Tini Guys?

Well the weather seems to be cooperating lately and it's starting to look good for folks who like to golf!

This trio of cards seemed more guy like to me, although there is a bow... I guess that one would have to go to a guy who is secure with his masculinity. LOL!  Just a quick share today, gotta run or I'll be late!  If you'd like the deets, please leave a comment and I'll be happy to answer questions. :)

Hugs!

Blue Sea Birds

Quick post with a seaside flavor.  Thought this would be good for a guy card- like Father's Day or Birthday- gosh even a Thanks card for a guy. 


The stamps are Stampourril & Paper Inspiration and the ink is all Chalk Ink Prussian Blue.  The swiss dot and card base are Amuse & the other stuff is scraps from heaven-only-knows. :)

This lighthouse is my go-to for guy cards, although when a gal pal got married a couple years ago we used it for her save-the-date cards.  She got engaged outside Nubble Lighthouse up in Maine.  Such a beautiful place!  She just became a mommy for the first time just a month ago to the cutest little boy. :)  Needless to say, with such happy memories associated with this stamp, it'll never get dumped in the garage sale bin!

What stamps of your will never end up in the "for sale" pile?

Hip to be Square

Happy Tuesday Everyone!  It's another Top Tip Tuesday treat day with a great tutorial from our TTT creator Leanne.  Don't forget to stop by and check it out. :)

The challenge we were asked to brainstorm for this week is "squares".  I checked with Leanne and she told me that as long as you have a square-related-something going on with your project it's eligible for the prize!  Currently I'm a little obsessed with creating 4 1/4X4 1/4 cards.  Can you tell? :)

I swear I am never ready for birthdays.  EVER.  Seriously, it's a little mental of me.  Here I am making cards and yet- well eventually the cards go out.  At least my family can see the cards I mean to send out here. :)

All these "little honeys" use dies and stamps from Papertrey Ink.  The paper on this  from Echo Park and My Minds Eye. 

This card makes me hungry for some juicy strawberries!  The papers are Echo Park and Websters Pages with images from Papertrey Ink.  I think I have a thing for polka dots right now in addition to my square card obsession. LOL!

The strawberries were stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa, then colored with Copics- R29, R24, YG95, & YG 93.

Tweety here has papers from Echo Park-Let's add EP paper to my list of current obsessions now too!

The Copics on this card are R29, Y11, & Y15 (those Y's were also used along with B000, C9, & C5 on the bee).

Have a great Tuesday and don't forget to add your creation or your tip to the Top Tip Tuesday challenge this week.  Make sure to let me know if you do!  I want to be sure to stop by and leave praise!!!! :)

These cards are wrapped and ready for a party here:
Make It Monday- #34
Paper Sundaes- Die cuts and yellow (the bee card)
Party Time Tuesdays- Anything Goes
Craft Your Passion- Layers
Stamptacular Sunday- Pile It On
Creative Friday- Open Theme

5 is a Crowd

How 'bout some baby cards? I'm excited that I sat down and finally made something with this stamps set from My Favorite Things!

I adore the a al modes sets! I'm hosting a "craft fair" at my house with my gal pal Lynn this weekend and wanted to make some generic baby cards.

These cards used a bunch of stuff from Echo Park and my scrap pile.

The bow is paper-pieced, which I love the look of and don't do enough!

I tried making her more of a ginger-brunette. Still working on my hair shading- and I think a little practice wouldn't hurt.

Okay, so this one would probably go for a baby girl. If you're making multiple baby cards, ya just know that one of 'em is gonna have to be pink! :)

These are the copics used. The ones you can't read are E33, RV13, B00, and B02. Hope you enjoyed these!

The bows are tied and so we're off to say hiya here:
Sassy Studio Designs- Pastels
Ann's Creative Nook: Anything Baby
Sunday's with Crissy- Baby Cards
Wee Memories- Girly (not much more girl than a baby! LOL!)
BTCAG- Cute and Girly

Sock Hop

It's tradition for my DMIL (Hi Barb!) to gift us "Easter Socks" in our baskets (along with my Cadbury Creme Eggs of course LOL!).  I'm of the opinion that I'll never be to old for an Easter basket full of candy. :)

This past weekend we made a last minute trip to Albany to see my baby cousin (okay she's in her 20's and not really a baby, she's a gorgeous adult!) who was up for a wedding.  Our good deed of travel was rewarded with....

Being the great Reading Specialist I am, I completely ignored the directions and my DMIL had to tell me I could break up the packs to pick my favs.

What to pick, what to pick.  Keeping in mind that my DSIL gets the leftovers..... (choose wisely was ringing in my ears LOL!)

Stay tuned to see which ones I picked and why. :)  I'm off to hit the outlets with Tom's baby cousin (who isn't a baby either, she's about to head off to college!!!!! Why am I suddenly feeling old?!?)

Oh yeah, Tom got to do the same thing, but his socks aren't as much fun to look at. ;)

Happy Saturday!

Hopping Down the Chimney?

We interrupt Spring to bring you chilly weather (and snow in Vermont!).

It was 31 when I woke up this morning!  I was chatting with a friend last night who lives in Vermont and she said it snowed there!!!!!  It's hard to believe when I know folks in Texas have had ridiculous heat and need wet weather so desperately.

After all that cleaning I did for this tour and this tour, I dove into those unfinished projects piles and actually finished some stuff, of course these images I colored last February (2010, not 2011).  I know, I know, such an over achiever. LOL!

Many of you left me such nice love about my studio and I didn't want to leave you thinking that it always looks so pretty.  Can you believe in just a couple of days it's exploded into this?!?  Okay I did have to kinda clean the floor to get in and out of the room and you can't see the ginormous piles of paper to the right of this shot.  Trust me, hot mess.  Am I cleaning, of course not.  Why do today what I could do tomorrow? LOL!

I'm hopping down the chimney with Santa here:
Christmas Card Challenges- Anything Goes
Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge- Song Inspiration (Here Comes Santa Claus)

Daisy Do

Pin It

***EDIT- This set is now the Follow-the-Recipe inspiration over at Catered Crop so come join the fun!

Daisies are such a cheerful flower!  Okay so this is really a Gerber Daisy, but with this paper, I thought an old school daisy was just the right one. :)

I've been drooling over the sets of cards folks have made for the Moxie Fab Card Sets Challenge that ends tomorrow.  Nothing like cutting it close huh!

Here's a closer view of what all the cards in the set look like.  I'm a sucker for glitter, so of course I had to Stickle these blossoms. :)

I added a memo pad to the set that I made.  Still not sure what I'm going to do with this set.  It's so dang cute!!!

The Deets:
Paper and stickers- mostly Echo Park "Springtime" (the leaf die-cuts are from my scrap pile though)
Stamps- PTI, Technique Tuesday & Hero Arts (I think)
Die-cuts- PTI (the leaves were Cricut)
Stickles- yellow & diamond
Ink- Memento- rich cocoa (the yellow daisy I used marker to stamp with Tombows)
Copics- Y11, Y15, W-2, C-3

Hope these smileys brought you some smileys today. :)

I'm dropping by to bring some cheer, here:
Moxie Fab World- Card Sets
Catered Crop- FTR10
Make It Monday- #33
Inky Impressions- Flowers
Papertake Weekly- Spots 'n Stripes (I figured one of the flower dp has a bunch of spotty dotty stuff. :)
Pile It On- Use Rubber

More Studio Shots

Happy Tuesday Folks!  I'm excited to finish my studio tour with you today, but don't forget to link up your "Anything Goes" or cool tip to Top Tip Tuesday this week so you can win some fun goodies!  Carol's got a great tutorial on making wallet cards you aren't going to want to miss.

Hope you enjoyed the partial tour of my creative space last week and my favorite tools shout out too.  This Tuesday I am sharing a few more pics that show how I organize my space.  As always, this is the way I organize 'cause it's what works for me and I post this in hopes it helps spark and idea for y'all out in Blogland. :)

Here's a shot of my work table.  My DH built it to fit a tiny little space two houses and 10 years ago. :)  We keep talking about replacing it, but it was one of the first woodworking creations he made and I'm not ready to part with it yet.  No it's not usually this clean. LOL!  The basket (I made that!) holds some different pens, pencil, paintbrushes, plyers- basically a catchall.  The red tray was my mom's and it stores my Stickles (yup in rainbow order) and ink sponges.  My Copics are in a travel bin to the left.  I have too many to keep in a Copic made travel bag and haven't figured out how to travel without ALL OF THEM (if only these were the worst troubles in the world!).  My "scrap bin" sits on top of the Copic box and the floating shelf holds my pencils, craypas, and glue.

A better shot of the floating shelves.  My candy bin and Amuse village-in-the-making stamps.  Some folks do Department 56, I do an Amuse storefront village. :)

Here's a what-not-to-do tip.  See that floating shelf with all my clear blocks?  See the TV?  It has a built in DVD player.  Guess where the DVD loading slot is.  Betcha figured it out huh.  Yup, right where the shelf is hung.  Luckily I can take the shelf off the wall pretty easily, but still.  What a big "duh".  I'm just way to lazy to fix it yet.  Not the most flattering shot of Fitz either now that I look at this shot. :)

This is my storage armoire I got years ago at an unfinished furniture place for a steal.  It holds my plastic card sleeves, empty containers waiting to be repurposed, old magazines, hand sewing stuff, paints, embossing powders, and other "stuff".  It's a hot mess in there so there's no way y'all are getting an inside look. Ha-ha! :)

Remember the table I had all those die cutters laying on?  Under that table is the Christmas basket.  This holds all my holiday stamps, papers, ribbons, embellies and other whatnot.  It's a wicked old laundry basket my DFIL's parents used to use.  Some old doilies from both our families line the basket.  This is probably the only thing that isn't rainbow organized and is more of a catchall.

Last shot of my room, I promise.  This is a bookshelf my DH and I bought at Target with our first paycheck 10 years ago!  We used to keep all his engineering books on it, but recently I took it over with all my children's books and crafting goodies.  The books you can see and all the baskets hold bulky stuff that either in progress or finished.  This is dangerous for me.  These baskets "hide" stuff and then I forget that I have these projects to finish.  I should go see what's in these today!!!  What have I forgotten to finish?!?!

Well I hope you enjoyed the rest of the tour!  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.  I'm happy to answer anything.  My next big challenge is to figure out where to put a sewing machine so I will use it!  Again, if only studio-space-constraints were the biggest troubles of the world.

Seriously, I'm really grateful to have this space as my own and hope all of you do/will have the same blessing in your life.  This post isn't meant to boast, it's meant to share ideas in the hopes it saves someone time and energy with their creative time.  Who couldn't use more time creating?!? :)

Hyacinth Trio

Quick post today. I'm glued to the TV watching the Boston Marathon! If you remember it starts right outside my school in Hopkinton and I'm so excited to see what will happen this year.

This pic is from last year's prep.  Good Luck Runners!

Fun flower trio here using the old marker-to-rubber technique I forgot I knew how to do!  I used stickers for the background embellie, Stickles on the flowers to give them spark, and lots of foam tape to give a little more dimension.

Things are blossoming with these cards here:
TotallyPaperCrafts- Spring
My Time to Craft- Spots
Little Red Wagon- Easter
Pals Paper Arts- Flowers
Drunken Stampers- Technology Sucks


Enjoy!