Lucky me!

My winning streak got a little longer when I found out that I won a not yet released digital stamp from The Greeting Farm. The newest Hope and Grace image is called "Rain, Rain" and she is such a cutie!

Marie sent the image to me this morning and I wanted to color her right away. I've always wanted to make an easel card and followed this great tutorial by Lysa on the In Style Stamps blog. I can see why it's so popular--easel cards are fun and quick to create! Thanks, Lysa--it really was easy peasy!

Rain, Rain will probably be offered to the public sometime soon, but for now I'm thrilled to know that myself and four other people are the first to own her. Thank you, Marie!

Stamps: The Greeting Farm, My Sentiments Exactly

Ink: Versafine, Colorbox

Cardstock: Papertrey Ink

Paper: Sassafras Lass

Other: Copic markers, Nestabilities, Basic Grey pearls, Glossy Accents,

Liquid Pearls, pop dots

Still more Innocence

I'm waiting patiently for my new Hero Arts stamps to arrive in the mail. In the meantime, I made a few cards with more (yep, you guessed it!) Pure Innocence digis.

My new favorite Nestabilities die is the nested blossom. I've used it here on all three cards, and I think it goes well with the Pure Innocence images.

These two digi images are now on sale at Heather Ellis' website . Pure Innocence clear stamps can also be found at My Favorite Things. The clear stamp sets come with sentiments, but the digi sizes can be played with--something I've learned to appreciate.

My daughter asked me to make some cards for a friend. I think I'll be making a set using Pure Innocence images since they're fast and fun to color--and I think I may have bought them all.

Stamps: Pure Innocence digital images, Hero Arts

Ink: Versafine

Cardstock: Stampin Up, Papertrey Ink

Other: Nestabilities blossom dies, Cuttlebug embossing folder,

Sizzix embossing folder, Copic markers, sheer dot ribbon,

Inkssentials white pen, Martha Stewart butterfly punch,

pop dots, K&Co pillow stickers

Have a Gorjuss Christmas!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

I had this Gorjuss Girl cut and colored a long time ago and finally decided to use her on a Christmas card with non-traditional colors, along with my favorite brown.

Hope Santa brings you what you wished for!

Stamps: Gorjuss Girls, My Sentiments Exactly

Ink: Memento, Versafine

Cardstock: Stampin Up, Papertrey Ink

Other: Copics, Cuttlebug embossing folders, buttons, ribbon, pop dots

More Pure Innocence

Here's another card made with Pure Innocence digis. Heather Ellis' Etsy shop is closed until January 3rd because she's on holiday, but you can still get some digis from her second website here and, as Erin informed me, they are now on sale! And there are a few new images as well. Thanks, Erin!

I just love the innocent charm of Pure Innocence designs. They are quick to color and make for super quick cards. Hope you'll like them, too!

Stamps: Pure Innocence digital image, Hero Arts sentiment

Ink: Colorbox, Versafine

Other: Copic markers, Nestabilities Label dies, Sizzix embossing folder,

K&Co pillow stickers, MS butterfly punch, ribbon, twine

Card drive and yummy candy!

Jennifer McGuire is once again hosting a card drive for ailing children and their families. Cards for Kids is an ongoing one, and cards can be sent not only at Christmas, but year round.

Visit her blog for the details and even if you're super busy, it's such a "feel good" effort to send even one card to brighten a young child's holiday or any day. Even a (gasp!) Hallmark card would be heartfelt and appreciated.

Our younger daughter was a cancer patient when she was 10 months old and I can empathize with families who spend the holidays in or out of the hospital with an ill child. Siblings are sometimes forgotten and a card would surely brighten up their day as well.

Thanks to some enabling from Alice, I've discovered Mo's digital images that are so easy to print and color. This Sophie card will be on its way to Jennifer this weekend.

Stamps: Mo's Digital Pencil, My Sentiments Exactly

Cardstock: Gorgeous red by Gina K (thank you, Judy!)

Ink: Versafine Onyx Black

Other: Nestabilities oval dies, Sizzix embossing dots,

Copics for coloring, corner rounder, buttons, twine, pop dots

And the very talented Jenn Biederman is generously giving away her prizes that she won for a Hero Arts challenge together with a card and an ATC that she created. Her cards alone are the true prizes and I can attest to this because I own a "JB original"! Visit her blog and prepare to be dazzled by her cards, projects and layouts. Thanks, Jenn!

Paula is hapai!

I was so excited when I found out that our Flickr friend Paula is hapai (hah-pie')--the Hawaiian word for "pregnant". This will be her second baby and I thought what better time to use the new Mom image from The Greeting Farm. I sent this card along with some stamped images and I'm sharing it since she just received it.

I altered the image slightly by trimming off the pants that the mom was wearing and drew in and colored some legs. I also cut apart the Hero Arts sentiment so that it fit the space. I'm becoming a little more comfortable with altering designs and may soon start to switch heads and bodies.

Take good care, Paula! Have fun colouring!

Stamps: The Greeting Farm, Hero Arts

Cardstock: Stampin Up

Ink: Memento, Memories

Other: Copic markers for coloring, Copic 0.3 multiliner pen, Basic Grey buttons,

Nestabilities Label One, Inkssentials white pigment pen

A cookie for Santa

Here's another of Amy's original digi designs--Cookie Break Santa. Love that name! See the little cookie in his hand? Now that's my kind of Santa!

I love how quickly you can start using digis after you download them, and being able to resize them, too. Not having to clean your stamps, or wonder where you're going to store them is an added bonus.

It wasn't my original intention to make a brown Christmas card. But I liked how the reds and greens looked against the background and decided to leave it as is. You can find Cookie Break Santa along with more of Amy's digi fairies, angels, and elves at All That Scraps.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Stampin' Up

Ink: Memento, Ranger Distress Inks, Versamark

Stamps: Amy's digi, Hero Arts

Copic markers for coloring

Nestabilities, Cuttlebug embossing folder

Felt leaves & gemstones (Hero Arts), pop dots

White embossing powder

Meet Fidget Goblinspider

Super talented Amy has designed a number of stamps and showcased them on her blog. Not only are they awesome, but she's made a perfect card with each of them. They are now on sale in digi form at All That Scraps and they're going fast!

She designed several fairies and I bought Fidget Goblinspider because I fell in love with her skirt. It reminds me of a mushroom or toadstool, and I loved her hairdo. Loved it so much that I cut off a part that was too intricate for me to trim. Now Fidget has an unexpected new 'do and I apologized to Amy--and got some cutting tips and words of advice: Practice, practice, practice!

I used a card base that I made a while ago, added some glitter to the dots on Fidget's skirt, and Glossy Accents (again!) on her eyes. Isn't she a cutie? Check out Amy's blog to see more "November Sweets" and get them while you can at ATS.

Another Izzy

I think Izzy is one of my favorite images to color right now. I still want to try a darker skin tone like Kelly did, but that means placing another order at Oozak for darker brown Copics.

I'm entering Caardvarks' circle card challenge with this buttony Izzy card. The background was made using Jennifer McGuire's distressed background technique which I love, especially with the Peeled Paint distress ink. I applied Glossy Accents to Izzy's eyes again, a technique which was shared to me by Kelly.

I'm planning to send this to a friend's daughter who is recovering from a nasty flu. I'm sure she's on her way to recovery and hopefully back in school.

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!

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.

Land lovin' mermaid

Mermaid Anya arrived in the mail yesterday and Kelly was right--she's fast and fun to color! And trim. That's of utmost importance because these eyes and hands are not as young as they used to be.

I was looking for a background and found this water splotched piece in my scrap basket. Cuttlebugged the top portion with the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder and added some seaweed around her. Then I realized that she looks as if she's walking on land. Amphibian Anya. Will have to try this again...

Twelve days??

Thanks to my niece, Heather, for pointing out that I leave for Japan in TWELVE days! I didn't believe it until I used all my fingers and toes....yep, 12 days! Tomorrow we get our rail passes for the JR trains--love the bullet trains!--and our yen and cell phone which can only be used in Japan. If we use our iPhone in Japan, it's $1.69 per minute so the cost of renting the cell phone is well worth the $30.

I'm finishing up my cards for Kate and her family and will send them off to Jennifer this week. I made the surfer card for her brother, Will, and will probably put some stickers inside, and the round card is for her older sister, Olivia.

I decided to give the buttony one to her parents. I love the sentiment and it's my first card that I took to the sewing machine! Stitching was fun and I may do it more often and some zigzag stitching when I get a bit braver....

Thanks for visiting! Have a great rest of the week....

Woo hoo!

Today announcements were made on the Greeting Farm and Club Anya blogs and two of my friends made the design team! Congrats to Kelly Booth and Lysa Rohrer for being chosen for Club Anya! So exciting to actually "know" them through the Hero Arts Flickr group! Kelly couldn't contain herself and let me know the day before so that I could share in her excitement! I'm happy for all who made DTs for both blogs. I've been lurking Amy's blog and she does amazing altering of Greeting Farm and Anya images with a light box and a Copic multiliner pen. Please visit their blogs for more amazing and inspirational work. Way to go, ladies!

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!

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.

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.