Feel Better, Cupcake!

When I saw the sketch for the FTL155 Challenge this week, it reminded me of a made-up bed for some reason. Tonight I sat down to play, and this is what I came up with:

I’ve been loving the Miss Nelly paper by Kaiser Craft (I’ve used it a lot lately – I’ll show you later), and this Doctor’s Orders stamp by Taylored Expressions was perfect for paper-piecing with it.

A few Copic markers, a little ribbon, and it was done!

Here’s the sketch with the link if you’re interested:

 

 

 

 

 

Off to bed now – it’s been a crazy weekend, following a crazy week, and I think tomorrow’s gonna be a little crazy too!

Big girls don’t cry

That’s a lie. Sometimes they do – like when their big girl moves out of state with her husband to start a new phase of their lives together.

My baby girl Laila and her husband Roy are moving down to the Virginia Beach area tomorrow so Roy can start his new job as a doctor (I’m so proud of him) at a hospital down there. Don’t they look wonderful and happy?
Roy’s family invited us out to a barbeque in Long Island yesterday to say farewell them. His mom Dottie cooked up a storm – incredibly delicious food that I ate waaay too much of!

I, of course, had to make a cake. It’s what I do.
That is a LOT of buttercream. Underneath it all is a dark chocolate cake filled with alternating layers of chocolate ganache and kirsch-soaked fresh cherries. I must say that it was very yummy, and very rich.

Roy’s sister Morgan made some beautiful (and very delicious) cupcakes. I confess that I was so full that I only tasted the little ones on the right – yummy little high-hats topped with marshmallow creme under chocolate coating. Well done, Morgan!

Anyhow, as I write this they are probably tossing things willy-nilly into cartons at the last minute before the truck comes at noon to pack up their lives and head down to VA first thing in the morning. And I’m sitting here with tears running down my face because I just realized that I never got a picture of us together yesterday. I know they’ll be back for visits, and I’ll go down there to visit, and it’s not forever, and all that stuff that people say, but still…

IHP DT August Challenge: Beat the Heat!

In many parts of the country, or the western hemisphere for that matter, August is the hottest, stickiest month of the year. This year in particular, we’ve had an especially brutal summer. So our challenge this month was to create a card/project using COOL colors and/or few layers.

I went for the cool colors, but actually ended up with a little more layering than I usually do. Overall, I think I ended up with a pretty cool card!
To begin with, I chose my patterned paper from the Basic Grey 6x6 pad Eskimo Kisses (it doesn’t get much cooler than that!). The branch and bird cage are from the Ashley’s Blooms set by My Cute Stamps. I stamped the cage and the sentiment (from an old Hero Arts set in my stash) in Memento London Fog to keep the cool feeling going. I outlined the branch with my Copic Marker BG11 to give the impression of the sky without coloring the whole thing, and to set off the white of the blossoms. The white lacy strip is some Basic Grey self-adhesive paper ribbon, also from my stash. The bird cage is popped up on Sticky Thumbs dimensional dots for some added depth.

The layout of the card was taken from this week’s Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 130, although I did kinda flip it around a little bit to suit the stamps.

If you’d like to play along with our challenge, we’d love to see what you do! Just upload your creation to the SCS or PCP gallery with the keyword “ihp0811” so we can find it.

Now go hop around and see what Kate and the rest of the IHP Design Team came up with for this chilly challenge:

• Deb
• Gretchen
• Kendra
• Loretta
• Lori
• Lynn
• Tracy
• Kate

Stay cool!

I love pink

Really, I do.

Stamps: Little Loveosaurus (MFT)
Ink: Memento Black, Copic R81 (for airbrushing)
Paper: A Fair Day (S.E.I.)
Other: Big Scalloped Ovals Nestabilities, Sweet Blush satin ribbon (PTI), self-adhesive pearls (airbrushed R81), Shabby Pink Smooch (TE)

Unity Hop-Along

Hi! Today the IHP DT is Hip Hopping along with the Unity Design Team. So be sure to check all their blogs for fabulous projects showcasing Unity! In celebration of this little hop, ALL full-sized Unity kits at IHP are $12 or less! But, there is VERY limited inventory and these past kits will not be restocked, so don’t wait or you might miss your chance to get them at this fabulous price.

Here’s my card:
It uses the Unity Itty Bitty set By a Thread, and paper from the Stella Rose Hazel 6x6 pad. I used one of the Copic markers that I colored one of the thread spools with to dye the white ribbon the same color, and added a little faux stitching with a white opaque pen. The patterned paper and the focal circle are cut with Nestabilities.

I don’t usually do any “dressing up” on the inside, but this time I did.
Go check out what the rest of the IHP DT did with their Unity stamps:

Kate
Tracy
Kendra
Lori
Deb
Lynn
Gretchen
Loretta

Happy hopping, and happy SHOPPING!

Two days in a row!

Here’s another card I made recently with some goodies I got at CHA a couple of weeks ago. It has sort of a rustic feel to it, which is pretty much outside my comfort zone.

The nice people at the Scor-Pal booth were kind enough to give me a Scor-Bug tool when I mentioned that I’d been wanting to try one. That was the launching point for this card, which uses a kraft panel edged with the little bugger.

At the Simple Stories booth, they had some samples of paper from the Days of Summer collection out for the taking. It was a piece that had circles of different patterns from the collection, so I punched some butterflies out of a few of them, and a circle out of another. I trimmed it with some adhesive paper lace from Basic Grey, and stamped it with one of my favorite stamps from Papertrey’s Signature Greetings set. The butterflies are blinged up a bit with rhinestones. Had to add some bling somewhere!

It’s a beautiful day, and I’m gonna head out for a long walk, ‘cause I think it’s supposed to rain later.

Let’s play catch-up

I’ve been stamping a lot, but not blogging a lot. Need to do something about that, since I do enjoy sharing my creations (even if the inspiration for them is often liberally borrowed from others). No excuse except for laziness, I suppose, and the fact that I don’t feel very chatty. So I decided that the answer, at least for the time being, is to set out to just post pictures of the stuff, and not put pressure on myself to be witty or verbose, and just see what develops.

There were a lot of friends’ birthdays in July and I realized I never posted pictures of the cards. Sadly, not all of these friends actually got cards. Blame it on Facebook.

So let’s start the game of catch-up with a couple of the cards that actually got made and mailed.

This was for my wonderful friend Kate (owner of i {heart} papers). Paper is from the For the Record collection kit, stamps are Technique Tuesday’s Stamping in Circles, and I used one of the Spellbinders fancy tags set for the scrolled medallion piece. I loved how it coordinated so well with the paper and stamp design! I colored in the white space on the circle thingie with a Copic marker to make it match the paper better. What I forgot is that Kate is not fond of red. Sorry!

Next up was my friend Jackie’s birthday. Jackie loves purple. This I remember because I do too. I used a stamp from the Stained Glass set by Flourishes, and paper from the Memory Box Enchanted 6x6 pack. I had fun with my Copic markers with this one. I even remembered to take a picture of which ones I used. Hmm, I see that I missed a couple. Sorry!

OK, I think I’ve used up my word quota for this post. Hopefully there will be more later. Words, I mean. And posts.

Later,