A little Vacation!

Just wanted you all to know that I am taking a vacation from technique challenges for a few weeks. I promise the next one I post though will be awesome! *grin* I have some really fun ones planned for when I start posting them again so bare with me. Until then, here is another card I did.
I made this Elephant card for my DH with the Wild Animals set from Rubber Inspirations. I just love the way this turned out. I hope he does too. Elephants, oddly enough are really special to us. Before DH left for basic training (3 & a half years ago) he got me a stuffed Elephant to cuddle with when he is gone. He told me a story about how Elephants never forget. He said he would never forget me no matter how far away he is. (Awwww) So ever since then Elephants have been really special. Every time I find a set with an Elephant I have to get it. So when I saw this Wild Animals set on the RI website I snatched it up! *grin* I hope he likes it. I colored it using watercolor crayons and an aquapainter.

It's Friday! You know what that means!!

It's technique time! This week I have had no time whatsoever to stamp. So I went way back into my stash to find a card for the technique this week.

This week's technique is, Scratch & Sniff cards!

These are easy to do. All you do is mix Kool Aid and clear Embossing Powder and then use it like normal on a card. For my card I searched the galleries at SCS for inspirations. I found one by noblerubies that I semi-Cased.So, here is what I did. I first started by mixing my unsweetened strawberry kool aid and my clear embossing powder (I do a 50/50 mixture). Then I set that aside. After that I stamped my chocolate chips from Oh So Sweet using Chocolate Chip ink onto Chocolate Chip cardstock (that's a lot of chocolate LOL) Then (it's hard to see in the picture) I stamped the Canvas BG stamp onto Real Red Cardstock using Real Red ink. Then I added the real red to the Chocolate chip base so that the card was half red, half brown. Then I added Black Grosgrain to blend the two better. Now for the image. I stamped my strawberry using my markers onto my Whisper White piece. Then I stamped it again using versamark directly over the first strawberry. Then I poured my mixture of koolaid and embossing powder over it and tapped off the excess, heated it up using the heat gun and viola! When it was cooled down I matted it to real red cardstock and then attached it to my card, finishing it off with a sentiment stamped in black in the lower right hand corner.

Give these a try! And you can get really creative and instead of using kool aid you can use cocoa or cinnamon or whatever. *grin* Have fun with it!

Just playing around

Just playing around today. Here is what I made:
I wanted to make some cards with the adorable bee images I got from Beate the other day. These look so much better in person, I promise. Anyhow, on this one I was playing around with the melted crayon technique and I guess you could say I got carried away. LOL I used two shades of yellow and decided to see what adding black and silver would do. In person the silver isn't so bam! lol I also colored the bugs wings using a Sakura Stardust Gel Pen from Rubber Inspirations.
On this one I wanted to make a card for DH but wanted it to be simple. So I colored the bee, used the stardust gel pen on the wings and then did faux stitching on the black mat, used a white gel pen to do the stitching with and then added some grosgrain ribbon and then I stamped the I miss you stamp from HL in the corner of the image.
On this one I was actually making a card to go with Kathy's blog candy on that is going out on Monday. I wanted to use the pencil over technique on the card since that was the technique for the contest. So on this one I used the Garden Set and the Everyday Greeting Set from Rubber Inspirations. I love how this turned out. I almost don't want to let it go. I guess I will have to make one for me to keep. lol I made a few other things today too but I won't share those right now. It's dinner time and I'm hungry. Now to figure out what to eat....

Technique Friday!

As you know, this week I traded in our car for a pretty new van. We had our car for so long, it had so many miles on it and we needed a new one. Don't worry, DH knew I was doing it so I'm not in trouble. LOL In fact, he picked it out online and emailed me the link. *grin* (I love the internet, even at half a world away he can still help me car shop. LOL)

So anyhow, in honor of my pretty new van, I decided that for this week, the technique would be a technique that I have never done before, thus making it a week of new things. First I got a pretty new van, and then I got to try a fun new technique (well new to me LOL).

The melted crayon background is one I have been wanting to try for ages. In fact, I even bought a box of crayons just to attempt this (so I wouldn't be melting DD's LOL). It was sooo much fun!

Here is I used:
Iron, Aluminum foil, White Cardstock (not glossy) , Crayons, Best Blossoms stamp set (SU), Black Craft Ink, Sincere Salutations stamp set (SU), Black Grosgrain, Pixie Pink Cardstock, Basic Black Cardstock, Southwest corner punch (SU)

First I covered my iron with the Aluminum foil. This is so clean up will be a snap. Otherwise the iron will get all gross and yucky and frankly, who wants to clean that. LOL Then I turned on the iron to a medium heat. (While I was waiting for the iron to heat up I used that time to make sure I had a covered work surface, You can use a few sheets of scratch paper or some newspapers. This does soak through the cardstock so you want to make sure your work surface is covered well.)
After the iron is hot I grabbed my crayons I was working with (I used to shades of green and two shades of pink) and scribbled them onto the aluminum foil. Then I just ironed my cardstock. The crayons will transfer to the cardstock and make a cool background. I repeated this a few times until I got the look I was going for.
Then I took my best blossoms set and I stamped it using black craft ink, directly onto the crayon background. (because I used a solid stamp it left some blank spots, if you use an outline stamp it shouldn't do that.) Meanwhile I stamped my sentiment onto white cardstock and then punched the corners using the southwest corner punch. Then I matted it to pixie pink and punched those corners out. Then I matted that to black cardstock. Then I attached the melted crayons background to my pink card base and then attached my sentiment piece. I added some black grosgrain ribbon to give it a fun touch.

This technique was so much fun! I am so going to try this again!

Guess what I got today!

I know, I have been really quiet this week. I've had good reason. I was car hunting on Monday, found one, sent the link to my DH so he could see, he emailed me back and asked me if I had seen the Blue 2006 Caravan. He found it online at the same dealership. It wasn't at the location that I had gone to so, nope, hadn't seen it. On Tuesday I called the dealership and asked about the blue van. I wasn't feeling well so I set up an appt. for the next day (that would be today) to go and look at it. Being the religious person that I am, I prayed that I would know if it was right. So I woke up this morning and felt great about it. I went down, test drove it, loved it and started the paperwork. I got to leave for about 2 hours for lunch and took that time to think it over. Even though I had been thinking about it for a good couple of days. Anyhow, I went back and signed the papers and so now my hubby and I are the new owners of a 2006 Dodge Caravan!! We got an awesome deal! I'm so excited! I still can't believe I bought it though. LOL I know DH will be happy when he finds out. I haven't talked to him since yesterday morning so he doesn't know yet that I bought it. But I know he'll be thrilled. Our old 2000 Neon was awesome and I am going to miss it but it had over 164,000 miles on it so it was time to trade it in. Here is a picture of me getting my keys from the owner, Jim Clark (he's the one I'm shaking hands with), then there's me in the middle and Bill is the awesome dealer who helped me out! That's our new van behind us. It's a really pretty blue with a little bit of silver in it. I love it!

Bloggers RAK Time!!!

I got two bloggers RAK's today! What timing too. I have had a busy and tough week and an even worse day so these couldn't have come at a better time. *grin* Without further ado:


I got a RAK from BEATE!!!!! OMGosh, you should have seen me, I was standing in the middle of the street practically screaming!!! Beate is so sweet. She even sent me some stamped images. Soo cute! Beate is awesome, and she is stamping royalty. I know you've checked out her blog, but I'm gonna link it anyway. Fresh & Fun is the name of her blog. Check it out!

I also got another RAK from Allison! I'm such a lucky girl! This is one of my favorite Bella's. This is the Sistah Hooda Bella! Totally cute and the flowers are just the right touch. Allison's blog is Stampin When I Can. Check it out!


You ladies totally made my day! Thank you! *grin*

Technique Friday's!

It has been a very busy week. And that's putting it mildly. LOL My family support group for my husband's company has been wanting to make cards to send to our guys for Fathers Day so they can have cards to send home to their dad's. I needed to come up with a simple, easy, quick design. So, I thought that I would make this weeks technique simple, quick, and easy. This week's technique is to do a no layer, no embellishment card. I call this....



Look Ma! No Layers!




The trick on this technique is, use no layers, no embellishments, and only white cardstock.

Now, before you say this impossible, let me show you my card:I used the truck from Loads Of Love (SU) and the guy from Loads Of Love Accessories (SU). The Best Dad stamp is one I picked up at HL for $3 on sale. I stamped the truck and the guy driving the truck in Basic Black (SU) onto white cardstock (Wally World CS- I'm almost out of my SU White), Then I colored it using regular colored pencils. To give it an extra punch I used my stardust glitter gel pen from Rubber Inspirations to color the "chrome" parts of the car. (It's actually shiny in person.) Then I stamped the Best Dad stamp and colored the heart.

There you have it, a simple, quick, easy, Look Ma! No Layers! card. *grin* This card looks really good in person. My friend saw it and didn't realize it was one of my stamped creations.

Give it a try sometime, you might like it!

And the winner is.....

Thank you to those few who entered last weeks contest. I assigned several numbers to each entrant and then had a friend pick a number. The person who had that corresponding number and there for is our winner is.......


Kathy!!


Congratulations Kathy! Email me with your snail mail addy ( jandscrown at yahoo dot com) and I will mail you out your tin!


Thank you again to those who entered!