Checking In

I'm still alive!  (In case you were wondering.)

It's been another super busy month and unfortunately a whole lot of other things to do besides blogging. Sadness.  But I finally have a few minutes and I'm just gonna show you everything I've been working on for the last few weeks.

Let's start with my card for Thursday's challenge at 365 Cards.

The challenge was to create a card with a detachable component.  With this super cute image from Robyn's Fetish , it seemed only right to make a detachable bookmark!

If you'd like to play along with the challenge, you still have a couple more days.  I'd love to see what you can come up with.

Here are the cards from the last couple 365 Cards Thursday challenges...

Day 241- Card Recipe

Day 234- Opposite Day

Day 227- Fun With Floss

"Rustic"

Hey there, everybody!  I don't know about where you are, but it has been a GORGEOUS week in the STL.  If you're the nature-y type, it's the perfect time to be out in it.  I just spent the weekend down in Ellington, MO.  It was beautiful during the day, then cold and clear at night-- just right for a hayride and bonfire!

Speaking of nature and outdoorsy things, today's challenge at 365 Cards is to create a card with a rustic theme.  As we all know, "rustic" comes from the Latin "rus," meaning "country, farm, or land" and "stic[k]" meaning... a piece of a tree. Lol. Just kidding...mostly.

But obviously, I had to go outside and get some sticks!

I found some really small, thin twigs and cut them into two-inch pieces.  Then I hot glued those together and tied on a piece of cord.  I cut the leaf with my Cricut, then sponged on a couple of colors.  Assemble all the pieces and voila!

I thought this turned out really pretty.  It's simple, but different and has a lot of great texture.   In fact, I think I have a couple more variations I'd like to try.

The Family You Choose :-)

I think it might be the understatement of the century to say that I like my friends.  They're crazy, but that's okay cuz I am too :-)  In fact, I saw a quote the other day that reminded me of our crew:

"We must hang together, or surely we will

hang separately." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Hehe. I thought it was funny.

Anyway, the card I made this week for 365 Cards' challenge #199 is inspired by some of my best friends.  For the challenge you have to pick a "year to remember,"  one that holds many special memories.  I didn't have to go back too far.  Two-thousand ten was a good year, especially the summer months.  There was one particular summer evening spent by the pool in the company of several lovely ladies... If they were reading this, they would know what I'm talking about. Haha.

If you would like to play along with the challenges for this week, there's still a little time!  As long as your creations are posted by 11:59pm tonight, they still count!  Thanks for stopping by :-)

Well, it's not like I wasn't thinkin' about it...

*sigh*  Epic blogging fail.  I thought about it.  I really did.  But it's hard to say what would really be worse:  Sleep-deprived posting or no posting at all. Haha.

The school year is actually off to a great start.  I can't really complain at all.  The kiddos are super cute, and relatively mellow compared to last year's group.  But I think my whole body is still revolting against having to wake up early every day!

I realize this is a little after the fact, but I thought I would show you my card for Thursday's color scheme challenge over at 365 Cards.

If you still want to play along, it's not too late!  You have until 11:59pm to link up your posts.

 

Here are the last few cards that I never got around to posting, for any of you who don't frequent the 365 Cards blog. (Although, you should. :-)  I believe if you click on the photo, you'll be able to see it full-size.

Is it just me or is it gettin' hot in here?

OH, I just crack myself up.

Thursday has come to us once again, which means it's my turn to take on of Pam's fabulous challenges and attempt to inspire you all to play along!  Today the challenge at 365 Cards is to use our gardens as inspiration.  "Do you have a garden?  If so, what sorts of things do you have in your garden?  If not, what would you want in your garden?  That is what should inspire your card."

That's not too crazy, right?  My family used to have a small garden in our backyard.  I don't remember everything we had in there, but I know for sure that we had chili peppers.  We can go through dried chiles like nobody's business.  I remember one time my brother convinced my little sister to take a bite out of one... It's funny now. Hahaha.   Here's my chili-inspired card:

So what's in your garden?  I'm looking forward to seeing your creations!

I'm Baa-aack!

Hey there peeps!! I'm finally back home and I'm ready to stay for a while :-)  For the last two weeks I've been away at two different camps. The first one was a five-day girls camp, here in Missouri, where my sisters and I were leading worship.  We had a great time and met a ton of super amazing people.

I was home for a Saturday, then crazy early on Sunday morning I left on a week-long mission trip to New Orleans, LA with a group of teenagers, most of whom are getting ready to go into their freshman year of highschool.  I learned a lot and had plenty of experiences that pushed me waaaay out of my comfort zone. Haha.  It was a long week and we definitely had our challenges, but I'm so glad I went!

This week I've been getting back into the regular swing of things, finishing up some projects and working on getting the classrooms ready for the kiddos at school.  That also means it's time to get back into my cards!!  The card I have to show you is for today's "Ad Inspired" challenge at 365 Cards.  All you have to do to play along is use this image as your inspiration:

Here's what I came up with:

My favorite dress form was the black one with polka dots.  I also used some of the colors from the ad, and used tulle to mimic the curtains.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you'll play along :-)

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!!

Quickie post!

Hey everyone!  This is gonna be a super short post because I'm quite literally on my way out the door to help with the middle school summer camp at church.  I'll be out until Sunday, so I wanted to make sure I was able to show you my cards for this week.

The challenge for today at 365 Cards is to use a sentiment that has somewhat of a crossword effect.  Our sponsor this week is Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More.  Here's the card I created using an image from her collection:

But THEN, I was thinking about it and I had another idea for a completely different card, so I made two:

Fun, huh?  You should give it a try.  The post for this challenge should be up on the 365 Cards blog pretty soon, then you'll be able to link up your creations :-)  Can't wait to see them!

Just Peachy

It just so happens that I was eating a peach when I got the details for today's challenge at 365 Cards.  The actual challenge is to make peach the dominant color, but I figured that nothing goes better with peach than peaches!

I used chalks to color the fruit, then used an eraser to add highlights back in.  The sentiment is computer generated.  This one is a really simple layout, but I like the details of the peach.

I hope you all are having a fantastic summer! Thanks for stopping by :-)

Cars

I found it a little ironic that today's challenge for 365 Cards had to do with cars.  Just this week my car decided to crap out on me.  I knew it was coming but, you see, my car and I had this love-hate relationship :-)  I can't help but love a vehicle that got me wherever I needed to go, but there were a lot of things wrong with it that I wasn't about to fork out the money to fix.  My car was nice enough to hang on to life over the past several months while I saved up enough cash to replace it.  But just to get back at me, it waited until the most inconvenient moment possible (on the way to an 8 a.m. choir rehearsal) to die.

But anyway, back to the challenge...

Today is "Mega Movie Thursday."  All week we've been using movie posters from this summer's movie releases as our inspiration.  Today is no different!  I really liked the original "Cars" movie and I'm looking forward to seeing the second one.

For my card I decided to attempt to duplicate the Cars logo.  I think I got close. Haha.  Since Father's Day is right around the corner, I thought this would be a fun theme to work with.  I used watercolors to create a "road" for the background.  Super-shiny silver cardstock worked great for the "chrome" but it was a little tricky cutting the words!  Here's my final card:

You don't have to take this challenge quite as literally as I did!  I'd love to see how this movie poster inspired you, so make sure to link up your cards on the 365 blog!