Spring Cleaning.....

Kinda. I have a bunch of spring cleaning projects started, but just can't seem to buckle down and TOTALLY finish one. I REALLY hate cleaning. Seriously. I would rather do yard work. At least I could be outside. And, ok. I will admit. Opened another book. BAD. Once I start a book, I can't put it down (and I wonder where my oldest got that annoying trait from?!). Well, the book is finished so maybe now I can get something DONE. (snort)

I do have a little project that my youngest and I did together the other night. I just need to take another photo of him with it. The couple that I took earlier didn't turn out. Soooo, if you are still hanging with me by tomorrow, I will have SOMETHING to share! hehe

Sympathy

I find sympathy cards TERRIBLY hard to make. I don't want to over do them (doesn't seem to be appropriate) yet, I want them to be meaningful. I don't own any sympathy sets. I think in my own mind I've convinced myself that if I don't own any sympathy sets, I won't have to use them (wacked, I know....it's a denial thing!!).

But reality is, that in this world, sympathy cards are needed. Last weekend a friend lost 9 immediate members of her family along with 5 close friends in a private plane crash. They were all meeting in Montana for a ski trip for the kiddos. Seven of those lost were children under the age of 10. My heart just hurts thinking of this. I struggled with this card all day Friday and finally came up with this

This card is a 5x5 square card. I did the faux "bleach" technique (because I'm the only person on this planet who cannot get paper to bleach (but will ruin another shirt in trying!!). I stamped the grass then the flowers in versamark on Gina K's 120# luxury paper. Then I used clear embossing powder to emboss the images. *helpful hint: make sure your powder pal tray is REALLY clean before dumping in a new ep/glitter, etc. My clear ep now has little flecks of whoknowswhat in it and it kinda ruins the CLEAN look that this technique is suppose to have! I then used LARGE stipple brush to put on my colors, starting with the lightest at the bottom and working my way to the darker colors (that way, I use just one brush!! Lazy stamper!!). I then covered my image with a scrap piece of paper, put it on my craft sheet and then ironed it on high until the ep melted onto the paper.

Now of course I had other problems with this image. This is actually the SECOND one. The first is layered underneath. The first one had no black layer. Felt it was missing something and I tried messing with some ribbon (of course, the image was already taped down, so I was going to have to come up with a different ribbon treatment). Welllll, the sentiment SMEARED over the embossed area when I was messing around. I don't know if it just hadn't dried over the now slightly glossy area or what! So when I stamped this sentiment, I HEAT set it (and of course, got it too far to the right, but I was NOT going to do this a third time!). Matted with the black, added the ribbon and matted that to Gina's 120# luxury paper.

Please keep my friend and her family in your thoughts (and if you pray, in your prayers). This was a very close knit family and they will need all the comfort from here and above that they can get to deal with this.

Supplies: Stamps: SU's Inspired by Nature, Warmest Regards. Paper: Gina K's 120# Pure luxury, Basic Black. Inks: SU's Apricot Appeal, Tangerine Tango, Really Rust, Ruby Red. Accessories: Clear EP, heat gun, iron, ribbon, stampamajig.

Out to Lunch

I wish!!
Sorry folks. The creativity just may not happen until this weekend. I am working all week covering for my boss who went skiing for spring break (is it Thursday yet?!! Geesh, my body feels like it should be!!). This full time working has me EXHAUSTED come evening and I just don't feel like doing much more than picking up a book once I get home.
I probably should stamp some images to color. Previously mentioned boss is having a b-day next week, along with my father. And I just found out I need a sympathy card too. Sigh. Too bad stamping is NOT an option at work!!

Can you hear the music?

I have been wanting to do the Wacky Wednesday challenge on the Rubbernecker Blog since they started TWO weeks ago. The third week was a sketch challenge. Here is what I came up with:

Now, some of you who like to be be the challenge police will say that my card does not follow the sketch, But! It does: Here's how: 1) The creator of the sketch took the liberty to change her squares on the side to ribbon. And she moved her circle embellishments. Therefore giving all the rest of us liberty to make a few minor changes as well. 2) My squares just decided to join together and become a rectangle. 3) My three little circle embellishments got shoved to a different location by the larger image panel. While they got shoved over, they each split in two.....resulting in another 3 circles in the bottom corner. 3) My image required the card to be changed to a square (this is a 5x5 card size) and that also resulted in the required alterations to the layout (and trust me, I tried THREE times to make my second bg panel shorter on the one side....the larger image just did NOT work with that so....it got s....t.....r.....e.....t....c....h....e....d to fill in that space!)

See?! I TOLD you that this fit the sketch!! (ROTFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Ok!! I'm really reaching here, but hey!! I wanted to use this image with this sentiment and I got a card done!! PFFFFFLLLLTTTT!!!! hehe

Some other details: Now, I am NOT a pink type of girl. I like my browns, blues, neutrals. The reason I even have this pink paper was for a project for a little girl cousin (which never got done....go figure). I just thought that "Erma" needed to express her different music beat. And so enters the pink. And incredibly BRIGHT GREEN. Of course I did not have embellishments that matched these common colors (snort) so I got out my copics and colored some clear self adhesive gems. The image panel is up on dimensionals. PERFECT!! Supplies: Paper: Gina K's 120# luxury white, SU's green galore, Prima Marketing Baby Girl Collection~Lullaby. Inks: Archival Jet black, SU's pink passion. Stamps: both image and sentiment can be found at Rubbernecker. Accessories: Score Pal, clear gems, Copic Ciao (A) markers, dimensionals

My Hubby Gets Creative

Yesterday was my 15th wedding anniversary to the Toad (you know, as in the kissed Toad who turns into a Prince?! Ok....that is the nickname his riding buddies call him too). This is what I saw on the kitchen counter when I got home from work

Gorgeous, huh?!! (Yes, I took the photos in a different room, the kitchen counters are not presentable for others to see at this time!!)

But even better than the roses was this:

The man spent his afternoon in my craft area making me a card!! (If that doesn't prove a man's love, I don't know what would!!) He used a scrap piece of textured River Rock, stamped the sanded BG in (?) brilliant blue and then found a scrap piece of old olive that had been crimped. He stamped his image (he told me he used my "T" from my stampamajig and had to re-stamp the image~~"pushing the heck out of it" to get the image over the crimping). He then found the corner punch and WAH~LAH~~ the man creates me a card!! Pretty good, huh?!! I had to laugh though.....he said that I didn't have any good sayings for the inside of my card. Think that is permission to do some shopping?! LOL!!

Me and My Mojo

Me and my Mojo just can't seem to get it together lately. Take this card. I had this idea to make the main card shape to look like a basketball. So, I cut out my circle card, draw my basketball lines, and then start layering my other elements. I don't know if it was the "orangish" basketball color under the red/black jersey, the lines on the basketball or what~but I did not like the look of it. It was too busy/distracting/icky (mind you, I did NOT figure this out on the first try. Nooooo!!!! I had to try different colors of "orange", some with sponging, some with embossing texture, you name it, I probably tried it). Now, you say, why didn't I just change the colors of the jerseys? Two reasons: 1) The team is the Cardinals. Our colors are red/black. 2) I had already colored four jerseys for all the coaches/assistant coaches for the four cards that I need to make!! (yeah, no original cards for everyone....we are in a time crunch here!) hehe

Ok....so now my Mojo is in a funk because my "cute" idea in my head is not working. And I needed to finish these card like YESTERDAY (and since I had to work yesterday, I'm REALLY running out of time here!!). Stepped back, kinda regrouped with my mojo and came up with this:

(don't know why this picture looks out of focus here. It's fine in my photo preview!)

I stamped the jersey from Melanie Muenchinger's Just So Sporty on Gina K's 120# Luxury white paper (have I ever mentioned how much I LOOOVE this paper?!! It's just WONDERFUL for coloring with copics!). Colored with my copics, cut out the jersey's and adhered them with dimensionals, to give it that extra "pop". Stamped the basket from SU's Just basketball with Brilliance Graphite black on to acetate and CAREFULLY heat set (I would have used my stazon, but have loaned it to a friend!). Cut out the basket and made a slit along the rim in order to put the basketball into the basket. The acetate is attached with Fiskers thin glue dots just along the top behind the basketball so that the net hangs "free". The sentiment is also from the Just So Sporty set and I carefully colored in the "THANKS" with my 01 micron black pen (the "coach" was also filled in this way). Supplies: Paper: SU real red, basic black, pumpkin pie. Gina K's 120# luxury white, transparency. Stamps: Melanie Munenchinger's Just So Sporty (available at Gina K) and SU's Just Basketball. Inks: Brilliance graphite black, SU's pumpkin pie, close to cocoa marker. Accessories: Copic markers, glue dots, dimensionals.

Thanks for stopping by! I'm off to create some "basketball" cupcakes!!

Quickie

This is just a quickie birthday card that I literally made in about 10 min. I had already had the balloons stamped on glossy paper from a similar card that I have made in the past. I had originally planned on using some of that "Happy" paper that can be seen on the Wacky but Happy chicken card but didn't have enough scraps left over. Soooo, since this is for an 8 y/0 boy (do 8 y/0 boys even LOOK at the outside of their cards?!!) I figure that this will do.

The balloons are popped up on dimensionals. The ribbon is curling ribbon from my wrapping stash. Easy peasy.

Supplies: Paper: SU whisper white, glossy white. Stamps: SU Birthday Balloons. Inks: yo-yo yellow, only orange, real read, brilliant blue. Accessories: glue dots, curling ribbon, dimensionals.

Thanks for stopping by!! I'm going back to coloring more images for my coaches thank you cards....bbl!!

One Down.....

.....only 7 more cards to go!!

This card was SOOOOO much cuter in my head. That's how it goes. This is how it is going to be. I don't have time to re-do. I think the reason I'm not too happy with this, is that the layout does not flow correctly. This does not have that "triangle" that moves the eyes to the elements. Plus, IRL, it has a couple of blips (one from a tape wrinkle, another couple of slight smudges). The worse thing about this is~~it's for my upline's daughter. Now, in all reality, the young lady will probably not care about such blips. But her mom will notice them (soooo, Kerney~~Just squint when you look at this!).

Some details on this: The skates were cut out of glossy paper (to give that patent leather look, hehe) using a Quikutz die and the heels/sole were colored with my black copic marker. A very thin strip of brushed silver cs was cut for the base of the boot. The wheels (which are too big, but that was the closest circle punch I had) have an eyelet set in the middle. I cut some 1/8" ribbon in half to lace thru the boot (not an easy task, I might add!!) The sentiment was computer generated and the inside has a HUGE 10! .

Like I said, this was much cuter in my head. Sigh....... Supplies: SU Whisper White, Pink Passion. Inks Pixie Pink (sponged along the edge and stamped on the inside) Stamps: Snap Frame Alphabet by Katie Pertiet for Autumn Leaves. Accessories: Cropadile, SU eyelets, sponge dauber, Quikutz boot die, Sizzix Big Shot

Creativity at it's WORSE

Allow me to inject some personal info here. Our family is BIG into biking. Seriously. DH and his father have raced mountain bikes for years and DH has also raced road bikes. Both he and his father also commute daily on their bikes. Before the kiddos came along, I joined in on the mountain bike racing scene too. It is just a part of our lifestyle.

Ealier this week I tried a new way of going into the garage. With DH's bike up on the roof rack. I have determined that this is NOT the way to do it. This is the result. YUP....the bike sheared at the head tube. It is now in TWO pieces. Sigh.......

Now, my only saving grace was that DH has done this same thing TWICE. But, it was to his own bikes. Not mine. Sooooo, being the charmer that he is, he is enjoying rubbing this in. And his friends are enjoying rubbing this in (mind you, most of them have done the same thing at least ONCE....when you ride all the time, it's usually a matter of when, not if, that you will try to enter the garage with your bike on the top rack or forget about it going thru a drive-thru).

I think I should try and stick to crafty creativity vs. driving creativity.

MIA???

No, I'm not MIA on the creative front. I'm actually busy coloring and coming up with ideas as I type. I have 5 "Thank you coaches" cards to make, 3 kid b-day cards to make and one special baptism card to make. Oh, yeah...did I mention that I need all of these by this weekend?!! YIKES!! Oh yeah, and I need to design 10 player certificates also. And clean my house since my in-laws will be eating dinner here tonight.

How much do you think cloning costs?!!

Simply

Well, I'm a day late and a dollar short (haha) but got a challenge card done!! WoooHooo!! Actually, I got this done late last night....but the lighting was REALLY bad at that time (ok, ok...it's not much better now, but that work thing is going to get in the way of posting if I don't do it now).


This is for the CAS05 challenge on Splitcoaststampers. This is SOOOOO not the card I started out to make!! LOL. Seriously, I wasn't even planning on using this die, stamp set or anything. But this is what came to be. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.

The butterflies are only attached by the middle of their bodies. In real viewing mode there is a lot of dimension on this card with their wings lifted. But, since I'm also the last one to get a photo box and my attempts at using a work light to get a photo just resulted in REALLY deep shadows, you will have to use your imagination on this on!! Supplies: Paper: Su's whisper white, Brocade blue. Inks: Kiwi Kiss, Old olive, brocade blue. Stamps: Inspired by Nature, All holidays. Accessories: small oval punch, Big Shot, Beautiful butterflies die, Pretties kit, sponge daubers.

Thanks for taking a peek! Now it's hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go!!

Wacked....

I was going to spare you the long rant this post but DANG IT!! The "Erma Bombeck" in me did it again!! GEESH!! I wanted to try and make an ATC for the Ways to Use it challenge on SCS and for the first Rubbernecker Blog Wacky Wednesday challange (which just happened to be the same thing!! WHOHOO!! Two challenges in one!! hehe). So this am I get up, stamp, color my image, put it all together, take a pic....and THEN REALIZED THAT MY IMAGE WAS THE SAME SIZE AS THE ATC....FORGET THE BACKGROUND LAYER!! GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tore the card apart to try and make it fit the required size. 'Ya know what?!! I put it back together again as it was. I LIKED how the card was. I DIDN'T like the smaller version. So there. Once again, no challenges for me this week. PPPLLLLFFFTTTT.

Image was colored with my copics again. Layered it on some OOOOLLLDD SU paper. Added some sparkley curling ribbon. Finished. Now I'm going to go eat some girl scout cookies and see if that makes me feel any better. (snort) Supplies: Paper: SU DP, Real Red, Gina K 120# pure luxury. Inks: Copic markers. Accessories: curling ribbon

FINALLY......

.....the light bulb went on!!! This card has been sitting on my desk for a WEEK. This is one of those cards that the ideas in my head were SOOOO much better than what was turning out on paper. I had gotten this Toad (ok...frog....but it's for my hubby and his nickname is Toad...so this is a toad) from Rubbernecker a while back and it was needing to see some ink finally. I had stamped the image a couple of times on Gina K's Luxury 120# paper (LOOOOVE that stuff!) and had finished coloring the image with my copic ciao's to discover I had colored the WRONG image (this particular one was stamped on a sheet that had a little mistake that was in a CRITICAL area)....fine. Cut out the image. Got this idea that I would float the toad on a background made using my alcohol inks over an acetate base. Except that the image just didn't look right over the background. Walked away for a day or so. Made my own little river with some hand drawn reeds to the side. Tried using a mixture of copics and sponging. Now, I don't mind mixing my mediums, but this was UGLY!! LOL!! Re-drew the river/reeds and this time just did some sponging. MUCH better! Layered the frog over the river and then cut out my first reeds from my mess up and layered over the drawn reeds (since they are hand drawn, they are not a perfect match which I think gives a more realistic dimension). Tried matting the image over blue. Didn't match the inked background. Over the next couple of days I tried adding different colored cs behind the inked acetate. Nope. Finally settled on just a small white mat. Great. Now I had this HUGE blank river at the bottom of my image. Ribbon~out. Got the idea to use some fishing line with this round embellishment. Just FYI: Fishing line does NOT wrap around a card like ribbon! Anyway~didn't like that. Tried the embellishment by itself. Just didn't feel the love for that. Got out my stickers from the past obsession of scrapbooking and tried "sticking" a sentiment. Nope. Considered handwriting a sentiment in the corner....Nope (for several reasons~didn't like the look of my handwriting being the most prominent one!)

Are you feeling my frustrations at this point?!! Over all, I have this card that I like the coloring, have finally gotten the overall look and it is just missing SOMETHING!! Then "DING!!" The light bulb went on!! WATERLILIES!! Pull some pics up from the good ol' internet and think to myself "I can draw those". Got a couple of leaves done and then looked at the flower and another light bulb. "Pretties kit!!" Uhhhh, WAY TO BIG (but I seriously considered cutting up some of the flowers and trying to trim the petals down to size)....ok, now my brain is STUCK on wanting these flowers to be dimensional but how? I'll just make my own petals and layer them!! ROTFL!! Can you picture me cutting out these ITTY~BITTY little petals and trying to curl them?! Finally~~a light bulb worth keeping went on. Got out my old SU Lily Pad wheel and used my black marker to roll out a couple of the flowers a few times. Colored and then cut out the layers. Added a yellow "middle....(what is that called?!!) to the larger one and layered the top over it with glue dots.

Here's a pic trying to show the layering a bit better.

A week later and OH YAH!! It's finally done. But more importantly~~ I like how it turned out!!

And even better~~~I'm DONE EARLY with DH's anniversary card!! BWHAHAAAAA

Supplies: Paper: Transparency sheet, Gina K's 120# Pure luxury, SU whisper white. Inks: SU's bashful blue, brilliant blue, Ranger Alcohol inks in Stream and Bottle. Stamps: Rubbernecker Frog, SU's Lily Pad wheel. Accessories: Copic Ciao markers,Inkssential opaque white pen, glue dots, sponge daubers.

Looking Back on Other Types of Creativity

Well, I'm still kickin' (but the cough is ready to either expel a lung or cause me to herniate a disc in my back!!)

Today I was doing the base work for some faux painting at a friends house. A couple of years ago, I decided that I needed a break from Physical Therapy and thought that I would enjoy going into the Faux Painting/mural business. Yeah...well, here is reality. I like to paint. I like to faux paint and paint murals. But I DON'T like having to do it for a living (snort). Painting is a LOT of work. Up TALL ladders. Reaching/balancing where one should not try to reach and/or balance (at least not ONE who has developed a thing about heights in her old age...) Anyway!! I digress.

Now, I love the look of a very subtle faux finish on a wall. It covers a lot of construction sins and even painting sins (or as the case may be at my house, lots of little boy handprints along EVERY wall that they pass). But there is one problem with trying to photograph such a subtle look with a point and shoot digital camera. Doesn't work. Or I should say, I can't get a photograph to show the slight details that make the paint job a "wow" when you enter the room. So, today I thought I would share a project that I did during this exploration of being a painter. This is a Trompe L'Oeil project for a little girl's secret room. The mother wanted it to be like her own little secret "house". Now the goal was to make this something that she would continue to enjoy even as she got older~a "retreat". So, I tried not to make it too "cutesy".

You enter into the "house" by going into the closet (the room was just a storage room over the attic~~ ONE little light bulb....no other source of light). The first picture shows the "front door"(painted to look like it has panels) and the "brick" of the house and the planter by the door

(this was a slider closet...not much room to try and take a good picture!) The next picture shows the inside of the "front" door

The little girl wanted her house colors to be purple and yellow. So the "wall paper" was a very light lavendar with yellow roses on it (also a request) The next picture shows the "bedroom area. The chest was painted to look like a ruffle of a bed (the mom was going to have a cushion made for the top)

The next photo shows the "back door (just a door that goes over the garage).

Close up of the potted flowers that are on the "back porch"

And the fireplace that is next to the door. Now, there is a couple of cool details about this fireplace. One: the "logs" are truely dimensional. I painted some paper and then rolled the logs and glazed the goop out of them to make them stick in the fireplace. Two: That is a REAL little shelf/mantle over the fireplace. At Christmas time, the girl hung garland over the mantle! Too cute!

(Again, I apologize for the glare. I had to use my work light to try and get this picture. )

The favorite part of this whole room for me was the "breakfast nook". I just loved how this window turned out.

(since the fireplace was going full blast, I had to have this be "early spring" with some snow on those hills!)

A close up shot of the hills (horses were also a request) ETA: I think that you can click on any of the pictures to get a better idea of some of the Trompe L'Oeil details)

Thanks for stopping by!

Hope you didn't mind this little detour from stamping. Like I said, this blog is exploring different mediums of creativity and painting is one of those creative worlds that I do enjoy.

I will return with a card on the next post!!