Whirlpool of Imagination

In a New Home

Yippee - finally got our internet back! The first day or two without phone, internet or tv was kind of nice in a get away from the world kind of way. But after the week dragged on, things got old fast!

I am getting my studio up to speed so when it's (semi) organized, I'll snap some pictures.

But after the warm welcome we received from our new neighborhood, I had to pull out enough supplies to get some thank you cards done.

Yikes - not the best picture but I'm still working on where to take pics in the new house.

The image is from Taylored Expressions and the sentiment from Papertrey Ink. I pulled out enough copic markers and a bit of ribbon to get the card decorated although kept it in my usual CAS style.

The carpets were cleaned yesterday so I'm hoping that by tomorrow they will be dry and I can get to organizing. Have a great night!

Tree of Hearts

Happy Wednesday! I have been engulfed with all sorts of reds and pinks this past week as I look to Valentine's Day and get a little crafty.

Today I pulled out this cute stamp from Taylored Expressions and had some fun coloring.

I pulled out my copics and a glitter red spica pen and got to coloring. It's been a while since I've used stamps that need me to sit down and color so it was fun. I'm not sure I have the patience to color every day which is why you won't see only these types of images - LOL!

This set has all sorts of little tree images for all seasons. I've yet to try any of the others yet but I definitely will!

Limited computer time due to muscle spasms (I think) so I'm making this quick. Have a fabulous day!

 

And Now an Early Christmas

Last post I was finishing up Halloween and now I'm jumping to Christmas. I know there is a lovely holiday in between and I haven't finished crafting for Thanksgiving yet but I need to get some new stock in my store and the holiday shopping season has already started so I've got to break out the Christmas tree (figuratively, I promise not to put my tree up yet!)

I have a bunch of stamps from Papertrey that I haven't inked up yet so I thought I'd start getting them inky this week.

This cute little loopy tree (as I'm calling it) is from Papertrey and stamped with hunter ink. The sentiment is from a brand new set from Taylored Expressions.

I paired the hunter with my beloved wasabi and the color combo just makes me smile - MUST create more with those colors together.

Along with stocking my store, my goal is to start creating my Christmas cards for the year. I say EVERY year that I'm going to try to get mine done before Thanksgiving so I can concentrate on orders and EVERY year I fail miserably. But I figure one year I will prevail so I'll put it out there and maybe this year it will stick!

Have a great night!

No Orange Halloween

This week the challenge over at CAS-ual Fridays is to create a Halloween card without using the color orange(CFC24). Now I'm a big orange fan so that's hard for me. But since my little vampire stamp was out from yesterday's mini card, I decided to ink him up again for this challange.

Super simple A1 card - both the image and sentiment are from Taylored Expressions.

I added some black gems to add just a little extra and he's all set to spook.

Are you getting ready for a fang-tastic Halloween? Show me your projects - love new crafting ideas for Halloween!

Mini Vampire

I had a short window of time to escape to my studio so I decided to whip up another Halloween mini card.

This cute little vampire is from Taylored Expressions (I think the sentiment is Papertrey).

I debated on whether to color him in but I liked the black and white look and just went with it.

This week begins final preparations for Meg and Conor's halloween parties. Hopefully later on in the week, I'll have some pictures to show you.

Have  a great night!

Bubbling Cauldron

I love making mini cards. Their uses are endless from gifts to tags to even mini notes. In the spirit of Halloween, I went with that theme today for my mini.

 

The stamp is from Taylored Expressions and is colored with copic markers. I added some stickles for the bubbles so they'd "pop" a little - pun unintended :)

The small black layer is embossed with a cobweb - the flat layer was, well, too flat.

Now I'm studiously trying to work on Halloween invititations - I'm hoping that I'll have pictures to show you by the weekend (because these invites really do need to go out!)

Have a great day!

 

Relaxing Summer Card

I am finding it a bit hard to get back into the blogging mode after our little vacation. We had a fantastic time in Hershey (which I will blog about on my family blog when I get all the pictures uploaded and edited) and here it is Tuesday and I'm still not back into the swing of things.

My guild challenge for the month of July was to "paint". I left the theme broad so my fellow guild members could interpret it any way they wanted. I am so looking forward to their projects as we near the end of the month.

Today I chose to paint with water and reinkers.

The stamped block is watercolor paper that was first sprtized with water. I then used a paintbrush to paint re-inker onto the wet block. I'm not sure I picked up the color gradations but I was going for a light to dark painting of color rather than all the same shade. It's much easier to see that in person.

The image is from Taylored Expressions and I left it sentiment free so it could be used for many occasions.

I'm feeling a bit lost now that my card class has ended. I really looked forward to those challenges. I guess it may be for the best. I'm a taxi service this week and may not see much studion time anyway.

Hope you are having a creative day!

Super Simple Color Combo Card

I have another card for this week's summer card class color combo but this time it is super simple.

I went round and round whether to jazz it up (and tried everything, believe me) but in the end, I decided that the white space looked better than anything I put on it.

The dots stripe is from Taylored Expressions and I matched up copic markers as close as I could to the color combo and used them to color in the circles.

The sentiment is from Papertrey.

I decided to pop dot the white layer so the card itself has just a touch of dimension.

And you'll be proud to know that while making some cards for my mom to send, I checked out some of the other color combo's and am expanding my color usage - I don't make promises on always using 5 (FIVE!) colors but I am trying.

Have a great day!

Fourth of July Wreath

A big happy fourth to all my American friends! We had an impromtu bbq that we attended so my stamping time was severely curtailed but I do have a patriotic card to share.

A nice simple, sparkly card for today. The stamps are from Taylored Expressions and I added the sparkle with my spica pens.

Now I have challenges galore to attempt - did you see that boatload of CAS challenges at Splitcoast today?

And of course there is my summer card camp color challenge - looks like a super fun combo that I want to attempt!

Off to get my inky groove on - have a great day!

Today it's Orange for Mom

I'm back again with another card for Mom.

These cute flowers are from Taylored Expressions. They are colored with copic markers and I added small rhinestones in the center of the orange flowers for a bit of sparkle.

I'm blanking out on who the sentiment is from. I'll have to go back and check on that.

Check in on Conor's cards: coloring is FINALLY finished. I'm now working on the inside info ~ that's it ~ remind next time to send evites for my kids' parties!