Bokeh Challenge

Hello my crafty friends, I know another post! How did I accomplish this?! Well this is a very, very simple card. I wanted to try my hand at the bokeh technique and wouldn't you know that CAS Mix Up was having a bokeh challenge this month! I also needed a thank you card, so why not combine the two. 

Well I have to say I found something out when making this card. I have had daubers in my stash for years. Did you know they go bad? Probably so, but I didn't realize it. lol So got out a clean dauber and went to use it for my white circles and wouldn't you know it just disintegrated! What a mess. So went in search of a TH sponge to use on the blending tool. Ok that is better. So I did the bokeh look, ink blending and stamping as well as wet embossing. I think I covered it all. As always my recipes of supplies will be down below.  I told you it was a very, very simple card!

As always I thank you for taking the time to stop and visit with me for a while. Your comments always bring sunshine to this part of my world, especially since it is still dreary and raining a lot here. Could be snow though, so I'm not going to complain....to loud! lol Hope to be around to visit you soon too. 

Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:
Distress Oxide inks in Picked Raspberry and Spiced Marmalade
Hero Art White Unicorn ink
Maymay Made It Positive Vibes stamps for the "thanks"
Versafine Onyx Black ink
Ultra Thick Embossing powder in clear
DCWV Foil (mirror) black cardstock for the mat

Sunflower Thanks

Hello all my crafty friends, I hope you are having a wonderful Tuesday! Heavy rain in the forecast for us again today-but nothing new there, an impact day for us is what they are calling it now. I think by the end of the week we are supposed to get 2 or 3 days of dry weather with sunshine. Won't that be nice?!!!

I wanted to play along with the sunflower challenge over at CAS Watercolour Card Challenge. I was sent this beautiful NBUS sunflower die by a very special, sweet and generous lady for my birthday a while back so I wanted to use it finally. I had fun with this die. I water colored it after cutting it on watercolor paper. Created a background using Distress Oxides and the splash technique that Loll has a video on. I'm not very good with it, I think I needed more water to dilute my color. Oh well, I am still pleased with how it turned out. I need two thank you cards for some special people. So I made this one and one on a kraft colored mat which I didn't take a photo of.

I need new tires on my car, so my neighbor works part time for a friend of his, who owns our local tire place. He told me there was a sale on tires, but that it ends on Saturday, this past Saturday. So on Saturday he gets my tire size and gets me prices on the tires. Then arranged for his friend to pick up my car on Monday (everything was put through on Saturday to get the sale price) and put the tires on and I wanted an oil change and all my fluids checked. Not used to this since Dwayne always did all this stuff. But with the help of these two men, it is getting done. Now the other guy, well he is the son of my late husband's boss, so Dwayne and this guy grew up together and worked together. He left me his own vehicle so I wouldn't be without a vehicle since they would have my car until sometime today! So not only did he come and get my car right at my home, he also left me a nice vehicle in case I had to go somewhere. So I wanted to send thank you notes to both families. It takes a village to raise me! lol That's what it feels like-but in all seriousness I am so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life that help me navigate life after Dwayne. Sometimes it is hard to see your blessings when you lose someone so important to you, but I have been blessed and know I'm very blessed! So thank you to all of you out there as you are a huge blessing in my life as well!!!!

As always I will list the items I used down in the recipe section at the end of this post. I thank you for stopping by and sticking with me this far and I thank you for your sweet comments. They always bring rays of sunshine to my life! I will be by to visit you all soon as well. Keeping busy with these dogs, but Kahlua is doing well and getting taller. Pictures of the girls next time around. We are slowly getting the hang of potty training. lol The girls are getting along so well and I am thankful for that. Have a lovely week my friends!

Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:
unbranded sunflower die
Oxides Distress inks: Broken China, Mustard Seed, Peacock Feathers
watercolor paper: Canson XL
Maymay Made It stamps: Positive Vibes
My Creative Time: More Stitched Rectangular Dies (I extended the length)
Zigs/Arteza watercolor pens

More Stacking Layer Cards

Hello crafty friends, I have the last of my stacking layer cards to share with you. But first I wanted to post an updated picture of myself. Not that I like looking at myself but because I love to see pictures of the people I visit at their blogs. You know, you like to "see" who you are talking too, right?!! lol Please be kind, I'm not photogenic and didn't put any make up on and my 57 years are showing!!!! And I'm not good at taking selfies at all, but it is what it is! Ok, now that you know who you are talking to, let's move on shall we?

So I made a birthday card, a thank you card and a thinking of you card. I love the birthday card, the papers just glitter so in real life. Isn't that Martini glass, pick and olive so cute?! I have no clue what color a Martini is or what one tastes like. Just saying! lol 

My hot air balloon I colored with my Prisma colored pencils. Wish now I would have did every other stripe. sigh Once again, some plainer (older) glitter paper behind the layers. 

Colored my plane and banner with my Prisma Pencils as well. Gold glitter paper behind the layers again. And that is it from me! I hope you have enjoyed these cards. I am thankful that you stop by and visited with me a spell. You know how much I love your visits and I will be around to visit you too. I am having problems once again getting my email notifications on the blogs that I follow by email, so don't worry if I haven't been around in a while. I will be by as soon as I can. Your comments bring me much joy and sunshine to this new life of mine and is so appreciated!!!

Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:
Lori Whitlock-stacking layers SVG's
My Creative Time stamps and dies

Your the Best!

Hello my crafty friends, it is with a heavy heart I come to you today with my design team post. We found out yesterday that my son's friend and college roommate was killed late Friday night in an auto accident. He had just turned 22 years old back in Sept. He was with another friend, who was doing the driving. The young man hit a tree and it killed both of them. My son, thankfully, had came home Friday. This was Bret's first year rooming with Nick, but they were friends and decided to room together this year. I was so happy that Bret had Nick to room with instead of living alone up at college. After my husband passed I really worried about Bret up at college, but Nick would come over and stay with him. He was a good friend to my son and he was very nice to me. He and Bret came home last winter just before our big storm hit and the boys shoveled and plowed snow together. Nice young man and it makes my heart so heavy knowing he is gone now. And now my son has to go back to his apartment with all Nick's things being there. I can even imagine how it will be for him. He said he guesses that he and Nick's parents will just sit down and cry for Nick. I'm sure they will, I've already been crying most of the day. I know God has a plan, but sometimes it is hard to understand that he does. So please keep these families in your prayers as they deal with the deaths of their son's right here at the holidays. And say a little extra prayer for  my son as well. Thank you so much!

Well on to my post. When I went away back in Oct, a special family took care of Savannah for me. So I made two thank you cards just for the little girls who helped take care of her. They really are the best, so I had to make two cards telling them that. The Cardz TV Stamp set that I used today is one of Mary's newest, it's call Favorite Sayings and you can get it here.    

I stamped and colored the leaves with my Zig's markers, I stamped them on some Bristol watercolor paper. The Zigs color so nicely on that paper! I used my Misti to line up sentiment and was able to move my paper on it to keep stamping. 

Remember to come back each day as you get inspiration each and every week. Happy crafting to you all! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Here is a new picture of Savannah, she has finally grown into her ears, but she hasn't grown into her feet yet! lol She is 47 lbs, I think she would have been over 50 lbs, but she stopped eating as much when our little Pocket's girl got sicker and then after I had Pocket's put down. Her appetite is slowly coming back, very slowly.  She is 5 months old today and she is such a beauty. 

One last photo I'd like to share is me and all the teachers when we went to on our trip in Oct. What a good time we had!!!

As always, thank you for taking the time and stopping by to visit a spell. Your comments always bring sunshine to my life!!! I do have a couple more cards to share and I will do that soon. 

Crafty hugs,

Card Recipe:
Cardz TV Stamp Set: Favorite Sayings
Leaves: My Creative Time Gobble Gobble
Bristol Watercolor Paper
Zigs Clean Brush Markers
Misti

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

Thank You!!

Hello my crafty friends, remember me???? I didn't think I would be gone for so long, but it has been a busy time around here. Between babysitting some of my grandchildren to elderly sitting...mowing, trying to spray and ducking rain drops, I haven't really made the time to post. But believe it or not, I did work on some cards and got 10 made! I can't believe it myself! So I will be posting here and there since I got the photo's edited and ready to go. 

First off let me thank some very generous people here in blog land for sending me some beautiful birthday cards, thank you so much for thinking of me. I didn't even see any of my family on my birthday because I was helping a friend out taking care of their aunt and my friend. She had to have a heart cath done and then came home. The doctor didn't find any blockages, which was a good thing, but what was causing her mild heart attacks? Well...turns out that her blood was way to thick. The doctor could hardly get the cath through her blood! So she is on beta blockers now, so hopefully that will do the trick. Once I get my birthday cards photographed, I will be adding them to a "cards from friend's" page. That is my next goal to get done.

This weekend, Sunday to be exact, our local hospice is having a butterfly release. So myself and my boys are all releasing a butterfly in memory of my husband. Bittersweet!! He has been on my mind so much here of late. I do well and then bam! I'm blue and teary/weepy, missing him so much. Funny how it comes on like that. I just finished staying with my friends elderly aunt for 5 days over the holiday. I was happy to help out so they could go away, but am so glad to be back at my own house and in my own bed. Anyway that is just a little of what's going on in my life at the moment. Sorry if I have bored you! You know I tend to rattle on like the old fool that I am!!!

Ok here is the first two cards I have to share. Both using the same technique as the last card I did. I wanted to try it out a few more times because I just love the look. lol I think it is such a pretty and elegant look. I'm not the best at coloring, but I think it will pass mustard. Is that the saying???? lol I'm pretty pleased with the way these came out and look forward to trying some more different flowers in this technique. 

As always thanks for stopping by and visiting a spell on the patio with me. Your comments always bring sunshine into my life! I know that I am behind on my visiting and commenting, but I promise that I will be by soon to try and catch up with what you all have been making!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Card Recipe:
SU stamps- Blended Bloom & Because I Care
Zig Clean Color Pens
My Creative Time-Stitched Rectangular Frame Dies & More
                                     More Stitched Rectangular Dies

Meet The New Blog!

Hello my crafty friends, happy TGIF to everyone. I hope your day is going well and that you are looking forward to some fun this weekend. 

Notice anything different? Yep, I have a new look on the blog! Isn't it beautiful?!! My sweet and generous friend, Loll of Stamping with Loll gave me a complete over haul and make my blog beautiful.  She even made me a beautiful watermark as well! Thanks so much for all your hard work Loll! I love my new look, how about you all? I'm so in awe at Loll's talents and generosity. I always say how blessed I am, and I mean it. I am a very blessed person, even with the loss of my husband, I know I'm still blessed in so many ways and this is just one of them.

I do have a card by the way. But just had to show off my blog first. lol I wanted to try out this technique for a while now, although I don't think I did it quite right. I'm still satisfied pretty much with the outcome. But I do need to find out how to do it correctly. I kinda' just did it on my own without a tutorial. Yeah, I know, I need to watch a tutorial. lol Also, there is a boo boo with making this card. I had planned on watercoloring with my Zigs, but got confused on what ink to stamp in that wouldn't smear. Yea, you guess it, I used the wrong ink! I used Tuxedo Black by Momento, the ink for alcohol markers. I have since labeled my black inks so I know which ones to use for what! So as I started adding some water with my water brush, my ink started to smear and I realized my mistake. Ok, so I thought lets see if I can just color in with the Zigs. So I was careful not to touch the black outline to much and colored my flower. I think I managed to save it as you have to look really close to see the smudges. Or as least I'm hoping that a lessor critical person will not notice! I am in need of thank you cards so I made this one into a thank you, but I really got to make some masculine ones for my son's who come and help me out.  Anyway here is the card, as always the recipe is at the end of the post.

As always, thanks for stopping by and visiting a spell with me. I so love when you do as your comments bring me sunshine and smiles! Crafty hugs,

Edited to add that one of my commentators, Karen, suggested that I linked up with Happy Little Stampers so I did. 

Card Recipe:
SU Heavy weight Whisper White card base
SU Water Color Paper
SU Regarding Dahlias Stamp Set-NBUS!!
Generic Sequins
Zigs Brush Pens

Die Class Projects

Hello crafty friends. Happy 1st day of spring to you all. Mother nature has decided to pull a bad joke on us by giving us about 4 inches of snow. Good thing is that it isn't laying on the roads and the sun is strong so it will melt quickly this time of year. Hubby and I are looking into other options for treatments for him. I hope whatever we find works well for him.

So in order to keep my mind a little busy I took the online class called Stretch Your Dies. This is the first time I've ever took an online class before and I am enjoying it. Of course I'm behind in all my homework. Some days it is just hard to get my mood up for getting crafty. But I did do day 1's homework. My first card is using your dies to do an inlaid design. The second card is done using craft foam to die cut out your word dies and images, then you heat the foam with your heat gun to shrink the foam. I never knew you could shrink craft foam! This fascinated me. I used the original size of the die in white to make my background look like it was embossed. Then I cut my flowers, leaves and word die again out of white craft foam. I used my Spectrum Noir markers to color the flowers, leaves and word die. Then I took my heat gun to it shrinking them. The heat make the flowers curl some, so they have some great dimension to them. And look at how much the "thanks" shrunk, amazing to me! And my last card I tried the smooshing watercolor technique by placing distress ink on my stamping block and spritzing it with water, then stamping it on the paper. I dried it with my heat gun and then took my word die and cut it out of the paper with part of it on the watercolor and part off the watercolor. Then I popped it up using more foam so that it stand up from the base layer, but still matches perfectly to the space. Hopefully I will get to day 2's class homework soon. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my simple cards today. As always want to thank you for your sweet comments. I also want to thank everyone for keep us in your prayers. Your support is amazing and even though I won't be here as much as I have been, I will be back from time to time. Thanks for not forgetting about me. And thank you for all your support and prayers, it is amazing how tight knit of a community it is in the crafty world and what amazing friends you all have been to me!! Thank you doesn't seem like it pays the bill....but please know I so appreciate you all! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Hello Crafty friends, I hope you are having a great hump day! Hubby's CAT scan was a wild one yesterday! First off he has to drink that chalky drink because they use the dye on him. Secondly, he got back there and the technician hooks up his IV, turns around to work on something else and when she turned back to him there was his blood all over the floor! The tubing had a crack in it letting the blood pool to the floor. Thirdly, while having his arms up and over his head, his face turned very red, which scared the technician so she called the doctor in. Hubby thinks that he just pinched off an artery or something like that. Anyway the doctor looked over him and let him go. I was waiting in the waiting room wondering what was taking so long. Well I found out when the technician walked him back out. She explain to me what had happened and then was going back to scrub up the blood. So glad she turned back around and they didn't drain his blood out of him!!!  Now we will wait to see what the scan shows.

It is my turn to post over at Cardz TV Gallery today. I recently had a SU party and I wanted a little thank you gift to place in the bags of my orders. So I made these cute bunny boxes on my Explore. I found it on the CTHM Artiste cartridge. I cut them at 7 inches, and I put 3 pieces of candy in them, a mint and 2 Hershey Kisses. On the spring color ones, I just stamped my "thanks" directly on the box, but for the white and black ones that wouldn't work, so I cut a tag out and placed my thanks on it instead. Aren't they dear?! The Cardz TV stamp set that I used was Heartfelt Wishes. I used the "many thanks" sentiment and just cut the "many" off. I can still put the stamp back together to stamp the whole sentiment if I so choose to. 

My next project is some boxes for Easter for my Grandchildren, still have to make another yet. I used my Explore once again with some Lori Whitlock files. My first time cutting SVG files and I have to say that I am loving using other files too! For these cute boxes, I used the CardzTV stamp set Easter Punnies, Birds and Bees and Easter Blessings. I stamped on a top note styled tag and placed it on the back of the boxes where I will sign "love papaw and grandma". These little boxes are just adorable and I will be filling them with some candy.

Thanks for take time out of your day to visit my little ole blog. I certainly love having you come by and your comments always make my day. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Thank You Snow Much!

Hello my crafty friends, I hope this Wednesday finds you warm and toasty. It's a cold one here and white. We don't have much snow, maybe 3 to 4 inches, but more is due to come on Thursday and then again on Sunday. Of course we all know how the weathermen work and their forecast changes between each broadcast! So hopefully we won't get any more snow this week. I don't mind the snow as long as it melts quickly and is all but gone before the next snow storm. lol I don't like when it hangs around all winter like it did last winter. Picky aren't I?! Let's just bring on Spring!!! lol I sure hope it is an early one this year.

Well onto my projects. It's my turn to post over at Cardz TV Gallery. My first project is a thank you card. And since it is winter and it has been snowing here and in NY where this card will be going, I decided to make it a snowman thank you card. I used the Cardz TV stamp set called "SNOW DAYS" and you can find that stamp set here. I used My Creative Time dies to put together my cute little snowman, the snow hills are also a MCT die as is the deer. I used MCT stamps to stamp my pine boughs-not really liking the ink I used to stamp them with, but what's done is done. I also stamp little snowflakes using 3 Twenty Craft Stamps. Then I took some stickles and added some sparkle and shine. 

My second card is a CASE (copy and share everything). You can see the original here. I loved this card Emma at My Creative Time With Emma made, and had to copy it. lol Only I didn't use "non" tacky glue and my sequins are caught. Oh well,  I knew not to use Tombow but couldn't find my glue that I use for shaker cards. And I had just used it!! I know it had to be right in front of my face and I just couldn't see it for seeing it. Please tell me that this happens to you too. This will be my husband's Valentine's card so he won't care if all the sequins don't shake. I used the Cardz TV stamp set called "HEART TO HEART" and you can find it here. Using all My Creative Time dies, I cut out to stitched hearts and scored a fold along the left heart bump and glued the first heart to this. This gave me by heart shaped card that would open. Then I took the "love" heart die and cut it out of paper and out of foam. I glued the foam to the back of the red paper love. I stamped the base heart with a MCT scripted stamp and then with Cardz TV stamp set "HEART TO HEART" and glued my key down that was cut out with a MCT die. I sprinkle my sequins in and then glue down the top layer with the acetate. Next time I won't make that same mistake of using the wrong glue. lol 

Check back at Cardz TV Gallery the rest of the week to see what awesome projects that my design team sister's have for you! As always I so appreciate you taking the time to stop and visit me, your comments always makes my heart sing! Crafty hugs, Brenda