A great week

Whenever Friday creeps up, I'm always amazed at how fast the week went by. I found out yesterday that my colorful bird-on-a-hill scallop card received an Honorable Mention for Hero Arts' mail it challenge. I hope the card found its way to Judy in Alabama.

And I'm still celebrating my birthday as a few cards and gifts arrived this week. Just sharing a photo of a beautiful BROWN clutch that a sweet friend from Indonesia sent me. The batik print is so pretty and reminiscent of her country. Love the browns!

And another sweet (and sneaky) friend sent me this stuffed felt owl keychain. The embroidery work is really amazing and I dubbed her "Owlice" after her designer. Big Owl looks happy...

This year brought the most number of hand stamped birthday cards that I've ever received. It's all thanks to the Hero Arts Flickr group and the many friendships I've made. I am blessed.

Cards and hugs for Kate

Followers of Jennifer McGuire's blog are all aware of her generous and kind heart. She is once again sponsoring a card drive for Kate, a little girl with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and for her family as well. As a parent of a cancer survivor, I wanted to join in and flood Kate and her family with tons of cards and good wishes. If you would like to participate, check out Jennifer's blog here and be inspired to bring some hope and sunshine to Kate and her family. This Greeting Farm pig always makes me smile and I hope that Kate will, too.

Happy Anniversary, Hawaii!

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of our state's admission to the United States. Pretty cool to be the 50th state instead of the 49th. Sorry, Alaska! And "50" has a nice ring to it. It's a state holiday which means schools are out of session and a lot of businesses are on a half day schedule. This Greeting Farm Hope image pays homage to our statehood. Gave her a grass skirt, courtesy of a Prima flower, and she has a yellow hibiscus which is our state flower. Happy Aloha Friday!

A card for Judy

Made this card for the "mail it" challenge over at the Hero Arts blog. It was going to be sent (secretly) to cheer up Judy whose computer crashed over the weekend.

I'm happy to report that Judy got her computer repaired and is back online and even though she'll probably see it on my Flickr photostream, I'm going to follow through with the challenge and mail it out to her today. Glad you're back in cyberspace, Judy!

Goodies in the mail

I received my order from Oozak today! A dozen yummy colors of Copic markers! I treated myself to a $50 order and even though we're not part of the "lower 48", I think I got free shipping because Oozak sent it to me thru USPS! Love Oozak, which Judy pointed out to me is "kazoo" spelled backwards. They have the lowest prices on Copics and thank you, Kelly, for telling me about them. My next purchase will be some type of holder or stand for the pens as they've outgrown the little plastic box I was toting them in.

And thank you for your helpful suggestions regarding photographing acetate cards. I still want to construct a light box and actually use it. I went as far as to buy a 12" box but ended up using it to mail something, and never bought another one. There's an excellent tutorial here and the results look well worth the cost and effort.

Is there a trick....

...to taking photos of acetate cards? I watched Kristina Werner's video of her Year of Cards series and was inspired to make a card with an acetate window. And I got my order from Stamping Online--only three new stamps!--so the plan was to use the Antique Flower background stamp and punch out a window.

The card came together pretty fast but when it was time to take a photo--it was so hard to do! I kept getting a glare or my reflection in the acetate which didn't show up when I set up the card. Am I supposed to go into a dark closet so there won't be any glare or reflection on the acetate? Any help or comments will be gratefully appreciated....

Blog awards!

You can tell what a newbie I am to blogging. I received two blog awards and it took me forever to figure out how to put them on my blog! The first one is from Hannah, who honored me with this award and I am a little embarrassed because my blog is so plain and so new to the blogging world. Thank you, Hannah! I will try and "glam" my blog and make it worthy of your award!

This morning, I found that Alice honored myself and three other friends with this award:

I wish that I could honor Alice by passing it back to her. She is such a talented lady and has scooped up numerous wins on the Hero Arts blog with her distinctive style. And she appears to love felt as much as I do. Big hugs, Alice, for sharing such a special award with me!

Birthday Christmas!

Imagine my surprise when I opened up a box yesterday and saw all of this:

A very sweet blogging friend probably had to sell one of her kidneys to put together these goodies for my birthday: Three sets of Nesties, a Sizzix label die, gems, flowers, alcohol ink applicator, a Hero Arts Friendship Message stamp, and R20 Copic pens! I'm most excited about the Copics because now my Greeting Farm images will have nice, rosy cheeks and not look so anemic. And the Nesties fit perfectly with what I already own. She's so sneaky smart!

But now, the pressure is ON! When I spoke to her and thanked her for all the wonderful goodies, she closed with, "I can't wait to see what you do with them!" {Gulp!} Me too!

Another sweet friend sent me some gifts which included this adorably cute pincushion! 'Bye bye generic tomato pincushion; hello cute little daisy pincushion! It's sooo cute that I want to keep it in its box and just admire it. I'm so blessed to have such sweet, generous friends...

I will post pics of some wonderful cards that were sent to me, too. So this year, turning 40 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! {wink, wink}

Hooked on Copics

I'm expecting my Stamping Online pre order of the new Hero Arts stamps any day now! Everyone's been doing great work and posting their cards using the new stamps in the Flickr pool. Just can't wait for my stamps to get here!

Here are two more Greeting Farm images--Flutter Anya and Teacher Anya. I really love that their images afford you a large surface to color with Copics. I gave Flutter Anya some bling with Diamond Stickles on her hair and wings.

I really wanted the Teacher Anya stamp since Jamie is into her third year of teaching and her good friend from college recently interviewed and was placed at her school. Looks like it's going to be a fun year for both of them!

And what a difference a day makes...today is bright and sunny and a tad windier than usual, but Felicia is gone and that's a good thing.

Felicia is leaving!

Thankfully, Hurricane Felicia turned into a tropical depression and is moving northward away from the islands. There will be a lot of wind and not too much rain on our side of the island. It's a pretty gloomy day with absolutely no sun. I feel sorry for the tourists who arrive here and expect sunny skies. It's just not happening today.

I'm sending this card to a dear friend and added another owl on the advice of my husband. He thought three owls looked chummier than two and I did have another one colored and cut out so I just stuck it on the branch. It looks a little crowded to me....

Sneak Peek Week!

This week's challenge on the Hero Arts blog is all about sneak peeks of their new line of stamps. They've come out with some new holiday designs and clings. I love clings! They don't take up as much room as wood mounted stamps and have the die and mounting cushion all in one little package. Hero's clings are genius: the design is printed on the cling portion, so when you mount it on the acrylic block, there's no guesswork as to where you're stamping! Brilliant!

This week's blogger was Lisa Spangler and she offered tons of peeks at the new stamps and the challenge was to make a card or layout, using the peek as your inspiration. Tough one for me but I gave it a go with the blue and yellow color combo. And NO BROWN whatsoever! Big challenge for sure!

Meet.....Megan!

Yep, I got her! The newest Wild Sprout from The Greeting Farm named Megan. I trimmed off her head and tilted it a bit...love her ditzy look! I hope to get more Copics for coloring their hair as all the stamped images have the same auburn hair color.

I can't stop coloring these cute images! My new Hero Arts stamp order is on its way from Stamping Online and I can't wait! I used the huge Purple Onion Designs vintage damask background stamp with Versamark ink and love how it turned out. As soon as I get Hero's new cling brocade stamp, I'm planning to stamp more backgrounds this way.

Happy Aloha Friday! Have a great weekend....

Hawaiian flamenco

The Greeting Farm has a number of Hawaiian themed stamps that are fun to color with Copics. One of their "farmers" is a gal from Hawaii and possibly contributed to their designs. Yesterday I colored a few more Surfer Ians and Hope Sings is so cute--she's playing a ukulele! I wanted to try some folded half flowers like Kelly did but Hope looks more like a flamenco dancer than a Hawaiian girl!

I {Heart} Tags!

This week's challenge at Hero Arts is tags. I love making tags and recall making a bunch for trading at a stamp convention several years ago. I made round tags, hand shaped tags, and even a doll tag with movable arms and legs.

I have so many water splotched backgrounds from Jennifer McGuire's Thinking Inking class. I decided to use one for a card that I posted for the challenge. The tag above wasn't sent to the group because the end result wasn't what I expected. It looks so eerie to me.

On that note, have a great Sunday! Can't believe it's August.....