Thanksgiving Banner Class

appearing this weekend only at the Chino Michaels!
I'll be teaching this class on Sunday and Monday.
Sign up in store for details.
(It's really a great project- you won't be dissapointed!)

rub a dub dub

..there's flowers in my tub.
Here's another cute stamp that I "borrowed" at Claudia's- thanks friend!
PP-DCWV, DejaViews
CS-DCWV
Stickles
Ribbon- CODWholesale (their prices on ribbons are INCREDIBLE- you get such a big spool for the $$!)

I can't get enough of these cats!

Here's my take on what I like to call the Prince of Pasha pose- if you have cats then you know this one very well- they lay on their pillow very regally and deign to allow you to pet their royal little heads!

Stamps- Pink Cat Studio
Colored with Tombow markers and Lyra watercolor crayons

Oh my!

Daniela Dobson just made my day- she chose my humble little blog for the highlighted blog of the week on CX!
I figured that I had better put a nice fresh new card up in honor of the occassion.
I stamped the little hat girls at Claudia's this weekend (and am now seriously thinking that I really need to buy this set now!)
I used my floral Fiskar texture plate for the first time-it didn't seem to impress as deeply as the cuttlebug folders-I think I'll have to play around a bit with it.
Stamps-TAC
PP- LillyAnna collection-TAC
paper flowers- Prima
CS- Colobok
Lyra watercolor crayons, Tombow markers
Punches-marvy uchida

Pink Cat on the go!

This little gal travelled to Vegas with me this weekend and found a new home at Claudia's house- she brought some plain stamped image sisters with her so she wouldn't get lonely. I can't wait to see what Claudia does with them.
PP- K and company
CS-DCWV
Stickles
Crystal Lacquer
Tombow markers
Stamp-Pink Cat Studio
Paper Frill-DoodleBug
Punches-Marvy Uchida, SU!

Weekend in Las Vegas

Back from a fun weekend in Vegas- we went to Emerils on Friday night(- nobody said BAM there though.)Great banana cream pie-YUM! Saw Spamalot last night - our first visit to the Wynn. We had a fantastic dinner there at Curso Coccina.Spamalot was hysterical- we are HUGE Monty Python fans .Today we ended up at Bellagio to see the conservatory garden and have breakfast. My favorite part of the weekend was seeing my dear friend Claudia-who lives there in LV. We had such a nice visit talking stamps, stamps, and more stamps!

another pink cat

Here she is-colored her in with Tombows and Impress markers.
I really like the look of the crystal lacquer over her eyes.

oh boy! New Stamps!!!

Yeah- it doesn't take much to make me happy ... just throw some new rubber at me and I am happy as a clam.
I got these cute cute cute new kitty cat stamps from Pink Cat Studio.
Here's one of the first cards that I made with them. The PP is from the DCWV glitter christmas stack.
The kitty is colored in w/ Tombows. I used some Gel glaze pens on her eyes to make them glossy.The American Crafts felt flowers I got for super cheap at Big Lots.

Prima Watercolor paper

I picked up 3 different sheets of this gorgeous paper at "Stamp Your Heart Out" in Claremont in Saturday and just had a chance to start playing with it last night. (I had seen it in magazines for several months now but could not find a local purveyor of it.)
It's actually printed on watercolor paper which really makes it nice to paint on. So far what I have done -is outline my edges with watercolor crayon (for shading) and then painted with Twinkling H2Os.My plan is to cut up the whole sheet for ATCs- there was a gal from the shop on Saturday who had done that for her trades and they were absolutely beautiful.... I'll keep you posted on how they turn out.

firey sunrise

We have just been hanging out inside trying to avoid inhaling all the smoke outside-it's supposed to be very hot again today and the Santa Anas are still whipping around. There are leaves and branches down everywhere. I am fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with all the dust that is blowwing into the house.I took this shot this AM as I pulled out of the garage to take Ian to school. Note the hawks in the right of the photo- I have never seen so many hawks as lately- they circle and coast in the winds. They look like they are having an amazingly fun time just soaring on the gusts.

Box top How to's

Those of you who know me-know the truth that I am a pretty lazy stamper-I rarely do the cards with fancy folds or engineering, as I call it. I am not particulary crazy about cutting things out either but this is a fun relatively simple card that deviates from the norm of standard side or top fold!

To make it- you cut 2 sheets of card stock for your base- each sheet is 4 by 8 inches.
Score each card 2 inches from either end- so that you end up with a 4 inch square in the center. (If you like- you can round the corners at this point)

Glue the 2 card pieces together at the center square so that the card forms a cross.
Decorate the inside of the card and the top flaps such that when folded onto itself just the left 2 x 2 inch square is exposed. To fold , tuck each top flap under the next in a counter clockwise fashion.

I decorated my card with some PP from BoBunny Press on the inside and Sizzix die cuts on the outside.

Boo!

Such a scary labrador... not!
I wanted to give a little shout out to Stamp Your Heart Out in Claremont. They are one of my favorite stamp stores. They have a monthly ATC swap on the third Saturday of the month. I went yesterday and came home with 20 fabulous Halloween themed ATCs. (I also came home with a couple new scallop punches and some of that GORGEOUS Prima watercolor paper)

Last Call

to sign up for my Spooky Cards class tomorrow at the Chino Michaels store!
The class is from 11-1. The cost is $15. Sign up at the store.

a few more Saffron cards

I still had a couple daisy stickers and some paper scraps on my table this AM so I was able to crunch out a few more cards.
I think that I certainly got my moneys worth out of this purchase!

Mojo's flowwing now

I have to admit I was off to a slow start this AM playing with my new little 6x6 BG pads.
So I pulled out 2 sheets of this gorgeous new K and Co. paper from the wild saffron line and a pack of Grand Adhesion daisy stickers and the cards just came flowwing forth! I adore this Tuscan spice color palette- it is so soothing and mellow.
The punches are from SU! and Marvy Uchida, stamps- Sophisticated Sentiments by TAC

New Stamps

Just playing around with my new Prima stamps here.
The butterfly and border are from the build-a frame-set
The sentiment is TAC Chicken scratch
PP- is BG Scarlett's letter.
CS-Bazzil
Gold Krylon leafing pen
ribbon- Michaels

New stuff

here's an ATC that I created using some of my new loot- corner stamp is from Prima Build a frame set, Krylon copper leafing pen. The leaves I cut out using my 2 new Cricut cart.s -Accent Essentials and Plantin Schoolbook.
PP-is old Basic Grey

Oh Happy Scrappy Day!!!

What a wonderful scrappy day I had yesterday- I spent the day on a Southern California Tour de Crop jaunt with my sister-in-law.We travelled in a chartered bus to scrapbook stores in Anaheim Hills(Scrappin' In the Hills) to Redlands (Collective Journey) then all the way to Carlsbad (Ever After)for shoppping, demos,lunch, and make and takes. There was a lot of fun and games on the bus ride to pass the time
There was costume contest (We won some great prize packs from Making Memories)
Heck- we even walked to Starbucks in our witches costumes!

The very best was when I got home my much beloved DH had a Cricut Expression waiting for me to celebrate our anniversay today!!!
So all that chirping that you hear is just me and my new big bugzilla!

Mothers Little Helper

nooo-It's not the kind of little helper that the Rolling Stones sang about!
It seems that Otto still hasn't quite gotten over his experience with his little collar yet.
Here he is helping me to finish off my scarf.
I am now onto my 3 rd project- another scarf but I am trying a different stitch where I have 3 rows of the yarn on the pegs before pulling over-it's very pretty but a bit harder to do.This one will take awhile so don't hold your breath waiting for a picture!

Uh oh- new obsession!

I have been eyeing those knifty knitter gizmos for a long time now and finally broke down and got a set with my Mike's half off coupon. My pal Nancy is the Knifty knitter teacher at Mike's so I took her class yesterday- what fun. I am now totally hooked.
Here's a pic of my first project- I didn't have too much yarn on my spool so I made my first project small so she could show me how to finish off the edges.
It's a cute little collar for Otto!
He wasn't too sure about it though- he kept trying to bite at it after we took the pix. So I guess that It will prolly just be a pony tail scrunchy.
I have moved on to a proper scarf now but have already knit through my first skein of wool so I need to go back to the store today and get another one!

caardvarks painted card entry

I fell in love with this Autumn Leaves Mod blackbird paper when I saw it at Target and had to have it-20 sheets for $5-what a deal!

I painted the chipboard birdie black with Apple Barrel paint and gave him a lil blingie for his eye.
The lettering is all from Cricut.

Halloween card

I made this one for a card making challenge this weekend
- used up some supplies that I had kicking around for the past year or so.
Embellie- Amercan Traditional
PP-Doodlebug, Carolee's Adornit
Wrights ric rac
And 3 colors of stickles- YUM!

Halloween Challenge winner is.....

Debbie!
Your LO of the spooky church was chosen at random to be the winner. Thank you everyone for participating!

(I'm sorry that I am late in posting the winner-I had an exhausting day at work yesterday and came home and collapsed!)

Kinda funny...

ever buy a stamp set because you like just one stamp in it and not care for the rest of it?
That's how I was with "forget not". I loved the sentiment but was not so crazy about the very stylized trees until.... I lined all the trees up in a straight row to stamp them. Now-I absolutely love these trees. I want to stamp forests of them on everything!
This was a card that I made for a WCMD challenge on CX. I had the BG mellow papers literally for 2 weeks but had that BG syndrome- where "ohhhh no it's too nice to cut it-I'll just look at it and admire it"!
I'll get a lot of mileage out of the little trees paper by punching them out with my little SU! tag punch.(The paper was like 89 cents a sheet!!!)
I love my new cinnamon stickles on the letters- that Sizzix font was a fantastic buy at the Ellison warehouse sale last Spring.
(I see that Ellison is having another warehouse sale in November- so if you are near the OC- you will definitely want to check it out!)

Happy Day!

Well- Happy World Card Making Day!
(I really want to know who dreamed this one up?I don't think that I had heard of it prior to this year- but I am all in favor of it. I also propose a world chocolate eatting day, world frolic with the dogs day, and world kitten snuggling day!)

The design team at CX is sponsoring a host of card making challenges over in their forum. As I found myself home alone last night-I was super busy cranking out cards. Here's the first of the lot.
The PP is from American Crafts (snapped it up for 20 cents a sheet on sale at Mike's !!!)
The big M is made with my Cricut -base camp cartridge.
And the scalloped square is a Marvy Uchida punch.

OOPS!

Looks like this blog reached 1000 hits yesterday and I missed it.
(Actually-it's over that but it took me 2 months to figger out how to get a counter on the site!)
Thank you all so much for coming and checking in.
I honestly thought that I would never blog- the puritan in me thought that it was rather self-indulgant.
But it's nice to have a place to record my creative outpourings.
And the opportunity to get feed back on them is all the more lovely.
Here's to the next 1000 posts!
Cheers!

Cross cut Card

This wonderful card was inspired by my wonderful angel upline Claudia Gates.
I love the simplicity of it balanced by the unexpected surprise of the cross cut fold.
To create it, cut a sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 card stock in half length wise- yielding 2 pieces each 4 1/4 by 11 . Fold these pieces in half at the 5 1/2 mark.

Using a pair of long scissors , cut in approx. half way on the diagonal from opposing ends of the front flap and back flap (See photo above) Fold together so that tails tuck into each other- stamp sentiment in exposed triangle.

Open card, and stamp all over the front (I used the same image repeatedly inked with Kaleidacolor ink.)

I am so doggone proud...

to be a part of this!
The auction for a place to Bark is now up on Ebay.
The bidding is up to $127 already for this fantatsic cause.Please consider a bid on this extrordinary piece of collaborative art.
The lot includes 57 hand crafted ATCs and a beautiful collaged cigar box to kennel all the zetti pups in.
(My contributions are the stamped labbie and great pyrenees in the lower left corner.)

Halloween Throw Down!

Ever watch that show on Food Network where chef Bobby Flay goes and challenges other cooks? Well-Now I am challenging you fellow paper crafters to a throw down!
Post a pic of a Halloween project that you have made on your blog- come back here- post the link in the comments section to this thread. I will pick a winner at random on Sunday Oct 7th to win some yummilicious blog candy!