Inspired by a Winner

I was trolling my favorite blogs for inspiration and found it!  Paper Players was showing their winners and one of them just spoke to my creative heart.  They featured this amazing pinwheel card by Karen Day and I just knew I had to try it out myself.  Now, I could have downloaded clouds, the pinwheel and grass from the Silhouette Design Studio.  They had them, but I elected to make the pinwheel and the clouds myself.  It was fun to have to think through how to do it and I have to admit that I'm enjoying learning how to the use the program to create my own designs.  The only regret I have is that I did not make the pinwheel a little bit bigger on this card.  The blue, brown and green papers are card stock from DCWV.  The pinwheel itself was cut from a scrap from the Stella and Rose 6x6 pad from My Mind's Eye and finished off with a pearl from Imaginesce using my Irock.  The sentiment is one of my absolute favorites for birthdays.  Its from the Garden Flowers set from Inkadinkado.  The clouds were filled with Fun Flock from Stampendous!

Thinking of You

I wanted to make a card to send to a friend of mine who is trying to recover from surgery and pack to move at the same time. Either is taxing enough, but the combination of the two could wear down even the strongest of us.

I was cleaning up my "favorites" and saw the Paper Player's sketch for this week and thought it would be a good starting point. I also wanted to test the capacity of my Silhouette to make intricate cuts. So, I purchased a cut out mat for a 12 by 12 layout and shrunk it down to a card size. Even dear hubby was forced to ask me what I was cutting when I was wandering around the house doing little tasks like filling the bird feeder, making hot chocolate and trimming the fur that mats on Chewie under her legs and the cutter just kept on cutting.

I was stunned by how well it did cut, although it's clear to me I probably should order a new blade. Then I just added some SEI ribbon, added a stamped sentiment to the frames cut out on the Cameo and glued the card together. Easy breezy.

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.