Dino-mite Cake!

Just a quick NSR post of the dinosaur fossil cake I made for John’s birthday.  I saw a similar one on Cake Central and wanted to try to replicate it.  It’s not perfect but I’m a card maker, not a cake maker so I don’t think it is half bad!  And, with Nutella Buttercream filling, it makes it super delicious!

I’ll be back later this week with a card for you!  Thanks for stopping in today!

Happy Birthday, John!

Today is my SO’s 35th birthday!  I have the next 3 or so months of teasing him until I’m as old as he is!  :)

Still being a dinosaur loving kid on the inside, I made him this waterfall card.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made one of these and thought it would be cute.  The dinosaurs are from the Stampendous set Prehistoric Party and I colored them with OMS and my Prismacolor pencils.  I’ve been giving those things a workout lately (after being neglected for sooooo long!) – have you noticed?

The cute dinosaur paper is from 3 Bugs and is called Dino-Mite!  Both the paper and stamp set are on sale now!

The rest of the card is pretty obvious.  I used SU cardstock:  More Mustard, Really Rust, Old Olive, Not Quite Navy and Baja Breeze.  The eyelets and ribbon are from my SU stash in More Mustard.  The inks for the sentiments are Palette Prussian Blue and Burnt Sienna.

Thanks for stopping by this weekend.  Hope you’re enjoying it!

Five Minute Friday Chicky

I am loving these Chick Ears chickies!!!  I used another PCP Sketch for this Five Minute Friday card.

I used a Barely Banana base, with Lavender Lace for my Square Scalloped Nesties.  The strips of DP are the B side of the same paper I used earlier in the week, Easter Egg and Stripes.

The chick is stamped in Palette Noir, colored with OMS and Prismacolor pencils and gone over with my clear Spica pen.  The tone on tone Easter in the background was stamped with Palette Sunflower and the Celebrate (from All Occasions Messages) was stamped in Palette Iris.  And lastly, the reversible pink/light pink ribbon and rhinestones finish off this quick project.

Have a great weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!!

Spellbinders Update

I got an email from Spellbinders saying that:

“The CHA Introductions are now shipping.  All open orders should be completely filled by the end of the first week of April.
Your response to these dies has been overwhelming! We are happy that production has now arrived and thrilled that we are able to fill all open orders. "

So…they’re a little behind where they said they’d be in the last update (they originally said middle of March) but it is good to know they are on their way.  I do have PIERCEABILITIES in stock already (and more coming) and they are AWESOME!  I’m so glad they resolved the quality issues that were present in the first batch.

I’ll be back on Friday, if not sooner!  Thanks for stopping by!

Another Chicky card!

Another Chick Ears card!  This time, instead of sparkling him up with a Spica pen, I used my Stardust Stickles on the chick and the eggs.  He is just SO cute…I can’t take it!!

And, I like how the Stickles tie into the sparkle from the glittery, embossed Easter Egg and Stripes paper (on sale now!).

He is stamped on PTI white in Palette Noir and colored with OMS and Prismacolor pencils with Barely Banana and Certainly Celery for my cardstock colors.  I used my SU! scalloped border punch and a little piece of the white glimmer ribbon to finish off this cutie pie.

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great week!!

Happy Birthday Loretta!!!

Today is one of my DT member’s birthday so please head over to Loretta’s blog and wish her a very happy day!

She is one of the women on this planet that amazes me…she homeschools 4 kiddos, fosters doggies who need love and lots of care and still manages to create beautiful cards and has a full head of hair.  Well, truth be told she has less hair now than she did because her and one of her daughters donated their hair to Locks For Love not too long ago. 

Seriously, I’m tired just typing this all out.  I am in awe and am so honored to have her on my DT.

So, yeah…she’s awesome and I’d love for you to all shower her with some kind words.

Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!

Blog Candy! Oops! I forgot!

I forgot to mention there are two IHP gift certificates up for grabs from two DT members.  Be sure to stop by Tracy’s blog (ends Sunday night) and Sarah’s blog for your chance to enter (ends Wednesday). 

And, Kendra is running the Sketch Challenge on her blog.  You have until Tuesday to enter that.

Scroll down for today’s card in case you missed it!

Easter Chick

I love Calendar Chicks from Stampendous.  I think they are completely adorable and when I saw the Chick Ears set I knew I had to have it. 

I used PCP’s Sketch Library and picked our sketch SK121308 to make this card. 

I love the glittery, embossed Easter Egg and Stripes paper (on sale now!) and thought it went perfectly with this little guy balancing his eggs.  He is stamped on PTI white in Palette Noir and colored with OMS and Prismacolor pencils.

The little Easter tag was made with my Small Oval Nesties and Scalloped Nesties (also on sale!).  The greeting is stamped in Palette Chartreuse.

All the colored cardstock is SU! : Regal Rose, Barely Banana and Green Galore.  It is hard to see in the picture but the chick and parts of the eggs are finished off with my clear Spica pen.  Did you know that Spicas are so sparkly because the actually contain little pieces of finely ground glass?  Yeah, wow.

Thanks for stopping by!  I’m sure I’ll have more cute little chickies in the coming days.  They are just way too cute!

Flower Soft Five Minute Friday

Hello!  Happy Friday!  I’ve added lots of new goodies to the store including Flower Soft and accessories, including stamps!  Yay! 

So, for today’s Five Minute Friday post (doesn’t include drying time!), even though I don’t have a sister, I made this card.  The image with the pot is a Card Topper from the Garden Corners collection and the “Sister” is from the Baskets and Butterflies Sentiments.  These toppers make such quick and easy cards and look so pretty when you add the Flower Soft.

The base of the card is SU! So Saffron and there is a layer of Mellow Moss in there.  I put a little trim of the Venise Lace across the top.

I used some Summer Mix Flower Soft for the pot and the upper right corner and some Pale Green Flower Soft for the very bottom.  I partially cut out the butterflies on the Sister to pop them up a bit and then cut out one entirely from the sheet to put above the flower pot.  I finished them off with a touch of Crystal Stickles. 

A few tips for Flower Soft…first, you want to use their glue, not because the glue itself is particularly special but because the bottle it comes in has a very fine tip and you only need little dabs of it.  Larger bottles have larger tips and will gush and make a huge mess.  And really, for $2.50, it is worth it.  You can refill it from your larger bottle.  *wink*

Next, you’ll want to have some wide mouth bowl to dump your pot in and a funnel to get it back in the pot.  The pots are nice size but Flower Soft gets very compacted and you really need to fluff it up to get the best effect, which means you need a larger container that you can run your hands through.  At the demo at CHA they had disposable bowls for each color. 

And lastly, a little goes a long way.  Don’t overdo the amount you put on there or it will lose the subtle, pretty effect it has. 

Let me know if you have any questions.  Post them here and I’ll answer them for you!

Thanks for stopping by!  Enjoy your weekend!!

IHP DT Sketch Challenge

Today, the i {heart} papers DT was challenged by Kendra (who is hosting a contest – so be sure to pop over there!)to do a sketch challenge. Be sure to stop by everyone's blogs to see their take on this sketch.

Amber Kroening	Loretta Lock
Carolyn Mustopa	Lori Tecler
Cathleen Torina	Meredith Socha
Deb Felts	Sarah Anderson
Dee Jackson	Tracy Schultz
Kendra Wietstock

For my take on this sketch I used a base of SU! Tempting Turquoise (one of my most unloved colors) and designer paper from the SEI Bridgeport line. I cut out the giant flower and butterfly from Springside and then Stickled the center of the flower with Turquoise and Platinum. The ribbon is the Magenta Glimmer ribbon that I just twisted for some extra texture. I love the sparkle of the ribbon and it is a dead on match for PTI Raspberry Fizz, as is the Claret Palette ink that I used to stamp the sentiment from Chelsea Sentiments.

Thanks for stopping by. I’m still trying to find my mojo…I’ll be back later in the week for another project for you!

PS – If the formatting looks weird it is because I’m trying to use Windows Live as my blog editor and I’m still trying to figure it out!

Five Minute Friday

First, thank you so much for all of your kind words and cards on the loss of Bandit. We're still pretty heartbroken and it hasn't been an easy week since last Friday.

Of course you knew my first card back would be of Bandit. These are thank you cards I made for the vet and vet tech. They are super simple and really don't need any explanation. Sometimes the creation of the card takes a backseat to the picture itself. Simple and to the point.

Thanks to all of you for sticking by me and checking in even though I haven't been creating this week. Your posts on PCP, your emails and PMs through SCS have been so uplifting. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I've fallen behind on my blog reading so I haven't been leaving comments or even looking at blogs, so forgive me! I hope to be fully back in the swing of things soon.

In the meantime, Pierceabilities are up (they only shipped part of my shipment so there are more coming if they sell out) as well as the entire new My Mind's Eye line of Penny Lane. Gorgeous die cut papers among other papers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sad day...

Friday was a very sad day in our house. At 10:30 in the morning, we said good-bye to our beloved Bandit. It was just a few short weeks ago I made this post about him turning 12.

His absence is profound. He was an immense force - both in physical stature and personality wise. He was quite a character and really had a great personality. He never let you forget he was in the room and was hard to overlook, weighing in at 130 pounds. His void is huge, both from an emotional standpoint and looking around seeing his (large) beds and feeding station gone. Those things leave open spaces that are a constant reminder he's gone.

I'm grateful for the life he had. It wasn't an easy one and I'm immensely glad the end was relatively quick - an ordeal lasting just about 12 hours.

Here's the brief summary. Late Thursday night he had a massive seizure. He had never seized before and this one was particularly fierce and long. Somehow John and I managed to lift all 130 lbs of him, still seizing, into the back of the car and rush him to the emergency vet clinic. But, about an hour had already passed. They were excellent and we left him in their care overnight.

He survived the night, continuing to have smaller seizures and then Friday morning they discharged him so we could take him to our regular vet. She is out on maternity leave, but she came in especially for us, newborn in tow, because Bandit was one of her favorite (most difficult) patients. I'm still in disbelief she did this.

After we cried our way through the options, which were few, we knew it was time to let him go.

We sat with him, petting him, talking to him and assuring him...and then he passed, with his most loved ones around him.

This is extremely difficult...if you read my post from a few weeks ago you will understand a bit better. I am most certainly missing a piece of my heart.

I'll be back next week. I need some time...I may try to scrapbook some pictures if I can muster through it.

As the song written for him says - His name is Bandit!




...and I loved him very, very much.

TGIF!!!

My goodness...what a week. I've been receiving CHA orders like crazy (be sure to check the NEW section on the website!) and have just been SO busy this week.

Anyway, that's why I've been so quiet this week. I did steal some time to come up with this card for Five Minute Friday. I realized although I've been creating I haven't been doing much stamping, so I remedied that this week!

The base is SU! Bashful Blue and the layers are SU! Chocolate Chip and Blush Blossom. I pulled the Blush from the DP (the baskside of the SEI Love Birds paper). It all came together pretty quickly. I stamped the bird three times - once on the white layer, once on a scrap of white so I could cut out the body and then once on scrap in Palette Seascape blue so I could have blue little wings. The most time consuming part was cutting out the little heart wings and gluing them back on the bird. I also used my blender pen direct to the Seascape pad to color the hearts on the branch and then went over them with my Clear Spica pen.

Everything else is pretty straight forward. I used my SU! scallop border punch for the DP and finished it off with a few accent pearls and then lastly, I added the Brown Leafy Vine ribbon. Isn't it just the perfect touch?

The branch and bird are from Whoo Loves You and the greeting and little flowerin the background is from All Occassions Messages. I love that messages set. It's got a bunch of really good sayings and some cutey little shapes and things to use. Make sure you check it out!

I think this weekend is going to involve some eBaying of unloved SU! stamps...they're taking up way too much room and not being loved nearly as much as they deserve. But, in between listings I hope to be able to do some crafting!

Thanks for stopping in!