More is More

Just a quick post to say Happy Anniversary to my hubby.  We’ve been married 16 years today.  🙂

Here’s the card I made for him…

I have to be at hair appointment in just a few minutes so just a quick post.  Card is 5.25″ square and base is Not Quite Navy.  Hearts are embossed in silver and that piece is wrapped with silver cording.  Metal sheeting (available from Sencie – click on her blog from my sidebar) run through the Cuttlebug.  Sorry the pic is a little dark.  I got one shot and the camera batter died.

Busy weekend – we’ll go out for dinner tonight.  Tomorrow I am attending a Christmas tea in the morning and then I have a stamping date in the afternoon/evening with my SoCal stamping buddies.  Hope you all have a fantastic weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!

Hmmm…I think I’ll set the timer for this to post in a few hours so Curt doesn’t see his card before I give it to him!  *wink*

I promised another Elzybells card and here it is.  🙂

Isn’t she just the sweetest thing?  This image is called Hopes, Dreams and Wishes and once I stamped it I discovered the that the jars are labeled Hopes, Dreams, Wishes…aaawwwwwwww!  Even though these are NOT Christmas colors I used this Christmas sentiment and stamped “Merry Christmas” inside.  This was another case of coloring an image without picking out the paper first.  But when I went looking through my stash I found this fabulous Heidi Grace paper (Glittered Paper/Heidi’s Flowers/Stripe Decor) that I had set aside for a specific project.  Oh the dilemma…do I cut into it?  Well I just had to – it’s perfect!  I sure hope I can get some more for my project from eclectic Paperie.  It’s shimmery/glittery/shiny all over!

Card base is Regal Rose.  Image was stamped on shimmery white and cut and embossed with nestabilities.  The little round embellishments at the bottom are an image from Snow Flurries stamped in YoYo Yellow on shimmery white, punched out and attached with pop up glue dots.  A Muse twinkle jewel in pink finishes them off.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!  Looks like I’ve blown right past Halloween and straight on to Christmas!  LOL!  All that Dashing stuff got me into Christmas mode and I’m guessing that a lot of what I stamp for the next month or so will be Christmas oriented. I have two different batches of 20 Christmas cards each almost finished.  Plus I have about 10 single cards ready.  I’ll need at least 30 more than that, so I either need to do another batch of 20-25 or I need to stamp a single Christmas card every day for a month.  Hmmm…we’ll just have to see how that goes.

Thanks for stopping by. 

Wowzas!  I made 5 cards this morning!  Many of you know that I am a very slow stamper (hey – More is More is a time consuming philosophy!), so making 5 cards before 11:00 am is nothing short of amazing for me!  And I even cleaned up as I went, so I didn’t leave a mess behind!  My friend Jess and I were talking about how much easier it is to stamp the next thing when you clean as you go and it made me wonder….why can’t I do that all the time?

My first 2 cards are a pair for todays Sketch Challenge at SCS.  If you’ve never played the SCS Challenges, you really need to give them a try.  I don’t get to play nearly as often as I used to, but I always enjoy it when I do.  I credit those challenges for making me a much much better stamper!  When I first looked at the sketch and read the directions (very early this morning), I have to admit, I just didn’t get how to do it.  But once I started to work on it, I found it was really quite easy.

I started with a celery panel 3.75″ x 5″ stamped with Fine Lace in celery ink and a wasabi panel the same size stamped with Floral in wasabi ink.  Each panel was first cut corner to corner on my rotary paper cutter and then put back together with removable tape, and cut again the other direction.  The result is 4 pieces.  Those pieces were then layered on a 4″ x 5.25″ piece of black cardstock.  Actually I first pieced them together with double stick tape on the back side to make lining up the corners easier.  Then I cut 1/8″ strips of black cardstock and adhered those with glue stick and trimmed the corners with a craft knife.

The main image from Garden Sihouettes is embossed with black craft ink and clear EP.  I don’t know about you, but I hate using black EP, because no matter what it seems to get black flecks on every project (yes I have an embossing buddy!).  I much prefer working with black craft or pigment ink and the clear powder.  My original idea was to use black flock, but it just didn’t turn out like I had hoped.  I’ll need to try playing with the flock more – I still think it coul dbe beautiful with this set.

Oh my heavens – I started this post hours ago, but SCS (and blogs) went down in the middle of it- fortunately I had hit “save” at least once already.  Daven and Scott must be tearing their hair out with all of the wonkiness this week.  YIKES!  Well I was going to share two more cards from what I made this morning, but it’s pumpkin time for me….so you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for those…more GS cards…loving that set!

Good night!  Thanks for stopping by.  🙂

Splitcoaststampers suffered a pretty big crash Saturday morning and my blog was down for a couple of days.  We lost blogs posts from Thursday and Friday *sad face*.  But thanks to the crew over at SCS for getting us back up and running.  Must have been a tough weekend for those guys!

Here’s the card I posted Thursday –

Monkey image is Stampendous Changito from eclectic Paperie.  Striped designer paper is My Mind’s Eye – the Costco slab.  Flourish was cut on th e Cricut.

And Friday’s card – my first one using Baroque Motifs –

Color combo – Regal Rose, Purely Pomegranate, Whisper White.  Flower edge punched with my brand new Martha Stewart punch.  Swirl was stamped first in Pomegranate and then using a stamp-a-majig, off-set, and stamped again in white craft ink.  The picture doesn’t really show it, but the swirls are covered in Dazzling Diamonds Glitter – super sparkly!  Ribbon from Michael’s and some pink crystals are the finishing touches.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is my friend Taylor’s birthday!  Hop on over to her blog (click from my blog roll) and wish her a Happy Birthday! 🙂  I’ll be back tomorrow with the birthday card I sent her.

Do you ever start going in one direction and end up someplace else entirely?  That’s what happened with this card.  When I was working on my Stampin’ Fun For Everyone cards I thought Dotted would be a fun background with that set.  I came up with this color combo of Caribbean, Taken With Teal and Rose Red and got the background pieces together.  However once I got to that point I just couldn’t make the  SFFE images work.  After inking each and every dot individually with markers I wasn’t about to trash this card!  I looked around and saw Flower Filled which I only recently obtained (from a sweet friend who felt she was *done* with it).  It has been on my wishlist for a very long time and I am really enjoying it!

I inked the vase with Caribbean classic ink and then used my Teal marker to ink over every other stripe before stamping onto whisper white cardstock.  The top of the vase was masked with a post it note and the stems were stamped in Teal ink and the lifesaver-flowers were stamped in Rose Red ink and glittered.  Not sure if you can tell, but the Rose Red panel at the bottom was stamped with Paisley in Rose Red ink for a tone on tone look.  For the Caribben accent piece at the bottom I used my slit punch to make a scalloped border and then punched holes and traced around them with a white gel pen.  The little white plastic flower trim is irridecent IRL and came from our local ribbon warehouse.  Teal satin ribbon is the final finishing touch.  The style of this card is somewhat unusual for me, but I really like it.  It just seems *happy* to me.

I just finished watching Super Nanny.  I  have no idea why I get sooo into that show…we don’t even have kids.  LOL! Something about it totally sucks me in though.  Time to call it a night.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a terrific week.

I couldn’t help but be intrigued by a little game some friends have been playing – Take Two.  Julia Stainton, Lindsey Botkin and Trudee Sauer have been having some fun (check out their blogs from my blog roll!)….so my friend Taylor and I kind of decided to *steal* their idea (I hope they don’t hate us *wink*).  We call it Double Take.  We chose a stamp set and a color combo and you’ll get to see both of our “takes” on it – thus a Double Take!

For today we chose Doodle This since neither of us had played with it much yet at all and a color combo right off the SU Color Coach: Rose Red, Almost Amethyst, So Saffron, Chocolate Chip.  You can see Taylor’s card here.   Oh I can’t wait to see what she did!

  My card is sized to fit in an envelope made with the SU 5-in-1 Template, however it ended up with so much dimension that I don’t think it will fit in any envelope period!  LOL!  I started with an idea I wanted to experiment with.  I stamped the flowers on Au Chocolat designer paper and watercolored them.  After cutting them out, I embossed each flower with 2 layers of UTEE.  They are soooo shiny and the curled a bit and took on a nice shape pretty much on their own.  I simply attached them to a saffron panel (stamped with some stems) with glue dots.  The top portion is stamped with Dots & Daisies BG and the little flowers are colored in with Amethyst marker.  The bottom portion was stamped with Paisley in Rose Red classic ink.  I used a Sakura Stardust Gel Pen to highlight the stems and all around the card – very nice touch of sparkle.  The sentiment from Warm Words was punched out with the SU small oval punch and matted on a large Chocolate Chip oval.  There is a small strip of the Au Chocolat paper in the middle with a bit of Rose Red grosgrain ribbon.  Finished the whole thing off with the ticket corner punch and some saffron brads.  I’ve gone back and forth between really liking this card and thinking it’s goofy!  LOL!  Do you ever do that?

Tonight is my monthly technique class, so sometime in the next day or so I’ll share the samples from my class.  For now I need to get busy to finish my prep work!  Thanks for stopping by!

The Pastor read the following story as part of his Easter sermon this morning and I thought I would share it withthose of you who might like to read it.  Happy Easter!  He is Risen!

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE EASTER!

Every Who down in Who-ville
Liked Easter a lot…
But the Grinch,
Who lived just North of Who-ville
Did Not!

The Grinch hated Easter, the whole Lenten Season,
And if you’ll be patient, I’ll tell you the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But that wasn’t the reason he loathed with such might.
The Grinch hated Easter, alone in his cave,
‘Cause his heart was as dead and as dark as the grave.

So he stood there, on Good Friday, and he pictured the scene,
Of Easter in Who-ville and all it would mean.
They would rise with “He’s Risen” on each pair of Who lips,
And they’d dress for church services and after church trips.
“They’re rehearsing cantatas and pageants and prayers,
They are ironing their clothes and they’re curling their hair.”
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming,
“I MUST find some way to stop Easter from coming!”
For on Easter he knew, all the Who boys and girls,
Would have much more to think of than fashions and curls.
They would think of their Savior, and all girls and boys,
Would open their Who mouths and make joyful noise.
And that’s one thing he hated, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise!

Then the Whos, young and old, would fold hands and bow heads,
While prayers of thanksgiving and worship were said.
Then they’d sing about Jesus, how He died, how He lives,
Then some windbag would talk on the hope that He gives.

And then they’d do something he liked least of all,
Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with Easter bells ringing,
They’d hold hands in a circle, and they’d pass Easter Greetings!

“Go under His mercy”, they’d say to their brother,
“The Lord bless and keep you”, they’d say to each other.
And the thought galled the Grinch from his hat to his shoelace,
And a frown seemed to darken each part of his Grinch-face.
“Why, for 53 years I’ve put up with it now!
I must stop this Easter from coming …..But how?”
Then he got an idea? And awful idea!
The Grinch got a Wonderful, Awful Idea!

“I know just what to do,” the Grinch said with a hoot,
And he made a quick pair of Bunny ears and a suit.
And he chuckled and clucked, “What a great Grinchy trick!
With these ears and this suit I can steal Easter…slick!”

He died baskets pink and he filled them with grass,
Then he set one aside for each Who-lad and Who-lass.
Then he went to the Wal Mart, charged his card to the max,
Spending thousands on chocolates, not counting the tax.

Then he bought fancy bonnets and gaudy bow ties,
And he grinned as he pictured Who giggles and sighs.
“This will keep them from praying and singing those songs,
This will please and distract them for all the day long.”

Then he loaded the goodies and baskets and clothes,
The bonnets and dresses and ties that make bows,
And he packed his Suburban till it threatened to pop,
And he grinned as he mumbled, “This Easter must stop!”

Then long after midnight, with each Who in his bed
While thoughts of Sweet Jesus filled every Who head,
The Grinch left for each as they finished their nap,
A sweet basket of candy, a distraction, a trap.

He smiled his Grinch smile as he tiptoed away,
And he pictured the mess he would cause the next day.
He pictured the Whos rising and finding their stash,
And forgetting about Jesus in less than a flash.

They would fight over chocolates, over bonnets and toys,
They’d forget about praying and making glad noise.
“We can’t get them dressed” would shout Who dads and moms,
“They’re covered with chocolate from their nose to their thumbs.
From their heart to their heads they’re absorbed with themselves,
We’ll have to put Easter and such on the shelves!”

The Grinch hardly slept as he waited the dawn,
He could not stop imagining the row that would come.
“Pooh-pooh to the Whos” he was grinch-ish-ly humming,
“They are finding out now that no Easter is coming.
They are just waking up. I know just how they’ll be!
Their mouths will hang open a minute or three
Then the Whos will all shout, “Easter’s all about ME!”
And they’ll forget the Carpenter of Old Galilee.
The Grinch cocked his head, put his hand to his ear,
“That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch, “That I simply must hear!”
And he did hear a noise rising over the meadow,
It started in low, and it started to grow.

But the sound wasn’t selfish or angry or sad,
It just couldn’t be so, but the sound sounded glad!
He stared down at Who-ville and the Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Who boy and girl had their chocolates and bonnets,
But every Who face had a peaceful smile on it!
They had their bow ties and their chocolate treat basket,
But the Grinch had a question and he just had to ask it.

“Why aren’t they distracted and selfish and rude,
Why aren’t they absorbed with their dresses and food?
Could it be that they’ll sing whether chocolate or not;
Could it be I don’t understand Easter one jot?”

What happened then…. well, down in Who-ville they say,
The Spirit got hold of a Grinch heart that day.
The heart that was empty, and gloomy, and cold,
Became warm and alive, filled with promise untold.
And Jesus, who had been to the Grinch just a bother,
Became Savior and Master, Redeemer and Brother!

Easter is more than just trappings, all Who-ville agreed,
It’s a Savior who lives to meet every man’s needs.

They made their Who circle in the First Church that day,
And after their singing, they started to pray.
“Go under the mercy,” said one to his brother,
“God bless you and keep you,” said one to the other.
“He is Risen,” cried one in the midst of the blessed;
“He is Risen indeed,” said the Grinch with the rest.

It’s been passed down as fact, or so the Whos say,
That the singing was louder by threefold that day.
And the circle seemed fuller, more warm and more sweet,
Two green, hairy Grinch hands had made it complete.