Last Day of VSN

Today is the last day of VSN for those of us not affected by Irene.  You can check those details out here.  Our fabulous coordinator just wants to be fair.  So there will be an extension for those Irene messed with!  This is one of my VSN cards from Saturday.  I made this for Jane's challenge called Dusty Trails.  Jane challenge crafter's to create a bandana print for their card and do some paper piecing.  I did a teensy weensy bit of paper piecing via my flower centers.  Jane approved, citing Dr. Seuss, "A person's a person, no matter how small"... I think that applies to piecing, too! Isn't she great!  This girl has to get some chores done, so I'll leave it at that.

Details -  Stamps: Short & Sweet, In The Spotlight, Polka Dots & Paisley, Love Runs Deep (Unity); Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Certainly Celery; Ink: Basic Black, Versamark, Certainly Celery, Bordering Blue; Accessories: Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch, Love & Happiness rub-ons, glue pen, Sakura clear star gel pen, May Arts burlap twine, white gel pen, corner chomper.



Ropin' and A-Ridin'

We are a-ropin' and a-ridin' at this weekend's VSN Rodeo!  A good time will be had by all.  I made this little number for Lisa's Rope Some Steer challenge.  She had us using some twine!  Easy peasy, I say!  Yeah, that was after I get myself unstuck on using my red twine.  After that, everything fell into place.  I got my sketch from the Moxie Fab World blog.  I played along with the Square Sketch Challenge and morphed the sketch a bit.  I used the circle in the flower to house my sentiment and used the twine to represent the horizontal line of the sentiment from the sketch.  I hope that is innovative enough!  I also tried to play along with the horizontal sketch on the Moxie Fab World...but I just mutilated the sketch.  I'll have to show you that card tomorrow!

Thanks for stopping by and if you think about it, come and check out VSN.  Maybe you will want to stay and play awhile!

Details - Stamps: Delicate Doilies, Whimsical Words, Paper: Crumb Cake, Whisper White; Ink: Versamark, Early Espresso; Accessories:  Espresso baker's twine, 1 1/4" circle punch, stampin' dimensionals, sponge dauber.

Ways To Recycle

{If you are looking for the Flourishes Birthday post, click here}

Hi all!  I'm back today with Hannah's Ways To Use It challenge.  We are going green folks, right here in the craft room!  Hannah challenged us to recycle something onto our card.  I have to admit that I started off with my Cheerios box, but that my little Sissix die just wouldn't cut all the way through the cardboard of the cereal box.  Never mind that, I'm such a collector that I had some thinner cardboard used to separate some triplicate forms from work.  That worked magically, so I crimper the whole lot of leaves and flowers and inked them up to decorate my card!  My daughter was invited for an all day play date at her former daycare provider's house.  This worked perfectly for me as I have a ton of crafty work that I would like to get done!  If you will pardon me, I'm going to get myself a tasty beverage and head up to create!  Hope your day is fabulous!

I also played along with the Crazy 4 Challenges team with a fun bingo challenge!  I just love those bingo challenges as you can do just about anything you want with so many combinations available!

Details - Stamps: Thinking of You (Flourishes), Vintage Wallpaper (Flourishes); Paper: Whisper White, Cherry Cobbler, Bravo Burgundy; Ink: Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Versafine White, Versamagic Sage;  Accessories: crimper, Birds and Blooms dies, buttons, glue dots, stampin' dimensionals, PTI linen & canvas impression plate.

Happy Birthday Flourishes!

Flourishes is lighting the candles and getting ready to sing to honor their fourth birthday! And, as a way to celebrate, I’m happy to say I was hand-picked to help them have a bit of a party as a designer for their customer appreciation hop! The only challenge here was to create a card or project using my favorite Flourishes stamp set. Read on – I’ll tell you how you can win some Flourishes goodies too!

When I heard I would have to pick my favorite Flourishes stamp, I kind of groaned.  I have many Flourishes favorites, so I worked in a couple here.  For my main image, I inked up the lavender from Fine Herbs in a couple of ink colors and stamped it on my tag.  The herbs in this set are wonderful.  In the summertime, my main job is the garden.  The only part of the garden that my husband doesn't touch is my herb garden.  I haven't been able to talk him into lavender yet...but I will.  My next favorite set is Tag Lines.  I couldn't bear to cover up that beautiful lavender image, so I stamped my sentiment from on a piece of vellum.  Did you know that this set has 19 little pieces to make the most useful sentiments?  I use this set all the time!  And...it's totally affordable!

Flourishes is always so generous and today's hop is no exception!  I'll bet you want to know what you win? Well, take a peek at this fun and festive blog candy!

If you’d like to learn more about how you can win all of these stamp sets, just click HERE to read up on today’s hop and challenge!

If you arrived here by way of Theresa's blog, then you are on the right path!  If I was your first stop, you’ll want to go back to the Flourishes Blog and start this hop from the very beginning! You have until September 1^st at 5PM CST to enter!

I'm the last stop on the hop today. Thanks for hopping along with us!  Have a fabulous day!

Details - Stamps: Fine Herbs (Flourishes), Tag Lines (Flourishes); Paper: Whisper White, Pear Pizzazz, Basic Grey Wisteria, vellum, SU kraft tag; Ink: Wisteria Wonder, Pear Pizzazz, Concord Crush, Versamagic Wheat; Accessories: M's rhinestones, Pear Pizzazz seam binding.

A Flourish Embossed

I'm busy today trying to play along with some great challenges.  This is my way late, Ways To Use It challenge hostessed by Teresa.  She challenged crafter's to use Versmark and I decided to do the emboss resist technique with a pale pink and purple!  This also uses the Card Patterns sketch for this week.  It's nice and simple and made such a pretty card.  Finally, this is for Flourishes Timeless Tuesday challenge to use pink, one button, ribbon and lace.  I'm heading back up to my craft room for a little more fun today, so I will keep this short.  Happy Monday!

Details - Stamps: Thinking of You (Flourishes), Tag Lines (Flourishes); Paper: Very Vanilla, Pale Plum, DCWV Sweet dp; Ink: Versamark, Pink Pirouette, Pale Plum, Perfect Plum; Accessories: Clear ep, heat tool, pink satin ribbon, thin vanilla satin ribbon, SU crocheted lace, Earth Elements buttons, sponge dauber, glue dots, scor-tape, corner chomper, stampin' dimensionals.

Woohoo, Friday Featured Fan!

Well, would you look at that!  I'm today's Friday Featured Fan on the Card Positioning Systems sketch blog!  I guess it's no secret that I love a good sketch and CPS regularly has fabulous sketches over there.  You could say I went straight "To The Moon" when I found out I would be featured (tee hee).  I had been looking for a way to use a tag on a card for Verve's August Get Your Diva On challenge and when I saw the CPS sketch, I just knew I had to do them together!  Diva Jackie is hostessing this month and challenged crafters to us a tag or make a set of tags.  So....I did!  The first thing I did for my card was mask the tag with a couple of circle punches and then sponged the edges of the tag with white ink.  Then I stamped on my sentiment and tied on my ribbon and twine, in the fashion of the great Diva Jackie.  Next I did up that cute little bear.  I stamped him, colored him and then borrowed Emery's legs to finish him off.  Finally, I stamped, colored and cut out a couple of stars to balance out my bear.  After a little embossing, matting and adhering, I had a card!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous Friday!

Details - Stamps: To The Moon (Verve), Egg-stra Special (Verve), Emery PJ (Verve); Paper: Whisper White, Crumb Cake; Ink: Early Espresso, Creamy Caramel, Regal Rose, Versafine White; Accessories: Seeing Spots ef, 1/8" taffeta ribbon, Crumb Cake taffeta ribbon, Early Espresso Baker's Twine, SU tag, stampin' dimensionals, scor-tape, paper snips.



Using Heat!

Hooray for Thursday again!  It's another Way's To Use It challenge and I am this hostess this time around.  This challenge is all about What's Hot!  Players should use heat somehow in a technique or use an image that generate heat, or somehow get creative with heat.  My sunset here represent heat fading with the sinking sun and then I heat embossed my wheat silhouette over my sunset. What do you think?  I also decided to incorporate Flourishes Shades of Sunset challenge into my card today.  I patterned this sunset after one I saw last weekend from my daughter's bedroom window as I was tucking her in.  The sunset had the most amazing purple cloud that streaked through the sky.  I studied the cloud quickly and tried to remember the colors I saw in the sky. 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous day!

Details - Stamps: Beauty In Nature (Flourishes), Tag Lines (Flourishes); Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Glossy card stock; Ink: So Saffron, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Soft Sky, Bordering Blue, Night of Navy, Elegant Eggplant, Versamark; Accessories: Black ep, heat tool, 1/8" black taffeta ribbon, glue dot, stampin' sponges, Nestabilities, stampin' dimensionals.

Hope...

Floats?  Hope for tomorrow?  Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul?  Whatever hope is for you, this card is both hopeful and peaceful for me.  I had a ball making it.  I dirtied up all of my edges and sponged around the inside of my Spellbinder's die to create a warm space for my sentiment.  I finally remembered to use my crimper.  I have been so inspired by Marisa (Whiterockmama on Splitcoaststampers) and her use of her crimper.   I made this card last week Jodi's Dare To Get Dirty challenge.  Last week, I was a card making machine and loved every minute of it! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Details - Stamps: Punch Potpourri, Hope Perches (Verve); Paper: Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke, Neutrals dsp; Ink: Bashful Blue, CrumbCake; Accessories: XL bird punch, crimper, M's rhinestones, Sakura clear star gel pen, very vanilla seam binding, stampin' sponges, stampin' dimensionals, Nestabilities.

Really?

I can't believe that I didn't share this already. I told you all about VSN just before it happened a couple weeks ago, right.  And I told you all to be sure and play along as I was hostessing a mini challenge.  And then I completely spaced it and never shared my challenge or my challenge card.  Good grief, you deserve a better blogger!  Oh well, better late than never.  Here is my card from my VSN mini challenge called All That Glitters.  It's a Rodeo VSN and I took a little inspiration from my sweet Rodeo Queen neighbor and her flashy get-up!  I challenged folks to use sequins on their cards and people did amazing things!  That is really one of the things that I love about VSN.  People stretch and get all kinds of crazy creative!  One of my fellow hostesses, Tami, was sponsoring the CPS sketch that week too, so I had to give her a little shout out as well. 

Thanks for happening by!  I'll see if I can't come up with something fresh for tomorrow!

Details - Stamps: Faith in Nature, French Foliage; Paper: Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, Taste of Textiles dp; Ink: Early Espresso; Accessories: Sequins, gold cording, Nestabilities, sponge dauber, stampin' dimensionals, glue dots.



Ending With A Dirty Butterfly

Today ends the Dare To Get Dirty challenges, they must be made, uploaded and linked by 11:59 PM CST.  I was able to do it and this was one of my last cards.  I ended up with 18 projects for 37 challenges. This little number covers 4 Dirty challenges and a Viva La Verve sketch.  What do you think of that??  My background is the Leafy Branches embossing folder, flipped over so it's debossed.  Then I took my baby brayer and sloppily covered my debossed card stock with some Certainly Celery ink.  Then I inked up my Canvas Background and laid my card stock on top of it.  I gently ran my fingers over the card stock without the embossing.  Thus my background came to be.  I pleated some mulberry paper for a delicate looking border.  I pinked the kraft edges of the Crumb Cake border and tied the whole thing with one little strand of linen thread.  My die cut butterfly was run through the crimper and then edged with white craft ink.  Then I wrapped wire around and twisted it to resemble the body and antennae for the butterfly. 

I'm looking at Tuesday now and it promised to be a busy day.  I hope I find time to peruse the DTGD galleries and leave some love.  It should be fun!  Thanks for stopping by!

Details - Stamps: Beautiful You (Verve), Canvas; Paper: Whisper White, Crumb Cake, white mulberry paper; Ink: Certainly Celery, Crumb Cake, Versafine White; Accessories: Leafy Branch ef, Nestabilties, sponge dauber, brayer, linen thread, glue dot, stampin' dimensionals, crimper, MM wire, Piercabilities Pinking Border, Flutterby die (Verve).

Good Morning Sunday

Good Morning!  I'm sorry that it has been quiet around here.  I have been busy with the Dare To Get Dirty challenges on Splitcoaststampers and well, you know, living life.  I have ignored most other projects, except those that wonderful be ignored (child, husband and garden).  Throw in a girl friend's crisis and that equals blog pause!  So today I will share this card and matching envelope I made for a slew of Dare To Get Dirty challenges.  You have to be a Fan Club member to view and play along with the challenges.  There are some really fun challenges too!  This card is for the challenges of Cindy, Diane, Dina and Iwona.  I used my scor-pal on this little number and had to get kind of creative with the measurements because I wanted a smaller card than the tutorial showed.  I was quite proud that I was able to do it by myself with only minimal frustration.

I'll leave with a short blurb today as my favorite radio program, a blog hop and an otherwise quiet crafty morning are calling me!  Have a fabulous Sunday!

Details: Stamps: Something to Celebrate, The Artist in You (Unity); Paper: Confetti White, Early Espresso, Neutrals dsp; Ink: Early Espresso; Accessories: Scor-pal, scalloped circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, MS cupcake punch, white taffeta ribbon, liquid glue, superfine glitter, glue dot, stamping dimensionals.



Use Your Kraft

No, wait a minute.  The name of the challenge is "Love Your Kraft".  That's right!  It's Thursday and Michelle is hostessing the Ways To Use It challenge and she called out "kraft".  It's no surprise, she's a kraft-a-holic!  And since I have been preoccupied with DIRT these days, I threw in a few Dare To Get Dirty challenges hostessed by Edna, Michelle, and Christina.  I used a My Favorite Things sketch for good measure.  Let's just say...I was a challenge machine!  I haven't done something like this in quite a while!  I think this card will do for a belated graduation card for my nephew!  He's headed off to college in a few weeks and could probably use the encouragement and the cash I will put in it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Details - Stamps: Live Your Dream; Paper: Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla, Kaisercraft Pack Your Bags dp; Ink: Crumb Cake; Accessories: May Arts burlap string, stampin' dimensionals, MM edge distresser.

Dirty Again

Yep, I made this for Jeanne's Dare To Get Dirty challenge and also satisfied my July Christmas Card challenge criteria.  After I made this lovely card, I decided I could crank nine more out for a total of ten!  Woohoo!  I got the sketch from Card Patterns and its great.  I can really see myself using this one over and over again.  I used up some designer paper that had been languishing in my stash and some strips of white grosgrain that I had received in some blog candy wins!  Maybe you can see my Sakura clear star gel pen around the edge of the Label One die cut.  The subtle sparkle is so nice for so many things.  I finished things off by rounding off the two bottom corners of my card.  Today is a bright and sunny day!  I think outside chores are calling me louder than my craft room.  Have a wonderful day!

Details - Stamps: Occasional Quotes; Paper: Whisper White, Soft Suede, Christmas Cocoa dsp; Ink: Soft Suede; Accessories: Nestabilities, Sakura Clear Star gel pen, white grosgrain, ribbon, mini glue dots, stampin' dimensionals, corner rounder.



Getting A Little Dirty

Splitcoaststamper's Dare To Get Dirty challenges, that is.  So far, there have been 20 challenges posted and I have made a meager 8 cards for the challenges.  I have to get my rear in gear, seriously!  Anyhow, I made this little number for Carole's Dare To Get Dirty challenge...I can't really say what the challenge is because you have to be a Fan Club Member to know that.  It's totally worth it though.  I also used this week's Card Positioning Systems sketch to get going!  I also used my beloved Verve Stamps.  I am really getting my money's worth out of those floral circle and leaf dies!  Love them!!!

Well, I'm going to head back to my craft room to see if I can crank out one more little "dirty" card before my eyes close!

Thanks for stopping by!

Details - Stamps: Bloom & Grow (Verve), With Gratitude single (Verve); Paper: Very Vanilla, Elegant Eggplant, BG Wisteria; Ink: River Rock, Almost Amethyst; Accessories: Floral Circles die (Verve), Elegant Leaves die (Verve), gold thread, needle, gold gel pen, M's pearls, SU tag, glue dots, stampin' dimensionals, Textile ef.