Altered State of Mind

It's the last day of May and I can't believe that the year is flying by so fast. It must be something that happens when you get "old". I always thought that old is a state of mind. June is going to be a milestone month for me as I turn 50. I used think 50 was old, but now I know that it is only the beginning. The beginning of the second half my life. The beginning of my figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I have a dear friend I call "Butterfly". I relate 50 to a butterfly. I've been sitting here for 50 years in my cocoon and now, I will change into the butterfly and spread my wings and see what new things I discover. "Change". That will be a topic for another day along with all the brain "fog" that comes with it, lol.

I belong to an altered art club called "Altered State of Mind". We've done "tip-in's", tags, and all kinds of cool things. Currently, we're going through Bernie Berlin's ATC book and playing with the different techniques. In April, the technique in the book was all about watercolor and baby wipes. I took some of the paper that I created with this technique and made this ATC. I stamped the flower image on it, adding some bling, (gotta love the bling!). I also stamped this really cool flower stamp by DRS. It has a place where you can cut the center out to run ribbon through it. My LSS got 5 of them in and of course I have to buy all 5. One is a butterfly and I'm sure that will be the next one I use. On the butterfly, you feed the ribbon through the body. Anyway, back to the ATC, I used clear embossing powder and glitter on the petals of the "ribbon flower". I then used Tim Holtz's distressing tool on the edges and inked the edges with Ranger's Dusty Concord Distress Ink for a much darker edge. Unfortunately, with the dark background, it's kinda hard to see the dark edges.

Enjoy your last day of May 2008. Make it an unbelievable day, doing whatever your heart desires, 'cause you will never have this day again! Go create something and get off the computer!

Printworks Pickup Truck

Printworks for May spotlighted a stamp with an image of the back of a pickup truck. Since I offered two classes in May for the board provided by the company, I had to design two cards. There are three cards in each class and the board only offered four total, making two cards per class. Printworks had a truck with DAD on the tailgate and made it into a pocket, really awesome. One card had "Stop and smell the flowers" on the gate, one Mom, and one Congrats with a graduation cap in the tailgate. Really great cards! The first truck I did was in blue and had "Just Married written in the back window. I tied tin cans to the bumper and it came out really cute. I was stuck on the second one, had a couple of ideas, but then my husband, Paul, had this wild idea. He said, "Turn the truck into an ambulance." You would know that he is a lawyer, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with the ambulance thought, lol. So I thought, if I use a marker to ink it and leave off the tailgate and draw in the door, it might work. Well, it did! I used an upside down flower pot from Art Impressions as the light on top, but it came out really cute. So in true Printworks style I had to do a little something on the inside.

So the thought for the day is, when you look at a stamp, think of what else it might be when you stamp it. Let your imagination take you to other places, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I hope you like it.

Victorian Box from Holly Berry House

Happy Memorial Day! It has been a crazy month and now it is almost over and I can't say I'm going to miss it. Sickness, two children moving home from college, one going to Spain for a week to play in the symphony, one moving from one state to another, the tragic death of a 21 year old friend of one of my daughters...and all this only involving three of the four children. Like I said, I'm glad it is over.

Back at the beginning of the month I taught a class at my LSS on the Victorian Box and Medallion from Holly Berry House. I prestamped/embossed all the cardstock. In class we cut the pieces out and glittered them up and put them together. They are really pretty. I'm currently working on one using Twinkling H2O's. It's really pretty and I will post it here when I get it done. (hopefully, I'll time to play in my studio the next week) These are great stamps and make beautiful boxes. I stamped the medallion numerous times and cut them out, graduating in sizes down. I used pop dots to attach the different layers. I used red line tape to put the box together and it makes a beautiful gift box. I absolutely love Holly Berry House stamps! They are so detailed. I hope you enjoy this beautiful weekend and I hope where ever you may be this Memorial Day weekend, that you take a moment to tell someone important to you, that they are special to you!

New to blogging??

Obviously I still need to work out the bugs in this blogging thing. I apologize for the way the post below looks. I really need to figure out why when I post it doesn't look like it did when I created it. Please have patience with me, I promise to figure it out and get it right. Thanks!

My shoe

Okay, so when I say I'll post something tomorrow, maybe I mean in a few days. So sorry, but the robin's nest really threw me, that along with 4 kids with more drama in their lives than one person can stand and a sick husband, and well, I'm sure you understand. Anyway, I wanted to post a picture of the card I designed with the April Printworks stamps. I loved the shoes as I mentioned before. I wanted something 3-D so I used glue dots and put a green button on the card. Before I attached it, I ran blue wire through it, twisting it around a pretty white polka dot green ribbon, and then spiraled it to make it really funky. Add that to the vellum, and I realy liked it. I used Liquid Lacquer on the polka dots on the shoe and the sole, heel, and bow to make them pop. One the inside of the card, I used Liquid Lacquer on all the blue parts of the shoe and even though you really can't see it here, I attached a blue rhinestone to the top of the shoe. Gotta love that bling! I then stamped "good friends never go out of style". I thought that they couldn't have cuter stamps than the shoes, but the May ones are awesome. The big stamp is a pickup truck. The back view of it. How cool! I already have a card design ready in my head to go along with the four on the board for the month. I hope you enjoy this card, but for now, know that I'm "thinking of shoe"!

Robin's Nest

So today's post has nothing to do with stamping, just beauty. The other day I'm sitting on the patio enjoying the morning, when a robin flew into a geranium I had just purchased a few days before. I was curious as I'd never seen a bird fly into a flower basket. I went over and the robin flew to the fence.

I peered inside and thought the plant looks really weird. Like it was mushed (is that a word?) down. Then I looked closer, and you guessed right, a nest with eggs. The robin doesn't like it when I water the plant, but oh, well, she's living here rent free, so I guess she'll have to deal witht the inconvenience. No piece of art that I could create would be as beautiful as what God has done. His miracles constantly amaze me!