I'm FINALLY stamping again!!!!

After weeks of not being able to stamp due to broken pipes and sickness...I FINALLY got to stamp tonight. Since it has been a while since I've stamped I decided to use a sketch challenge and what better one to use than the Verve Visual honored guest sketch challenge contest. I made the first card using SU! Roses in Winter. It turned out ok but not exactly what I had envisioned. The second card I made is in my opinion MY FAVORITE card I have ever made. I absolutely love this card. I used my Verve Visual set "Starlight Starbright". I LOVE this set and I LOVE this card. It was really hard to get a good picture of it. I sprayed the black background cardstock with glimmer mist and you can't see the shimmer in the picture but it looks great in real life. I bought some silver curling ribbon after Christmas at Target thinking "this looks cool" but never really thinking I would find a use for it...I was wrong! It worked great with this card. Can you tell I'm pretty excited, I seldom make cards that I think are good and I am so happy with this card. Let me know what you think of it. Thanks for stopping by. Have a great night!

Here is my Roses in Winter card. I used SU Ballet Blue, Apricot Appreal, Real Red and Whisper White along with some Basic Gray dp. Along with Roses in Winter I also used SU! French Script and a Flourish Set from Autumn Leaves.
Here is my "Rockstar" card. I used "Starlight, Starbright" stamp set from Verve Visual. I stamped the sentiment in Brilliance Black Ink and the Stars in silver pigment ink. The black cardstock is sprayed with glimmer mist. The first picture is taken with the camera flash off and the second one is taken using the flash. The main image squares are elevated using SU! dimensionals.

Wish RAK goodies

I am finally feeling a little better so I thought I would drop in and say HELLO!!!
I still haven't stamped anything but I did want to share some pictures of some goodies I received in the latest Wish RAK secret swap on SCS. The reveal day was last Saturday but I was so sick I didn't even open my package until Monday but WOW was it fantastic! My secret wish RAK friend was Karen Haynes (greyhound stamper on SCS). Karen went WAY WAY over the $15 minimum you are required so spend and TOTALLY spoiled me. The package was AWESOME. Thank you Karen for all of the wonderful goodies!!!! Here are some pictures of my new treasures:
This is the ADORABLE card she sent. I just absolutely love it! I always struggle coloring the hedgehogs but Karen did an AWESOME job! I just love it!
She sent me an adorable flowered 8x8 scrapbook, 2 8x8 packs of designer paper from provo craft, a hard cover A to Z of cardmaking book, 2 packages of Marth Stewart dimensionals, some MM shimmery brads (oh how I love bling!), a multi pack of SU! In Color cardstock, a cute decorated bag of bath salts....
and theres more...4 packages of Art Accentz glitter, some mini clipboards, some luggage tages, a provo craft roller to picking up glitter, a bag of primas, a photo wallet, 3 provo craft clear stamp sets and 5 packages of bits and pieces storage containers (not shown).

THANK YOU SO MUCH KAREN!!! YOU TOTALLY MADE MY DAY!!!!!!!

Still alive

Sorry it has been so long since I have updated anything here. I have been suffering from terrible vertigo since last Friday. I still don't feel up to doing much of anything but I wanted to post a quick note to say Hi to everyone. Tom even put my stamp room floor back together on Saturday and I still haven't had enough energy to put it back together...so you know I'm really sick. I will try and post something tomorrow or Friday if I can. I hope you are all well! Have a great day!

What Mythological Creature Are You?

I saw this on my friend Jen's blog the other day and since I have absolutely nothing stamping related to share I thought I would share this. After answering the questions I learned that... I am a Pegasus.

You are a perfectionist, with an eye for beauty. You know how to live a good life - and you rarely deviate from your good taste. While you aren't outgoing, you have excellent social skills. People both admire you - and feel very comfortable around you.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

A dreary day

Today was just all around dreary. It was cold and rainy. For the first time in a long time I actually opted for a nap instead of doing anything craft related. We didn't get my stamp room put back together this weekend like I had hoped and I was a little depressed. Tom was studying for another computer exam all weekend and that was more important so I completely understood but I am still disappointed my room is still a complete mess. Thankfully all the studying paid off because he did pass his exam this morning. Only one more to go, YAY!
On another note, my sister called tonight to say her mailbox was full of cards today. She was completely shocked and touched by the kindness of everyone who sent her a card. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who sent some happy mail her way!
I'm hoping to post something craft related tomorrow, but we'll see. We are having a girls night out tomorrow night. April and her daughter Raechell and Annabelle and I are going to see the 3-D Hannah Montana movie and then we are going out for dinner. Should be a fun girls night. I'll let you know how it is. Hope you all have a wonderful evening. Thanks for reading!

RAK request & some Gina K class cards

Yesterday my sister had to have her cat put to sleep. This was awful and unexpected news and she is heartbroken. If any of you have an extra card laying around, she could really use some happy mail right now. If you want to send a card, please leave me a message or send an email and I will get her address to you.


On a much happier note, last night my sister and I went to a OMS/prismacolor pencil class at the Gina K Designs retail store (this was a good distraction for my sis after her terrible day). The weather here was awful and we were half hour late due to traffic but we made it, and I'm so glad because it was a lot of fun. The class was taught by the expert herself, Gina K. I learned a lot and got to make 3 awesome cards. I am also signed up for 2 more classes with her in the near future and I can't wait...watercoloring using Sakura glaze pens and a Copic marker tutorial class. Here are the 3 cards we made last night:

Another Changito Card

I just love the Changito monkey stamps! This is the card that I had just started working on when our pipe broke. It is a bit plain but I still like it. Once again Changito was colored using Prismacolor markers. I cut the tag out of chipboard using my Cuttlebug and covered it with cardstock. The dp used was from this awesome package of 12x12 cs weight dp I got at SAMS Club, I just love it!

Finally got to do a little stamping!

I finally did a little stamping last night. My stamp room is a complete wreck but I did find some C.C. Designs images sitting on my table that I had already colored so I decided to do something with them. Images are colored with prismacolor markers. I used my FAVORITE Quickie Glue Pen to do the glitter (using SU Dazzling Diamonds glitter). If you haven't tried one of these pens, I strongly suggest trying it out. You can get them for $1.99 from scrapbookpal.com (I have found them locally at Archiver's but they are $2.99). They work AWESOME for glitter work in small areas! You can click on the image for a closer look. I hope you all have a terrific day...it is extremely cold here (last I checked the wind chill was -31) so we won't be venturing out anywhere today. Stay warm!

Natural Beauty

I don't have anything stamping related to post today. It has just been a strange couple days. The weather here totally sucks, I have no motivation to do anything...etc. etc.
Instead I thought I would post a picture that I took of Annabelle a couple days ago.

A long day...

Today was a long day. Nothing in particular going on, just a long day. I spent most of the day cleaning and doing laundry. No stamping, unfortunately.
Since I've been posting pictures from some of my favorite stampers, today I thought I would post some gorgeous western themed cards and some cute Bella cards. All of these great examples were made by my dear friend Mary (mwebb on SCS). Mary is, in my opinion, an expert at coloring with Sakura glaze pens. I've never seen anyone else come close to the job she does with them. For more great cards check out her gallery on SCS.

Stamping Saturday

Today would be a great day to stamp...and I might actually get to do that. I pushed my stamping table into a corner in the basement and cleaned if off yesterday so I could potentially do some stamping today. Doesn't mean I will, but at least I can if I want to. Only challenge might be to find where all my supplies are stashed.
Since I don't have any new creations for today, I wanted to spotlight another one of my incredibly talented dear friends: Kisa (Kisamari on SCS). Like Delia, I met Kisa on SCS. She was in a lot of the first swaps I joined and even sent me images from Heartfelt Thanks just so I could join a swap. Being fairly new to the site at the time, I was in awe of the generosity she showed to someone she didn't even know. I think after that I just followed her around splitcoast, joining the same swaps so I could get her awesome cards! Here are a few of my favorites (that I could actually find in my diaster of a stamp room) she has made over the past couple years. If you want to see all of her creations check out her gallery on SCS.


I also forgot to mention that she is the best TAC demo in the world, so if you are looking for a demo, look no further!

Happy Friday

I need to get my stamp room put back together ASAP. I am going a little crazy without it. The house is clean and we have no place to go today which means it would have been a great day to stamp. Oh well, what can you do. I may go down and try and organize my table and sit in the hall and stamp something. Who knows. Our dryer is also not working so I may need to wash some clothes and make a run to the laundrymat to dry them. It has been quite a week.

Since I haven't been able to make anything, I decided to pull out a scrapbook page to share today. I didn't make this page. All I did was add pictures from Beckett's 1st birthday. In my early days on SCS I hosted a few scrapbook page swaps. Little did I know that by hosting a scrapbook swap I would meet one of my now dearest friends, Delia. She is an AWESOME scrapbooker and when I received the pages she made I was thrilled because someone finally made pages that were my style and were usable (honestly a lot of the pages I received I only salvaged portions or pieces from them). I loved this birthday layout she made and all I had to do was add pictures!!! She is now on the scrapbooking DT at A Shade of Blue. To see some more of her great layouts check out her gallery (loganlovesstamps) at ashadeofblue.net.

Check back tomorrow to see some more projects from some of my favorite stampers. Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Gotta love glitter

I absolutely love glitter. Actually I love anything that sparkles. I made this card for one of the challenges on ASB during December. I used it as a birthday card for my friend Kisa. I know it doesn't really have a birthday theme but I thought it was pretty enough to use for any occasion. The glitter was done using a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen. This is one of my favorite products...you can do awesome glitter detail with it. I also used another one of my favorite products...Doodlebug sugar coated brads. I just love sparkle!!! The main image stamp is "Agpanthus Cluster" from Stampendous and the background is "French Script" from SU.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

An old card and some new stamps

Since I can't really stamp anything new, I thought I would post one of the cards that I made at Christmas time. Once again, a cute, happy, fun Penny Black stamp! I just love the Penny Black frogs, ducks and chickens. They are my absolute favs and so easy to color!
I also thought I would share a pic of my new stamp set from Verve Visual that arrived yesterday. I'm disappointed that I couldn't ink it up right away but I'm still excited that it arrived. Annabelle is a self proclaimed "superstar" (at 4 years old) so I just had to buy this set. She loves singing and dancing and dressing up like a rockstar so these sayings will be perfect for some future scrapbook pages. I recently bought the DCWV rockstar stack and these will go perfectly together. Can't wait to get back in my stamp room and play with these.
Speaking of my stamp room, the fans are still running but it seems to be drying out nicely. Crossing my fingers that we can put it back together in a week or so.
Hope you all have a wonderful day!!

Today is a new day!

I'm trying to keep a good attitude about yesterday so I'm starting today's post with a bright, happy looking card. This is the first card I made yesterday before the big pipe event. I love Penny Black stamps, they are always so fun and cute and happy! The second card I was working on won't be done for at least a week.

I thought I would also post a few pictures of the current state of my stamp room. Tom and I pulled all of the flooring out in hopes of saving it, there was a lot of water under it so it is a good thing we decided to do that right away. I didn't sleep much at all last night worried that the cap they used on the pipe would somehow fly off and fill our basement with water...luckily that wasn't the case. I still feel so fortunate that it happened while I was standing right there...it could have been worse....MUCH MUCH WORSE.

My stamping supplies are now all piled in the kids playroom. I have a feeling there will be no fun had in that room for a week or so.


Here is the pile of flooring we pulled out. Thankfully it came apart really easily and we labeled everything so that if we're lucky we can get it put back in correctly.

This is the nice hole we had to cut in the wall to get to the pipe.

Here is the wide shot of the room, fans blowing and heater going. I just have to remember....IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE!

A bad day...a REALLY BAD day

I got up this morning with only one goal for the day...stamping, lots of stamping. I shouldn't set goals, as something always seems to get in the way. I spent the morning doing routine housework. After lunch the kids and I went down in the basement to play. My stamp room and their playroom pretty much make up the entire basement. Before I started stamping I took a picture of my very clean/organized stamp room. Take a look:







After taking these pictures I sat down and stamped for a bit. I made a cute birthday card that I will post later and then I started working on another Changito card. It was going great. The card was coming together well and I thought it was super cute. The kids had gotten tired of playing in the basement and went up to the kitchen to play on the computer. While I was working on my card I heard a hissing noise kinda like water flushing or something. I ran up to see what they were doing and they were both sitting nicely on the couch watching tv. I came back down to my stamp room to find that a water pipe had frozen and burst and water was pouring in onto my stamp room floor. I was in a complete panic. I felt like I was in a movie or something. The water just kept coming. Our basement isn't quite finished yet (there is no trim up yet so basically where the drywall met the floor there is a little gap and that is where the water was coming in. Our basement has full exposure with a walk-out and our outside faucet is right outside my stamp room...well it froze and broke and caused a really good day to go south very quickly. I called Tom and also ran next door to our neighbor who just happens to have done plumbing/house repair stuff for 35 years before he retired. He helped me get the water shut off, THANK GOD, and he also cut a hole in the wall and found the broken pipe and capped it off so we could turn the water in the house back on. I have a feeling I won't be stamping for a few days. My stamp room has pergo (I think that is what is called) flooring and water got under it so it either has to be pulled up and dried out or totally torn out and replaced. So much for my stamping momentum. Here are some "after" pictures of my stamp room:







In the corner where all the towels are we had to cut a big hole in the wall...this TOTALLY sucks. I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry at this point. I'm just so thankful that I was down there when it happened because if it had happened during the night or while we were out we would have had an awful mess and I would have lost a lot of stamping stuff. Gotta look at the big picture...it could have been worse.

Gotta love Changito

I've always thought the Changito Monkey stamps from Stampendous were super cute but I could never figure out what to do with them. I finally came up with a card that I'm willing to share. I colored the monkeys and vine with prisma markers and added a little glitter to the vine. The monkey square is also popped up with SU dimensionals. The layout is one of the sketch challenges from SCS but I can't remember which #.

-12 degrees

When I got up this morning the temperature was -12 with a wind chill of -23. I don't leave the house when it is this cold out. The good thing about this is...lots of stamping time. I finally got a couple hours of stamping time today. Here are 3 of the cards I made this afternoon. I made the first one and then used scraps from that card to make the other two (hence the same color combo for all 3 cards).

Girls Night Out

In November my sister and I decided that we needed to start having a little time for ourselves so we decided that every couple months we would go to Archiver's for their Friday night scrap mania. 6 hours of fun, uninterrupted stamping/scrapping time (without kids). We went the last Friday in November and had a great time so we scheduled another girls night out for last night. Everything was set, the husbands were taking care of the kids and we could stamp the night away. I went right away at 5 to get good seats and my sister arrived around 5:45 (she had to pick kids up from school, etc. etc.). We started cutting out a few die cuts for some scrapbook pages we had in mind and at 6:45 my sister's husband called to inform her that their 1 year old daughter was throwing up...A LOT. Needless to say our girls night out didn't turn out quite as planned. She had to leave but I decided to stay since we had paid, but it just wasn't as fun hanging out by myself. I did manage to get a 2 page scrapbook layout done though...



These are pictures from out trip to the pumpkin patch in October 2006...yes I am WAY WAY behind scrapbooking. My sister had taken a bunch of pictures of piles of pumpkins and we cut them using the dies at Archiver's to make the letters for the title. The box that says "Schuster's Playtime Farm" is a pocket. I haven't made the card to go in yet but I thought I would write a few comments about the day and stick it in there. That way I can hide my hideous handwriting! I think it turned out pretty cute considering my scrapbooking is extremely rusty.

Oranges

I will add some stamping stuff later today but for this morning I just wanted to pose the question...Why is it that no matter how you peel an orange and no matter where you stand while doing it, it manages to squirt you directly in the eye? It never squirts off to the right or left...just directly in the eye..EVERY TIME!