Whirlpool of Imagination

New Home

Good friends of ours have been looking for a new home for a while now and just moved yesterday. Tonight we headed on over there with a little something to congratulate them on their new home.

I debated on putting a sentiment on the front of the card but eventually decided to keep it plain and write a nice note inside.

The house/trees stamp is from Amuse. For the life of me, I couldn't remember the color of their new home so i went with a row of houses and a variety of colors. I used watercolor pencils to color in the houses and trees and then used a prismacolor marker to make the grass. I have officially decided that I like regular watercolor brushes and a bit of water in a tray instead of those water pens. Every time i try to use them, a big glob of water comes out and ruins whatever I'm making. I like the concept but not the actual use of them. I'm finding I'm partial to the Winsor Newton brushes. They have a nice point to them and you can get different sizes to match whatever type of work you are doing. I did chalk some clouds in to add a bit of color and since I wasn't adding a sentiment, I added a bit of ribbon at the top.

I'm pretty much fried for the night - later!

Floating by with a Quick Hello

Yeah - I did get a little stamping time in tonight. I've got most of my laundry finished and everything is put away so I rewarded myself for a bit.

I'm really enjoying the use of oranges and yellows lately. The hot summer weather has been an inspiration and I find myself drawn to these colors. I also adore this patterned paper from Bo Bunny Press and decided that I just had to use it in combination with my summer color combo.

This is also a favorite sketch design of mine. I find is works well with smaller focal images and a sentiment. I've been wanting to use a wider ribbon instead of paper but just haven't had everything click with that yet.

The cat is from Cat's Pajamas, the sentiment is from Spunky Stamps and the flower in the background (which I tried to match as closely to the flower in the cat's ear as I could) is from Fontwerks. I colored the cat image with prismacolor markers.

There have been a few threads lately at Splitcoast about getting together with stamping pen pals. Back when I first started stamping, I had several stamp pen pals and really enjoyed corresponding with them and sending cards back and forth. Then for a while, I got out of stamping and lost touch with them. So I've jumped on the pen pal bandwagon again. Summer cat will be in the mail soon!

I'm Back!!

I have spent the last week in New Hampshire having a lovely vacation with the family. For those of you who live in the White Mountain area I can't tell you how beautiful the area you live in is. And if you've never been there and get a chance to go, I really recommend it!! Between Mount Washington (yes, we drove up it) to the waterfalls and just the gorgeous scenery wherever you drove, it was spectacular. The kids had a blast at Storyland but they had just as much fun splashing around at Jackson Falls for several hours too. It feels great to be home. I'm in the midst of several loads of laundry but I'm hoping for some stamping time later on this evening and hope to be back showing my creations.  Later!

Don't Abandon Me!!

LOL ~ I am going to be without my computer for the next several days (may score a laptop from my brother but no guarantee there). I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! I'll be back with my computer on Friday so have a great week everyone and I'll see you back here on Friday!

Lavender Anniversary

So today I was making a belated anniversary card (do you sense a trend????Every card I send lately seems to be belated!!). The original wedding colors were lavender so I wanted to make the card with a lavender theme (so you see, I just HAD to make it a shade of purple!!)

This cute little tree is from Stamping Bella and I used markers to color the hearts. When I was matting the picture, it felt kind of stark so I ran some ink along the edges. In hindsight, I've decided I don't like that. Next time I need to remember to just put the inkpad down!

The sentiment is from River City Rubber Works and stamped with SU ink. The black block is actually embossed with the cuttlebug flowers and vine although the scan did not pick that up at all. I wanted the texture for embossing but for the life of me, can't find that folder. (A sure sign that I MUST clean the studio). And since I'm ribbon happy lately, I added a bit of ribbon.

So yet another belated card has made it into the mail. At this rate I'll be sending out Christmas cards in February!!

A Blue Graduate

I had a (long overdue) graduation card to make so I sat myself down today and wasn't allowed to make anything else but this card. Since the graduate is a girl, I pulled out my bella grad.

I think the school colors are blue (can you tell I'm really on the ball here?) so I made the cap and gown blue and the rest of the card evolved from there. This was definitely one of those times when I picked the image first with no idea about the final design of all the elements. I really like the blue/orange combination of color. I've done the darker blue /brighter orange thing but I really like this lighter blue with the peach. The graduate is colored with colored pencils and then blended with baby oil. I used markers on the flowers. (Image from Stamping Bella)

I used one of my new Paper Trey stamps for the sentiment. I like how the sets have a great variety of sayings. I'm always looking for new shapes/styles of sentiments so even if I may not use the images much, I know I'll use these sentiments. The one beef I have is sometimes the acrylic doesn't always ink up as well as the rubber. And believe, I've tried the different types of polymer and I've tried the different types of ink and I know that these stamps are the higher quality. There just isn't quite the consistency that I find with the red rubber. It doesn't mean I won't buy them, it just means a little extra work when I need to touch them up, like I had to with this one. I went over many of the layers with black pen because they did not show up crisp enough for me.

I didn't originally plan on using the flower. I was going to do something funky with ribbon. I'm not sure what but, in the end, I'm really tired so I took the easy way out and put in the prima and brad!! I'll save the funky for another day.

I had a lousy nights sleep and a busy day so I'm going to surf a bit and then hit the hay early. Hopefully I'll be nice and refreshed for tomorrow! Night.

Summer Treats

I promised myself I wouldn't do it but I never listen to myself! Every year at the end of school (not to mention every holiday during the year!) I always make some sort of gifts/treats for the kids classmates. Well, I said I wasn't going to do it for Meg's classmates this year; there was too much going on, etc etc.......Did I listen? Nope - so today I had to crank out 24 treats of some kind.

The saying in combination with the pop rocks is not originally my idea - someone on Splitcoast said that they had done something similar. I never saw their design but I did use the concept. Since I had minimal time today to get these done, I decided to keep them ultra simple. I was originally going to do different colored cardstock for the boys and girls and generally make it more difficult than I needed to. I decided then to just go with yellow (it's summery) and I added some orange to jazz it up a little bit. And by using the yellow, I could stamp the image and get away with not coloring them (huge time saver there!) The images are from TAC and CTMH.

I even pulled out some funky scissors to go with the whole "rock" theme. Back when those shaped scissors were all the rage, I will admit I bought them. Now the kids use them rather than me (I'm not sure I used them ever all that much) but for this project it seemed to fit.

For the pocket card itself, I created my own measurements to closely match the size of the candy. The original piece of cardstock was cut to  4 X 11.5 and I score at 5.5 from one side to make the bottom fold and at 1.5 from the other side to make the fold-over flap. The back seemed a little plain so I added some orange cardstock there rather than have it be all yellow. So now I can officially wrap up another school year of little treat creations. And I am exhausted and am off to bed - night!

A Little Orange Anyone?

Well, it took me a little longer than I had planned but I finally scanned the orange version of my flower card.

The flower is from TAC, the sentiment is from Cornish Heritage and the patterned paper is from Daisy Bucket. I was looking through and I have a lot of different colors with this design - I foresee several colors of this card! Rather than colored pencil, I used twinkling h2o's on the flower - I can't decide which way I like it better.

Two days left of the school year.....tomorrow we give the teachers their gifts. For the main teacher, I went in and had the kids make a book about why they like her. It's really cute and I think she'll enjoy it (plus the kids practiced their writing and drawing skills to boot!!) Talk to ya later!

And the winner is.....

Okay, Meg has just picked a winner......it's Barb (GrammaStamper). Meg was a little concerned but wants everyone to know that she didn't peek!! Meg and I want to thank everyone who took the time to comment and most importantly, play along. She got so excited every day to see the cards made with her sketch and it definitely gave her confidence quite a boost!! (And now I have little sketches from her all over my papers here by the computer). I reworked yesterdays purple card and used one of my other favorites, pumpkin pie cardstock. I haven't scanned it yet. Hopefully I will be able to scan it and upload it tonight. Later.

Happy Father's Day!

I hope all the dads out there had a wonderful day. It was mellow (and HOT) here but I think Mo enjoyed himself.

Meg has been really enjoying the responses to her sketch. She will randomly draw a winner for her sketch contest tomorrow. For those who recently posted sketches, Meg really wants to visit and thank you on your sites but she had to go to bed - tomorrow evening she'll get a chance. I placed an order at Blockheads Rubber Stamps today for me and the winner. I tried to get a little variety in the stamps and I'm hoping to get to the craft store in the next day or two so there may be a few things besides stamps in there too!

Since its Father's Day, I wanted to do a masculine card but the mind just wasn't clicking with the male images. So instead, we have flowers. And oh look, they're purple!! Shocker, huh?

The flower stamp is from TAC and I think the sentiment is from Spunky Stamps (but don't quote me on that one). The flower is colored with prismacolor pencils and blended with baby oil. The patterned paper is from Daisy Bucket.

The last week of school is this week coming up and it will be crazy. I'm hoping to get some stamping time in to stay sane but if I go missing for a couple of days, you'll know why! Later.