Yahoo!!

We sold our house yesterday!! It had been on the market since this past May and I really didn't expect it to happen so soon. What a blessing! Just had to share my praise with you. :)

I won't have anything to upload for a few more days. We are having three rooms of carpet installed today and one of those rooms contained my craft desk! With my busy schedule, it might be Monday evening before everthing is put back together.

I will give you a heads up to be watching for a little blog candy offer. Since our house sold and my birthday is Monday....I think I should celebrate a little!! What do you think?

Color Challenge

I made this card for Jen Carter's Color Challenge Combo over at Paper Wings. We were challenged to use this color combo. Jen made this card and oh so kindly shared the cardstock colors that she used. (Thanks Jen!) She used Matchmaker Cardstocks in the following colors: Raspberry, Orange, Apple Green and Periwinkle.

The star image is from 'The Spirit of Christmas' and the sentiment is from 'Treasure Seeker'. It's so much fun to find a way to merge two totally different stamp sets.

Supplies:

-Spirit of Christmas

-Treasure Seeker

-8" x 5-1/4" black cs base

-5" x 3-3/4" white cs

-scraps of Matchmakers cs:Raspberry 1, Harvest Orange, Apple Green 2 and Periwinle 2
-Black VersaFine ink, black pen

Retro Santa

I had time to try out one of my new stamp sets today. It's TAC's 'Retro Christmas' from the Fall Supplement. The images are so, well...retro! They are one-of-a-kind in my stamp set collection. I created a set of these cards for my Etsy shop. I'm hoping to come up with some more cards from this stamp set. I have another free day tomorrow, so we'll see what happens!




Supplies:

Retro Christmas
VersaFine black ink
Apple Green 2 cardstock

misc. red and white cardstock

black eyelets

Prismacolor Watercolor pencils

Tombow Blender pen

Gray Tombow pen

Coaster Calendar

I'm gearing up for my December Hostess Clubs and this is one of the projects that we'll be making- a coaster calendar. I plan to put a magnet on the back of the coaster. My calendar pages are from Red Castle, Inc. I used two of TAC's stamp sets- More Abundance and Blooming Builders. Both of these sets have so many different possibilities. I think I'll be making more of these...what a great stocking stuffer...

Supplies:

Calendar pages from Red Castle, Inc.

More Abundance

Blooming Builders

4x4 coaster

Moonlight White Brilliance Ink pad

Black VersaFine ink

misc. red and black cardstock

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Some exciting news...I won TAC's Terrific Trio contest. These contests are just for TAC demonstrators, but the public is able to view the winners. Click here to check out this months contest winners and click here to see my winning entry. Thanks for looking!

8 Years

Chris and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary today. It's amazing how time goes by so quickly! Eight years ago, we were both attending Labette Community College. I was a sophomore and he was a freshman. We were both studying to become elementary education teachers. We had a 1988 gold Astro mini-van, and no bills. Fast forward eight years- I am in my fourth year of teaching, Chris is a supervisor at the State Hospital, the gold van is still around and actually running (amazing, huh?) and the no bills part? Ha, yah right!

Chris is truely my best friend. I love him so much! I wasn't able to come up with a current picture of the two of us, so I thought it would be fun to add this wedding photo. Thanks for reading!!

My sister, Samantha, works at a daycare and one of the little boys that she watches has just become a big brother. Samantha asked me if I had any baby cards made up and I said no, but that I could make one real quick! This cute little teddybear image comes from a set called Just So Sweet. It will be retiring in December and this is only the first time that I've used it.

Supplies:
Just So Sweet
Bazzill Cardstock (the blue is called Stonewash, the brown ??)
misc. blue/brown striped ribbon
white cardstock
Prismacolor watercolor pencils
Tombow blender pen, Gray Tombow pen, Black ink
pop dots

Fun Technique

I had a chance to work at my craft desk the other night and pulled out my 'Camping' stamp set. I forgot that it had these two trees. As soon as I saw the trees, they reminded me of the 'stamping off' technique. The 'stamping off' technique allows you to achieve several shades of color from one ink pad and it also allows you to add depth to your project.

For this card, I chose to add depth to my trees. I inked my tree images with Landscape Palette ink and brushed the edges of each tree with Burnt Umber Palette ink. I firmly stamped the image onto white paper and then, without reinking, I positioned my stamp slightly higher and to the right of the first image and then stamped again. This caused the next set of trees to appear off in the distance. I continued this process across my piece of cardstock. Next, I used a kleenex to rub the Burnt Umber ink along the bottom of the white cardstock and rubbed just a little bit above the trees- just to get rid of the bright white of the cardstock.

This technique was a lot of fun. I honestly don't own very many solid image stamp sets. I tend to stick with open images that I can watercolor. It's kind of fun to step outside your comfort zone every once in awhile. I really should do this more often. :)

Supplies:

'Camping' stamp set

'Tag Tidbits' stamp set

'Ivy' Bazzille cs

misc. white and brown cs

QuicKutz diecut tag
Landscape and Burnt Umber Palette Ink, black ink

Heidie Swapp edge distresser

misc. red ribbon

Inspiration

This beautiful card was sent to me by Rita Holmes, a fellow TAC Angel and PW member. I was so inspired by this card!! Rita's card features TAC's Floral Dingbats set. I purchased this set recently and hadn't had a chance to use it yet.

Rita used creams and browns for her card. The main image was stamped on a shimmery cardstock. It's even more elegant in real life.


I decided to go with Bazzill's 'lagoon' cardstock for my card. I've been using this color a lot lately. I can't speak for Rita, but for my card I stamped the background with VersaMark to create a watermark. I had planned to stamp on a cream colored piece of cs for my main image, but I didn't have the right color of ink. So I used my heat gun and clear embossing powder to achieve what is shown here.

Thanks again to Rita for her beautiful and inspiring card!