I'm the Featured Crafter

Seriously - I am - it's Featured Crafter Friday at Andrea Hays' site - Crafts on a Whim, and she featured me today - YAY! This woman is so crazy talented - look at all of her projects. And her site is really pretty and purrfectly organized!

Head over and check it out! I'm so honored!

:)

Somebody Told me

That you had a boyfriend, that looked like a girlfriend, that I had last February... (WAIT - that's a Killers song - sorry)

Somebody told me, after I forwarded a particularly sweet comment from one of you, that my Understand Blue readers are possibly the sweetest people on the internet.

You know this already. But sometimes, it's nice to just state the obvious. You are sweet people.

None sweeter than a woman who has truly enriched my life like nothing I can even describe. My upline - Pam Downs. From the moment I met this beautiful, bubbly woman, nothing has ever been the same. I became a demonstrator because of her, which means I met all my stamping friends through her, which means I met all of you through her, I met my new boss through her... She's incredible. So please look to the right and visit her SCS gallery so you can see her talent and not just her heart. But here's a little piece of her heart. This plus an email from her about Spotty just melted me.. I will miss her at Tulsa Regionals this weekend. I don't have the spunk to go this weekend. If anyone wants to go in my place, I've paid - let me know.

Now, to Jenn. My sweet Starbucks goddess from Georgia who always keeps me in her prayers, I'm certain. this woman is amazing. So is her dad. Check out what he made for her this week. And then look at what she made for me. Brilliant. The flap of the envelope she sent me the card in is QUILTED paper!!!! amazing. Then inside - oh my COW (as Jenn says) look at this. I need to ponder and recreate this. It's gorgeous.

thanks sweet ladies.

And after compressing all the disks in my back and finishing my room, I only had the energy for this one thing, which made me smile. Not easy to do this week. The image is one of my faves from the Doodle Factory, and the greeting is an Inkadinkado image. (funny story - I made my sister in law laugh until she about peed pronouncing this ink-a-dink-AAAAH-dough (like the Mikado or something) instead of Ink-a-dink-a-DOO the first time I said it!!)

Happy almost Friday. & Thanks. Dropped all Spottie's food & stuff off at a no-kill shelter today and they were very sweet.

Before & Aahfter

A couple notes here. Those leather crates were an accident - I didn't know they were the perfect depth for the bookcase, but man was that a good find. Look closely and you'll see the narrow ones hold the Hodgepodge Hardware & Accents & Elements tins perfectly. Two are for ribbon, one for Simply Sent kits, one for 6x6 pads of Basic Grey & colored pencils, one for sticky things - Modge Podge, glues, Stampin' Mist, Armour Etch etc., and two on the bottom for envelopes and precut cards. I've never closed the door in 5 years so it's not coming back. Still got some paper left over I gotta figure out. I'm switching out my computer monitor and installing a Wacom pen & tablet this weekend, so I may do a little more to the desk. I used 3M hooks on the inside and outside of my desk support panel to hang scissors, my Martha T-Square, a power strip for all my powered items and other hangy things. It's amazing how much this moves out of the way but within easy reach. Inside my closet under every shelf I have Sylvania LED "Dot It" push lights so I can read my stamp sets labeled. If it's in a container, there's a label on it. This is important. Especially if you're OCD. I'm sore, tired, and satisfied with the renovation. Time for a margarita. Enjoy.

Spottie Tater Tottie

I just pulled all the pics off my camera and I had these little movies of Spottie. This one is hilarious. She's being bad trying to eat grass and I'm trying to make her quit. Yes, my slippers (Uggs, blue, a gift from a beloved friend) make a guest appearance. It was COLD that day. February 23, 2008.

Creative Destruction

The progress in the room continues. As soon as my target.com order comes in, I will share the "after" pics with you. Remember that "after" means a huge amount of stuff came out of my room. I will be putting a lot of retired sets on Ebay at some point. If there are any retired sets that any of you are pining for, let me know and I'll see if I have them. I literally have hundreds.

My only remaining problem is paper storage. I took a 24 slot paper organizer from Office Depot out of the room entirely, so I need to replace that storage with something - maybe a rolling Iris type filing cabinet under my desk. I started with two leather cubes from Target that match my other storage solution I'm waiting for, but they're very heavy filled with paper, so if I ever want to move them, it's gonna be a bummer. Not sure if I'll keep those.

Anyway, here are my camp projects. The world's cutest bunny basket, shown here in three colors. Well, only two colors - but I made them in three - the one we made at club was pink.

The rest of this post is for my friend Yvonne. Copy when you're feeling stumped. It's its own inspiration.

The black and olive rub on card with felt flowers, CASED from Splitcoast super talent - "ishlala". She really created a beauty with these. Makes me sad that these colored rub ons are only available until March 17th, because this color combination is stunning. A lot of my girls said that the felt flowers were something they wouldn't have purchased until they saw them in real life and they are darn irresistible. If you don't have any yet, let me know. For the lazy among us (me) the fact that they already have holes punched in them for the rhinestone brads is the icing on the cake. Wait till you see my Target organization system for the Accents & Elements that used to be shoved in nooks and crannies all over my stamp room.

Then another case from just one of my favorite stampers in the Universe, creator of the stamping academy videos (which are fabulous - check them out) and just sweet lady who heads up the Chic n' Scratch blog. I love the simplicity of this card. The background is from Boho Backgrounds and is a gorgeous little stamp.

The last project I can't find in my excavation pile that is currently in the hall, but trust me it's adorable. When I find it I'll let you know.

Now, on to a few more thank you's for things you've sent me.

This beautiful sympathy card from Vicki, with whom I share a love of not only birds, but all creatures great and small. Cuttlebugged, lovingly colored and beautifully layered, this card inspired me. I am going to put a little birdbath in the backyard with little Spot. I just have to find the perfect one.

Thank you ladies. You're all so sweet I just cry every time I think about it.

And to any Losties who read my blog - I can't wait until tomorrow's episode!

Thank You

Doesn't even begin to express it.




Today really didn't start well. My house was awful without Spotty in it. So I left, and without even thinking about it, I ended up at Lowe's buying paint. I bought "Splash" - a Martha Stewart Blue. I decided since I didn't like it anymore, I would just change everything. So I headed home, and found...

Flowers from Shanna and Melody and my parents. Messages from Jenn, emails from Jayne, Carrie, Lynne, Carolyn, Rhonda, Yolanda, Yvonne, Kate, Pat - and that's just the beginning. Thank you so much. You guys have no idea how much all this means to me. Poor Spotty. I miss her so much. I feel like a ghost in here.

Let me tell you about the flowers. From Melody and Shanna, not only were they all blue, as you can see, but either by coincidence or design, they were from a florist called Ali Bleu. What are the odds? I am so completely touched. And look at them, they are stunning. My mom & Dad also sent blue, with some gorgeous coral roses mixed in.

So after I absorbed all this kindess I went completely nuts and ripped my whole stamp room apart. This was the room Spotty hung out with me in, had her scratching post and water in. Ugh. So I completely took it apart. I have some before photos to share with you after I began the destruction. Hopefully soon I will be able to post the after photos. One wall is the lovely splash color now and I need an advil. I decided I didn't need a door anymore, which I removed with the crafter's toolkit hammer and my knee... I have paint in my hair. I'm hoping to sleep soundly.



Thank you guys so much.

Big hugs

L.

The Owl and the Pussycat

I started this post before today happened, so I erased what I typed. But I had made this card this morning before I had to put Spotty to sleep.

I loved her and will miss her. I was making this little owl card when she started having problems.

So instructions later.

Bluebird of Happiness...

Surely you don't think that there could have been a greenbird of happiness or a brownbird of happiness. It HAD to be blue.

So here is my bluebird of happiness. This is an image from the canary stamp set from Starving Artistamps (by way of Red Castle). At club today, we had a long conversation about birds. Lots of people really don't like birds in real life, but who doesn't love them stamped?? That little bird from the Always set, the teeny cardinals, this lovely blue bird... Oh. Yes, I know the set name is "Canary", but really?

Doesn't it look like this gorgeous real life blue bird? IT'S CALLED ARTISTIC LICENSE, OKAY - STOP JUDGING ME!! :)

To make this card, I folded a standard size white card. I positioned my coluzzle near the top - leaving the top uncut for the fold of the card. I cut out a circle using the largest groove on the circle coluzzle. Then I cut out some Basic Grey paper with two smaller grooves of the coluzzle to make the accent ring. Then, since Copics bleed through my Whisper White cardstock, I cut even a smaller circle with my coluzzle for the bird image, which I stamped in Brilliance Graphite Black and colored with the copics. I then added a little frost on the limb with Stickles. I am sure that somewhere it is still winter, because it's certainly late spring/early summer here.

I'll post my camp projects at some point and give you the announcement - I'm not quite ready yet.

Hope you're having a good Saturday!

Nurture!

I'm having so much fun with copics and coloring. I used to hate coloring! Why? I guess I was crazy. But I'm a recovering anti-colorist.

These little silhouette flowers are gorgeous. And I'm in love with this vase with the little rocks in it. I made my own water with copics.

For the flower, I colored the stamp with my Stampin' Write Markers and huffed.

The window is made with the two Stampin' Up! oval punches and all stamps are Starving Artistamps.

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.