A Colorful World

Just a quick post as I'm off to bed.  I made this for the color challenge on Splitcoaststampers to use More Mustard, Melon Mambo, and Baja Breeze.  This is not a combination I would've thought to use, but I like it!

Images are by Rubbernecker in their Create a Garden Set 2 and Garden Phrase Set.

Tropical Birthday Birdie

It's all about the color this week.....bright, beautiful, tropical colors at da Mudder's tea party because we are headed to the rain forest to plan, carry out, and attend the 108th very colorful surprise birthday party for Miss Eula! You can read all about this amazing woman in the Teapot Tuesday Destination Station.

AND, if you want to play in this week's Teapot Tuesday challenge, you can check it out in the challenge forum here.

So, in honor of Miss Eula's 108th birthday and her zest for life and her parrot, Star, this tropical-wanna-be-parrot, Pascal, is flying all the way there to bring her balloons and a birthday banner. Pascal has a tendency to be a little wascal at times. You see, Pascal belongs to Miss Bertie and Miss Bertie has trained Pascal how to fling things. You can bet your bottom dollar that Pascal and Miss Bertie will be livin' it up in tropical paradise celebrating Miss Eula's birthday, sipping on pina coladas, and flinging colorful confetti-like bird seed! Squaaaaaaawk!

CSS Alumni Blog Hop

Welcome to another StampTV Center Stage Alumni blog hop!  If you've arrived from Carolina's blog, you are in the right place!  You can also start at the beginning by going directly to Stamp TV and hopping from there.

Carolina challenged us to create a card that contains only the following items and no others:

* one neutral color for the card base:  white, ivory, black, brown, or kraft
* two different colors of card stock
* one patterned paper
* three buttons
* one color of ribbon
* as little or as many Gina K images as we'd like

Since I really need to add to my Christmas card stash, I chose to go with that theme for my design.  I love this beautiful reindeer from Gina's The Magic of Christmas stamp set.  He has a regal bearing about him, don't you think?

I chose white as my neutral cardstock; burgundy and metallic green as my two different colors of card stock; my one patterned paper is obvious; my three buttons are actually a button die cut out several times and stacked for depth of a real button; I used gold for my ribbon; and, like I wrote above, I chose Gina K's The Magic of Christmas stamp set.   I colored this sweet reindeer with Copic markers, masked him off, and stamped the trees in the background.  The trees were colored with Stampin' Up's old forest green reinker, as well as creamy caramel and chocolate chip reinkers, and blender pen.  I used a gold paint pen to color the stars on top of the trees.  I added silver glitter on the garland of my trees.  For my clouds, I punched a scallop punch out of a post-it note and sponged my color around that.  It's hard to tell in my photo, but for the snowy ground, I dipped a paint brush in white craft ink and painted it carefully around my trees all the way to the bottom of the card.  I then used detailed white embossing powder and heat embossed it.  Last, I used a glue pen to adhere dazzling diamonds on top of the snow.

Now, to continue the hop, head on over to Cheri's blog and check out the marvelous creation she has designed!  Have fun!

Krafty Butterfly

A quick post this morning.  I made this for the SCS Clean & Simple challenge to use the colors kraft, turquoise, and white in our design.  I need some simplicity in my life, so making clean and simple cards fits that bill!!  Isn't this ric rac border punch cool?  Should help me save a few dollars by not having to buy ric rac ribbon!

I hope you'll swing by my blog tomorrow as I'll be participating in the Stamp TV CSS Alumni blog hop, and the crew has some awesome projects to show you!

Stamps:  Flight of the Butterfly (Stampin' Up)
Cardstock:  Kraft, Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White
Ink:  Tempting Turquoise, Memento Black
Accessories:  ric rac border punch, turquoise button, hemp cord, pop-up glue dot

Create a Garden

I can hardly believe how fast the month of August is flying by.  The slight changes in the temperatures and light of the day, as well as the incessant sound of the cicadas signal to me that fall is fast approaching.  This also happens to be the last August challenge for the CCEE Stampers as hosted by Tosha (stamps4funinca).  She has given us some spectacular sketch panel designs with which to work this month.  Check out this cool design

You can view the challenge details, my team members designs, and all the other sketches Tosha had for us this month on our CCEE Stampers blog.  We hope you'll play along with us!



And here's my design.  After I stamped the checked background, I heat embossed the flower image in black over that and cut them up into 1 1/8" squares.  Both of these pretty flower images are new Rubbernecker images from the Create a Garden Set.  To mat the white wide oval panel in black, I just punched two more wide oval panels out of black cardstock and lined them up the way I wanted in order to get a different look.  I absolutely and totally LOVE Stampin' Up's Cherry Cobbler; it is such a rich, deep red.

Thanks for swinging by and visiting my blog today.  I wish for you a day full of joy, happiness, and blessings.


Stamps:  Rubbernecker's Create a Garden Set 1,Garden Phrase Set, and checked background
Cardstock:  Cherry Cobbler, Black, White
Ink:  Memento Black, Cherry Cobbler, Lettuce
Accessories:  black embossing powder, heat tool, spiral border punch, wide oval punch, photo corner punch, black brad

Witch You All the Best!

Tosha has another terrific sketch design for the CCEE challenge this week, and we'd love it if you played along!  You can get all the details and see my teammates cool samples here.

For my card, I used this darling witch image from Rubbernecker's Halloween set.  There are some really cute images and sentiments in this set.  I made her cauldron with Stampin' Up's decorative ornament punch with a portion of the top cut off and I added a piece of drippy goo border punch on the top of it, as well as my border under the three designer papers section.  I colored my little witch with Copic markers and added this pom pom ribbon trim.

Isn't she witchin'???

Catching Up

Here are a few cards I've made in the last several days.

I think it's fun to play with punch art in card designs, and I don't do enough of it.  However, I did take the opportunity to create these fishies using the Stampin' Up decorative ornament, trio heart, 1/4" circle and double circle punches.  I made this card as part of the Teapot Tuesday challenge for an eight year old boy who recently underwent a bone marrow transplant.  Details are here if you're interested!

This next card I made in honor of my friend Cindy, aka Mothermark, as she was selected Queen for the Day last Friday on Splitcoaststampers.  Cindy was one of the very first SCSers to befriend me, and I haven't stopped laughing yet. Her imagination, creativity, and talent are like none other.  I had the good fortune to fly out to Colorado about three years ago and meet Cindy, as well as Traci (Tracim) and we all had a riot of a good time!!

Anyhow, the Queen for the Day challenge is where you go into the Queen's gallery, select one of her projects and case it.  Cindy had made this darling tri-shutter card.  My changes are obvious in that I used these adorable trees and penguin image by Rubbernecker for a winter scene.

And another great stamper, Kathy (aka CAKath) was chosen as this week's Featured Stamper on Splitcoaststampers. Her work is always stellar. I settled on her gorgeous VSN Serigraph card because, not only is it GORGEOUS, but I had never tried the serigraph technique, and I love the looks of it.   It was an easy technique with beautiful results.   I used Rubbernecker's Fall Trilogy set for this design.

Thanks for stopping by!  Sorry I'm not posting as often as I'd like, but there are only so many hours in the day and work continues to claim most of them, and I try to fit some stamping time into my evenings as I can (a huge stress reliever for me).  I know many of you can relate.