win

Flourishes has a great sketch challenge going and if you enter you're in the running to win all three of October's new releases. I recently got some new stamps, and while the images on my card and the sentiment are from two different sets I knew they would be perfect together and couldn't wait to use them together. This sketch was a great way to do it. My DP's are Basic Grey's "Eerie". The shoe and broom are from Flourishes "Witching You a Happy Halloween" and the sentiment is from Kraftin' Kimmie's "Cinderella". I've been working on mass-produced Christmas cards in groups of 10 and I'm almost done with my second group of 10. My goal is to get them all done and addressed by the end of October because that is always such a big project during the holidays so I'll be thrilled to have it done. Thank you for your kind comments and wishes for our new little grandson and thanks for stopping by. It's almost time for another Copic Challenge so stay tuned.

Trunk Full of Wishes

Good Monday morning to you. Today I have a card for my dear daughter because it's her 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Sweetie! Since she is due to have her second son any time, she might as well share her birthday and get on with it, right?! Anyway, this is "Traveling Tilda" and "Suitcase with Sign" from the Bon Voyage collection. I just love this Tilda so I made her into the keeper of wishes inside this trunk. You'll note that I attached a key to "unlock" that trunk full of wishes. I copied Mary Giemza's post idea from Saturday and did an easel card, even borrowing the die-cut swirls. Her card is awesome and you can see it here. I love doing easel cards because the recipient can display their card if they want to rather than having to put it away. I used Wags and Whiskers DP's and I stamped the frame around Tilda with Flourishes' "Falling Leaves", then sponged Tilda and the frame in "Old Paper" Distress Ink from Tim Holtz. The sentiment is computer generated and the dies are from Spellbinders' Labels Seventeen. I love those because they accommodate a pretty big image. The flowers are Primas from 7 Kids College Fund. I hope you have a lovely week and I hope to be back with some challenge cards soon. Til then, thanks for stopping by. I love hearing from you.

Card #3-Patience

Here is my third card in the "Cuties" series. This one I called "Patience," but she is found in the Summer Cuties as "Speedster." The sentiment from Flourishes' new "Kids at Play" set seemed to be perfect. Again I used Cosmo Cricket's "Pixie-licious" DP's and I colored my flowers to pull out colors from the image and papers. I used my Spica glitter pens for parts of her tricycle. These three are all I've done so far, and I thought originally I would keep them simpler and make up a note card set by adding a few others to it, but I couldn't leave them without embellishing them and then wondered how practical it would be to make them for a set. I still love the images and enjoy looking at these little cuties. I hope you've enjoyed them. We're starting a new week and I hope you have a good one. Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Father's Day

Just wanted to share a few cards I did for my guys for Father's Day. The first is for my eldest son and I had to get this one in the mail so went for something simple. Hope it got there on time, but if not, it's not likely he'll check my blog and see it here first. If he does, Happy Father's Day Matt! My idea was inspired by Stacy's card here, but I changed mine slightly. I used a different cup and "steam" than she did, and I made my sentiment on the front a bookmark. I used the cup from Flourishes "Coffee with Friends" and free-handed the rim around it and colored them with Copics. The steam is a partial image from Impression Obsession's "Smell the Coffee" set. The top sentiment on the bookmark is from "Smell the Coffee" and then "A Man's View" from Flourishes.
My next two are adorable Whimsie Doodles images that I had to customize since my one son has boys and girls. The DP for the whales is from SU and the background DP is from my DCWV "Old World" stack (I'm loving these papers.) I was so intrigued with Ellen Hutson's glitter classes that I employed this technique on these two cards. I used my score-tape that I got from 7 Kids CF, lined it up along the edge of my DP and punched out the scallop edge with my SU edge punch. I adhered the CS to the main card and then peeled off the top strip and sprinkled my SU Ultra-Fine glitter over the Score-Tape. The second thin line was the tiny strip that was left when I punched the scallop so I glued it on and repeated the technique. You should be able to click on each picture for a closer view. I haven't delivered my husband's card yet as he is not here to receive it at the moment, so I'll wait on sharing that one. I hope all you dad's out there have a great Father's Day. Thanks for stopping by.

Color Challenge

Goodmorning and happy Saturday! Busy Beauties is currently hosting a color challenge. I made this card for my SIL's sister who is graduating from nursing school. This seemed to be the perfect image. The challenge was to use red and blue somewhere, so I decided to color my image with a monochromatic color-scheme and let the red and blue pop out. I also decided to link this to the Sunday Sketch and Stamp challenge, so this uses their sketch because Busy Beauties is sponsoring this challenge. I used my Tiny Bubbles and Hearts EF's and the grad hat and sentiment are from Flourishes new set "Hats Off." I hope you have a chance to play along with our BB color challenge. Thanks for stopping by.

Summer Fruits and Twinchies

I had fun making these cute little cards to enter into Flourishes' "Twinchie" challenge. The images took very little time to color - less time than picking out DP's to go with them, or at least the first one. I decided to do the second one because both images are from Flourishes "Peaches and Cherries" set and the fruits sounded sooooo good to me. I used Cosmo Crickets "Material Girl" DP's for the Peaches card, and Basic Grey's "Lemonade" plus Cosmo Cricket's "Early Bird" for the cherries card. I'm really tickled with how they turned out so I may have to make more of these. Great challenge, ladies. Hope you have a great week and thanks for stopping by.

Just Chillin'

Yep, this little guy is just chillin' because he's "Chillin' Randy", another one of the Busy Beauty images available at the BB Boutique. I love this image and thought he'd be perfect to adorn a birthday card I had to make. I know Carolyn had a post recently that featured him in green and blue - if you missed it you should check it out because it was too cute! I also love blue and green together and this card had to be a "guy" card, so I went with the blue and green as well. This image can go with a lot of sentiments and I especially thought it went with this one, at least "attitude-wise." The sentiment is from Flourishes' Birthday Celebration. Randy and cake were colored with Copic Markers. There is a Chillin' Rosey" for the gals as well. Check out the boutique and all the great new images, and if you missed the Blog Hop, (previous post), be sure to see how cute these images are all done up. I hope you have a wonderful week-end. It's in the 20's here.......YIKES! Stay warm, wherever you are!

Princess Post

Not much time these days to post, and I'm so sorry that I haven't been around to see your latest creations. I would love to see what you're all doing, but I've been busy every moment and this is the first chance I've had to post to my blog. I'm still hoping to find some quiet time to stop by for a visit and actually be able to leave a comment. Meanwhile I had to post my little princess and her birthday card. I took her to her first production of the Nutcracker on Saturday and she was so excited! Her 6th birthday was last week, and I bought her a fancy dress and coat and it was even cold enough out to wear it. Her mom fixed her hair so pretty and polished her nails and put sparklies all over her cute little face. She was sooooo excited, and she loved the performance. It was even more special because her dad and her aunt both play in the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra that accompanied the performance. It was outstanding, and she loved it......so did I!! I'm thankful that our fair city is still very supportive of the arts. So, I colored the image on her card to try to match her dress. It's mostly the dress color that matches, and their blonde hair. She's holding a Nutcracker that we bought at the production. The image is one of Mo's designs, and when I saw it I thought it would be perfect for our little princess. The background is gold-embossed with Flourishes "Damask." Thank you, all you faithful bloggers who still stop and visit and comment. I promise I haven't forgotten you and I will be around soon. I hope you have a safe and wonderful Christmas!

Flourishes' "I Believe" Santa

Wow, it's been over a week since my last post, but last week was a busy one for our family. My best friend was here for most of the week. While she was here, my precious 16-month-old grandson who lives with us was admitted to the hospital for 2 days with viral bronchialitis. Not a fun time. Needless to say, I was not stamping or blogging.
I did this card awhile ago but I was so inspired by this card from Linda Duke for Flourishes that I decided to go back and color mine. Linda's card is exquisite and I know mine doesn't hold a candle to hers, but I'm still very pleased with it. I had stamped it in one of my distress inks and just colored the berries and holly leaves at first. After seeing hers, I decided to be daring and try to color it. It was already in my card and ready to go, so if I messed up, I'd have to scratch the whole card. I colored it with my prismacolor pencils. Haven't used them in awhile. I do like how it turned out and I still think this image is incredibly beautiful and detailed. At our house, Santa is acknowledged but not emphasized, so I chose to use "Merry Christmas" instead of the "Believe" sentiment that comes with the set. I hope to be back before a whole week goes by again, and I hate that I've not had time to visit and comment on your blogs, but the holidays keep me busy. I'm so happy that 3 of my 4 kids and their families will be with us for Thanksgiving, and all 4 of my kids and their families will be home for Christmas. This will be a first in a long, long time. There will be 19 of us for that. Thank you for stopping and looking. I do love and miss your comments and just generally keeping in touch. Have a wonderful week and Thanksgiving Holiday and good luck if you dare to go out on Black Friday. LOL Hugs,

Babies and Christmas

I have two cards to share with you today and they're both stamps from Flourishes. The first is from their Baby Love set and it is for our very dear friends who were blessed today with a new granddaughter. Their oldest grandchild is 16 if I'm not mistaken, so this has been a thrill for them to anticipate this new little one, and a girl at that. We are so happy for them. The papers used are from SU's Pink Pirouette. This set came out a few months ago and I immediately fell in love with it.
The next card is from their Christmas Wreath set, and I think it is one of the handsomest wreaths I've ever seen. I've already seen it colored several different ways and every one that I've seen is gorgeous. Flourishes is preparing to release their November sets this week so peek previews are already out there. No, I'm not doing a commercial for them. I just happen to love and have need for these images right now, so I'm thrilled that they're sitting here waiting for me to ink up. It's also time to donate my Christmas cards to our church for the Women's ministry to send out to our missionaries, so I need to go through what I've been saving up and get them ready to pass on to them. We are getting ready for Tropical Storm Ida and the rain is steadily increasing. Schools were cancelled today and much more is supposed to be closed tomorrow. I'm going to clean up and watch a movie and hope that we don't lost power. Thanks for stopping by. It's always a treat for me to see what others are doing and share with you what I've been doing.

Favorite Things Challenge at Flourishes

I love the challenge at Flourishes right now, and I actually had a chance to participate. The challenge is to do a card illustrating a line from Sound of Music's "My Favorite Things". If you don't remember the lyrics they can be found on their blog. I decided to do......oh, heck, I'm sure you can figure it out, although I upgraded from "strings." This is Flourishes "O Christmas Tree" set and I tried to keep the feel more country with this cute little tree. I love the plaid paper, which is from My Mind's Eye "Merry Days of Christmas" collection. The ribbon for the ribbon loops is from Sharon Johnson's ribbon store. My daughter is about to start rehearsing for our local production of Sound of Music, so I was excited to do this and get into the spirit. The DT has done some beautiful cards for this challenge. Be sure to check them out if you can. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week-end.

Fall Wedding

I wanted to share another card I got done. This is for our nephew's wedding which we will be attending this week-end while in Orlando. I decided that they probably would prefer something with a "natural" look to it instead of a fancy wedding card, so I used my Falling Leaves set from Flourishes. The sentiment and rings are from Flourishes Wedding Essentials set. The sentiment on the inside is from Gina K called With This Ring, and the Congratulations is an Inkadinkadoo stamp that I love. I stamped the various leaves in Fall SU colors, and then colored the one leaf and acorns with my copics. I mounted this on SU's Soft Suede - I really like that color! The ribbon and buckle are also from Flourishes. Well, yay!...I managed to post two cards. If I have internet access while I'm away I'll try to get around to see what y'all are doing. If not, I'll have to ooh and ahh when I return. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week-end.

Fight Like a Girl

I can't believe it's been almost a week since I posted to my blog. I hate that, but I guess there are too many things competing with my stamping life right now. I did manage to make these two projects to send to my niece. She has been very involved for several years in Walks for Life relays and I thought maybe she would like to share these with friends of hers. I made the bookmarks first and they were pretty simple. I backed them with Pink Pirouette DP. The card I made needed some brighter pinks with it so I used both Pixie and Passion Pink CS with it. They're all done with Flourishes "Think Pink-Fight Like a Girl" set. I really like that set and I hate that I didn't get to this sooner so I could send more cards out to my own friends. We leave tomorrow for Disney World (I know, life is tough), so I wanted to get this posted before I leave. I hope you are enjoying Fall, wherever you are. We finally got a taste of cooler weather and I'm loving it. Thanks for stopping by.

Christmas on the Classy Side

On Saturday, World Card-Making Day, I wanted to make at least one card in honor of the day, but I got to make two. I'll share the first with you today. I love how this turned out, although it was somewhat slow coming together since I made it up as I went. I got the main idea from a post that Susan "Rainy" Roberts did awhile ago with SU's ornament stamp and punch. I combined stamps from 3 different sets to make this. The main ornament and sentiment are from PTI's 2008 Holiday Tags Collection, the top of the ornament is from Verve's Ornamental Christmas, the background is the Damask stamp from Flourishes. I embossed the Damask in black EP as well as the ornaments and then I punched the ornaments with my 1-3/4" circle punch - a perfect fit. The sentiment is embossed in gold and punched with SU's Modern Label Punch. The ribbon is from Sharon Johnson's Ribbon store. All of this is on gold CS from SU. I used my MS punch for the "holly" and punched little red "berries" with my Crop-a-dile. They were a bit flat, so I added red half-pearls on top of them. My daughter thought the black ribbon confused things with the swirly background and thought something should go on top of the ribbon. The gold cord from SU was too yellow-gold, so I ended up cutting a thin strip of the gold CS and that seemed to work. I topped it all off with the fancy corners die cut for my Cuttlebug. The picture doesn't do justice to how rich it looks with all the embossing. It's a good thing I made these on Saturday because Sunday my cold seems to have turned into the flu. Since I'm laid up, I thought I'd at least try to post this. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week.

Victorian Charm

This card was done with one of Flourishes newest sets, Cottage Home. My background paper is from Basic Grey's Two Scoops and it reminded me a little of Victorian wallpaper with the cherubs on it. The heart-slide is also from Flourishes and the ribbon is from SU. I used my Martha Stewart fence punch and matched it to a "cobblestone" sidewalk which is the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder for my Cuttlebug. I really like how this turned out, although the coloring took me awhile, mainly because I was deciding as I went what colors to make the house. Thanks for stopping by. I'm off to try another one of my new Flourishes sets and then finish some cute Halloween projects. Have a wonderful rest of the week-end.

Flourishes Sketch Challenge

I actually jumped in on two challenges this week, besides Copics, of course. One was Flourishes' and they had a simple sketch challenge, but the cards the DT did were gorgeous and motivated me to get in on this. (It's one of those rare Saturdays when things aren't quite so busy.) I used Flourishes "All Wrapped Up" and my Wassail DP from Basic Grey. I cut out the packages from this paper, as well as the ribbon and bow, and then continued to use it for background paper. My main CS is gold from SU. The ribbon and buckle are both from Flourishes and I've been enjoying these gorgeous buckle embellishments. Be sure you check out the gorgeous cards the DT did and jump in on this one if you've got a bit of free time. Thanks for stopping by and I wish you a happy relaxing day and rest of your week-end.