Joy!

Arg!  I made this card for last week's Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge, but forgot to post it and link it up before I left for Thanksgiving!  Oh well, at least it's also for Wplus9's Color Cue 10 challenge (I used Hannah Craner's light blue, white, red, and kraft combo), which is still open!

The "Joy" stamp is from Taylored Expressions, colored with copics (B00, BG10, and BG23 for the blue, R22, R24, and R27 for the red). The dotted border is Waltzingmouse, then I cut and embossed using Nestie Labels 4.  The paper is..you guessed it, Echo Park!  Added some red baker's twine and embossed the card base using PTI's text impression plate, and ta-da!

My Christmas card box is getting more and more cards added to it...I hope there'll be enough when I start sending them out!

As I mentioned, I was out of town for Thanksgiving, so I did not get to wish everyone a happy day and let you know how thankful I am for all the inspiration from your blogs and all the warm fuzzies from your comments.  And how thankful I am to have found not only a hobby that I love, but that has some of the most awesomest ^[1] supportive people on the interwebs!

Thank you!!!

^[1] Yes, "most awesomest," because y'all are that awesome.

Quick Sunday Post

Because it's almost time for TAR ^[1] (and of course the required TARcream^[2])!

So these are my three current crafting loves:
1) Echo Park Paper
2) Waltzingmouse
3) Eat Cake Graphics

Put them all together and what do you get....

 Some serious cuteness!  I stamped ECG's "Sophie Willoughby and her letter" onto PTI Vintage Cream and colored with copics. I also stamped her again on a piece of white scrap to cut out and pop up for her letter. I framed her with Waltzingmouses's Vintage Labels 4 stamped with PTI Hibiscus, die cut, and sponged around the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink.  The "note" was a journal card from Echo Park's Everybody Loves Christmas pack, and the stickers are from the same pack (I know!  Echo Park makes me like stickers! Who am I?).  The background is PTI Simply Chartruese, stamped with PTI Polka Dot Basics II in Ripe Avocado, then bordered with PTI Hibiscus and Scarlet Jewel because I couldn't decide between the two!

Also wanted to send a BIG THANK YOU to Emily Keaton of My Little Slice of Bliss. She gave away blog candy for reaching 5,000 hits and I won!  Just look at the stack of awesomeness that arrived yesterday:

Thanks again, Emily, and thanks for always leaving such lovely comments.  Definitely check out her blog if you haven't already--you're in for a treat!

Ok, TAR is calling my name, so I'm outta here!

^[1] The Amazing Race, aka The Best Reality Show Ever.
^[2] Ice cream consumed while watching TAR.

Invasion of the Blog Snatchers!

I know, you're going to look at today's cards and think to yourself, what alien has taken over Meg's blog today?  Can you count the number of ways this is Not My Style?

1) White card base (I'm just not a WCB type of gal!)
2) Jewel tones!!  Including PURPLE (PTI's Plum Pudding).
3) PURPLE AND RED.  Living together on the same card!  Right NEXT to each other!  (I was going to include this with #2, but I think it deserved its own bullet point)
4) Massive amounts of imperfection!!  That I LIKE.
Did you spot any others I left off?

I made a set of these for my MIL's birthday.  Here they all are:

I versamarked and white heat-embossed SU's Upsy Daisy on PTI's Scarlet Jewel, Plum Pudding, Ripe Avocado, and Enchanted Evening, then cut out the strips and pasted them back together onto a scrap square of cardstock.  And I must admit, the colors looked pretty good together.  But then I decided to do a little cracked glass technique, and wow, the colors just got so rich and beautiful!  And when I was melting the UTEE (ultra-thick embossing enamel), it melted the original white embossing and made it streak-which I  thought looked all artsy.   I cracked three of them, and the fourth one left alone.  Here's a couple more closeups:

In other Meg news, I recently started devouring books again.  You know how it is when you're reading an "ok" book and it takes forever to finish it?  Then you read a good book and you finish it in a day because you stay up all night reading it?  Then you remember why you liked to read in the first place, and start reading more and more?  And start checking out armloads of books from the library and amazon starts daily dropoffs of used books at your doorstep?

Or is that just me?

Well, the two most recently devoured book have been It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong (of dooce.com)--very funny and very good birth control (ha).  And then I picked up The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber.  Why?  I have no idea.  It's not like I even like historical novels.  But, oh my, once I started it driving home from Atlanta (edit: DH was driving, I was riding!), I stayed up all night to finish it!  Could not put it down.  It was certianly not a story I've read before, and that goes a long way with me.  I would say Sucked is about 4 stars out of 5, and Rachel is definitely a 5 out of 5.

Let me know of any books that have kept you up late recently!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

You know how sometimes a card makes you happy the whole time you're making it?  This was one of those cards!  I cut out Eat Cake Graphic's Ethan and Oliver snowy saucer fun image, colored with prismacolor pencils  (I did have to ask my DH what color saucers are-he said definitely go for bright red!).  The dp is Echo Park (slight addiction issues), and the bottom layer is PTI Aqua Mist, embossed with Cuttlebug snowflake folder, then inked with white ink.  I added some red twine, and the handwritten tag.  I think I may put "....wish you a Merry Christmas" as the sentiment on the inside.

So I know what you're thinking, aw, this is cute and all, but really, how did it make you happy the entire time you were making it?

Because Ethan and Oliver tilt!

I used this tutorial from Splitcoast and it was really pretty easy.  And fun!

Oh, and another thing that made me happy making this card?  I've been telling Holly that she keeps accidentally putting tails onto dogs that are obviously Corgis (of the Pembroke variety, don't try to get fancy and tell me they're just Cardigan Corgis) and this one has big ears, short legs, and no tail!  Definitely a for-real corgi!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Brrrr!

Are y'all starting to get some winter weather?  I think we've officially tipped over into winter this weekend, so that certainly got me in the mood to start making some Christmas cards!

Brrrr!!  I feel cold just looking at this card!  I used this week's Mojo Monday sketch and this wonderful Eat Cake Graphic image, "Sarah pulls Nicky and Otto."  Of course the girl has to do all the work while the boy and dog just take in the view!  I used watercolor crayons and SU markers to paint the image with my aquapainter. Here's a close-up:

The green Echo Park DP was cut with Nesties Labels 4 and the sentiment is a K&Co rub-on.  The brown DP is also Echo Park.  I punched two snowflakes, inked them with PTI Chai, added a button and some twine, and attached it to PTI Scarlet Jewel ribbon.  I made this a larger card-5x7-to accomodate the larger image (and because I just found a new stash of 5x7 envelopes in a drawer), and also put the image panel off-center so the lil' doggy could look up at the snowflake.

Now I'm going to go wrap myself up in a blanket to get warm!

Stay tuned for another fun winter card tomorrow!

Waltzingmouse Tag Challenge

SQUEEEEE!!!!  Have you seen Waltzingmouse's upcoming release? Holy moly, I know I NEED at least two of the sets, if not three!  Plus I'll probably have to pick up her Labels 14 set, too....watch out, credit card!

Unless, of course, I win the random pick for the Tag-You're It! challenge -the prize is 100 pound shopping spree (plus an extra 25 for using Waltzingmouse stamps)-I'm pretty sure I could spend that in a heartbeat!  So without further ado, the lucky, lucky, lucky (I hope!) tag:

Claire wanted "beauty" and "elegance" and I think the sentiment, stamp, and paper certainly fall under the "elegance" part.  I stamped Waltzingmouses's Vintage Labels 4 using Colorbox Deep Green chalk ink, then applied a K&Co rub-on I picked up for pennies on clearance. Hint: run your rubon through your cuttlebug with some paper/cardboard shims for a perfect application.  The larger label die cut is from Echo Park's Merry Christmas paper pack-expect to be seeing a lot more of this paper in the next two months because it's just gorgeous.  I used PTI Dark Chocolate ribbon to wrap the larger label around the bottle of wine.  Then I punched a hole in each end of the smaller label and ran some red twine through (of course had to add some buttons), then attached the label using foam tape for a little dimension, and tied the twine in the back.

I went into our huge wine stash (of 3 dusty bottles) and was so excited to have one with the perfect winter scene:

How could this not bring comfort and joy?

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Swell News!

A friend requested a card for a relative's baby shower.  There didn't seem to be a "theme" on the invitation, so I went with this cute stamp from Amy R Stamps (from All That Scraps).  My friend told me she was giving a gift card, so when I saw this week's Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge, I knew it would be perfect!  The paper is the current SU baby paper.  The preggo shirt was cut out and pop dotted, then framed using Waltzingmouse's Vintage Labels 4, which was also popdotted.  I sewed the pocked onto the card, then made the tag pull by attaching one end cut from a Nestie Labels 4 to a rectangular piece of cardstock.  I put two removable adhesive dots on the tag (with the backing still on them) so my friend could attach the gift card. I tied up the baja breeze ribbon with some chocolate twine and added the "baby" tag from PTI Mini Mixed Messages. Here's a close-up:

In entertainment news, we finally jumped ship from Blockbuster.  We were using their mail-in service, which was pretty sweet because you could trade in the DVDs at the store, so we used to have 3 mailed DVDs and 3 store DVDs out at one time.  Then I guess they figured out they weren't making much money that way, and cut it back to 3 only.  Then they filed bankcrupcy AND they didn't have The Office Season 6 AND my brother-in-law has been bragging about instant downloads, so we joined NetFlix.  Why did we wait so long?!?!?  I'm loving the instant play feature in my stamping room!  We also hooked up our Wii to it as well.   If you're a DVD or TV watcher, I'd recommend trying it out.  You can do a google search and easily find a free 4-week trial.  What are some of your favorite "background noise" movies?