Gratitude

Do you Facebook? I don't. Well not really - I farm, but that's a whole different problem. But because I have to go through Facebook to farm, I read other people's wall comments. One friend has me deciding to at least post daily on Facebook. Her suggestion, and she's already begun, is to post one thing you're thankful for a day. And she said not the obvious stuff like family. I like it. It's a good idea. Today I'm grateful that I got this card finished before it got too dark outside for photos. And that's a really big thing for me to be thankful for, believe me!

This card hits four, count'em, four challenges at once. It's a sketch, JUGS6, a Color Throwdown #68, a theme of "Thankful" from The Pink Elephant and then then adds the leaf requirement from Pile It On. It looks better than it sounds, honest.

You can already see that the colors and leaves work together and adding Thankful - logical too.

Here's the card:

I did some dry embossing today, always a good thing because it doesn't demand perfection. The templates are from Lasting Impressions and the cardstock is from a DCWV Brights stack with a white core. I try to use white core for dry embossing in case I want to distress. I made a determined effort not to use buttons on this card - been over doing those a bit! - and thought I'd gotten away without ribbon too. Not quite - the embellishment was on the clearance rack at Michaels. 

Gratitude on Facebook. I'm gonna try it. Try it here too - I'm really thankful if you read this!

Gone to the Dogs

As a family, we've always loved dogs. A definite preference for bigger rather than smaller, but dogs in general. Until last fall, we had been dogless since the spring of 2006. My husband took pity on me when the youngest child went to college and got me Emma, a German Shepherd. She's now 15 months old and until recently was the center of the universe. Just ask her. Now, suddenly and happily, we're a family of dogs! Nigel the wonder Corgi joined a little over a month ago and Colby, the Australian Cattle dog puppy just last week. This card is for them from Emma. She helped. And if you haven't had a German shepherd help you carry stuff out a screen door while you're on crutches, believe me, you haven't had help!

I used the Color Throwdown Challenge #67 and Mojo Monday sketch #111 for the design. Here's Emma's card:

Best part? I WON these stamps! Earlier I posted a card with stamps I won from Papercraft's blog . This set was included. And at that time, we didn't have a dog with a patch or a mask in the family. The stamps are from a set called Cosmo Pups from Gel a tins. And they come in a nifty tin too! BUT WAIT! There's more! Stamps that is. (And I'll use them another time). The papers used are from the Wild Saffron die cut mat pad from K&Company. Those pads are a nice way to get variations in papers if you're a cardmaker and not a scrapper.I made the collar embellishment and used some open holed brads that look like eyelets.

Hope you've had time to enjoy your family dogs lately! 

Believe - in Halloween and Christmas!

With everything busy around here, I'm taking another minute out to post a card for two challenges. This one is supposed to fill the requirements for Card Positioning System sketch 139 and for the Color Throwdown #66.

Check these sites out if you haven't already. Great inspiration from the design teams and participants!

This card made use of cardstock I had in the stash and my new Papertrey Ink set, Holiday Button Bits. The Button Bits series is just too cool for school - fun to use and gives you built in embellishments!

Have a safe and happy Halloween and enjoy the extra hour of sleep tonight. I'll miss daylight savings terribly. I suspect all procrastinators do!

Happy Birthday!

Here's a cheater of a birthday card. It fits the challenges for Card Positioning System challenge 138 and Color Throwdown challenge #65. It's also submitted to the Paper Craft Planet blog for Susanna's birthday. The real cheat? I made it for my mom's birthday and it's in the mail on the way to her.

Here's the card I finally came up with to meet all the qualifications.

I used Papertrey Ink's Everyday Button bits and a K&Company designer mat pad for the papers. The buttons and ribbons were from the stash. The original design of the stamp calls for it to be a topiary - it's really pretty and elegant that way too. I just made it a flower stem and added the wings from the bird in the button set to make the flower leaves. Love that about Papertrey designs, most of their stamp sets work in several ways.

Hope you have a great weekend! We finally have the family room painted and now we're in the process of putting it all back together and shampooing the carpets as well. The heat is on since we leave on a short vacation Monday and I hate the idea of coming home to a mess!

It's the JUGs inaugural sketch!

Two bloggers extremely high on my personal inspiration list have begun a sketch challenge. Really, if you don't know these two, please check them out: Kristin Bueter and Stampin' Pam. Their artwork will impress you every time, they have post frequently and they're incredibly nice. So how can we NOT join their challenge? I promise you'll be glad you did! Here's the first sketch ever for the JUGs challenge

Decisions don't come easily to me so if I can limit my options when designing it's usually a good thing. This time I created the card for the JUGs challenge using the Color Throwdown

Here's my card:

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I made an editorial change by using a circle instead of an oval. I'm one of the very few remaining souls on earth without an elaborate die cut system of any sort and just couldn't get my oval cutter to cooperate. The papers are from Die Cut With A View's Indian Summer line. The stamps are Hampton Art. The little brads are from the dollar section at Target last year and the ribbons are from that mess of a basket I have. I think the little squirrel honestly looks like he's asleep or meditating!

A Basket Case for Color Throwdown #61

The colors for this week's throwdown definitely remind me of fall, especially fall in South Florida. While we don't do traditional fall, the light changes and colors mute a little. Here's the challenge offered by The Color Throwdown:

 

For some reason, the ink, stamps and I never quite got on the same page. So tonight's card is paper pieced. The papers are Basicgrey and Fancypants and the pieces are just handcut.

 

I cut the brown strips about 3/4" wide, wove them on top of the cardstock basket shape and then just used a glue stick to hold it all down. The flowers are just cut circles with inked edges. Truly a quick and easy card!