Retro to Modern

A little background history is needed to explain this (belated) Father's day card.

A few months after the Toad (DH) and I got married, we bought our first home. It was a condo that was decorated in a lovely 70's shade of avocado (?) green. All the walls had wall paper on them (including the kitchen ceiling!). We were both working full time and trying to train daily as we were racing mountain bikes also at the time. That did not leave a whole lot of time for working on updating our new home. So, when the TV died, we decided not to replace it ~ that way we would not be tempted to sit in front of the boob tube instead of getting stuff done. (There were many jokes among our mountain biking friends about our entertainment highlights being putting a red sock in with the whites and watching it go round and round in the wash).

Forward to 15 years later. While we finally did get a TV, we never hooked it up to cable (the only way to watch it). All we could do is watch videos and later DVD's (and since we were joined by two children in this time period, our TV viewing pretty much was catered to them....veggie tales for a Saturday night, anyone?!!). At Christmas time, we bought the boys a Wii for their big present. But!! It was kept at Grandma/Papa's house because the deal with the kids was that the playroom had to get cleaned out to make room for the Wii. It actually worked out pretty good. The kids were not always asking to play the Wii as it was something that was just done on the weekends when they spent the night at their grandparents house (yes, I'm very lucky.....my kids spend almost every Saturday night at their grandparents!!)

When the oldest turned 12, we brought the Wii over to our house since he was having a friend spend the night. We had many discussions and decided to keep the Wii at home. But!! All those "threats" of the playroom having to be cleaned out, never came to be. 'Cause mom and dad finally figured out that there was not enough room in the playroom that was needed to allow more than 2 kids in there and safely play!!

So, we are sitting in the family room with our little TV in this very LARGE nitch that DH had made for our entertainment center. The Toad calls up his buddy to "just go look and see what is available". Yeah, right. He comes home with this HUGE flat screen TV (one should never let two males go look at electronics without a female present!!). Sooooo, guess what DH's father's day gift was?!!! hehe

Here's the outside of the Retro TV card:

This card is LARGE. It measures 6 1/2" x 5 " not including the rabbit ears. All the knobs were just outlined along the edges with my black copic marker to give them some dimension. Now, here's the kicker~~the inside

BWHAHAAAAA!!!!!!!! I LOVE this image from Art Impressions!! Hehehe!! It's PERFECT for this card, don't ya think?!! I originally wanted to place the "flat screen" tv on the little tv table that Art Impressions has to go with this set. But the angle I had made of my TV screen did not work out with the table and I was too lazy to draw my own (decided that this flat screen was up on the wall). The sentiment on the screen was done on the computer. The border around the TV is faux. The image was stamped on Gina K's 120# Pure Luxury paper and everything was colored with my copics (Once again, I'll apologize for the poor picture. I wasn't able to fold over the top of the card due to the rabbit ears, and trying to hold the card, take the picture and keep the dog from messing everything up, it was a miracle that I got this shot at all!!).

This card took me forever to make mostly because I thought too much about the coloring instead of just doing it!! But I'm very pleased with how it turned out (too bad you can't see all the subtle shading....I about broke my arm patting myself on the back with this one!! hehe)Supplies: Paper: Textured 12x12 creamy caramel and going grey. Brushed silver and chocolate chip and Gina K's 120# pure luxury. Inks: Stazon jet black, copic ciao markers. Accessories: punches galore!

Thanks for stopping by again today. I'm going to try and get a couple of more projects done to spread out over the next week or so. My kids are leaving on a trip to Yellowstone with their grandparents (have I mentioned that I have great In-laws?!) and are taking my....uhhhh, my son's camera, with them so I won't be able to upload anything new!! (When I mentioned to DH that I needed to go buy myself a camera since the boys were going to be gone for a week, he just looked at me and said, "can't you go a week without posting anything?". HEELLLLOOO!!! This man does not GET the importance of blogging!! BWHHAAAAAAAA
I promise I'll post something one way or another...it just might have to be some "blasts from the past" type of thing!!

Have a good one!!

Foiled.....

.....that pretty much describes my afternoon~~~foiled.

The Toad (aka DH) and his dad took the boys (including the dog) for an overnight camping trip this afternoon. They are driving within 2 miles of their camping spot then loading up all their gear and the boys' on their mountain bikes and "biking" into the camping spot.

WONDERFUL, GLORIOUS FREEDOM TO CREATE ALL DAY!!

Except I got foiled. By a book. I'm sure that I'm the last person to read (or as the book cover indicates, seen the movie) My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Yup. Finished 423 pages today (ok...I had started it yesterday...but had only read the first 70 or so pages as of this morning). All my FREE hours that I was going to create, create and then create some more were taken up with reading and ended with me bawling my eyes out over this book and giving myself a headache.

But!! I still need a card for DH's grandfather and for DH for father's day (which, according to my calendar, is TOMORROW). Soooo, I remembered a card that Gina K did on stamp TV. Loved the technique and the colors. Decided to adapt the idea for DH's grandfather's card.

I used SU's exclusive texture plate with an extra piece of paper for the sandwich in my Big Shot with regular tin foil. Stamped my sentiment form SU's All Holidays and did all the matting/layering. IRL the sentiment does NOT look like it is layered crooked. I have looked at it several times to make sure my tear fatigue eyes are not playing tricks on me!! The "brads" are faux made with my 1/4" hand held punch. How can someone run out of something so basic as black brads, I ask you?!! Leave it to me, I would be the one! But this needed something to add that little extra "pop".

I wish I could say that I LOVED how this turned out. But I'm going to be honest here. This one was better in my head (ok, ok, it was better when Gina did it!!). I'm going to walk away from it and see how it hits me tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll have time to come up with something else if the effect is still the same in the am. Supplies: Paper: SU's cranberry crisp, whisper white, basic black. Stamps: SU's All Holidays. Inks: SU cranberry crisp. Accessories: Tin foil, Big Shot, Texture plate, 1/4" hole punch, mini glue dots

Thanks for dropping by again! I'm going to try and stamp out the new images I ordered for DH's card (how many hours do I have before they get home?!! Nothing like procrastination to make one create!!)

Don't Mess With Dad

Today's Wacky Wednesday challenge on the Rubbernecker Blog was to create a Father's Day card. Of course, being more like Erma Bombeck vs Martha Stewart, I have not even started on ANY of the cards that I need to make for this upcoming holiday. I decided to combine this with the sketch challenge on SCS and get a double bang for my buck.

This is a funky card. Originally, I had the 5x5 piece of creamy caramel as my base. Got everything laid out and something just didn't mesh. By chance, I plopped down the base on a scrap piece of Really Rust! AHHHHH!!! It needed that extra pop. Sooooo, since the DP was already adhered to the base, I just cut a piece of Really Rust 1/4" larger than my base and adhered THAT to the creamy caramel. Makes taking decent photos rather challenging...but IRL it's ok! hehe...(that would be Erma being too cheap to cut another piece of DP to do the card "correctly").

The center panel (the brown with the silver brads) is actually grunge paper that I painted with Vintage Photo crackle paint. I then sponged some chocolate chip ink and vintage photo ink over it to highlight the cracks more. In real life, it looks like old, cracked leather (and smells like it too!! The grunge paper has a "leather" scent!! PERFECT!! hehe). It is adhered with dimensionals so that the brads lie flat.

The image is from Stamp Oasis and is stamped with chocolate chip craft ink and clear embossed. Thank goodness for SU paper snips to cut around it. I did direct to paper with my ink pad in really rust on the rust panels. Added the brads from the SU silver hardware kit.

This is going to be my FIL's card for father's day. He loves things western (do you think that has anything to do with being born/raised in Nebraska? Running a feed lot?!! LOL!).

Thanks for stopping by again today!!