MTME Pretty Palette and Pattern #14!

Oh my, what a busy summer so far and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down much! I had a little time today to play with this week's Pretty Palette and Pretty Pattern for My Time Made Easy.

I love pink and browns together and still have some paper from Echo Park's Life is Good collection that work so well for the color choices this week for the challenge at MTME that you can see here. The layout is the MTME Pretty Pattern this week too The sentiment is from Paper Makeup Stamps Grateful Thanks set. 1/8" brown satin ribbon was from my stash and I picked up the organdy ribbon with the flowers attached to it a while back at Hobby Lobby and had never used it!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

More Travel Time

It was traveling time again last weekend. This time dh and I went to NJ to visit his sister for a long weekend. She lives about 45 minutes from NYC and we went in to the city to see a Yankee game on Saturday (first visit to the new Yankee Stadium!) and again on Sunday for a matinee performance of War Horse at Lincoln Center. War Horse was MAGNIFICENT! Hubby and I had read lots about this production and were super excited to be seeing it (and on the day of the Tony Awards too). It won for best play. What a wonderful day!!

I made this card to send to my SIL. She loves dragonflies and has a chair with dragonflies in the upholstery pattern, prints with dragonflies, a wall hanging, etc. I think she'll like Danny, a Paper Makeup Stamp image you can find here. I colored him with copics and used a Labels Four nestie. The sentiment came from the PMS Grateful Thanks set. My dp is one of the Basic Grey Sweet Threads paper. Flower from my stash.

Hope you have a good day and thanks for stopping by!

JUGS #87

The daughter of good friends graduates from high school this weekend! She was one of the flowergirls in our oldest daughter's wedding 12 years ago. Time goes so fast! The JUGS sketch today seemed to be perfect for the her card. The school colors are....you guessed it....blue and gold. :) The sentiment is a Paper Makeup sentiment that comes in two sizes and can be found here. The daisy dp is left from The Will to Daydream PMS kit. I used a lacey circle and an inverted scallop circle nestie and the mortarboard and diploma stamps came from the dollar bin at Michael's. Our graduate will be on the volleyball team at Grace College in northern Indiana this fall and her team is going on a trip this summer to Africa. What an adventure!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Making Wishes

Best Wishes to all of you! I've been looking at wonderful creations on many different blogs in the last few weeks but no time to craft myself. I flew to Nebraska to get my mom and then I drove her to North Dakota for a high school graduation and then 3 days after getting home from that I had a week-end at oldest daughter's new lake cottage (soooo relaxing). This week we're finally seeing some sun and warm weather. Hooray!

Today my card uses the Color Throwdown colors of melon, pumpkin, and celery and the Mojo Monday 193 sketch.

Papers are from Basic Grey's Sweet Threads paper pad on a celery green base. My image is Kirsten Silhouette, one of the new silhouette stamps at Paper Makeup that you can find here, and she's available as a digi too. I'm absolutely no good with digis, but for those of you that are, PMS has a bunch of them! I stamped Kirsten on textured melon paper so it's not as "solid" as most silhouette images but I liked the "faded" look (if a silhouette can be "faded"....). The sentiment is from the PMS set, Dandy Wishes. My ribbon has a little silver sparkle in it. Hope your day is a sparkle kind of day! Thanks for stopping by.

We had a few nice days last week....but more rain all day today. :( I'm soggy!! Hopefully all this rain won't drown all the spring time flowers. I made some flowers of my own today.

I used a technique that was new to me, "kissing with a twist" that I learned about on the JUGS Challenge. I used flowers from Paper Makeup Stamps, Springtime Solids set and inked one of the large flowers up with Angel Pink Memento Ink. Then I used one of the smaller daisy type flowers and inked that up with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink and "kissed" the darker stamp onto the lighter one. It was so much fun, I made 3 of them!

The leaves are from the same PMS set and I used Bamboo Leaves Memento Ink (no kissing :). I drew the stem in with a YG63 Copic that happens to match really well. I used the Pretty Patterns Sketch #9 from the My Time Made Easy Challenge and flipped it on it's side. The dp is from Basic Grey's Sweet Threads paper pad. The sentiment is from another PMS set called Friendly Flowers.

Don't forget to take time to smell the flowers! Thanks so much for stopping by.

Yummy New Paper!

Goodness! My last post was almost a month ago but it's been a while since I've had time to craft. I spent a happy, happy Easter weekend with our grandsons while momma and daddy were away at a friend's wedding. My hubby was in Washington D.C. with his students at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival so he couldn't come with me. It was just me and the boys for 3 1/2 days. I got a little tired :), but it was SOOOO much fun. It was sad to have to come home. The end of the school year is quite busy for me though so it's been crazy since I got home.

I have a card today for the Pretty Patterns #8 at My Time Made Easy. I got some yummy new paper this weekend and I am just drooling over the colors/patterns in the Basic Grey Sweet Threads paper pad. My sentiment is from the Keep Strong sentiment set from MTME.


I stamped it with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink
and added 3 little dew drops.

The flower is Mulberry Street.



I hope spring has come wherever you are. Thanks so much for stopping by!

In the doghouse

Now why am I in the doghouse? You'll see....

I especially wanted to play along with the Sketch Saturday this week since Paper Makeup Stamps is this week's sponsor. I went through my PMS stamps (and there are a LOT of them) to find one that had never seen ink.....there's a few of those too. :) I always smiled at the "I'm in the doghouse" sentiment but had never used it. So here it is.The sentiment and the doghouse image are from the Home Matters set found here. And this is my take on the layout for Sketch Saturday. The colors are this weeks colors at JUGS.

I'm hoping that "jughead" Lisa Kind had a fabulous birthday this week and this is supposed to be a birthday card, right? Well, it is, because the inside will say "I'm so sorry that I'm late for your birthday." :)

The papers are My Minds Eye Stella Rose from the Hazel collection, the punch is Martha Stewart, and the rickrack and buttons are from my stash. This will probably be my only post this week because I'm heading to SC to stay with our grandsons for the weekend while mama and daddy are off at a friend's wedding. We're going to play, dye Easter eggs, play, eat "kid food", play, play and play! Have a blessed Easter!!

Pretty in Pink

I love pink and black together (and so does my dd) so I wanted to play in the CR84FN Color Challenge this week. Aren't these yummy colors? And this is just the 4th sketch in the new Pretty Patterns Challenge from My Time Made Easy.

I don't have any MTME (yet :) so I used a quote/wordart stamp from Paper Makeup Stamps that I love. There's a Inventory Reduction sale going on over at PMS so you should check it out!
As usual, my photo skill is not great. :( I thought this quote went well with the music dp (which I think is Echo Park, but I'm not sure). The pink paper is Bazzill "Pinkini" and there is a little texture so I knew the sentiment wouldn't be as clear as it would be on plain paper but I think it's okay. The sweet little roses are Recollections that I picked up at Michaels and the black grosgrain ribbon is from my ribbon box.

Hope you are having a great week and thanks so much for stopping by.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry.....

I've been involved with theatre all of my teenage and adult life and know the lyrics to LOTS of Broadway shows. I'll bet lots of you know what this blog title is from. :) When I read "chicks or ducks" as this week's challenge at Raise the Bar that song immediately started going through my head. And I had a stamp with little chicks on it! This stamp is very special to me because it's called Carma. Yep, it's named after me and it can be found at Paper Makeup Stamps. It's one of the Beautiful Day Fairies. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska and we'd get baby chicks in the spring. They were so cute but they grew up to be just plain white hens. And then my chore was to gather up the eggs every day. It wasn't my favorite job but I loved the baby chicks.

This image is colored with copics. I used a kraft base and dp from DCWV's The Green Stack. The layout is last week's sketch from The Sweet Stop. The button flowers are Sassafras.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Color Throwdown #136

I just got My Minds Eye Stella and Rose "Mabel" paper pad last weekend so I couldn't resist using them for the Color Throwdown. :) There are four from this collection on this card. It turned out bright and cheery and just makes me smile. I found this layout in a stack of sample sketches I've collected so I have no idea where it came from originally. I apologize that I can't provide credit except to say that it isn't me! This adorable image is one of the March releases at Paper Makeup Stamps and his name is Danny. It seems like I've been using a lot of just sentiments recently or paper piecing images (I do love to paper piece!) so I thought it was time to get back to my copics. I think there's space on here for a simple sentiment and I may add something before it gets sent......when I decide where it's going :)

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

JUGS #78

I'm having fun with my new "stuff" I got last weekend. This card is for the JUGS #78 challenge. It's a sketch challenge this week. I really need to work on my photo skills as they are sadly lacking. My dh and dd are both excellent photographers but it sure hasn't rubbed off on me!

The papers are from My Minds Eye Stella and Rose "Hattie" paper pad. The sentiment is a Paper Makeup Stamp. I chose this one because the spiral pattern on the paper reminded me of the painting, Starry Starry Night. I colored in the stars on the sentiment and highlighted 'all' with a copic (Y 17) and added some stickles to the stars. I used a lacey circle for the backing of the sentiment and added some Studio 18 rhinestones to the corner.

Happy Wednesday!! Thanks for stopping by!

A Quilt for my sister

My sister is a fabulous quilter. I don't know how many she has made....over 30 I think and they are all really, really, really gorgeous. I do lots of needlecrafts, but quilting is not one of them, and I am always amazed at her skill in finding just the right colors and patterns to go together. Last week I saw a quilt block card on Ginger's blog (Scrappin' Story) and just had to try one of my own. My sister's birthday is this week (oops, the card will be late.....as usual). The quilt block pattern I used is one of the many, many variations of a star block.

I think this one is most often called a starflower. The squares are 3/4" for a 3 square inch block. My papers are My Mind's Eye Hazel papers backed with Passionate Bazzill cardstock. It's more "coral" in real life that it appears in the photo. I was going for more coral/orange to play in the My Time Made Easy Pretty Palette Color Challenge. but it's not as "orangey" as it should be. I guess I'll post it to that challenge anyway and hope they'll forgive me. My image is Leigh from Paper Makeup Stamps. I always think of April showers with Leigh so she seemed appropriate for an April birthday. I'm also connecting to the challenge over at Raise the Bar for April Showers this week. I paper pieced her dress with the same paper as the outer border on the quilt block and colored the rest of her with copics. I added some stickles to her wings and to the "splash".

Hope spring has come to wherever you are! As always, thanks for stopping by.

New "Stuff"

This weekend I discovered a place about an hour away from me that has all the papers that I could only order before! Sadly, this is a busy week and I don't know how much time I'm going to be able to find to craft but here is some of my new "stuff".
These patterned papers are Basic Grey's Life of the Party. The sentiment is one of my favorite Paper Makeup Stamps and can be found here. Each half of a 7" zipper is centered with a little star brad.

Challenges: Color Throwdown
Sketch Saturday

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Zippers, zippers, everywhere

I saw the challenge yesterday on the Just Us Girls blog to create a flower from an old zipper. (There's a link to a tutorial!) Well, I used to sew A LOT. I made most of my girls clothes when they were little, most of mine in my younger days, and once made a suit for my hubby. I taught Costume Design for 8 years at the same university where my hubby still teaches Scenic design in the Theatre and Dance department and have made some pretty unusual garments over the years. Consequently, I am no stranger to zippers and a zipper flower intrigued me.

I haven't sewn much recently except for my grandsons' Halloween costumes but I knew I had to have a stash of old unused zippers somewhere.....but where? I finally unearthed them late last night in an old sewing box in the bottom of a closet! I won't admit to how many I found but only 3 had silver metal teeth and I chose to use the yellow one. Here's how it turned out. I think you may be seeing more of these from me. :) I posted a card last week that I made for a friend undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her pancreas. The surgery went very well, they are very hopeful that they got all of the tumor and she is recovering well from the surgery. The surgery was last Tuesday and she's hoping to be released from the hospital late this week. The scripture quoted on this card says it all.
The "details":
Scripture quote - Paper Makeup Stamps
Patterned papers - A day at the Beach paper pad by The Paper Studio
Nesties - Circle, Peony, and Labels Ten
Opaline pearls by Basic Grey
Quote was smudged with VersaMagic chalk ink in Sea Breeze

Have a great week and thanks so much for stopping by!

Sending a little encouragement

Everyone can use a little encouragement now and then, right? Today my card has a great Paper Makeup Stamps quote/poem that you can find here. I've always liked it but I think this may be the first time it's ever seen ink. Shame on me! I used the Mojo Monday 183 sketch and flipped it on it's side.
I paper pieced the butterfly with the same paper as the backing of the sentiment. Here's a closer photo of the sentiment so you can see it better (and it shows the sparkle in the ribbon more. :)


Here are the "deets":

Papers: All four patterned papers are from the Mirabelle paper pack by The Paper Studio
Stamps: "I'll just be me" wordart and Danni's Flutterbies by Paper Makeup Stamps
Nesties: Circle, Lacey Circle, and Labels Fifteen
Ribbon: Ivory Sparkle Organdy Ribbon by The Ribbon Boutique

I have a charming little 5 1/2 month old guest all day today while her mommy and daddy are working so my crafting time might be pretty limited. Hopefully I'll have something new for next week.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Providing a little "lift".

I was quite pleased with the way this card turned out if I do say so myself. The image and the sentiment is from Paper Makeup Stamps Oo La La stamp set. This is actually the simplest of the 3 corsets in the set and one of the 7 sentiments.


The layout is the Sketch Saturday #147 and I'm loving this layout. I'll be using it again I'm sure. I paper pieced the corset and colored the stripes and ruffles in with copics. The "buttons" are teeny little rhinestones that match the larger ones on the purple panel. The colors are the CR84FN Color Challenge. I really need to work on my photography skills as you can barely see the ivory lace under the purple grosgrain ribbon.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

The JUGS Challenge with PMS

Paper Makeup Stamps is sponsoring the Just Us Girls Challenge this week! Now most of you who read my blog know that I'm PMS owner-Katie's mom. I've only been stamping as long as PMS has been in existence and almost the only stamps I own are Paper Makeup stamps. So what to choose?!?!?I looked through my papers for the challenge colors and all these yellow suns made me smile. Hmm, there's still lots of stamp choices of Beautiful Day Fairies that would be happy being out in the sunshine but I decided to go to one of my favorite sets, Sailing By. I paper pieced the smallest of the two sailboats and the lighthouse. I created a landscape of sorts with paper and added the sentiment. It's one of 5 sentiments that come with this set. The sun, 'water', and lighthouse papers came from a day at the Beach paper pad by The Paper Studio. The pink and 'sand' papers were in my scrap drawer.

This card is for a friend who is having surgery tomorrow for what we are hoping is very early stage pancreatic cancer. I'm praying for "smooth sailing" for her recovery.

Hope your week goes smoothly and thanks for stopping by!

Let's Swing!

I had a great afternoon in my craft room making cards. My craft room now looks like a mini tornado went through but clean up can always come tomorrow, right? Challenge #58 this week at Raising the Bar was an inspiration challenge based on this adorable little image:

I immediately thought of one of the Beautiful Day Fairies at Paper Makeup Stamps called "Greg". You can find him here. I used the colors in the Color Throwdown #133. I colored Greg with Copic markers. I used a Curved Rectangle nestie to cut him out, distressed the edges with Adirondack eggplant ink and mounted it on eggplant cardstock.The quote is also from PMS. So are you ready for spring? Let's swing!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Feeling a little blue?

I'm not blue/sad, just working with blue for the Copic Creations Challenge. My image today is Sally Sheep from Paper Makeup Stamps. Isn't she sweet? She can be found here. Copics used here were B32, B34, B39, and B21 for her dress and hat; W00, W1, W4, for her face, ears, hands, and feet; and E41 and E30 for her fleece.


I used the Get Sketchy #78 layout (and I'm almost too late to enter that one!) My dp is from the Max and Whiskers Basic Grey paper pad. My sentiment is from the Little Moments Sentiment Set at PMS.

Enjoy every moment of your day and thanks for stopping by!

A Tree for Earth Day

Here it is the middle of March already! Hubby and I had a wonderful spring break last week in NYC. We saw 4 Broadway shows and also saw our own college senior Theatre students perform in their NY Showcase for NYC agents and casting directors. It was a little rainy and not as warm as I hoped, but being in "the city" for a few days is always fun. I don't think I'd like living there but we have good friends who do and they wouldn't live any where else!

Since I was away from home all last week, I didn't get any St. Patrick's Day cards done. So, my family is getting store bought cards this year. (Shame on me!) My husband's grandmother was born in Northern Ireland and came to the US as a young girl. Our oldest daughter is married to an Irishman (their name is O'Keefe) and my mom has some Irish heritage too. Erin Go Bragh!

I'm submitting my card for today to two challenges. Crazy 4 Challenges is to use a tree in honor of Earth Day. My tree is the Willow Tree from Paper Makeup Stamps. I stamped it with Rich Cocoa Memento ink on green cardstock. The more patterned paper is from the Kioshi paper pad by Basic Grey, the background paper is an individual sheet I picked up at Hobby Lobby. The base is Bazzill Rain Forest.

My layout follows the Mojo Monday 182 sketch. The purple organdy ribbon is from my ribbon stash (actually left from dd's wedding decorations 5 1/2 years ago!). Opaline pearls from Basic Grey finish the top corner. Enjoy your St. Patty's Day and remember to go green and preserve our earth for the next generation!

Thanks for stopping by!