Thursday, September 30, 2010

Pink and Purple Birthday

Thought I'd share my daughter's recent 'Clean and  Simple' birthday card which I'm submitting to the current Cardvaark challenge.


 Here it is:


What can I say. She's a girl. Loves pink and purple. :)
Thanks for looking!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

My Final Pairing Up Challenge with Tanya (and giveaway winner announced)

I've had a lot of fun pairing up with Tanya for this challenge! Thanks Tanya! For our final week we decided to do a free for all.

Here's my card (which I`m also entering in the current Caardvarks CAS challenge):

 Tanya's card can be found here.

Thanks for looking. Now to announce the winner of some Hero Arts goodies!!! :)
Drum roll please......

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:
7
Timestamp: 2010-09-28 17:15:34 UTC

#7 is...  Latrice!!!

Latrice said...
It was so fun meeting you and your mom. You two are beautfiful people seriously! I really hope to see you again. In the meantime we should Skype and craft together. I actually don't have those stamp sets! That's unheard of. Big Hugs and great pictures BTW!
 Latrice, I'll try and get your goodies out to be mailed tomorrow! :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful week. Lots of rain over here. Makes me feel all warm and cozy being in the house. :)



Sunday, September 26, 2010

Leaf Cards

Some more cards for Hero Arts Autumn challenge. I LOVE using my Silhouette (in case you hadn't noticed). ;) They have a new program and I'm trying to transfer my library to the new system but it's not going very well. Oh well... we'll get there. :)

Here are the cards:



 The leaf shape is from here: www.silhouetteonlinestore.com/sd/viewShape.aspx?id=12581. I ungrouped the image so I could use the outline for the back and front of the card and cut the inside on a separate piece of paper. The greeting is from the Frames and Messages clear set. On the last one I crinkled up the paper to give it the texture of a real fall leaf.

I also made this card for challenge:


The main panel was kind of a happy mistake. I clear embossed the maple leaves and went over the panel with Walnut Stain distress ink. Apparently some of the tiny flowers were embossed and so they also resisted the ink. :)

Hope everyone had a great weekend. We had family over today to celebrate our twins' birthday. :)



Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Scrapfest 2010!

A bit of a long post but I've included a giveaway. :)

Just wanted to share my adventures with Scrapfest 2010! This was my first year going to Scrapfest and I sure hope it won't be my last. :) Thanks to my wonderful hubby for allowing me to go and my parents for making it possible too. (Steve said I could only go if I had someone to go with to share hotel costs, etc. and my Dad encouraged my Mom to join me). :) My Mom and I shared a room with Natasha and we had such a great time with her, getting to know her. Miss you Natasha!

Well, I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. Our adventure began with my Mom and I driving from my place in London, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan. We left around 5pm Wednesday evening and arrived in Windsor (just across the border from Detroit) at about 7. My Mom asked me to get her passport out of her purse and after doing so I took mine out too... only to realize I had my EXPIRED passport with me. :( We turned around and made our way back to London for my current passport, adding an extra 4 hours to our trip. I'm SO glad we decided to drive up the night before our flight. If we'd left my place in the morning we would have missed our flight Thursday morning and I would have been one sad little crafter. The rest of our trip went smoothly with only a slight delay with our first flight to Chicago. Once we arrived in Minneapolis we dropped our things off at the hotel and headed out to the Mall of America to check things out, do some shopping at Archivers, and register for Scrapfest.

Mom and I
 We then met up with Linda and Liz at Starbucks for quick hello before heading back to our hotel room. We were so tired and I had such a headache that we turned in early. Natasha showed up and we chatted for quite a bit before calling it a night.

Friday was blast! I had all 3 of my classes that morning...


Tim Holtz was a great teacher and SO funny!

Latrice, Anne, Barb, and Anita at one of the Hero Arts classes. We all sat in the front row. :)











Shari and Jennifer teaching away. They were wonderful! Such a fast-paced class. 


I was thrilled to finally meet Jennifer and Shari. Jen and I have gotten to know each other a little bit through email the past 2 1/2 years and meeting her in person was my biggest motivation for going to Scrapfest. :) Shari and I shared a day on the Hero Arts blog almost 2 years ago and so I was excited to meet her too. My two favourite card artists... and they are both as nice as can be. :) 

After class some of us at at Chipotle. I had researched restaurant menus quite a bit before the trip because my Celiac and the only thing I couldn't eat there was the flour tortillas. The food was SO yummy! We ate there 3 times during Scrapfest and were more than satisfied! Yum!

After lunch we hit some make and takes and hung out with some of the Hero Arts flickr girls...

Anne, Me, Barb
Jenn and I
Anita, Me, Jenn


Once we hit all the make and takes we wanted to do for the day we headed over the Cold Stone Creamery. I LOVE their ice cream and my favourite is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter. Absolutely DELICIOUS!

Saturday we took it pretty easy... did a couple of make and takes and some shopping. I had to hit the Lego store for the kiddos and the M & M's store for the hubby. :) My Mom and I spent some time in the afternoon relaxing at the hotel and watched a movie before the Hero Arts flickr group and Hero Arts ladies met up at Twin City Grill for dinner. Latrice organized the dinner and a card swap and we all had a wonderful time. Latrice was also so thoughtful and brought me some gluten free goodies from Trader Joe's. How sweet is she!?!? The staff at Twin City Grill were SO good at accommodating my gluten free diet. I had more food than I could eat! :)

Deb, Liz, my Mom
Anne & Brita
The whole group of us!!!
Me, Natasha, Mom
Jennifer, Me, Shari

 I know it was a working weekend for Jennifer and Shari and so I made sure to keep my expectations in check. I wasn't really expecting to spend a great deal of time with either of them but did secretly hope to at least sit at the same table as them during the dinner. Alas, it wasn't meant to be...

...BUT I was thrilled when Jennifer asked about getting together Sunday morning for breakfest with her and Shari. Natasha, my Mom and I met up with them at IHOP and it was so nice to get a chance to talk with them and get to know them both better. Thanks so much ladies!

Mom, Natasha, Me, Shari, Jennifer

Me and Jennifer
It really was a wonderful weekend! My Mom and I had such a great time together and Natasha was a great roomie. It was so nice to get to know her and some of the other Hero Arts flickr members and Hero Arts ladies better. Our flights back went well... no delays! We did show up at the hotel/ flight parking to a dead battery but the parking lot had a vehicle there specifically designated to give cars a boost! Yay! Only cost us 5 minutes of our time. :)

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in making this past weekend such a memorable one! I miss you all!

AND.... thanks to everyone who made it through this long post. :) I feel so spoiled to have been able to attend Scrapfest, for all the goodies we received there, for Latrice's generosity with the gluten-free treats as well as Nancy's generosity in the past week or two when I received tons of gluten-free black licorice in the mail, etc. etc. etc. I'm feeling very blessed and want to pay it forward.

So...I will draw one random commenter on this post to send these goodies to. You have until next week September 27th (my twins' 4th birthday!) at midnight. I will post the winner next Tuesday the 28th during my final pairing up challenge with Tanya.

Hero Arts Jingle all the Way catalogue, Happy Holiday Tags, Gift for You, Merry Always, Red Christmas Felt,           Spring Mixed Gemstones, Clear Mixed Gemstones

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Pairing up with Tanya... take two!

I'm back from Scrapfest and getting back into the swing of things here at home. I'm planning to post about my adventures (along with a giveaway) tomorrow. Today I'm excited to post the 2nd of 3 pairing up challenges with scatteredstamper (Tanya) from the Hero Arts flickr group. I'm also entering this is the Caardvark CAS challenge found here. This week we decided to use Hero Arts 'Kiss from the Sun' clear set. I hadn't broken this one in yet and so I was glad for the extra motivation.

Here's my card:


The sentiment is computer generated and the clouds are the Hero Arts clouds for the Silhouette. Blue cardstock and twine are both Papertrey Ink.


Thanks for looking! Be sure to check out Tanya's card here and remember to come back tomorrow night. :)












































































Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Pairing up challenge with scatteredstamper (Tanya)

Hi everyone! This is the first of 3 weeks in which I'm pairing up with Tanya (unknown in flickr world as scatteredstamper) to create cards using the same stamp sets. This week we decided to use Hero Arts "Real Flowers" set. Here's the card I made:


My card base was embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder. The Spellbinders large die cut was stamped with Hero Arts 'Friend Definition' stamp. I then took the large flower from the "real Flowers' set, inked it up using distress inks, spritzed with water, and stamped. I really like the watercolor effect that gave it. I stamped my message on a Spellbinders label die cut and finished the card off with some embellishments.

Thanks so much for looking! To see Tanya's beautiful card go here.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week. Tomorrow I start my journey to Scrapfest at MOA!!! Can't wait! :)

Friday, September 10, 2010

Virtual Cardmaking Party in celebration of Operation Write Home’s birthday


Today starts Hero Arts virtual cardmaking party in celebration of Operation Write Home's birthday. The goal is collect 500 cards from this weekends festivities for soldiers to send home to their loved ones. The past and present Hero Hostesses as well as some Hero Artists have come up with some challenges for this weekend... and there are prizes involved. ;) My group of hostesses came up with the theme of "cards of encouragement". Here's my card:



I decided to make a card that could be sent to a teen or tween son. I thought this might be a group that might not get as many cards as teen boys can be difficult to create for. Yet, I have a feeling that teen boys struggle just as much (if not more) than others with having their male role model away for so long.

HA:
Classic Messages
Graph Background
Layering Paper: Cerulean, Poppy, Grass

Hero Arts shapes for the Silhouette:
www.qksilhouette.com/sd/viewShape.aspx?id=12585
www.qksilhouette.com/sd/viewShape.aspx?id=6991

For more details go here. To see the list of challenges go here. Hope to see some of you over there. :) Have a great (stampy) weekend). :)

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

signs of fall


Another sign of fall... the start of school. Our first day of homeschooling this year and only 2 of us broke down. Busy, stressful morning but we'll get there. :) Still have a few things to do school wise this afternoon so I'll get to the cards I made over the past few days...

Another one using the Silhouette. LOVE using my Silhouette and HA stamps together.   


This one was inspired by the Hero Arts blog this week and the focus on felt.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Saturday, September 4, 2010