Mary Jo's Lunchtime Sketch Week 9

First off I wanted to say thank you to everyone that left a comment and birthday wishes on my Blog Hop post. They really meant a lot to me.
This card was made for Mary Jo's Lunchtime Sketch week 9 I was not able to finish it in time that week but I finally had a chance to finish it this weekend though. I wanted to incorporate some inchies into this sketch like Gerrie did on her card. I used the Alcohol Ink Press from the TJ April/May 2007 newsletter on the inchie squares and edged them with a black sharpie. Stamp is from Impression Obsession. I used the new stripes cuttlebug folder on the cardstock. When I ran the background cardstock through the cuttlebug some of the color came off because it had a white core so I ended up sanding it to get a distressed look. Finished card is 41/4x 51/2. Hopefully I will get caught back up with Mary Jo's sketches soon. I am hoping to have sketch 10 done in time for Emilia's birthday Wednesday. Thanks for stopping by and have a great night.

Blog Hop and a Birthday

Tonight is Papertreys first Blog Hop and today is my 39th birthday too. It is a beautiful day here in Denver and we just got back from visiting my favorite place this afternoon, The Denver Botanic Gardens. We also went to get a strawberry yogurt sundae for me for desert tonight. Even though it is my birthday I decided that I wanted to participate in the Blog Hop. I can eat my sundae and blog hop too :). The challenge was to use ribbon as a focal point in your project and this is what I came up with. I also used Lauren Meaders Saturday Sketch this week too. I started with a piece of PTI Stampers Select White Cardstock. I use a flower piercing template in the upper right corner to create a flower pattern. After that I backstitched every other hole with 1/8" ribbon. I created the leave pattern on my own. My husband bought me a Score Pal for my birthday so I used it for the first time yesterday to create the border. I love how that came out and was so easy to do. I finished the card by stamping the sentiment from the Lady Lady set in the lower left hand corner with Palette Noir Ink. That was it. I usually don't make cards this simple but that was part of Laurens challenge. I really like the effect the ribbon gives too. I hope you like the card and if you do you can vote for it here after 8:00P.M. EST but you have to register first if you are not already a member. A list of the other players blogs will be there too. If I was to be a winner tonight that would be a perfect end to a great birthday. Only vote if you really like what I did with the ribbon though. :)
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will visit again soon. Have a great night.

Rainbows and Angels

Unfortunately I was not able to come up with anything I liked in time for Mary Jo's Lunchtime Sketch Challenge Week 9. Hopefully I can still salvage what I have been working on this week and if I do I will post it if not I will just have to skip this one. In the meantime I came up with this. I got the inspriation for this card here. I changed it up a little bit though. I ended up using stamps for the background instead of drawing images. I used my largest scalloped rectangle nestability for the frame and I resized the card to 41/4x51/2. I colored the angel images with my copics and cut them out. The stamps I used are from Alluring Impressions.
I am going to try and participate in the Paper trey blog hop tomorrow night. Hopefully I will get the new stuff I ordered for my birthday from them today so I can finish what I have been working for it so check back tomorrow night to see what I came up with.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Locks and Keys

This card was made with Alluring Impression stamps. The technique I used is called Burnt Edges and was a TJ technique from Feb/Mar 2007. Brown cardstock is Bazzill. My friend Linda shared the idea for the layout with me. Thanks Linda. :) Finished card measures 41/4 x 51/2.
If you are celebrating Easter tomorrow I hope you have a good one.

Make A Wish

I still can't believe that Kristy made it into the top 10 on Idol last night. I was not a big Amanda fan but I don't think she deserved to go home yet. Looks like it is turning into a popularity contest instead of a talent contest again. Thank goodness Carly did not go home or I might have had to stop watching it. Still trying to catch up on the rest of the shows I taped. Luckily all my VCR's worked.
This card was made for MFT day which is the 20th of every month. It also gives me a reason to use my MFT stamps. I used this weeks MFT sketch as well. I chose this stamp because my birthday is next week and I was in the birthday mood. I would never have a chocolate cake on my birthday though because I don't like chocolate. My favorite is vanilla yogurt cake with strawberries in the middle but I did not think a white cake would have looked very good on the card. Main image stamp was colored with my Copics. Solid Cardstock is SU. Poka Dot Cardstock is from the TAC Tutti Frutti paper pack.I colored SU white grossgrain ribbon with my Copics. Nestabilities were used for the purple scalloped piece and the Make a Wish tag. I finished the card off by drawing black dots on the scalloped piece and outlining the oval tag with a black pen. That's it hope you like it.
By the way Happy Spring!

Sunflower Splash

Last night was the start again of two more of my favorite shows, Dancing with the Stars and the Bachelor. I have not had time to watch the Bachelor yet (I taped it) but I did see the guys dance on DWTS. There was only one guy that looks like he has any chance of winning this one to me so far. The ladies dance tonight but I will be taping it on my last free VCR and watching it tomorrow because I have to watch Idol tonight. My other DVR and VCR will be taping Biggest Loser and Big Brother. Looks like Tuesday is going to be a busy TV night around here for awhile. I still can't believe that Kristy did not go home on Idol last week. Hopefully she will redeem herself tonight. My favorites so far are David Cook, David A, Jason, Carly, and Brooke.
Now on to the card. I made this one for this months TJ Technique of the Month contest. This months technique was Reinker Splash. The winners were announced this morning. I was not one of them but there were a lot of great entries that I was competing against though. I used the new cuttlebug dots folder for the background on my card. Cardstock is SU. Stamp is from ISC. Ribbon is Bazzill. That's it for now. Have a good night.

Mary Jo's Lunchtime Sketch Week 8

I hope you all have had a nice weekend. Not much new to report here. Still waiting for Spring to arrive but I know it is getting close because I can see our tulips coming up.
This is what I came up with for Mary Jo's Lunchtime sketch week 8. The cow stamp is new from The Angel Company. Isn't she cute?? I just love this set. I colored her with my Copics and then tried to flock her. Not sure if I did the best job of that but it was my first time using it. I drew in the grass. The left side piece was done with a light pink shimmer sheetz and a cuttlebug embossing folder. The technique I used to do this is called Aged Metal and is one of the recent TJ techniques. The black paper is from The Uptown Girl paper pack from the Angel Company. The little tag is a tiny tag cuttlebug die that I cut from chipboard and colored with a colorbox petal point ink pad. Purple cardstock is SU.
I hope you all have a great week.

Added 3/21/08 While looking at the original card on the left for a few days after I posted this I decided I did not like the green tag so I changed it to purple and am pretty sure I like it better this way. What do you think?

Retro card update

The more I looked at my retro card in my last post (the card on the top left) I kept thinking it still needed something but couldn't figure out what. I decided to ask the TJ ladies what they thought since they are always so helpful when this happens. Most of the ladies that responded said they liked the card the way it was and I was going to leave it that way until yesterday when an idea popped into my head to add some square sliver frames around the main images which I think helped to give it the finish I was looking for. Most of the TJ ladies agreed but I also had a couple of ladies respond after I shared the updated card with the silver frames saying that they thought the frames would be better in brown and a few others suggested I add some bling to the small circles. So I took their advice and gave it a try. Which version do you like best now?

Mary Jo's Lunchtime sketch week 7

After working so hard on my clock last week my mojo was pretty much gone this weekend but I decided to give this weeks sketch a try anyways. I am not sure if I like how it came out or not but thought I would go ahead and share it anyways. I started with Mary Jo's lunchtime sketch week 7 for inspiration. Stamps are Shapes By Design by Alli Miles for Papertrey ink. Green Cardstock is Papertreys new Perfect Match spring moss. The other cardstock is Bazzill. Brown ink is Adirondack espresso and I used the TJ marker wash technique on the main circles. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions to make this card better I would love to hear them. Have a good night.

Just So Hoppy Clock

When Melanie came out with this set I knew I was going to have to come up with something completely out of the box to even have a chance of winning her next contest with it. After thinking about it for awhile one day the idea of the frogs jumping around the numbers of a clock just came to me and this is what I came up with. I started with a plain white clock which I found at Walgreens for $4.00 last week. When I got it home I took it apart and started working on the outer covering first by using the polished stone technique with lettuce and stream alcohol inks. After I was done doing that I let the covering sit for a couple of days while I thought about what I wanted to do with the inside. I originally thought about stamping the images directly on the clock but I was worried that if I messed up then the whole thing would be ruined so I decided to stamp the images on Papertrey white stampers select card stock instead, color them with my Copics and cut them out. Once I was done doing that I decided to airbrush the background with my Copics so that the bottom half looked like water and the top half looked like sky. In the process of airbrushing the water I sprayed to close to the clock and ended up with some splotches. In my attempt to fix those mistakes I made things worse. I started to freak out but finally decided to try the polished stone technique once again to fix it and thankfully it worked. I am actually glad this happened now because I think it was a better thing to do for the water than just a plain airbrushed background anyways and I think it actually made the water look more like a swap so my mistake turned out to be a good thing after all. When I was done with the water I decided that I wanted to make the sky look like it had more clouds in it but I had already glued down my images at that point so I could not do anymore airbrushing unless I wanted to mask everything which I didn't, so I decided to sponge on some Faded Jeans Distress ink using a ripped piece of cardstock to get the cloud effect and was happy with how that turned out. When I orginally started working on this project and told Emilia my idea she suggested that I put a frog on the second hand so he would move around the clock but I thought he would be to big and the butterflies would work better for that so this is how that idea transpired and I think it was a great way to finish it off. Overall it took me about a week to finish because I kept coming up with new things to do to it and I kept wanting to make it perfect but I have decided that it is finally done now and am happy with how it came out. I hope you and Melanie like it too.

Mary Jo's Lunchtime sketch Week 6

It's that time again. This is what I came up with for Mary Jo's Lunchtime sketch week 6. I need some thank you cards so I thought this was a good way to get both accomplished. Butterfly and Thank you Stamp are from The Angel Company. The top piece is a TJ technique called dry embossed wash. Pattern paper is from the DCWV floral paper pack. Solid cardstock is Bazzill. I used my plain circle and scalloped Nestabilities and a Signo white gel pen to doodle around the plain circle. The butterfly was stamped on the purple circle and then another one was stamped, cut out and the middle part glued down for a 3D effect.
I hope you all had a nice weekend. It was a glorious 74 degree day here yesterday and this morning we woke up to 30 degree temperatures and snow. That's Colorado for you. Hopefully Spring will really be here soon though.