CCC Kerry's challenge

The challenge for this card...which was due the end of July!, is by Kerry who wanted everyone to use a robin, holly, and an optional mailbox on the card. I think I got it covered!! I really have fun playing along with the challenges but it seems that I have good intentions to get them done but allow myself to be distracted!



My distraction this week is that I will be leaving Thursday to go to Virginia to help take care of my 30 month old granddaughter while her Momma and Daddy go to the hospital to bring her new sister home. My son called to day and said that the doctor told them that she wouldn't make it to her next doctors appointment on 6 September because she ready to pop!! We had planned on going out the 10 September but this works out better for us because we will be there about 2 weeks and then we will come home and get ready to go to Spain for just over 3 weeks! YAY!

I am so looking forward to the cooler weather because it has been over a 100 deg F, 39C, most every day since last June! Someone asked about my electric bill the other day since we have to run air conditioning constantly and it has cost about $130 a week or >$550 a month.

Hope everyone has a good week and I will try to log online every chance I get.

Materials:

Graphic 45 Christmas Past paper.
Red card stock
Tim Holtz bird and branch dies, UTEE, Age Linen for distress
Spellbinders Scalloped Rectangle
Stampin UP! Label punch, Riding Hood Red card stock and ink, Always Artichoke seam binding,
Flourishes Stamps, mailbox
Copic Markers for coloring.

WOYWW #117

WoW! Wednesday again! I know that sounds old and trite but...I don't know where this week has gone. I went to Tulsa, OK with my sister for a wedding shower for my nephew and ended up staying all night and I have yet to get into my schedule again! Curious what WOYWW and Wednesdays are all about? Click on the link to Miss Julia's blog, Stamping Ground and she will tell you all about it!

My desk is cluttered as I am working on a card for the Christmas Card Club that I was invited to join.

I have fallen behind and I am now trying to catch up but...looks like I will be leaving for Virginia early Thursday to help my son and daughter-in-law when their second child comes. My husband and I are planning on driving out so it may not be possible for me to visit very many blogs but I promise to try!

I will post a picture of the finished card later. Have a great week!

Christmas Card Club

I am about 3-4 weeks behind in the Christmas Card Club due to other pressing issues around here. I decided today to make a big effort to get caught up because in a little over a month I will be going to Spain and I don't want to get any further behind! I got one card done before getting sidetracked looking for a stamp that I want to use on the next challenge. I really have to get more focused but with the FM and ME that is a challenge in itself!!

This card is inspired by Sally's challenge...Santa Claus is Coming to Town (use Father Christmas Image or animal dressed as Father Christmas)


I used Graphic 45 Christmas Past card stock from 2 years ago...yes I hoard a lot!! I made the card with Pear Pizazz from Stampin'Up! and layered the Graphic 45 paper on top as a mat for the Santa image that I cut out of the opposite side of the layer paper! The ribbon is SU. I finished it off with a little sparkly red bling from my stash of stuffs. It is an easy peazy card and I am happy with the way it turned out. (I am not so happy with the picture cause it looks so blurry and dark to me.)

Check back tomorrow and hopefully I will have found the stamp I was looking for or I will have found another one that will work just as well. If you are interested in playing along with the group and getting a head start on your cards this year just contact one of us, names and links are on the side bar, and we will tell you how to get started.

Amy Duff Papertrails Leaver 500 post giveaway

I surfed into a blog today that has an awesome candy giveaway. Amy Duff is celebrating 500 blog posts on her blog. Amy blogs about her art creations, home situations, and being the mother of an autistic daughter. I read through several posts and I decided to share the site and add her to my Google reader! I think she has a lot of good ideas and thoughts to share. Check her out!

Traveling Time

Decided to enter this tag into a couple of challenges this week. DragonsDream Tag It On and Simon Says has Travel as their themes this week. I think that this tag fits that catagory!

The stamp set is from Tim Holtz but it was one of the clear acrylic ones from Micheal's that I bought before I got smart and started buying online. Now the store where I shop has started carrying Tim Holtz products.

WOYWW #116

I just got back from a design team meeting at the store where I do my classes and it looks like there is going to be some fun things happening the next few months with the holidays and changes going on. We had the opportunity to look at some of the new products that are rolling in from CHA and got the skinny on when we can expect some things to show up at the store. It has been and interesting week around here first dashing this way then that. I have managed to get a couple of blog posts in around the goings on to show off some of the things I have been doing and creating.

A picture of what my desk looks like today. It is in a messy state but it sort of lives there most days. I spotted up the pristine looks of my cutting mat by accidentally dumping some acetone on it and it immediately lifted some of the markings and the vinyl from the top. You can't see it in this photo so I don't know why I am telling you...guess as a warning to be careful with acetone around the cutting mats. As you can see in addition to crafting I have continued to take stamps off their wood mounts and those stamp cases have stamps that need the glue applied. I did about another 10 sets but they are already in the cabinet. I decided to reorganize the stamps according the the Stampin'Up! categories or Nature, Occasions, Elements, Holidays, etc. I think it will make it easier to find what I want. I plan on putting a list of stamps accessible to the shelf so you will know what section to find what set in.

Here is a picture of the goodies I picked up at the store tonight. We all decided which products we were going to showcase for our projects and I won out getting to do a Christmas Canvas with the Graphic 45 Christmas stamps and papers. Yay!
Last picture...here are the last two tags I made for the tag class the beginning of the month. I thought I had posted them on WOYWW #114 but it was only the leaf tag! Everyone who took the class enjoyed making them.
WOYWW is a fun time of the week for me going and snooping around other peoples desks and seeing what it up in their corner of the world. It is a small world on WOYWW cause we go all over the world from the comfort of our desk chairs. No visa required!! If you are interesting in following along or joining in the fun go to Julia's blog, Stamping Ground and check it out.

Bingo!

This is the last card for the class this Thursday night. The Texture trades, Playing games was used in the making of the three cards. The first card is called Admit One, second card is Who you are, and the third is simply Bingo. Remember getting a game box for Christmas and when all the covers for the bingo game went missing we would steal buttons from Momma's button box to cover the numbers!

There are still a couple spots left in the class. If you are interested in taking the class contact Whole Lotta Scrap at 310-3400 to reserve your seat. There will be 3 cards/tags made in the class. Class is from 6-8:30pm August 25. Class fee is $22 and you will receive the embossing folders and supplies to make the tags. Equipment you will need to bring a paper cutter, scissors, glue/tape runner, craft mat, and if you have them your distress ink pads. Hope you see you there!

Materials:

Kraft Card blank
Tim Holtz Texture Trades Playing Games, Bingo Texture Fade
Retro Grunge Paper Stack
Tim Holtz Ideology Bingo pieces
Buttons, paper flowers
EK Success leaf punch
Distress inks, walnut stain, vintage photo, fired brick, scattered straw, black soot
Bakers twine

Amy's 1000 sheets of paper giveaway

Was surfing around the blogs today and ran across Amy's A Thousand Sheets of Paper blog and she has an awesome give away. Amy is celebrating her blogversary and she has a mega candy give away of stamps and otherm goodies and giveaways. Go check her blog out!

Who you are! card

I was trying to photograph a picture to put on the blog when my number two helper...Princessa Stormy jumped into the picture! I thought it was just too cute to cut so I will post it so all can see the torment I put up with...isn't she posing so cute! The kitty girls know I love them and I love taking their pictures so they have learned to pose for me!


Here is a picture of the card: I am calling it my Who you are! card. I love the masking and coloring on this card. I used Tim Holtz Retro paper on a kraft card blank. I attempted to mask each ray and color it with the distress ink to match the paper. The sun rays have all ways appealed to me symbolizing the fact that you the limits of what you can be, hence the sentiment on the card.

Materials:

Kraft Card blank
Tim Holtz Texture Trades Playing Games
Retro Grunge Paper Stack
Tim Holtz Purely Random Stamp set
Distress inks, walnut stain, vintage photo, fired brick, bundled sage, scattered straw
Bakers twine

A love-ly canvas

I have been making canvas's recently and everyone that has seen them has been after me to get a class together and teach them how to make the canvas's too. Finally I got it together and we are having THE class at WLS on Saturday.


The basis for this project is a 12"x12" stretched canvas by Canvas Corp. but there are all sorts out there that you can use. This one is just plain canvas that hasn't been gessoed but I like the stiffness of the gesso so I mixed some gel medium and gesso together and painted the canvas front and the back of the paper and stuck the paper on the canvas. The printed paper is by Creative Imaginations Iron Orchid Designs and after sticking it on the canvas I put a couple coats of the watered down gel/gesso mixture on top wiping the corners off with a wet wipe before it got to dry so the designs would show through. The picture mats are made with the Vintage Cabinet Card die and a contrasting mat cut around it. The flourish on the top of the mat is from the Urban Chic stamp set from Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz line. I distressed around the canvas frame and the mats with Vintage Photo Distress ink after applying a layer of tissue tape to the outer edge of the frame.

The love die and Mini Baroque die were used to make the love emblem. I cut a pink and a white emblem then used the love die to cut out the oval in the white and glued it on top of the pink. I distressed around the emblem with Vintage Photo Distress ink and added the pink half beads and the flourish.






After the canvas was completely dry I took some crepe ribbon and glued it to the upper left corner bunching it up as I went. I used Mulberry roses and 'Color Me Crazy' daisies to create the floral arrangement. The centers of the small daisies are decorated with plastic half beads like Dew Drops. The leaves are cut with the Mover's and Shaper's mini leaf die.






I used the mini-bird cage and bird die to make the cage hanging from the branch on the right upper side of the canvas. The birds flying around are cut from the Martha Stewart bird punch.








I took a swivel clasp and suspended it below the lock faceplate using a brad. On the circle loop end I added a word stick and on the swivel clasp side I put the key and a bead fob that I made from some beads in my stash. I used Distress Stickles, Rock Candy, to give some sparkle to the flowers on the paper around the edges because without it the flowers just faded into the paper. I used Accent Glaze on the bird in the upper right hand corner to make it stand out a little.




Product list:
Tim Holtz dies used: Vintage Cabinet Card and Tattered leaves.
Movers & Shapers mini leaf and branch, mini bird cage, mini baroque die, love die
Tim Holtz/Ranger Distress Ink Pad Vintage Photo
Tim Holtz Ideaology: lock and key, swivel clasp, word sticks
Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Urban Chic
Rock Candy Distress Stickles
Tim Holtz/Tissue tape
Creative Imaginations paper Iron Orchid Designs
Martha Stewart Bird punch
Gesso
Gel Medium

Fun mail that came this week!

I just wanted to share some things that came in the mail this past week and post a thank you in addition to the emails I sent...or will be sending as soon as I post this.
I was part of a journal page swap last month on Yahoo. The group is called Creative-Block-StampersAnonymous that is a group promotes stamping using Stampers Anonymous stamps. I received back the pages that 12 other people created and the hostess of the swap created book covers for us.





Second parcel! Part of the swap was a stamp given to us by the owners of SA and it came this week also!! It is one of the new Christmas stamps that came out in the last CHA in Chicago last month. I just Love it!









The third thing I received was some ProMarker ultra-fine point nibs that Di from Pixie's Crafty Workshop sent me all the way from England. Di had a blog candy event to celebrate her 200 blog post and was so kind and generous she couldn't limit herself to 2 or 3 she sent everyone who entered a package of the nibs. Thank you Di you are awesome!





The fourth piece of happy mail came to me all the way from Australia! (Oh my I get around and don't even leave the house!) Susan from Stamp On Me sent me an awesome personalized bookmark. Isn't it gorgeous! I love it!
Just want to say thank you to everyone for being so awesome and such great friends. I think it is amazing that we can share so much and be so supportive of each other because of this great invention called the internet!

WOYWW #115

This is my desk this week. Thought I would share a wider view and then an up close for you to get a peak of what I am working on. I had a couple people ask me if I ever used any of my ribbon cause they can see the shine from the outer wrap on the spools hanging on the wall. Those are the new/extra spools I bought when they were on sale.(I am a huge bargain hunter and why buy one when two will be a better deal! Anyone relate?) When I had the idea to use curtain rods to organize the ribbon I had so many ribbons spools and there wasn't enough space for all of them so I decided to hang the full ones and keep the partially used ones in a box under the desk. As you can see I am starting to break into some of them now.
My desk is really trashed out towards the end of a project because I never seem to be able to stop long enough to get things put up. I like having everything close at hand and being able to just reach out and grab when I needed something. I had also hoped that it would help me to put things back but...no dice.
I have been working on a 12"x12" canvas using mostly Tim Holtz products for a class I was asked to do at WLS. I am not a floral type person and it has been a real struggle for me to step out of my comfort zone and try to do what I call 'girly' stuff. I can kind of, sort of, maybe combine a little grunge in with it and get it done but...not my forte! I am currently working on a bead fob to hang on the fob chain on the right.

This week has flown and it seems like I didn't get everything done that I wanted to do but I did get around to all the desks this week!! I really enjoy WOYWW and I am willing to give up a little housework to see what everyone else in cyber world is doing in the arts/crafts world. If you would like to see what I am talking about visit Julia's blog, Stamping Ground, she is the Queen Bee and leads this group in all sorts of fun things!

Okay, I am off to check out the other blogs. I am so addicted and need my fix of WOYWW! Check back tomorrow and I will have a couple finished projects up for you to view.

Admit One Card

I am going to be doing a tag/card class the last of this month were we will be using the Tim Holtz texture trades called Playing Games to make a tag to put on a card. Here is a card that I finished this weekend that will be one of 3 cards offered in the class. The class kit will include a set of the texture trades in addition to the products to needed to make the card. The paper mat is from the Retro Grunge paper stack on a kraft card blank. The ribbon film has pictures glued to each frame that I cut apart from the Lost and Found stack. Mulberry paper roses finish it up.

If you are interested in taking the class contact Whole Lotta Scrap at 310-3400 to reserve your seat. There will be 3 cards/tags made in the class. Class is from 6-8:30pm August 25. Class fee is $22 and you will receive the embossing folders and supplies to make the tags. Equipment you will need to bring a paper cutter, scissors, glue/tape runner, craft mat, and if you have them your distress ink pads. Hope you see you there!

WOYWW #114

My desk isn't the neatest place today because I have been working trying to get my tag class together for this next Thursday and for some reason I have procrastinated getting any of my classes done for this month. Don't ask me why cause I have ideas flying through my brain but I can't seem to get them to stick long enough to get done!! Funny thing was I thought that I had the tag class almost completed and found out that I was having a major brain fart and I was no where near done. I even thought the tags were at the store on display but when I went to get the info out of the box to type up the direction sheet they were in the box and not done!! I have CFS/ME and FM and my doctor tells me that this problem with cognitive processes is due to what he calls Fibro Fog... I guess I should be happy it isn't Alzheimer's huh!!! Oh...before I forget this is What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday and if you want to check it out head over to the Queen of Snoop, Julia's blog. You never can tell you might want to play along with us.




On the mat on my desk I have one of the tags I am working on finishing for the class. I had to pull out the beading tools to attach a bead charm and a philosophy tag to the fibers at the top. I did an emboss resist using the Tim Holtz Falling Leaves stamp set and used different colors of distress stains. I then cut some leaves using the TH Tattered leaves die and colored card stock that I stamped the leaves on randomly. I put rock candy distress stickles on them to give them some sparkle. I decided that I wanted to try using the leaf stamps with emboss resist because there is so much detail in the veining and stems and I think it worked really well! The define your life is a stamp set from Stampin'Up! that has 28 stamps with various words and definitions on them.




Here is an up close of the charm and philosophy tag. I also like the way the resist shows up in this picture. Do you think the leaves are too sparkly? I will post the other tags in the next day or so. I am going to make myself 'work' tomorrow and get everything done for the rest of the month too!

When I got home Monday evening there was a box sitting on my front step from the UK. Keryn and I have been emailing back and forth and she sent me some of my most favorite things in the whole world...Jaffa Cakes and Typhoo tea! Keryn also sent one of her handmade cards and it is gorgeous and I couldn't get my camera to cooperate and take a good picture! Now I know that you probably think I am nuts about the tea and cakes but the first time I went to London in 1991 I stayed at the Baden-Powell House and they served Typhoo tea. The teas here in the states weren't as black or as strong back then and I am a caffeine addict! The coffee at the BP house was really not too good back then so I drank lots of tea. I am told it is much better now!!! The first jaffa cake was given to me by a young scout at the same place when he decided to share with the crazy American Mum!
Thank you Keryn for sending this pigeon my way! I love the card and plan on framing it. The cakes and tea...another story.

WOYWW #113

I have spent the past couple of weeks being not as productive as I wish I could be but then that is life in the Doswell house and just getting a meal together or a load of laundry done can be a challenge. Speaking of challenges, I am late on a couple that I subscribe to each week and I have all sorts of ideas that I would like to put to paper but not the energy it takes to complete them. Ah yes...life! I keep telling myself that it will be better tomorrow! Since my desk is rather boring you need to step over to Julia's blog Stamping Ground to see what all the other WOYWWer's are doing this week. WARNING: it is addictive!

Here is a picture of my desk this week. As you can see it is loaded with all sorts of 'stuff' that I have managed to accumulate but not much in the way of productive projects. My daughter is a lead supervisor/manager at a new JoAnn's that has opened here in town this past week. I signed up on JoAnn's a while back for coupons and last week they sent me a 20% off everything including sales items so I went in and loaded up on things I just can't live without. There is a stack of DCWV(die cuts with a view) paper/card stock pads that were on sale at $999 from $19.99 that I applied that coupon to and I saved 70% on each pad. The grand opening is next week so I will probably apply the 50% off coupon to something then. My daughter tells me they are going to have $10 gift cards for the first 100 people who come to the store the first 3 days of the grand opening so I will have to be up and about early those days!! Heather knows me better then that! I am never up and about early!


Here is the only thing that I have made/created since last week. It is another attempt at Steampunk. I stamped the clock and the woman's head then covered it with the accent glaze and after several attempts I doubt I will use the distress ink to stamp with again cause the glaze makes it change colors. I like the card and composition and I think I will use it for a woman's thinking of you/all occasion card!


Thanks everyone for all the kind thoughts regarding the birds last week. I think you may be right about them being ready to leave the next cause I have seen a definite increase in the number of birds around this week. I was so distraught thinking I was a baby bird killer for sure! Anyway I off now. I plan on visiting all sites this week if at all possible. If not it will be my goal for next week. I am such a snoop though it bothers me when I can't see everything!!!