Rudolph Day

Hello my crafty friends, on the 25th of each  month there is a challenge called Rudolph Days Challenge hosted by Maureen. I try and play here and there (to build my stash of Christmas cards and because it is fun to play), of course lately I'm not playing to much of anything with the summer chores. But I did want to try and play along, and since I had a card that I made, but never posted I thought I would use that one since time is at a premium. So here is my card, which is very CAS. 

See, told you it was a CAS card. lol I just love this stamp set because I love the ribbon. I really think it gives the look of a bow tied on a card without all the bulk. The little deer didn't come from this stamp set, but from another one, but fit in the tag very well. I still haven't decided if I should color the deer or not. What do you think, leave it as is or color it? Ok off to see if I can squeeze under the wire to play along at Rudolph Days!

As always I love when you come by and sit with me for a spell. It was a beautiful day to sit outside and enjoy the nice breeze. Your sweet comments bring so much sunshine to my world and warms my heart and for that I thank you very much!!! Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:
Avery Elle-Beautiful Bow, for the bow and sentiment
3 Twenty Stamps-for the deer

Happy Birthday Cards

Hello my crafty friends, I hope this Monday finds you all well and enjoying the start of a new week. Can you believe we are going into July?! These months sure do swish by don't they?! Well don't faint here, but I made a card. Many birthdays for the end of June. I had 6 cards go out here today. Some are going to be a tad bit late, the days just go by me so fast, I don't know where they go. But anyway, speaking of birthday cards, I received so many for my birthday back in May and I finally got my cards posted in the tab "cards from friends" so please take a look. Today is also my good friend, Loll's birthday, so please go over and give her big birthday wishes! She is an amazingly sweet person and uber talented as well! Trust me when I say you won't be sorry you went over to her blog. Just sayin'....

Today's first (and second one too) card is a birthday, told you I needed a lot of birthday cards for this month, I think birthdays are more popular in June than weddings!!! But it is a very CAS card, but I think I like it. lol I used an Altenew stamp set, the peony bouquet one. It was a love hate relationship with this stamp set. I so love it, but it took me a while of practicing before I could line the thing up! Even using the Misti. But I finally got it. Then I thought my square die was in farther than it actually was, so not much of the flower is cut out. lol Yes, only me! I can make more blunders than anyone!! But it's ok, but it still look ok. Tell me what you think...

 My second card, a summery card with flip flops and I've used snippets on this card.. Who doesn't love flip flops this time of year. Unless you are like me and wear them out in the snow to get the mail. Haha! I hate shoes with a passion, don't get me wrong, when I was younger I loved my heals, but now...you can't pay me to be that uncomfortable in shoes anymore. I've always been a barefoot person in the summer months and in the winter months I still love to be barefooted in the house. How about you, do you love your flip flops??? How about going barefooted? 

That's it for me everyone. As always I appreciate you coming and sitting a spell with me. Wish we could have used the pool for a bit, but having a pool service person come out because I'm having issues with it. Of course I haven't a clue on anything about the pool except to put shock in once a week! So maybe next time we can sit on the deck and test the water out. Your comments always bring sunshine to my day and make me smile from ear to ear! Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:

Card 1:
Altenew Peony Bouquet
Butterfly-Jen Hatfield banner die set
Happy Birthday-My Creative Time "Script Words"
My Favorite Things ink cube in Purple Rain
My Creative Time-Stitched Square dies

Card 2:
Snippets from my stash
flip flops, sentiment and flower buttons from My Creative Time "Sit Back and Relax"
                                                                                                              "Stitched Button Dies"

Watercolor

Hello my crafty friends, I hope today finds you all well and enjoying the season. I have a pinterest inspired card for you today. I made two and even though they look identical the water coloring isn't quite identical. I so love how these cards came out! I just think they are so colorful and pretty. And it isn't often I like many of my cards! I used distress inks to watercolor with by swishing them on a stamp block and picking up with my water brush, adding extra water from the brush when needed. Die cut my butterflies and added a sentiment and called it done! Just a simple card. Another edit: Forgot to say that this card design wasn't my idea, I found it on Pinterest!!! So sorry, some days I just don't have a brain in my head!

Edited to add: I'm linking over at CAS Mix Up Card Challenge. It is fun doing mixed media because I don't even know I'm doing it! lol 

Card Recipe:

Distress Inks for the watercoloring-can't remember the colors I used, so sorry!
My Creative Time-Stitched Rectangular Frame Dies & More
Largest Butterfly-Technique Tuesday, Happy Butterfly (code: DlHappyB)
Medium Butterfly-Jen Hadfield Banner Dies
Small Butterfly-Penny Black-flourish & butterflies

A Tutorial

Hello crafty friends. Today I have a tutorial for you, well actually I told Momma Mary of Carolina Cards that I would do a tutorial of a card I had made that she wanted to know how to do. So this is for you Momma Mary!!! 

The card is this card. First you want to start with what ever paper you will use for your layer and size it to the size you want it. I used SU watercolor paper I had in my stash since I wanted to use my Zigs and water brush, it measured 5 x 3 3/4. So I didn't need to cut it down any, but if you need to cut your panel down then do it now. Once your panel is to size, you will want to stamp your image in the left hand top corner. You can also put something in the right hand bottom corner if you wish, like leaves. My stamp set didn't have any leaves, so I didn't stamp anything in that corner. 

Next you want to cut out a rectangle, square, circle, whatever shape you want to use in your panel with what ever kind of layering dies you like to use. You can place it in where ever on your panel, I chose to off set to the right with my stitched die and cut it out with my Big Shot.

This is what you should have now. Set aside the one with the rectangle cut out of it. We only need the solid rectangle piece to work with right now.

You will color this one using what ever color medium you want. I used my Zig Clean Color Pens. 

Here is mine all colored, so now I'm ready to add everything to my card base. 

I decided to add a black panel to my card and then place my cut out panel on top of that. I did it that way because my watercolor panel is a vanilla color and my card base was white. Place the "cut out" panel on the black panel. Then you can either inlay the cut out colored rectangle back in the negative space or you can pop it up with foam or foam tape. I chose to just inlay it back in the negative spot on my card.

And that is all there is to it this type of card. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy! Now all I have to do is place a sentiment on my card yet. I think this will be a birthday card for my birthday card stash. I hope this has help you Momma Mary and anyone else who wanted to know how to make this type of card. 

Thanks for stopping by today and visiting with me a spell. You always bring so much sunshine to my life and your comments always put a wide smile on my face. 

Edited to add that this tutorial was inspired by a card that I CASed in a challenge. See link above to see my original card with the link to the challenge.

Crafty hugs, 

Card Recipe:
Zig Clean Color Pens
SU Stamp set-Regarding Dahlias
SU Water color paper
black paper from my stash
My Creative Time-More Stitched Rectangular Dies

Memory Quilts, Pillows and a card!

 Hello my crafty friends, I'm here with my 7th card today and one of my favorites. Although, I would like to try and remake it so that it is more softer in the coloring. This is also one that I didn't make double of this time. I tried to make this card extra special, not sure I achieved that as I think it should look more soft, but I tried. A good friend of mine told me after Dwayne passed that she would make me a quilt out of his clothing if I wanted her to. Well....I did and I was so touched that she offered to do that for me! The thought of snuggling under a quilt made from hubby's clothing sounded like heaven to me. Not only did she make a queen size quilt for me, but she also made a lap throw for when I watch tv in the winter months....and 6 pillows for the grands....and 3 more pillows for me....and a lap quilt for Bret since he was the youngest of the boys and had less time with his dad than the other boys did. Now is that a wonderful friend or what?!!! First we went through his clothing and I picked out the clothes that I wanted her to use. Dwayne had 40 t-shirt alone! Yes, he had more clothing than me because businesses would give him t-shirts all the time. Next she took the clothing home with her and she sat down and hugged his clothing and cried a few tears, then she got to work. And work she did! I just can't believe all she did for me, the grands and Bret. So I just had to share how they came out. 

This is the lap quilt, it is pretty large in itself as it goes the whole length of the couch almost.

 The grandchildren's pillows-each has a piece of his jeans, a sweatshirt he wore all the time, a dress shirt and a piece of his jammy pants.

 And here is the queen quilt! The 4 squares, two on each side where you see the triangle pieces, are the quilt pattern: Stairs to Heaven. Those we around the center t-shirt, which was his Corona t-shirt. He enjoyed having an ice cold beer after unloading hay and straw. He didn't drink a lot, if he got a case of beer it would last over a year down in the basement fridge. But when it was hot and he was hot, then he enjoyed a bottle of beer. My friend included buttons, labels, stains at my request, zippers, etc...The red pieces you see, the really real red fabric is his one piece long johns. Half is in my lap throw and the other half is on the bed quilt. Love that! Now see the pillows? The one on the left was made from his sweatshirt (he had a lot of them since he dressed in layers for work), she took the pocket and put on the shirt with his jeans. The pillow on the right was a t-shirt and his jeans are inside the neck line. The middle pillow are his hankies, in the center my sweet friend cross stitched a heart and in the center of the heart she put "I love you Dear". That's how Dwayne always said he loved me. Well, we always called each other "dear", rarely used our given names with each other. Now I need to find some blue pillow shams to go behind the pillows she made. Bret's throw is pretty much like mine, so I didn't take a picture of it...yet anyway. Now am I blessed or what?! What friend would do all of this?!! A very good one that is who! She knew what I was going through as her sister passed from cancer too many years back. And she made her nephew a quilt from his mother's clothing as well. She also made herself and her mom some pillows from her sister's clothing. My friend is just a very special person to me and I just adore her and I am so thankful for her.  I just love snuggling under in my bed and placing his clothing up to my cheek. So this is why I needed a special card.

And here it is. I hope it is special enough cause I really don't know how to thank her for all she did for me. If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them please! How do you thank someone for all of that? What can I do to repay her?? Or to let her know how thankful I am??? 

Recipe is at the bottom. As always, thank you for stopping by and visiting with me a spell. I hope I didn't bore you with this long post but I appreciate you hanging in with me this long. You always bring sunshine into my life which now a days isn't always an easy thing to do. But I find that this is one of the first places I want to be after I get out of my funks. Crafty hugs, 

Card Recipe:

My Creative Time Stamps and Dies-"Mom"-flowers
                                                         -"You Are Fabulous"-sentiment
I won a $50 gift certificate to My Creative Time and this "Mom" is one of the stamp and die sets I got. Isn't it a beautiful one?!!! 
Zig Clean Color Brush Pens
Score Board-Martha Steward- to make my score lines around the card
sequins

Masculine Thank You Cards

Hello my crafty friends, back with two more cards for you today. These are more masculine thank you cards.  I love the way this typewriter card has a "tropical" feel to it. The little flies are so stinkin' cute! They are from a Paper Tre Ink stamp set, which was a gift from Aunty Darnell! Thanks Auntie!!!! 

 Here is my fishy thank you card. The bubbles have glossy accents on them. My blue panels are popped up on foam tape. I think those little gold fish are so dang cute. lol All my stamps are from the NBUS mountain that I have!! Yay for using up some more NBUS!!!

Card Recipe:

Card 1:
Paper Tre Ink-Boy Basics Frog Hop Stamp Set-fly-NBUS
Stamp Up-Secret Garden-leaves-NBUS
My Creative Time-Once Upon A Time-typewriter and sentiment

Card 2:
My Creative Time-You're a Great Catch-fish, bubbles, seaweed, sentiment-NBUS
Technique Tuesday-Budding Poppies-sentiment
Zig Clear Color Brushes

Poppy Flower Cards

Hello my crafty friends, as promised I'm back with a couple more cards that I've made. Remember I made 10, I know I still can't believe it myself. lol But because they are all simple and CAS, they were easy to make. Anyway, on to the cards for today.

A while back, Momma Mary aka Mary from Carolina Cards sent me some brusho's for my birthday. Thanks Momma Mary, I am so loving them!!!! This first card is my first attempt at playing with them. I need to watch some videos I think, but over all I was pretty happy with the way my background turned out. I will list the colors I used in the recipe below. Oh and the brusho's and stamp set are NBUS to boot!!! Yay for using some of my NBUS! The color of my poppies are the same as the on the second card, not sure why they aren't showing like the second card. My photographing skills aren't the best, but you get the point. I embossed the flowers in clear embossing after stamping in black ink. 

Remember I said I was going to try and make at least two of each card I make. Well for the most part I've held true to that, but there are a few cards that I haven't made doubles of. I'm ok with that because like I said, I've been pretty true holding myself to that goal. This one is more plan and CAS. The little white dots are Gain sent boosters (free sample) and they are really yellow in real life. lol Edited to add that the sent booster were not my idea, I got the idea from my friend Hazel over at My Card Attic. They smell so good, but I don't think I will use them much on my cards. They are so thick, so you wouldn't be able to mail them. But for hand delivery, they will be fine and will make the card smell so nice.

As always I want to thank you for stopping by and visiting a spell with me. Your comments always bring sunshine into my life making me grin from ear to ear!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Card Recipe:
My Creative Time-Stitched Rectangular Frame Dies & More
                              More Stitched Rectangular Dies
                              I can't find what stamp set I used for the sentiment on card 1
                              Plane & Simple...-Happy Birthday (card 2 sentiment)
Zig Clean Color Pens
Tim Holtz Distress Ink-Tumbled glass
Brusho's-Rose Red, Moss Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna
Technique Tuesday-Budding Poppies (2014)