Two months is better than none!

Well........My 5 cards a week resolution made it two months before it was broken.  Rats!  BUT I babysat my grandson four days last week instead of two and I was just too tired.  Not a very good excuse but I'm sticking with it!  I'm still going to try to keep the resolution though.  One broken week doesn't mean the rest of the year is a bust!  Right?!!

Here is a card that I did for the Hambo Hoedown.  This is such a fun challenge....you should really give it a try.  Just click on their badge on my sidebar!  Our challenge was to use this lion and one of the two sentiments that we were given.  I thought I would do something different.  I took the sentiment and made it into the background of the card.  In retrospect I think I should have made the print smaller and repeated it more times.  But that will have to wait for next time!   We were also to include stripes somewhere, I did them on the lion's shirt!  ;-)

I actually almost forgot this week!    Hope you enjoy.

Hambo Hoedown Pelican

This is my card for the Hambo Hoedown this week.  We received a free pelican digi......isn't he darling?!!  Our color palette needed to contain, blue, brown and tan.  I layered the pelican several times.  Unfortunately I had my larger lights for taking pictures set up in a different room to film tutorials for the TJ newsletter so only had my little lights........not perfect but they sure gave the pelican a good shadow.  The pelican and the BG are colored with copic markers.  I gave the sand some texture and did the cloud treatment that Marianne Walker showed us the other day on her ilikemarkers blog.  The sentiment was generated on my computer. 

My Mom's Valentine

Sometimes everything just fall together soooo easy.  The card I did for Valentines for my mom was one of those.  I think I had about 15 minutes total into this card.  Knew what I wanted to do.....coloring went super quick.  I was tickled with it and she was wowed!!  ;-)  I thought it was interesting that when I used the red copics to color the rose, I wanted a darker color for the shadow and I used V06!!  A violet no less!!  I'm going to have to remember that!

The image is a digital from Fred she Said.  You can't tell from the picture much but the flower bunch is cut out and mounted above the heart.  It is also hard to tell that I have gold leafing all around the outside edge of the heart. 

I also got two more cards done today that are some of my assigned submission cards.  DONE.....and ahead of time.  ;-)

Still getting it done!

My resolution is still going strong.....and I haven't missed yet.  You just aren't going to see some of my creations until the next TJ newsletter airs in April!!

BUT today I did two cards.  I'll post the second one tomorrow.  The first one is the Valentine I made for my hubby.  This ubber darling image is from Hambo stamps.  The minute I saw it I wanted it for hubby's valentine.  I drew a larger briefcase for the inside and made it a flip up so that the final sentiment could be under the briefcase.   Unfortunately, I had the sentiments already printed off and the computer wasn't ready to print them again so I just put them in place and colored around them.  My DH didn't care!  ;-)  Image was colored with copics.  I saw that piece of yellow paper and thought it would be great for the image.  I cut it down to size and mounted darker paper behind.....I thought it kind of looked like a doorway!

HoeDown Monster

This week on the Hoedown challenge, we are to use a Hambo stamp with a heart somewhere on the image.  The freebie image we received this week was a darling little monster.  He just spoke spots and layers to me so here you have it!  I didn't have a heart stamp so I just cut a heart into a piece of paper and used the hole as a mask to sponge the heart on the sentiment.  I didn't want to make the monster green since he would be for Valentines day, so I chose purple and lime green......two of my favorite colors!  I also took a side picture so you could see all the layers.  I popped the body above the tail and the eyes above the body.  I wanted the heart to be raised too but not beyond the hands so I cut out the hands and 'wrapped' them around the heart.  Hope you enjoy!  There are lots of other entries this week already....head on over to the HoeDown.....the link is on my right side bar.

Tapping the Helmet!

The card today is for the HoeDown Challenge by Hambo Stamps.  You can click on the Hoe Down link in the right side bar.  The challenge was football.  Okay......I do have to preface this with the statement that I really don't care to watch football.  If I want a good nap, all I have to do is put on a football game and I can be asleep in 5 minutes.  I think it is the crowd noise!

Anyway...........I rate the teams according to their helmets.  The cooler the helmet, the more I root for the team.  Seahawks, cool helmet.  Dolphins, cool helmet.  Rams, WAY cool helmet.  There are more but NOT Green Bay or the Steelers....they are NOT on my cool helmet list.  So, I wasn't going to root for either team on Sunday.  BUT then I heard that the "G" doesn't really stand for Green Bay.  On a Sports Inside website, the article said that the "G" actually stands for "Greatness!"  So........with that in mind, the Green Bay helmet climbed a few notches in the cool helmet list. 

So, with the challenge being football, I just had to do the card shown.  I did a spotlight technique for the helmet and market tapping for the background.  Hope you enjoy!!

THEN..........I was really busy on Sunday and Monday night as I finished up 28 of the thank you cards for my rhodie society trophy donors.  It looks just like the red rhododendron card I made for my hubby that I posted a couple of days ago.

Cricut Mickey for Valentines

My daughter asked if I could make some Valentines cards for her to buy for her nieces and nephew (my grandkids).  So....I thought it would be a good time to try out the Mickey and Friends cartridge I had purchased.  I did learn one thing.......next time I'm going to make it a LOT larger.  Those tiny pieces for the eyes and the tiny red piece for Mickey's shirt drove me nuts!  Cuttlebug highlight for the background.  The Minnie card will look the same just with Minnie instead.  I'll have four of these ready for her tomorrow.  I also got 28 cards ready to assemble today.  They will be the same as the Bday card I did for my Hubby.  It was a productive day for stamping but not for housework....only one load of laundry and one load of dishes!

 I also participated in a challenge on CDAC.......you should remember this challenge.  I posted a card yesterday that I made.........only to find out that I had used the wrong digi!  Well,, this card has the correct digi artist for the challenge.  This was a fun challenge.  The participants picked 10 elements for a card and you were to choose 5 of them to make you card.  I chose, embossing folder, ribbon, border punch, faux stitching and the color pink.  You can just barely see from the photo below, the diamond glaze that I put on the cherries.  It looks really great in real life.  The digi is from Designed2delight and is colored with copics.  I was really pleased with the copic coloring on this.  I tried not to over color it as I often tend to do!

Ray's Birthday card

Here is the card that I did for my hubby's birthday.  We both love rhodies and have been in the Portland chapter of the American Rhododendron Society (ARS) since 1984.  Many years ago, I drew up this rhodie and had it made into a rubber stamp.  The stamp was really too little for this card, so I scanned in the stamped image and decided that it was too grainy.  Then I blew the size up pretty big and redrew it, rescanned, cleaned up and printed it out as this size.  Colored it with copics.  The BG piece is a Cuttlebug highlights piece and the flower uses 'out of the box' technique.  The sentiment is from SU.  I decided that I love this so much that this layout and image will be my thank you cards this year for the ARS trophy donors.  So that means I'll be making about 26 more of these but with thank you instead of "it's your day'.  Since my time is limited, I scanned in the image above that took me a long time to color and will print out the other 26!  My image so I can do as I wish!  Yeah!!   I did enter this in the #5 Red Hot Challenge at DYSU.  Here is the link to that challenge!

I'm the trophy chairman in charge or purchasing the beautiful trophies we have every year for our Mother's Day Show.  I get to buy, glassware, china, pottery, metalware, etc.  It is a lot of fun to spend other people's money.  I buy things that I would like to win since I have won a few over the years.  Hope you enjoy the card.

Just a Valentine!

Sometimes I wonder if I would forget my head if it wasn't attached!  I had a challenge to complete for CDAC.  It was a potluck challenge from Designed2Delight.  Got sidetracked after I got off the computer......had to go back up the stairs from the Stamp Hole to find the challenge potluck list.  Got back down to the Stamp Hole, grabbed the image I had colored and ready to go for a couple of days.  Picked my 'potluck' items (ribbon, corner punch, stripes, embossing folder, and the color pink.......you had to pick 5).  Took the picture of the finished card and then went to post on the challenge.   Sheesh!  Silly me.........I had a digital image from a different designer instead.  Well....that's my story and I'm sticking to it!  I hope you enjoy it even if it was wrong for the challenge!  Image from Just Some Lines and colored with copics.  I hand cut the heart around the sentiment and for the shadows.  I AM so excited.....still keeping my resolution......but then again it IS after 7 pm and dinner isn't made yet.

AHTIA DON'T LOOK!!

Can you tell that I'm working on birthday cards for my relatives!  Hee Hee.  The first card isn't for my daughter-in-law's birthday but a decoy so her card doesn't show on Facebook! 

The first card is called total texture and is a TJ technique from the current newsletter.  I used paper from the Paper Temptress and in real life it is just beautiful!

Now for the other card.  The stamp is from Inkadinkado and paper from Hot off the Press and Bazzill.  I made this for a color challenge card over at Copic Creations.  The challenge was to use cool colors.  So, NO yellow, red, orange, or yellow green.  Do you know how hard it was to do flowers and greenery without my yellows and yellow-greens!  Augh!!   I wish the camera had caught the subtle light colors in this card.  I airbrushed light blues and some Red-violets into the sky.  The colors are really more that what you see!!!!   Someday they will invent a camera that can do artwork justice!  I also used my new MS butterfly punch.  Hope she likes it!

TRAVIS DON'T LOOK

Okay.....I'm posting several other cards first because I don't want my son-in-law to see the first picture on Facebook!  Today is barn wood.  The first two cards are ones that I did as design work for the TJ newsletter early in January using the new Barn Wood technique.  I had a lot of fun making the window on the one card.  Stamp credits are "I brake for stamps" on the first two cards.

Now for the card that I made for my Son-in-law, Travis.  I am sooooooo tickled with this card.  I wanted to make him a card with a tool box on it.  Alas, no tool box stamp to be found in my stamp hole.  So.......I can draw that.........I say to myself.  Well........it was a lot easier in my head than on paper.....took me a couple of hours to get the drawing the way I liked it but I LIKE IT!!  I hope that you do too.  I had the design for this card in my head and it actually looks like what I wanted!  So many times, that does NOT happen.  I colored the image with copic markers.  Then I remembered that I had these neat screw snaps that I had been hoarding for about 5 years and they were perfect to finish off the card.  To the right of the image is another piece of barn wood.  Maybe some fancy dancy stamp company will see it and want to buy the image.......hahahahahahhahahah!!

Yesterday's card

Here is my resolution card I did for yesterday.  I had a lady call me and wanted me to do cards for her niece and nephew.  Here is one I did for the niece (who has medium brown hair).  I hope she likes this one!  Mo's Digital Pencil drew the DARLING little girl who is colored with copics.  I didn't have a sentiment I wanted so I just wrote it.  I also wrote a title on the book that the little girl was reading.

Catch Up!

I didn't get a post done yesterday but I DID get a card done and have still kept up my resolution!  Yeah! 

Here are a couple of Valentine's cards I did for an order.  One of for a mother and father and the funny Wee Henry one is for her nephew. 

The stamps on the All My Love card are Hero arts and Memory box as well as Stampin Up.

The Wee Henry card is a digital stamp from Hambo Stamps!  Enjoy!

Quickies!

It was a very quick productive hour today for my resolution card.  The one card actually turned into 8 cards!

The cards I made that you see in the picture are a quick thank you card to the people who helped us when our car club purchased Christmas dinners for soldier families.  There were three people who gave us extra funds that fed 5 extra families.     I just embossed the nestability right on the front of the cardstock instead of layering it.

Then I made two other cards that were a little nicer to thank the gals at the Oregon National Guard in the Family Assistance Program who worked hard getting all the names for us.  I can't show you those pictures until next week as they are one of the new techniques coming out in the upcoming Technique Junkie newsletter.  I just love this new technique because it is QUICK!  Can't wait to show you.  So.......I LOVE productive hours!  Wish I could do quick cards all the time.

Pounds of Rubba Plus

I must say that it HAS been a couple of years since I've made the time to take care of my unmounted rubber.  I've been using it but it wasn't cataloged and it wasn't in CD cases.   That is about to change.  I have these all cataloged and they will be in cases soon!  Yeah!!


Now all of that part of the post was a decoy as the card I did today for my resolution is for my Son-in-law, Adam, and since he is on FB I didn't want him to see his card!  We have a plethora of birthdays the end of January and the beginning of February so I'm trying hard to be ahead of the game instead of waiting until the last minute like I normally do!

I wanted a big beer mug but didn't have a stamp so I just drew it.....nothing fancy mind you.  Mug is colored with copics.  The oval BG is a TJ technique called bingo splat.  The lighter blue background piece is also a TJ technique but since I wasn't smart enough when I made it to actually write the name of the technique on the back......I have NO idea what it is!  The 'foam' is just cotton.   I didn't want to go too much overboard because Adam is the type that just throws the card away at the end of his Birthday...........*gasp*!!

Jim, don't look!

As I typed my title today, my musical turrets kicked in and I was soon singing "The Streak"...you know...."Ethyl, don't look!  It was too late, she was already mooned"  Anyway....my title is a message to my son, Jim, to "Don't Look!"  He is on Facebook and my blog posts to FB.  This will be his Birthday card this year.  You can read a write up about it and see it's picture by clicking HERE .  The link takes you to the Technique Junkie blog where I post twice a month.  Hope you enjoy my hidden card!  I made it yesterday and have continued to keep up my one a weekday resolution!  Yeah.....almost a whole month. 

Sometimes when I go downstairs to create, I really struggle and it takes a couple of hours to come up with one decent card.  This particular card worked up in about 30 minutes!

Hubba, Hubba Valentine

Still keeping my resolution!  I didn't post the cards I did on Mon, Tues and Wednesday since they were design work but you'll eventually see them!

Today I made another Valentine.  This card was inspired from a TJ friend, Nancy Young.....her flower was WAY better than mine though!  I think this guy stamp is a hunk....you know.......a 'real' man!  Clean cut, handsome, trim!  He is from RubberStampAve and I love him!  Below him to the left is my version of Technique Junkie's Acetate Flower.  I think my acetate flower technique needs to have a little work.  AND this was my third try.  Shameful!  It does use another TJ technique called Cuttlebug Highlights but instead of highlighting with ink, I highlighted with Versamark and used a sparkle embossing powder.  Hope you enjoy!

Accident Update:  Well..........I'm still doing my spinal decompression treatments.  I'm soooooo ready to be done with this.  My back feels better off and on but there is no change in the numbness in my feet.  My question tomorrow to him will be .....How long do we continue!?

On another note:  I get another piano lesson tomorrow.  So excited.  I better bone up on my "Happy birthday" chording before I go!

I Didn't Forget!

Bet you thought I broke my resolution because I didn't post.  You're right......I didn't post BUT you're wrong, I didn't break my resolution.  I'm actually ahead.  I did three cards yesterday BUT you don't get to see them for a while.  They are design team work!  I have three more to do today for design work then you get to see something on Wednesday!

Aged Thinking

Aged Thinking.......sounds like I'm getting old!  hee hee!  This is a card that uses the Aged Tiles technique from the Technique Junkie newsletter.  Quite easy unless you are using parchment paper like I did....sheesh!  The ink would not dry and I had a terrible time keeping ink off the image.  what you are seeing is the THIRD stamped image!  My fingers are all brown!  I should have just embossed it!  This image is from RubberStampAve that I've had for a couple of years and has never seen ink.  It just seemed perfect for this technique.  I hope you enjoy!

Aged Wine

Every week the technique junkies have a technique from a past newsletter that they invite people to try again.  This week it is Aged Tiles.  I combined it with the Torn Frames techniques as well for this card.  I do have to admit that Aged Tiles was not a technique that I really wanted to do but it was pretty easy and fun.  I was trying to figure out which stamp to use and my eyes fell upon this stamp by Inkadinkado.  In hindsight, I wish I would have stamped and embossed it to darken it just a shade!

I'm even a little ahead this week for my resolution.  I have another card I made but I can't show it until the very end of the month as it features one of the techniques in the upcoming newsletter!

AND some news.......starting March 1st, there will be a new CD that you can get from Technique Junkies.  Called "Emboss or Die".  It is such a clever name and will have 70 techniques on it.  30 ones from newsletters and 40 new ones.  Stay tuned for more information soon!