Zinnia it Wonderful? And a tip.......

Okay....bad pun or bad play on words.  And, actually, I am not even sure that this flower is a zinnia but cut me some slack okay? - titles aren't my strong suit!  We are in the middle of an intense heat wave where I live and so I am  finally able to get inside and craft without feeling too guilty about it.  I am also on the downside of busy life for a few weeks and so that also gives me a chance to craft.  August will heat up with all three of my children moving from one place to another and so we have lots of weekends that will be spent moving kids and furniture.  Sheesh.....don't these kids know that mom and dad are 50 and 52?  Hmmmm, I am trying to think what age is the age that we parents are too old to do heavy lifting and moving.  My husband told the kids that we would help move but we would not help clean......Seriously????  -  the cleaning is the easy part!

 Yesterday I did a challenge.....and had a lot of fun with that card.  Today I finally got out my copics and colored.  Yep, I colored like a preschooler and boy oh boy was it fun.  And sooooo satisfying!  I haven't been able to find much time to color an image for a looooong time and so I went for a favorite theme of mine.....flowers and butterflies.  I also am still experimenting with stretching my dies.  I love a square card and have many square images like the one I used today but not many square dies.....at least the square dies I do have are never big enough for most of my images.  BUT! I do have lots of fancy rectangular dies.....and it took me the longest time and seeing many examples online before I put it together that other people were retrofitting their rectangular dies to fit a square card.  Duh!  So, it is a little more futsy than just cutting a die and placing it on the card but in the long run I like the results and more importantly I like that I can use my dies for more than one look!  So far I have only used rectangles but think that I can also use other shaped dies for this purpose.  My "mind's eye" doesn't see the possibilities right away so it takes me a bit to configure the dies....almost like working with a puzzle.

Today's card uses a large rectangular die from Spellbinders.  I cut it down quite a bit to get the square size that I wanted.  Then, I matched up the edging design and glued them down.  It is really hard to see the "seam" on this die but even so I decided to cover the seam with the ribbon.  While I am a "right hand corner ribbon" sort of gal this vertical placement is new for me and I like it!  The stamp image is a Northwoods Rubber Stamp Co. image which is one of my favie companies and the inside sentiment it from JustRite Stamps.  I am going to enter it over at Die Cut Diva's July Challenge.  It is Floral this month.  If you haven't visited that blog site I urge you to do so.  The ladies there are just the sweetest and they always have wonderful die tips.

I love the femininity of this card!  So fun to make after all the orange/black/white graduation cards!  I feel like it is "Springtime" in my cardmaking mind after the zillions of similar grad cards!

And here is the inside....not too fancy but just a little somethin'/somethin' to dress up the interior.

Now I am including here a past card that shows the die in all its full rectangular glory....changing it from a rectangle to a square really makes the die look different and fresh to my eyes ;-D

I also am going to include two other past cards that I made....grad cards that use the same design but I changed it up from a rectangle to a square by cutting down the die.  Can you tell I love this new option with my supplies?  Oh well, I am excited to discover something new...especially something new that doesn't cost me any moola!

Does anyone else have a cool new tip that they have discovered?

Thank you for stopping by today and thank you for wading/slogging/ trudging through my loooong post!  I hope that you all are having a good day and that you are enjoying your summer as well!

Be well,
Sheila

What's the Buzz.....

Well, that is the name of the challenge that I am entering this card into.....however the challenge really has to do with using the colors of black, white and yellow more so than a "bee theme."  And, seriously, I really tried to come up with a bee theme....tried pretty darn hard but couldn't deliver!  Then I remembered this lovely Silhouette stamp set that I had from JustRite Stamps and although I have never inked it up before this card it suddenly became the "perfect" image to do in these colors.  Yellow is a color that I don't often work with...if fact I believe I have only begun using yellow very recently so I am not too confident making a card with it.  But I thought this "cameo" or 'silhouette" image could be accented very nicely with yellow and besides I had this marvelous yellow and black plaid ribbon that I got on clearance ages ago that would be perfect for embellishing on this challenge!  I stamped, embossed and die cut and fussy cut the cameo and surrounding adornment.  Then I continued to use various Spellbinder dies and embossing folders for the rest of the card.  I popped different layers up on foam tape.  I colored the bling with a yellow Copic marker and also colored some pale "butter" colored paper roses with the same Copic to match the yellow cardstock.  I am entering this card into the My Sheri Crafts Challenge #114 "What's the Buzz".

I also finished off the inside with a sentiment stamp set from JustRite Stamps.  I love how it looks like it just belongs with cameo card!  I did mess up though by putting the border on the bottom of the sentiment portion...oh well! That's why it's called handmade!

Thanks for stopping by today!  I will fill my blogging buds in on what is/has been happening in my life in another post.  I just felt the need, the absolute need to sit down and craft today before I went stark raving mad!  Anyone else out there ever get those moments?  I hope I am not the only one!  Take care all!

Be well,

Sheila

Two Cards and A Challenge!

Hello...long time no post!  It has been busy here what with grad parties and the life I live in general.  We have just come back from a long weekend away at "Hnilifest"....my husband's family's yearly get together.  It was fun but at the end of a super crazy busy month so I am very glad to get the month of June behind me and hopefully, have a slower summer for the month of July.  In August, all three of our kids move as well as are oldest daughter's boyfriend so we have 4 moves on the horizen and that will mean busy, busy weekends again!

I have been making grad cards by the bushel lately and and have been following roughly the same design.  I just LOVE this particular design.  It goes together quite easily and to my eyes it looks very nice and neat when completed.  I have made it so often now that I can do it by memory for the most part with just changes to the overall color palette.  I really like the "JustRite Stamps" brand of stamps for this type of card and purpose.....and so many of the stamps coordinate with Spellbinder's dies so it is a win/win for me with regards to pulling off a nice card without too many ripped up versions along the way!  I have decided that I love to craft but that my artisitic and creative abilities are somewhat lacking and so it is nice to have supplies that cater to those deficiencies as well as bypassing them!

I have two cards to share with you today.....I actually would have had 4 but forgot to photograph the other two and have already mailed them out.  Bummer because one of them was just gorgeous with a color palette of pale peach, pink, yellow and white.....such a soft but "refreshing" summer color scheme!

The first card that I am going to share is a birthday card that I have made for one of my very best friends.  She has a early July birthday and so I decided to incorporate a bit of a red/white and blue color scheme as well as pops of yellow for highlight.  I also did something different with the inside.  I bought this large....LARGE heart in a discount bin last winter after Valentine's Day but when I got home I felt it was actually too large to work with the way I wanted too.  But lately, I have been putting it inside my cards for a soft background.   I really like the way it finishes off the card and it is a small print therefore making it easy to write over.  I am planning to enter this card into the My Shari Crafts Challenge #113 "Happy Birthday America" which is to make a birthday card for someone.

My second card is one that I made for a girl that Corm has gone to school with since they were in 4 year kindergarten together.  I have liked this kid from the first day and am so happy that they have stayed in the same group of friends all of these years!  

Thank you for stopping by today and I hope that your July is off to a great start!  We are having cooler than normal temps here but it is just lovely out....no rain, warmish breezes and SUN!

Be well,
Sheila

Stretching My Dies!

Today I have some graduation cards and a Father Day's card to share.  I always have lots of graduation cards to make but am really feeling that this year will be my last heavy year.  Since Corm graduated this year we have soooooo many of his friends to give cards to but next year will be less and the year after that even less.  So, while I am getting sick of the black/orange/white color combos I think I will miss these cards when I don't need to make them anymore.  Oftentimes, for the girls that I know really, really well I just do their cards in their favorite color combinations.  These two graduation cards have the same die cuts but in the case of the 5" x 5" card I cut the dies down to fit the card and then just put a ribbon over the "seam"  I love this idea.  I can't remember where I saw it....it might have been the JustRite Stampers site but it would have been a 1000 years before I thought of it on my own!  It allows me to really stretch dies....a rectangle also becomes a "square" when needed.  This way I can frame out my various images the way I want to!  I am going to submit the boy's graduation card and the Father's Day card to the Die Cut Diva's men/boys challenge for the month of June.

The first card is for one of my son's friends who has been around since kindergarden and the next card is for a girl.    You can  see how I used the ribbon to cover the seam that was created when I cut the two different dies down to fit a square.  Easy peasy!

This last card is the card that I made for my husband for Father's day.  This was a craaaazy weekend and Father's day ended prematurely with Joe having to leave for India.  I decided that instead of trying to quickly fit a card into the already busy day I would instead slip it into his luggage for him to come across later ;-D

On this card I cut the white colored mat and "stretched" it to fit over the patterned mat. Then I fit the putty colored mat....which is exactly the same size as the white mat over the white mat to cover the break in white mat and also to keep the layers more uniform.  I like it although the colors look soooo blah here on the blog.  In real life they actually look really smart together!

Well, I am off to purchase tires for my son's car....yuck.  I absolutely hate doing chores like this but I will say that we have been getting our tires lately from Costco and they are a DREAM to work with and the prices are so great!  And, my Costco is across from a Kohl's and a Micheal's sooooo I always have something to do while I am waiting for the tires to be mounted!

Take care and enjoy your day,

Be well,
Sheila

Sending Sunshine and asking a question.

what a lovely prospect.....to be able to "send sunshine" to another!  Actually, that is probably what happens whenever we send snail mail.  At least for me it is like a ray of sunshine peeping out when I see a personal card or letter waiting for me inside my mailbox ;-D

It is the time of graduation parties in my area of the world and we have many, many to go to.  My own son's was Memorial Day weekend and before it we (dad, mom and his sister's) coached him on how to interact with a large group of people...how to go up and greet everyone and thank them for coming....how to make small talk for a 6 hour party etc....and he did very well.  In fact, people called or came up to either myself or my husband over the next few days to remark on Corm's demeanor and how he talked with everyone.  And that makes me very happy as that is how my husband and I were raised.  In fact, had he went off and spent the whole time with his friends my mom in heaven would have reached down and thumped me upside the head for not doing a better job of parenting. And, now his ordered thank you cards have arrived....(yes they are ordered after I saw that he will be writing closed to 80 at this point!)  But one party that we really had to go to (no way not to) the mother invited everybody with a FB message and now has gone on line to send out a casual "Thanks for coming to anyone who has come and thanks for any gifts" message.  Literally, that is it.  And has also put out there the question is it okay to send an e-thanks rather than a handwritten one.  Because she doesn't want to buy the stamps.  This makes me so sad.  The idea that thanking people is a burden.  I really hope she is an exception and not the new normal.  Thoughts?

Now, on to my cards. I have a several people in my life who aren't feeling so great lately and the weather here in SE Wisconsin has not been the cheeriest so I thought that I would send out sunny wishes both in message and in card form!  I had this specific window card idea when I saw the CASology challenge....something yellow but now that I am done with the cards I am not sure that they both are completely  CAS after all!  So, while I won't be submitting both of them as planned I will be submitting the first, non filigreed card.  And, of course, I will be sending them out and hoping they bring a smile to the recipients!

The first card that I am showing you and the one that I will be submitting to CASology was done with the scraps of the filigree card.  It is smaller by an inch on both top and bottom.  For this window, instead of "hanging a curtain" I decided to put in "glass" by way of vellum.  I like both details and will def use them again.  I am not sure that this will be a complete CAS card but I am going to enter it anyway!  I think, even though there are more "elements" to the card the amount of white space along with the fresh colors and clean lines make it CAS to me!  So, this one goes to the CASology challenge YEllOW for week 48!

The second one is a "filigree" card and that is a type of card that I have been wanting to try.  Basically, it is a card with filigree edges all around it and that also goes for the card's "back" page.  I like how this turned out and the filigree assembly wasn't that hard to do at all!  The rest of the card is pretty self explanatory....although I will point out that I stamped and embossed the message after I dry embossed the white brick panel and thought it was super easy to do. The card got a little more cluttered than I originally intended in the lower corner due to ablob of GA that fell and threatened to pull apart the filigree when removed.  So.....I will make this card again but will be hyper vigilient about drippy GA bottles so I can have a "cleaner" look!

Thank you so much for stopping by and as life slowly gets back to normal here I hope to be crafting more, blogging more and visiting more!  

Be well,

Sheila

Here a card, there a card....

My youngest son graduated this past Sunday and I am surprised at how emotional a day/time it was for me.  I always knew that there would be a surge of emotions when Corm, our last child, graduated but wasn't prepared for the tidal wave that hit!  I am just starting to dig out from the the grad party, the events leading to graduation and the ceremony itself.  And, while I have been making a few cards for several kids whose party's we are invited to I have been so busy that I forget to photograph quite of few creations.  Oh well!  I do have two that I did photograph and those I can share with you.  The first is for a friend that I am looooong past due in getting a card out to.  She sent me a wonderfully sweet little pick me up card when I was just heading into this whole graduating time frame a few weeks ago and I still haven't gotten back to her.  I thought I would make her a card and get it sent but days turned into weeks and here I am quite delinquent in letting her know how much her kindness meant to me!  I have been using some of my JustRite Stamps lately and working them my different dies....and totally loving the results.  I still enjoy coloring but these type of cards go together soooo quickly that they are the perfect type of card to turn to when I need something and don't have the latitude to color.  I really had fun with these colors....they are somewhat of a new pairing for me put I love the results and think I am going to shop for more of this yellow-y/gold color!

I also have the card that I made for my son for his graduation.  He is going to attend UW-Madison....home of Bucky the Badger! and I wanted to use the colors of Wisconsin.  I totally LOVE how this turned out!  I used JustRite stamps again along with some of their complimentary dies and my Spellbinder dies and really  played around with the design until I found what I liked best.  I did ffigure out that I could cut apart a die as long as the cut areas were covered so that is what I did with both cards....in the "lovely" card the scalloped pink mat is cut and pulled out to the edge of the white die and the Wisconsin card has the same thing done with the black scalloped mat.  This way I was able to get a little bit of the contrasting color in.

Then, this is inside the top flap of the card.  I wanted to finish it off with a little bit more of Bucky....which is simply a sticker that is matted on a black die cut square.  The Bucky on the front of the card is mounted on white card stock and then fussy cut out.

Thank you for stopping by.  I hope to have my house more in order soon (man I hope it is soon!) and also to put together some of the graduation photos to share.  It was a wonderful time and now on to the next stage of life!

Be well,
Sheila

Look What I Made!

A baby's shadowbox to hang on the nursery wall! Yesterday I had the joy of attending my nieces baby shower.  She is due in just over a month and is having her second little boy.  Her husband is HUGE into motorcycles and so somehow I wanted to incorporate a motorcycle into the baby gift.  While we did purchase an adorable bassinet for them I wanted to try and make a personal gift after I found out that friends had taken this gift bag I made them and deconstructed it to frame and hang in their granddaughters room.  I had cut the squares, distressed the edges and embossed them to mimic a quilt and then added the little baby's name in rub on letters.   So, for my nieces my little baby boy I thought what about if I took the bags basic concept but modified it to work inside a shadow box.....hmmm.

I was able to get a nice white 12" by 12" shadow box from Target.  And since I wanted to incorporate motorcycles (not a real "baby - like" motif) and still have the hanging look appropriate for a nursery I decided to go with very soft, baby boy colors.  I then went to Hobby Lobby to look for a pre made motorcycle embellishment that I could work with.  I found the one below that also had a black motorcycle jacket, riding gloves and a black helmet in the package.  The gas tank was a glossy red....all very tough and manly looking and not too little boyish!  I bought the $3.99 package anyways and carefully peeled the gas tank off of the cycle body.  I then adhered some matching paper to the removed tank, carefully cut around it and then covered it with GA.  When dry, I then re-glued it to the body of the motorcycle.  I was going to to do the same with the the jacket, helmet and gloves and then I remembered this  Tim Holtz "gear" die that I got several years ago on clearance at a store that was going out of business.  I have never used it before!  So, I glued silver foil to regular card stock and then ran it thru the die machine and voila!...some homemade embellies!  I added buttons instead of the gear centers to "soften and babify" the hard metal look.  Then, I searched thru my stash, remembering that somewhere I had some hardware themed brads that might work for creating a "frame" for the focal image.  So, then I began to assemble the project....first a brown mat that was 12x12" followed by a blue 11x11" mat followed by an white, embossed 10x10" mat.  On top of the white I used my home made "quilt" and then used three Grande Spellbinder squares to draw the eye in more. For the personalised smallest square I first printed the baby's first and middle name on cardstock.  I then used a versamark pen to emboss the black before centering the Spellbinder square die and cutting.  Then it was a simple matter of of layering two more dies and putting the motorcycle on.  I messed up a bit on the quilt....it is not as even as I would like and for my next one I will have that better arranged!  I also think I needed to drop the largest gear down a bit but before I knew it it was stuck and I couldn't go back and rearrange it  with out ripping the underlying "quilt".    All in all I am very tickled with how this turned out!  It was my first attempt after the bag and I am actually really surprised at how easy and how QUICK this came together.  While the name "Vincent Norton" is somewhat unusual for a baby name it has alot of meaning for the parents as both Vincent and Norton are the names of vintage British motorcycles that the baby's father restores in his free time.  I am not sure the dad appreciates the polka dotted gas tank but oh well!   I had to make it match!  

 I am entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes challenge as well as over at the Die Cut Divas Guys and Boys June Challenge.  And, actually, I just saw the Moxie Fab The Gift Challange and since this is a gift I made I decided to enter it over there too!  I hope that is okay!

Thank you so much for stopping by.  My life should be settling into a more liveable routine now that the BIG graduation party for my son is over  More on that in another post.  Now he just has finals and the actual ceremony but that is no work for his mom!

Be well,
Sheila