Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Found my new home!

We were up in Tehachapi on Friday getting the inspection done on our new house (which went well, no major issues, yey!) and after it was all done we went into the town centre to wander around. I had seen online that there was a local scrapbooking and stamping store there, so of course I had to check it out!! The store is mostly scrapbook focused, but does carry stamping stuff including a few Hero Arts stamps and Ranger products like my distress inks and alcohol inks etc. But best of all, at the back of the store is their Centre d'Art, a room FULL of supplies available for use for an hourly fee. You can go there with a friend, and spend an afternoon using any of their tools, books etc and they also have classes etc of course. But best of all, you can rent stamps for just $1 a day- and they have thousands!!! The lady who runs the store, Kathy, was so nice and so passionate about her store and crafting. She is off to CHA this weekend and we had so much fun chatting about that and how much fun she would have! I can't wait to hear all about it when she gets back, and to see the new products when she gets them in :)

While there I of course had to pick up a few things!! I hadn't tried any spray mists yet, and had seen that the Create blog's challenge this week was to use spray mists- so when I saw the shelf full of glimmer mists I had to get one! Also, with it coming up to Valentine's Day I had to add a heart to my stamp collection, so the Hero Arts Heart Lace came home with me too!!

I had been itching to get playing with my new finds and finally got time last night. Here's what I came up with...

It's quite different to the cards I usually make, but I quite like it! I sprayed the glimmer mist onto white cardstock and then blotted it with a paper towel to give a glimmery marble effect.

I then embossed the Heart Lace in gold and used a Fiskars border punch to punch the top and bottom. I then gold embossed La Lettre onto the card, wiping the ink off in places each time I stamped so that it looks 'patchy'. I adhered the panel to the card at an angle (using my new Glue Glider Pro that I received from De over at EIC, thanks De!!) and then tied the brown ribbon, using a little Glossy accents to stick the bow in place.

I really can't wait to move up to Tehachapi now, and get to spend more time at Picture Perfect and Stamps of Approval! I know I will make some great new crafty friends there and have lots of fun :) Just keep your fingers crossed for us that escrow continues to go smoothly so we can be in our house by March!!


Friday, January 21, 2011

Love, love, love!!!

Just had to share my excitement with others I know are probably jumping up and down just like me!! I let out a little eeeeekkkk and scared the life out of my cat Silvester who was snoozing next to me, and received a rather worried look from hubby who was minding his own business watching TV!! Soooo, what am I so excited about?

Look at this....

I think Ranger and Core'dinations were thinking specifically of me when they came up with this collaboration lol!! Ok, maybe not- but there seriously could not have been a better new product for me- just take a look back over many of my recent cards like these Christmas cards or these distressed cards. It's quite obvious if you spend any amount of time on my blog that I have a little Distress Ink addiction- I have all 36 of them (got them off ebay when I first started stamping), and use them for every single card I make. Then when I bought my Texture Boutique starter kit, it came with a sample pack of Core'dinations cardstock and once I got sanding and distressing that card I was hooked on that too. Now I can get that yummy sandable card in the distress ink colours.... I am in heaven!!!

Oh, and just to amp up the excitement even more- they are giving away 40 sets of this wonderful new product (I sound like I work for them don't I, hehe). Just head over to the Ranger blog and get your name down for the contest. They are bringing out one in the Adirondack pallet too, so even more srumminess to play with. I just can't wait til these are available to buy and I can get my hands on them.

Oh, also my kittie Silvester was a little jealous when he saw that I had posted a pic of the other 2 the other day, so he insisted I snap a pic of him to put on here while I was in the middle of taking card pics ;-)

Here's my beautiful boy- he just loves the camera! I wish you could feel how soft his fur is too, I could just snuggle and pet him all day.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

The challenge motivation worked :)

Remember how I was saying yesterday how I had been really struggling with getting motivation to sit down and get out my stamping supplies and get creating again with all the other distractions I have going on in life right now......

Well my plan to peruse my favourite challenge sites worked, and after a quick (well ok about 2 hour long lol) read on my fave blogs I ran off to my craft room and happily pulled out my new Hero Arts stamps and got stamping!!

My first card was inspired by the current Hero Arts challenge to create a card inspired by the 2011 Catalogue and to use the masking technique in a project. I was also inspired to use the butterfly stamp by the current Create challenge to use butterflies, and to use the silver embossing by the current Etsy Inspired challenge featuring the Etsy store Modern Bird where you can find some really lovely handcrafted silver jewelry.


The card was inspired by one of the cards on page 17 of the HA catalogue, using the Dictionary Greeting friend stamp and the large canvas stripes design block. I stamped the friend definition onto the card using Aged Mahogany Distress ink, and then masked it before inking the whole card front with Victorian Velvet and then stamping over it with the design block in Aged Mahogany. I made sure the ink was fully dry before embossing the butterfly, from a Martha Stewert set, using silver detail embossing powder. The card was actually a pinkish coloured card which I flipped inside out so there is the nice surprise of the colour pop inside.




My second card was also inspired by the Hero Arts Challenge. I loved the Large Blossom cling stamp the minute I saw it, and the card pictured on page 39 of the catalogue just sealed the deal!

I created another one layer card here (for some reason I thought that was part of the HA challenge lol, maybe that was last month and I missed it!!). First I embossed the Large Blossom onto the card with white poweder and then masked it before inking the entire card front with Scattered Straw. I then stamped the Large Canvas Stripe design block  using Wild Honey, off-centering it a little to put it at an angle on the card. I then coloured the flowers using peeled paint, scattered straw, wild honey and a little aged mahogany, applying the ink with Fantastix. The sentiment was stamped with black Stazon, and then finally I used my Crop-A-Dile to attach the brads at the corners of the Canvas Stripe block to make it look like a separate piece attached to the card.

Ok, I'm off to catch up on all my fave blogs and get commenting on the beautiful creations in the galleries :) Hope you have had a great day....!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Where'd my mojo go?!

 It's January 19th already, can you believe it?! I haven't posted since before Christmas, wow time is going fast! Sorry for going MIA again, but with no excuse of a trip home this time lol! Honestly, my head has just not been in the right place for stamping and card making. I was really excited when I got my Hero Arts Catalogue for Christmas and ordered some a few weeks ago but when they arrived in the mail they have just been sitting on my desk. I love them, but just can't get into the mood to start playing. I have plenty of ideas, and have loved seeing all the beautiful creations on the Hero Arts blog and Flickr pool- but just can't get myself into the craft room to make beautiful creations of my own!

I think it's because of everything we have going on in our life right now. When I went on my trip back to England, I got out of my routine of reading my favourite blogs and playing in the challenges and since I got back we had Christmas and have been dealing with still trying to buy our first home. The first house we were getting fell through a couple of weeks ago. It was so disappointing and stressful to deal with and to make the final decision to walk away and stop fighting for the house we had set our hearts on was really hard. I won't bore you with all the details, but basically it was just one thing after another coming up with that house and in the end we just had to accept that it wasn't the house for us. Honestly though, the minute we made that decision to walk away and move on it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and now I'm really glad we did it. We were lucky to find another house we love right away, and put an offer in on it on Tuesday last week and by Thursday we were already in escrow!!! We have our home inspection on Friday morning so you have to wish us luck :-) Of course, now the stress and disappointment has been replaced by anticipation and excitement- we've been looking at furniture and appliances we'll need, and I've picked up quite a little addiction to Marshalls, Ross and TJ Maxx, looking for cute home decor items for my new home!! Its all so much fun, but again eating into my brain space and time I need for my card making!!

I was thinking earlier today that maybe the motivation I need to get going again is to stop by one of my favourite challenge blogs and try to play along. So I'll be heading over to the Etsy Inspired Blog and to the Hero Arts Blog to see what they have going on and hopefully get into that craft room.

Do you ever lose your crafting mojo? How do you get it back?

I do have a few cards to share for you though that I did a few weeks ago. The pics aren't great as I had already put them in cello bags before I remembered to photograph them (see I'm all out of sorts lol). I am a big supporter of a local charity called Forgotten Angels who are a cat rescue and focus on adopting out homeless kitties, but also on running a trap-neuter/spay- release program in the community to try to reduce the feral cat population on the streets. I used to work at the local PetSmart and became friendly with Cathy, the lovely lady who runs the rescue. We actually got one of our babies, Odie from them a couple of years ago. Here he is on the right with one of our other boys Taz.



I got talking to Cathy when we were down at PetSmart during one of their adoption afternoons a few Saturdays ago. They have a table at the front of the store where they sell cat and dog goodies like car magnets, and mugs etc and she was saying how she needed to find some new products to sell as people wanted new things. I suggested I could make some cards in a cat or dog theme and if they sold I would be happy to make some for her every week to sell on the stall so she has something new and different. I love the work that they do, so it's the least I can do to donate these cards and hopefully help get them some money for food for the kitties etc. So, here are the cards I've made so far- I'll  be taking them down on Saturday so I'll let you know if any of them sell!!

I found one of the kittie sets, used in the first card in a craft store when I was home in England, and then got another cat set and a dog set by Inkadinkado, but I've got to be honest and say I'm not loving any of the sets- they're really not inspiring me that much!

Do you have any recommendations for cat and dog stamps I could get to make some cuter cards. I really want to help Forgotten Angels make some money, so I want to make the best cards I can!!


Oh, and as this is my first time posting this year- Happy New Year!!!