Birthdays! Presents!

Just a quick post to say happy birthday to my cousin Teresa. Also today my darling cat Zoey turns 18! Can you believe that -- 18! Pretty darn good for all that she's been through - first being born from a momma cat that had been abandoned in an apartment while pregnant then acute kidney failure from that horrible kitty food. But while they have the birthdays, I get the presents because I finally got to open my box from Basic Grey that I won from blog candy. Whoohoo! I love, love, love this magnetic mat. No more design "assistance" from the furballs if I leave a project in progress because now I can hold everything in place with the really strong magnets that came with the board. Plus I'm really excited to use these doilies and the paper pack. Hmmm, cards? layouts? We'll see. I have a feeling I'm going to have to make these presents last because any day now the family will issue their yearly edict's that I stop spending on myself since my anniversary, birthday and the holidays are coming and I'm known to ruin their gifts by buying it for myself first.

Scrapbook Expo

I was so excited to go to Scrapbook Expo today. I had such a great time last year with my hubby's cousin Christie and her friends. Although this was a solo trip, I was so looking forward to shopping 'til I dropped. I look forward to this and the CKC each year to see new products, find some great buys and inspire me. So I excitedly printed my coupons and set off on my little adventure this morning. But it was sooooo small. There were hardly any vendors there. Honestly, I had shopped the whole vendor floor (twice) in an hour and a half, and that was not hurrying at all. But that didn't stop me from spending some money.

I found the usual: stamps, paper, embellishments, etc., but my favorite purchases this time were storage items. I stopped by Die Cut Dan's booth to buy some great storage for my Cricut cartridges. I had run out of room the shelf and was either looking at having to find a new location or some other solution. We gave my Mom some little boxes with inserts that hold cartridges for Christmas last year and I was thinking about going that route. But then I saw a different holder on the Internet that looked like the same style that the Cricut tools come in, but couldn't find it any store here to see if I would like it. But these little plastic cases were the perfect answer to my storage solution. Two of them held all my cartridges in less than half the space the boxes took up: Plus I think I can get another two cases on that shelf!

Then I found this stamp pad holder. I've been storing my stamp pads in a drawer and I find that I forget what I have and have to dig through the drawer to find the right one. This holder holds Stampin' Up pads perfectly and now I see my colors at a glance. It's perfect. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to put it.

Oh, and one last thing. That little green box to the right of the stamp pad holder I also picked up at Dan's booth. It holds my Stickles perfectly, although I really should have bought two of them. I didn't realize how many bottles of Stickles I had. Anyhow, while I was a little disappointed at how few vendors were there, that won't stop me from still going to check it out if they come back this way. After all, the smallest vendor floor is still better than no vendor floor. There's plenty to be happy about with my storage finds and I still have one more day to play in my craft room before I have to go back to work, I found out today that Tony Stewart won last weekend when we had no satellite to watch the race (stupid tree blocking the satellite), Hubby took me to dinner and a movie (Contagion - wait for the DVD - the big screen isn't necessary and it's not worth the big screen ticket price) and the Hawks won tonight and are undefeated so far! So, all in all, it was a pretty good day.

Argyle card

Wow, what an amazing week! We just returned from part two of our vacation. This time we motored over to the coast and spent three nights at a lovely park over there we've never stayed at before. The weather was glorious, not too hot, not to cold. It was even nice enough to venture into the water to splash in the waves.

I had such a fabulous time. It's been a long time since I've laughed and splashed and played like that. It made me think of Cely from Creating in Carolina's love of the water, so I had to write her a little message in the sand.After all that play, I got a full day to spend crafting in the RV while Hubby played with the Wii. I can't believe how many cards I finished. It's also amazing how much of a mess I can make doing that:

Chewie didn't help much.

But that's okay, because I was having a hard enough time trying my hand at a handmade argyle pattern:

It was a heck of a lot harder than I thought it would be. Tomorrow I'm off to Scrapbook Expo to see what inspiration I can find.

Happy Birthday (and another birthday card)

And first a word from our sponsor (well not really) I just want to take the time to say:

Happy Birthday Aunt Margie!

Okay, now on to today's project, which is a birthday card, but not the one I made for Aunt Margie, which can be seen here. I bought this stamp set called Garden Flowers by Inkadinkado. I don't know why but it doesn't look like the one on their website. What's odd is the picture there is missing the one stamp that caused me to buy the set: this beautiful, elegant flower (I'm not even 100% sure what type of flower it's supposed to be). But when I saw it on the picture on Scrapbuck.com, I decided I needed to get that stamp set. So when I started digging through my stamp sets looking for something for a birthday card for a girl, this one jumped out at me. I happily peeled it off the backing and went to work. I didn't need any kind of sketch to get me started, this one just fell in place. Unfortunately, there's been a theme lately of bad photography because the picture just doesn't really do the card justice. I added just a touch of Stickles to the flower and it really shines (ha ha) in real life, but I just couldn't really show that in my picture (also the brads don't look quite so wonky in real life - I swear I used a Stampin' Up paper piercing template so they really are evenly spaced and look quite a bit straighter in real life). Maybe this picture gives you a hint of the sparkle to the card. It's really funny, before the Stickles I thought it was an okay card. But just a little tracery of Stickles on the flower and I absolutely fell in love with the finished product and knew it was "just right." Isn't it funny how sometimes we just know when it's done and others we just know it's not?

Window card

A week ago I came home early from work because I had a killer sinus migraine. I get them from time to time, particularly when the weather starts going through rapid changes (90 degrees to 60 degrees in two days). Most of the time, they are a pain (literally) but I can make it through work and then come home to sleep it off. So I thought I could make it through the whole day at work, but it quickly became quite clear that wasn't in the cards for me. At least not if I wanted to make it through the day with my dignity somewhat intact. So I hung in there until my meeting were over and then dear Hubby drove me home - have I mentioned before how fabulous it is that we work in the same building - and I took some decongestants and went to bed. Now the bad part is that I drift in and out of consciousness with these. I sleep for a little and then wake up for a little, but can't really move without making my head feel like it's going to explode. So while I waited for the meds to kick in, I started up an episode of Scrapbook Memories on the DVR. Now I've seen most of these so if I drift off, no problem. Also, with the DVR, who cares anyway, I can just rewind it. Which I did about five times that afternoon always waking up with the end credit music started. I would rewind the show and be out a few seconds later again (wouldn't it be nice if I could just turn the TV off? But no, I freak out if the TV isn't on). I don't remember much about the episode but I have had this crazy urge to make a window card ever since (not surprisingly I've since learned they did a window card on that episode). So here is my simple window card I made using two different Fiskars stamps that DaisyMae Maus sent me. The first is the tower of gift boxes that came with a stamp set to be used with Fiskars Push and Print Stamp Factory and the second is the birthday greetings that goes with the Fiskars Continuous Stamp Wheel. I then colored in the words "Happy Birthday" and "Enjoy" in pink (again my photography sucks because you can't really see that all that well in the picture) and used my Stampin' Up set to punch the little box of holes around the window. It was a pretty quick card to put together, but at least I've conquered that urge to make a window card and can move on to other things now.

Have you ever (anniversary card)...

So have you ever bought a set of stamps for just one stamp in it? I confess. I do it all the time and this is a perfect example. I bought the "Heart Full of Love" set from Inkadinkado just for the two kitties together. Lately I've been major sucker for Inkadinkado stamps. Now the whole set is cute, but I just fell in love with the one stamp in it. It's so stinkin' cute! So I had to buy the set for that one stamp. When I got it, I just couldn't hardly wait to start playing with them. I have another anniversary card on my list so I thought I would make yet another card with the images set out in a grid, this time playing primarily with black, white and red. I was quite happy with the card when it was complete but I still have to say that the kitty block is far and away my favorite.

Meow birthday card

Yeah! I'm back from a great long weekend camping with the dear Hubby and Chewie. We had a fantastic time. The weather was perfect. My parents came down on Friday, so while Dad and Hubby fished, Mom sorted her pictures from our Southern California trip two years ago and I made a couple of cards.

Here's a picture of Hubby and Dad coming up the river to the docks just beyond our site to check that us "girls" were okay. (Hubby's standing, Dad's sitting) By the way Aunt Margie, tell Uncle Gordon that Matt still loves the boat. He and our camping neighbor talked boats because the neighbor had an old Seaswirl that was also still in amazing shape. They are really great boats. Hubby and I fished together on Saturday. Well mostly I drove the boat - yes, I have a license to do so! Although we caught a few, mostly we threw them back, which secretly makes me very happy. I'm a catch and release kind of girl. The only drawback was that Hubby sat on a bee and it stung him on the ankle. Good thing he's not allergic!

But with all that fishing, I didn't get any card making done. Instead we ran to town afterward and got mixer for margaritas so we could have a relaxing evening with Hubby playing Metroid on Wii and I finally had some time to catch up on my Creating Keepsakes and Scrapbooks Etc. issues I hadn't finished reading. Chewie went crazy when Hubby was trying to top off my drink. I think she wanted her share! On Sunday, I started making cards when the phone rang and Hubby's parents said they were going to stop by. So I quickly finished a card. Chewie was a little upset at being left in the RV when we were chatting outside, so I took Chewie for a walk (yes, she walks a leash. She's pretty good too. I just have to be patient and walk at Chewie speed - which is painfully slow at times!) and then she was ready to nap so I could visit. So I guess you can tell that I'm totally in love with this spoiled rotten cat. Well honestly, I'm totally in love with all of our spoiled rotten cats, but Chewie's the only one who is happy to go camping with us (Tigger has decided he doesn't like to have his routine interrupted so we leave him home now).

So it's not surprising that I'm so in love with this stamp that looks like Chewie that I keep gravitating to it. I needed to make a card for my nephew's birthday and Paper Player's Clean and Simple Challenge was to make a card with an animal or plant on it, so I took that as another excuse to use my Chewie stamp (although I think Chewie thinks she's human, not an animal - but we won't tell her that). It's a quick and easy card, the only problem is my camera doesn't really pick up the coloring of the stamp (silver just doesn't really photograph well with my limited skills). I drew inspiration for the layout from flipping through some sketches in my notebook. I'm pretty sure this one came from Mojo Monday, but I couldn't tell you which one anymore because I looked at so many things in my old notebook for inspiration, I'm not 100% sure anymore.

Sketch N Stash Birthday Card

Thanks to Cheryl Ann First Cafe Expressions I found a great new sketch blog called Sketch N Stash. The current challenge is to use one of their existing sketches. I found that Sketch 22 was calling my name. I dug into my scrap bin for the paper, which I think is maybe from DCWV from a Spring stack from a few years ago. I found the eyelets in my embellishment bins. It's been an awfully long time since I've used eyelets. The stamp is a new one that came in the Fiskars Stamp Factory that DaisyMae Maus was kind enough to send my way.

Sassy Lil' Sketches - Sept. Week 1 Card

I'm slowly but surely making it through my list of cards to make for upcoming events. It seems like work birthdays are always clustered together and I'm entering a new cluster. Fortunately, Sassy Lil' Sketches had a very inspiring sketch here. So dug into my scrap bin again, designed some "flames" in SCAL by creating a union of a triangle and ever so slightly offset circle and finally tried the rolled candles I've seen when trolling the blogs for ideas.

Biffle Day at the Races Shadow Box

In July, hubby and I spent an enjoyable night at a dirt track not terribly far away (it certainly would have been more enjoyable if I had a cushion to sit on and blanket for when it got cold when the sun went down - I had no idea that the races would go so late or that the benches would be so hard!). The track doesn't look like much, but it had a big draw that night: NASCAR driver Greg Biffle.

He's never really been one of my favorites, but I didn't dislike him either. He was just okay. But it isn't very often that a driver makes it to our neck of the woods, so favorite or not, we came to see a NASCAR star and even paid extra to ensure that we would have the opportunity to get an autograph.

He may not have been one of my favorites when we got there, but he was quite a nice guy and I have to say that won me over. It didn't seem like he was just "going through the motions." He cracked a joke when I asked if I could get picture with him and my husband and generally just came across as a really nice guy. In my book, personality and manners are more important that money and looks (maybe that's because I don't have tons of the last two or maybe that's just because I realize they are both superficial - yeah, that's the one I'm going to go with).

So I've had this autographed card and some autographed tickets sitting on the edge of my craft table and a shadow box all picked out sitting on my craft room floor for quite some time. I've been carrying around the picture of him with hubby as a bookmark for weeks. But I've never gotten around to arranging the items in the box until Saturday night.

I was on a cleaning jag because, well, the house was freaking dirty. It's amazing how much work it is clean up after two adults and five cats. So after loads of laundry (which I'm proud to say is completely done with the dryer empty and the laundry room empty except for a few shirts hanging on the bar because I refuse to dry them in the dryer), vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, carting a dishwasher full of glasses down from the master bedroom, finally hanging the new artwork in our bedroom and the cross-stitch a client made for me years ago and the candle holders in the guest bedroom, well I'm sure you all get the picture, I plopped down exhausted in my craft room, where I listened to the hockey game (they lost - thankfully it's only pre-season) and watched a muted TV to see Tony and Jr. make the chase (Whoo-hoo!) and finally put together the shadowbox. I didn't want to put any adhesive on anything with a signature, but that was pretty much the only challenge (conquered by photo corners). I was too tired to be terribly creative. I just matted the photo of hubby and Greg and printed out a picture (taken on a Blackberry of all things) of the car that Biffle drove that night and called that good. Maybe some day, I'll jazz it up, but hubby was happy with it and that's all that really matters.

Scrapbuck Haul

Last Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Scrapbuck and saw this cute stamp set called Gem Stone Cats by Inkadinkado. I had not seen it before and certainly no store around here carries it (trust me, I own every cat thing that they do carry). So even though I've only purchased from them at scrapbooking shows, I decided to take advantage of their free shipping on orders $20 and over and did a little, well lot of, stamp purchasing since I couldn't believe how good their prices were. Then I was surprised at the prompt e-mail I received confirming my order and the follow-up e-mail for shipping/tracking. They really did ship in one day like they said they would. I'm always little leery of ordering online from a new company, but they delivered on their promises.

I was so excited to get this box the other night. So even though I was nursing a headache and should have just gone to bed, I had to open the box and this is what I found: and the whole reason I ordered: Gem Stone Cats!

Oh and a roll of foam "pop dot" type tape and a fun little acyclic stamp block that has a handle for easy stamping. I have one already but my mom saw it when they visited while we were camping a few weeks back and really liked it, so I ordered it for her. Now that I think about it, I should have ordered one for my sister and DaisyMaeMaus too. Hmm... maybe I'll give them a little time to re-stock and do some more shopping!

Freshly Made Sketches - Sketch 1

Thanks to Linda's Stampin' Loft, I found this great new (and I do mean new) sketch blog called Freshly Made Sketches. I am so excited about this new blog because I love the "clean" idea it promotes. That is completely my style. So even though I'm so tired tonight, I just could not stop myself from making a card from this sketch, after unpacking my box o' goodies from Scrapbuck (I'll post on my haul tomorrow). Of course I had to use a stamp from one my new sets, but I cannot believe how quickly this card went together and again it was all scraps from my scrap bin.

I cannot wait for the next sketch. I'm so inspired.

A different type of card...

I've never really branched out into different shapes of cards, but when I saw this video about a diamond-fold card on Creations with Christina, I thought I would give it try for a masculine birthday card for a co-worker. The nice thing was the "hidden" spaces were perfect for all of us to sign the card (plus it reminded me of those old folded doodads that we made in grade school - come on, you remember the ones where you had to pick a number and then pick a color and such and then it would reveal your fortune... Do kids even make those anymore...) Anyway, the card went together in a flash and is very simple. I didn't really add much bling or embellishment since it was my first try at this card, but I know it's not my last. Again, I used my scraps from my scrap bin of My Mind's Eye Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Boy paper. I'm not letting a single part of that paper go to waste.

Get well soon card

I found out that someone I've known through work for several years had a heart attack this weekend followed by a quadruple bypass. They say that he'll be fine, but I thought I would make up a quick get well soon card to send to him. Rather than spending hours trolling the blogs for inspiration (since I've already spent a good portion of the evening doing that already), I decided to simply grab a page that I printed from the Mojo Monday 2009 sketchbook the other day and make a card based upon the first sketch I saw. Turns out it was the sketch from September 7, 2009 (how weird is it that I should pick the date closest to today?) and it was perfect for a male card. I pulled out my trusty scraps from My Mind's Eye Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Boy (have I mentioned how much I love, love, love this pad of paper) and put together is card in a really short period of time. It would have been even shorter but instead of making the banner with my scissors, I had to draw it in SCAL and cut it.

You're Purrfect card

My absolute favorite stamp right now is from a Recollections set called Meow, Meow and it looks like our cat Chewie. So of course I had to make a cut file to go with the stamp. My test cut worked perfectly, but my stamping isn't very good. After coloring in Chewie, I trolled my bookmarks looking for a card that it would work with. I don't have a card in mind because Chewie doesn't go with the whole list of birthday cards I need to make, but I was going to make this card anyway. Then I found this sketch I had bookmarked on Scrappity Dappity Doo!, which is really from the Doodlebug Design blog post here. I decided it was perfect. So I cut a scalloped circle on my Cricut using a scallop from the BeaOriginal blog here. Then a little grosgrain ribbon and an heat embossed saying from a We R Memory Keepers stamp set called "You're Purrfect" and a piece of paper from my scraps and I was done.

Fun little kitty card

During my coupon shopping spree on Saturday, I picked up an Inkadinkado stamp set I didn't have yet called Cats Galore. It has a number of inch square stamps and I immediately saw them laid out in a grid on a card. So, of course, that's what I did.

Unfortunately I didn't have a one-inch punch, which I realized I really needed to cut out the inch squares correctly. So it was off to Craft Warehouse to use my coupon to pick up the new punch, oh, and some new 12 x 12 Cricut mats that they have on sale for only $7.99 a pack. Armed with my new punch and Cherry Limeade from Sonic to beat the heat (honestly had no clue it was that hot out considering I needed socks to warm my toes in my craft room), I had fun coloring the kitties with my colored pencils. A little tape later and my card was complete.

Quick card for the I Feel the Love Project...

I had a lot of fun again this morning turning another stamp set into one that I can cut out the shapes on Cricut and then stamp the images. It took less than an hour to do the entire set. But then I took a break from that (and from the marathon of BBQ Pitmasters that Matt is watching seeking some inspiration to use his new smoker) to whip up a card for Funky Card's September I Feel the Love Project. This is a great project and I encourage all of you out there to help out by making a Halloween card for these kids. The only caveat is not make it scary. So I had to stop and think: If Halloween isn't about scary, what it is about? Why, candy of course! So here's my card which I shamelessly scraplifted form Victoria Scraps who was following the sketch from Peachy Keen Challenge #58:

The paper is from Studio G. I bought this at JoAnn's a few weeks ago while out shopping with my mom and sister. We each bought a pack of the same paper. I found the coordinating ribbon at Walmart yesterday. I used the Stampin' Up Top Note die then embossed it with a Halloween folder I have from Sizzix. Then I embossed the word "Candy" from some little acrylic stamp set I bought (you know, those ones they sell for a $1 at the craft stores) and stamped and cut the Trick or Treat banner from a stamp set from Recollections I picked up at Michaels a few weeks ago. Fun stuff. Now I need to work on some birthday cards. There are sure a lot of them coming up.

But first I had better go fold the laundry since the dryer keeps buzzing. Why is it that it seems like I'm always doing laundry? Seriously, shouldn't there be some point where it's all done?

Sympathy Card Using Cut Files Made For My Acrylic Stamps

A co-worker's father died this past week. While I have a stash of sympathy cards, I had bookmarked one on Michelle's I Stamped That blog a short while ago so I decided to scraplift it for a new card. I also used the card as an opportunity to try using my cricut to cut shapes to match my stamps. This is what I got:

While I'm not overly enamored with this card, I'm so excited about the flowers on it because I cut the shapes to outline a stamp set I own using my cricut (I only wish I was better at centering a stamp on a cut image). It was quite a challenge to come up with the cut pattern to match my stamps. If you try it, I would really recommend using a stamp with clean lines for your first try. The distressed stamp set I used was really challenging. After several attempts to figure out how to do it with this distressed flower stamp set, I finally found that scanning the carrier sheet for my pattern worked better than trying to stamp the image then scan it or trying to draw around the outline to make up for the distressed nature. Then I followed Creations with Christina's steps in Photoshop from this video, but found I had to do a little extra clean up due to the distressed nature of the stamps. But even then, the cutting lines were still a bit too jagged when I tried to import it into SCAL. So this evening I found that I could solve that problem by saving the Photoshop image as a bitmap then importing that into Inkscape. There I traced the bitmap to smooth the cutting lines as if I was trying to make a piecing file from an image. Once the bitmap was traced, then I could save the file and open the svg in SCAL. It took me several hours of trial and error, but eventually I had a SCAL file with cut files for all eleven flowers in my stamp set. Now that I've done what's likely to be the most challenging sets, I'm excited about the possibilities that this opens up.

Mojo Monday # 206 and Saturday adventures

Last night I got in a baking frenzy to use up the zucchinis that are ripening in the garden.

Several hours later I had four, well, three and half loaves...

We started off today with a call from hubby's parents that they had found a smoker (the barbecue kind) at the garage sale across the street. Now hubby has had his eye on a smoker for a while now, so I knew he was interested. So after breakfast, we hopped in the truck to go down to pick it up and drop off a loaf of bread. While we were there, it just so happened that they had the cover for the bed of hubby's truck, another thing he's had his eye for a while but hadn't bought. So we got a deal on both them and he's happy as can be.

When we got home, I headed for my craft room. I have a list of cards I need to finish for upcoming birthdays and such, so tonight I sat down to get to work on them. This one was inspired by this week's Mojo Monday sketch. My co-worker is a big Betty Boop fan and I'm sure she's just going to love this card. The best part is I made it entirely from scraps of paper I found in my scrap bin.