More cats, and dogs

Just another bunch of cats and dogs from Sunny Studio's Santa's Helpers set. This time I colored them with Zig Real Brush markers. The box and the cat's head piece are covered in shimmer, too. The dog's hat has a little white Prismacolor pencil, because, well, Santa hat.

Super quick cat tags!

Wow, I did these cat tags in a last-minute panic-driven moment.

Seems, all the women I was giving gifts to at my library are cat people. Cats and librarians, go figure. Anyway, these came together very fast. As a matter of fact, the thing that took me the longest was lining up the letters on the block for the names. Plus, I dropped the "I" and lost it, AGAIN. Flashlight at an angle to the floor to the rescue, again.

The cats are from Sunny Studio's Santa's Helpers set. I heat embossed them and quickly colored them in with Copic and Spectrum Noir markers. The names were created with Lawn Fawn's Violet's ABCs, and the tags were cut with My Favorite Things' Tag Builders Blueprints 5. I didn't have appropriate ribbon, so I used baker's twine. I have 4 giant spools of twine from The Twinery that I probably will never use up.

If I had had more time, a few sprigs of holly stamped in the corners would have been nice. But this did the job!

I made tags out of these two guys earlier this week for the cookies I brought to work. Too bad I didn't take pictures of the tags. The back read: Christmas Calories don't count. Oh how I wish that were true. These are from The Alley Way Stamps.

There's a cat on my Christmas tree!

So, one last Christmas card, at least for today, LOL. My cards for this year are almost all in the mail (finally) and I still have a few left over. It's a good start for next year, right?

This is another card using the tree die from Kat Scrappiness. The star atop the tree is a cookie from the Sunny Studio's Mug Hugs set, and the cat is from My Favorite Things' Cool Cat. I have been experimenting with my new big set of Prismacolor pencils. I've got to get them out of that big can, it's impossible!!

Oh, Yesterday was cocoa day? Oh well.

So, yesterday was cocoa day and I just didn't have this one finished. Work gets in the way of my hobby sometimes.

For this one, I used the cocoa mug and candy cane from Sunny Studio and the tree die from Kat Scrappiness. I love that tree.

I used patterned paper from an old 6x6 pad from Recollections (Michael's).

The layers of the tree needed more definition so I first smudged up the bottom of the layers with a little white ink. Then, I wanted even more so I added the faux stitching with a white gel pen. I added a glitter paper star and a bunch of Nuvo drops, and used a sentiment that was on my desk. Everything is flat on this one so it will go nicely in the mail.

Yum yum for cocoa.

Cozy Christmas cup 'o Cocoa

Just a quickie today. This cup of cocoa is from Sunny Studio's Mug Hugs. In real life the purples, if not exactly a match, go together better. The snowflake on the front of the cup is painted with silver Wink of Stella. Really, I only wanted the clear one, but Michael's only had the 3-pack of clear, gold, and silver. So, I finally got to use it!

The sentiment, on a sketchy banner tag, is from Hero Art's Coffee Cup Tags set.

Cups of cheer!

Well, hooray for coffee, and hooray for the Winter Coffee Lover's Blog Hop. Today's cards, 3 different ones, feature the go-cup from Sunny Studio's "Mug Hugs" set. I paper pieced the cups and mounted them to rectangles with wonky stitching.

Here's a close-up of the Wink of Stella on the cup's sleeve. The glitter and sparkle doesn't show up in the main photo.  The card below is the first one I did, and afterwards I decided that it looked better with only one cup. The ivy and snowman decorations on the left cup are coated with glossy accents.

I have a short attention span, and there is a reason I don't do a lot of the same card. I have leftover cups and bases for more of these and I really want to move on to a different color combo and style.

Warm polar bear greetings!

This is the card that took all day. Seriously, I had this blog post all written out with everything that went sideways with this card. Then I deleted it because it was tedious. I did it once already, you know?

The smiling bear is another from My Favorite Things' Polar Bear Pals. I used several different MFT dies for the background and sentiment strip. The two things that really slowed me down are the silver thread on the round panel, and the little coffee mug. I simply didn't have a mug stamp small enough in scale, so I improvised with a cup from Your Next Stamp that was part of an espresso machine. Oy vey.

So, this is my first entry into the 2016 Winter Coffee Lover's Blog Hop.  The inside has the "Have a BEARY  merry Christmas" sentiment that I used on a previous card.

Beary Christmas, you all!

More bears from My Favorite Things' Polar Bear Pals. Not much more to be said.

I created the background from bristol smooth cardstock which I cut into wavy strips with the MFT die "Whimsical Waves". I then attempted to blend in the Distress colors with a blending tool. The jury is out on that one.

I can bear-ly stand it!

I have quite a few of these polar bears from My Favorite Things' Polar Bear Pals set. None of the sentiments are for Christmas, so I'm using bits and pieces from other sets. More bears tomorrow!

I water colored the background onto heavy water color card stock and cut the panel out with a stitched rectangle from Lawn Fawn that is exactly A2 sized. Then I cut the silver glitter frame with a frame from MFT. I colored the bear with Copic and Spectrum Noir markers. I colored 2 of the bears quite darkly with warm grays, and the rest are just kind of shadowed in with cool gray. Then I let my Scan and Cut do it's thing.

So much fun!

I'm glad I got past the learning curve with it. And thanks to whoever said it was OK to tape down the edges, that has made a lot of difference! I'll color the other bear's scarves when I chose backgrounds for them.

The sentiment on this one is from MFT's Merry Everything set.

Leaping for Joy!

I love these reindeer from My Favorite Things' Merry Everything set. These were watercolor painted, cut out with my Brother Scan N Cut, and mounted to a watercolor background Not much else to say about this one.

You are always on my nice list!

Yes, I have more reindeer stamps!  I thought the 3 previous sets were the best when I got them, but it seems each year I must have more.

This reindeer and Santa are from My Favorite Things' Merry Everything set, and it features 3 different reindeer, a Santa, a sleigh, and a bunch of presents. You will be seeing more reindeer from me later this week, for sure.

I water colored these guys with my new Mission Gold water colors. I just love to watercolor, even if I'm not so good at it yet. The frame is cut from a My Favorite Things Blueprints 27 die, and the dots are from Nuvo Crystal Drops, here in a green and gold color.

Let the Christmas cards begin!

I'm so happy to start doing Christmas cards! They are my favorite of all the cards I make, so yay for the season!  We will ignore the part where I'm in Florida and have exactly 4 days of experience in snow. So yes, we will be seeing a lot of snow themed cards, because that's the norm at Christmas.

I had a lot of fun water-coloring these poinsettias from Simon Says Stamp's Winter Flowers set. I used my new (to me) Mission Gold Watercolors and painted these on white embossed water color paper. I first gold embossed the sentiment from My Favorite Things' Hand Lettered Christmas in the center of the panel, then white embossed the flower, berry, and leaves in white around it.

Note to self: don't touch the wet color with the heel of your hand. I saved this one by cutting out and around the smeared bits. Here's the panel with the smeared bits on the right.

After I took this picture I also added some gray shadowing around most of the images. Then I messed with the shadowing on the main flower some, too.

I mounted the trimmed piece with a lot of foam tape on some heavy-weight dark red card stock that was cut down to A2 size.

So, here come the Christmas cards! I love them.

Happy Turkey Day, Part 2

I did another card with the same Lawn Fawn Turkey Day stamp set. I kept it simple with an oval frame cut from a plaid paper (also Lawn Fawn). I still had another turkey, so I put him inside.

The gold rectangle is cut from an Avery Elle Wonky Stitched Rectanges, as is the sentiment strip.  The oval frame is cut with 2 of the largest ovals in the My Favorite Things Wonky Stitched Ovals. Over all, the whole thing is wonky, but I'm not starting over!

Happy Turkey Day!

Sometimes you just want to see if you can use stuff you haven't yet used. So I needed another Thanksgiving card, and pulled out this cute turkey from Lawn Fawn (Turkey Day). Then I decided to use both the Lawn Fawn Snow Capped Mountain border dies, and the MFT Trees in the Forest dies, too. Yes, and I used the Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Border for the foreground.  The Puffy Cloud Border is the only thing I have actually used before. 

When I was thinking this one up, I remembered the trees as being quite a bit smaller than they are.

If I do this design again I'll probably leave out the mountains, and lighten up the sky a bit.  Or I'll use the LF tree border die. Or I'll use the rolling hills fence back there. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Give thanks.

I decided to go with the messy water coloring for this Thanksgiving card. Really messy. The stamp is an older set from Lawn Fawn called Harvest Season. The "Thanks" border is from Simon Says Stamp, and I cut the letters for "Give" with Bottle Cap Letters from My Favorite Things.

I stamped a row of leaves inside with various Simon Says Stamps dye inks.

Here's a picture of the old Lawn Fawn stamp set:

I believe it is the first Lawn Fawn stamp I ever bought. Now my stamp tray is bursting with them. Yay.

My deer friend, and my new toy.

I did it and I'm happy that I did. I gave away my semi-crippled* Silhouette Cameo and bought a Brother Scan N Cut 2. For cutting out stamped images, wow. Just wow. I can't tell you how much easier this is. But I can show you the first images I cut with it!

The tree, the stump and both critters were stamped with Versafine onto Bristol card stock, cut with the ScanNCut2, and then colored with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers. The background is from a 6x6 pad of impressionist type images that I got several years ago at Tuesday Morning.

The tree, stump, and critters are from The Alley Way Stamps. Gosh I miss them.

* For the curious, my Silhouette Cameo got it's USB port fried, so all designs to be cut had to be saved to a memory card. Plus, to cut stamped images I had jump through several hoops first, and even then only one side of the page would cut correctly. I had to guess if it was going to be the right or left side today.

This little piggy hogs my heart!

These little piggies really have captured my heart! 

True story: I visited the My Favorite Things store in Eustis, FL, back in June when I was staying at my brother's house next door in Leesburg. When I showed my stamps to my sister-in-law, she insisted that I should use them "right now". She pulled out her paper crafting supplies and all her coloring tools and offered me the entire dining room table, to use for the rest of the week.

That's when I discovered you could use the back of a clear plastic plate for an acrylic block, and a table knife makes a pretty good scoring tool. Yeah, all of her stamps are wood mounted rubber.

I colored up a whole page of pigs with assorted colored pencils, mostly Crayola. I later discovered that my favorite gray colored pencil was actually a watercolor pencil. Who knew?

I used the MFT Hog Heaven and wood plank background stamps and a fishtail banner die. The oval and rounded rectangle dies are from Gina Designs, and I don't remember where I got the heart die from. Oops.

Now for my question. Do you prefer the picture with the plain white background, or the one with the music background? The sheet music wasn't quite tall enough for my little Foldio, but I did it anyway.

Coffee before talkie!

I'm still keeping things very simple. The coffee cup and pot images are from Pretty Cute Stamps, as is the tiny "before talkie" tag. The word "COFFEE" is die cut with an alphabet set from My Favorite Things.

I'm not sure who I would send this card to, however. Anyone I'd say this to already knows it.

Pumpkin Spice Latte time!

Yay, I am loving this coffee lover's blog hop, and wish I had a touch more mojo this go around.  

Today's card is a simple cup with simple sentiments. The PSL on the cup die cut cup stands for "Pumpkin Spice Latte", of course. 

The cup die, banner die, and stamped sentiment are all from My Favorite Things, and the paper is from an old stack in my stash that's lost it's cover.

Enjoy your fall coffee everyone!

Get well tea party

Yep, it's get well time, for me! I brought back a stupid chest cold from my Alaskan cruise, and it is malingering.

Anyway, this card is created from The Alley Way Stamp's "Tea Par Tea" set (from 2014). I embossed the teapot and teacup with copper embossing power onto water color paper. I then colored the m with my Gansai Tambi watercolors. The tiny teabag was stamped and embossed with the same copper embossing powder and mounted using a tiny piece of hemp twine.

I also use My Favorite Things plaid paper and MFT's scalloped frame die. The card base is cut from some Simon Says Stamp paper.

Way to start the Coffee Lover's Blog Hop, right? More tea, please!

More dragons!

These Magical Dragons from My Favorite Things Stamps are just so expressive and cute! This dragon looks kind of befuddled. Was that dragon slaying supposed to be today?  It kind of reminds me of that movie where the dragon slayer and the dragon were in cahoots, doing fake slayings for profit. Dragonheart, it was, from the late 90s.

I used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers to color the dragon and little people, on Bristol cardstock. The sentiment is on a thought bubble from Lawn Fawn (A Birdie Told Me), and the sentiment itself is from The Alley Way Stamps’ Rock Solid set.

More dragons from MFT’s Magical Dragons. I wanted to use the Gift Box Cover Up die, to look a little like a window. The background is a printed paper from a very old stack, featuring a hay bale and blue sky, all on a fabric texture.  If I ever do this one again, the dragon won’t be bright green.

I used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers to color the children and the dragon. The puff of smoke from the dragon’s mouth was a last minute addition. It almost makes him look breathless, don’t you think?

Dragon fly-by

What can I say about these CUTE dragons from My Favorite Things? Well, cute, for one. I colored them with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers, fussy cut them, and put them on this square frame with clouds. Sigh. So cute.  More dragons will come, shortly. Yes.

That's Magical Dragons, BTW.

Recipe for Happiness

Ok, so I had wanted these fat chefs from the moment I saw them, yet I kept resisting. They are Recipe for Happiness from My Favorite Things. When I went to the store in June, I caved and threw them and the matching dies into my basket. Committed!

I wanted to keep the colors neutral, so I went with a black, white and red theme. Then I added grey. In the first card I used a wood plank background stamp, grey on grey. It was then cut out with a Wonky Stitched Rectangle. All my chefs and accessories were colored with Copic markers. He's backed with a Wonky Stitched Oval.

In my second card, I used the Duo 3 die from Pretty Pink Posh, trying to make it look like a window with an awning. The red at the bottom also has tone on tone background stamping. This time I used an old stamp from October Afternoon's Farm Girl. Yes, it's supposed to look like your great-granny's wallpaper. I sneaked in a touch of blue, too.

For my next, and last card for today, I went with something more colorful. I recently got a whole bunch of sequins, and I really need to use some of them up before getting more. I want ALL the colors, and there are a LOT of colors.  I used my Wonky Stitched Oval dies (MFT) to make the frame and doubled up on the thickness of the foam tape behind it. Next time I'll probably stick with something rectangular.

I'm glad I didn't go bonkers collecting washi tape.

Have a tweet birthday!

Today I'm back with the outline that was cut of the 2 birds I had painted last week. This die, from Concord and 9th, cuts 2 birds on a branch and their outline. Love it!

I put the bird outlines, top and bottom, on a piece of dark brown card-stock that I had stamped with the Romantic Script background stamp from MFT. I added a white zigzag border and an abstract orange print on the bottom, then die cut some sprigs of greenery (Paper Smooches Foliage 2). The sentiment is from MFT's Birds of Paradise stamp set.

Thankful flowers

Today I took my inspiration from Stephanie Klauck from the My Favorite Things design team. I liked her card so much I practically copied it. Honestly, I suck at grouping flower stamps into a great arrangement, so I copied Stephanie's. I also liked her coloring on Kraft colored paper, so I copied that too. Thanks, Stephanie for the wonderful idea. Totally not mine.

As you can see, I did one with white embossed images, and the other I stamped in black ink.  These flowers are My Favorite Things' Funky Flowers set. The sentiments are from MFT's Grateful die and stamp set. I die cut the "grateful' word in black and purple, and put the black one slightly offset behind the purple one, to give it a shadow.

One thing I really appreciated about Stephanie's arrangement is that none of the images touch each other, so no masking was needed. Yay! 

Both were colored with my Prismacolor pencils. It's funny, I don't use them very often, so most of them are almost full length. But that dark olive green kept breaking, so I kept on sharpening it. It is now less than half length and looks odd in the tray. Plus I Googled broken colored pencils and found out I was doing it ALL WRONG. You turn the sharpener, not the pencil. I just ordered the electric pencil sharpener that was recommended by Sandy Allnock. Oh, and I may put that one in my car to soften it up and heal the core. My car can get up to 120 degrees in the sun, no kidding. Florida. Sigh.

Hello, birds!

I recently won a gift certificate to Concord and 9th, for participation in the Summer Coffee Lover's Blog Hop. I was SO excited, because I have had my eye on this bird die for a bit. This is "By Your Side". I also got another die and set of card bases which I haven't used yet.

You can't tell by looking at this picture, but the die not only cuts the 2 birds on the branch, but it also cuts a thin outline of paper above and below the birds. I can use the thin outlines to create another "picture", and you will see the results of that, soon!

I cut the birds from water color paper and quickly colored them with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers. I then tried to figure out which color to mount them to. I probably should have picked the paper and then the bird colors, but live and learn, right?

I used the Romantic Script background stamp from My Favorite Things, then cut the "Hello" from a MFT word die (Hello There). That panel was mounted on a very old piece of patterned paper, then the whole thing was attached to the front of a top folding card base. I popped their little wings up with a tiny bit of clear foam tape.

Now, back to nonstop mayhem on the news. I'm shaking my head.

Sending lizard love!

OK, here's my last of the lizard card series. Once again, this cute little fellow is part of Pretty Cute Stamps' Leapin Lizard collection. He is colored with my Zig Real Brush Clean Color markers, fussy cut, and added to a background that includes the Simon Says Stamp Rolling Hills die.

It's summer and the gnats are out. Thank you lizards, for eating them.

Iguana wish you

More of the lizards I colored this week with my Zig Real Brush Color markers. I love this guy, even if everybody knows iguanas are bright green! He's coming, I promise!

The iguana and the sentiment are from Pretty Cute Stamps' Leapin' Lizards set. The background is an old experiment I had in my scrap box, blended with Distress Inks and a Tim Holtz stencil. 

Now, just keeping it real. this is what my work desk really looks like. 100% a mess. If you look carefully you can see the green iguana I colored, kind of southeast of the actual card. LOL. 

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

For anyone who is still reading, wow, thanks! My question for you all is, does the size of the photo matter to you? I keep them less than 600 pixels in either direction so I won't go over my limit for Blogger. I also put most of my photos on Flickr at the same size. I think Flickr's size limits are a lot more generous. Should I make larger versions of the photos for Flickr? Does anyone care?

Let's do Lunch!

In honor of the giant lizard I saw last week, I've been coloring these chameleons and iguanas from Pretty Cute Stamps. The stamp set, an older one, is called Leapin' Lizards.

I colored both the chameleon (PCS), and the bird (from My Favorite Thing's Tropical Birds set) with my Zig Real Brush Water Color markers. I really wanted them to be looking up at the bug (lunch?), but that would have required some masking that I didn't really want to do today. I MAY go back and do some surgery on the chameleon's eyes. Maybe.

I also used the bee from Spellbinder's Bee and Laurel die, a zigzag border die from Lawn Fawn, the sentiment from Avery Elle's Hello Chum, and did some background stamping with leaves from MFT's Blissful Blooms (Versamark on the grass) and the diagonal striped sky.

I am linking this to My Favorite Things color challenge # 48. This is the 3rd one for this challenge. I really like the colors!

I'm also putting this in the Pretty Cute Stamps' summer challenge.

Tropical birds, flowers, and lizards???

Today's card features the word dies from MFT, Absolutely Fabulous. It is accented with a bird and some flowers and leaves from MFT's Birds of Paradise and Blissful Blooms. These were painted with my Zig Real Brush Water Color Markers. I also colored the letters on the Absolutely part since they just disappeared into the plaid.

I'm putting this into the MFT Color challenge # 48. The purple isn't quite spot on, but I'm going for it any way!



Now, my tropical story. I love living in Florida, even if the wildlife can be a little scary. There's a snake that hangs around the back door at work. He's shy and harmless so not many people have seen him. Just yesterday I saw a 2 foot iguana in the parking lot at Tijuana Flats. Sure, if you are going to see an iguana, in the parking lot of a Mexican food restaurant seems very appropriate. Then when I got home I saw this GIANT green lizard on the tree in my front yard. Honestly, it's hard to tell, but he is absolutely fabulous. At a distance. This guy was between 12 and 14 inches long.

Edited to add: I have researched him, and he is a Knight Anole, native to Cuba, and can live 10 to 15 years. Wow.

Remember my Big Louie story from a few years ago? I'm not doing that again,  no way, no how.