Does Macy's carry this dress?

Here was the challenge:

- 20 minutes from start to finish
- Main image must be stamped straight onto the card
- May use punches, but not the Cuttlebug (or Cricuit, if I had one)
- A sheet of card stock can be used, other than the card itself, but no patterned papers
- No coloring the image in with any medium
- One embellishment of choice can be used
- Any sentiment stamp may be used, or the sentiment may be generated on the computer
And the really hard one:
- She picks the "category" of the stamp used, (but fortunately not the exact stamp)

The category chosen was: fashion

Here's what I came up with:

The dress is from Rubbernecker, the sentiment from High Hopes. The dress and sentiment are heat embossed with Ranger's embossing powder (Well, she didn't say I couldn't use embossing powder. So, all is fair there.)

Pre-Season Football

A die cut card shaped like a football to celebrate the start of the season.

Art by Dustin Pike

Images all drawn and colored by Dustin Pike.

Birthday card:

Matching gift card:

For mom:

For Christmas:

For grandson: Thank you to my fellow blogger friends for the inspiration to use a pennant type banner on this card.

Mousey Mistletoe

The inside says: "Sending Christmas Kisses"

Happy Birthday Mom

My mother loves lilacs. Today is her birthday. So, you know it -- a card with lilacs (and mice).

Evolution

Here is the evolution of that one card once again.

From this:

To this:

To finally this:

In took 2 days, but I think I finally got one I am satisfied with.

Best Gifts

This little card didn't come out exactly as I had wanted. The glue dots decided for me where the little roses should go -- a little too much like a perfect triangle for my taste, but then who can argue with glue dots when they insist on having their way?

Here's the same verse by Cornish Heritage Farms (before they sold it) using Offray ribbons and much more amendable glue dots:

I didn't make it 30 days posting here each day (as I know I won't be available to post for at least most of the rest of this week -- let alone make anything), but I want to thank you, Bridget for the inspiration and thank you to everyone who came here and left me encouragement! You have reminded me how much fun it is to create something just for the joy of creating it and then seeing it again with fresh eyes after it is posted. You reminded me how therapeutic it is just to share a little of myself. And most wonderfully of all, you reminded me how much fun it is to check into other people's blogs and share a little piece of their joy -- for I had pretty much stopped doing that until this past month. So, even though, I didn't make it 30 days -- I think it took! Thanks, Bridget, honey! And thank you all for sharing your blogs with me!

Emily

The first poem I ever memorized was by Emily Dickinson.


I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! They'd banish us -- you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog --
To tell your name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!



The second poem I memorized was by Langston Hughes. Then I went back to dear, Emily and learned:


I felt a cleaving in my mind -
As if my brain had split -
I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before -
But Sequence raveled out a sound
Like balls -- upon a floor.



The fourth poem, I strove to memorize was also by my favorite recluse. I have to admit after the first verse, I never did get it down.

Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest sea -
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.



Here is a card much in the same vain as my last post. Bird image by Inkadinkado. The word "hope" by Fairie Song. Embossing powder by Ranger.

And the inside of the card is Emily's poem, by Serendipity:

Here is the same card made as a gate fold. Instead of the Faerie Song stamp, I used a Hero Arts stamp for the inside. (Sorry, the poem looks crooked -- it must have to do with the angle I had to take the pic from, because it looks straight when you look straight down at it.)

Hello Owl

Heat embossed with Ranger's Antiquities Verdigris embossing powder is this owl from Inkadinkado and sentiment from Hero Arts.

Birthday Turtle

Happy Birthday

Grade 1

Card for my favorite boy, starting 1st grade in a couple weeks:

The chalkboard is simply a black piece of card stock framed out with red strips. I used my best left handed printing on it, using a white gel pen. The piece of chalk is a rolled up piece of white paper.

Simple Hearts

Even More Eggs

These eggs are covered in small seed beads and bugle beads. I used really, really strong tacky glue to get these beads to adhere. When I coat an egg with beads, I don't put any decoupage or glaze on them, because I haven't found any that doesn't turn the cracks between the beads milky.

This one is covered with shells, using the same thick, sticky glue that I used for the beads. My grandson helped with this one.

More Eggs

Making these little eggs is not hard. You simply blow out the egg. Decorate it. Then I thread a sequin (which will cup the bottom of the egg) through a looped thread with a bangle of some type at the bottom of it. Thread the looped part (which is what you hang it from) from the bottom of the egg to the top, thread on another sequin to cup the top of the egg. And add a touch of glue to each sequin to hold them in place. Add several coats of decoupage medium or glaze medium to each egg (allowing it to dry completely between each coat). You can use bead caps instead of the sequins if you want a fancier egg.

Here are some eggs that I made using temporary tattoos to decorate them:

Personally, I rarely color my eggs before I decorate them. Somehow I like the plain white or brown of the egg best. But occasionally I do make one that is colored and when I do, I like to use fingernail polish to paint them with.
Here is the only egg that I have in my stash that is colored:

The crosses (I guess only one is showing here) are scrapbook stickers.

Let me warn you if you decide you are going to make a cloisonne looking egg by drawing the design on and then coloring it in with nail polish -- it is extremely time consuming. I made a couple like this before and the recipients loved them, but the time involved was ridiculous!

Eggs I

Every few years, I like to make eggs. I only make them every few years, because it seems to take me a few years to get each batch completely finished.

These first two are real eggs, (blown out, of course) with the traditional decoupage and napkin mediums.

On these second two (real eggs,too, of course), I used my scrap booking stickers and a thick glaze medium.
This first one is for Claudie:

I took 3 pictures of it, so you can see that I add detail all the way around each egg and not just on the one side.

This is Theo's (notice I managed to chip it somehow):

Another Hero Card

Thank you to our Troops

Usually, I hit the after Independence Day sales to buy crafting items to make my cards for Operation Write Home. This year the clearance racks were filled with 4th of July glitter and shine -- not actually appropriate for our troops overseas. So, that thrifty bit of inspiration was not going to work this year. What am I going to do? Well, Rick St. Dennis left some cute little digi art at the Operation Write Home site and I used his Uncle Sam to start my card making this year.

This year I decided to make my cards in batches of 8, so I have 7 more of these to go. I don't think I am happy with the die cut "Thank You" and I think I will use a stamp and blue embossing on the rest of the cards.

Smokey Mountains -- Tennessee

I am desperately trying to post on this blog for 30 days straight -- thanks to the inspiration of my dear friend, Bridget. The trouble with that is I am a slow crafter and time is limited anyway. So what do I post on those days that I haven't found a crafting muse?
Today, I am drawing from the photo archives back to my trip last September (2010) to the Smokey Mountains.

Scrapbook Pages w/ChipBoard

One of my "old" scrapbook pages. Old meaning early 2008.

I realize that isn't a very good picture -- something about all the gold and the glare and shadow. So, here are a couple detail shots of the chip board embellishments.

On this particular spread, I had painted the chip board pieces, leaving the paint rather thick to give them added dimension. Then I added micro beads to some with that super sticky red tape (that stuff is amazing) and in some I strung wire with beads or just coiled the wire up. There is so much that can be done with chip board that I never tired of using it.