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!!