October 2- a cloudy Sunday

Yesterday was a dark and wet day. Good day for a long nap on the couch...which I did after my BIG lunch with my friend Vicky...we went to a local fried seafood place  and I finally had some fried clams AND a big piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream-mmmmm-haven't had pumpkin pie since the holidays last winter and it was SOOOO tasty...oumpkin pie is such a fall taste-it wouldn't be anywhere near as good during the spring or summer. And since it is now fall...with all the rain the leaves are coming down...I don't think the color this year is going to be very fantastic...things seem to be yellow and falling. No spectacular colors yet at least.

This photo is from a couple of weeks ago...a lone pretty leaf...actually I quite like the contrast of the single leaf on the very textural but neutral pavement.

I'm still enjoying this dark weekend...relaxing...but still mildly productive...just what I need right now to recharge my soul and my brain. My only goal is to finish reading my Sookie Stackhouse short story- 100 pages you'd think I'd have been able to finish it over the past week but I didn't. Time to move on to another book so it is time to finish reading.

So been thinking about my February vacation...have any of you ever been to New Mexico? I want to go southwest (since Europe is out of the budget right now...I can fly 2 of us roundtrip to the west for the cost of  1 of us to Europe...at least) and want to go someplace new...another state to cross off the list....but we will see.  I really financially should just sit home...but nah...that sounds so unappealing to me.

So time for some Halloween!!!!!

I'm up to 21 cards....having so much fun playing with my Halloween bin of stamps...I use them only for short period of time each year so when I pull them out it is so much like getting a bunch of ner stamps.

So this is a good warning for the up-coming season. I used a brown card but layered a grey piece of cardstock on the right. I used the same make of cardstock (Coordinations) so they would match and be the same weight. I stamped the spider webs on 3 of the corners (Character Constructions) with black ink. I stamped the dancing skeleton (might be Stamp Francisco...it's a stamp I got in a set on eBay a long time ago) in white Memories pigment ink-love this brand for white ink...I've had this pad for like 10 years and it is still going strong. The 3 spiders are all from Martha Stewart, and are black embossed...The hanging spider I drew in the piece of webbing.  Then I stamped the word (Martha Stewart) in Versamark and I LOVE how it embossed. I started by shaking on just a bit of black embossing powder on the top and then added the red glitter powder on the bottom.I love the 2 color look.

So here's the card I made from the other half of the cardstock I used above (cutting a 12x12 sheet). Anyhow, I started by stamping the owl image (Northwoods) in black in on white paper and colored it with markers. Then I embossed some acetate with Tim Holtz/Sizzix's spider web embossing folder. I cut out the acetate just to the size of the owl image and attached the 2.  Before I attached the image I brushed a bit of black ink on the cardstcok. Once attached, I added the spooky word (Close to the Heart) and then I cut out the saying from a new Memory Box stamp and cut the saying into individual words. I actually stamped the words in white paper which I grungily colored with yellow markers and distressed with a tad of ochre colored ink.  Finally I glued down some back oak leaves-these are from a pack of Martha Stewart confetti I bought a few years back.

So here's the Memory Box stamp I used for the yellow saying on the owl card:

 

These are great phrases I think. I used the spooky forests saying on the card I showed you yesterday with the howling wolf. I just stamped the whole set (since it is a single woodblock stamp) and cut out the sayings I want. Love it.

Thanks for visiting!

And Happy Sunday.

Non-traditional spring colors

Hey everybody-Its Friday!!!!!!

So here's a springy card I made that's not your traditional spring card- not the pattern, not the colors...made it for my baby girl who's in college...

The paper of the card is from Martha Stewart.  I then used one of the newer Sizzix dies to punch the circle on wood grain paper, which is also from Martha Stewart. The blue is a giant punched circle on some paper I had around in the stash. I used a saying from My Sentiments Exactly. The lady bigs I believe are from a Hero Arts set and I stamped them in a ring around the edge of the blue circle and then colored them with Copics. I then used some coordinating Martha Stewart paper that had bigger images on it and just cut out a woodland gnome from that and attached him. Finally, some red pepper dimensional pearls. Easy, simple...oh yes, I did put down some 7Gypsies paper tape-been in a paper tape usage place lately. LOVE IT!

Now the inside of this card is kind of special...though not perfected yet. I bought this pop-up tree die from the Sizzix Oultet and its my first attempt at making a pop-up center. I punched the tree in white heavy paper and colored it. The leaves are punched in green and then decorated with a Hero Arts stamp which I stamped multiple times and colored. The little tree fairy is also from Hero Arts and then I punched to flowers and cut out this sparklely mushroom from the same piece of paper I cut out the forest gnome for the front of the card.

I don't know if the inside matches the outside as much as I'd hoped...but I'm really ready to try new things like doing pop-up cards.

So that's my art to share today.

Happy FRIDAY!!!!!!!!

recharged!

So yesterday was a rather quiet day, which I needed. Made some homemade turkey soup from the Thanksgiving turkey (thanks to Linda my sister-in-law for donating her turkey remains), did a FEW small chores, took out the Christmas boxes from the attic, watched some tv, read, spent about an hour in the studio, went out to dinner...MY KIND OF DAY! Especially after such a busy week...I needed the down time to get the batteries up...and today I feel much more ambitous and perky...helps the sun is out too. We're going to cut our tree today...not sure if we'll get it up since Katie has friend plans at 4 and she wants to help put up the tree, which she should...but if it doesn't go up today we'll put it up tomorrow morning.

Today's photo is one I took Wednesday at Old Navy. Think its fun and frivolous...

 Ande below in this second photo is a Christmas card I made awhile back. Stamps are all Martha Stewart except the postage mark which is by Paper Artsy...I stamped the tree in green and used sparkley green embossing powder on it and then ligtly inked the back with green ink. The snowflakes are using Champagne Versamark in the background. The Merry Christmas is Martha Stewart tape..as is the cheerboard tape at the bottom, and I punched the bottom of the card with a Fiskars border punch (there is green paper overlapped the bottom of the card that is punched, its not the card itself actually punched to tell the truth). And lastly, I put on some TINY vintage green ric-rac-I LOVE RIC-RAC that I found at a yardsale here in my town a few years back...that yardsale was some guy cleaning out his Mom's craft stash after she passed away and I got SOOOO much great old stuff like trim and fabric for $20. It was a steal, really, but he was glad to be rid of it all.

Happy Saturday All!