Hello Out There!

Ok, this is getting ridiculous now.  My stamp desk and blog have been feeling so neglected.  On the other hand, my powerpoints for school have been rockin' recently, so maybe I should just start posting those instead, in case you wanted to catch up on your high school math in the middle of your crafting. 

What's that?  You'd rather see a card instead?  Ok, I guess you caught me in a good mood, so I'll share one.

After seeing this photo, I feel like maybe I should turn the card 90 degrees to the left (and also rotate the sentiment banners).  I used Karen's Sweet Sunday Sketch from I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it weeks ago.  All sorts of October Afternoon Thrift store happening here.  Maybe too much?  I am in love with that Impress flower, though. 

Book Reports:
Book #9: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer.   I was suckered into buying this when I read a review somewhere that compared it favorably to Malcolm Gladwell.  Yeah, notsomuch.  A few of the memory tricks were pretty neat, but there just wasn't much "umph" to the story.  Based on the other reviews, I may be an outlier. 

Book #10: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.  Perfect vacation book--laugh out loud with lots of good scenes.  Makes me want to read more of his books. 

Book #8 Update: The Help comes out in paperback Tuesday!

Actual Cards!

Once I got my stamping room all organized, I quickly messed it all up again playing with some new items.

This card uses a huge jumble of new stuff!  The flower is the outline peony from Impress Rubber Stamps.  I stamped it onto Gina K Pure Luxury with Versamark and heat embossed it in white. Then I used watercolored it, using Memento Ladybug ink (I stamped the inkpad onto a cd case, then just picked up the ink from there using an aquapainter).  I know, I never would have thought "ladybug" would come out this gorgeous pink when it was watercolored!  I cut out two images to layer, but it still needed a little more here and there, so I cut out a third to add some extra petals. I added a ocean-breeze-but-really-looks-aqua-mist button tied with some linen thread.  For the card base, I stamped the small outline poppy on the top and used Waltzingmouse's Picnic Patterns for the bottom third, adding a Berry Sorbet ribbon in between.  The sentiment was cut from Nesties Label Four. The frame is from Waltizingmouse and the sentiment is from PTI Vintage Picnic (man, a lot of picnicing going on!), both stamped with Pink Lemonade Fresh Ink.  I colored two white brads with a copic to make an aqua mist design triangle (look at me talking all fancy!).

This was a quick card I did for this week's Splitcoast CAS color challenge of red, brown, vanilla, and kraft.  I cased it from this lovely creation by PaperInBloom.  The main panel is from Waltzingmouse--isn't it fabulous?  I covered everything on the stamp itself except the middle with a postit and inked up the red portion, then removed the postits and carefully inked the brown, then stamped it all at once.  The flowers are outline peony and solid peony from Impress.  And got to use some new brown & white twine.

In other news, here are some thing that are making me happy:
1) Students who "pinky-swear" they're going to work harder for the next test.
2) Getting an AWESOME Dr Horrible shirt out of the blue from my DH.  (Hey, have you watched it yet?  If NPH's shoulder shimmy at 5:08 doesn't make you giggle uncontrollably, then you must not be me.)
3) Finding loads of new settings on my camera and taking this adorable picture of Addison using "pet" mode:

 4) "Super Harvest Moon" tonight.  The sun will be setting directly opposite a full moon, so it's supposed to look pretty awesome. I'm going to head out to a high spot with my camera (in its new "sunset" mode) to check it out.
5) My blog peeps--whether you leave a comment every day, drop in a few times to say hello, or are just an anonymous follower, thanks for the interweb love!

Just a Quick Post...

To let you know I'm still here and to share two recent cards.

I got my new stamps from Impress last week, along with a handstamped thank you note, which actually turned out to be quite frustrating because I have no idea how they stamped their image so cleanly and have been trying to duplicate it without much success.  I'll have to take a picture of it and post it because it really is crazy.  Anyway, I do like how these stamps stamped!  I bought some of their ink, and used Pink Lemonade and Slate on River Rock and Ocean Tides for this card.  I also debossed the Ocean Tides layer with PTI Linen Impression Plate (note: if you're sending a kraft card folded over through with an impression plate, you probably don't need to use the cereal box shim.  In a related story, why is it always the "good" B plate that cracks, not the one that you've been needing to replace for the last six months?).

Ok, I know that middle circle is U-G-L-Y.  Imagine that I did it on a white circle.  And that my stamp cleaned up nicely after the first time, so I didn't have ugly spots on the "29th" when I tried to use orange which I then had to cover up with the blue.  Really just focus on that fun medallion.  This was for today's CAS challenge to use this wreath as inspiration.  I markered up my medallion using SU markers, stamped it, cut it out, and mounted it on Raspberry Fizz.  Then the middle circle part just went downhill, but now I'm totally over making this card.  Do you ever get that way sometimes?  I might come back to it later this week and try to fix it, or I may just put it in the "donate" pile.

I hope y'all have had a non-donate pile crafty day today (unless, of course, you were actually making the card with the purpose to donate, in which case, rock on, sistah!).