Celebrate!

It's our niece Katie's birthday on June 6th and since she lives in South Carolina I needed to get her card done so we can mail out her package this week.  Katie is definitely a "fashionista" so when I saw this patterned paper collection by sei called "Couture" I knew it would be perfect!

After stamping the dress form and hat from a clear set by Toga with Clearsnap seaglass pigment ink, I overstamped both images with Hero Arts S5507 Envelope Pattern with Ranger antique linen distress ink to give them a little texture.  After cutting both images out I also inked their edges with the same distress ink.  The sentiment that I embossed on the banner is from an old Rubber Stampede set - I love this funky font!  I used a Martha Stewart punch and a Stampin' Up die to create the layered butterfly.  The individual and flourish rhinestones are from Michael's.  The paper flower was a gift from a friend :)
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up cs 

I hope everyone is having a fabulous start to their week!  I want to thank you for sending positive thoughts my mother-in-law's way.  Her surgery to remove the gallstones was successful and she is feeling soooooo much better :)  I'm off to spend some time with my mom today - we're going to do a little shopping and have lunch at Olive Garden (Yum!).

Making ATC's is Addicting!

After seeing Jennifer McGuire's post today on the Hero Arts blog I just had to try this technique!  One of the themes of this month's Hero Arts contest is ATC's so I decided to use Jennifer's technique to create a couple:

For the first one I stamped Hero Arts CG140 Poppy Background with ColorBox frost white ink on a piece of kraft cs.  After coloring the flowers and stems with colored pencils I overstamped Hero Arts CG125 Friend Definition with cocoa ink.  I mounted the panel on a 2.5" x 3.5" piece of chocolate brown cs and then embellished it with some die cut butterflies and baker's twine.
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up butterfly die, cs and ink, Martha Stewart baker's twine, Papertrey ink cs

For the second one I followed the same process above using Hero Arts CG105 Silhouette Flower and Hero Arts K5193 Flower Word.  The hummingbird from CL383 Antique Engravings was stamped on kraft cs and colored with colored pencils.  I embellished this one with a die cut fence border and butterflies.
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up butterfly die, ink and cs, Martha Stewart fence border punch, Papertrey ink cs

They were so much fun to make that I decided to make two more!:

I inked up one of the leaf clusters from Hero Arts CL477 Delicate Leaf Clusters with Ranger distress inks (peeled paint for the first and tumbled glass for the second one) and spritzed with a mixture of perfect pearls and water before stamping on pieces of watercolor paper.  They have a pretty shimmer IRL that was hard to capture in the photo.  Both sentiments are from Hero Arts CL129 Anytime Messages.  I inked the edges of the panels with Ranger antique linen distress ink before mounting them on 2.5" x 3.5" pieces of cs.  The dragonfly is from Hero Arts CL383 Antique Engravings and the die cut butterfly is a Martha Stewart punch.
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up ink, cs and pp, Queen & Co. rhinestone, Martha Stewart baker's twine, Ranger icicle stickles

Thanks for all your sweet comments!

Vintage Thinking of You

I wanted to make a special "Thinking of You" card for my mother-in-law as we are all praying the procedure she's scheduled to have on Friday will finally remove those pesky gallstones!  I also wanted to use some new stampin' goodies I recently acquired :)

I stamped E2409 Blossoms I from Hero Arts set LL754 Blossom Etchings (my very first Hero Arts stamps!) on a die cut oval and colored it with some of my new copic markers from the Pale Pastels set.  After masking the blossom I overstamped Hero Arts K5344 La Letter in cocoa ink then sponged the whole oval with Ranger antique linen distress ink.  I then mounted the floral oval to an amethyst die cut oval that was embossed with a Cuttlebug swiss dot embossing folder.  I framed the completed piece with my new Spellbinders Decorative Oval Window die cut that was distressed with both Ranger antique linen and walnut stain distress inks - love how this looks like an antique frame!  Sentiment is from Hero Arts CL342 Everyday Sayings.  I was going to add a ribbon treatment until I came across this netting and vintage-looking button - different, but I like how it looks :)
Other Materials Used:  Martha Stewart cs, Stampin' Up cs, ink, pp and flourish stamp

Thanks for stopping by and for all your comments!

Not Breathing a Sigh of Relief

Awhile back a poem was making its rounds on the e-mail circuit.  I don't remember all the words exactly but the gist of it was about the kinds of people who cross your path in life.  Some of those people end up being kindred spirits while others you breathe a sigh of relief that they have left your path!  The card I'm sharing today is for one of my co-workers Wendy who is moving to Tennessee next week as her husband got a job transfer.  I haven't worked with Wendy long but I felt as though we were on the cusp of becoming friends.  She is artistic and can appreciate my love of cardmaking.  We are close in age and have the same build and hair color - folks would often mistake us for sisters!  I'm happy for her but at the same time I know I will miss her.

I first stamped Hero Arts H5312 Silhouette Burst with cocoa ink on white cs.  Using the negative from a die cut circle I sponged Tsukineko pretty petunia chalk ink to give the burst more of a flower-like appearance.  The butterfly from Hero Arts CL383 Antique Engravings was also stamped with cocoa ink on a white cs scrap and sponged with the pretty petunia ink and some Ranger peeled paint distress ink.  The pp "grass" was die cut using a Papertrey ink scalloped border die.  Sentiment is from MSE (My Sentiments Exactly).
Other Materials Used:  Martha Stewart cs, Stampin' Up cs and pp, Michael's pearls, American Crafts buttons

     I would also like to share that my mother-in-law was in the hospital from Mother's Day through yesterday.  She has gallstones and they have already done two procedures to try to remove them (even going as far as transferring her to a nearby urban hospital for the second procedure).  She will have to have another procedure (hopefully the last one!) next Friday.  She is understandably discouraged so any prayers for her quick recovery would be greatly appreciated!   

Thank you so much for stopping by and for all your sweet comments!

See the Flowers Smiling

Quick post today as the sun is shining for the second day in a row and I don't want to miss out!  I watched Shari's technique video on the Hero Arts blog regarding coloring with colored pencils and decided to give it a try.  What I quickly discovered is the quality of your colored pencils really does make a difference in the result.  I don't own very many Prismacolor pencils so I tried using the inexpensive pencils I have on hand - blending the color with a white pencil was difficult and didn't produce as good a result as I had hoped:

I used a bloom from CL495 Blossom Art and did a little masking.  Decided to pop up the flower in the lower left hand corner to give some dimension and applied Ranger icicle stickles to the flower centers.  The sentiment is from CL129 Anytime Messages.
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up cs and butterfly dies, Cuttlebug textile embossing folder, Nestie, Michael's pearl

I hope everyone has a fabulous Friday and that you have the opportunity to see a few flowers smiling :)

Wallpaper Flowers

Another one of my all-time favorite Hero Arts(HA) flower stamps is K5185 Wallpaper Flowers.  I first embossed it in black on a piece of white cardstock.  Then I smooshed an orchid and an olive ink pad on an acrylic block and colored the image by lifting ink from the block with a blender pen.  After trimming the image I matted it on a piece of orchid cs and adhered it to the card front with foam tape.  Clear gems were added to each of the flower centers.  The sentiment is from HA CL129 Anytime Messages.  I plan to give this to my MIL for Mother's Day as I know she likes this color combination.
Other Materials Used:  Stampin' Up cs, pp and ink, Cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder, Michael's rhinestones, Nesties

This is the first day in several weeks that we woke to blue skies and no rain!!  Even the birds sound happier :)

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

Where Did April Go?

Have you ever gotten to the beginning of a new month and wondered what happened to the last one??  In my last post I was just hours away from leaving for Paris.  I've been back for three weeks now and in that time have caught up with family and friends (and laundry!), celebrated Easter with loved ones, adjusted to the return of my MIL from her winter stay in the south and have made a few cards to get my creative juices flowing again.

My husband Keith took over 500 photos during our trip!  For someone many affectionately refer to as "the bean counter" I'm impressed with a lot of the subjects he chose to capture:
Look at the gorgeous wisteria covering a residential building in Montmartre:

I really cannot overstate how much I enjoyed the desserts in Paris (good thing we did A LOT of walking every day!):

Rodin's sculpture of "The Thinker" (Touring the gardens of Rodin's museum was an incredible bargain at only 1 euro/person!):

That's me standing in front of Rodin's "Hells Gate" in awe of its size (and wondering if the artist was dropping acid while he created it - LOL!):

Here's a view of the base of the Eiffel Tower (and a sobering reminder of the times we live in):

Here's the Eiffel Tower at nightfall in all its glittery goodness:

Here's an embarrassing pic of yours truly (he made me do something similar at the Leaning Tower of Pisa!):

You can barely make out the people walking around the top of the Arc de Triomphe.  After paying 10 euros/person to walk over 300 steps to the top (yep, I counted them!) my dh husband who has a heart condition announces he left his nitro back at the hotel!

Not only do I love the Byzantine influence you can see in the architecture of the Sacre Coeur but could the sky be any bluer?????  I haven't seen a sky that blue since we returned home - it's rained here almost every day for 3 weeks :(

I really had no idea how huge the Louvre Museum is - we spent 8 hours there and still didn't see everything!  We spent a lot of time in the Egyptian antiquities section as who knows whether we'll ever be able to safely travel to that part of the world.  Leave it to my husband to notice this statue making a "shadow dog" on the wall!:

And don't you just love ole blue eyes??!!!:

Spent another day touring the palace of Versailles - King Louis XIV sure knew how to live!  I think the gardens alone are larger than the village I live in!:

My husband really has an obsession with fountains (I swear 100 out of the 500 pics he took contain fountains!):

Statues too!:

You just never know when you'll have a celebrity siting in Paris!  Oh wait.......that's just me!:

I love some of these random shots of the river Seine and the streets of Paris:

Leave it to yours truly to sniff out the only scrapbooking store in Paris!:

And finally, I will leave you with a few "What on earth was my husband thinking?!!" shots:

Thanks for stopping by!!