Hopping Along for Jessica

This is my second post of the day.  Please CLICK HERE or scroll down for my Flourishes Friday post!  

I'm hopping along to celebrate the Birthday of Jessica Knutsen, owner extraordinaire of There She Goes Stamps.  I had so much fun on the Design Team, so I was thrilled to be able to jump in on the fun.  

One thing I really love about Jessica is her awesome prismacolor pencil coloring.  She does some magic with these pencils and her shading, and she's great at "creating a scene" (on paper! LOL) with masks.  So I thought I'd do it a little Jessica-style.  


I pulled out my very cute My Little Friend set and masked and stamped these little guys out, adding some lines and connections with my Copic Multi-liner to get the scene to work with the hill and grass.  Then it was just fun colouring everything in, adding a little puffy cloud and some simple accents to make this birthday card fun.  You can click on either of these pictures if you want to see a little more detail.  


Too cute right?!  

Happy Birthday Jessica!  Thanks for all the TSG Fun!  

And have fun hopping along to the rest of the celebration stops today:  

You're So Fly



Hello Flourishes Friends!  Today the Design Team is showing off projects with a very fun set - What A Catch.  It is such a great masculine set!  A while ago you might remember me saying I needed to make a number of thank you cards for the staff at our Church on Administrative Assistant Appreciation day, and 2 needed to be masculine.  This was one of the them...


I thought it was a fun play on words to combine this set and the Inside and Out  - Just Because in the sentiments for this card.  "Just because you're so fly" sounds so fun!  I stamped the tackle and gear onto Flourishes Classic Ivory with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, then coloured up the image with some masculine colours to match this Authentique Free Bird Nest Comfort and Familiar Paper.  I really like the chevron theme in the design, so I also played that up with an Edgeabilities border along the bottom in Flourishes Color Made Easy Pistachio cardstock.  


Just Because is stamped in Ranger Crushed Olive Ink and You're so Fly is stamped in Forest Moss.  Then it's just a wee bit of jute twine and an Olive button to finish off the detailing.  

You'll want to hop through the Design Team today to see their great cards with What a Catch and get some great inspiration for that man in your life!    And if you're looking for even MORE inspiration check out the Flourishes Gallery for this set as well, you'll find tons of great ideas for that man in your life!   

And, one last note, don't forget to check out the Flourishes Blog again today for new Designer Focus {blushing} hope you can join in on the fun!  

Organizing Cards & Pretty Tulips

Hey there gang!  Happy Wednesday to you.  I'm in allergy season and I'm a bundle of itchy eyes and sneezing. It's worse this year than in many years for me and for our youngest son.  :(

So I just wanted to pop in for a quick note to let you know I have a couple of posts on the CardMaker Blog to check out.

Today's post is about how I organize the cards I've made to get them ready for sale...


And this post is about a pretty card I made inspired by another from the CardMaker Magazine archives.



Hope you can take a look!


Give Me a Ring


How about another fun card from this month's Flourishes New Releases?   I can tell by people's response that you really love this cute set Call Me.  :)  I do too.  I think the vintage phones are SO fun.  I have to tell you, I had the best little giggle as I was making this card.  As I was stamping out the sentiment I thought, "ha, this would be a funny card from a girl to a guy - like she's demanding a proposal!"  So everytime I look at it that cracks me up!  

The shape is first cut with the Call Me set's Silhouette Cut file on Flourishes Classic Ivory card stock, then stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and coloured up with Copics.  A telephone book should always be yellow don't you think?  They delivered the yellow pages the other day and I realized that it's been years since the last time I looked up a phone number in a paper phone book.  

I've paired it up with one of my all time paper packs from MME - Sunshine.  I love the blend of yellow, black, cream and soft blues.  I have barely anything left from this pack.  


Behind the image I used our Flourishes Perfectly Pierced Classic Window Die, some wood buttons, iridescent ribbon, and gold cording, and all placed on Flourishes Classic Kraft card stock.  And there you have it!  




Photography 52 - 20

Week 20 of photos included Mother's Day and some spring gardening 


My beloved's on Mother's Day.  I feel so blessed to be their mom, and I can hardly believe I've been a mom for 16 1/2 years.  That just doesn't seem possible.   We had a really nice time with my family where my husband and brother made us a dinner of grilled steak, crab legs, twice baked potatoes, salads and trifle for dessert.  They did good :)


My brother and I and our mom.  She's a gem.  


The bruisers :)  Oh I just love this picture.  Our youngest son still missing a tooth, and our little nephew who knocked out a tooth by accident. So they have mirror image smiles.  They are so cute!


Sweet little picture of my little button-nosed niece.  


 Ladder ball - my husband put together this game called Ladder Ball, have you heard of it?  It's fun, you have to swing a linked pair of golf balls onto a PVC pipe "ladder" for points.  



Want to see my early spring garden?  Some tulips and some grapevine hyacinth (muscari).  You can see that some bunnies have been snacking on my tulips.  grr.  

 

Lovely bleeding hearts.  They are just starting to bloom.  



These tulips will be done soon, so I had to grab a few shots of them.  


My sister-in-law gave me these dahlias for Mother's Day.  They are so pretty!

One of our hanging baskets.  We found this gorgeous basket of fuchsia.  They are a gorgeous colour combination of cream and deep pink - almost a burgundy.

She's Got Fabulous Feathers


Hello, Fabulous People!  We're back to show off another look at the May Releases at Flourishes.  Wasn't it a beautiful set of stamps?  I know you won't want to miss out having them in your crafty little hands...and TODAY is the LAST day to purchase the May New Releases at a discount.  So don't miss out!  

I thought I'd diva this gorgeous girl out today from our Glamour Girls set.  When I coloured her up with Copics I saw that the feather on her Kentucky Derby-worthy-hat were peacock feathers....that reminded me of some peacock feathers I had from a Ms. Peacock costume I made for a Clue youth event we had done one time...and then I just couldn't resist putting them on the card.  If you're going to go diva, you just have to go all the way :)


She's stamped on Flourishes Classic White with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, then die cut out with our Flourishes Perfectly Pierced Victorian Oval die.  She's paired with Flourishes Color Made Easy - Emerald Coast cardstock that was embossed with a peacock embossing folder called Courtship, it suited the theme perfectly.  


Some pretty teal velvet ribbon, green silk, turquoise ruffled edge ribbon, and some Kaiser Sea Breeze Sparklets to match all the glam.  






Be sure to visit the rest of the Design team to be inspired again...


***And I hope you can visit the Flourishes Blog today for a new feature we're doing this summer,  a closer look at our Design Team and a fun new challenge with prizes!  It's going to be great! ***

Blue Jeans and Bracelets

I'm a blue jeans kind of girl.  I could wear jeans most any day.  Though I do like to dress up  - I think I'm most comfortable in my jeans.  I was thinking about how pretty silver looks with blue jeans and then thought about how pretty a silver bracelet like our new Simply Charming set would look against the look of worn blue jeans, and that's how this card started!


I combined the metallic look of silver embossing with an aging effect to the Color Made Easy True Blue Cardstock.  The bracelet and charm images are all first cut out with the Simply Charming Silhouette Cut File, stamped with VersaMark and then embossed with silver embossing powder.  After the images were cooled, I went over the cardstock with a Ranger Distress Marker - in Picket Fence.  This marker is SO cool.  It fades the card stock but it almost takes on the silvery tone of the embossing.  It's the perfect effect for the charms.  I distressed the cardstock in the same way with the marker and also some sponged colour with Ranger Stormy Sky Distress ink, so it would look like worn blue jeans.   


A few accents like some silver cording, seam-binding and some metallic Saville Row Candi dots to look like rivets.    

So what's YOUR go-to piece of clothing?  Are you a jeans girl like me?  :)

Thanks for joining me again today!