A Weekend Away!!!

This last weekend we had the pleasure of being able to go camping for a few days! Ya, it was cold and rainy part of the time but the trailer my parents have is like a hotel on wheels! Furnace, microwave, tv and of course we must bring card supplies!

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This first pic is my youngest daughter getting creative with her ink!

We enjoyed the bubbles....

The play station. Yes, even Allie looked like she wanted to play! My parents are not dog people and have not wanted to let her in the trailer (whose to blame them, she sheds soooo much) but because Chad could only come for one night and we had no where else to bring her on a spur of the moment she was allowed this time!

As always, she found a cozy corner and called it home!

Maya had so much fun creating that Dad & K also came to see the fun!

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I still think they were just wanting to join in! :)

Ahhh, you can't have a good campout without a FIRE!!! This pic above is Chad's idea of making the best smores. Squishing the chocolate into the marshmellows and then roasting them.

Getting the toasting to perfection and being prepared to sandwich them all together. (Notice the graham cracker hanging out of his mouth and the other in his hand waiting)

It was quite a sight to see him eat his melted mess!

Hmmm, hmmm good!


Chad could only stay for one night and then go back to work while I had a couple more days off. So, the girls and I had much fun playing games, trying out silly masks and crafting together! We stayed in our pj's all day!


Then out of no where the sun appeared for a few hours! So we hit the beach! West coast style, in our winter coats not bathing suits!

All in all it was a much needed break from the regular schedules of life!

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I also got to spend quite a bit of time with my Copics and stamps but I haven't taken any pics yet so, give me a few days and I'll show you the play time I had too!

Oldie but Goodie!

It has been a long time since I've done much embossing! So, I made this one by reverse embossing with clear powder on white paper and coloring the background with foam & Ranger Ink.

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Stamped the branch with craft ink, added some glitter to the flowers, stamped the sentiment with the same craft ink, layered it up and added some ribbon. Yes, I love ribbon on just about every card!

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This was actually quite quick and easy! Gotta love that!

Congrats to....

My dear friend Sherrie! She has just accepted the invitation to be a part of Cornish Heritage Farms design team! In honor of her new gig (and my lack of creativity these days) I've been inspired by one of her recent cards with their new stamps!

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Here is the link to her original, now I know hers is amazing, but I had fun with it and REALLY, REALLY, REALLY enjoyed stamping today!

I took this shot thinking you may be able to see all the glitz a wee bit more, but maybe it didn't work! Sorry!
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Happy stamping all!

What farm is fresh?

I've always thought it odd that this stamp set was called Farm Fresh! I've never yet got a whiff of any fresh smelling farm!!! hehehe

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Oh well! It still is a set I really love! I'm still working on using up pre-stamped backgrounds and coloring pre-stamped images. Slowly, but surely I am working through my stash. Good thing I've had a stash too. I've just plain not been feeling to creative lately. Too tired, too tired of seeing bad things happening to good people, too tired of feeling tired. It is just all too draining!

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I guess I've kinda been in a slump lately.

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Thankfully, I got to spend yesterday evening at a friends house, and this afternoon at another friends house and boy was that time needed muchly! After relaxing with them and seeing all their fun new stuff I got a bit of an itch to play again.

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But, my creative space is such a disaster right now there is no way anything very good can come out of it! So, I spent the evening doing some shopping and picked up some shelving stuff & baskets.

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The plan now is to CLEAN UP!!! Wish me luck!

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(Maybe I will take a before and after shot, hmmmmmm, we will see how brave I am!)

One person...

Great quote: To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world!

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I think this is one of my favorite luvey cards I've made. Of course, a pic never does it justice but I was going for simple elegance and I think I got it.

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Her dress is all glitz up and just pops out IRL!

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I used some super old patterned vellum I found stashed away, Papertrey's sentiment and Wordsworth image.

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Hey, something old and something new! Kinda fits for a wedding card eh? hehehe

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Ya, it's late and I'm not stamping enough! Hope you out there are all stamping more than me these days! :)

I thought December was busy!!!

Yikes!!! February has been absolutely jam packed with way too many big celebrations!!! My mom just had her 60th birthday, my sister's 30th & my daughters 13th birthdays are tomorrow and I had my b-day kinda lost in between! :)
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My sisters and I decided to throw a big party for our mom and this is the invitation we made for it. Kinda simple, her favorite colors and she is a flower fanatic so we thought they were perfect for her.
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One afternoon a few weeks ago we got together with the 4 kiddies (nieces & nephews all 4 & under) and we managed to make 38 invites. I don't think the 3 of us had been able to spend time like that together in quite some time and it was great to be able to do this!
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Sorry, I've not been able to post this sooner but we didn't want her to see it and I haven't had much time for the craft table these days!
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Here's to future stamping time!

Finding Treasures!

It seems every time I go through my stuff to clean up or sort things I find things I've pre-stamped and never used! This time it was these uncolored flowers. Yes, this is an old stamp SU! set but sometimes these old sets are just what you're looking for!

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Anyway, these images are stamped on glossy paper. I wanted to color with my Copics but I've been told that they don't work on glossy. I went ahead and tried anyway!

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They definately don't blend but you can still use them. You just don't get the shading that these markers can give you on nice, smooth paper.

I also took a very light grey to go around the image and give it a wee bit of dimension. Yes, I know they look like they are floating in thin air but oh well!

Then just layered them with some cardstock, stamped a sentiment and used simple embellishment on each to finish them up!

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Happy stamping!

I'm Getting Distressed!!! :)

Yes, my distress is all about the ink though! Ranger Ink that is! In a few days I have the pleasure of presenting another card class at my LSS and it features 4 different ways to use Ranger's Distress Inks. This first card is called brushless watercoloring. The focus really is the stamp and I just didn't want to cover it up with a bunch of embellies so I picked my favorite bg and let it speak for itself!
This second card is making the paper look kinda like leather. The real name of the techique has slipped my mind right now! Figured it was a great masculin looking paper so the trees and again very little embellies to finish it off.
This pic really does not do this justice. It is dark outside and I just can't seem to get a nice shot. Anyway, this card started off being ivory c/s. The ink is applied to a craft mat, spritzed with water and then you smear the paper over top. Kinda fun, real inky and I liked that in this sample it was a soft look.

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The fourth card we are doing I've shown you a while ago. It is having some fun with the spritz and flick technique!

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The whole idea is just to show the girls there are many way to use this ink and it is way more fun to use than just stamping with it!

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Getin' Inky!

Fun & Simple

I found my self sitting and coloring images a little while ago with no plans to use them. I just plain picked marker colors without a care for being able to match them to papers I have!!!

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Sometimes, ok most times for me, my favorite cards are the ones I don't plan out. I start with one thing, say the color image, and look for ways to use them later.

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There is much talk about notebooks or journals where many people jot down thoughts and ideas. I have come to terms with my mind not being able to work that way. :)

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I tend to wing it! Sometimes for good and sometimes not so good. And I'm ok with that!

This is just another way I used the same colored image and focused on a different color scheme. I like the first one much more but I thought the purple inked background stamp on the teal paper was kinda fun!

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Here's to finding what is fun for you!

Could I add anything else?!?!?!

This is a card I made for a dear friend's birthday. She has been the queen of techniques with the philosophy of more is good (even though her style has changed since then :)

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Anyway, I had a ton of fun trying to use my Ranger alcohol inks in as many ways as I could on this. The background was ivory paper, smeared with ink then "spritzed & flicked" with water.

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The photo corner and arrow were silver & copper and thanks to the inks they are now black and red! The funny square, jewel thing was an architectural stone which I inked up and covered in glaze and pressed in the jewel. The stamp is also from a set she gave me a couple of years ago. We both have a soft spot in our hearts for vintage stamps!

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Then a little piercing and copper paper to mat it with and I don't think I could add one more thing! Maybe next year I will try to go more simple and clean, like her current style is!!!

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Enjoy your day!

Another Calendar, with some tricks....

I know I've shown you a bunch of calendars already, but this one has a few tricks that I've added and wanted to show you. I have really been enjoying playing with my alcohol inks and copic markers. This flower was a teal color from the store so I colored it with a deep red copic marker! I also colored the jewel brad to match!


In this one, I used my copics to color the red baubles and red brad. My ranger ink to color the arrow. It was silver to start and now it is teal!

This one, I also colored the spiral with my copics.

Last but not least, that flower was white to start! But not more, thanks to my copics!!!

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I love being able to color anything I want! It is awesome!!!

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Happy stamping (or coloring) today!

More Background Stamps!

Simple, and hopefully elegant. I love the big b/g stamps to make my own patterned paper! Here I've used a few more of the pre-stamped card stock I had before I recieve my order from Cornish Heritage Farms. They have soooo many wonderful new ones it is not easy deciding how many I can afford to get!

Well, this is a super quick post tonight! I've not been a huge blog poster but I do love to share when I can!
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Happy stamping!

My Christmas Projects...

Every Christmas for the last 5 or so years I've been making my mom & sisters something special for Christmas. Things, like card sets, coasters and stamped candles to name a few.

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This year I planned to make these calendars last summer, got crazy busy this fall and only decided I HAD to do them on Dec. 23rd!!! Oh my, how crazy is that! Seeing as each one took me about 3-4 hours that is all I did until our get together!

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I used 4 x 4 chipboards coasters, 2 - 12x12 designer papers and lots of flowers & embellies!

Here is a side view...

And here a few of the pages to show you some of the different, yet very simple layouts I used.

Since then, I decided to make a few more for friends!!! They are soo fun!

As Martha as I'll ever get.... Christmas 2007

I saw this idea in a commercial to use cranberries inside, upside-down glasses and then they become candle holders!!! Make sense!?!?!? Anyway, this is the easiest way to create something fun. Then we got to thinking about all kinds of things you could put inside the glass depending what the occasion is - gumballs, paper curls, tinsel or whatever!

Anyway, this year Christmas was a year of posing and picture taking! Everyone got in on the fun! (This is my beautiful 12 year old daughter!!!)

Even my 4 year old nephew loved his new camera!

Getting lessons on what new camera's can do! Great! Now Chad wants another new toy!!!

Grandma is enjoying her yearly Christmas story reading time to the Grandkids! It looks like they are all enjoying it too!

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Every year I get to enjoy Christmas Eve with my parents, sisters and our families. We eat fun food, exchange gifts and enjoy each others company.

My sister making fun of my re-using a Christmas bag from last year!

My sister Pam and I, before we both got sick! Well, you can't say we don't share!!!

Then on Christmas morning, "Dad" gets to pull out the gifts from under our tree!

This year, he got the gift "wrapping" that never ends! Thanks to an un-named brother-in-law of mine, Kassandra has been dying to wrap Dad's gift with an endless amount of saran-wrap. I think she actualling used packing plastic and doubled the size of the gift with the many layers!

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He was pleased when he finally got the end though, it was his Lord of the Rings extented editions that he has been wanting. (Yuck!) hehehe

Then the girls got the first of 2 big gifts. This is their reaction to finding tickets to the TobyMac concert in February!

Then getting a Wii. Maya was great, she got all excited and was cheering with Kassandra until Chad asked her if she even knew what it was. She has no idea what it was but thought it must be good!

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If anyone is considering some kind of video game, this is most definatly the way to go! I've even enjoyed a few games of bowling!!!

An action shot!

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That was our Christmas in a nutshell! Yes, both my sister and I got sick, missed a few extended family get togethers but all in all it was a great week.

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If anyone actually made it to the end of this post I'm impressed! I posted most of this for the out of province family! Happy New Year!

Copic Marker Class

Yes, I've been infected my the Copic marker bug! I have a set coming to me for Christmas that I snuck in and used to make this sample for a class in January! Ooops! Don't tell my mom! :)

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Anyway, I was going for simple yet playing with some basic color layering. These markers are so easy to create dimension. I also wanted to use some stamps that the shop sells that I've not used in a class yet and that thought led me straight to My Favorite Things. I really like this little coffee set as it has a focal image along with little pieces, like separate mugs and the corner coffee beans, to compliment it.

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Well, on a personal note, I am really working at finding the peace of Christmas today (after I get all the house cleaning done). To relax and be able to enjoy the anticipation of my favorite celebration. To ponder on the gift of Christ and be grateful.

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Merry Christmas everyone!

Background stamps!

I've always loved big, background stamps, collected a bunch of them but not used them as much lately! So, with all the new ones that Cornish Heritage Farms just released (thanks to Lisa) I figured I should use what I have pre-stamped before I get new ones.

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Yes, I have been known to pre-stamp wacks of backgrounds, keep them in a shoebox and pull them out as needed. Saves time when I feel creative and gives me something to stamp when I'm not feeling creative!

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This first card used white craft ink overtop of Rose Red paper. Black mat. Embossed the sentiment and added the ribbon & flowers. I used the same basic layout for the next card too. Except the bg stamp is on vellum and attached with the brads on the bottom and some adhesive under the snowflakes and sentiment.

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I strategically placed the snowflakes over the birds on this stamp to give it a different look. (just in case some of you know what this stamp actually looks like :)

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I'm kinda needing to do something other than Christmas right now and these cards were just what I needed!

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Enjoy your day!