Running With Scissors…

You know how it is when you buy a new car and all of a sudden you notice that car on the road all over the place, when you’d never noticed it before?  Well, I’d never heard of blog candy before I started my own blog and then I noticed it all over the place!  It looks like so much fun!  I just want to say “thank you for visiting”, but I guess we can call this a Grand Opening Giveaway.  Okay, so I’m having my Grand Opening a month after the fact…

I went shopping for you at our LSS.  I was hoping to find some cool 6×6 paper packs, but they didn’t have any (small town).  Soooooo…I cut twenty 6×6 pieces of my own Kaleidoscope paper.  I hardly ever see it used but it’s great double sided paper.  Lots of fun, vibrant colors!  Try it, you’ll like it!  I’ve also included some matching Kaleidoscope accessories, WeR Memory Keepers eyelets, one yard each of two different ribbons, and some little clippie things that match the papers.

I don’t know if I’m having trouble with folks leaving comments, but I guess this is a good way to find out.  Just leave a comment on this post, in answer to the question below, and I’ll do a drawing using this random number selector on Monday night, April 2nd, at 8:00 pm PST.   Your odds might be pretty good (maybe)!

The burning question is:  When do you do most of your gallery/blog viewing?  Is it when the kids are at school and the hubby’s at work?  Sneaking a peek at your desk at work?  Evenings?  Weekends?  I’m an evening and weekend gal, myself.  So, tell me, what kind of gal/guy are you?  Here’s a picture of the loot:

I hope you have time to play!  I’ll have a winner posted by Tuesday morning!

These are my cards for the 2007 Christmas Card Challenge, hosted by Alliesmem here on Splitcoaststampers.

Would you believe I stressed over getting these cards done?  That’s not the way it’s supposed to work!  The idea is to get your Christmas cards done a little at a time early in the year so you won’t have to stress over them.  When I do my cards for this challenge I figure out my design and cut my pieces at home, then pack everything off to work with me every day so I can stamp and assemble on my breaks.  I thought I had plenty of time…I was just moseying along, enjoying myself.  When I got down to the last week of the month things went awry:

Visitors stopped by to spend my break with me (that’s nice, though).

Meetings were scheduled during my break time (the nerve!).

The workload was too heavy for me to allow myself a break (bummer).

Our multipurpose break room was in use for work-related activities (imagine!)

A potluck was going on for a coworker’s last day (goodbye, Angel).

The potluck is the reason there are only eight cards in this photo, rather than the requisite ten.  On Friday the break room table was overflowing with goodies, but I managed to clear enough space to lay some paper towels down and create a little work area.  Well, when I was finished with my too-short break and putting my things away I realized that two of my cards had bean dip on them!  How in the heck did that happen?  I was so careful!  Nevertheless, they’re done now, even the bean dip cards.

A lot of the details are probably hard to see in the photo, but in addition to the Weather or Not mittens and Warm Words I used the Pine Bough wheel and the little snow sprinkles from Festive Favorites.  Papers are Handsome Hunter, Bordering Blue, Whisper White and some background paper I’ve had for ages.  Thanks for looking!  On to other things now…

I’m thinking ahead to some April birthdays and I’d like to send pretty cards that are also cheerful.  Actually, I sat down in my stamp room just wanting to make a pretty card but I thought I might as well give it a specific purpose.  So often I stamp just for the heck of it and then think later, “now why didn’t I make Jane’s birthday card?  This one won’t work; it’s too somber…”.  Does that happen to you?  I don’t know how many times I’ve sorted through the gazillion cards I’ve made, looking for a suitable fit and come up empty handed.

This card started out with the Bodacious wheeled background that was languishing in my scrap drawer, scrapped right along with the original idea–too dark, I thought.  I wheeled with Bravo Burgundy on Rose Red, then wheeled off (sort of like stamped off) and wheeled again for a little more shadowy depth.  Covering most of it up with those colorful flowers and popping it with the Regal Rose and black mats took care of the “too dark” issue.  The flowers were all stamped in Versamark and dabbed with Stampin’ Pastels (Poppin’ Pastels), with only the most subtle shading done on the largest flower.  I then sprayed with matte sealer and cut out the one flower and its leaves.  I punched the panels one layer at a time with the double rectangle punch so I could tie on the Rose Pink ribbon accent.  Linen is stamped in black.  I always think I need to use dainty little images with Small Sayings, but I like the way this tiny greeting looks, nestled all itty bitty there in the curve of the petals and leaves.

Thanks for coming to visit!  If you’ve read this far you’re now reading that I’ve got some blog candy coming up sometime this weekend–for no reason other than to say I’m glad you stopped by.  You’ve all been wonderfully supportive during these early days of my journey into blogging.  Thank you so much!  Happy Friday!

I made this card after I took the daffodil picture that’s in my previous post, although it doesn’t hold a candle to its inspiration.  The daffodil is from the retired Perfect Petals set.  When I was trying to decide on a background stamp I thought to take a look at Well Worn Words.  Well, gosh, it was just what I needed!  I watercolored  the daffodil on watercolor paper.  The background is stamped in Always Artichoke on Very Vanilla and I used Moss, Banana and Apricot for my other papers.  The lace is plain old Mrs. Wright’s hem tape.  You can get it wherever sewing notions are sold.  This color is called Apricot.

Here’s a picture of Mrs. Wright and her hem tape:

I have flowers planted in every conceivable nook and cranny in my garden.  These are tucked beneath the purple smoke tree.  It’s bare in the winter and early spring, which allows enough sun to reach through and encourage the bulbs to bloom.  Later, its bushy branches hide the dying bulb foliage which feeds the bulbs for next year’s blooms.

I’ve decided to switch to “pretty” cards this week. I used to make a lot of this kind of card, but more and more these days the fun and whimsical cards have been coming out of me.  I’m not sure why that is…I’ve been wanting to get back in this groove for quite a while, but it just wasn’t happening.  I decided to look to Lily Kate–Basic Grey, that is–for guidance.  Now…when I thought about this Lily Kate paper, a gift from cwilliams (thank you, Candy), and my new Lily Kate ribbon from Jacksonbelle Embellishments I pictured something a lot more opulent.  I just couldn’t wait to get my hands on that ribbon collection!  There’s crushed velvet, polka dots, frilly trim, tapestry trim, velvet rick rack and more.  Velvet rick rack!  Come on!  And then I wound up with this quiet little thing in soft pastels and one little strip of unassuming twill.  I guess that’s just what I was in the mood for.

This little bird from Garden Collage seemed to be a perfect fit for the paper.  I love this image so much and I’ve hardly used it.  I have far too many stamps (did I really say that?)!  I colored it with pastel chalks (Stampin’ Pastels) and then sprayed it with a matte sealer.  After I distressed and curled the edges I sponged them with a little Creamy Caramel and then adhered that piece to a Pretty in Pink mat.  I stamped a strip of Barely Banana with So Saffron Weathered and a Certainly Celery Hero Arts script.  I pieced these together, added some piercing and stitched through the piercing with linen thread.  Rather than tuck the twill around the edges, I trimmed it to fit, frayed the ends a bit and adhered it with Sticky Strip.  I mounted the main image on dimensional tape and added the brads to balance out the design somewhat–I wanted a lot of the paper and “sky” to show.  The sentiment is from Warmest Regards.

About those brads…these are So Saffron.  I think the So Saffron brads look more like Barely Banana and vice versa.  In fact, this distinction is so remarkable that I switched them in the containers.   Just an interesting tidbit.  Maybe your’s are different?

Okay, this is the last of the Doodle cards for a while.  Doodle This, on the right, is just something I wanted to finish up from the weekend.  Doodle That is a pick-me-up card for a friend who’s recuperating from surgery.  I used Kaleidoscope paper again (I have lots of it).  The Doodle This flowers are watercolored on Shimmery White.  The leaves are the petals from the big flower in the set.  You might have to look closely to see the Very Punny frog resting in the blooms.   I used the key tag punch for the Small Sayings sentiment.  The card on the left has Linen stamped on the Amethyst panel and shows up more IRL.   That panel is raised on mounting tape and the small tag punched flower image is placed inside the larger tag punched opening, so it’s all on the front of the card.  The scallops were made with the slit punch, which I tend to want to call the scallop punch these days.  I love my punches!  Other cardstock colors are Lovely Lilac and Marigold Morning.  I had a lot of fun making all these Doodle cards!  These are definitely “feel good” sets.  I think I’m ready to move on to a different look now.  Hmmmm…what shall that be?  Thanks for visiting!  I hope you’ve got a great weekend coming up!

I’m such a novice blogger!  I jumped into this with both feet, but very little knowledge and consequently I did something the other day that fouled up the works.  I thought that once I “published” a post I could delete the photo from my files because, after all, it was just a duplicate, right?  Wrong!  Some of you reported to me that you couldn’t see the thumbnails in the Post-It tutorial, others couldn’t see the “Buddies” picture.  Some folks could see everything just fine.  Hmmmmm…what might be wrong?  I thought and I stewed and I fretted and I mulled this over until I realized that the common denominator with these pictures was that I had deleted them from my files–the only pictures I had deleted.  I went to my wise and patient blogging friends at Splitcoaststampers (thank you, Jenn and Kurtis!) who explained it to me in terms that, surprisingly, I could understand.  No more deleting of files will take place on this blog!

Soooooo…if you viewed those pictures before they were deleted you’d still be able to see them until you cleared your internet cookies.  Sure enough, I cleared my cookies and–poof!–they were gone!  If you were viewing those posts for the first time after I deleted the files, you were just seeing a box with a red x in it.  So sorry!  I hurried home at lunch time today and re-uploaded all the pictures so you’ll have better luck if you’d like to try again.  Thanks for sticking with me!  I’ll get better at this, I promise!

Another Doodle This card with the Kaleidoscope paper, watercolored on Shimmery White.  This time I stood the leaf spray upright, which took up a lot of room so I bumped it out of the panel to allow more of the background paper to show.  I hand-doodled the flower stem and sponged a little Mustard on the edges of the Saffron card base.  Those cute little flower brads are from the Paper Wishes catalog.  You can view their site online here, but the best thing to do is sign up for the catalog–it’s so fun to shop through!

A wee pause to appreciate the forsythia blooming outside my patio door.