Happy Birthday, Nick!

It's hard to believe he was born at 4 lbs 14 oz, and is already a handsome young man of 21 years!

 

Tropical Drink Wedding Card

 

A friend of mine needed a wedding card for a destination wedding she's attending in the Dominican Republic, and I came up with this beachy card.

The coconut tropical drinks are made from QuicKutz dies called "Coconut Drinks," and I added the hearts for more of a wedding theme.  The hearts, and the one in the corner, are from an SU punch.  The waves across the bottom are an EK Success border punch.

 

Here's the inside:

Another SU heart punch and a sentiment from the Stampendous! "Paradise Beauty" set.  I got both the dies and the stamp set from Archiver's at a deep going-out-of-business discount.

 

This was a perfect project for me to work on today, because while I worked on the card,

THIS was my view.  It's hard to tell with the screen looking all funny, but it snowed AGAIN this morning.  Enough all ready!

Happy Valentine's Day! (a day late)

Happy Valentine's Day!  Here's a homemade Valentine's Pie I made today:

 

 

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day/Weekend!

Shake Your Grass Birthday Card

Beachy themes are definitely my favorite.  When our closest Archiver's was having its going-out-of-business markdowns, I picked up this aging hula girl from Art Impressions called "Hula Set."  I colored her with Copic markers and added some Recollections flowers to her skirt.  The sentiment is a new mini stamp from CTMH, "Heartfelt Birthday Wish."  I used Copics again on it and then added a little sparkle with a Spica clear marker. (You probably can't see the sparkle unless you click on the image to make it larger.)  The paper, also CTMH, is "Lollydoodle," which I've used several times already.

 

The "Hula Set" is funny because you also get a little spring contraption that I used inside the card:

I affixed another image of the bottom half of the hula dancer with the spring, so when you open the card the image jiggles.  The sentiment, "Shake Your Grass" on the right also came with the same stamp set.

 

Here's a closer look at the inside image:

You can see how the image is raised, and at this angle you can glimpse the stick-on part of the spring.

I love how it turned out.  It's perfect for one of my Parrothead friend's birthday, because we've worn our share of grass skirts over the years and "shaken our grass."

Creative University 2012 Layout

In February of 2012 I was fortunate to attend Tresa Black's Creative University art retreat near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  I took lots of pictures and, of course, have only scrapbooked I think three layouts.  A few weeks ago I was in the mood to scrapbook, and made this two-page layout of only the beautiful views from the long weekend:

 

This is a poor picture, but you can see I used plain CTMH outdoor denim cs with just a band of B&T paper and some slate cs.

I used a mat on just the larger 5x7 photo on this page.  I added glittery letters and lots of bling and white embellishments.

 

The long border of bling on this page is from Recollections.

 

Here's a close-up of the white and silver embellishments.  I used some bling swirls, some single rhinestones, some rub-ons, and I doodled with my white pen.  Of course, since I was writing directly on my layout, I misspelled "university" and had to squeeze the "r" in after I noticed it.  Ugh.

 

Finally, here's a look at the embellishments and doodling on the other page.

 

I believe Creative University is happening right now, and I wish I was there.  If you haven't been to Tresa Black's blog, check it out: Fabulously Artsy

 

Stormy Seas / Art Impressions Card

The beach-going gal on this card is in the "Sally Swimmer" set from Art Impressions.  I colored Sally with Copic markers and affixed her with dimensional adhesive.  Everything else is from CTMH's "Tommy" paper pack and workshop on the go.  I didn't take a photo of the inside, but it says simply,
"Happy Birthday."

Wild About Love: Fox card

I don't know what all the other foxes say, but this one says "Just because."

Foxes seem to be second in popularity only to the owl right now.  I used my current favorite CTMH paper set, Lollydoodle again on this card.  The sentiment is from the stamp set "Cloud Nine," which is from a previous promotion and not currently available.  The little fox is part of CTMH's February Stamp of the Month set titled "Wild about Love," so it's ONLY available for the rest of this month.  I colored this fox with my Copic markers and added a CTMH "gem" for the flower center.  The three cute pink embellishments are new from CTMH and called Flamingo Dots.

 

Here's the CTMH promotional photo for the "Wild About Love" Stamp of the Month set:

Camper Crazy Cards

Aren't these little Airstream-like campers adorable?  I made these two cards with the stamp set "Camper Crazy" and the paper set "Lollydoodle" from CTMH's new Idea Book.

 

  Here are close-ups of the two cards:

Everything I used is from CTMH, except for the little paper flowers from Recollections and the coloring was done with Copic markers.  I LOVE the Lollydoodle paper.  It had the perfect vintage/outdoorsy look to go with the campers.  The leaf border is the zip strip from one of the papers.  "You make me a happy camper" is a sentiment included with the stamp set.

 

This card uses all the same elements, except I added a strip of CTMH Lagoon cs to match the colors I used on the camper.  On both cards I used dimensional adhesive to pop up the sentiment.

A Doodle Valentine

I'm still drawn to my CTMH slate cs.  For this busy Valentine, I used a couple punches, a tiny bit of ribbon, and a couple CTMH stamps (the large image in the bottom right is CTMH's "Classy Doily"), but mostly I used my white pen and just doodled everywhere I could with the white ink.   A couple of the hearts pop up with dimensional adhesive, and so does the sentiment.

Update on that Resolution:

Upon further reflection, it appears I should have resolved not only to be more creative, but also to BLOG MORE.  I've been pretty negligent in my blogging, so I'm hereby updating my resolution to Be More Creative and Blog More (and for all of the children in the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.--see classic Steve Martin SNL sketch HERE if you don't get this).

 

In my defense, I have been creating some things, which I'll get to in the next post.  First, however, Close to My Heart released its new catalog, the Idea Book for Spring/Summer 2014.  It's awesome: take a look HERE to look through the catalog.  Want to order something?  To shop, click HERE or click on the picture of the Idea Book in the right-hand column of my blog anytime.