Whirlpool of Imagination

Flip Flop Thanks

I am just about ready to close the books on Meghan's birthday for this year. The last item on my to do list was thank you notes. Sometimes I try to match the thank you's to the invite them, sometimes not. This time around, I decided it would be fun to revisit the flip flop theme.

The beauty of thank you notes is that they can be super simple, which is what I was going for here.

The image and sentiment are from Gina K stamps. I took the same colors from the flip flop invite and used them to color the image on this one. The image block is pop dotted for a slight bit of dimension.

And therefore I was able to tie in the theme in a simple way.

I just got some stamps from Prickley Pear so that's what I'm playing with today. Hope your day is a creative one!

Back to School Reading

In honor of the kiddos going back to school, I thought I'd focus on reading and those bookmarks I like to make to hold your place.

This one is stamped with a Gina K image in cherry cobbler ink.

The soccer ball image is from Spunky Stamps and stamped with real red ink.

And for those animal lovers, we have a paw print stamped with cocoa bean ink. I can't tell you who the image is from though - no markings on the stamp.

I am participating in my first blog hop very shortly. Tomorrow I'm showing a bit of a sneak peek. See you then!

Pumpkin Basket

I'm sick again. The germs are swirling over at the kid's school (about a 20% absentee rate) and after going in on Friday to help out, I think some of those pesky germs attached themselves to me! I'm hoping I can fight this off a bit better this time - fingers crossed!

I decided to give myself a color challenge. I laid out some colors and challenged myself to make a card with those colors. Here they are...

 

Here is the card......

 

The image is from Papertrey Ink, tamped with memento tuxedo black ink and colored with copic markers.

Copics: YR68, YG97, YG93, E33, E35, E37

The sentiment is from Gina K and stamped with old olive ink (Stampin' Up).

I used my nesties to cut out the shapes and added a bit extra with Swarovski crystals (adhered crookedly it seems - it did NOT look like that when I held the finished card in my hand!!!!)

Hope your day is a good one (and the germs are jumping on you!).

Witch Party

I'm back! Thank you for all the well wishes and for checking on me - it means a lot! I'm still gooky (I'm all about the technical terms) but have it much more under control and finally had the desire to sit down and write tonight.

Last year we let Meghan invite 6 friends and threw a little Halloween party. These are great girls - very fun but also really well behaved and kind so they all mesh well together. I remember it as being fun rather than being WORK, which says a lot about kids' parties (they haven't all felt that way). Since I do remember it as being fun, I told Meghan she could have another one this year.

Right now Meg is into everything Harry Potter. This obsession has been going on since the beginning of the year and as much as they are fabulous books, I am ready for this to pass. But as of yet, it's still going strong and I bet you can guess what my two are going to be for Halloween - Harry and Hermione. Can you tell this from the invite?

 

I am loving the trend of anime stamps and as soon as Gina K released these, I picked them up. Please meet my version of Hermione. She is stamped with memento tuxedo black ink and colored with markers.

Copics: YR68, E00, E37, R59,

Prismacolor: black, cool grey 10%

In the spirit of Gryffindor, my little witch wears black and maroon and her belt buckle is gold (gold spica pen-11).

The sentiment is also from Gina K and stamped with tuxedo black ink.

The background is first dry embossed with the cuttlebug spiderweb folder. I then dry brushed gold glitter paint over the web (Decoart Craft Twinkles Brush On Glitter Paint) for a bit of sparkle.

Now I'm getting into party mode. Luckily, the girls really liked several of the games/activities so I figure why reinvent the wheel and we'll be doing some of the same things again (really, will making caramel chocolate apples ever get old???). 

I have a week's worth of projects to show you so even while I'm prepping for the party this weekend, I will have fun stuff to show off. See you soon!

Autumn Leaf

Today I'm going with the super short entry. This card is one of those fast cards that can be produced quickly and are useful when you need something in a hurry.

The leaf is from Stampin' Up and is stamped with chocolate chip ink. The sentiment is from Gina K and stamped with dusty durango ink (one of this year's SU In Color inks). I added a bit of patterned paper from Papertrey Ink, rounded the bottom corners of the card with a corner rounder and all done.

I am truly getting better but I seem to get coughing spells at night and so sleep is spotty. I'm fading fast here tonight so that's the reasoning behind this quick post. Hope you have a great night and I'll be back tomorrow with something Halloweenie. Later!

Confident CAS

Ooops - what happened to Frinday? I'll tell you what happened. My pen pal Siobhan got a bunch of us to join Facebook (yes, it takes me a LONG time to get with things) and then I spent far too much time fiddling on there yesterday. Of course if you, my blogging buddies, are on there, drop me a line and say hi.

The other thing that kept me busy was the Splitcoast Limited Supplies challenge for the week. It was Clean and Simple stamping. How awesome is that - me, the girl who adores CAS, was loving it. I actually haven't even gone through the LSC gallery yet. I want to have time to peruse leisurely so I'm waiting until I have a good stretch to just surf.

Here is the first of my CAS cards. I do have another but haven't taken a pic yet so that's for another day. I have different definitions in my mind about CAS cards. They can be ones, like this one, that have lots of open space. They can also be ones with simple, clean layers and some open space. I feel that much of what I do falls under the CAS umbrella.

The leaves are from CTMH and are stamped with SU garden green ink. The sentiment is from Gina K and is stamped in SU pomegranate ink. I am liking that color combo and in fact, the other CAS card I stamped used the same combo. And that is pretty much it. Did you do the challenge yesterday? Please show me - I really would like to see!

And now I'm off to clean and shop and clean some more. We're having a birthday dinner for my MIL tonight and I haven't done anything for it yet. Hope you have a great day!

Girl and Bird Friends

Edit: I forgot to title this post and it's driving me nuts. Had to come back add one!

I have been slow to jump on the Elyzbell bandwagon. So when last December, there was a free shipping offer, I just had to give them a try. This past week, I finally mounted a few up and have been inking away. I'm still busy coloring some of them but I have my first creation to offer today.

I have always thought this was one of the cutest images so it was the first one I sat down to work with.

I used palette noir ink and copic and prismacolor markers to color her in. For her hair, I used a prismacolor pencil and baby oil to smooth it out. The sentiment is from Gina K stamps.

I was really pleased with these stamps. I really like the unmounted option and they are nice and deeply etched so they stamp like a dream. I am quickly becoming a fan!

Sympathy Medallion Re-made

I started making cards for sale about 5 years ago. Since that time, my style has changed in an odd way. I've always liked clean and simple but my cards nowadays seem to be a bit more put together, so to speak. I can't really explain exactly but I have changed in the last 5 years. So now I am going through some of my old designs and updating them a bit.

After making medallions from the scallop edge punch, I revisted my square medallion technique using corner punches.

I'm sorry for the weird lighting - it wasn't a nice day when I was taking pictures. The medallion in the center started off as a plain old square. I used a corner punch in all 4 corners to create the medallion. After it was punched, this became a simple job of layering. All the layers are simply cardstock.

The sentiment is from Gina K. I experimented with it lower but turns out I like it better closer to the medallion.

Here is the punch I used. As you can see, the original guide broke but these are interchangeable so I just used one from another corner punch.

Did you get out there and vote today? I was lucky and went right after lunch. There were no lines and I was able to walk right up and get my vote cast. The kids were really interested in the process so we made it a learning event as well. Of course they are now both really impatient to vote too - told them they have a LONG way to go yet!

The White Out Challenge

This weeks Limited Supply Challenge over at Splitcoast was fun! I sort of bent the rules with the (tiny) addition of patterned paper but hopefully they don't kick me out of the challenge for that!

Here is my Birthday Pieced Dress. The idea was to use white as the main color. We could then use black, brown OR grey and one accent color.

We were not supposed to use patterned paper or background stamps and we couldn't use anything but the accent color for any extra color. We could use the cuttlebug and ribbon and other embellishments. Here is my best try.

Both the dress and sentiment come from Gina K stamp sets. I used patterned Christmas paper from last year to piece the dress. I liked the shade of red on the polka dots so I ran with it.

I used the swiss dots folder from the cuttlebug and the jewels are from Doodlebug. I'm not the best at paper piecing but I like the end result here, looks pretty good to me.

No stamping for me today unfortunately. This afternoon Meg had to cheer at a football game so I was there cheering for her instead. Their uniforms came in - she looked sooooo cute!

I hope your weekend was as fun and fruitful as mine - I'm looking forward to getting back to some serious stamping this week. Until next time......

Friends and Flowers

Good morning! It's kind of rainy and dreary here today but I'm feeling energized so I thought I'd post this morning. I only picked up a few of the new Stampin' Up stamp sets but I'm really pleased with my choices. Today I'm working with Pocket Silhouettes (I think that's what its called).

This whole card came together from the patterned paper (also from SU). I love the color of this paper so I was determined to make a card from it. Then I noticed how one of the stamps from Pocket Silhouettes matches the look of the paper so that made my stamp decision for me.

I used Tangerine chalk ink for the flowers. I then used chocolate chip (SU) ink for the sentiment (a favorite saying of mine from Gina K). I was itching to use this twill ribbon from Taylored Expressions which may also have influenced my paper choice. The twill is fantastic. After using it (and knowing how much I adore ribbon), I just HAD to place another order and pick up more colors. This is my first experience using twill and it is lovely - you will be seeing more of it!

I rounded everything off with chocolate chip - I really  think it is one of my new favorite colors. It just seems to go well with pretty much everything.

Enjoy the rest of your day - hope it is delightful.