Have a Moo-tiful Birthday!

I love that hockey season is back in full swing:  last night the home opener and tonight the first game at home in my easy chair watching on the big screen.  Yes, this is the life.

The only big dilemma in my life right now is whether to drive to Seattle on Thursday night to take Sandy Allnock's class on coloring funny people at Impress.  I so want to go, but it's a long trip and I'm a bit of a introvert.  I have a hard time sometimes convincing myself to go do new things even when I know I will enjoy it.  So in the next couple of days, I have to make up my mind.

In the meantime, I've finished up with the last of the Birthday Farm Animals stamp set she designed for Simon Says Stamp.  I've had so much fun coloring these cuties.  Today's card came together pretty quickly too.  There's a flag shaped die in the My Favorite Things Blueprints #13 that I had been looking at and thought would be perfect for the cow stamp, so I had already cut it out the other day.  Then it was just a matter of picking only two of the fun patterns in the Sunny Side 6x6 paper pad from Pebbles to build my card.  I added some baker's twine I found in my stash, a little Wink of Stella to the banner, and the now almost required Pretty Pink Posh sequins and Glossy Accents. 

It's Your Pig Day and Mine Too!

It's here!  It's finally here!  It's the home opener of my favorite hockey team and the hubby and I are there watching the banner raise from last year's winning season.  So excited!  So it only seemed fitting to do a card for a big, I mean pig, day. 

This is another image from the oh so cute Birthday Farm Animals set from Simon Says Stamp that I colored over the weekend.  This card came together so quickly since I had these scraps left from the Carta Bella Hello There 6x6 paper pad on my desk that were just calling my name.  A few cuts to trim the paper down to fit the background of the card, a few more cuts to create a banner and then I die cut my image using the Notebook Basic Die from Paper Smooches.  Then all it took was some tape, a few Pretty Pink Posh sequins and some Glossy Accents on the balloon and eyes to finish it off. 

Happy Birthday Spring Chicken!

Ahh... It's Thursday.  Just one more day before opening night of hockey and I just can't wait.  This time tomorrow I'll be yelling and cheering and celebrating one of my favorite things about Fall:  the return of hockey!

In the meantime, I continue to make birthday cards using that Simon Says Stamp Birthday Farm Animals set.  Today's card features the chicken (which is so stinking cute).  Once I had it colored, I was back to that same place:  what do I do with it now?  This time I pulled out the tag die from Lawn Fawn from the Winter Gifts set.  It was the perfect frame for the chicken.  I cute a second one from patterned paper from the Pebbles Sunny Side 6x6 pad, which was still sitting on my desk.  Then I cut down another piece using the stitched frame die from Mama Elephants Basic Set and some vellum from the scalloped die from the same set.  Then it was just a matter of layering the papers together, added some Hemptique baker's twine and finishing it off with some Pretty Pink Posh sequins and Glossy Accents on the eyes.  Super cute!

Got Cupcake? I Do and Lots of Upcoming Birthdays...

For some reason the end of September and beginning of October bring a lot of birthdays to my world.  Not much cake because many of those birthdays are for people too far to celebrate with in person, but then that's probably a good thing.  I certainly don't need cake, okay, well my waistline doesn't need cake.   So on Sunday, I spent some time in my craft room, watching movies and coloring the images from the Simon Says Stamp Birthday Farm Animals set.  (Can I just take a minute to say that Jennifer Lawrence is pretty darn amazing?  I watched American Hustle for the first time and was stunned about how well she played the part which is so different than Hunger Games, which I've watched probably a dozen times this year alone - it's a great background movie for crafting).

Anyhow, so once I had colored all my images, I wasn't sure what to do with them.  I was flipping through my dies and saw the polaroid die from Amy Tan's set and knew exactly what I was going to do.  I pulled out my largest stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things' Blueprints #13 to cut out the background from the dotted paper from the 6x6 Sunny Side pad from Pebbles for my background.  Then I cut out the polaroid from white paper and made the frame for my goat image.  I stamped the sentiment from the set, added a little pink card stock behind the heart and finished it off with some Glossy Accents on the heart, the flame and the goat's eyes, some Pretty Pink Posh sequins and a little Marvy Liquid Applique on the cupcake (note to self:  put the applique on first and heat set it before the Glossy Accents). 

So in Love with Birthday Hogs and Kisses

I absolutely love this Birthday Farm Animals set from Simon Says Stamp designed by the talented Sandy Allnock.  I just had to order it (in fact, I mistaken ordered two to my mother's benefit).  When it came in the mail, I had to get inky.  I had been playing with copics that day but had switched to colored pencils and decided that the colored pencils would be perfect for this cute little hog. 

I picked out the pretty chevron type paper from the Pebbles Sunnyside 6x6 paper pad for this card and used the colors to help in my decision making for the balloon and hat.  I, of course, added a bit of Wink of Stella to the hat and the balloon and topped the balloon with Glossy Accents.  I used the Lawn Fawn Stitched Journaling Card to cut out my panel and finished the card off with some Doodlebug sequins in Swimming Pool.  In retrospect, I would have left of a lot of the sequins.