Snow...not again!

Is it really Saturday? I usually love Saturdays since I have a little help with the kids, but today I'm too tired to do anything. It may be in part to the fact that we woke up to a light dusting of snow. I am SO tired of cold and winter. I need it to be sunny and 70 for the next 6 months (I know I'm dreaming). I did drag myself out to a couple garage sales this morning, including the semi-annual garage sale at our local scrapbook store. This is a great sale as long as you don't have crowd anxiety (which I have severely). I braved the crowd as long as I could stand it (I get really nervous and hyperventilate when I'm packed in like sardines) and I did get a few deals but not as great as previous sales. I think Tom and I are going to have an afternoon "date" and go to Red Lobster for a late lunch/early supper while my sister watches the kids. I'm hoping to then stamp the rest of the night but who knows if that will happen, or if I'll have the energy to actually do it. I just threw this card together using an image that I colored earlier in the week. I think the dog is from Whipper Snapper but I'm not 100% sure (I received it from someone in the wishRAK group). The sentiment is from the retired SU! set Rough Day (or maybe it's Play, I can't remember). Nothing too fancy, just a lot of layers. The glittered paper is from the DCWV glittered mat stack. I hope you are all having a great Saturday. Thanks for stopping by!

Friday's post a little early

I have another busy day of babysitting my niece and a friend of Annabelle's tomorrow so I thought I would post tomorrow's card, tonight. As I'm continuing on my journey of trying new things I decided to challenge myself with a monochromatic card tonight. I know it isn't exactly a technique but it is something that I totally suck at (just ask my old monthly swap friends about my totally dorky monochromatic card I made last year). Oh and a second challenge for the card...it is square. I never make square cards. It is huge too...5 1/2 x 5 1/2. I colored this adorable Penny Black image this afternoon using gamsol and prismacolor pencils. I just LOVE Penny Black, have I mentioned that before? Anyway, the cs colors I picked are Yoyo Yellow and Barely Banana along with some pattern paper from DCWV. It is pretty simple, but I think it turned out darn cute!
The pearls are the ones from the Target $1 bin. I am so loving them. I only bought 8 packages, I may have to pick up a few more if they have any.
Thanks again for stopping by and sharing your comments. I enjoy each and every one! Have a wonderful evening!

Trying something new!

I decided that I am going to start trying some techniques that I have never done before (or ones I haven't done in a long time). For this card I did the acetate and tissue paper technique (BTW, I have no idea if that is really the name of the technique, but that is what I'm calling it).
I stamped the butterflies with stazon on acetate and flipped it over. I added a dime size drop of crystal effects and a few drops of SU! classic reinkers. I smooshed it all over using a crumpled up piece of tissue paper. When it was covered I took a new piece of crumpled up tissue paper and covered the acetate...does that make any sense? Anyway, that is how I got the crumpled look behind the butterflies. I added some stickles to the front of the acetate and viola! It gives a neat appearance but boy were my hands messy, I would highly recommend wearing rubber gloves.
And even though I haven't made any more monster cards I did stamp a bunch of monsters on acetate and "color" them with either pearl-ex or glitter...fun, fun, fun. I can't wait to make something with these little cuties!

Hope you are all having a great day. It is cold, windy and rainy here. Another great day for stamping (except that I have 2 extra kids today, so stamping time with 4 kids running crazy is probably out of the question).
Thanks for stopping by!

I need some input...

Here are the pages I was working on at Scrap Mania on Saturday night. I tried finishing them up today but I want some honest opinions....
The entire page is glued down with the exception of the flowers (the glitter on them is still drying). What I need to know is: Does it need something else, and what? Does the left page title look ok with only the one black strip or should it have 2 narrow black strips similar to the right hand page? Should I move the flowers someplace else? Do I need more rub-ons? Where? My original title was Flower Girl but it just didn't look good so I changed it...please don't tell me I shouldn't have as I already glued my letters down. Is the right hand page too empty in its bottom left corner? What do you think?

Girly was a little harder

Girly monsters were definitely a little harder. This card didn't turn out great but I'm on a roll posting today so I thought I would share it anyway. Instead of coloring the monster with markers like I did with the other cards, I stamped on acetate with stazon and then ran it through my xyron machine. I colored it by adding pearl-ex power to the sticky side after it came out of the xyron. I then ran it through again and stuck it to the pink passion cardstock. After I had the whole thing glued together I started playing around with the cuttlebug background and a pink gel pen. Since everything was glued together when I started with the gel pen there was no going back so I just picked a few of the embossed words to highlight in pink. It is kind of a funky card. I don't like it as much as I liked all the boyish monster cards I made earlier today but the monster is still cute regardless of how the rest of the card turned out.

After a fun day of playing with monsters...I'm off to bed. Hope you all had a great day. Thanks for stopping by!

More Lil' Monsters

Here are a few more Lil' Monsters I threw together. I used the same blue and white theme because I already had a bunch of paper cut. I am going to experiment making some of them more girly looking later. These were just so much fun to play around with.
I should have been working on finishing my scrapbook page from Saturday but I got caught up in the cuteness of these little guys. I will try and work on my sb page later tonight or tomorrow. I did find some time this afternoon to be naughty and shop a little at Michael's. All Cricut cartridges are on sale at Michael's for $40 this week so I splurged and bought one. I justified buying it with the fact that I need to finish some titles are a couple sb pages...so be on the look out for a sb page with a Cricut letter title :)
Hope you are all having a great day! It is cold and rainy and all around dreary here...great day to stay in and STAMP!!

Time for some CASEing!

I had a few minutes to play this morning so I threw together this little guy. I wanted to do something fun and simple. I absolutely love the cards made by Kurtis (krabearkub on SCS). His blog is just as fantastic as his creations. A couple days ago he posted a card that I absolutely LOVED and I wanted to CASE. I finally got a chance to play around with it today. It isn't an identical CASE since I used different colors, stamps, etc. etc. but I did "steal" his overall layout. I think his card was absolutely stunning and my card... well, I think turned out pretty darn cute.
I love this Lil' Monsters set from Green Grass Stamps. I haven't actually ever made anything with this set until today, but I have a feeling I will be making several versions of this card later today using the different monsters that come in the set. The card is simple and fast to make. The little baubles are the cheapies from the Michael's floral department, but even though they cost a lot less than Dew Drops or Bella Baubles they work TERRIFIC! Stop back later and hopefully I will have more of these cute little guys posted. Hope you are all having a terrific Tuesday!!!

Change is good, right?

I like to play around with my blog options a lot. Because I don't have photo editing software, having a really cool looking blog is difficult. Let me know what you think of the newest look. Besides changing up my color combos, I also changed my blog title. After making the scrapbook pages for Delia's birthday a few weeks ago, I have been trying to look at life in a different way. This afternoon I was thinking about the ups and downs in life and I realized that I need to change my attitude about a lot of things and find "the best in life" instead of complaining about the things that I have no power over.
Wish me luck!
I hope you are all having a terrific day!

Funny Story....

Here is what happens when you leave a 3 year old unattended with the computer: Last night Annabelle and I went to bed early but because Beckett had taken a nap during the afternoon he was still a bundle of energy. He loves to do puzzles and will do them for hours so Tom left him in the office with a pile of puzzles and went downstairs to watch a movie. After Beckett was done with the puzzles, instead of telling Tom he was done, he decided to jump on the the computer and take some pictures of himself using the photo booth program that came on our mac. The kids love this feature but have only used "our" computer when either Tom or I are around. They have their own iMac down in the kitchen that is "theirs" so they are pretty knowledgeable about maneuvering their way around. Apparently he is A LOT more knowledgeable than we gave him credit for...he took 75 pictures of himself using all of the different special effect features. Tom didn't notice the pictures until after he finally put Beckett to bed, but this morning Beckett explained to us he was taking pictures and making "funny faces". The kid is a total ham. I forgot to mention that he also changed the name of the hard drive so we definitely have to keep on eye on this kid before he starts deleting our itunes or iphoto libraries. Here are a few of his masterpieces:

Pencil Sketch
Swirly Head
I think this effect is called stretch, but we call it Big Head
I can't see you, anybody there?
Beckett Warhol
X-ray
Funny face
What the heck? He thought this was hilarious. Not sure I consider this a funny face.

Hope you all have a wonderful Monday. Thanks for stopping by!

Lots of stamping time today with few results : (

I know I mentioned yesterday that hopefully I would post my project that I was going to work on last night at scrap mania today, but I didn't get it finished. Sadly, I worked for 5 hours on a 2 page layout for Annabelle's scrapbook and I didn't get it done. I wanted to finish it today but it still needs "something" so I will post it in a few days when I hopefully have it finished. Instead, I have some simple graduation cards to share. I spent A LOT of time trying to make graduation cards today and well, it just wasn't in the stars for me to accomplish much. Everything I made during my first 2.5 hours in my stamp room went into the garbage, literally. I managed to throw these together but considering I was working on graduation cards for about 5 hours I wouldn't consider this a very successful stamping day. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Check back during the next few days for a peek at my scrap mania pages. Thanks for stopping by!