Friends with Flair Friday Challenge Card

Have you guys seen the new blog for the upcoming online magazine called Embellish that is run by the wonderfully talented Ashley Cannon Newell? She is one of the current Dirty Girls in the Dirty Dozen at Splitcoaststampers. Talk about a class act...the things she produces and the blog she is running are top notch and incredibly inspirational. I hope you will visit her and see for yourself.

The Embellish Magazine blog held a challenge recently called the Polka Dot Paradise Color Challenge which was to make a project incorporating polka dots and the following color scheme.

What gorgeous colors that fit perfectly into the fall season. So I decided to make a fall-themed card using some new leaves from Unity's September Store Kit and the sentiment from Unity's September KOM.

Season of Blessings

The digiwords used for the background text underneath the leaves are from Say it With Stamps. Inks used are TH's Aged Mahogany Distressed Ink; Stampin Up's Pumpkin Pie, Apricot Appeal and Purely Pomegranate. I used the Rock n Roll technique on the stamped images to create the variation of colors on the solid stamps.

To create the cool ribbon/twine effect I just tied knots in the ribbon at three points that I tried to space evenly over the front of my card and then wrapped the twine around the ribbon and secured it at each end. It makes for great texture, interest and depth on the card!

Thanks so much for stopping by. If you didn't start at the beginning with the Unity blog to see all the Friends with Flair posts, then click HERE to go there now!

Enjoy your day and may your bucket be filled with flair!!

Friday Friends With Flair... Who Does That??

If you know Unity stamps then you know the answer to the question in my title and their new tag line. The answer is Unity Stamps Does That!!!

What do they do???

• They produce the most wonderful stamps around
• They love their customers and take good care of them
• They give a jazillion stamps away
• They keep things fresh and fun
• They inspire us to be better stampers and better people
• They provide a forum for fans to get together and encourage each other

Seriously....Who does that???

I am so happy to be a part of the wonderful network of people who love Unity stamps. It is so fun to participate in the weekly blog hops and see what other talented stampers are doing with their stamps. Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and checking out what I have made for today's Friends With Flair post.

I decided to make a card for this week's Unity Addicts Challenge that you can find right HERE. We were challenged to make a holiday card using Red, Pink, Blue and Kraft. And this is what I came up with...

This stamp is called Love Builds a Home and comes with a beautiful sentiment inside the big cloud, but because it didn't fit the holiday theme, I decided to mask my card to keep the words from stamping and then I just wrote in my own sentiment (Edited to Add: I wrote snow instead of woods! OOPs!!) I chose part of the quote from the Thanksgiving Song by Lydia Maria Child. I'll admit that I first thought that line went with a Christmas theme, but when I looked it up I realized it was intended for Thanksgiving. But, Thanksgiving is a holiday too right?? The DP is from MME.

Here is a closeup of the cute little house that I colored with my Copics! I paper pieced my trees with more of the coordinating papers from MME. They are blue! You know like Blue Spruce Trees!! LOL!!

I hope you are having fun looking at all the great creations on everyone's blogs. If you want to start at the beginning, just go HERE to the Unity blog around 10am CST and you will see the list of all the blogs participating. Don't forget to find the Blinkie!!!

Be sure to check out all the Who Does That? fun stuff over at the Unity Forum where there are lots of chances to win tons of stamps! Have a great Friday, and may your bucket overflow with a lot of fun things to do this weekend!

It's Friends with Flair Friday!! Enjoy the Day!

Today is going to be really fun because I get to participate in finding the Flair Blinkie! It was so fun having it on my blog last week and I really appreciated all the nice comments, but this week I am going hunting!! Have you found it yet??

I had lots of new Unity come in the mail this week, but I haven't had a lot of time to play with much of it. I did use some of the new Jillibean papers today from the Le Chic Vintage kit, but I can't show you what I made just yet!! But what I can show you is a card that I made for a good friend of mine that lives in Va Beach. She actually purchased one of my Etsy cards and then also commissioned me to make another one for her.

She requested me to make a card for the Parents of the Bride for a family member of her and her husbands. This isn't a category of card that I have ever made before so it was a bit of a challenge at first. I call it Enjoy the Day.

I masked off the word "relax" when I stamped the sentiment. Instead of using the butterfly that came in the Sept In-Store kit I used the one from the August 08 kit (because it was smaller). I did however use the butterfly trail in the new kit too. I embossed the front using the Quickutz Frame embossing folder in my Cuttlebug. To achieve the sponged look on the inner oval, I embossed the frame twice and cut the center out of the second one and placed it over the first one to use as a mask. I then pounced a combination of SU ink in Sky Blue and Certainly Celery. This card will also be entered into the first challenge being held over at the Paper Maniac blog which was to use embossing on our project.

Here is the view of the inside of the card...

My friend chose this sentiment from a list of ones I gave her that I found on the internet. I was thrilled to find out that she likes the card and found it acceptable!

Hope you are having fun hopping around and visiting all of our Unity Friends with Flair. I know that I am always so inspired by my fellow Unity fans! I am enjoying my day since it is the first of a three day weekend for me. I hope that you Enjoy the Day too!!

To start the blog hop at the beginning, please visit the Unity blog!

May your bucket continue to overflow with the freedom bestowed on us thanks to the protection we receive from the forces of men and women who courageously defend us! Today I remember those lost on 9/11 and pray for their families.

I Opened an Etsy Store!

So I finally decided to give Etsy a try. If you haven't heard of Etsy, it is an online site where handmade items can be bought and sold. I make so many cards these days, more than I can give away and I am tired of them sitting around here collecting dust. I already mail birthday and special occasion cards to my friends and family members and I also contribute cards to the Share a Card organization, but there are still too many left unsent. It only makes sense to try and sell them to somebody who would like to pass them on to someone in their life, right? Certainly people buy cards all the time, I am just hoping that maybe they will want to buy them from me!

I have no idea if this will be a successful venture or not, but I figured if I even recoup a small portion of the money I spend each month on papers and supplies it couldn't hurt!

Here is the link to my store. It is called none other than MyBucketOverfloweth! It is an appropriate name because my bucket actually does overflow with cards! Ha!!

I decided to additonally make some card sets to go into my Etsy store and I wanted to share with you the first set that I made. I tried to keep them clean and simple so the cost could stay down and it would appeal to the most people.

Here is the set that I call my Fall Four Pack!

Once again I used the adorable paper collection from Recollections that you can get from your local Michael's store. I just love how blue is an accent color for fall this year! I LOVE that!! Two cards are oriented landscape and two are portrait.

This card is called Fall Blessings and is made by paper piecing the Unity stamp tree stamp that came in the CKU Giggles set (which was sold only for a limited time). And yes, I individually cut out by hand each of the little circles for the middle tree! I made four sets of this card so that is a total of twenty little circles that I hand cut!! I know, call me CRAZY!!! The sentiment stamp is from Unity's Birdie Inspiration.

The next card is called Thankful Thoughts and it went together really nicely. I simply cut three equal squares to make a grid and them stamped the cute leaves stamp from Recollections where the fourth square would have gone. The sentiment is from Verve Stamps.

This third card was the most time consuming only because of the coloring involved. This adorable stamped image of squirrels and the sentiment are from The Greeting Farm set called Forest Friends. To color these I used my Prismacolor pencils blended with Gamsol. The layout for this card uses sketch SC244 at SCS

And finally the last card in the collection I call Happy Harvest. It is named after the SU sentiment I used that comes in the Loads of Love set. The die cut leave was made with my new Nestability die. I also embossed it and inked it and attached some cool fall fibers for an added touch!

So this whole set I am selling for $12 (plus shipping) which I think is a pretty good deal considering what you can spend at Hallmark for cards that are much plainer. I did get my first sale already when my neighbor and new friend Lisa bought a set from me! Thank you Lisa!!

Wish me luck! I would love to see this be an avenue to supplement my income and allow me to keep new products coming into my craftroom!

Have a wonderful Thursday and may your bucket overflow with new opportunities for you too!

Haunted Halloween

This card was a very challenging challenge card! LOL! I made it for one of the new challenges on the Unity Stamp forum at SCS (USK01) . Unity has revamped their way of doing things and there are no more Hip Hop Blog hops on Thursdays and the Hip Hop Hangovers (HHH) on Fridays are now Friday Friends with Flair (FFF!) The challenges are changing too and this is the first Kit of the Month challenge!

Jenn asked that we use only the July or August Kits of the Month and that we were to use the colors orange, black, green and purple! I was thinking to myself "Great"!! I love Halloween and I will make a Halloween card which will work perfectly with those colors!

The challenge however came in when I realized that none of the stamps from either of those kits had anything that remotely would work for Halloween. So the thinking cap went on (that was the very challenging part... LOL) and you can see what I came up with! I took the school house stamp from the August KOM and turned it into a Haunted House! Pretty clever huh??

The tree image is also from the August kit. The DP is from K&Co. and the ribbon is from Michael's. The cute metal embellishment for the Happy Halloween sentiment is from the new Recollections line at Michael's. I colored in the houses with my Prismacolor colored pencils and the trees with my Copics. The grassy hill was torn and colored with Copics also! The bat is a sticker that I have had in my collection for a long time!

Thanks for taking a look and have a great day!

May your bucket overflow with all treats and no tricks today!

It's that Sweet Time Again!

Yep it's Wednesday which means that it is time for another wonderful sweet sketch to play with from Sweet Sketch Wednesday. Have you heard of it before... or are you new to this blog? Well be sure to check out the SSW blog each Wednesday for some wonderfully creative sketches to play with that you will want to use over and over again!

Here is today's sketch...

The card that I decided to make this week has a specially sweet meaning because it is the card that I gave to my sweet baby sister Michelle (who I named my own daughter after!) Her birthday was actually last week, but I couldn't share this with you then until the sketch was released! So let's wish her a public Happy Birthday today OK?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!!

My daughter's Michelle and Leah with their Aunt Michelle (in the middle.)

So Many Candles

The candles border stamp and the cake stamp (in the Hodge Podge of Happiness kit) come from Unity. The sentiment stamp is one of Dee Gruenig's that I bought at my local craft store. The DP is from BG's Lime Ricky collection and I colored my images using my copics and stamped the sentiment with SU's Pumpkin Pie.

If you look closely at the candles I have added stickles where the flame is to make it shimmer if the light hits it right. The paper flowers are from Prima and I can't remember the name of the company that made the fabric flowers on the bottom. I colored some BG brads with my Copics to customize the color for this card.

Here is a picture of my sister Michelle with her fiance Claude.

They are getting married in January 2010!

The family met up at my sister's house last Thursday for a little surprise with cake and ice cream! I hope she had a special day! I love you Michelle!!

To see more of what the DT created with this week's sketch head on over to the Sweet Sketch Wednesday blog and start hopping around. You can also get to their blogs using my list on the side bar!

May the rest of your Wednesday be even sweeter than it has already and may your bucket overflow with happy celebrations with sweet people that you love!

Everyone Needs a Little Inspiration!

Dictionary.com defines inspiration as

• Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity.
  
• The condition of being so stimulated.

Don't you feel sometimes that you could use a little inspiration? Doesn't your mojo leave you temporarily and you struggle to find just the right stamp to ink up or the right paper to use? Well thankfully SCS has designed a way to help us get out of those ruts and to find inspiration from other artists and websites. Every Saturday you can log into the SCS Inspiration Challenge Forum and find many ways to be inspired.

Last Saturday we were inspired by Bellacor Vases that can be found HERE. There were over 1500 vases to choose from and anyone could find something to inspire them. As soon as I saw this vase HERE, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had found my inspiration!!

Here is the card that I created after being inspired by that Bellacor Vase.

I decided that not only do I need inspiration sometimes, but so do others who are struggling with one of life's toughest battles... the loss of a loved one. I kept this card clean and simple because when you are trying to comfort someone who is grieving, it is better to take the minimalist approach so the true sentiments can be felt. I used my Unity silhouette flowers from the Birdie Inspiration set and lengthened the stems using a Sharpie Fine tip marker.

When I created this card I was hoping that I could inspire someone going through a tough time and move their mind to a higher level of feeling loved by me. On the inside of the card I used a Stampin Up sympathy stamp that says...

May God's love

heal your sorrow, and may

His peace replace your

heartache with

warm and loving memories.

I also played along with yesterday's Inspiration Challenge IC193 that can be found HERE! This time we were to be inspired by an ecclectic online store called The Curiosity Shoppe. They had really neat ideas and I found lots of creations that I would want to CASE or borrow! I chose THESE Earrings as my inspiration.

When I saw them my mind went directly to Dawn McVey's Damask Designs stamps from PTI and to the Ambrosia Collection by Basic Grey. So with the lace earrings as my inspiration, and the Damask stamps along with some BG, I was led and they led me to make this rather formal Birthday card...

I cut out one of my label nesties twice in one size and once in a large size. Then by turning one of them 45 degrees I was able to create this medallion like mat for my stamp. I decided to stamp the Happy Birthday sentiment right on top of the strip of Damask Designs. To finish it off I added four rhinestones to accent the center piece in the medallion.

Weather permitting my family and I are going to do some boating and jet skiing. Ricky will just be fishing since he is still supposed to be resting his eye. I am happy to say though that everday he is reporting that his vision is improving and his eye is hurting less. My daughter Leah made it back to Gainesville yesterday and is still in a little pain still but also doing better every day!

Please have a wonderful day and may your bucket overflow with inspiration from many sources!

Happy Hip Hop Hangover!!

I am a little later in posting today than planned, so sorry about that!

So let's get on with the HHH cards!! I have three cards to share with you today that all use Unity Stamps. If you have been to some of the forums this week then you may have seen these, but it's all I have for you today!!

This first card was made for the Hip Hop Challenge yesterday called "the Great Outdoors" where we had to use a stamped image of anything you would find outside the house. I chose to do a beach scene and used my Sun and sentiment image from Unity's July KOM and the bucket and shovel from the Beach Days and Sun Rays set. The DP is from October Afternoon.

Sunshine and Sand

I had the opportunity to use a new product that I picked up at CHA which is sand that already comes with the glue in it. It is made by Muddpuddles.net and comes in many colors. The color I used here is called Malibu Beach and is their most popular color. It was so easy to use and it really makes a great affect on projects!

Look at how realistic the sand is. It is also very durable and stays glued down very well with no evidence of the glue left on the sand!

This card also was made for the Clean and Simple card challenge CAS26 on SCS on Monday to use stitching on our project. I used yellow thread and added machine stitching to make more sun rays coming out of the sun. The waves were made using another tool I bought at CHA which is called the Ultimate Crafter's Companion. The box comes with embossing/debossing plates in various patterns. I thought this looked like waves and so I used it and then inked it to add dimension!

I am pleased as punch to say that this card won a free stamp set for me and was the challenge winner chosen by Jeanne last night!! Woohoo!!

My next Unity card is for the second Hip Hop Challenge which was called "Break Out the Buttons!" For this challenge we had to use three buttons on our project. I chose to use these adorable little flowers from the 100% Happiness in-store kit. (You can see lots more from this set if you do the Hip Hop yesterday starting on the Unity Stamp Co. blog!) I paperpieced some of this adorable Scenic Route paper and tilted my mats to make this sweet, whimsical card!!

Three Times the Sweetness

And finally I will share with you my first submission for the Guest Designer challenge at Unity. I don't think this is a winning entry and I will definitely be submitting some more samples because of that. I don't know where my mojo was for this one! LOL!!

The challenge was called a 1-2-3 challenge. We had to use 1 stamp (that could be stamped multiple times), 2 DP's and 3 embellishments. I think the cool thing about this card is that I did mask off the ice cream cone and left only the cherry on top which I proceeded to stamp many times to make my own background paper. It was tedious, but I like how it came out! The rest of the card is just OK for me!

So there you have them! Three Unity cards for your HHH viewing pleasure. I hope that you are on the blog hop to see all the rest of the customer's creations today. If you haven't started from the Unity Blog, then please click HERE to start at the beginning!!

Have a great day and happy hangover day!! May your bucket be overflowing with tons of Unity style inspiration!! I can't wait to see what Unity has in store for us come September when Hip Hop changes to some new form of blog hopping!! The suspense is killing me!!

Quick Reminder and a Special Birthday Today!!

Don't forget that the July issue of SheetLoad of Cards is available for download and there is still time to enter the monthly challenges and win FREE digital stamps from the July sponsor, Squigglefly!!

Head on over today and find out how to enter the July Shout Out to SheetLoad and Show Us Your SheetLoad contests.

Now with my DT duties out of the way I wanted to wish a special someone a very happy birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIFFANY!!!!

Tiffany is my third daughter who recently graduated from high school and is preparing for a career in law enforcement. She has a new job working very closely with our local Police Department and she just LOVES it!! I think she was made for this field of work and she will be very good at it.

Tiffany is on the right with her good friend Jessica!

Tiffany is a sweet and fun loving young lady who has made me so proud. It is never hard to get her to smile, even if she thinks she is mad at me!! She loves to laugh and have a good time, yet she always tries to set a good example for her friends. We love her so much and hope that she has a very special today!

She decided on her own to go PARASAILING today to celebrate her birthday! This scares me to death! But, since she is 19 and an adult, I didn't try to stop her! I will try and share photos of that with you at a later date! I am sure she will have a good time!

Using my new favorite technique of coloring on a black and white image printed on acetate, I made this card for her birthday...

The photo was a random image I found on the internet. I used my new "flying high" stamp that came in the Unity In-Store only kit called 100% Happiness. The rest of the sentiment was computer generated. The DP is from We R Memory Keepers.

She is going to love this card since it will always remind her of her 19th birthday when she went parasailing! Later today we are going to have a cookout with her friends on the lake and spend some time in the pool, on the boat or kayaks and jet skiing! It sounds like a fun packed day... just the kind Tiffany likes!

I wanted to leave you with some of the layouts that I have done of Tiffany in the past. I can't believe that it has been 19 years since she was born. My how time flies!!

Tiffany as a newborn

Tiffany's fifth birthday party

Tiffany finally losing some of her shyness

Playing frisbee on the beach in Jacksonville

Matching her cousin!

Dressed up as Wendy throwing the first pitch at a local ball game

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for taking a glimpse into my life and celebrating with me my special daughter's birthday!

I hope you have a great day and may your bucket overflow with many special memories of the loved ones in your life!

New Sweet Sketch, New Digistamps, and New eZine Issue!

Everything is new!! It's a new month, new release day, and a new Wednesday!! So, I have lots of new things to share with you!! I want to do all of the great sites that I do DT work for justice, so get your morning cup of Joe and hang on for a lot of blogging fun!!

Sweet Sketch Wednesday!

First, I can kill two birds with one stone!! Using the new sketch (Sweet Sketch4) from the Sweet Sketch Wednesday site and one of the newly released stamps from the Kitchen Gingers set at Whimsie Doodles, I made the following card for your viewing pleasure!!

This is one of those cards that just pleases me. I think it's a combination of the layout of Arlana's wonderful sketch, coupled with the adorable digistamp image called Ginger Greetings plus the pretty colors from the BG collection called Urban Prairie!

The new Sweet Sketch Wednesday Sketch #4

To make this card I printed out my digistamp image onto 110lb GP CS and made sure it was dry. Then I colored in the images with my Copic Markers. To help prevent any running of black ink after printing, just use your embossing gun to heat set the ink. I then cut my image out using one of the Nestie ovals and made an outline for it with the next size up scalloped oval. At the base of the card, following the sketch that you can see pictured above, I ran the blue paper through my CB Swiss Dots folder. I stitched around the edges of it with black thread. I also printed out the greeting stamp and used my nesties the same way as I had for the main image. I finished the piece off by adding some large sized red ric-a-rac and some Prima flowers for detail. BG brads were added to the centers of each flower.

The color inspiration for this card came from a the Florida's Friday Color Inspiration challenge on Stamp TV in the Florida group. Each week Asela from Gina K Designs challenges us with a new batch of colors. I changed my neutral color from beige to white though! Here were this weeks colors...

Here is a second card that I made using this weeks Sweet Sketch! It is to celebrate Independence Day ! It also combines a couple challenges! Of course the first is the sketch, and the second one is Unity Addicts Challenge from 6/24 on SCS which was to use Red, White and Blue on your card.

Here is what I came up with...

This card went together really easily because I used some awesome DP that had coordinating stickers from Creative Imaginations. All the stamps are from Unity except the number 4 which is from Martha Stewart. To read more about the Unity stamps I used, please visit my SCS Gallery post HERE!

For more inspiration and to play along with our sketch for this week, please visit the blog. You can visit Sweet Sketch Wednesday to see some more cards made from this sketch. Arlana also has Mr Linky activated so that if you play along you can upload your card for all of us to see!!

OK, now for more about Whimsie Doodles!

So the WD DT and I have been teasing you for quite a few days now with some sneak peeks at some of the images that are going on sale today at the Whimsie Doodles Etsy store!! The wait is finally over and you can get all of the adorable digistamps that we have previewed for you. It's a new WD Release day!!! Yippee!!!!

Being released today are the following digistamps...

• Ride the Wave


• Puddle Jumper


• Stir Things Up


• Ginger Greetings


• Perfect Mix


• Button Sentiments


• Flipped

(If there is a hyperlink, click on it and it will take you to my SCS Gallery where you can see the sample I made with that digistamp!) Or you can visit the Whimsie Doodles Blog to see these digistamp images and link to the store.

So what are you waiting for? Head right on over to the WD and get some of these awesome images!! You won't be disappointed!!!

And last but not least... let's talk SheetLoad!!

It is the first of the month so that means a new issue of Sheetload's eZine is ready for you to download. The cover of the issue is pictured below! You are going to love it! It is sponsored by Squigglefly. The sketch artist this month is the talented Barbara DeBose and she has provided us with a wonderful layout to use. I hope that you will get over to the SheetLoad site and download your FREE copy today!!

Click on the cover to take you to the SheetLoad site!

Edited to add the direct link to the eZine!

I made a sample using this month's sketch and one of Squigglefly's Digistamp images that they so graciously let us use!

I used Squigglefly's adorable image called Party Time to make a birthday card! Using this bright American Crafts DP, I made a card and matched it up to a gift bag to give to a special person for their birthday!

Here is a closer view of the card...

Here is what I used to make this card called Party Time!

Digistamp: Squigglefly (Party Time); Sketch: July 2009 SheetLoad sketch; DP: American Crafts; CS: GP (white), The Paper Co. (brown), Ink: computer printed digistamp; Markers: Copics; Gems: Studio 18 clear rhinestones; Rub-ons: My Sentiments Exactly (Birthday Cards); machine stitching. Hand cut stars from DP.

Phew!! Did you make it all the way to the end? If you did you should get a medal!! Well I don't have a medal, but I do hope that I inspired you to go and get some free sketches and then go shopping for some great digistamps being released today!

I will be back tomorrow with some more fun things to share with you! Have a great day and may your bucket overflow with lots of new things for this new month! Happy July!!

Inspired!

Sorry for being a bit MIA the past couple of days! I have been busy working on DT submissions that I can't show yet! And also I have been working on projects around the house and had a friend visit from south FL.

Today I got up early and while the rest of the family was still sleeping, I indulged myself by working on a card for today's Inspiration Challenge on SCS. It is IC186 and we were to find something from the "Charm School Drop Out's" work to be inspired by. You can see her Etsy Store HERE and THIS is the print of hers that inspired my card!

My card is titled Always Remember...

I decided that the white glowing circles around the dandelions made me think about halos and had a really serene feel to them, so I decided to use this as a sympathy card. I used BG DP and all the stamps are Unity. The flowers are from the August 08 kom, the bird on the branch is from the April 09 kom, and the sentiment is from the Confession: I love Unity set.

To make the circles around the flowers I used one of my Nestie circles to draw a circle with a pencil Then I traced the pencil lines with a white Prismacolor pencil and used Gamsol to blend it in towards the center. Then to highlight the white outline, I used my opaque white pen from Inkessentials to accent it.

I like how it came out and hope that it will be a comfort to the recipient when I have the need to send it out!

I am keeping this short and sweet because we are headed out to clean our pool deck this morning!! Hope you have a wonderful weekend and I plan on being back tomorrow with some more things to share!!

May your bucket overflow with good family fun this weekend!

Hip Hop Hangover!!

Happy Friday!! It is Hip Hop Hangover day. It's the day after Unity's Hip Hop where they were honoring Dad's. If you didn't get a chance to hop through the blogs, you should start at Unity's blog post HERE and give it a try.




I have had a good bit of time this week to play at my craft table making cards. Many of them are Unity, and I haven't even shared them all with you here yet! Well today I am going to share two of them and soon I will share some of the other ones with you.




Here is the first card that I made using Unity stamps...



The Fine Print: DP: We R Memory Keepers (Grandmas Kitchen); Stamps: Unity (Camper, Aug 08 KOM, Sentiment, Nov 08 KOM); Ink: Amuse (Black) VersaMagic (Jumbo Java); Markers: Copics; Twill tape: Unknown; Buttons: SEI; Border Punch: Martha Stewart. Machine Stitching. Nestabilities.

I made the flower accent following Thursday's Way To Use it challenge WT222, which was to use crinkled cardstockout. Using my Nesties, I cut three different sized circles and then crumpled them, distressed the edges and inked them up. I layered them on top of each other and topped it off with a coordinating button.

Here is the second Unity card I made this week...

This card was made using the leftovers of my "You're one in a Melon" card that I posted earlier this week. It also was made following a sketch from Kisa's gallery for this week's Featured Stamper challenge FS122.

The Fine Print: DP: DCWV (Green), Pink Polka Dots, unknown; Stamps: Unity: Flower (May 09 KOM), Sentiment: SU (Crazy For Cupcakes); Brads: Unknown; Ink: Amuse (Black); Pencils: Prismacolors with Gamsol; Pens: Sakura (Black Glaze), Signo (White opaque uniball); Buttons: varied, Ribbon: Michael's. Nestabilities.

Puppy Update...


I feel like a mother in waiting while we are trying to be patient to find out whether or not we can adopt "Tasha." The shelter is having a meeting tonight to determine who is approved for adoption. The lady in charge says she is giving her vote to us!


With any luck we will get to meet Tasha by Saturday and hopefully take her home with us! We are so excited about it! I hope it all works out just fine!



Have a great day and may our bucket overflow with fun times for the weekend ahead!

SheetLoad Sneak Peek! And Final showing of May's Sketch

Wow! The month of May sure has slipped by rather quickly!! I can't believe that it is June 1st already tomorrow! We are already in "summer mode" in my household. Both of my kids exempted their final exams, so their last day of school was on Friday! Tiffany will walk with her class on Wednesday for her Graduation!

With the new month before us, it means it is time for a sneak peek at my submission for SheetLoad's new eZine being released tomorrow. I am not one of the featured designers for this month's release, but I am playing along with the other DT members.

Here is a snippet of the card I created using June's sketch! Be sure to visit tomorrow and I will show you the whole thing!!

Be sure and visit SheetLoad of Cards tomorrow for the release of the June eZine issue. And today you can visit there and see some more sneak peeks!! Click HERE to get some more previews of what's to come on June 1st!

I have one more order of business for SheetLoad. I am afraid that I won't be able to share with you the complete set of cards (nine 4.25 x 4.25 square cards and nine scraplings) that I made using May's SheetLoad sketch because two of my green Copic markers ran out of ink right in the middle of coloring my images. But I did get the second sample done. I made three of each of these too.

So here is sample two of my take on May's SheetLoad sketch with the scrapling! The DP is from Junkitz; the flower stamps (in two sizes) are from Unity's August KOM; and the sentiment is from the Essential Sayings set from MFT (which happens to be on sale right now!)

I have to order some Copic refills today!! Do you know how often you need YG03 and YG11 when coloring your stamped images? I have been paralyzed for a little while now!!

And finally, I have one other thing to share with you today...

We have exciting news in our Family!!

My baby sister is getting married {again!} This is a picture of my sister Michelle (I named my daughter after her) and her fiancee Claude! They have been dating for over a year now and are the sweetest most "in-love" couple I have ever seen!

Claude popped the question last week and they are planning a wedding in January!!

Aren't they a cute couple??








So of course big sis had to make a congratulatory card for the happy couple!



Here is the Clean and Simple card I made for them....

I barely stamped on it! I just used the sentiment stamp from SU's A Little Birdie Told Me set. I let the DP from PaperTrey Ink and the embellishments steal the show on this one! I used my Martha Stewart border punch to make the black lacy edging.

I couldn't be happier for them... Claude and his two daughter's are going to be a wonderful addition to our family!!

That's all for now! Have a great Sunday and be sure to visit tomorrow when I will have my June SheetLoad sketch to show you!

May your bucket always overflow with good news in your family too!