Fruity Friday!

This adorable orange stamp is from One Smart Cookie - teeny and adorable. I punched holes and put little scraps of the decorative paper I used on the bottom of the card behind the holes for a little color.

The orange is colored with markers and then accented with Crystal Effects.

So stinking cute that little orange!!

Then I did these jumbo paper clips with little citrus toppers that are made with the Rock n Roll technique and then accented with a glitter pen. I used 3M foam tape to hold them on. The stamp set is Tart & Tangy, which I WON at Leadership!!

More later - I'm trying to get ready for this weekend's camps so that's why I've been so quiet! But I have lots of fun new products I'll be playng with this weekend, plus an exciting announcement!

Different Type of Baby Card

I thought these new Cuttlebug dies were cute and I was staring at them wondering what to do when I thought they might make a cute baby card.

The dots are with the white gel pen, and the larger dots are with a pencil eraser.

Now I have a question - you know how the cuttlebug plates warp? well they warped these dies!! I can't straighten them back out.. So they are not cutting evenly.

Has anyone else had this happen? Other than that, I love these new dies!

A very dignified bunny

All Easter bunnies don't have to be cute, you know. Some can be stamped with Opalite Golden Mist Ink in black cardstock, accented with a Krylon Gold Leafing pen and sat upon Basic Grey paper that is also gold leafed.

The bunny world is made up of all sorts, believe me.

It's official!!

Understand Blue readers are truly the nicest people in the universe. Everyone else can quit trying! You probably already knew this about yourselves, but I'd like to present you with a little more evidence. Exhibit A - a BEAUTIFUL anniversary card from my friend Lynne in Canada - look at this!!! AND WHY IN THE WORLD HAVE I NEVER CUTTLEBUGGED AN ENVELOPE?? This is adorable! And I do not hold my inability to get my hands on the dotted embossing folder against dear sweet Lynne!

Exhibit B - a tea/chocolate packet made by my friend Vicki who lives right down the road. She writes "Just wanted you to know I read the blog and copy you like crazy. Loved this one so much I had to make one for you." It's all blue down to even the beautiful TEA!! I love it! Check out the teeny blue flower brads!

Exhibit C - also from Vicki, this adorable stitched bunny card!!! She has this incredible sewing machine that she creates amazing embroidered creations with. It boggles my mind - I have never been able to sew, much less make anything that looks like this! A little early Easter Bunny for all of you today!!

Thank you so much - it really made my day to open my mailbox and see these fabulous gifts from you.

Today's first card from me is a birthday card I made with Just Celebrate. That's the set the teeny elephant is in too. When I got these, I cut the images away from the greetings so that I wasn't bound to those pairings. I almost always do that. I'm picky about my greetings. In this case, I kind of felt like the cake says it all and I didn't want any words on the front of the card. I will stamp Happy Birthday on the inside.

I stamped it with Brilliance Graphite Black, heat set it and colored it with Copic Sketch Markers. I used a Sakura Gellly Roll Clear Star glitter pen to bling up the frosting and the plate. I cuttlebugged the right side of the card and used SU! paper on the left, with that yummy satin ribbon in between.

I'm hoping to produce something blue & gold today.

Yeah she is...

I made her in a combo challenge - I took Beate's challenge and rotated it 90 degrees, and also used this weekend's Inspiration Challenge (keyword IC116 on SCS) to find the cheery colors for this little hottie!!

She's a chick from Stampendous' Chick Family set, and is adorned with Stampin' Up! dsp and Cool Carribean Cardstock and candy striped ribbon. I have absolutely no idea where I got these self adhesive rhinestones. The greeting is from Starving Artistamps.

Enjoy.

BLUE-m where you're planted

Tee hee.. I've been so red and orange lately I thought I would get back to my blue roots with this little ditty.

What do you think? I've been dying to play with this flower from Bloomin' Beautiful, and you all know how I feel about bees!! So step one was to completely mess up my stamp room so that I had my customary one square inch to work in. Without that, it's really hard to know what you want to create!! :) So then I found the perfect Basic Grey 6x6 square - I mean look at this paper! The scroll work, the brighter white square that was CALLING OUT for my flower. Beautiful. Then I stamped my flower with Brilliance Graphite Black ink and heat set it for color fastness. Then I colored it with my Copics and cut it out carefully. Then I stamped the "blossom" definition in Basic Black directly on the paper background, along with the bee. Then I took a scrap of actual SU Basic Grey CS that was in the precarious mound of stuff on my desk and "hmmed" at it for a while. I curled it like you would ribbon in my bone folder until it got soft and distressed. I tore it into little strips and mounted it on the front of the card, with little scraps of it glued to the longer strip. Then I glued my flower down with Martha's gel glue (the stem was too narrow for my SNAIL adhesive). Then I stamped just "blossom" on the grey strip, and accented it with a paintbrush and my Opalite ink pad for iridescence. I did that to the flower too. I added Crystal Effects to my bee wings, a little strip of rhinestones and a blue brad.

Hope you're having a good Saturday. I walked 9 miles and I am sleeeeeepy. Need a nap.

I want to add DIY to my DirecTV package. I don't have it and Martha has an ALL CRAFT SHOW! I had no idea!!

They probably have it bundled with the all frog or chess and checkers channel or something weird. Bread crust TV maybe. I wish we could buy channels one by one...

Tell me what you're up to this weekend.

Sometimes, when you're looking OUT the window..

A teeny polka dotted elephant runs by and NO ONE EVER BELIEVES YOU!! Now I know what Mulder and Scully felt like ALL THE TIME.



But I captured my teeny pachyderm on film, so there's NO DENYING THIS - THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!!



How about the itsy bitsy rhinestone on that flower?

Sass city.

Enjoy.

Step 2 - Peek out the window you just opened

I can't resist the window challenge!!! Here's my second entry! I love this little Doodle Factory "dood" - Yapples. He's so excited that he succeeded in being the cutest monster on my blog tonight that he is ASTONISHED!!




I used Stampin' Up!'s Full of Life for the greeting, and Brilliant Blue Designer Series Paper. The rhinestone brad is from the Pretties kit, and the punch I used is the 3/4" circle punch. Yapples is popped up with dimensionals and colored with Copics.





I took Kristina Werner's advice for positioning my image in the windows I created. First, I punched two 3/4" circles from white cardstock and adhered them to my DSP panel to get them perfectly aligned. Then I just positioned my punch around these circles and punched through my DSP for perfect windows. I then traced those circles onto the white cardstock and used them to line up Yapples' astonished eyeballs.

Hope you enjoy him!

Open a New Window

(Are you humming that song now??) heh heh. I love getting songs stuck in your head.

This is for today's Ways to Use it Challenge, which focuses on windows - however you feel like defining it. Here's the link to the challenge forum on SCS. Join in!

The card base is real red, with a pumpkin pie layer underneath a strip of that sassy new DSP from the mini.

The star from In the Stars is stamped in Real Red on Whisper White, and then punched out with the large star punch. Same with the teeny star. Then I just stuck on a large square vellum tag and added some of that GORGEOUS candy striped ribbon. I like simple!

I might have to enter more than one for this challenge today. What a fun one.

Teach, so you can learn..

It's one of "The Martha Rules." I'm listening to that book on my Ipod and it's very good. This one is rule #4. And you probably already know this, but the best way to really learn something is to teach it. Which is why I love teaching stamping - I love learning.

So I am teaching you something I discovered today.

I was searching for a design for a masculine card, and I settled on this pear from Infinite Goodness. I love all pear stamps, and this sketchy (in the best sense of the word!) style is really beautiful and good for all sorts of styles, I think.

I decided to emboss it and then color it with Copics. If you're not familiar with these first hand, I know from experience that they seem very mysterious to the uninitiated. But if I had to sum them up, I would describe them as a COMBO of a marker and a blender. Because of what they're made of, you are blending and coloring at the same time. So going over and over and over what you've colored actually blends and softens it, instead of making it more intense and harsher, as would a regular marker. Does that make sense?

However, this results in a saturated paper, which you dont' realize until you turn it over to adhere what you've done. And if you're me, and it's today, when you flip it over, you see something really totally beautiful and different from what you've done on the front. A work of art all by itself. (I actually like it better than my finished card) Notice how most of the yellow seeped through to the back after I blended it heavily - almost none of it is left on the front. So I'm showing you that, plus the finished card, with the "front" side out. But don't be afraid to teach yourself something new and unexpected by accident!!! I sure did that today.

Hope your day was happy & fun.

PS - my car is fixed and Spottie cat is better every day.

Mmmmmmmmm - Minty Dark Chocolate Goodness

So I got some of the little chocolates C&Y use and I made myself another book, this time with I think the prettiest of the Starving Artistamps/Doodle Factory Grace Girls. Am I biased as a brunette towards this little dark haired lady? That's for me to know and you to find out!!!! Were her green eyes and red accents inspired by my beloved Snow White? NONE-YA!! ;)

I used black craft ink & clear embossing powder to make her on white CS, and then cut her out. I colored her with a Real Red Stampin' Write Marker, a Green Galore Stampin' Write Marker and the Y21 Buttercup Yellow Copic and a Copic Colorless Blender. The saying is embossed in white, and the base of the treat is textured Real Red Cardstock with the shockingly lovely patterned paper from the Scarlet's Letter collection by Basic Grey. It's finished with the slit punch and some black grosgrain ribbon. Now that all the stamping blahbityblah is done, you should run to Walgreens and get the Ghirardelli Intense Dark Mint Bliss 60% Cacao squares! Yummy.

But a few notes on what I'll call the Blue List - a list of my favorite things. I do not like Ghirardelli Chocolate. I also do not like Godiva. (Pausing while members of the audience gasp) I find the texture of both of these to be inferior to Dove and Cadbury chocolate. I have some sort of throwback Irish farmgirl DNA in me, and everything I eat has to have a dairy feel to it. Dove and Cadbury chocolates are so smooth and buttery and melty that they quiet the farmgirl noise in my brain. Ghirardelli and Godiva have a brittle/waxy quality that offends my chocolate sensibilities. However, that being said, I still do try things, especially dark chocolate, combined with either orange (my favorite), mint or cherry. And these dark chocolate mint bliss squares have a taste I really really like. So they won't make the Blue List, but they're pretty darn good.

Orange U Even a Little Curious?

What's inside this lovely, tart & tangy treat? I have to tell you a story about this. Many many years ago - 7 to be exact, I had three hostess clubs as a new demonstrator. In one of these clubs, I had two customers named Chriss & Yvonne, who had children who were in the same school as my niece and nephew, so they were introduced to my club by my SIL, Karen. Both became great friends, and both became talented demonstrators. And both of them did something I have never done - became very successful selling stamped cards and gifts. I stamped with Chriss last week, and she was working on a project for a customer who purchases her cards and gifts. This project was a little thing I had demonstrated in my club all those years ago - a little teabag book. Since that club, Chriss and Yvonne have made and sold literally thousands of these little books at craft fairs and to individuals, with one SIGNIFICANT improvement over my book - they substituted CHOCOLATE for tea. Brilliance!! The ones Chriss was working on were stunning - in black and white, with polka dotted paper and an image from Together Forever on the front. Maybe she will post one in her gallery and put a comment with a link *wink, snort!! - No pressure Chriss!!* so you can see. Yvonne & Chriss use the little individually wrapped Ghirardelli squares, but find anything you like for this easy project. Here are the deets. Start with a piece of 6x6 patterned paper. (I used Basic Grey here - the 6 x 6 pads are perfect) Score at 2.75 from each end to make your 1/2" spine in the center. Then, fold it the opposite direction almost in half, leaving yourself about a 1/8" or so flap to glue down. Glue this down - I used the Martha Stewart all purpose Gel adhesive shown in the photo - it has a very fine tip and dries quickly. Then cut yourself a cover out of another piece of cardstock or patterned paper - 7.5" x 3.5", scored at 3.5" from each end to give yourself a spine. I also cut a teeny strip of coordinating paper for the outside of the spine. Then I used my piercing tool to poke two holes through the cardstock cover (cuttlebugged) for brads. These will go all the way through the little sleeve that holds the tea or the chocolate. I SNAIL'ed my sleeve to the cardstock before punching the holes. Then I used the slit punch to punch holes for ribbon for the front and decorated with the Tart & Tangy set orange, the greeting from One Smart Cookie and various other layers you can see. You can't see that the orange is decorated with Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder, but it is! :)

I filled mine with two Wild Sweet Orange Teabags from Tazo because they're beautiful and I don't have any chocolate.

Sometimes the simplest projects you did years ago are wild and wonderful and new to someone else, so don't forget them!

PS - I think Spot removed my distributor cap while I was sleeping because she likes all the attention, because now I've got car trouble! Cats are tricky! :-D

Have a good day.

WOW - Mahalo!!

Spotty & I got a card from sweet, sweet Judie in Hawaii!!!! All the way from Hawaii! Judie clearly went out and purchased some patterned paper that was made just for my kitty - notice the words "queen", "lazy" and "nap"!!! It also has a Kliban cat on it - which I LOVE!!! The oval is dry embossed on shimmery white, and hand colored. And there are colored rain dots!! I really want some of these.. Thanks Judie - you're an angel. Spotty wanted a pic with her first piece of mail from the middle of the deep blue sea, so here she is! She's just been chilling today, except for a quick trip to the emergency vet today to get the little shunt pulled out of her arm, which she's very happy about. We'll see how the next few days go.

She can only walk a few steps at this point.

Did you know it's actually February 21st?

On my blog it is. Because I'm ahead on my card a day project! :) Buying myself some cushion for a busy spell.

When I saw them demo One Smart Cookie at Leadership I almost cried at the intense cuteness of these teeny images.

I went for simple & green for this one. I punched out some cardstock with the large tag punch, Hermafixed it to the outside of my card and then dry embossed it with my light table from the inside to make a little hollowed out space for the smaller tag punch to fit in with my cucumber on it. I added Crystal Effects to my cuke and a row of self adhesive rhinestones. I stamped the greeting and the cuke in basic black with my Stampin' Spot. I love clean simple cards. That is when I'm not loving layered detailed cards ! :)

I have lots more I want to stamp today but it's 70 & sunny and after two sleepless nights I need some sunshine, so this Understand Blue CEO (tee hee) is going to go for a walk and hopefully get a nap before I switch cat sitting duties with the DH again. She is sleeping now.

I'm going to share with you Martha Stewart's definition of a "Good Thing" for your crafting:

1. Good things are "small" ideas that are quick, clever,

simple and smart.

2. They make you say, "I wish I knew that before!

3. Good things come with clear, concise instructions and

beautiful photographs

4. Good things don't take a lot of time, or a lot of money

5. Once you learn them, you won't forget them

6. You feel good using good things

7. Good things only get better with time

Find Yourself on Some Basic Grey..

You might be wondering to yourself about my problem with Basic Grey patterned paper. I blame all of it on Chriss, who posted all these beautiful samples with BG paper. Then BG had a sale on the little 6x6 pads, which I really love. Except for some templates, most of the work I do with patterned paper is totally accomodated with a 6x6 sheet. Now, part of the deep addiction I have to this paper means that those little 6x6 pads sat unused for a long time because the paper was TOO beautiful to use. I know - stamping dementia started when I was 15. But I am starting to come out of that and use it. But now I use it on EVERYTHING. There's no balance here. So here's one of the Grace Girls on some of this sassy paper. I pulled them all out last night in the search for the purr-fect colors, but I think all of these came from the "recess" collection. Stamp is from Starving Artistamps/Doodle Factory. I stamped her in black craft ink and embossed with clear EP. Then I colored her with Prismacolor Pencils and blended them with a Blender Pen. I then stamped a ghostly version of her in Sahara Sand on the yellow layer and popped the main image up with Dimensionals. I stamped the "Find Yourself" greeting on another piece of Basic Grey and then felt like a complete idiot for a few minutes. You know why? Because I think I'm the last person in the world to realize that the Hodgepodge hardware is sized EXACTLY to fit our tag punch!!! No more hand cutting things to fit in this frame!!! This is so amazingly easy!! This is the new hardware kit from the SU Occasions Mini. Then I used the corner ticket punch, some ribbon and some stick on rhinestones to finish her off.

Enjoy.

L.

Inspired

I love this stamp. This is the poppy stamp from the new Starving Artistamps Large Silhouette Flowers. If you want some good news - here are two pieces. From now until February 21st, any full sheet of stamps (These flowers are a full sheet) you purchase will earn you a free sheet of cling mount!! On top of that, enter "lydfie" as your coupon code, and you will also get a 10% discount.

I used "blue magic" again after stamping in white craft ink - just with Poppy Red (who knew?) and Crimson Red Prismacolor pencils. I really like leaving the white edge. Hope you do too.

The background paper is Basic Grey, and a little self adhesive black "pearl" to finish it off. TFL!

Have a good Saturday. I was up all night so I need a nap.

L.

Inspiration Challenge

Here's my entry for the Fan Club inspiration challenge over at SCS.

I used Fabulous Flowers and the Blue Magic technique (IRL blk magic but I like blue better) with Prismacolor pencils for the flower. Pink, cream and violet. I colored around the edges of the flower in Navy to make it pop off the cardstock a little. Then I layered it on Regal Rose, and onto some beautiful handmade Navy paper.

PS - my kitty had a stroke last night, so things are not going well. She's at the vet. Pray for us.

Limited Supply Challenge

I stamped with my friend Chriss, a fellow demo, and we decided we haven't done the SCS challenges enough and needed to get back on the train! So I'm stretched out in my private dining car on that train, a frosty Manhattan with three cherries in hand, enjoying my view of the Continental Divide while some British butler types ask me if I have everything I need..

WHOA - what just happened?? I'm back.

Here's my card. Lots of punches, with Blush Blossom, Groovy Guava and Chocolate Chip CS, layered onto a Close to Cocoa card front. I stamped the greeting in Chocolate Chip with the Sale a Bration set - So Many Scallops, inked with a chocolate chip marker.

Then I added some self adhesive rhinestone accents from Marcella K. I'm not super happy with this product, because half of the ones I lifted off the sheet left the adhesive behind so they were a waste. If anyone has better self adhesive rhinestones, I'd really like to hear what brand they are.

Now, let's talk product. I don't subscribe to the newspaper and haven't in a very long time. Very long story I'll tell you sometime. So I don't get the Michael's coupons and that always hacked me off. Well they finally got smart and they used the zip code info they collect at checkout to find who was coming to the store and THEY MAILED ME THE COUPONS!!! I was so excited, because I really wanted a big set of the PrismaColor pencils but they're too expensive. So tonight on my way home from dinner I stopped and got the 72 color set - 72 colors (!!!!!) for 50% off!! They are normally $90 and I got them for $45!! Yeehaw!! Do you know there are 8 shades of blue?!?!?!

And things just get better and better. I stop on my way home and check the mail and look what I got!!!! This beautiful card with one of my FAVORITE sets from SU! EVER!!! This is from my friend Lynne in Canada - a wonderful woman who finds the most fun websites and sends me the sweetest notes. Thanks Lynne - it's beautiful and is up on my wall. Sweet lady. Look - she even stamped the envelope!!

I can't wait to play tomorrow. It's supposed to be rainy and gross so I'm ready to stamp!

:) TFL! TTFN!!

Michael Jordan for President!!

That would solve everything!! :) I love Michael Jordan. And I'm thinking about him because now I have that "I Believe I Can Fly" song stuck in my head. Been singing it the whole time I made this card!!





This gorgeous fishy is a Starving Artistamps creation - from Birds& Fish. He has a fun Aztec look to me. I used the Black Magic technique to create him, and then decided that Black Magic is more fun with glitter! Then I cut him out and popped him up above the other two. I think I'm going to have a Black Magic stamp camp in March, except I think I'm gonna call it Blue Magic! I'm in love with the technique and have been doing it all day! Really neat possibilities with this. So stay tuned for the camp.

Want to hear a confession? OF COURSE YOU DO!! I love the handmade paper behind the black panel so much that I couldn't bear to stick down a whole square of it that you couldn't see, so I cut skinny little strips of it to layer with. It's so completely beautiful.

Hope you're having a great Friday. I will probably post a lot this weekend!

:)

Valentine's Day - Texas Style

For those of you a shade north of here, let me let you in on this afternoon. I went out back with the DH & Spotty for a little debrief on the day, and we heard the ice cream truck go by. It plays "It's a Small World After All." That's what February is like here.. Heaven!

I know I've been a tad quiet, but I've been very busy. Lots of people to meet, things to do, and yes, Valentine gifts to make!! My husband took these to work today. they are a combination of inspirations. I call that COMBINSPIRATION. First, I fell in love with Kristina Werner's valentine color combo of Blush Blossom, Groovy Guava and Chocolate Chip. Then, I saw my beloved Martha Stewart and her instructions for heart "flowers". Finally, I thought to myself, "Self - what candy would match this combinspiration?" And I realized it was Jelly Bellies, which are sold separated by color in bulk at my neighborhood grocery store. I purchased Sour Peach, A&W Cream Soda, Caramel Corn and Toasted Marshmallow flavors and layered them for a combination parfait/"potting soil" for my flowers. I made 18 of these for my husband's office.

So so cute. The vases were 50 cents & a buck at Michael's. If I hadn't waited so long, I could have probably gotten 18 of the same kind, but that place looked like a war zone yesterday.

So what you do is get 22 gauge wire, assemble your heart flower - Martha used 5 - 8 hearts, I used 4 - and punch a hole in the center. Poke the wire through, and on the top side, add a pearl or bead, and make a little loop of wire on top of it so it doesn't come off. Then underneath the flower, add a pearl or bead, and zig zag the wire to keep the bead tight under the wire. Then just pop it into a vase full of beans!! Oh - to make the hearts, I used the Forever in my Heart set. I stamped the polka dotty heart in Groovy Guava and the outline "Love" in Chocolate Chip on Blush Blossom. Then I just stamped the Love stamp on DSP to give me a template to cut. Fun.

Now - check out this ADORABLE Valentine from Shanna Culver!!! How sweet is this? This sweet lady lives in Dallas and remembered me & Spottie today! Thanks Shanna - so beautiful and sweet of you!! Come to AUSTIN!! :)

Then, I also got a wonderful valentiney card from sweet Rhonda Bean, who also has well wishes for Spottie!!

My picture doesn't do her coloring or her Iridescent Ice embossing on the heart justice, but this is an adorable card. I have this set, so I might ahve to pull it out this weekend.

Big hugs to all of you great ladies who email me and send me cards and post comments - you really add something very special to my life and I'm so grateful.

Now on to the big news of the night.

No, it's not the Obama/Clinton fistfight, or the Huckabee/McCain soapy twister match for the nomination - nope - it's the fact that I got TWO stampin' magazines today - my beloved Stampin' Success and Crafts 'n Things - AND I HAVEN'T EVEN OPENED EITHER ONE OF THEM YET AND LOST IS ON TONIGHT AND I SPENT A BUNCH OF TIME MAKING BACON FOR BLTS AND NOW WHAT THE HECK AM I GONNA DO?

Last but not least, I need you to check out Jenn's site today. Not only for her take on V-day, which is sweet, OR FOR THE INCREDIBLE TREATS SHE DESCRIBES WITH ORDERING INSTRUCTIONS, (seriously - dark chocolate malt balls??? I wonder if I could fit one of those PLUS one of my peanut butter malt balls in my mouth at the same time? I'm willing to try!!) ((Totally calling that number she gave)) but for her paper quilting post just prior to the V-day post. It's wonderful.

An extremely sweet lady with whom I recently crossed paths inspired me today to do my normal Saturday morning house straightening/laundry folding so that my whole weekend is free for stamping!!!!! Which is a good thing because I've got all these Grace Girls and Occasions mini sets calling my name.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Valentine's Day.

See ya tomorrow!!

LOSTSTAMPINGMAGAZINESLOSTLOSTLOSTSTAMPINGMAGAZINESLOST

Hey Cupcake

Okay -

I'm sitting in a Starbucks this AM with the trusty Dell Laptop,

DIGRESSION - WTH? WHY ARE LAPTOPS SO HEAVY? I WANT THAT MAC ONE THAT FITS IN AN INTEROFFICE ENVELOPE PLEASE!!! I TOTALLY HAVE A LAPTOP RELATED INJURY. UNACCEPTABLE.

And Sam from my regular Starbucks had recommended their stunningly beautiful vanilla cupcakes to me the other day. Since they were out of the yogurt granola parfait thingy, a cupcake seemed like the natural choice.

OMG it was so tasty!! I'm not a huge fan of frosting at all - I really just like plain cake. But this frosting was really pretty good and THE CAKE PART OF IT WAS CRAZYYYYYYYY GREAT! I could eat a dozen cupcake stumps!! (Seinfeld, anyone?)

So I thought I'd share. I'm on a lifelong journey to find the world's best cupcake. This week sometime I'm going to go here (Or maybe here or here )and see what that's all about. There are two businesses in Austin AT LEAST that operate out of Airstreams. The other is this crepe place that gets such rave reviews that you can't get into the place. It moves around. Cool, eh?

Hillary and Obama Fistfight on YOUTUBE!!!

Well, not really. But I'm not feeling super creative with my post title, so I needed to get your attention. That would be funny right? Obama definitely has a reach advantage, but we felines are wily, so who knows what tricks old Hill would pull out of her bag.

Anyway, now that you're paying attention, check out the 40 Valentines I made today. I stole Juls716's adorable matchbook idea - she made these matchbooks and stuck little 3X3 notes with SAB rubons in them. So so cute. So I was making 40 of them for a friend's mom's group today and that's why I'm too pooped to come up with my own headline and not one ripped from today's fake headlines that I made up after eating some cookies.

The Matchbooks are very easy to make - 8.5" X 3.5, scored at 1". You do the second fold manually, after you've stapled the bottom. You do if you're me, anyway. Then get to work decorating a bunch of 3x3 notes. I only put one note in each matchbook because of the quantity, and then I put them in a cello bag with Sour Strawberry Jelly Bellies, which are a divine shade of pink. HEB sells Jelly Bellies by color, which makes stamping projects soooooo much easier!!

Next, check out this amazing card my upline sent me!!! PAMELITA - UR AMAZING!! (Her real name is Pam, but we like Pamelita Bonita, or Spam, or Stampin' Mama. But I digress. LOOK AT THIS CARD!!

Hope you're having a fabulous night. I'm going to head over to Kristina's blog and check out Make a Card Monday!

L.

Finally - an OCCASION persuasion

I have finally waded through a few things I really wanted to do and I'm ready for the occasions mini! So here's my first effort. This stamp set is so freaking beautiful. If you do graphic design work and use stock vector images, this type of image is very popular in collages because it looks so stunning layered. Sometimes they call it "grunge" but there's nothing grungy about it!!

I stamped it first in white craft, then in black craft ink, using the stamp-a-ma-jig to line them up so that the white is just a shadow behind the black (the photo is not really doing this justice, but it's there!). I used my rectangle punch to create a channel for the black grosgrain ribbon and absolutely couldn't resist a flower slider!! The butterflies around the edge are in white craft ink.

This is a 5x5 card. I hope you like it.

Don't forget - I like to mail out my cards. If you're not on my list already, please sign up for my card-a-day mailing list.

SWINEY BEAUTY

Okay - I swear this is the last one today, but seriously, it's so hard to do when you've got a roomful of new stamps. And by roomful, I MEAN MY ROOM IS FULL.



Anyway, I think that these little piggies cried out for this greeting from Sassy Suzie.

My piggies are Doodle Factory Valentines images from Starving Artistamps.


How do you like my weird diagonal ribbon that I used our punch for? It was the only way I could really figure out how to make the greeting fit without ruining my piggies.

I drew the frames around my swine with a Stampin' Write Marker and a white gel pen.

I stamped them in black craft, embossed with Clear EP and colored left swine with pink pastels and hearts with white pastels. Fun!!!



L8R. Gonna re-watch a little LOST. Hey - I heard the writer's strike might be over - we might actually get to see the OFFICE before we all die of old age!! Pray!




Oh wait! So many of you have emailed me about Spotty, so an update on my kitty. I went back to have her BUN levels checked (apparently this is NOT a measurement of how big her butt is, but something about her kidney function) and it had barely improved. From 72 to 70 in a two week period with a unit of fluid under her skin every other day. So they told me I had to do it every day which almost made me throw up. However, miraculously, the very next day, all the sudden she became much more peaceful during this torture. I don't know what happened except me praying for it to get better. I also have to shove 1/4 Pepcid down her twice a day, plus this disgusting liquid vitamin. So I torture her 4x a day. Just to show you I'm not exaggerating about this awful needle - here's a pic of it on my stamping mat, with a little piece of sticky strip to show you both the width and length.



I'm also attaching a pic of her little IV bag getup we have attached to the outside of the bathroom door. We both have to get on the floor outside the bathroom, my DH tries to hold her, and I stick this terrible needle in her neck, release the stopper on the IV tube, and we wait and hope she doesn't struggle and poke herself.

Anyway, you guys are so sweet. Hopefully the daily stuff will help her. She hardly eats at all, which really makes me worry. I got her to eat Hawaiian bread and yogurt today but she needs a lot more than that.






Thanks for asking!! Pray for Spotty!



PS - Jenn - I laughed out loud, so the other Nahrstadts are just are a little too dry!!

Happy Stamping, everyone. Remember - tomorrow is a day of rest!

:)