Tea, Cookies and a Sketch

The Busy Beauties DT were invited to sponsor this week's Sweet Sketch Wednesday. The sketch was a great one to do and I used one of the new Busy Beauties releases called "Tea and Cookies." I'm loving my Basic Grey Kioshi papers and used them again for this card. I colored my image with Copics and I colored my flowers with Copics also. The sentiments on the circle are from PTI's "Tea for Two" and the sentiment at the bottom is from Flourishes "Christmas Tea." I hope you can join in on the challenge - I think you'll love the sketch. Thanks for your visit and your comments. They always encourage me.

Summer's Comin'

This week's Just Magnolia challenge is "Anything Goes." I have so many Magnolia images I can't wait to stamp and color and this is one I've been wanting to do. This card uses 2 images: Tilda in Swimsuit sitting on Bathing Ring. I stamped Tilda first and then masked her to do the bathing ring. The image is colored with Copics. I incorporated colors from my Basic Grey Kioshi set, which I'm loving using. My sentiments are from Gina K's Lazy Days of Summer. My eyelet strip is punched with a MS punch. The flower center is a stitched brad that coordinates with Basic Grey's Eskimo Kisses paper. Hope your weather is growing warmer and you can taste those lazy days of summer comin' just around the corner. Thanks so much for stopping by.

Seeing Spots, er....."Dots"

Happy Sunday to you! Today our Copic Creations DT members were invited to be Guest Designers for Crissy's second Sunday's with Crissy Challenge. This adorable image is one of Crissy's and the theme for the challenge is "dots." Do you think I captured the theme? I used several shades of my tiny polka-dot paper from PTI, and the 3 smaller stars were stamped with SU inks and a star stamp from SU's "In the Stars." I colored my sweet, happy couple with Copics and gave his kerchief some dots as well. My DH even weighed in with a suggestion to give them freckles which I jumped right on. I just loved this image when I saw it, and I didn't even take into account that her dress has "dots" all over it. I hope you can join this fun challenge. Thanks for stopping by and I wish you a wonderful week.

Welcoming Spring with a Twist & Shout

Welcome!
We’ve got a “SPRING” in our step today and NEW Busy

Beauties Boutique images in our hands and we are delighted to have you along for the hop! If you are just starting out, please be sure to hop back to Carolyn’s blog so you don’t miss any of the fun! If you are arriving here from Barb's blog then you are right on track.

I loved all the new images but I decided to go with this one called "Eat Cake." Since I am a rather conservative-type person when it comes to going Green on my cards, I realized that I would most likely use buttons and ribbons recycled from somewhere/something. While there are many, many things you could employ to "Go Green" on a card, I chose to stick with the traditional items one might add without a great deal of trouble. That's what I did with this image. I sewed on buttons, and attached my sunny yellow ribbon. My solid CSs are So Saffron and Tangerine Tango from SU! My tiny dot DP is from PTI and my striped DP is from Cosmo Cricket. My Swiss-Dot embossed Tangerine Tango is sponged with Tim Holtz' "Rusty Hinge" Distress Ink. My sentiment is from SU's "Sweet Little Sentiments." I colored my whole image with my Copic markers.

We hope you’ll join us for a TWIST & a SHOUT! The “TWIST” being our new GO GREEN WITH A TWIST Challenge (in honor of Earth Day) at the Busy Beauties Creation Station! And the “SHOUT” being a RELEASE PARTY over on Paper Craft Planet this SATURDAY AT 8 P.M. EDT. We'll bring the Party Favors! *wink, wink*

Your next stop is Kadie! Thanks for bopping & hopping with us, and we hope to see you for the TWIST and SHOUT!

Meet the Tweedles

Here is another one of those adorable images from the Busy Beauties "Alice Series". This one is "The Tweedles Dee and Dom." I used both sides of Cosmo Cricket's "Girl Friday" for the DP, and Tangerine Tango for my main CS. Be sure to check out the talents of our April Guest Designer Susan. Her link and details can be found at the Busy Beauties Creation Station challenge blog here. I hope you've had a chance to check out these great Alice images, and we have some new images we'll be sharing with you on Thursday. Thanks for stopping by.

Swingin' By with Birthday Wishes

I finally got to ink up my adorable C.C. Designs "Party" set, and I started with this card. I perched my little girl on a "swing" and "hung" it from a makeshift stamped tree background. My sweet little granddaughter turns two in about 3 weeks, so this one is for her. Her brother will be 5 the week before that, so I have colored the little boy and will post him soon for my grandson. Then in June there are two more grandsons' birthdays - one turning 2 and one turning 1. Lots to keep up with I'll tell ya! Anyway, I love how this little one turned out. My DP's are Cosmo Cricket's "Material Girl". Thanks for stopping and taking a look. Have a wonderful week-end.

Copic Creation Challenge Time

It's time for another Copic Creations challenge. This time we're doing black hair. I am wowed by what the DT has done with their cards. Our sponsor is the Greeting Farm, and I got to work with "Graduate Ian." This will be perfect because my grandson is graduating from K-4 in May. The stone wall behind him is a Magnolia stamp and the "cloudy" sky is Basic Grey's "Mellow" DP. The background DP is from Basic Grey's "Marrakech." Be sure you go to the Copic Creations blog to get the details on the prize for this challenge and check out all the beautiful ways to color black hair. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day.

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.

New Image Release and New Challenge Blog

ALL ABOARD (woot, woot!) FOR A NEW BUSY BEAUTIES ADVENTURE!!!!!

WELCOME! Today is a very BIG day for us, and we are way beyond excited! We hope you’ll join us on a fabulous journey as we travel through Wonderland with awesome new ALICE INSPIRED IMAGES from the Busy Beauties Boutique! Along the way, we’re also welcoming our April Guest DT SUSAN! Our final destination is our BRAND NEW BLOG: The Busy Beauties Creation Station!!!!! The adventure begins at Catherine’s blog. If you are arriving from Rachel's blog then you are on the right trail.

For my choices for the Hop, I love the Alice images Carolyn and Thomas have come up with. I must admit when I first saw the cat it was not anything like I expected. The Queen, likewise, looked very ominous. But when it came time to decide which images to do for the hop, those are the two I chose. I decided to "take a walk on the dark side" and I really enjoyed working these up. Since the Queen has sort of a Phantom look going on, I decided to keep the colors on the dark side as well. I used my 7 Gypsies "Savannah" DP and I was pleased with the vintage look it offered. I incorporated quotes from the "Alice in Wonderland" book for both of my cards.

"Chester Cat" is certainly not the harmless looking cat we're familiar with from the classic Disney movie, but he is apparently truer to the actual cat in the original story. I made an easel card with him and used Basic Grey's Eerie Paper Pad DP's to carry out sort of a cat/madness theme. I printed out two "Mad Scrapper" images, mirror-imaging one of them, and colored them and cut out just the heads, again to accentuate the "mad"-hatter idea. Once again I used a quote from the book. I colored all images with Copic markers. I know you'll love the rest of the images you'll find along the hop, so be sure to continue the journey and then join our challenge from our very own Busy Beauties Challenge Blog.

As always, we have HOP PRIZES! There will be 3 winners chosen from the comments left on certain DT blogs, but it's a secret which blogs we'll draw from! The prize for these winners is their choice of 1 Free BBB Image! So be sure to leave some love all along the way! Blog Hop Winners will be announced Sunday night on the Creation Station blog. And there is a prize package for the randomly selected winner of our Inaugural Challenge, so be sure to check that out at the end of the hop!

Your next stop is Michelle's blog! Enjoy the ride and when you finally arrive at the Creation Station, you’ll see our Inaugural Challenge is posted and waiting for you! Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week-end.

Copic Creations Challenge #25

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. I have been out of town, my computer crashed, and I was sick for several days, so all that truly set me back. I'm happy to report that my computer data has been saved and I'm over my illness. Now I'm finally getting back up to speed with my cards. Our Copic Creations challenge for the next two weeks is being sponsored by Paper Garden Projects, http://www.papergardenprojects.com/
and Cathy from PGP will be giving a $25.00 GC to the store. The theme of this challenge is flowers. What a great theme for this time of year. My Daffodils are from Flourishes' Calendar Set 1. I stamped the image 3 times, colored two of them completely and just one flower from the 3rd. I used dimensionals to mount the second flower image and 3rd single flower. My circle is done with a Spellbinder's die and a corner punch, previously featured here. The Copic colors I used are listed with my card on the Copic Creations website. The DT did some beautiful illustrations of flowers. I hope you'll check them all out and then join us for this challenge. So many left such wonderful comments on my last CC challenge post and I loved reading all of them. I used random.org to pick a winner for the "card" and Bow Easy, and it chose #7, who was Lissa. Lissa, congratulations! Please e-mail me with your address and I'll get that in the mail right away to you. I wish you all a wonderful Easter week-end. Thank you so much for stopping by.

Vacation Pics-Beautiful Sedona

I wanted to share with you a few pictures from our recent trip out west. A week ago today we drove to beautiful Sedona, Arizona, (from Buckeye) picnicked in a park and then walked a trail in another area. What incredible creations these were. The picture on the bottom left is of our grandson Ethan who lives with us, along with his mom-our daughter (his dad is military) and our son's youngest one, Emalee. They're 4 months apart and they had a good time together. In fact we heard that the morning after we left Emalee went around her house calling for Ethan. We had a lovely time being with our son and his family and it ended all too quickly, as always. The day after we got back I came down with some nasty virus and have been laid up in bed until this afternoon. Remnants of it are still hanging on, but I trust I'm on the mend. I'm also having a personal
crisis - a computer-crisis. Just before our trip I received my new computer and it was at that time that my old one, perhaps out of jealousy, who knows, decided it wouldn't boot up anymore. Now, of course, my life since 2004 is on that baby, and I loved that computer and I can't get a lick off of it. I'll have to take it in and hopefully they'll get it to boot up and work again, and if not, perhaps they can do a disk recovery on it. All of my digi-stamps are on it, and so much more. Well, I apologize for the whiney stuff. Hopefully I'll have a card up real soon. Meanwhile I wanted to post something lest people think I disappeared altogether.

Christine's Sketch Challenge

I was excited to learn that my friend Christine from dolcreations is guest designer this week for the Truly Scrumptious Challenge blog. Her challenge is a sketch challenge with the option of adding a quilt effect. I colored my Tilda with copics and used DP's from Basic Grey's Marrakech for my background and quilt squares. The blue squares are stamped with a quilt-block stamp from PTI's Quilter's Sampler and cut with EK Success' square punch, which fits those blocks perfectly. My sentiment is also from the same set and the inside of the card continues the sentiment with "is sewn with love and measured with kindness." My ribbon is covered up with the quilt blocks but it's there. My solid brown is SU's Soft Suede and my solid blue is PTI's Ocean Tides. The light brown DP is a single sheet I ordered and I don't remember it's name. I'm glad that I got to play along with this challenge. I'll be MIA for a few days while I go visit my babies in AZ. I'm taking several images and several Copics so I can color some. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week-end.

100th Challenge!

I purchased a few digi-stamps the other day from a new (to me) artist that has some pretty cute images, found here at Stitchy Bear Stamps. This little fairy is one that I bought and I colored her for our neighbor's little girl's 2nd birthday that my grandson was going to attend. She loves fairies and I thought this one was so cute. I added Shimmerz to the top of her outfit but it's hard to see in the picture. I learned that Danni from Danni's Dreams - Flutter-By Wednesday is hosting her 100th challenge, so I had to post this to her challenge. Congrats, Danni - that's awesome! My DP's are from Basic Grey's "Lemonade." My sentiment is from SU's Teeny Tiny Wishes. I'm so glad I got that set because I use a lot of teeny tiny sentiments. Thanks for stopping by and if you haven't seen all the wonderful blog candy being offered for our Copic Creations Challenge Anniversary, back up one post and check it out....you'll be glad you did.

Copic Creations One-Year Anniversary Challenge

Welcome to our one-year anniversary post. We've done something special to celebrate. Not only do we have several sponsors for this challenge, but each DT member is giving away their posted card and/or blog candy. The challenge is to do your favorite image and incorporate one of more of your favorite challenge themes that we've covered this past year. My card is actually a hanging card. By the time I added the lattice work, I decided that it would be a pretty piece to hang, so I backed it with DP and added "picture-hanging hardware" so it could be hung. I have an optional "Happy Easter" greeting that can be adhered if desired, but I actually liked it better without it. My blog candy is a brand new Bow Easy. My card image is a design by Philomena O'Neill (sponsor of our 20th CC Challenge) at Phindy's Place. This card is sort of a CASE of one that Jami posted awhile back that I fell in love with. You can see her post here. The challenge themes I used are the feathering technique and the coloring of embellishments. I feathered this shy little bunny's dress with BV11 and R20 and I colored the top flower to match her dress. We have 10 fabulous sponsors for this anniversary challenge, and I'm going to invite you to get the details of who they are and how to win at the Copic Creations Challenge blog right here. Be sure you check out the fabulous entries the DT has for this challenge. Remember, in order to win from the individual blogs you must leave a comment on those blogs. The winner of each blog will be announced on April 1, the same time as we announce the winner of the challenge. I hope you'll help us celebrate the first anniversary of this fabulous semi-monthly challenge by playing along and leaving some luv for each of the talented DT members. Thanks so much for coming by and have a wonderful stampin' week.

Birthday Blessings

This card is for the 4th ODBD challenge, which is a sketch challenge. I used the image and sentiment from ODBD's Happy Birthday set. I colored the image with my lightest set of Copic Markers, and then I shaded a bit with the lightest of the regular series of colors, i.e. G01, BV02, etc. I realized after putting it together that to completely follow the sketch I should have done circles, and my circles should not have overlapped the bottom band. However, I decided I would enter it anyway and if they want to disqualify it, that's fine - I still like how it turned out and it's worth a shot to link to the challenge. I used DPs from Basic Grey's Nook and Pantry, and I sponged them a bit with Antique Linen Distress Ink. I used my Labels 5 Nesties and SU's scallop punch for the punched border. ODBD is having a second anniversary celebration coming up soon with daily challenges, and lots of give-aways, so I'm hoping I can participate in some of it at least. Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely week.