Surrounded by boxes!

Hi all!

I realized I haven't posted in 10 days, and unfortunately don't have any cards to share today either, but I just wanted to pop in and let you all know I am still alive- just very busy!! We're finally closing on our house, YEY, and should get the keys tomorrow, double YEY!!! So, as the title suggests, I am knee deep in boxes and packing paper getting us all packed up and ready to move! We're pretty much all packed apart from the kitchen necessities and food, our clothes... oh and my craft room lol! Even though I haven't had a chance to create in the past week, I just can't bring myself to pack away all my lovely stamps and inks in case I do get time to play! This of course is ridiculous as if things do go to plan and we do get the keys tomorrow we'll be actually moving, and cleaning, and unpacking etc etc for the next week and will have even less time to play.... I guess once I've finished typing this I should just go and get it done- but it is only 5.30pm and hubby doesn't get home from work til 11.30pm, and I've pretty much packed everything I can for now..... maybe I can have a little play before packing :)

I had to laugh when I saw the weather forecast for this weekend. Winter has been pretty mild here and we've seen barely any snow, even up in Tehachapi where we're moving to, which is at 4000ft. So, of course this weekend, when we should be starting to move and have a carpet cleaning company scheduled for the new house, they are forecasting snow- and lots of it! Down to the desert floor, which means snow at our current house, and a whole lot of snow at our new house!!! This would be very exciting if we were all moved in, snuggled up on our new sofas with our new pellet stove keeping us warm. However, we will be driving up and down the mountain with loads of boxes- that is if they don't close the roads!! Ah, nature how you like to play with our plans lol!

Now, see if it does snow and we can't start moving I will definately want to be in my craft room having some stamping time..... maybe I'll just pack it up next week :)

Lynsey x

My new stamps arrived just in time....

To join in at this week's Play Date Cafe challenge to take colour inspiration from this collage

Being relatively new to this challenge blog, when I first saw the inspiration picture I panicked a little- arrgghh, Vintage!!! LOL! But then, Michelle over at the blog was kind enough to come to my aid and clarify that it is a colour challenge, and so the only requirements for the challenge there that I used the colours, phew!

Then I thought, what is a challenge if not supposed to be challenging- that's the whole reason I decided to take part in thm! So, I added my own little caveat to the challenge that my card did need to be vintage themed. I'm not sure if what I came up with would technically be called vintage, but to me it is compared to my usual style...

I took a piece of pink textured cardstock and stamped it with HA Small Stitched Flowers in Victoian Velvet Distress Ink and then distressed the edges before adhering it to a cream coloured card inked with Antique Linen. I then took a beige piece of Core'dinations cardstock and stamped the HA Envelope Pattern in Vintage Photo before sanding and distressing the surface and edges. I stamped the leaf image from HA Delicate Leaf Clusters using Vintage Photo and then sanded again to soften the image. The sentiment, from HA Find Joy set was stamped using Walnut Stain. I adhered the distressed panel to the pink panel and then added the flower which was stamped with HA La Lettre in Victorian Velvet, and sprayed with Tattered Angels mist in Latte. The button was adhered with a little glossy accents.

Just had to share a quick pic of one of my boys checking out the pretty flowers hubby suprised me with for Valentines Day, aww! I also got two cards, one from hubby and one from my fur babies- aren't I a lucky girl :-)

Ok, time to get on with making dinner.....

Lynsey x

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope you are all getting spoiled today, whether it's by a significant other, or by yourself!

I left it to the last minute as usual and found myself sitting at my desk a couple of hours ago racking my brain for ideas for hubby's card, watching the clock ticking away out of the corner of my eye- eeek! But, with 30 minutes to spare until he gets home it is finally complete and sitting on the counter in its envelope waiting for his arrival, phew!

I didn't want to make anything too girly, as I wanted it to be special for him. I was struggling with coming up with something personal with the stamps I have, and then remembered he had loved all of the alcohol ink projects I had made when I first started card making. So, I decided to focus on alcohol inks on acetate as the main focal point of the card. I cut three hearts out of acetate using my Cricut and then, inspired by the colours of the current Embellish Blog challenge I used alcohol inks and my blending tool with copper mixitive to colour each heart.

The layout of the card was inspired by this gorgeous card by Eva Dobilas, the current muse over at the CASE Study challenge blog.

I just received my new Envelope Pattern HA stamp in the mail today, so of course I had to break it out to stamp the background panel in Peeled Paint Distress Ink. To add some more detail I punched each side of the panel with my Fiskars border punch. I finished the card with a sentiment from the HA Live Life Set.

I attached the inked hearts to the card with embroidery thread, stitched through the card.

Oh, I think that's hubby's car I hear pulling up, better go meet him at the door with his Valentine's kiss, mwah!

Lynsey x

Digital part 2...

Ok, I may have found a new addiction here lol! It's fun to be able to sit on the couch watching Grey's Anatomy and design cards using the digital stamps. This may be a little premature, but I'm thinking that I need to get some editing software.... going to have to look into what is best. Any suggestions? I want to be able to edit little parts of stamps, like the colours for example.

In this card I wanted the word 'friends' to be black while the rest of the definition background was grey. In Word there is no way that I know of to change just part of an image, but I'm assuming in an editing software program I could do that right? As you can see, the only thing I could think of to do to acheive what I wanted was to go over the word with a black pen, and it wasn't very successful lol! Ah well, it's all about learning right?!

 I imported and sized the HA Friends Definition and Sunshine Daisy digital stamps (both free at Two Peas!), making the definition grey so the flowers stood out as the focal image. I then printed the design onto kraft and coloured around the flowers with prisma pencils. I went over the word 'friends' with a black pen and inked the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink.

I cut a piece of watercolour paper as a mat, distressed the edges and ran antique linen around the edges. To finish the card, I tied the ribbon around the panels before adhering them to the card, and then added the three pearls at the top.

Ok, think I'm done for the night now :)

Lynsey x

Dabbling in Digital.....

I was relaxing, watching tv this evening and playing around on my laptop when I remembered I had downloaded some Hero Arts Digital kits from Two Peas a few weeks ago and hadn't figured out how to use them yet! I am a big fan of Lucy Abram's simple, yet beautiful digital stamped cards and really wanted to have a go at it myself! So, seeing as I don't have any photoshop or anything, I managed to figure out how to get the images into a Word document, yey!!

This card really was sooo simple! Once I got the images (from Hero Arts- Lots of Love) imported and sized, it was as simple as loading some kraft into my printer and hitting print! I then just cut it to size, inked the edges with some Antique Linen distress ink, and stuck it on a card! To give it a bit more pop, I printed the large heart onto white paper and used foam dots to adhere it to the card, and faux stitched down each side of the panel.

Do you see the envelope in the background? This was me feeling all brave lol! I know its really not advanced, but I was very impressed with myself for working out how to line the envelope up and stick it down (with removeable adhesive) on a piece of paper before running it through the printer! This is one of my favourite touches to do with my 'real life' stamps so it was fun to do it with my new digi stamps too!

I'm not overly loving the design of this card, but I just put it together really quickly to get a feel for the whole digital thing! I really enjoyed doing it, so I'm afraid I'll have to get a few more of those kits- of course at least with these there are no bags to sneak into the house and hide from hubby lol! 

Lynsey x

Play Date Cafe challenge #67

Just a quick post today as I wanted to get my entry in for the current PDC colour challenge! I loved the colours when I saw the challenge at the beginning of the week and wanted to play, but of course as usual time ran away with me and then as I was browsing today I noticed the challenge closes tonight oops! So off I ran to put together that card that had been floating around in my head all week!

The challenge was to use these colours

I loved the richness of this colour combo, and also that flower picture which is gorgeous! I immediately thought of my new HA Large Blossom stamp and how scrummy it would look in those colours. Here's what I came up with today

As you can see it's a very simple card, just some embossing and colouring with Distress Inks on textured cardstock. I used Spun Sugar, Fired Brick, Aged Mahogany and Chipped Sapphire to represent all of the colours in the challenge. I coloured the embossed image and then adhered it to a mat coloured with more Chipped Sapphire. I embossed the sentiment from the HA Live Life set onto the card in white for the final touch.

I also wanted to say a big thank you to my blogging friend Virginia! She has always been so supportive of me since I arrived in the wonderful world of cardmaking and blogging, and was so sweet to give me my first blog award this weekend!

As part of this award, I have to share a photo that I love- here's one of my recent faves!! Don't tell hubby ok ;)

That's hubster, and our oldest boy Silvester taking a little nap together after a long day, all together now- awwww!

I also have to share 3 things I love about me. I've got to be honest, and tell you that when I read that I was stumped! I don't know if it's the modest English girl in me, but I couldn't think of one thing- and that really got me thinking, I need to work on loving me this year! Isn't that very SoCal of me lol! Anyway, this is what I struggled to come up with:

1. I'm a learner- everything that comes up in life, I handle it by learning everything I can about it. Being informed about something makes me feel more in control, and I just love to have my nose in a book learning!

2. I'm optimistic (most of the time lol!) and truly believe that everything happens for a reason.

3. I'm married to my best friend! Ok, maybe that doesn't count as something I love about me.... but I'm all out of ideas!

Finally I get to pass on the award to 5 more very deserving blogs:

1. Megan- A lovely girl I met through a AF Wives forum I was part of a couple of years ago. She's a true inspiration to me, and shares her story of life as the wife of a wounded Veteran and young Mom of 2 beautiful kids.

2. Brenda- Another of my new crafty online friends, she is always stopping by my blog and pics at the HA Flickr group offering kind comments! She's very talented too!

3. Lin- Very talented card maker, she's always inspiring me with her challenge cards every week! I always love when a new post pops up on my blog reader from Lin! She's also very kind and supportive to me, and often one of the first to leave love for me on my blog!

4. Anne- One of my very first crafty online friends, she's a very talented photographer and artist. I'll always be grateful to Anne for introducing me to the HA Flickr group, and for being so encouraging and welcoming to me when I first embarked on my stamping and cardmaking adventure.

5. De- Very kind, generous and talented member of the fabulous Etsy Inspired design team, and her blog is soo pretty!

Ok, gotta run now and get that challenge entry linked up... but one last thing- just saw on E! News that Tia Mowbry has Endometriosis and just announced she is pregnant- double yey for this! Yey, that it may have brought a little awareness to Endo, and yey that there's hope for me yet!! Next month is Endo Awareness month and I'm thinking of running challenge here on my blog to honour it, I'll keep you posted!

Lynsey x

CR84FN- my first time!

I came across a blog challenge I hadn't seen before this week that looks really fun- CR84FN color challenge! Their challenge for this week was to create using the following colour combo...

I sat down with this inspiration last night and came up with two cards. This time of year is very busy in my family for birthdays, so first up is another birthday card- for my Grandad this time...

I used the kissing technique from the current Hero Arts challenge, inking up the Three Ferns with Broken China Distress Ink and the Dots and Flowers background stamp with Barn Door. After kissing the stamps together, I stamped the fern onto white card stock. I then cut the image into 9 'inchies' and inked the edge of each square using antique linen Distress Ink. The kraft piece was stamped with Dots and Flowers in Tea Dye, and distressed around the edges in Antique Linen.  The birthday sentiment is from the Birthday Messages Clear set, and then Grandad word is from a relatives clear stamp set I picked up when I was over in England in December.

I really like the effect the kissing technique gave with the red tints on the blue, you can't really see the pattern of the other stamp though- got to work on that still! 

The second card I made is for my precious little Goddaughter's first Valentine's Day! I was asked to be Godmother to my best friend's baby girl last year and I love that little bundle of snuggliness so much. (You can see a photo of her at her Christening here). They live in England so I don't get to see her for real life cuddles very often at all, but we chat on Skype (well the baby doesn't chat, she's only 9 months old- but I can't wait until she can tell me all about her day etc!) and I have made it a goal to send her a card and little pressie for every holiday (and also some just because- as they're the best cards aren't they!) so she knows I'm thinking of her. This is the first card I have made for her, and I realised I need to get some little girly stamps lol! So, it's a bit grown up for her, but I tried to make it a bit younger looking with the butterfly heart trail, and I know she'll love the butterfly on the card. Her Mummy will love that it's personalised to her, so hopefully it will be a hit all round :)

It's a pretty simple card! Just a piece of kraft, punched with a Fiskars punch, and distressed with Antique Linen and the Heart Winged Butterfly embossed in white and inked with Tumbled Glass and Broken China. I cut the butterfly out and put foam dots under each wing to give it dimension and glued the body to the card with glossy accents. I did have some black embroidery thread glued on as the butterflies antennae, but then had second thoughts and cut them off seeing as the card is for a 9 month old. I wanted to make sure it had no small pieces, just in case! The sentiment is from the Michael's dollar bin, and the 'Goddaughter' is from the same Relatives set as before.

So, any tips on good girly sets for making cards for a very young little girl?!

I'm loving these colour challenges, can't wait to try some more :)

Lynsey xxx

One more card!

As I was uploading my first card to the Play Date Cafe, I remembered I had a butterfly that I had made a month or two ago when just playing with embossing and inking on patterned paper- and it just happened to be purple! So, I rushed back into my craft room and put together this card, also for the PDC, and Hero Arts ' Love & Friendship' challenge!

I need to try one of those 90-minute scrambles over at the Hero Arts Flckr group- that card came together in record time, while trying to race to get it done while there was still sunlight to photograph with lol! Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it so had to take it under electric light, but I think the pic still came out ok.

Ok, now I'm off to do more 'research' online for craft room inspiration- of course my new house comes with a new craft room- one that will be totally my room and not just a corner, yey! I've got so many ideas- but after the number of clear stamp sets I ordered yesterday, I need to come up with a clear stamp storage system..... how so you store yours?

Lynsey xxx

Cars and Challenges

Hi there! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend- mine was mostly spent hopping around various blogs and stalking twitter accounts to see what was going on at CHA! I've decided that one of my stamping goals is to go to CHA one day, it just looks like so much fun. Even better would be to work on a booth there and demo- a girl can dream can't she?!

We went up to a small car show at the town we are moving to soon (hopefully!). Our realtor's daughter just started a new barber business up there and they hosted a car show as part of the grand opening. Here's a little pic of my hubbies other love (please excuse the messy masking of the license plate lol, I had to do it on Paint and don't have much skill in that area lol):

It's a 1963 Chevy Corvair. It is a little rough around the edges, you can see the paint is faded and green in places, and the interior isn't perfect- but I think it gives it character! It's so much fun when we take it to car shows as we get a lot of people come over to us and tell us stories about when they had one as teenagers back in the 60's, it seems to stir up lots of fond memories for people :)

Do you see the mountains in the background? Ooh, I love it so much up there, can't wait to get moved up to our very own home in the mountains- eek! Escrow is scheduled to close March 1st, so only 27 days to go, yey!!

Anyway, onto the challenges....

I loved the current Play Date Cafe challenge to use black and white with a touch of purple, inspired by this beautiful picture

I was inspired to use buttons on my card by the current EIC challenge inspiration store Too Cute Kawaii. This store has all kinds of cute little things all crafted with polymer clay. I particularly liked these cute buttons

I'm also entering this card into the new Hero Arts 'love & friendship' theme challenge, using their new Live Life clear stamp set for the sentiment.

This next card I made for my grandmother's birthday!

The layout of this card was inspired by the current CASE Study challenge with the main panel and flower embellishment. I was inspired by the Hero Arts featured technique for February- kissing, and so went rummaging through my stamps looking for one with lots of solid space to kiss! I pulled out my flower medley and La Letter stamps and got kissing lol! Once I kissed the stamps and stamped the flower medley I then embossed it with clear powder so I could colour over the flowers easily. I pulled out my way too neglected jar of flowers and inked it up with distress ink, stamped La Letter onto it and then found a pretty flower button to stick in the middle. I think the canvas stripe background, and twine in the button and wrapped around the flower panel just finishes the card perfectly.

I put in an order for some more new stamps last night, eek- some new lovely Hero Arts and Lawn Fawn will be arriving at my doorstep in a few days- yey!!

Have a great day xxx