Whirlpool of Imagination

Under the Sea

I guess this card is appropriate since it rained all day today!

I started with white glossy cardstock and, using alcohol and dye reinkers, created the background. The sea horse pattern came from one of the talented designers at Circle of Crafters. I wasn't sure what to do with the bit of card on the top and bottom of the image layer, so I ended up adding a score line just to add a little something to the final card.

Fairly self-explanatory, just a bit more time consuming to make this one as the folding takes a bit of time.

Trying a New Toy

Today's card originally started out as an attempt to make a minute card. I thought my using my new

Fiskars edge punch would make the process go quickly . On top of that, I had planned what I thought would be simple, but it took longer than I had anticipated.

I bought this one as well as the "threading water" scallop with holes punch. I started with that one but was not completely happy with the results.

The concept is simple. Place your paper in and punch. Then move along using the guide to line up the already punched areas and presto, a perfect punched line. A couple things made this less than perfect. First, I think I need to sharpen these by punching in some aluminum foil, especially the scallops. The holes within the scallops are not punching cleanly through. Second, as you punch along, the edge of the paper is separating from the main area of the cardstock/paper and as a result, it becomes harder to punch completely straight. I had one piece end up completely lopsided.

On the plus side, when it works, it works nicely. You get a really neat image that would be hard to duplicate with say, scissors.

Here is the finished card. I used my swiss dots folder to emboss the bottom layer. I then used the punch out the decorative border. To get it even on both sides, I placed a mark on my punch to always start in the same place and I flipped the piece over to do the second side.

The center image is stamped with a Papertrey circle and the flower and sentiment are from Stampin' Up. In theory, not a complicated card but the punching did not go as smoothly as anticipated and layering everything took a bit longer than expected as well. I'm not sure I'm happy with the final result or with the punch but I will continue to try using them to see if I get better with practice.

Cookies Anyone?

I meant to give this to you last night but I never got back on so let's start our Saturday morning with a good cookie recipe. The original recipe is a bake-off winning recipe from the 2000 Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. If you haven't figured out yet, I like to change recipes so this is different from the original, which I'm sure was really tasty.

This is our official tailgating cookie recipe. I always make it for tailgating days.

Chocolate Brownie Cookies

1 pkg Pillsbury Fudge Supreme Brownie Mix (in a pinch, I use whatever is in the cupboard)

1/2 cup margarine, melted (I now cook with Smart Balance and it comes out fine)

1 egg

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2/3 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

1.Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the brownie mix, butter and egg. Stir until well blended. Add chocolate chips and oats and mix well. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

2. Bake at 350 for 9-12 minutes or until edges are set. (Centers will be a little soft). Cool 1 minute and remove from cookie sheets. Cool completely.

Couple of notes: The do continue to cook a bit after you take them out which is why the centers look soft when you first take them out. Let them cool completely because when they are hot, they are pretty crumbly (which is not always a bad thing if you need the chocolate fix!)

Enjoy!

There you are Scooby Doo

Conor's birthday is fast approaching so its time to show kid's invitations. When I asked him what he wanted his theme to be, he picked Scooby Doo (again, its the same theme we had last year). I wanted to do something different from last year so I tried to incorporate the theme of the place we're having the party.

Since it's about a 99% certainty that it will rain the day of his party (I'm serious, you could win a lot of money betting on the fact that it rains during one of our parties), the thought of 15 boys stuck inside our house gives me nightmares. Therefore, Conor is having his party at one of the local playscape stores that provide parties. The store's theme revolves around the wood theme of their playscapes which gave me the idea for the wooden frame around Scooby. I took a wood backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms, stamped it and then cut it up into 1.25 x .5 inch pieces. I then placed those pieces around the outer edge of the blue layer to create the frame. It looked a bit plain so I added those square brads to give the illusion of hardware around the edges of the frame. I found these fun 3-D stickers of Scooby on the internet and added those to the card front. I debated on adding a sentiment to the front somewhere around Scooby but I did a little "market research", aka asked the moms at skating practice, and they all thought it looked fine the way it was. That worked for me so I kept it the way it is. These look simple but the cutting and the frame took a while, about 20 minutes per card so simple works for me as my to-do list is mighty long!

I haven't done my monthly recipe so I'm thinking that may be my post for tomorrow. Think sweets!

I'm Ambivalent About this One

I made this card a few days ago and I am still undecided as to whether or not I like it.

This card started out from a sketch. I was updating my sketch ideas notebook and decided to pick an old sketch to make a card. These butterflies are from Prickley Pear and are actually one stamp. I stamped it and cut it down to three pieces.

The backgrounder is from Cornish Heritage Farms. I chose it because it had similarities to the background of the butterflies. Instead of ribbon for the vertical strip which is what I always seem to do, I decided on a sentiment strip using this sentiment from TAC.

After putting it all together, I look at this card and am not sure what to think. I know that a quick change I could make is to put a black layer between the card base and the cream layer. But for some reason, I keep balking at that idea. Something keeps telling me to leave it as it is although I can't tell you why or if I even like is this way. Ah well, that is the convoluted story around this card.

Spring may be here, the temperatures are trying to get above those winter cold temps - I'll believe it when I can put my winter coat away! Hope you may be experiencing some lovely spring weather.

My Easter Bunny

I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend. We were busy all weekend with family and I took the time to stay away from the computer. It was nice to step away and take a break. And now I can go check up on my favorite blogs and sites with a fresh eye.

Easter really snuck up on me this year so I did not make that many cards. One of my favorite bunnies is from a TAC set so I pulled him out to make a few cards for stamp pals.

He is colored with prismacolor pencils and blended with baby oil. His colors are taken to match this great paper from TAC that I got in my demo pack. The sentiment is from Cornish Heritage Farms. Besides layering several times, this card is pretty easy overall.

And now that the glut of holidays has broken up, I am officially eating light for the rest of this week. I feel laden with food that I don't normally eat and honestly, feel a bit sluggish because of it. I was up and at the gym this morning so I'm back in the routine and no more heavy foods or sweets for me! Hope your Monday is a fantastic one.

Stamp Pals are the Best

I have a lot of stamping pen pals and they are the best. I love getting mail and having a chance to send cards to people I know will appreciate the time and effort that goes into making your own cards. I get too many to show all of them here but I thought I'd start picking a couple at random every month to show some of my fun mail. Today's cards are from Tara and Sarah.

Every card I receive has something in it that can inspire me. I love how the shamrock was made with the hearts along with the gold cord stem. As soon as I opened this one up, it made me smile.

What strikes me about this card is the fun layout. Long cards are a lot of fun but I always seem to do the same old design with them. I am definitely going to try this with the gate-fold opening and the use of patterned paper. What's great is that you can use a larger design on the paper but because there is such a large area of paper, you don't lose something like you do with the smaller blocks. I just got some paper that I think would go great with this and want to give it a go.

These are only two of the fantastic cards I received last month. I am definitely going to keep showing more because I have such a talented group of pen pals!

Cold and windy here today. Are you sure it's the start of spring? I'm thinking Easter will be on the mite chilly side!

A New Type of 3-D for Me

I had plans for posting this last night but I got caught up watching American Idol and Mo had shut off the computer by the time I came upstairs! After giving pyramid cards a try, I decided to wanted to try 3-D cards. I don't think I did this one right but it does look better in person than on the screen.

Like pyramid cards, you start off with images on the cardstock that need to be cut down. In this case, there is more cutting as your building pieces of the scene up rather than a rectangle of the image.

For this card, the lighthouse was cut out several times, sometimes with the rocks, sometimes not and layered to give the card its depth and dimension. I'm not sure if I was supposed to pop dot one layer but if so, I couldn't tell you which layer so I didn't do this. Since the cardstock is well, cardstock (and thicker) it does seem to build the layers nicely.

I definitely need practice cutting and doing more of these but it was fun to try something new. I used my new favorite CB folder ~ swiss dots along with a little stamping to finish off the card.

We're stuck with the rain today. I would love to stay in my pajamas and stay inside all day but no luck. Hope its nice wherever you are!

Lucky Treats

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you!! We had a fun day with a trip to the Irish Club, corned beef sandwiches for lunch and Irish sausages for dinner. (and nothing but salad for the rest of the week!). Because I seem to wait until the last minute, I was working on the treats for Conor's class last night. Of course Meg sees them and asks if she can have some for her class too - of course I say yes. So, 42 little treats later I get to go to sleep!

For some reason, this picture came out horrible. (And I swear I didn't have any Bailey's until after the pics had been taken!). I wanted something cute but small and semi-quick for the kids' classmates. I don't have a lot of cute leprechaun images so I pulled out my Quickutz for this project.

The bag topper actually has a pretty blue base but the camera didn't pick that up too well. I stamped little shamrocks from Papertrey Ink on the top and bottom of the topper. The white strip is actually embossed with the cuttlebug swiss dots folder and then the hat was cut out, assembled and raised up a bit with mounting tape.

It's pretty simple but I try not to go too crazy with the kid's classmates treats - cute works fine for me.

Keeping Notes

I've been working out and such faithfully for over a year now. I've kind of hit a plateau and want to jump start my weight loss again so I thought I'd start keeping an exercise journal. In the process, its becoming an journal for more than just listing sets and such. I've been talking about my eating and how I feel etc. so I decided to make it a pretty journal.

I've had this paper ready for covering a composition notebook for about a year now so I thought I'd use it. Because I really like Papertrey's Out on a Limb set, I had to use that. I kept the journal simple because I have come to the realization that I'm a simple gal - when I try to add too much stuff or too many layers, the whole thing just looks ridiculous. The bottom right corner was originally going to have more flowers but it wasn't really working for me so I pulled out this great ribbon that I have not idea where it came from but I wish I did because I love it. Anyway, I decided to just ad a bit of ribbon to the corner and finish off with some primas.

Another busy day here - Mo ran his first 5K so the kids and I went to watch him cross the finish line. Now I'm off to make St. Patrick's treats for Conor's class - nothing like waiting for the last minute!