Summer... it's Hot.

Haaaaappy Thursday!  How's your summer going?  Mine's flying right by and I'm trying to hang on :-)  I did get to spend a couple hours in the pool on Tuesday.  It was SO hot, it felt like bath water. But then it rained for a bit and cooled everything off and it turned out to be a gorgeous night, which we spent at the Muny. This is pretty much my only "free" week this month.  For the next two weeks I'll be out of town for two different summer camps.  One is a girls camp here in Missouri, the other is a mission trip with 8th graders in New Orleans.  I'll have about half a day break in between the two, but I think it'll be fun.  Then maybe I'll sleep for a week when I get back ;-)

I have a card to share with you today! This week at 365 Cards, we've been making collage cards.  I've said before that I tend to stay away from putting lots of "stuff" on my cards.  But then it's always fun to step outside the box and stretch a little bit.  For today's challenge, your collage card should include sponging, scallops and stitching.

There's plenty of sponging around the torn edges of the paper.  I didn't feel like lugging out my ridiculously heavy sewing machine, so I had to do the stitching by hand.  It turned out pretty good, I think.  For the scallops I used crepe paper ribbon.  There are so many possibilities with a challenge like this, so I hope you'll stop by and play along too!!

Ladybug, Ladybug

Hi there, blogger friends!  Happy Saturday to you all.  I'm singing at a conference here at church today, and I'm trying to do something useful with my time until the next session.  I haven't had a chance to blog anything these past couple of weeks, so I thought I'd do that :-)

Let's flashback to Thursday.  It was Day 31 at 365 Cards.  The challenge was to use a piece of poetry on your project.  It was a little hard to start with the image and find a poem to match, rather than starting with the poem then finding an image to compliment.  So with a quick search for poems about ladybugs, and then sifting through a bazillion preschool songs, I found this poem that I thought would be perfect for a card:

"I'm sending luck and wishes

All wrapped up in a hug

Good things should come your way

With this tiny ladybug."

~Author Unknown 

The image I used is from our sponsor this week, Digi Doodle Shop.  They have some super cute things, so make sure to check out their site!  Also, it's not too late to play along with this challenge (or any of the challenges this week)-- You've got until Monday night to post the links to your cards :-)

Hi there, friends!

The year 2010 has come to a close and we're kickin' off the new year with hopes for another 12 months of endless possibilities.  I can't wait to see what happens :-)

These last couple of weeks have flown by.  We've enjoyed having my brother home for the holidays.  He'll be leaving on Monday already, and I have to go back to work.  I have to start getting up early again. Ugh.

I do have a card to share with you.  This is a little late, but there's still time to play along!  We're doing a "flashback week" at 365 Cards, so we're revisiting a challenge from June called "Stunning Silhouettes- With a Twist."  Obviously, there should be a silhouette on your card, but the "twist" is that the whole card should have a black and white color scheme.  I'm a big fan of black and white.  Here's what I did:

The silhouette is from the "Sweethearts" Cricut cartridge.  I created the "charm" by punching out a heart from the patterned paper and then covering it with diamond glaze.

Thanks to all of you who've dropped by over this past year! It's been fun :-)

Yay, yay, yay!

Okay guys, I've got a super fun announcement for you today! :-D

Today I get to reveal my card for my first week as member of the 365 Cards design team!! YAY! Lol... I'm kind of excited. Can you tell?  I love playing along with these ladies and getting so many ideas and inspiration from everyone who joins in.  I don't know how Pam manages to come up with a new challenge for every day of the year, but she does. And it's awesome.  And I'm so honored to be a part of it :-)

SO, without anymore rambling from me...

This is "card recipe" week, so today's ingredients are:

5x5 Card

2 3x3 Patterned Papers

Sentiment

1 Image (stamped, fussy cut, digi, whatever)

2 Buttons

Since everyone's starting to get into that "back-to-school" mode,  I chose this super cute digi stamp from Meljen's Designs.  I colored the image in Photoshop before printing.  Normally I enjoy coloring by hand but, on this occasion, my coloring was particularly atrocious. Haha.

Well, thanks for stopping by!  Can't wait to see what you come up with :-)

Well, Now that's just cool :-)

So guess what, friends! I'm done with my June craziness!!! That means I should be back into the swing of things pretty soon.  I have SO missed hanging out on the blogs with you all.

Today at 365 Cards, they're kicking off a celebration after reaching 1000+ followers.  It's also a reader appreciation week, of sorts, and the super cool thing is that they asked ME to be a part of it!!  So today, along with four other fabulously talented ladies, I got to create a card for this week's Super Sketchy Sunday:

Isn't it a fun sketch?  I'm thinking you should definitely head on over to 365 Cards and, at the very least, check out the rest of the cards from the guest designers!  And THEN, play along.  Because I said so ;-)

For those of you in these United States of America, celebrating Independence Day-- Have lovely, safe, fun and fabulous weekend!

OH yeah, and if you haven't already, make sure you go check out the "blog tour" over on the OWH Stars & Stamps blog.  I didn't ever get a chance to get a post set up for it as I'd hoped, but there's so many great cards to see!! Go check it out.  Click the button on the top right of my blog.

Hole-yness

Hooray for Fridays and surprise days off!  Except that I still have to work for a while tonight... ewwww. Since I didn't have to work this morning, I split the extra couple of hours between staying in bed and working at my craft table :-)  I got a couple of cards finished, but I can only show you one for now...

This is for the "Peek a boo" challenge at 365 Cards.  To play, you have to "cut out part of an image so that the color and/or pattern on the inside acts as part of the image."  This teacup image is one that I created a while back when I did the acrostic challenge. This time I added the little tea taggie thing hanging out of the cup.

I kept the front pretty plain and simple...

... and I actually decorated the inside of the card, which is not something I usually do.  The sentiment is a rub-on.  You know, I find it amusing that for as much as I dislike the color orange, it's been popping up in my designs lately. Lol.  And when I say "dislike," i just mean, "a lot less than all of the other colors."  I've got nothin' against sunsets, oranges or goldfish. Hehe.

Well, I've got a couple more projects I wanna work on this afternoon, so I'm gonna keep this short.  Thank you so much for stopping by!

HA!! I did it! (Part One)

At the risk of driving all of you completely bonkers, I've been playing catch up with the challenges at 365 Cards and not posting them as I go... So I have SIX cards sitting here, waiting to be revealed.  Sheesh.  I think I'm gonna split this up into two posts to make it easier.  SO, here's the first few...

Day 96, Color Scheme

Green, Pink, Purple, Yellow and Orange

I had a really hard time getting started with this one.  It's not my favorite, but the cupcake turned out kind of cute.

Day 97, Supersize It

Card dimensions = 8.5" x 5.5"

The reason I chose this sentiment is because I can't think of why you would need a gigantic card like this unless there were gonna be a whole bunch of people writing in it. Lol. But this is coming from a girl to like to keep things short and sweet. I know a couple people who could probably fill this whole thing up in no time ;-)

Day 98, Super Sketchy Sunday

Click the link to see the sketch!

This one is a little bit out of my usual style, I think.  But I really like how it turned out.  The green and gold color scheme is kind of neat.  It looks more sparkly in person :-)

Thanks for taking a look! If you wanna go straight to part two, CLICK HERE.

What a great weekend :-)

This weekend is definitely on the top 10 list of fabulous weekends.  Except for an unexpected misadventure on the way, the wedding I photographed on Saturday went pretty well.  It was simple, fast, and I had my sis with me as a my back-up, so I feel like we did a pretty good job.  Sunday was a full day as always, but not stressful.  Family from Georgia was in town for the wedding I mentioned, so we spent part of the evening visiting with them.  My 14-year-old cousin and I started talking about dancing at weddings and parties, and we decided that we should have our own dance party at my Grandma's house on Memorial Day.

So we did.

OH. My. Goodness.  We had so much fun.  Now, most of you won't realize why this was so ridiculous.  My family are not dancers.  Not really, anyway.  We apparently can, but we don't. I've always watched and figured I could do it, but until recently, never bothered to try.  So, my cousin, sister and I spent a while making sure we knew all the steps for the Electric Slide, Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle. Once we had them down, we talked the aunts and even my grandma into doing it with us. Lol.  It was so funny.

Another great thing is that I've had some time to spend making some cards last night and this morning.  I've really missed playing along with one of my favorite challenges, but school is finally out and some of my other projects are out of the way.  Here are my cards for this week's challenges at 365 Cards:

Day 91, Super Sketchy Sunday

This weekend also kicks off my summer project, which is to get some cards sent to OWH. Just a really simple note card, for starters. ;-)

Day 92, Tissue Paper

This one makes me laugh at myself. :-P  I was having a really hard time figuring out how to incorporate tissue paper into my card design.  I thought about flowers and I found some tutorials with some really pretty ideas, but I'm trying to keep them somewhat flat for OWH shipping purposes.  I thought about using some kind of decoupage-type technique, but it just wasn't working like I wanted it to. It wasn't until I had just about had it, and I went to wad up a piece of tissue paper to throw it away that I kind of simultaneously crinkled it and twisted it and it look kinda cool!

There are some small rhinestones around the waist of the dress for some extra sparkle.  The camera didn't quite catch them.

Day 93, Clowning Around

Okay, this one made me laugh too.  I've mentioned before that my mother is a clown. She's been doing it for a while now and just "graduated" in May as a full-fledged "Joey."  Yeah, it's waaaaay more complicated than you'd think. Lol. 

It just so happens that she and some of her "clown friends" are hosting an appreciation dinner for the "mentor clowns," and they asked me to make some invitations.  So that's what I worked on for today's challenge...

The clown's nose is a dot from some red, felt alpha-stickers that I had purchased for another project that ended up being too big.

Thanks for stopping by today and reading what has turned out to be a rather wordy post!  I love reading your comments!!

Just for You

Today's card combines two challenges. The first is a sketch challenge from 2 Sketches 4 You. Secondly, I used the color combo from Color Throwdown's color challenge. (I used the word "color" three times in that sentence... I'm not going to correct it. Hehe.) This is the first time I've joined one of their challenges.

Here's what I came up with... Enjoy!

Matchbook Card

Hello everyone! It's a beautiful sunny day here is St. Louis... not a cloud in the sky-- or at least none that I can see sitting here on the living room floor! Today's challenge from 365 Cards was to make a matchbook card. I hadn't done this before, but I enjoyed making it, and I like how it turned out. It seemed like something modeled after a matchbook should be kind of small, so this one is about 3 inches square. Please excuse the obnoxious yellow background. Haha. I didn't think it would be that... ummm... vibrant. lol.

Here are a couple more pics to show how I put this together...