You Brighten My Day

Here are a couple of cards I made using the Sale-a-Bration set, You Brighten My Day.

My nephew and his family recently moved to a new home in Austin.  I made this card for them to celebrate their move.  I used a piece of the Adventure Bound DSP stack for the background and cut it with the Project Life Thinlet.  The houses are stamped onto Naturals card stock with the middle house heat embossed with white craft ink.  The little banner at the top uses paper from the Adventure Bound stack also.

This card is a CASE.  I love it!!  I stamped the light bulbs on Naturals card stock and cut each one out.  Then I popped them up on dimensionals and drew a black line to the bottom.

Each week, Stampin' Up! features a Sale-a-bration product to give you inspiration for projects.  This week, it's the You Brighten My Day stamp set.

Paper Craft Sketch Challenge

We're still in the deep freeze here.  I laugh when I hear some of my New York friends who moved here say that this is not the South they had in mind when they came here!  Guess we have it better than New York, or Boston, or Connecticut or .....!! Last night's low was supposed to be 10 degrees with a high of 19 degrees on Thursday!  You can bet I will not be going outside!  We had a little bit of snow late yesterday afternoon - or thunder snow as the weatherman called it.  All I know is it would snow for a little while and then the sun would come out; then a little more snow and a little more sun.  Sonny had to escape for a bit - he is getting cabin fever!!  He drove up to the post office for his day's entertainment.  He has left his truck at the top of the driveway so he can drive his Red Cross route today.    I ended up canceling my Stamp Club for Thursday and rescheduling it for next Thursday.  Hopefully, the weather will cooperate!!

This is my card for Paper Craft Crew sketch challenge # 132.  I used My Digital Studio to create the card.

Here is the sketch:



Check out the cards from the rest of the Design Team here.

MDS Monday 101 - On a Tilt!

Time for another MDS Monday sketch.  The sketch this week is by Tami Hewlett (one of my favorite MDS designers!)  We are to put the focal point on a tilt.  The best way, I think, to do this is to first line things up nice and straight; then group them and put them at an angle.  Tami has a video tutorial on the MDS Monday blog.

I had to dig deep for these pictures!  They were taken 10 years ago on a vist back to Dallas.  Margaret and I were at my friend, Sharon's house having a few drinks out on the upstairs patio.  Sharon had recently joined the Red Hat ladies and we were having a fun time trying on her Red Hat accessories!  Did I say we were drinking???!!  Margaret's husband came to get us to go home and we got him in on our shenanigans!  I used a few overlays with this layout.



Here is Tami's sketch:

Adventure Bound Quick and Easy!

If you have seen the paper stack in the Occasions Catalog called Adventure Bound (pg 40) and wondered (like my sister did) what in the world would you do with it, let me just share a few cards I made with it last weekend.  It makes great masculine cards.

I used the "hello" thinlet and cut one from Soft Suede and one from Very Vanilla, added a little Tombow glue to the back and shadowed them.  "Just Sayin'" is from the great set, Crazy About You.

How about a nautical look?  I used the Circles Dies to cut my "porthole" and stamped the boat image with Staz-On Black ink onto Vellum paper.

What about a sweater on a cold day?  The buttons are made using the Simply Pressed Clay and Buttons and Blossoms molds (pg 208).  I used my Blendabilities to color the buttons.  The sentiment is from Sheltering Tree.

This may be my favorite!  I stamped the sun in Crushed Curry in the corner with the stamp from Kinda Eclectic.  I stamped the sentiment (Feel Goods) in Gold and embossed with Gold Powder.

Super simple on this one.  You Rock (from Crazy for You) was stamped on Vellum and cut out with the Word Bubbles Thinlets and backed with Gray card stock.

These cards are so quick and easy to make!!

Well. we got the "big" storm last night ... ha ha!!  A mixture of snow and sleet started falling about 3:30 - as Mom and I were leaving the doctor's office.  I had hoped to make a few stops after taking her home but decided I'd best get on over the bridge and home before the streets got slick.  We had a mix off and on until I went to bed around midnight.  I was hoping to see a winter wonderland when I woke up today but this is all I saw!

Nothing to get excited about!  It is pretty slick - at least that was what Sonny told me when he walked up the driveway to get the newspaper this morning.  I canceled my Tuesday Stamp Club and Sonny's Tuesday skeet shooting was canceled.  So now we'll see what else comes our way.  This is our forecast for now:

TODAY - Mostly cloudy. Highs in the mid 30s. Northwest winds around 5 mph.

TONIGHT - Mostly cloudy. Cold with lows around 19. Northwest winds around 5 mph.

WEDNESDAY - Partly sunny. A chance of snow showers in the afternoon. Snow accumulation around an inch possible. Highs in the lower 30s. South winds around 5 mph - increasing to west 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph in the afternoon. Chance of snow 50 percent.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT - Partly cloudy. Colder with lows around 4 above. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph. Wind chill values as low as 7 below after midnight.

THURSDAY - Sunny. Cold with highs around 19. Northwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Wind chill values as low as 9 below in the morning.

THURSDAY NIGHT - Mostly clear. Cold with lows around zero. Wind chill values as low as 10 below.

FRIDAY - Mostly sunny. Cold with highs in the mid 20s.

FRIDAY NIGHT - Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow. Cold with lows around 15.

SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT - Rain or snow likely. Moderate snow accumulation possible. Highs in the mid 30s. Lows in the mid 20s. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.

SUNDAY - Rain or snow likely in the morning - then rain likely in the afternoon. Little or no additional snow accumulation. Highs in the upper 40s. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.

SUNDAY NIGHT - Mostly cloudy. A chance of rain in the evening - then a chance of snow or rain after midnight. Lows in the upper 20s. Chance of precipitation 50 percent.

MONDAY - Partly sunny. A chance of rain or snow in the morning - then a chance of rain in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 30s. Chance of precipitation 30 percent.

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forecast/w-Lake-Norman-of-Catawba-North-Carolina.html#ixzz3S1dB7IQJ


Not sounding real promising!!

So I will be staying in and making a few cards!!  Maybe even cleaning up my stamp room.

In the meantime, here are today's Weekly Deals.  If you decide to put an order in, please use my HOSTESS CODE #TECQMHTT

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

We're getting ready for the Big Storm this week!  Temps have been dropping for the past couple of days.  Tonight it is supposed to dip into the teens with the high only 32 tomorrow.  Snow and ice are predicted to start in the early evening and last 2-3 days.  I have already canceled my Stamp Club for Tuesday and I am hoping I will be able to have everyone come on Thursday.  Tomorrow I will be bundled up to go play bridge and then take my mom to her doctor's appointment before the storm hits.

I wanted to share the Valentine's that I sent to the grandkids last week.

I printed off these wrappers and wrapped boxes of candy that I got at the Dollar Store

I used the Mini Treat Die to make little bags that I filled with candy.

More Dollar Store finds - Valentine pencils.  I used the smaller panel of the Mini Treat Die to make these cute little pencil holders.

We had a pretty quiet Valentine's.  Sonny and I went out for breakfast and then to the grocery store.  Later that evening, we went over to Marianne and Greg's so I could help Marianne get ready for her first workshop.  We took a break and went out for Italian food.

I got some GREAT news today!  Remember this sketch I did for MDS Monday's 100th Sketch Challenge?  Well, I was notified on Sunday that I was a WINNER!!  They picked two top winners and I was told in my email that mine was chosen by a landslide!  So excited!  I win a MDS download (value $9.95).  I had a whole list that I had to decide between.  I have so many of the downloads that sometimes I have a hard time finding ones I don't have!!  But I decided on a punch and several embellishments that I didn't have yet.  Check out the other winners here.

How do you like my new Blog Banner?  I had fun designing a new one on Sunday.

MDS Monday 100th Challenge - from the West to the East

(NOTE:  This is a double page challenge)

I had time this week and decided to do another MDS Monday's sketch challenge for #100.  This time I used some of the pictures that Ashley and I took in 2006 on one of our cross country trips.  She finished her Residency at Fort Lewis in Washington state and the Army sent her to Washington DC.  So we packed the car, grabbed her cat, Taco, and headed east!  (And a few months later, Sonny and I took almost the same route as we moved from Washington state to North Carolina.)  Three years earlier, she and I had made the trip from Texas to Washington (and Sonny and I followed about six months later.)  And in another three years, she would be leaving DC, headed back to Texas and of course, I made that trip with her also!  So in six years, we hit the majority of the states in our cross country journeys. Now we just have to do the middle states (but hopefully, for fun and no more moving!!)

For this challenge, I used a Double Page Sketch from last December.  (Check out my previous sketch here when I was a guest designer.)

I wish my blog page was wider so I could put the two pages side by side so you could see how the map goes from page to page.

I used stamps and papers from various travel kits - World Traveler and Travel Journal.  I also recently downloaded the kit, Nifty Fifty which features the map of the US plus individual state outlines as a stamp and as punches!  I just did not have room to put all the states (or unfortunately, all the pictures) that we visited on this page!!  I used the dotted line from Compilation of Recipes to chart our journal from the west coast to the east coast.

This was such a fun page to make and brought back so many happy memories which is what scrapbooking is all about!!

Here is the sketch I used for this page.


There is a Blog Hop on the website for MDS Monday that you can follow along to see the designer's sketches HERE.

Paper Crew Card Sketch 131

How is your day going?  It's Wednesday which means it's once again time for the challenge at Paper Craft Crew.  I'm excited to share this week's sketch and my take on it using My Digital Studio.  Come and visit and have a look.

I love this color combo!

MDS Monday 100th Sketch Challenge!

Remember I blogged last week that I was going through old pictures and strolling down memory lane?!!  Well, one of the reasons is I wanted to find some great pictures to do a My Digital Studio challenge over at MDS Monday.  This is their 100th Sketch Challenge and they are giving away prizes!!  When I ran across these pictures taken several years ago (Cassidy is now a teenager!!), I knew they were the ones I wanted to use.  I remember this day so well.  We were in Tucson visiting Jeff and his family and we were babysitting.  It was a beautiful sunny day so Sonny and Cassidy found some bubbles and he taught her how to blow them.  She was so excited!

(Click on picture above to make it larger)

The challenge is running for two weeks and it started last week.  To enter the challenge, you select any of the past 99 sketches, create a new project, and link it to their website.  They have set up a Pinterest Board with all the past sketches.  That was the hard part!!  Which one do I choose?  But I knew I wanted a sketch that I could do the picture progression above.

The background paper is from World Traveler and I found the polka dot stamp in Beautiful Today and made it a watermark color.  I found this font that I love called Pea Ellie Bellie!  Don't miss the girl and boy sitting at the top blowing bubbles (from Storytime).   I found some stitching I liked in Family Fun and the Project Life Banner which I colored Lost Lagoon

I even made my own bubbles!!  I used a Circle Punch and color filled it with DSP from Watercolor Wonder and made them different sizes.  (Don't forget to add a drop shadow for extra dimension.)   I also used a few brads for my bubbles! Then it just had to have a little shine added.  To create the reflection,  I used the Freeform tool and moved the anchors around on the circle shape to get the shape for the shine.

So, the sketch that I used was # 65.  How do you think I did?  Would I win a prize??  It doesn't matter.  I just enjoy MDS so much!!

 

Make sure you go to the MDS Monday web site and check out the other sketches.

Thank You Cards

Are you in need of Thank You cards?  Well, these are a few that I included in my Stamp Club's purchases last week.  I always like to put a little something in their bags each month - ribbon, buttons, cards (which I don't sign so they can use them later ), etc.

The card above uses the Banner Blessings Photopolymer stamp.  You won't find this stamp in the catalog but it is available for purchase.  I really like it.  You can see a couple of other cards I made with the set HERE.  The other stamps I used in this card are Four Feathers and Gorgeous Grunge.  Doesn't the Certainly Celery go great with Coastal Cabana??

This cute little fellow is a single stamp that I have neglected!  I just think the little koala bear is darling.  The stamp actually read "thinking of YOU" but I stamped THANK from the Sale-a-Bration set, Simply Wonderful, cut it out and glued it on top of "thinking of"!  The Melon Mambo background paper is the Sale-a-Bration Irresistibly Yours DSP

This was a simple card.  I uses the Under the Tree DSP (from Holiday Catalog) and Hello You Thinlets.

Again .... Hello You Thinlets with the Sale-a-Bration Simply Wonderful stamp set and Best Year Ever DSP.

Simply Wonderful

In need of a few Thank You cards?  I made a few last week using different stamp sets.  These two use a set from the Sale-A-Bration catalog called Simply Wonderful.  I also used Best Year Ever DSP.

For the card above, I made the card base Hello Honey and the banner Calypso Coral.  It is a really simple card to make and who doesn't like quick and easy???

This card base is Calypso Coral.  The ribbon is the chevron ribbon but it is in Pumpkin Pie.  I thought it matched these colors really well.  I masked the "Thanks so very much" stamp for the top 3 "thanks" and stamped in Memento Black Ink.  I used different colors of Blendabilities to color in the "thanks."  The DSP is Sale-A-Bration Best Year Ever.