Stamping Slump

Hello!

How's it goin? I'm in a bit of a stamping slump! I'm thinking it has to do with my cold, but I'm not quite sure. If you all could send your creative juices my way, I'd certainly appreciate it!! I have no stamping motivation at the moment (or for the past week for that matter!)

I don't have much to show since I haven't really stamped for over a week now, but these cards I made a couple weeks ago and hadn't posted yet so I thought I'd share them:

These are birthday cards I made for a couple of my good A Muse Addict friends. I made a similar card awhile back with the Madeira stamp and Thank You Mix MA with the orange chiffon notes and decided to make some with different colors and stamps for these birthday cards. I love the layout, it'll definitely be one of my fall back on layouts in the future.

This was a quick, last minute card I made for my friend's bachelorette party. These are her wedding colors, chocolate brown and baby blue. A super simple card and not too over the top for me. I used Spica glitter pens to sparkle up the glasses a bit. It's tough to see but I did stamp the Tinplate bg stamp on the bottom portion of the card, tone on tone.

I hope you're all doin great and enjoying your week!!

Hugs and blessings to you!

My Baby is 5!!

Hey Everyone! It's my baby's birthday today, Courtney is 5! It's hard to believe she's not a baby or toddler any more, she's growing so fast! I know people say that all the time, but it's so true!! We had a party for her on Sunday which was very fun, but CRAZY! There were about 18 kids!! Our house just doesn't accommodate that many people well! It wasn't rainy fortunately, but the ground was wet, so most of the kids wanted to stay inside to play most of the time.

Here's a picture of her getting ready to blow out the candles, she wanted cheesecake for her birthday!! She had been asking for it for a couple months now, so we made sure that's what she got!! :D

The highlight of her birthday was these boots that my mom got her:

They're "real" cowgirl boots, Durangos! She's a horse FANATIC, so she feels so special in them!! And they're pink and have jewels on them, can't get any better!! :D

So of course getting ready for the party, I completely spaced making her a birthday card, so the day before I scrambled to make a quick card:

She's been noticing the squirrels everywhere lately and makes sure to point them all out to me and gets so excited to see one, so I thought this would be appropriate for her.

Ok, one more picture, I know there are a lot here, but this one cracked me up, she tried this wig on at the party store the other day and I think it's definitely her!! :D She's a silly girl just like her mommy!!

I hope you're all having a great week!!

Hugs and blessings,

Cityscape SOTW Challenge

Here's the card I made yesterday at Victoria's place, using the Cityscape stamp from A Muse for the Stamp of the Week challenge on the A Muse Addicts site posted by Jennie:

This was inspired by Julie's cute boutique card here.

Also, I thought I'd share a beautiful card that Victoria gave me that she wasn't able to post on her blog (forgot to take a picture before giving it):


Victoria is the biggest sweetheart ever and this card just warmed my heart and made me feel so thankful to have met her and blessed to have her as a friend.

Hugs and blessings to all of you!

Ahoy, me hearteys!!

Yo, ho, ho!! LOL! I had no idea today was national Talk Like a Pirate day!!! LOL!! I remember it coming around last year and thinking how much fun it was, but wow, this year flew by so fast, seems like it was only a couple months ago!!

Well, I was debating whether to post this cuz I was really just trying to figure out how they work, but avast ye, I made this little Fun Flip game thing after seeing the Star Wars ones me lassies got in their Lunchables and it fits in with the pirate theme o' the day!

It's probably tough to figure out what it is if you haven't seen one, but it's two pieces of cardstock adhered together in just the right places and each piece is cut in half opposite o' each other and scored opposite o' each other, so ye can flip it around every which way and it reveals different pictures!! Very fun but shiver me timbers it was tough to figure out!! LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by! Arrrrr!
Godspeed!!

Tic-Tac-Toe

Here's another game I made for the A Muse Addicts Step it Up challenge this month:

After seeing all those cute little Shrinky Dinks Jennie has been doing on her blog, it got me thinking about them and how they'd make fun game pieces for this so of course I had to pull out my old stash of shrink plastic and give it a whirl! I could not for the life of me, get those circles to stay flat though!! Maybe Jennie will give us another tutorial to show us how to do that?? (Pretty please??) Other than making the Shrinky Dink magnet pieces, this project was SOOOOO super easy to do! I did get to play with 2 of my A Muse clear sets for this project, Fancy Borders and Uppercase Large Polka Dot Letters!!

I spent some time with Victoria today, out drooling at Impress and shopping at Target. We did end up going to her place and stamping a little, but I didn't have much time there since I needed to come home to pick up my kids from the bus stop. I did manage to get one card made (yes, I finished it V!!), but haven't taken a picture yet, so I'll do that tomorrow and post it then!! :D

I hope you're all having a great day!!

Hugs and blessings,

A Muse Calendar

Have you seen the new 2009 A Muse Calendars that Linda has available on the A Muse News Blog??? My good friend Victoria is being honored through the sales of the calendars this year! All proceeds raised for the calendars are going to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society an organization that Victoria got to pick which is dear to her heart because she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma earlier this year.

I got to play around a bit with the calendar and use my Bind-it-All machine that I bought earlier this year and had never used!!! Here's what I made:

Victoria and I were working on calendars together one day and she showed me a calender she made a while back that she had a template for, to make these cool stands for flip calendars. I didn't have her template, but I got the idea from hers and made my own version. I put a piece of window sheet on the front of the calendar so it's protected and has some sort of cover. I also added a little bit of Stardust glitter pen to each page to give it some sparkle and unity throughout the pages. The "2009" numbers were stamped with A Muse's Birthday Builder clear set.

I realized after I bound it all together that I should've taken pictures of the pages before doing that so I could combine them, but I just made a little extra work for myself having to take pics of each page and uploading so many pictures!!

I hope you like the calendars and are inspired to get your own version and help support this wonderful cause!! There are 3 different versions of the calendar available for purchase through donation and 3 different donation levels for you to choose from!! So fun to have choices!! What a great opportunity Linda has given us to help support those in need!!!

Hugs and blessings to you all!

Step it Up Game

Hi!! I made a couple projects over the weekend for this month's Step It Up challenge on the A Muse Addicts site. The challenge is to make any type of game or toy using A Muse products.

I'll share one for today:

We sell these cute little tins in the A Muse shop for $1. It was super simple to make, I stamped the images (added some black glaze pen to the spider), cut them out with my CM circle cutter, punched holes where desired, added some double stick foam tape to the bottom of the circle, placed it in the tin, added some ball bearings, put the lid on and added some ribbon to decorate the outside. Maybe not all in that order exactly, but you get the picture! :D Super easy project but it's definitely a challenging game, those balls fly around so fast in that tin!!! :D My son was so sweet, he said, "You make such cool things mommy!" Gotta love him, boosted my ego for sure!! :D

I hope some of you will be able to try out the Step It Up challenge this month!!

Hugs and blessings,

Happy Friday!

Hi Everyone! Happy Friday to you!! I hope you had a great week and are ready for a fun or relaxing weekend!!

I finally got to do some stamping again yesterday. I feel so busy lately that I haven't even been thinking about stamping!! That's definitely a very sad thing!! Victoria came over again for a play date and we made a few cards together. I did manage to get one Stamp of the Week challenge card done for the A Muse Addicts site, this Love Bus card:

I put some Crystal Effects on the bus to make it glossy. While I had the Mushroom Trio stamp out I decided to do a mushroom card too!

While I was at the University Bookstore the other day I saw a super cute little notebook that had mushrooms on it and the sentiment that went with it was "Let Peace Grow", how cool is that?? I don't have a sentiment like that so Victoria and I were looking through the sentiments I had and decided we could put "Peace" from Peace on Earth MA and "grows" from Love Grows together to make "Peace Grows." I think it works well! I love it when an idea unfolds and works. I originally tried coloring in the mushrooms with Souffle Pens and they worked, but weren't giving a good variety of color, they looked too washed out, so I decided to paper piece them instead.

This is a donut card, even though it looks like a cupcake card!! LOL! (I try!) The cupcake image and black scallop are on the inside of the card and there's a punched out scallop circle on the front of the card so you can see the cupcake from the front of the card.

I have a couple ideas for Bernice, this one didn't quite work out how I hoped it would, I was hoping to do a quick easy card with her, but it ended up taking much longer to make this card than I expected. I masked off her lizard/rat and added the balloon. Doesn't she look just like me??? :D

And last but not least, I need to share these fabulous pictures of Victoria and I!!! LOL!!








We were playing with Photo Booth on my computer and trying to get a nice picture of the two of us to post on our blogs, but as I was adjusting the screen, I ended up focusing on our chests by mistake, so we decided to play it up and take a fun photo!! Victoria said, "Oh, it's one of those types of pictures!!" LOL!!

Then we couldn't stop laughing about how silly we are!!! And, yes, I was having a bad hair day and that is my messy office/craft room! That's ok though, sometimes we just gotta live life and not worry so much about what we look like, right?

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today!!!

Hugs and blessings,

First Day of Preschool

Hey everyone!! How's it goin?? Me?? I'm wiped out!!! LOL!! Today was my DD's first day of Co-op preschool and I forgot how much work it is helping out in class!! It was a busy day, lots to do and clean up! I was in charge of helping the kids make gingerbread cookies (um, can we say messy??) Then with all the other activities and just keeping up with all the kids, I feel completely zapped! But, she had a BLAST and completely loved it and can't wait to go back! She had sharing today and I was so proud of her, she wasn't nervous at all, so excited to tell everyone about her toy kitty she brought in and even put it on the green mat so all the kids could play with it.

I'll share a simple card today. I made this a couple weeks ago for my mom cuz she bought these stamps and wanted an idea of what to do with them.

Then I saw this post by Jeanne S and thought I'd give the sponging a try!! I still need some help with it, but it did give the card a little something more than the original.

Stamps: A Muse Cow, Grass and Moo-chas Grass-ias
Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, Always Artichoke, Old Olive, Soft Sky, R20 Blush Copic
Papers: A Muse Fern notecard, black, white
Accessories: ribbon by May Arts?, dimensionals

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you have a fabulous week!