Saturday's class project

This birthday card was my fav project from Saturday's class at Karen's, where I've stopped with friends every other Saturday the past few months. We've been working on a 12-week project, making a 2-page 6x6" scrapbook spread themed on a different month each weekend, along with 2 mainly unrelated cards. Fun projects, the next class will cover December and we'll be thru with the year. I'd picked up a small 6x6" scrapbook at Hobby Lobby to contain all my pages, and will do a wrap of the months' scrapbook pages when we've finished the year.

another inchie card

Here's another inchie card for today, this one using all 5 stamps from my latest Inkadinkado mini clear stamp set, Nativity. I don't recognize the store price sticker so methinks I'd picked this set up from the last Mega Meet in Novi MI, held this past spring. A few friends and I hit that the last couple years. We went after work yesterday to a Great Scrapbook Events scrapbooking and stamping show in Birch Run. I spotted a couple items on my wish list and picked up some more scrapping supplies and a few stamp sets. I'm hoping to ink some up tomorrow!

This card's based on Beate's current weekend sketch challenge, WSC106. The card measures about 3-1/2x7" so it's just a bit too large to fit into a small one but will fit with room to spare into a business #10 envelope.

stamps: Inkadinkado's Nativity; paper: SU's Brilliant Blue and Whisper White card stocks; ink: Color Box's Blue Iris chalk

rejoice

A clean & simple card for today, this one's based on the CPS141 sketch and uses a new Inkadinkado clear mini stamps I'd picked up recently. I like silhouette -type stamps lately, and this one inked up very nicely with my chalk inks. Earlier I met for breakfast with a stampin' bud, took in a stamping class, then booted out of there to work an open house at the university where my day job is (insert shameless plug here for Kettering University). I'm relaxing with a cup of coffee now and will make this a short post as I usually catch up on my banking on Saturday mornings and didn't yet today ... so take care and have a t'riffic weekend, all!

stamps: Inkadinkado's Nativity; paper: SU's Brilliant Blue and Whisper White card stocks; ink: Color Box's Blue Iris chalk; tools: Fiskar's trimmer with scoring blade

a brayered Christmas

Another card from last night's stamp camp w Angie, this one uses a couple blues that I didn't make note of and brayering technique. I'm brayer-challenged; I'd picked up a brayer more than a year ago and I don't think it's seen ink yet! Even tho' I stamped and embossed the images a bit too soon after brayering, I'm still pleased with the results. We brayered the lighter color blue background over a circle placed over the card to get the moon effect, then lightly sponged a darker color blue around the moon to make the sky more dusky (izzat a word?!).

All SU unless otherwise noted - stamps: Branching Out, Wandering Words; paper: Whisper White card stock; ink: unknown blues, Versamark; accessories: black embossing powder

a shimmery Christmas

I'd not played with these shimmer paints before, but I quickly became hooked! We used the Frost White shimmer paint to coat the blue card stock, then the Platinum to add some snowflake and swirl stamps, added some bling and mounted the card stock. I loved all 5 cards from tonight's stamp camp with Angie, so had my DH pick out which was posted tonight!

No deets today - all materials supplied in class and I'm looking forward to sitting back a spell with a nice cup of amaretto coffee! See ya tomorrow!

Veterans Day

Today's card is a simple red, white, and blue one as it's a federal holiday in the U.S. and we're honoring men and women of our armed forces. In keeping with Veterans Day tradition, President Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, saying, "While it is important and proper that we mark this day, it is far more important we spend all our days determined to keep the promises that we've made to all who answer this country's call."

On Veterans Day, I thought it was appropriate to site some statistics about veterans and mental health:

• Almost one in three veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq confront mental health problems.
• On an average day in this country, suicide claims another 18 veterans.
• Approximately 30 percent of veterans treated in the veterans health system suffer from depressive symptoms, two to three times the rate of the general population.
• More Vietnam veterans have now died from suicide than were killed directly during the war.

I watched a special on HGTV about some vets receiving home make-overs and these NAMI statistics really drive home that we must support our veterans!

I thought I had a stars embossing folder ... but alas, I guess I don't. My hand held star punch and my Silhouette were in the master bedroom where my DH was taking an afternoon nap, so I winged it with the dots - inspired by a card I'd spotted on Kim Dellow's blog the other day (here - thanx for the inspiration, Kim!) and all square shapes based on Sharon's ssnotime110 square challenge. Well, hope you have a t'riffic day, folkes! I'm off to gather more leaves in our back yard before we lose our daylight!

stamps: studio g's series 30; paper: SU's Real Red, Whisper White card stocks; ink: Color Box Blue Iris chalk ink; accessories: Cuttlebug with Swiss Dots embossing folder

Sesame Street turns 40

How time flies when you're having fun, eh?! It was a pleasant drive in to work today, listening to NPR talking about the changes Sesame Street's undergone thru the years. We left off at the 7th change and I'd meant to tune my PC to the show when I got to work, but got distracted and forgot ... I hope I can catch a repeat of the show.

edited to add: Know who the first guest star was who appeared on Sesame Street? This and 39 other interesting tidbits can be found here!

My kids loved the show (yes, so did I) when they were young. I purchased this Elmo Cricut shape at CAM's "new to you" sidewalk sale this past summer. Elmo was my eldest son's fav character and we've got an Elmo collection somewhere in the house still ...

If you visited Google today, here's what their logo image looked like:

sweet, eh?!

giving thanks

My hybrid card today uses one of my latest CTMH stamp sets - Grateful Hearts. I don't recall now where I'd first spotted this printable but it's available in both color and b&w versions from the kind folkes at Everything Creative's Etsy shop. Today's is a quick card; I simply printed the printable's color version on ivory card stock, mounted it on chocolate chip, popped that up on ivory card base, added a couple little sentiments, and voila! Easy peasy. I'd meant to do more stamping today but instead we did some much needed cleaning - the guys tackled the leaves outside, while I tackled some of my piles inside. I'm a hoarder and had started a pile of magazines behind my end table next to my fav chair in the living room and I've got to admit it was getting pretty large. Some hit the recycle bin and some are headed in to work with me tomorrow. I occasionally drop some mags off at a break room at work. Then there's the pile of "to do" things that had grown on my PC table. I'm glad to report that both piles shrunk considerably today!

Anyway, clearing out the mags, doing my bank reconciliation, and posting the past week's banking entries onto Quicken took most of the morning. I'm a creature of habit and usually do my banking on Saturday mornings but yesterday we switched routers on our main PC. THAT corrected a problem we'd been experiencing where we kept getting disconnected from the Internet, then automatically reconnected ... I'd kept track and some days it was every 20 minutes or so. For someone addicted to the Internet, this is not acceptable! We tried switching our modem first - we rent a cable modem from the kind folkes at Comcast (IMHO friends don't let friends use dial-up!) - but that was last weekend's project and it didn't resolve the issue. Well, I'm glad to report that, after some hiccups yesterday, it appears we've been successful! Whoo hoo! But ... I'm rambling now, aren't I?! Sorry 'bout that! Back to today's card ...

stamps: CTMH's Grateful Hearts; paper: A1's Natural White, SU's Chocolate Chip card stocks; ink: SU's Chocolate Chip; accessories: Everything Creative's Giving Thanks printable

so thankful

Here's today's make -'n- take project from when I stopped at CAM with my youngest on our way to errands at Barnes & Noble and Best Buy. I've got this stamp set, but that's about it by way of deets today! The scalloped circle and leaves are from die cuts and I distressed the edges with some chalk inks before using glue dots to adhere the leaves to the card, then bent them slightly so they'd appear to be more "in flight."

stamps: Autumn Leaves' 'tis the season

Shout Out To Sheet Load

There's only a few online mags that I devour religiously. This one, Sheetload of Cards, provides not only sketch layouts but tips to efficiently mass produce those sketches - a t'riffic idea for Christmas (or whatever holiday, for that matter) cards. This month's issue is now available - see the November '09 issue at this post - and they also have a link on their blog to the archive of past issues. Check 'em out! This month they're offering a FREE printable quotes file, folkes!

sweet triangle box

Another class project, this one's sweet in more ways than one! It's filled with chocolate Hershey kisses! Easy peasy and oh, so cute! Thanx for the slick idea, Mary! Don't you like the snowflake presentation? Two of the same punch assembled in a peppermint twist fashion to match the cute DP. Me likey!

no deets - all supplies provided in class

happy sunday moanin'!

I share jokes with my friends on a weekly basis, collected from what I've received over the past week ... and my fav brand of jokes are "moaners" ... you know the type? Like this video ...