More is More

Happy Friday!  So as I mentioned earlier, I spent the week being on call for jury duty having to call in every night (and even once mid-day) to see if I would have to report.  Well yesterday I did have to report to the courthouse at 8:30 am.  Thankfully I had the closest courthouse to us – which is unusual – so I was thankful about that!  I did my one day and I am now done for at least a year.  It was a close call, for awhile there yesterday afternoon I really thought I might get seated on a jury for a spousal abuse case.  It looked like they might go through everyone in the room before they agreed to keep the 14 needed.  Finally at 4:00 they had their panel and my number had not been called into the jury box.  It was excruciating sitting through the whole process…especially some of the stuff people say in trying to get kicked off the jury…oh my!

PHEW!  Now onto Friday and the FUN STUFF!!!!

Fridays are Sketch Challenge days at the Taylored Expressions Blog and we’d love to have you play along!  Every so often Taylor offers a fun added BONUS to playing the weekly TESC… PRIZES!  And today is one of those days as Taylor is offering BONUS PRIZES for TESC106.  You’ll have through April 2nd to play along and enter your card for a chance to be named a Top Crop and win your choice of FREE STAMP SET from the Taylored Expressions Store.  Winners will be announced on April 5th.  You do not have to use TE stamps to enter. Get all the details to play on Taylor’s blog

For my card today I used TE Favorite Peeps.  When I saw the 3 little mini panels at the bottom I immediately thought of the image of 3 chicks in the Favorite Peeps set.  In order to punch them out with the SU label punch I actually stamped them separately, one at a time and then punched them.  It’s easy to just ink part of the stamp with a Memento Dew Drop.  Although I usually use a full sized Memento pad it’s great to also have the dew drop size for omitting part of an image.

Images were colored with Copic markers and I sponged sky with a cloud template and Baja Breeze ink.  Most of the eggs were covered with Smooch Illuminate and the bow was painted with Smooch Sassy Pink.  The grass is an image in the stamp set.  The little words at the bottom are from SU Everyday Flexible Phrases.  I added a Doodlebug brad, a butterfly bellie and tons of stickles in yellow and fruit punch. 

Now let’s see what the rest of the Sketch Crew has cooked up this week:

Next week I hope to share some new stamp room organization (that is IF I get in there and get it organized – LOL!) with you as well as my new kitchen curtains!!!  Hope you have a great weekend.  Thanks for stopping by.

Recipe –

stamps: TE Favorite Peeps, SU EFP

paper: So Saffron, Regal Rose, Crate Paper Twirl Collection, TE Choice Snow White

other: punches – SU border, label, large oval, scallop oval, Doodlebug Boutique brad, butterfly, stickles (yellow, fruit punch), Smooch (illuminate, sassy pink)

Happy Wednesday!  It’s been a bit of a crazy week as I’ve been on call for possible jury duty which means I haven’t been abale to make any solid plans and I’ve been trying really hard to get everything done that needs to be done as early in the week as possible in case I’m not available later.  Wow – was that a run-on sentence or what?  LOL!  I’ve had a card ready to share with you since the weekend, but with SCS being down (including my blog) on top of work etc.  I haven’t been able to get here to show you until now.

Last week I saw a challenge on Kim Hughes’ blog to use yellow as the primary focus of a card.  Only today did I go back to read the entire series of posts and discover that there were prizes involved and the deadline to enter was midnight last night.  Waaaaahhhhhhhhh!  Oh well – I enjoyed working on this challenge very much and am very pleased with the results.  This is a birthday card for a special friend.

I had a heck of a time getting a decent picture of this and it’s so much prettier IRL.  I really need to set up some better photo lighting!  That yellow is Barely Banana and it’s so soft and yummy looking with the white and SU Basic Gray cardstock.  I have NOT been a fan of the yellow/gray combo, but I know it’s very hot in decorating, fashion and paper crafts so I pushed myself to work with it…and I’m glad I did.

The stamp sets I used are both retired SU – Echoes of Kindness and It’s Your Birthday.  I actually pulled out my watercolor crayons for this and it was really fun playing with them again.  Flowers are highlighted with Diamond Stickles. Border punch is SU and the tiny little pearls are Adorn It.

I just had to call in for jury service again mid-day today and found I don’t have to report this afternoon, but I do have to call back again tonight for possible service tomorrow.  Off to accomplish everything I possibly can this afternoon.  I hope you’re having a great week!  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy First Day of Spring!  Today it’s time for another Dirty Dozen Gallery Reunion – where one of the girls presents a monthly challenge and this month’s hostess is Joanne Basile.  I haven’t had a chance to play in the last several months, but I had to make sure I made time for this one – The Birds and the Bees!

Challenge Focus:  Lets think spring!

Required Element: Use either a bee or a bird in your project this month

Restricted Element: No border bunches

 You know I’m all about the birdies!  And this was the perfect chance to try out an idea I’ve had floating around in my head for awhile.

I’ve been wanting to create a shaker card using the chick and egg images from the Taylored Expressions set Favorite Peeps along with an SU circle treat cup.  They fit together perfectly! I started out by searching through my patterned paper collection for something that said “Spring” to me.  I came across this paper in the Basic Grey Gypsey 6×6 pad and then matched up my Copic markers from there.  I stamped 2 eggs.  For the first egg I stamped the chick in the inner circle and colored it in.  Then I hand trimmed the eggon the inside line.  For the 2nd egg I punched the center out with a 1 3/4″ circle punch and colored the entire egg.  Then I covered it with Versamark and heat embossed it with Irridescent Ice embossing powder.  It’s super shimmery/sparkly.  I put some multi-colored beads in the cup and sandwiched it between the 2 eggs.  That was then layered onto 2 nesties shapes (circle and curved rectangle).

Cardtock is Prism and the card size is 5.5″ square.  Finishing touches include stickles (lime and fruit punch), KaiserCraft rhinestones, Basic Grey Green at Heart Bloomer, sentiment on a Spellbinders Fancy Tag and some ribbon from my stash.  I ran out of time last night as it got late and the birds needed to go to bed.  Now I’m thinking of all sorts of little details I’d like to add like some cuttlebug texture, stitching and on and on.  You know me…More is More!  LOL!

Click here to see the gallery of all the players this month.  Entries will be uploaded throughout the day today.

I hope you have a great weekend!!!  I have some stamping time planned for today – doesn’t get better than that!  *grin*

Happy Friday!  Boy, for a week with nothing scheduled it sure ended up being busy!  It’s all good though!  Here I am with my 5th day in a row blog post (be sure to scroll down and take a peek if you haven’t been here earlier this week) and it’s time for the Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge – TESC105.  As soon as I saw the sketch I knew I wanted to use Basic Grey Green at Heart 6×6 along with a coordinating Green and Heart Gummy embellishment!

I found that SU Rich Razzleberry and Always Artichoke coordinate wonderfully with the Green at Heart papers. I used a retired SU set, Block Party, for my focal panel.  The image was stamped on white cs with Artichoke ink.  Then I covered the entire panel with Versamark and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. When you see the card in person it really makes a big difference in the overall look.  I used  a couple of border punches at the bottom (SU scallop and EK  Success Parisian), some liquid pearls and a ZVA Creative crystal flourish for the finishing touches.  Oh and I added Taylor’s Tiny Twinkles to the Gummy.

Now let’s see what the rest of the Sketch Crew has cooked up this week:

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Wow!  It’s Thursday already!  This week is just flying by!  I’m back for Day 4 of 5 in my goal to blog all week.  I’ve been on an organizational kick in my stamp room for the past week or so – I’ll share more about that next week – and in moving some things around I came across an image I had colored a really long time ago at Joy’s house.  I think it was a Suzy Toronto image..I’m not seeing it in the eP store anymore.  This was one of my very first times playing with Copics and I used some pretty wild/fun colors. 

I decided to dress it up a little with some Ranger Glossy Accents on the pencils and the paint brush tips plus add some doodling.  Another thing I found when cleaning up was the Top Note Die cut from Tempting Turquoise cardstock…a little serendipity for this card.  I used some more of the SU Flamingo dp for the background panel and the circles.  To do something a little interesting for the layout I cut 3 sizes of circles with my nesties from the red patterned paper and Green Galore cardstock.  I layered and adhered them together and then cut them in half for the top and bottom of the card.

The sentiment is from the TE stamp set Crafty Cuppie and it was punched with the Modern Label punch.  I added some red Adorn-it jewels and some yummy red silk ribbon.  This is one of those cards that just makes me happy.  Goes back to the Bold Bright days when I first started stamping.  LOL!

Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll have a sample for Taylor’s sketch at 8am tomorrow morning…hope to see you then.

Here I am – Day 3 in a row of stamping and blogging.  Are you impressed?  LOL!!!  Today I had fun playing with the weekly sketch challenge at SCS.  I used to play that challenge and the SCS color challenge almost every week and I really miss it.  The original sample for SC272 by sparklegirl is really stunning and although the style and feel of my card is very different I was inspired to leave part of my cream cardbase bare and to use the cream inner panel as well.  For my card I felt that inner panel needed the texture of a CB folder.

I think Crafty Cuppie from TE is my favorite Cuppie set and I particularly love this little stamping Cuppie.  I actually had this image stamped and the Cherry Hill paper picked out before I ever even saw the sketch, so once I had sketch in hand the card came together fairly quickly.  I’m just now realizing that the color in this photo isn’t super true.  I used Chocolate Chip cardstock for all of my matting – it has a nice contrast with the Buttercream cardstock and the colors in the patterned papers.

The crafty little scene is colored with Copics (as shown to the left) and the apron is paper pieced.  There’s Lime Stickles over the glitter bottle, Ranger Glossy Accents over the embossing gun and a red Bright Smooth Bling dot over the cherry.  The scene was die cut with a Spellbinders Label 5 Die.  The next size up for the matting would have overwhelmed the card so I cut the same size from the Chocolate Chip cardstock and simply cut it in half and adhered the halves slightly apart to the back of the image.  This is a great trick for any time you don’t have or can’t use the next size die.  I added red liquid pearls around the image.  Some ribbon from TE and a button from my stash finished off this fun card.

In order to stick with my goals this week I still need to take Tessa for a walk, but I think I might wait a bit for it to cool down some.  WeatherBug says it’s 82 right now.  I can’t believe I was in the snow in Iowa less than 2 weeks ago!

Thanks for stopping by.  I already have a card done and ready to share tomorrow so be sure to come back!  Oh yeah and Happy St. Patty’s Day.  I had forgotten all about it until the girls in my Bible Study came in and pinched me…yes seriously pinched me!  I had to go change my top to something green before we could head out for lunch.  I’m not big on the holiday and I do not like corned beef…so sorry for not having a *green* card to share today.  😉

Hi there!  I had hoped to post this morning (getting back to more consistent blogging) but I was just running too late for work.  In my office we celebrate birthdays with lunch of the birthday girl’s choice, cake and a gift card.  Everyone puts money in for each birthday and we rotate who’s responsible to buy the gift card.  Today it was my turn to bring in the gift card and the birthday girl asked for Costco – super easy.  Of course I wanted to wrap it in some fun and special way….so why on earth did I wait till this morning to do that?  D’oh!

I had a few of these fun little clear paint cans on hand (I got them a long time ago at eclectic Paperie but I don’t see them on the site now) and they are really easy and fairly quick to decorate.  I used some SU Pink Flamingo dp along with various ribbons.  My largest circle nestie was the perfect size to cover the top of the lid and I used the Blossom nesties for the tag.

Sorry for the bad photo, but I was snapping these as I was running out the door to work.  At least you can get the general idea.  Do you have any of these clear cans sitting around?  If so I’d suggest you get one out and get it all decorated up for a birthday or Mother’s Day and have it ready to go the next time you give a gift card for a present.  Having it ready ahead of time?  Wouldn’t that be amazing????  LOL!

I have two goals this week – things I want to do every day Monday through Friday:

1. create and blog something – anything.

2. Walk Tessa one mile.

So far I am on track. Now let’s see what Wednesday brings. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  See you tomorrow, Lord willing.