We are officially Empty Nesters...

Yep, the last little chicky left the nest.  I'm sure he would hate the fact I just called him a chick.  :)  He will live.  But, since he doesn't read my blog, he will never know.  I thought that since his bedroom was in the basement (part of the garage), my husband would take over his room.  Last weekend, my wonderful, thoughtful and all around pretty incredible husband told me he was going to fix it up for me.  My very own craft room.  Yes, its true.  This is what it looked like last weekend when I started moving stuff in. 

Wow!  What a MESS!

So, thats the quick tour.  We found the desk a few weeks ago at a flea market.  My DH asked them how much they wanted for it and they said make an offer.  He offered $40 and we ended up getting it for $55.  I think we did really well with $55.  It has a real leather top and is a dream to rubber stamp on.  I absolutely love it.

I've put away most of the stuff you see all over the floors.  Then yesterday, my husband says lets go to Lowes.  Oh no.. not Lowes.  This is what I ended up with after the trip.



 No, silly, not the Big Shot!  The shelves.  He bought wood and stain and made me a shelf.  For WHAT you are thinking.  Well, lookie here.

 It holds all my punches except my edge punches.  I've rearranged it a dozen times and I realized the last time that if I moved all the medium punches between the feet, I could move my older style of punches to the top.  I will have to take another picture.  Isn't this a wonderful present?!  Now I can play with my punches without having to unstack a bunch to get to the one I want.  I'll take some more pictured when I get more organized, but this is soooo much better than what I was doing before.

I have spent most of the day in the craft room.  I really need a name.  It's obviously not a Man Cave, can it be a woman cave?  No, thats not right either.  Give me some ideas.  :)

This is my card for the day.  I think my little room in the basement is working pretty good for ideas.  Both this card and the thank you card I used for swaps for Louisville were made there. 

It was a good day.  :)

thanks with gently falling

OHHHH... I really like this stamp set!!  It's Gently Falling from the Holiday Mini Catalog.  I used the Spice Cake Designer Paper and the First Edition Specialty Paper for the backgrounds.  Aren't they pretty?  The button is actually a paper button from the button's #5 Sizzlits die.

So, tomorrow I will be going to Louisville KY for a day or two.  I get to go to the Stampin Up Regional.  Whooo hoooo!  Yea, I'm pretty excited about it.  The above card will be my swap card.  I made a BUNCH of them.  I used three of the four buttons from the die and tied each one differently.  It was kinda tough.  But, I think it was worth it. 

Recipe for the card: 

 Paper:  Spice Cake DSP, First Edition Specialty Paper, More Mustard CS, Cajun Craze CS, Very Vanilla CS

Ink:  Cajun Craze, More Mustard

Stamp Sets:  Gently Falling, Sincere Salutations

Accessories:  Decorative Label punch, white bakers twine, Buttons #5 Sizzlit, sponge daubers

Have a great weekend!

Hi!

whhhh... whhhhhh... whhh..  cough cough.. sorry.  Don't mind me.  Just blowing off a little dust from the blog.  Where on EARTH does time go??
I did a Fall bazaar today.  It was the same one I did last year and it was just as bad.  After having such a bad time last year, I told myself I wouldn't do it again.  I did it again.  Sigh... I don't learn quickly, do I.  I didn't even bring my camera this year.  My darling daughter came with me again this year and she did take a picture or two on her phone.  If she sends it to me, I will put it here.  Since I really didn't sell anything, I will take some pictures of what I made and post them, also.

Next Friday I will be in Louisville KY at the SU! regional.  I am SO excited.  I've never been to a regional, and I hear they are pretty fun.  My upline is going with a few other demos in the Dayton area.  Mary, my upline, is actually one of the presenters.  HOW exciting is THAT??!!

I will be posting some pictures of some cards in the next couple days.   My pictures library is kind of messed up right now.  I have GOT to get organized...  :)

September 11

It's been awhile again since I've been posting.  Been just a busy summer.   I just mainly wanted to post today since it's 9-11.  10 years after the World Trade Centers came down.  I remember hearing my mother talk about all she remembered when President Kennedy was shot and I could never understand what could cause such an emotional response.  I fully understand now and I pray that my children don't have something in THEIR lifetime that affects them this way.  I was at work when the first plane hit the first tower.  Of course, I thought it was a terrible accident... until the second plane came in.  It bothers me even today to watch the coverage.  It's been an emotional day for me.  No, I knew no one in the towers and no one I know had anyone there either.  Why is it so emotional for me?  I just can't understand the mentality of a group of people that have no respect for human life.  Everytime I see the pictures and hear the stories, it breaks my heart. 

I have no pictures to post today.

oops....

June 12... huh.. has it been that long??   Its not that I haven't been doing anything with rubber stamps, I have.  I guess I just really didn't realize how much WORK a blog is!!  Maybe not the blog itself, but all the picture taking and downloading and cropping... sigh..  Awww.. quit yer whinin'!!  On to what I've been playing with!

This was a card I made for my daughter's boyfriend's brother (ok, now THAT sounded confusing!).  He is in the middle east and is turning 21 at the end of the month.  His mom sent out a request for birthday cards for him since he is serving our country in a FAR away country on one of the biggy birthdays. 

This card was harder than I thought it should be.  I didn't think that putting 3 panels on a card would take a lot more hand/eye coordination!  Oh, well, let me tell you it DOES!  The paper is retired.  I don't have my catalog with me at my chair, so I'm not listing all the supplies.  If anyone out there is interested, let me know and I will dig everything back up.  :)

Have a great night!

Another Card Challenge

I mostly like clean and simple cards.  I probably do better at clean and simple cards.  Ok, so I really stuggle with things that AREN'T clean and simple.  When my upline and I were working on some card designs for the Operation Write Home event we did back in October, she sent me a link to a blog for this type of cards.  This week, I decided to do one of their card challenges.  I'm not sure I like the card I did, but I am going to enter the challenge anyway.  : )   Clean and Simple Blog

My entry: 


I'm thinking ... it's crooked.  Hmmm....

It's kind of different for a birthday card, isn't it.  Well, some of my friends and family are creeping up to the big 50 year thing that seems to bother so many people. So I made it in black.  hahaha...  (I'm not there YET, so I don't know if it will affect me.  I honestly don't think it will.  I mean, geez.  It's just a number.)  Anyway, I also hate to throw stuff away and decided to use the little teardrop shapes that punch out of the Blossom Bouquet punch that is in the summer mini.  I scooped them up, used tweezers to hold the tiny little pieces, glued them, then stuck 'em down in no apparent pattern.  I ran the black piece thru the Big Shot with the Square Lattice EF.  Used the (retiring) Spiral Border Punch on the edge.  The sentiment is just the Decorative Label punch, the 1 3/4 x 7/8 oval punch and the (retiring) 1 3/8 x 5/8 oval punch.  Finished it off with three Basic Pearls.   Am I using enough retiring stuff??  Probably will be seeing a LOT of it for the next couple weeks. 

I think I really like the look of the teardrops embossed into the paper.  Not so sure it looked exactly like what was bouncing around in my mind, but thats ok.  I do that a lot!  And now, I have a 'reason' to keep the leftover stuff from the new punch.  :)  I don't have the doily one.  It looks like it might have some fun stuff to keep, too.  *I am NOT a hoarder!

Cribbage and Crystal Effects

This was supposed to be done yesterday, but while I was trying to download some pictures, Blogger decided it was time to do some maintenance.   Geez... I was doing important stuff here!  :)


My husband and I play cribbage.  I'm not very good, but he puts up with me.  Our biggest problem is remembering who's crib it is.  While we were in Florida, we came up with a way to keep track.  We had a lotion bottle that we would pass back and forth.  Whoever had the bottle, got the crib.  Last night we were playing here and there was no bottle of lotion, so this is what we came up with.Isn't he CUTE?

Don't they look alike??

Ok.  Enough of that.  I have a couple of things to show you tonight!  The first is the new In Colors.  I hope you can see well enough. 

The top right one is the pool party color.  I like them....

This is something else I learned how to do.  It goes by many names, but what it IS, is crystal effects with re-inkers.  Punch an image with your favorite SU! punch.  Place the punched paper on a non stick surface like waxed paper.  Cover the whole thing with Crystal Effects.  Put a few drops of re-inker of your choice of colors in a lid (keep them seperate).  Take a straight pin and touch it to the first drop of ink just to get ink on the pin.  Touch it to the CE.  Add a couple other colors.  Don't do too much or it will look muddy.  Drag the pin thru all the colors to swirl it around.   It's really pretty.  :) There are three colors in this one.  All new colors.  Oh and by the way... THANKS BUFFY...  Better directions here!