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!

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!

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 :-)

Unconventional Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day! Or Single's Awareness Day... whichever one you're celebrating today. Haha ;-)

I'm quite literally on my way out the door to work this morning, but I wanted to share this card with you first.  I've been itching to make something with the "From My Kitchen" cartridge and this is what I came up with:

Kinda fun, no?

Happy Monday to ya! :-)

Busy, busy!

Well, this week has been interesting.  Started off pretty good, got a little weird toward the middle, ended a little crummy on Friday, but then got a whole lot better with taco night and some fabulous friends ;-)

Somewhere in the middle of that, I did find time to put together my card for Thursday's challenge at 365 Cards, but I'm running a little late again with posting. Oops.

The challenge was to create a photo frame card.  It's not too complicated.  The trickiest part for me was figuring out what size to make the card.  Mine ended up being 6.5 x 5 in.  I made it so that the photo slides in on the side.

That cute frog image is from Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More, our sponsor for this week.  Make sure to link up all your cards for this week!  The winner gets 5 digi stamps OR 4 digi stamps and a paper set.

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 :-)

Hello blogger friends!  I'm kinda proud of this card I'm sharing with you today.  I just really, really like how it turned out.  Sometimes I have a great idea but, once I get started, I end up having to tweak change my design.  But every once in a while you have that project that comes together just like it looked in your head.  And that's awesome.

It's Monday, so it's time for yet another challenge from Scrap It With a Song.  This week we're scrappin' to "Get Here" by Oleta Adams.  It's a pretty song-- I'd never heard it before this challenge.  My sentiment is straight from the lyrics of the song...

The lovely couple is cut from the "Sweethearts" Cricut cartridge (which my momma found on CLEARANCE! yay) and I absolutely love it.

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you come on over and play along with us :-)

L-O-V-E

Ahh, love.  Love, love, love.

I love love.  Love is lovely.

All you need is love.  Love.  Love is all you need.

Oh wait, wrong song...

Ha.

Okay, seriously now.  Today is Monday, which means I'm still single!  No... wait... that's not right.  It means it's time for a new song challenge at Scrap it With a Song!

(Good heavens, what did I drink this morning?  I'm in a really weird mood.)

Our song of inspiration for this week is "L-O-V-E" as sung by Nat "King" Cole.  I absolutely lo... uh... extremely like this song. Lol.  Here's the card I created...

I found the "L-O-V-E" stamp in the dollar bin, and the paper on clearance at Michaels.  I love when that happens!!

I sure hope you'll come join us for this week's challenge! Our sponsor is our very own Angela aka Toucan Scraps-- check out the link below to browse her store.

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.

"I Could Not Ask For More"

Monday's here!  For those of us who are on a "summer break", this is okay.  For those of you who still have to go to work... hang in there, friends.  Friday's coming.

It's time for another challenge at Scrap It With a Song and our inspiration for this week is "I Could Not Ask For More" by Sara Evans.  I really love this song :-)  I also like the Aerosmith version, but it's not quite as... umm... "pretty". Lol.   The sentiment on my card is based on the lyric, "everything you are is everything to me".

Sew Many Cards is our sponsor this time, and I had the pleasure of working with one of Angela's images for my card...

Isn't it cute?  That bunny is super sweet.  I used Prismacolor art markers to color the image.

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you'll take some time to come play along with us this week :-)

Love Story

It's Monday! And that means there's a new challenge for y'all at Scrap It With a Song :-) This week's inspiration comes from Taylor Swift's "Love Story."  Our sponsor is Cassandra at the ShopHandmade.com store, Paper Mom-- The winner of this week's challenge gets 3 digital images, and each of the other Top 5 winners get 1 image.  Super fun!  Hope you guys will check it out and play along!

Here's my card:

For this one, I took the sentiment right from the lyrics of the song.  I wanted to make an "I Love You" card that wasn't all... you know... red. Haha. Just sweet and simple.

Thanks for stopping by!  I appreciate your comments ;-)

Weird Weekend

This has been a really weird couple of days.  Not a bad weird, just---- different. Haha. My sis and I sang at a funeral on Friday.  What was supposed to be two or three songs turned into an hour and fifteen minutes of me literally making up accompaniments to songs I didn't know.  That was interesting.  Next time I agree to do that, I'll definitely be asking some more specific questions.  The super long funeral made me almost completely miss work, but it wasn't a huge deal.  And speaking of work, we got out early at the preschool which is really rare.  I got called into work at church again, but then got sent home early because half the kids didn't show up.  SO yeah. It was just weird.

Saturday was less weird.  My cousin's first communion was in the morning, then my sister and I spent the rest of the day at our church singing.  Afterward we checked out a new brewery with some friends.  That was a good time. Sang again this morning and then came home to chill AND of course, make cards :-)

I've got three for you tonight...

Finally finished the rest of the "White Space" challenges @ 365 Cards!  I think these two might've been the most challenging (or they just happened to come on the days I was most tired!).  Here is Day 47.  I don't know if I love this one.  But the little sis liked it (and she's probably my harshest critic) so I'll post it ;-)

And here's Day 48.  Took me a while to come up with this one.  I'm probably stretching the boundaries of this one just a tad with the shape of the decorated space, but it seems like there's been this mini-competition all week long to see who can stretch the rules and/or freak Pam out the most ;-) You guys are funny... and you make mine look like it's not a big deal. Hee hee.

For today's Super Sketchy Sunday challenge, I kind of had to force myself out of "white-space" mode!!  I know Pam mention something about olives, but I kept seeing half of a hard-boiled egg. Haha. But I thought that might be a dumb card, so I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and wondered what kind of animal you could make that has a big round body and a little round head...

SHEEP! Hahahaha... I hope you like it. (Haley, I thought of you when I made this! lol)  Thanks for looking and I hope you've all had a pleasant, restful weekend :-)

More Cards, Less Blah-Blah-Blah

Okay, friends.  I've only got about 15 minutes to make this post, but if I don't do it now I'll ended up posting an entire week's worth of challenges on Saturday, and that would be ridiculous (not that it isn't already). I'm gonna have to skimp on the commentary for this one, but enjoy the pictures, okay?




Sunday, Day 42-Super Sketchy Sunday

The rest of this week's challenges are "White Space" challenges and they are whoopin' my butt!  The challenge is to keep your all of your embellishments and whatnot inside the designated space and everything else is left "blank".


Monday, Day 43
I'm sad to say we've been needing a few of these lately.  But I think it turned out pretty and hopefully it will be a blessing to someone going through a rough time. :-)

Tuesday, Day 44
This one is also for this week's Tuesday Trigger: Lovely as a Rose challenge @ Moxie Fab World.  I got my inspiration from the colors in the photos, but also from Samantha's project with the paper flowers.

Wednesday, Day 45
When I saw this challenge, it just reminded me of butterfly wings.  I did turn the sketch sideways for this one.  And I probably cheated just a leeeetle bit with the stamp and the black matting. Hehe. Nobody's perfect :-)

Thursday, Day 46
I love this paper! I found it on clearance too, which makes it 10% prettier. Haha.  I also used it on the Sunday sketch.

YAY! All done-- and a few minutes to spare! Lol.  Thanks for coming by to look at my cards :-)

Irony or Paradox?

Today's challenge for Day 22 at 365 Cards is to create a card inspired by the movie Alice in Wonderland. I was amused to find that many of you share the same sentiments toward that movie that I do. I haven't seen the new version yet (not really sure if I want to-- it looks kinda creepy) and it's been YEARS since I've seen the Disney version. I always thought it was a little weird and more than a bit confusing. But I do like some of Tim Burton's movies, so maybe I'd appreciate this new one a little more.

Anywho... I ended up using the Queen of Hearts (from the Disney movie) as the inspiration for my card. I really like the bold pattern and colors of her costume, so that's what I went for:

Now, the real challenge here ended up being the sentiment. I mean, "OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!!" seemed a little inappropriate. And while I can think of a couple people I could send it to, I wouldn't. Haha. So I decided to go with "I love you" and just revel in the irony... or is it paradox? Either way, I love that it doesn't make sense... cuz neither does that movie! :-)

La Di Da

I'm sitting here on the floor of my sister's bedroom while she and our younger sister try to weird me out by singing/saying random things. It's not working-- there's nothing they can do to get any weirder. They're currently in the middle of a splendid rendition of "Three Times A Lady." Lol :-)

I have two cards for y'all today. The first is a catch-up card from Thursday's "Plentiful Patterns" challenge at 365 Cards. I went paper shopping, but I didn't have time to go out to Archivers, so I had to settle for the selection at Michael's. Don't get me wrong, I love Michael's, but they don't have much in the way of patterned paper. I found the toille and houndstooth patterns, but I ended up having to make my own plaid.


My next card is for today's challenge- Day 20, Let's Make Some Noise. What do you call this anyway? A shaker card? Well, at any rate, I created the "shaker" by stacking several of the frames cut with my Cricut and a piece of acetate from some packaging. On the inside are some small punched hearts.


Thanks for looking!

*Sew* A Needle Pulling Threeeaaaad...

Hey, hey! Hope this finds you all at the beginning of an excellent Monday! (Or maybe the end of one... either way, I hope it's good.)

Tonight I've been working on my card for the Sunday sketch challenge on Day 7 of 365 Cards. I'm not gonna ramble on too much about this one except to say that I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever used my sewing machine to stitch on a card. It was waaaaay fun. I should do it more often.


Okay... I gotta get some sleep now. Thanks for looking!

Hooray For Corny N*Sync songs :-)

OOPS! If you're looking for my post for Day 6, click here! I got a little link-happy earlier :-)

I worked pretty much all day yesterday, so I never got a chance to sit down and work on a card for the "Fancy Folds" challenge at 365 Cards. But I guess that means I had all day to think about it, so when I actually sat down to put this together, the ideas flowed rather smoothly.

The petal card base is one that I've had laying around for, literally, years. I'm actually kind of surprised that it's survived some of my "I don't need that, get rid of it" days. Don't know why I've never been able to come up with something to do with it until today... I guess it just took someone saying "Hey, make a petal card!". Thanks Pam. lol.


When I was trying to decide what to put on the inside, I said to myself, "hmmm-- music. hearts. music of my heart. aha!" Remember that movie with Meryl Streep and the song with N*Sync and Gloria Estefan? Lol. Good stuff.



Now it's gonna be stuck in my head all day. Oh well... there are worse things! Haha. Hopefully I'll be back later with a card for Day 6!

2-in-1

Hey folks. How's it goin'? It feels a lot later than it really is... I was sure it was closer to 12:45, maybe even 1am. No clock in the craft area. *shrugs*

Anywho, I decided to get one more card in today. It combines two challenges that I've been contemplating over the last couple of days. The first is the Asian-themed challenge at The Corrosive Challenge blog. The second is EBTKS Challenge 10 which is to use fabric. I've had scraps of this gorgeous brocade fabric in my stash for a few years. I had started making a top with it, but something went askew and I never was able to quite figure out what I did wrong. Oh well. I probably like it on the card better than I'd like it on me. Haha. I used gold embossing powder on what I hope is the Chinese character for "love." I wouldn't know if I was wrong. lol. I'm gonna trust Google... this time. :-)

Enjoy! Thanks for looking.

Love and Baby-ness

Ummmmm.... don't have a whole lot to say today. Mom and little sister are out of town for the week, so I had the house to myself for most of the day. It was nice for a little while, then it got reeeeeally boring. Haha. So I went to see my other sister at work and got some frozen custard. mmMmm.

Today's cards are for the challenge by 2 Sketches 4 You. I even had time to do the bonus sketch! Yay me :-) Finally got to use this "love" stamp I've been hoarding. It was a "hot spot" find at Archivers, but I rarely need a sentiment that big. I was glad to finally put it to good use.



This one is for the bonus sketch. Again, got to use something I've been hanging on to for a while. That rose paper was something I got on clearance at Michael's, like, a bajillion years ago. Well, at least 3, probably. It's a little more "froo froo" than I typically go for, but I think it'd make a cute baby girl card or something. Yeah.


Well, thank you all for looking!

A Good Day

Hey! I actually had some time to do more than one card today! And guess what... I actually like all of them. Ha. Somehow I got on a chipboard kick, so you'll see a lot of that today :-) The chipboard letters are from the Target dollar bins-- oh how i <3 dollar bins :-D

This first one is for 365 Cards' challenge to use a number. I reused a color combo from the other day that I just love! The idea is that this would be used for a 2 year birthday... but really, you could use this for any occasion.


The second is for the latest Card Patterns sketch. I used the sketch as the inspiration, but I ended up make some adjustments, so it didn't turn out looking as much like the sketch as I had originally planned... but you do what you gotta do. :-) I'm kinda proud of the heart. I cut it out by hand and then covered it with diamond glaze. I wish red was easier to photograph! It's actually a much darker, deeper red.


This one is for this week's UseIt! challenge which required using a flower (I used a couple of chipboard flowers that I've had for a while), fibers (green ribbon for the leaves), and something metal (I painted a metal frame for the sentiment). The last thing was to use a tool that you haven't used in a while. I didn't really have a tool that I hadn't used... unless you count the paintbrush, because I really never paint anything for a card!