Himawari Babies

I've seen Himawari Babies designs used on some blogs and was always wondering who sold those stamps and where could I find them? Blogging friend Denise graciously sent me some images to play with. It turns out that she's a designer for Himawari (him'-ah-wah-ree) which means "sunflower" in Japanese.

They're images printed on good quality cardstock, already colored, and ready to be used. You can punch them out with paper punches or Nesties and affix them to a card or tag or even a scrapbook layout. How wonderfully easy is that?

Jennifer McGuire made these cards a while back and they've always been a favorite of mine. I trimmed out some images and put these together really quickly with scallop circle punches and used some Cuttlebug folders for texture.

I can see how these would make quick cards because I made these in less than 30 minutes and tucked them into goodie bags for my neighbors. Thanks, Denise, for introducing me to Himawari Babies!

Trick or Treat!

I bought a set of kitty stamps from The Greeting Farm during their recent Farmer's Market sale. After I colored one of the cats, it looked a little too dark to be used on anything but a Halloween card.

When I saw the image of the little mouse, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! Light bulbs don't click on very often so I had to work fast! I even sketched a little witch's hat (inspired by Amy!) and colored and cut it out, along with the mouse. I Googled "candy corn" to check the order of the colors and here is the end result of a very quick card.

Hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Tall card challenge

Caardvarks is having a tall card challenge and I'm not sure if this qualifies--it feels like I'm cheating! I love Purple Onion Designs' noteblock stamps. I own about 6 of them and even ordered some wood to fit because all of their stamps are sold unmounted.

I used the noteblock on an earlier Halloween card and trimmed it to fit, so I'm glad that I could use it full size for this card. I also used the Nestabilities scalloped rectangle dies for the first time and the noteblock image fits almost perfectly in the middle of them. Added more little ghouls from The Greeting Farm and I'm happy with this tall card. There are a lot of awesome submissions--check them out here.

Paper tearing challenge

Last week's challenge at Hero Arts was to do some type of paper tearing on a card or scrapbook layout. I just received the Friendship Definition stamp in the mail and decided to make some scraplings since I have a ton of scraps to use. All four images--the butterfly, frog, flower, and deer were in my scrap bag, waiting for a home.

After stamping the text, I ink distressed in different colors and used a ruler to tear them into strips that would fit scrapling sized pieces of cardstock. And I love the little leaf sizzlit from Stampin Up so I used them on all four scraplings. Done!

Yay, Alice!

I'm so proud of my blogging friend Alice who was recently chosen to be part of the Sketch Crew over at Taylored Expressions! Alice makes awesome cards and has an incredible eye for color. Today is her first appearance on Taylor's blog and she did a knockout job with TESC#88 as only Alice can. This Cheer Anya from The Greeting Farm was perfect for a card for her, right down to the "A" on her outfit. Way to go, Alice! It's a happy day in Wonderland!

Feeling a skosh better today--still burping!--and thanks to all for your concern. TUMS and I have become good friends...

Randomness

Sharing a few more pics from our trip to Japan.

In Odaiba, we stopped by a Toyota showroom and they featured these colorful cars with designs that were made by school children. They had a contest and chose the winning designs and put them on little Toyotas. This one caught my eye because it was cute and must have been done by a girl.

Here's a display of a (fake) sushi tower in a restaurant window in Osaka:

Glorious Mt. Fuji, as seen from a bullet train, after Typhoon Melor passed through:

Thousands of origami cranes at a memorial for mobilized students in Hiroshima:

And.....a can of SPAM that we saw in a Tokyo supermarket, selling for 662¥! Equivalent to $7.25US.

Hope to finish up and share some cards tomorrow. Feeling a little blah today with the cloudy weather and a mild case of acid reflux. Thanks for stopping by...have a great day!

Happy Halloween

I'm not into Halloween. I think it goes back to an early childhood when moms still made their kids' costumes. My older sister wanted to be a witch so I had to be a witch, too. I wasn't happy at all, and that was probably my last Halloween that I remember dressing up for. I quit Halloween!

To this day I'm not a Halloween fan. But I just loved this Spooktacular stamp set from The Greeting Farm. And I've always wanted to use the Purple Onion Designs noteblock stamp so this 4"x4" card came together rather quickly.

I almost bought Martha Stewart's scary fence punch (with a 40% off coupon) and I'm glad that I didn't. Just trimmed and uglied up her regular picket fence and I saved myself about $10. Now that makes it a Happy Halloween...

Finally, a card!

Yay, I finally feel almost back to normal! Normal enough to pick up my new Copics and color this Miss Anya while I watched "Glee". Love that show!

I was so happy to get C5, C7, and C9 in Japan to color black hair as Oozak has been out of them for the longest time. (A lot of colors coming in on the 20th, so they say.) It was interesting to see that a lot of the young girls in Japan do not have black hair and seem to like the auburn or light brown look. After a while, they all started to look the same no matter where we were--like they were cloned!

Don't look too closely at the hair highlighting. I didn't know what I was doing as I got down to the bottom. Still need lots of practice...

Copics and cranes

At Hiroshima, we visited the Peace Museum and I saw a display of tiny origami cranes. They were the actual cranes folded by Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was a victim of the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima in 1945. She developed leukemia as a result of exposure to the radiation and her classmates folded a thousand cranes with the hope that she would be cured.

She continued to fold them even after the thousand were completed and used whatever type of paper she could find--cellophane, gum wrappers. I was humbled by how neatly they were folded and the fact that she created little works of art with what she had. Apologies for the dark photo but we weren't allowed to use flash in the museum.

And for anyone who's interested, here's a shot of my Kokuyo stash--love the yellows!--and the 19 Copics that I got. I thought I bought a dozen but 19 is a nice number. I should have rounded it off to 20.

Home!

We arrived home this morning after a 6-1/2 hour, over the ocean, through the international date line return trip from Narita Airport. Everything went smoothly through customs and I showed the agent my declaration form with "Art Supplies" on it. Yep, my 27-inch, 43 lb. suitcase held about a dozen Copics and some Kokuyo tape and refills and I proudly declared them!

I actually screamed as we turned the corner at the Loft and there were the rows and rows of Copics--Sketch markers, Originals, and Ciaos. Felt badly that I scared a poor little old lady and politely shoved a teenager on the side just so I could marvel at the display. Then my daughter gave me a shopping basket and wished me well. I was in heaven.

Japan is the birthplace of Copics and Kokuyo tape, too. I watched a video on a new Kokuyo tape that you can stamp just a square of glue if you want to affix, say a postage stamp. Pretty cool. I'm sure it'll be making its way to the US very soon.

Oh, the food was great:

and the scenery was awesome and Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge are both marvelous structures.

But for me, getting my hands on those Copics was a definite highlight of the trip. I picked up twelve of my "most wanted" colors and my sweet hubby encouraged me to get more but I'm quite satisfied with what I got and managed to fill in more spaces on the Copics color chart (thank you, Maylee!)

We didn't get to see any changes in the colors of the foliage--our guide said October is too early--so we'll probably have to return to Japan in a few months to see that--and pick up more Copics!

Will post more pics after I get over this jetlag. It's good to be home.