They couldn't have figured this out sooner?

Russ is coming home from Guam. Seems they think he can do everything he needs to do from the office in Novato so they decided it's too costly to keep him in Guam. GO FIGURE. Now why they couldn't have figured that out TWO WEEKS AGO, so he could have just brought everything home with him on the 16th????? UGH!

Taz will NOT be amused.... he he he.....

Well, VSN was a bust.

Between dealing with getting Russ back off to his second "tour of Construction-Quality-Man duty" in Guam, my allergies from HELL and then, the icing on the cupcake, tweaking something in my lower back, I only got 3 challenges done in the 45 minute timeframes and I did two others afterwards. This was my favorite card I did. When they said "tie-dye" and combined with the vacation theme, I immediately thought of the line from Grateful Dead's "Truckin'": "What a long, strange trip it's been". This was Friday night when we were still having server issues over on SCS, so that was my inspiration for the first line. And, since this VSN was a stamping vacation, I thought of a fellow SCSer, Julee, who actually got on a plane and flew to another SCSer's house for a VSN party, so I had to use Stampabella as the image! So, Julee, this one's for you! LOL!


The technique challenge was tie-dye wax resist which is done by folding and crumpling waxed paper and then ironing it against white glossy cardstock and sponging the inks on over it and then wiping the ink away off the waxed areas, which leaves the pattern. Cool, huh? I've done wax resist before, but it never occurred to me to use my tie-dye skill to make patterns.... D'oh! The flowers are those cute little Primas that came in the "underwear" packages with a CTMH Sunny Yellow Bigger Brad in the middle, topped with a glue dot and a small CTMH Hollyhock swirl clip and then with glitter sprinkled in the middle. The words are printed on adhesive vellum and stuck on the card. I got the adhesive vellum at Michael's... 5 sheets for about $5, but I had a coupon! If you peel the paper before you cut out what you printed on it (leaving the backing paper uncut), you can keep running the same sheet thru the printer, you just have to be careful where you are printing!

The other challenge I really liked (and I'm planning on doing more of these!) was the luggage tag challenge. I was not really THRILLED with my tag, but like I said, I'm going to do more of them. I got the badge holders at WalMart in the office supply area (just a foot or so away from the jumbo paperclips!) in a package of 10 for less than $1. At that price, I think I will do these the next time I have a shoebox swap to go to. It's always fun to do something other than a card when given the chance! Here is my luggage tag:

Since anyone who knows me knows that my favorite color is PURPLE, the choice of fibers should not be a surprise! I also like dragonflies, hence the charm, which I also got at WalMart... it came in a package with a little flower and a butterfly charm with it and the 3 on the card were 96¢. I had actually forgotten that I had wound a bunch of fibers onto cross stitch thread cards and put them in one of those plastic boxes for cross stitch thread! I came across the box in a drawer when I was cleaning up the stamp room last week! OOPS! I found the paisley paper (by NRN Designs) when I was cleaning too. I have WAY too much paper.... I need to start using it on EVERYTHING I make! The letters are CTMH from the Boutique Alphabet, stamped in Perfect Plum Craft Ink and then embossed in Hologram Highlights. I also used two rhinestone brads, but one is behind the dragonfly charm!

Things are settling back to normal around here. Sunday I had to drag Russ' patio chair back into the garage since we were forecasted to have rain and possible thunderstorms Monday. Glad I did, it rained HARD for a while. I also got out the spreader and put fertilizer on the lawn. Hopefully later this week the weather will get nice again and I can finish planting in the back yard!

My stamp room is ALMOST clean.....

And I'm ALMOST ready for VSN! It starts at 4PM my time. I know I will miss the first couple challenges.... I have to go run some errands with Russ.... banking, picking up clothes at JCPenney's, etc. Don't even ask me why he can't do it by himself, but that isn't an option. SIGH. At least he got the taxes done. We owe the state $75 and are getting $200 back from the feds, so I guess our withholdings are pretty darned close! Russ is almost ready to head back to Guam tomorrow. We have to pick up his catalog order of clothes at Penney's and then I will need to do a couple loads of laundry for him tonight.




As you can see, Taz is getting ready for VSN by napping....

Hopefully I'll do some stuff during VSN that is worthy of uploading here! If you are so inclined (and aren't already playing), here is a link to the VSN Forum on SCS so you can see what I'm talking about!

Everyone have a great weekend!

Probably not much stamping will happen around here....

......until the end of the week! Russ is home from Guam. He got home Friday night. Saturday morning we got up bright and early and went up to Reno with our friends Justin & Leslie and gambled all day. We started at the Atlantis. After a buffet lunch and a little more gambling, we decided to call it a day. We made our way back across town to find the highway COMPLETELY STOPPED and all the entrances closed! So, we decided if we were going to have to be sitting around, we may as well go back to a casino and play some more! So we went over to the Silver Legacy where we ALL did QUITE well!

Yesterday we stayed around the house most of the day and today I am tackling laundry, dishes and grocery shopping. I will spend my time in the stamp room this week CLEANING in preparation for VSN (Virtual Stamp Night) on Splitcoaststampers which starts Friday evening. Saturday, Russ flies back to Guam, leaving here around 9AM again, so I will be able to participate in VSN most of Saturday too.

I will share the INCREDIBLY cute Prima flowers I got from cutabovescrappin.com - The flowers are cute on their own, but the packaging is a HOOT! They are called "Isabelle's Secret" and I got the Pink ones. They also come in black, I think....
The second photo shows the flowers better..... I love the patterns printed on them!



Aren't they FUN? I almost hate to cut open the cute packages! Hopefully I will find something to use these on during VSN!

That's all for now.... Gotta get back to the dishes!

I did a little stamping today....

It was hard to come indoors with the gorgeous weather we've had this weekend, but I decided to do the Sunday Stampers Challenge on Splitcoast. They list a featured artist and you look thru their gallery of stamped art and recreate one of their cards changing at least 2 things. In the stamp world, this is known as "CASE" or "Copy And Share Everything".

Here is a link to the card I copied

Here is the card I did. I changed the colors, the stamps, the embellishments on the bottom half and used layered tags instead of squares for the trio of images. Pretty much all I copied was Holly's layout and I, too, used stitched ribbon on top of the tags:



It's hard to tell from the picture, but the pink and white tags have a "drop shadow" green tag behind them. They are raised up on "pop dots" to give the card some added dimension. After I scanned the card, I added glitter to the edge of the green tags too. I have to do that after I scan..... I am not patient enough to wait for the glitter to dry and end up with globs of glittery goop on my scanner otherwise.....

The printed paper behind the tags is by Basic Grey... it is from the new "Perhaps" collection and I just had to go buy the new Basic Grey papers after seeing what two of the Splitcoast bloggers have been doing with it.... DROOL..... PRETTY PAPER....

For those who read this for an update on what's actually going on around my house (Hi Russ!), I got all the patio furniture out and uncovered and cleaned off and moved around out back today. I also cleaned the BBQ (eeeeeeeeewww!!!!!) and got the srpinklers up and running for the season (only had to dig one up out of the lawn this year!).

This entry will be all about stamping!

Yes, I actually DID SOME! I belong to a group on Splitcoast Stampers called the "Challenge Chasers RAK Group", or "CCRAK" for short. One of the things going on with the group is an image chain. Dawn started it by sending out cards to two members of the group which included two stamped images inside. Just the image on cardstock. No coloring, no embellishments. The chain challenge is to take those 2 images and make 2 cards and send them to 2 people in the group and include 2 new images in each card. So, I got 2 images in my RAK card this week from Bonnie (radsue). Now, I had a bit of trouble with these.... first, they are SO not my current style (I actually used to own the bunny stamp or one really similar to it at one time); second, I'm not much into detail coloring - I don't have the patience for it and third, they are fairly large images and really dominate the card which I found hard to work with for some reason. So this is what I ended up making:



It's hard to tell, but the bunny card has little flowers stamped in the "open" diamonds of the Print Pattern background. Colors are Barely Banana, Blush Blossom and Pretty In Pink plus markers in Orange, Caramel, Pink, Regal Rose and Green Galore. The off white on the dress is a CTMH Marker in Colonial White, I think. I punched the corners off the pink mat and ran Stickles along the edge. I also pierced those same corners on the image layer. The Prima Flowers have Stardust glitter pen accents which you also can't see in the scan.

The Bear card was a LOT more coloring and since he was SOOOOO big, I went to a 5x5 card size. The brown card is Kraft Confetti and the Elegant Eggplant mat was run thru the cuttlebug and embossed using the Textile embossing folder. Antique Copper Hodge Podge Hardware rounds it out. The border on the Kraft card was fun... I used one of the stamps from the Abundance Borders set by CTMH and mitered the corners by masking with post-its to avoid any overlap or odd change of design. I was quite pleased with how it turned out!

So, these two cards will be off in the mail tomorrow to two of the CCRAKers. The images inside are WAY different styles..... One recipient is getting a Bella and the HUGE fish by Paula Best to play with. The other recipient I know to consume alcohol so her images are a cocktail line image by Stamps Happen and a really fun Wine image by Stamps In Motion that I've had for a LONG time. I can't wait to see what they do with them!

In addition to those two cards, I also sent out another 12 today from my stock of cards that I've been hoarding.