Thank You From Liz

It has been one of those times when life has gotten in the way.  I hope to be forgiven for my absence.  This past week has been nonstop everything, and next week will be even more difficult to post, as hubby and I are going to the West Coast to visit with grandchildren.  What fun we will have.  So I will be out of commission for another week.  Today two of our grands left after spending the weekend to have birthday party for their dad, my son.  This is the son for whom I did the little scrapbook I showed a couple weeks ago.  He loved it, and the kids, who were the stars of the book, loved their performance too. 

Unfortunately I did not make time to finish the Morning Chat Challenge this week.  The challenge is to do an Easter creation.  I have none -- oh shame on me!  However, I have this really cute, adorable, little Easter thank you that I received from my great friend, Liz.  She is a chat friend too, but she doesn't have a blog -- yet!  Soon, we hope.  In the meantime, I'm going to show her pretty card as an entry to the chat challenge.  If you want to see other challenges from this very talented group, you will find them here.  Then click on the Morning Chat Challenge on the top bar.  Liz has used the really, really, adorable stamp set from the main catalog called Everybunny.  I love this set and have been thinking about it, hesitating, and thinking some more.  I still have not purchased it.  I sure wish I had.  It is one of those sets that the more I see it used, the more I wish I could get my hands on it.  I guess I could still get it before Easter, right?

And just look at that cute egg flower on the inside.  I sure do like this card.  Thank you so much, Liz, for your thank you.

Hopefully I will be back soon with some more creations, but if I don't get my fingers inky before we go on our trip, I will see you all around April 2nd when we get back.  Have a great week.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

MDS Adventure -- Take Two

I had to play just a little more with MDS.  I made another birthday card, and then printed both, mounted them on coordinating paper, and voila, done.  It is a lot of fun with MDS.  You can change your mind and undo, then change it back again.  You can look at it and add, delete, and not have any worries about ungluing or hiding mistakes.  I really enjoyed these and the scrapbook pages I have been working with.  However, the next MDS I work with I believe I will try my hand at hybrid and work with an MDS base and then add some layers.  I believe I still favor the look of entirely hand made and layers.  So what do you think of these attempts?  They don't match each other, but I took the picture of both together anyway.  I'm into advanced design that way.   Ha!

Short post, not much exciting around here right now.  I spent several hours today on my computer researching sites in cities we will be visiting this fall on our vacation.  I have lots of information, but I'm tired of looking at my computer screen. 

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Crafty Hugs
Sandy

MDS Adventure -- Take One

This is me playing around.  I've been working with MDS over the past few days.  Mostly it has been scrapbooking pages.  I'm not quite ready to show any of those pages yet, but tonight I decided to fool around with a card.  I wanted something out of the ordinary.  I think I've really got something unusual here.  What do you think?    

 I started with designer paper from the Sunny Day series. From there I added some cardstock layers, then a frame from Frames With A Flourish, which I colored in Crumb Cake, reducing the opacity some so that the frame wouldn't hit you in the face. The main image is the small flower in Always, which I enlarged and colored with Brocade Blue and added a brad from the Hodgepodge Hardware. The grosgrain ribbon is Bermuda Bay. I had fun with the Happy Birthday label, and I'm not sure I know how to tell you how that was created, but I'll try.   First I did the scallop oval punch in both Pink Pirouette and Whisper White. The printing is done by creating a print box, minimizing it to a point where it will fit in the oval.  Then I chose the print style and color in the same way you would chose when printing in any word document.   Lastly, that tiny swirly thing below the Happy Birthday is from Frames with a Flourish which I sized to look appropriate. I must say, when using MDS you can change things in any way you wish to make it go where you want, be the size you want, and the color you want. I think I am going to like this program a lot.

Now I have to figure out how to print.  There are a couple ways to print -- either direct from MDS, or export to a jpeg and print from there.  Of course, when I am really good at this I could send it to SU and have them professionally print it.  I think I'll wait until I am a little better and when I'm not just fooling around with weird, wild, colors.  For now, I will probably print this on Whisper White cardstock and then mount that on a color cordinated background cardstock, maybe a little more Bermuda Bay, or a totally different color, or black or navy to set it of.  I'll know when I see it.

I hope you liked my venture into the world of digital.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

Nice Weather -- Not So Nice Garage

As much as I love to work on my crafts, I have had a horrible time these past few days getting motivated to work with paper.  It is soooooo gorgeous outside that I just have to go out to play.  We almost made it to 80 degrees today.  Just 1 degree off.  Wow, it's only March.  So hubby decided to clean out the garage.  Since I have some stuff stored in boxes out there, that meant it was my job for today too.  Not my favorite.  I also did a little digging in the dirt.  Also not my favorite, but better than cleaning the garage.  Can't say how many times I just had to come in the house -- I made all sorts of excuses.  But we finally finished.  (Note to self:  Take BIG can of bug spray next time.  There are some spiders out there that must be from an alien world!  Or maybe just Texas!  BIG!  Ugh!)  (Note to hubby:  Spray a line of bug spray to circle the house.  If one of those monsters gets in the house, my friend Tracy in Washington State will hear my scream!)

Since I have not been spending any time in my craft room, my post for today is something we did at our demo team meeting on Sunday.  My sideline and good friend, Liz, was this month's designated make n take gal.  She always does an awesome job.  This time she CASEd  a card from Laura Haffke (Hi Laura, we all loved your card.  Bet your ears were burning all the way to your house while we were talking about you -- all good things.)   As usual, Liz added a few of her own touches.  Liz is our ribbon guru, so she took ribbon and wrapped it around the front panel and then used a few more scraps to add touches to the front, and to make a bow.  We then curled more ribbon by wrapping it around a little paintbrush and heat setting the curls.  I wonder if I could heat set some curls in my hair with a little paint brush and my heat gun.  Hmmmm.......

The inside of the card is a cute folded panel with an inset birdhouse.  What you need to do is take the vanilla panel and lightly fold in half (Don't crease too hard or the image won't emboss.  You just want to know where the center is.).  Now that you've found the center you can stamp your image to line up the birdhouse, stamp with VersaMark and emboss with black.  (The stamp set is the hostess set, Up In The Air, from the Occasions Mini)  Then color your flowers with markers.  After that cut just above and just below the birdhouse and fold opposite from the center fold, make your creases, and push the birdhouse back.  Glue the vanilla piece to the Poppy Parade by first gluing to one side, then put glue on back of the vanilla piece and fold the entire card closed to glue the other side.  This way it will be sure to close properly.  We glued Everyday Enchantment DSP panels to the inside and colored the front panel with markers.  I added a couple butterflies to cover a few little black smudges -- I was a little sloppy.  Don't forget the little pearls.  They finish it off beautifully.  Here's  the beautiful one that Laura did -- maybe she can explain better.  

 

I hope to get back to my craft room tomorrow, but with the weather forecast, I'm not so sure I'll want to be inside tomorrow either.  Perhaps I'll work on some more things that have spray smooch, spray fixatives, or spray paint.  I can't do that type of thing in my craft room because of my carpet.  That'll get me outside.  We'll see.

I hope you find some time to get outside if your weather is nice.  Come back to visit soon.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

Morning Chat Challenge - St. Patrick

It is time for another Morning Chat Challenge, for the morning chatters at Butternut Sage, here.  Every two weeks we have a challenge, and this one is to use at least 2 shades of green and either a St. Patrick's Day image or an image of your choice.  Being Irish I had to do at least both.  There are greens, and St. Paddy wishes are there too.   The idea to make the "label," if you want to call it that, came to me when I saw some left over pieces of paper on my craft table from when I used the edgelit die.  So, my thoughts went to, why not cut that style in the colors for my challenge.   This entire card came together by letting it form.  First it was "maybe add this," then "I wonder if I do that," and "how about this."  It looks like traditional green St. Patrick theme with a SAB  Everyday Enchantment twist.  I think I like it.

I had completed a different card for the challenge and couldn't decide which to use.  This one won, but you will probably also get to see the other card in a day or two. 

In addition, I'm using MDS and diligently working on my travel scrapbook.  Oh wow, that is not in my box!  Talk about working "outside your box."  But I am determined to make it work,  Once I find a page or two that make me happy, you will probably start seeing some scrapbook pages. 

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  It seems spring has sprung.  We never had much of a winter, and now my daffodils are blooming, the fruit trees have buds on them, the redbud trees are blooming, and I understand the cherry blossoms in DC are blooming too.  Wherever you are, I hope the weather is being kind to you.

Come back for another visit soon.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

More Thanks

Remember this little card from the other day?  The thank you card that went with my customer orders?  Well, yesterday I had a brain F____ --- ummmm, brain "inspiration!"  I so liked the little embossed oval frame, that I wondered what would happen if I used the embossed rectangle.

This is what happened.  Isn't the little rectangle just too pretty?  I may like it even better.  Now I want to try some different colors.  I may have found my latest, new, thank you card.  Of course, you do need to remember that the 3 x 3 envelope is not accepted by the Post Office, so you need to use a larger envelope for mailing.  But isn't it cute for attaching to a present, or thank you to your customers?

My days since Wednesday have been much better.  No more spills in my car, no more catastrophes.  Of course, I have had no response to my e-mail yet, but in life we don't always get what we want.  Oh, and my Federal Express arrived.  So all is well.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  Weather is pretty and flowers are springing.  Just like you need to spring your clock -- forward tonight.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

One of Those Days

I sure had "one of those days" today.   The kind that makes you wonder why you crawled out of bed.  I was gone from home all day, and that is probably good.  If I had been home I might have had to hide in  the closet.  It all started when I didn't get the e-mail response I expected this morning.  Then my MDS CD froze my software program.  In all fairness, though, it was minor, and the wonderful gurus at SU support whipped right through a fix for the problem and it was running fine in minutes (thank you wonderful SU support folks).  After that it was this and that.  Lots of little things that became big.  Then the McDonald's gal didn't tighten the lid on my drink properly and I dumped nearly half of it in the car -- fortunately most went on the floor mat so I can just hose off the mat.  And on and on it went.  Last but not least, my dear hubby, who is most often a gem, told who he thought was a telemarketer that no, he would not give them an address.  Turns out it was a call regarding an order of mine to be shipped Federal Express.  Oh well, it will get here eventually. 

Well, the thank you card that was rolling around in my head yesterday did convert to paper like I hoped.  I think it turned out well.  It is a little 3 x 3 thank you, and inserts into the small square SU envelope.  I included these thank you cards in the orders I delivered to my customers.  If you make them to mail, you'll have to put them in larger envelopes so the post office will accept them.  I'm going to make a few more.

There was something good from today, however.  I went to my upline's technique class (Hi Buffy -- great techniques today).  After the class we sat and talked a good bit -- neither of us was busy this afternoon, so no pressure.  We discussed techniques, the new Smooch products, the diagonal board for the Simply Scored, Convention, dogs (huh?), kids.  We brainstormed about classes, craft days, and what else I don't know.  One topic led to another and another, then 4 more and 6 more.  By the end of the hour, or two, we had solved all the problems of the world.  Thanks, Buffy, I needed that!

I hope you like my thank you card today, and that you come back soon.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

Summer Ice Cream

I cannot believe time keeps marching -- rather running -- on the way it does.   I barely turn around and days have gone by.  So here I am trying to catch up again, post something, and try to find time to go to my craft table and make something more.  I gave up on this week's challenges, just no time.  The card I have today did not end up on paper the way I saw it in my head.  I wanted the triangle background to be upright like a cone, however, with it that direction, the ice cream really did not fit, and really looked awful.  So, I turned it upside down.  I may need to tweak the whole idea to see if I can come up with something better.  I've had this little bowl of ice cream stamp for some time, and just had to ink it up.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

The inside is very simple, just a few ice cream toppers.  Same goes for the envelope.

 
I received a SU order this afternoon, so I need to go up to my craft room, sort it out, and put the orders together.  Deliveries start tomorrow.  I have their thank you cards rolling around in my head.  I hope that idea goes on paper better than my ice cream card.

Until next time................

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy

Mini Scrapbook

I finished my mini scrapbook for my son, Scott's, birthday present.  My hubby says he is going to like it.  Getting that comment from my hubby is all I need -- usually I hear "that's nice" or "cute."  This time he looked and looked, pulled out the tabs, looked some more, and said "Wow, that's really something.  I'm sure Scott will love it."  Sooo here are a couple pages for you.  Tell me if you agree with my hubby.

The booklet shows by folding back and forth.  There are 6 surfaces one way, and 6 surfaces the other.  You can either look at 2 pages at a time or unfold the whole thing.  I've done each 2 pages with a theme, then additional pictures from that theme are on pull out tabs.  

On this page for their birthday -- by the way, J.T. turned 9 and Hannah 6, and their birthdays are celebrated together because they are only a week apart -- they are with their cakes, and the tab shows some presents, etc.  (To my friend Sue, the super cakemaker:  Sue, close your eyes and pass this one by.  Don't laugh at my cakes!)  The cakes barely survived frosting with SOFT frosting, traveling 95 miles in the car in the August heat, sitting on the table all day, putting back together a time or two, not to mention little fingers that just had to taste.  But, as funny as they look, the kids loved them.   Hannah got the giggles a time or two.  The frosting on her doll kept slipping off her "boobs" and down to her waistline.  Hannah laughed that she had to push the frosting back up to keep her decent.  Ha ha, Hannah, I had your number.  You tasted frosting every time!

With this page I show how one of the tabs is done.  The tabs pull out from under the pages.  There are 10 full pages -- and a front cover and back cover -- so with the 5 pull out tabs I was able to incorporate 37 pictures and the highlights from most of 2011.  My son will have plenty to show off -- if he likes it!

Today I am off to my craft room.  I want to have a completed challenge for you tomorrow.  I need to do a birthday card but, hey, what are challenges for?  I should be able to do a birthday card AND a challenge all in one, right?

Have a wonderful weekend.

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy
 

Birthday Sneak

Today I have a sneak peek for you.  I've been working on a little 4 x 6 chipboard scrapbook for my son's birthday.  Even though I picked out paper easily, photos took some time.  Once I had the paper and photos, it took a while to decide how to put it together.  Now that I know what I'm doing (not always the case) it is moving along pretty smoothly.  I'm happy with it, but I am only a little over half finished.  When it is done there will be 11 pages of photos, journaling, and decor, with 4 or 5 pull out tabs.  I am pretty sure my son is going to like it -- and it  doesn't have many flowers or frilly things -- just a little where his daughter is concerned.  So it is masculine -- not the easiest.  I hope you like it.

The color theme is Old Olive with other shades of subtle green, and Cherry Cobbler with other shades of subtle reds, and a splash or two of whatever coordinates.  This is definitely a create as I go.  I'll have a few more pics later.  And hopefully I can squeeze in a card or two, and a challenge or two, along the way.

Until next time.............

Crafty Hugs,
Sandy