Two for one day...

I just posted some news about the great weekend I had, including the three cards I made, but I was also so excited about some tutorials. On the Hero Arts flickr group, I spied a card by swanlady21 that was so beautiful and looked quite complicated. I need to email her and see if she has a template or tutorial. She has posted panels. Then just recently hetty4you posted a similar card and I asked her if there was a template. She's created several tutorials for different sizes of paper and they seem easy to follow. Here is the 5 1/2" X 12" tutorial that also links to Split Coast Stampers for more samples by other stampers. There's also a 5 1/2" X 11" tutorial. It's something a bit different to try and I'm all for trying out new techniques. Hope you follow my links to the cards and The Cratifblog.

This past weekend

Almost June, can you believe it? Over the Memorial Day weekend, I enjoyed some crafting and a couple of outings.

A life-long friend of my beautiful and talented daughter-in-law, Rosalie, graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in Interior Design. We had a wonderful time at the party on Saturday. The kids got to decorate and take home flip-flops. Wonderful food and conversation. A beautiful day out - temperature was perfect. So happy to see Hope complete her education and achieve her dream.

On Sunday, I had some time to craft and made three cards with colors I don't think I've ever used together. I'm not a fan of yellow, certainly not a mustard to almost goldenrod color. Not sure I'll ever buy this color again, not even sure where it came from, but I do like the dramatic cards the yellow combined with other colors produced. I was only going to create a card based on Avital Gerner's layout at Creativity Prompt and was working with tans and creams, but wanted a good vivid color too - grabbed this yellow card that I had been trying to work through my printer for a backing for one of my ATC cards that didn't work out. Stamped the cards with different sets of Hero Arts stamps and added a Tim Holtz stamp on the card featuring the man with the umbrella and saying. Made this card:
, then went on to make a card with a stamped yellow stripe on black. Used two border punches by Martha Stewart here:
and then spied one left-over piece of yellow and wanted to use the man with the umbrella stamp. I glued the rest of the papers I worked with on the first "rayed" card and glued them all to the front of the notecard. I used the Cuttlebug and Nestibilities to cut a black border to frame the stamped image:


I'm so pleased with these and amazed that I used that yellow paper at all.

And last, but not least, we celebrated a late Mother's Day - went out to eat at "The Cheesecake Factory" and thoroughly enjoyed the experience... I was amazed at the menu - a book of delights and we did NOT have desert - for a lunch, I still have left-overs... I think I might go back just for desert.

New stamp set - Artistic Borders

I have been eyeing the wonderful creations on the Hero Arts flickr group using the Hero Arts Artistic Borders large flower - such eye-catching creations. I am not going to list the selections here because I don't want to miss anyone's beautiful submissions, I'll just tell you how to check on flickr for the wonderful views. The search will show you all cards/projects that were tagged with the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number for this stamp set. The projects will include any of the large number of stamps in this set. Once logged into flickr, click on the arrow beside the "Search" button on the upper right side of your screen, a list will display, then click "Everyone's Uploads." You will now have a new "Search" window. Key CL322 into the "Search" window, click "Search" and you will see everyone's projects that posted CL322 as a tag. I just finished doing this and was again amazed at how many different and totally awesome projects were made with stamps from this set.

Here are my two entries on Sunday - yes a last minute entry.

and side view


I'll be using these stamps for quite some time... the borders and flowers are wonderful... and I loved twisting the stem in this set to follow the curve of the background stamped image. Have a great week.

52 Questions - a year of mini art journaling

I found an intriguing ATC on llaurenb's photostream and saw something about 62 Q... what was that? llaurenb is so sweet and took the time to explain what 52 Questions was all about and that she is recording her mini art journaling on ATCs. I'd not seen anything displayed on the back of ATCs other than information about the card itself. The back was much more personal... You can see I was falling into the "Well, I'll just see what it's about...." trap She sent me two links, one to Ember's and the other to a flickr group at 52 Q - a year of mini art journaling. I liked what I saw...

Some I'm having trouble deciding what I want to do.... How do you create an ATC on the movie Schindler's list.... well, I haven't done this one yet.

I definitly like the book ATC and the Hopes for 2009 ATC I did for this challenge. I don't like handwriting on these so I type them out - all except one... Here are two of my favorites that I've done... Enjoy the weekend.



and

The Renee Award
Hello! Today I'd like to share an award that was generously given to me by my friend Anne Gaal called the Renee Award. It is such an honor to receive blog awards and I am so very grateful!
The Renee Award




The Renee Award was created by Bella and Ces in honor of their friend Renee.
In Bella's own words: "this is a brand new award and I have the pleasure and honor of spreading the seed, watching it grow. I hope it finds it's way to those who are like Renee: the acorn, a small package becoming a tall and sturdy oak, giving more acorns, becoming tall and sturdy oaks, giving acorns..."
There are no "rules" for claiming this award, but I would suggest the following:
Thank the person who nominated you for the Renee Award.
Click on the picture above to see it larger, then download it and post it on your blog.
Mention the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.
Nominate others to receive the award.
Comment on their blogs to let them know you nominated them.
Visit Bella, Ces, and Renee and let them know you received the award and passed it on. Consider linking your blog post to them, too.
Now I am supposed to share in the fun by nominating others. This is hard for me, because I know, like many of us, we are always trying to obtain that extra minute to accomplish something, from repairing that vacuum with the army man stuck just beyond your fingertips to building a coat rack. I have met so many wonderful artists, bloggers, and friends and I love being part of this blogging community. But, I also understand the value of awards in exposing us to a few blogs that might be new to us.
Out of oh so many wonderful blogs and friends, I think I will nominate a few of the newest ones I know about... doesn't mean it's brand new... just new to me. I'd like to nominate the following bloggers, (in no particular order):



Susanne Andersen

Pia Overgaard

Hannah Nicole F



I hope you'll take a moment or two to stop by these blogs (including Anne!) and leave a nice comment or two. It takes just a moment, but it is sooooo nice to receive those comments! :-)