Bugs and Kisses

Hello my crafty blogging friends! It has been a month since I last posted and almost a month since I have made a card. One of my brothers passed away the beginning of March since I last posted. The last month has been an emotional roller coaster since his death. His death was unexpected and quite a shock. He was also the care giver for another brother of mine who is very ill with MS. My crafting time came to a halt with all that has been going on the past month with taking care of my brother's final arrangements and caring for the other brother who is very sick. Slowly things are starting to fall back into place though and I hope to find time to start crafting again and make the rounds of visiting you all and seeing what you have been crafting since I last visited with everyone.

This card was made for a swap that I hosted on the Card Swap forum of the CardMaker site. The theme was "Black and White With a Splash of One Color". 18 very talented ladies signed up for my swap! The swap due date was the same week my brother passed away so I am just now getting around to sharing with you the card I made for the swap. I love the color red with black and white and what better to use for red than a ladybug! I had fun with this swap and really enjoyed seeing all the cards everyone made.

Hoping to be back this week with another card as I really need some "me" time to do some crafting. Hope all of you are doing well. Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to tell those you care for that you love them. Life is very short.....I will miss my brother very much.

Tag Your It and a Favorite Thing

Over at Inspire Swap Chat there is a game going on called Tag Your It. Someone posts a tag they have made and the first person to post after them will receive the tag as well as they now offer a tag to the next person that posts. I have jumped in 4 times to play. Here are three of the tags I have made. The first is a Happy Hopper girly tag. The tag below was made using the ornament punch from SU. Cutting off the tip makes it look like a vase!

This last tag was made using a brass stencil from Dreamweavers and then embossed with copper embossing paste.

Then as promised I am posting a picture of another one of my favorite things. It's the clear Stardust Gel Pen. I LOVE this pen for when I like to add a bit of sparkle or glitter. I used it on the bubbles of the first tag. I also used it on the balloons of the Happy Hopper birthday card I made 2 or 3 posts ago. I keep this pen close by as I often use it to add just that bit of sparkle. It also comes in many colors but I like the clear one as I usually use it over colors on images that I have colored. If you haven't tried one of these pens...you should! I promise you will love it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Challenges from Beat the Blues Crop

Thought I would share some of the creations I made from the Beat the Blues crop at CardMakers last week. There were many fun challenges and just not enough time for me to complete them all but I sure loved making the ones I did have time for. Also got loads of ideas and inspiration from all the other creations that were posted. The card above was to follow a sketch...always a favorite challenge of mine to do.

The picture below was for a challenge that required us to make a corner bookmark and a card to place it on. I think I would like to go back and try this challenge again and make some more of these now that I have more time and no deadline to meet .



The next one was to wrap a candy bar. This was a lot of fun and quick to make. When you untie the ribbon and pull up on the ribbon the candy bar comes out. With some adjustments and changes in size, this would also be a great idea for giving packets of hot chocolate or some flavored tea bags.

This last one I have chosen to share with you was a challenge that I just freaked about when I saw it. It had my least two favorite things....monochromatic and use the color yellow. I am not a yellow person and I have always been lousy at monochromatic cards. So I pretty much had decided to not do this challenge. Then I decided ...it's called a challenge right? I need to conquer this challenge. Soooo ....a simple card I made and not my best but I was so proud that I did the challenge and conquered using my least favorite color and technique.


Next crop will be in May! Sure hope you will join us. Guaranteed to be loads of fun and tons of inspiration. Thanks for stopping by! Next post I will post another one of my favorite things.

House Mouse Flower Bed

I'm hosting the weekly sketch challenge this week over at Card Swaps on the CardMakers site. Sketch challenges are my favorite type of challenge. I also enjoy making my own sketches. I used a House Mouse stamp for my image....Flower Bed. I colored the sleeping critter with Prismacolor color pencils. Cardstock used is by Bazzill. The border punch is by Martha Stewart and the embossing is from a Cuttlebug embossing folder. I plan on making a few more of these to send out to wish some friends a happy Spring. We are getting a touch of Spring weather this week with temps reaching almost 60! I know it's only February but it sure is nice to get a bit of a teaser of what hopefully is around the corner soon.

Here's the sketch I drew for this challenge from which I created my card.

If you would like to join in on the challenge this week you can find it HERE. All participants will have their name put into my hat for a chance to win a RAK from me.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone is having a great week!

Beat The Blues Crop at CardSwaps on the CardMaker site

Beat the blues crop is in full swing over at the CardSwap forum on the CardMakers site. Wednesday was the first day of the crop and it will go till this Saturday with challenges and games being posted daily. There are prizes for each challenge, games and a grand prize. You can find further details of the prizes and instructions for participating in the crop HERE. If you looking for some inspiration, friends to share your passion for card making with or just plain fun...check out the crop!

I am hosting one of the challenges today at the crop. Mine is called "Second Hand News." The challenge is to make a card using other printed papers that were originally meant for another purpose in place of designer or printed papers meant for scrapbooking or card making. Some suggestions would be a newspaper. map. sheet music, page from a book, napkin.....there are all kinds of ideas. I chose to use a local paper that I picked up in Chinatown in Chicago. I was inspired by the Chinese characters printed on the newspaper. Above is what I started with and below is the card I made using the newspaper.
I thought at first that I would stamp the panda on plain cardstock but decided to try stamping directly on the newspaper. I really like the end result. I though it almost looks like the panda had been printed on the newspaper by the printers.

I hope you like my challenge and will consider trying it yourself. Hope to see you over at the crop. Challenges end Saturday but you have till 11:59 pm CST on February 15 to complete any or all challenges and post them to be considered for the prize drawings.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tilda Easel Card

Hi everyone! This is Sweet Tilda by Magnolia. I love this image and thanks to my friend Jenny who was kind enough to send me her! I'm entering her into two challenges.

CardMakers Card Swaps weekly challenge : Easel card
Just Magnolia and Hangler and Stangler challenge blog: anything goes with added option of using ribbon

I colored the image with Prismacolor color pencils. Floral DP is by DCWV and the butterfly DP is by Paper Pizazz. Cardstock is Coordinations Foundations.



It's Super Bowl Sunday! May your favorite team win and if your not into football may you be having a crafty day making lots of beautiful creations. In this house we will be rooting for the Packers....while I work on some cards. Love multitasking. Have a great day everyone and don't forget about the crop coming up this coming Wednesday over at CardMakers!

My Favorite Things and a Spring Card

I love to visit other blogs to see what other people are creating. Quite often I also learn new techniques or learn of new products etc from visiting blogs. I would like to return the favor and share some of my favorite things from time to time and maybe some of you will learn something new from me. So I will share some of my favorite tools, crafting supplies, sites, techniques etc....some of "My Favorite Things" in my crafting world. I thought for my first favorite thing post I would share with all of you what got me started in making cards....Brass Stencils!

The card above was made for challenge day last week on ISC. The challenge was to make a Spring card. Usually I grab my stamps and start stamping and coloring but this time I pulled out my brass stencils and went back to what I fell in love with when I first started making my own cards. My Spring card uses two stencils from Dreamweaver Brass Stencils. The background is the bare tree stencil which I stenciled color using Colorbox pigment inks. After drying the ink I then used Dreamweaver's Spring stencil to paste emboss the word and then sprinkled glitter before the embossing paste dried. The card design is inspired by a project from one of Lynell Harlow's books of projects using the Dreamweaver stencils.

Below is a picture of some brass stencils. Sorry I didn't realize when I was taking the picture that the camera was reflecting onto the stencils. There are many nice brass stencils on the market but I am a big fan of the Dreamweaver line. The brass stencils are designed by the very talented Lynell Harlow. She has a blog that I like to follow for inspiration and ideas. You can find it HERE and you can also purchase stencils HERE.



Below are some cards I made a long time ago but thought I would share them as they also use brass stencils. The first one uses the crane brass stencil. I embossed the cranes, then stenciled them with gold pigment ink and then finished with a touch of glitter on their heads.

The next one uses Dreamweaver's flamingo stencil which I paste embossed and then colored with chalks. Love this stencil!

This last card uses Dreamweaver's Cyprus tree stencil which I used to spray bleach onto the cardstock bleaching out the color. I thought the end result looked like a bonsai tree so I continued on to finish the card with an Asian theme.

I use to play a lot with my brass stencils then I got caught up in the rubber stamp frenzy. I'm thinking it's time to pull those stencils back out and rediscover what all I can do with them....like run them through my die cut machine for easy embossing!

Hope you enjoyed my Spring card and my favorite things post. Also hope you are all keeping warm. Here in the Midwest we are buried in snow from the blizzard we had this week. We are still digging our way out! Thanks for stopping by.