The crazy cat lady and her Easter cards...

Can you believe it, after months of nothing I blog twice in 24 hours! I'd forgotten how much I loved it, and really intend to take a little time every day during the week to make a nice cuppa and sit down to write for a while. I'm loving getting back into my creative groove, and am branching out into other crafts than card making which I'm really enjoying. I will always love card making, but stamping on other mediums is just so much fun and there is so much possibility. But, we'll save that for another day as I have a much more pressing topic to attend to....

We've also been busy around the house over the past month with lots of little projects here and there. It's so much fun to be able to make changes and improvements in our home, as before we had always rented and there's only so much you can do in rental houses. I thought I would share with you one of the first ideas and projects we completed after moving in..... whether you think it's an improvement to the house, or just weird will depend on if you are a crazy cat person like me lol!

(If you're just here for the cards, please scroll to the end of the post to avoid my rambling about litter boxes ;) )

Drum roll please......

Yes, that is a kittie restroom lol!!!! Like I said, if you're not a cat lover you are probably thinking I've got a little crazy up here in our new mountain home. You may be thinking the altitude has got to me a little.... But, if you do have multiple indoor furbabies of the feline variety in your home you will be all too familiar with those unsightly litter boxes. And the smell from them. And the litter being tracked everywhere by our little darlings. So, I wanted the litter boxes in the laundry room but I did not want them out on display for all to see. While I pondered on how to pull that off, my eyes wandered to these lovely cupboards along one wall of the room.

Please excuse the mess on top, we were still in the middle of moving in and that counter had become the catch all for anything without a home yet! We are lucky to have plenty of storage in this house (although it's just the two of us, we'll revisit my assessment of storage if and when kids join the household!) so I knew we wouldn't miss having the bottom cupboards, and I hatched my kitty restroom plan. As it would involve plenty of power tools for taking out shelves and drilling holes in doors, and I'm not allowed to use said power tools, the hubby was put to work.....

 Step One: Remove the shelf that was fixed in the middle of the cupboard so kitties don't hit their heads when going to the bathroom :)

 Step Two: Remove middle door and cut out hole for cat door (whilst unknowingly showing off your growing bald patch lol!)

 Step Three: Begrudgingly pose for the camera to show off your handy work :)

 Step Four: Install cat door and rehang cupboard door.

Step Five: Set up litter boxes inside the cupboard. We've since changed to covered boxes as that's what our cats have grown up using and so were have lots of 'accidents' with the low sided open pans in the photo. 

 Step Six: The finishing touch :)

We were feeling very pleased with this new addition of the kitty restroom! The boys' reaction on the other hand seemed more along the lines of "WTF?! You want me to do what?!!!"

But with a little gentle encouragement they soon came around....

Yey, go Odie!!! Always the first to try something new :)

Silvester (the big grey one, who is more mouse than cat in temperament!) however, seems to have a deathly fear of cat doors (??!!) so we had to modify it slightly by removing the actual flapping door.

We also need to get baby locks for the doors as Taz prefers to exit the restroom by pushing open the cupboard door and racing through rather than walking through the cat door. Ahh, cats- who'd have 'em!!

It really has worked perfectly though over the month since we've had it. There's a lot less mess and smells now, and my laundry room looks nice and tidy without cat boxes on the floor on full display. We're quite proud of our litter box solution :)

Crazy cat people... us?!!!

Anyway, most of you are here for cards not litter boxes so we'll finally move along!! As I've mentioned a few times now, I have been making and donating some cards to our local cat rescue (yes, more cats!!) and they sell them to make money for the charity to feed their rescues and spay and neuter feral cats in the area. A few weeks ago, they requested some Easter themed cards to put on their stall.

I shared one yesterday, and as I've once again overloaded with pics I will share just a couple more today....

This simple cutie was made with a $ bin Easter stamp set from Michaels, and a kittie from a Personal Impressions set I picked up in England last year. I water coloured the images using distress inks, inked the edges of the cardstock with some Tea Dye, mounted on a piece of K& Company pp, and used foam squares to adhere it to the card base.

This next card uses a Penny Black stamp (Frolic), again water coloured with Distress Inks, inked on the edges with some Tumbled Glass. I rounded the corners and adhered it to a piece of kraft, rounding the corners on that also. I added some more detail with the gel pen stitching around the edge. I then stamped the card base with Hero Arts Envelope Pattern and inked the edges to give it more dimension, and finished it off with a HA sentiment from the Find Joy set.

I'm really enjoying water colouring with Distress Inks. It's so easy to get a nice look and to blend the colours- and I have the whole collection of inks so there's a huge pallet of colours available to me :) I had started to buy Copics last year but they are so pricey and I wasn't that great with the ones I had, so I'm loving that I can get a similar look with my beloved Distress Inks!

Is there anything those little wonders cannot do?!

Hi, I'm Lynsey and I'm addicted to Distress Ink (and cats, and Ikea....)

I think I may need help lol!

Love Lynsey x

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....!

Lazy Sunday

Don't you just love lazy Sundays? Hubby has been out mountain biking this morning so I have been snuggled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and my laptop having a look at all the wonderful creations people have posted over the weekend. I've also been considering signing up as a Stamping Up! consultant. I was thinking about looking into it in the New Year once we are moved into our new house (hopefully) and settled. I figured it would be a good way to maybe get to know people in a new town, and make a few pennies to support my new hobby. From what I could see there is only one lady in the town we're moving to who does Stampin Up, and by the looks of her event calendar she isn't very active with it, so I'm thinking it might be worth giving it a go. But on the other hand, if I don't know anyone in the town, how do I even get started? hmmm. This was just a thought playing around in the back of my mind, but then this morning I found out that the company is doing a deal where their starter pack is 50% off until November 30th- so now if I'm going to do it, now would really be the time to get signed up.......oh what to do, what to do!!!! What do you think?

I wish Hero Arts did a consultant program, I'd sign up for that right away!!! Or Ranger, that would be a good one too!

I also had time to take photos of my most recent projects this morning, and even managed to get a Thinking Inking challenge card up and posted at Two Peas before the challenge deadline LOL. I really loved the sticky back canvas tree Jennifer did in this weeks Holiday Thinking Inking and it really was as easy at she made it look! My double distress in the background didn't come out as well, but I think that was due to the stamp I used for the first layer, it didn't have enough stamping to really be effective. Anyway, here it is...

I stamped Hero Arts Starry Sky (S5448) onto a glossy card with Distress Embossing Ink, heating it until it was really dry,  and then used Broken China Distress ink, wiping it directly onto the paper and wiping off the excess with a cloth. This was heat dried also and then I stamped a snowflake from Inkadinkado Snowflakes set several times around the card, again using the embossing ink, and heat dried it before applying several layers of Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink. I followed Jennifer's directions on how to make the tree, tearing strips of sticky back canvas and twisting them sticky side in, and sticking them to a triangle covered in dry adhesive- it makes a lot more sense when you are watching the video LOL. I stuck the tree to the card and then used Snow Writer by DecoArts to make snow at the bottom of the card. Once the snow was on I thought the background looked too muted so I stamped a few small snowflakes around the sky using Color Box white ink, and added gems to the tree for a little sparkle. The sentiment is from an old Hero Arts set.

Look at these little Santa Hats

Aren't they just sooo adorable! I picked them up at Target on Friday, and as soon as I saw them I pictured my new little birdie stamp wearing them, he he , soooo cute!

I stamped my little bird from Hero Arts Birds and Branches and coloured him to look like a robin using distress inks mixed with a little water and applied with Tsukineko Fantastix. The cardstock pilled a little from the water but it kind of made it look like feathers... kinda lol! I cut him out and put his little hat on and then stuck him onto a second image I had stamped onto white cardstock. I inked the background with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and  made a little pile of snow for him to stand on with Snow Writer. The mat was made by running a piece of cardstock through my Texture Boutique with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, and then inked with fired brick and sanded lightly. The sentiment, from Hero Arts, was stamped using black Stazon and then it was adhered to a metallic brown card.

Another quick card using those cutesy santa hats...

For this card I just embossed a piece of white card with the Hero Arts Rain Drop Background and A La Mode sparkle embossing powder and then cut strips of patterned paper from the DCWV Christmas Combo matstack and adhered them to the card. The circles were cut from the same paper stack, using my Fiskars circle punch, and then adhered to the white embossed piece. Finally the three little santa hats were stuck on the circles, using a little Glossy Accents to make sure they stay in place! Since getting into stamping and distress inks I have really ignored my piles of patterned paper I've had sitting around for years since my attempt at Scrapbooking ages ago! The current Wee Memories challenge- to 'dust off that patterned paper' really inspired me to go through my paper and get it onto a card!! I had actually bought this matstack this year when I first planned to make my own cards, and then added it to the ignore pile LOL, so it was good to get it out and use it!

I made a bunch more cards this weekend too, but I'll save them til later in the week so I don't go on forever here again!!

Hope you're enjoying your lazy Sunday!

Lynsey x

Catching Up...

Hi all! Sorry it has been a while since I posted- I know what you were thinking, there goes another new blogger running out of steam after two weeks!! I have no excuse, other than being distracted with a few stresses in life- its still all going on now, but I'm hoping to be able to report a positive outcome on Friday...watch this space!!

With everything going on I kinda lost my crafty motivation for a bit, but I have still been hopping around on all the wonderful blogs I follow, and checking in at the TwoPeas and Hero Arts Flickr Pool galleries and getting all inspired by the creativity out there! I have done a little stamping here and there though, and thought it was about time I got them posted on here!!

First up, I wanted to say a huge thanks to Daria (DJC) over at Two Peas for the oh so cute Hero Arts Birds and Branches cling stamp set she sent me after I won the random drawing for a RAK in her Stamptoberfest challenge. I couldn't wait for it to arrive, and as soon as it came in the mail I sat myself down and had so much fun playing with it (after perusing the HA Flickr Pool for inspiration of course!!). Here's what I came up with so far...

I stamped this little guy onto two different patterned papers and then cut the wings from one and body from the other and after stamping him again on some white cardstock I adhered the body over the white cardstock image, and used foam dots to adhere the wings, giving them dimension. I coloured the crown and beak using prismacolor pencils. I created the background by stamping the flower stamp from the same set repeatedly using bundled sage and peeled paint Distress Inks. I then inked over the bottom with bundled sage, and the top with tumbled glass to give the look of a sky. The orange piece was inked in spiced marmalade and then I ran it through my Texture Boutique using the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder. The sentiment is from Hero Arts Everyday Sayings and was stamped using black Stazon.

I also made another quick birthday card which I have sent out to one of my friends back in England...

This was a really easy card. I just stamped the big birdy onto white cardstock and then stamped the balloon (from Hero Arts Birthday Messages) to look like he was holding it, cute huh! It made me smile! I adhered it to a metallic blue card, and then to add a little detail I used my new Martha Stewart Score Board to score a border around the image, and then used a white gel pen to make little dots inside the border. Finally, as I thought he needed a little dressing up, and because I am becoming a little obsessed with gems, I put purple gems over each of his white spots on his back. Simple, but cute, I thought!

Thanks again Daria!!

Phew, this is going to be a long post as I still have 3 more projects to show you, hehe!! I guess I have been a little more creative in my blogging absence than I originally though.....

Next, a couple of cards inspired by Jennifer McGuire's Thinking Inking Holiday series over at TwoPeas. I can't wait to see those videos every Monday morning, with only a couple of weeks left I will miss them when the series is over! Anyway, a couple of weeks ago the projects focused on stamping with paint. I had bought a set of Paint Dabbers after watching the original series of Thinking Inking but hadn't used them yet, so after watching the new projects I was determined to give them a go. I picked up the Hero Arts Flower Medley stamp at Michaels (along with some other goodies of course, hehe!) and thought it would be perfect to use with my paints.

I inked up the stamp with Lettuce and Pool Paint Dabbers to give the effect of grass and sky, and stamped it onto white cardstock. Then I coloured in the flowers using finger daubers and Wild Honey and Scattered Straw Distress Inks. I dry embossed the white piece using my Texture Boutique and Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder, and then stamped the sentiment from the Hero Arts Birthday Messages set using black Stazon. I tied a bow around the card with ribbon, adhering it with Glossy Accents. I adhered the pieces onto a metallic brown card and added a little dimension and shine using gems in the center of each flower, and a pearl in the middle of the bow. This one will be going to my Nan for her birthday at the end of the month, and I'm excited to be able to give it to her in person as I will be in England for her birthday for the first time in 5 years, yey!!

My next card inspired by the Thinking Inking classes used the technique Jennifer explained, using alcohol inks on sticky back canvas. I had both of these items and had not been finding much use for them, so as with the paint dabbers, I was excited to get some new ideas.

The colour combo for this card was inspired by the current EBTKS challenge. I inked a piece of sticky back canvas with various blue (can't for the life of me remember which, sorry!!) alcohol inks, adding a few drops of pearl mixative to give the fabric some shimmer. Once it was dry I white embossed Hero Arts Snowflake Tree onto the canvas, and 'stitched' around the edge with a white gel pen. I stuck it to a metallic card and stamped the sentiment (from Hero Arts Holiday Cheer Messages) using black Stazon. I couldn't resist some pearls in the center of some of the larger snowflakes on the tree, and a snowflake button stuck at the top!

Finally, I wanted to try my hand at stamping on candles again. Anne Gaal's November blog challenge is to stamp on a candle, and Hero Arts Blog challenge this month is to create a handmade gift (or gift tag), so what better time to have another go at it!!

I stamped Hero Arts Blooming Butterfly onto tissue paper with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. I then wrapped the tissue paper around the candle and heated over the image with my heat gun until the wax melted through the paper. Once the image was completely melted onto the candle, I trimmed off the excess paper and again gently heated over the edges until they melted into the candle. I added a ribbon, and pearls, all adhered with glossy accents to add a little more prettiness to an already pretty candle!! This will be going to my best friend for her birthday, yey!!

Ok, I think I'm done.....oh wait, I must report that I have been progressing slowly but surely with Weight Watchers! I weighed in today and got my first 5lb sticker, yey me!! You know what that means- time to order my first 5 Copics, wahoo!!!

Last but not least, I have to take a quick moment as tomorrow is Veteran's Day to say how proud I am of my husband, Jason, who served 11 years in the US AirForce, and also to thank all of the men and women who have served in both the American, and English military, past and present. You are all in my thoughts every day.

Lynsey x

Christmas is Coming....!

I've had a great time today playing around making Christmas cards! I'm flying out to England for 3 weeks at the end of November so need to have all cards and gifts made/ purchased by then, and as tomorrow is the last day of the Hero Arts challenge I figured today was a great day to jump in and get started!

I had lots of fun with my Hero Arts stamps, embossing powders and of course my Distress Inks! I don't think I'll ever get bored of watching the embossing powder melt, or trying out different colour combos with my inks!

Here's what I came up with, which is your favourite?

Oh, and in other news... I started Weight Watchers last week. After all the meds I've been on, and sitting around a lot more, and well okay eating too much (!), I decided as part of my taking time out for me I need to lose weight and get down to a healthy BMI. Anyway, I had my first weight in today and I lost 2.6lb, yey me!! I've decided that I will reward myself with a Copic marker for every pound I lose, that way I won't feel as guilty for buying them, hehe!! I'm going to propose this plan to hubby tonight, I already have my first colours picked out so he really can't say no!! Thinking that I will save up until I have lost 5lb each time and then buy them to save on shipping, or maybe 10.... though don't think I can wait that long!! It's good motivation for me though as I'm determined to lose at least 2.5lb this week so I can place my first order!! No Halloween candy for me then, well maybe just one piece!!

Lynsey x

Etsy Inspired Challenge card

I came across the Etsy Inspired Challenge Blog a few weeks ago via Virginia who is one of their very talented deisgners. Every week they choose a different Etsy store to use as inspiration and challenge followers to create a project inspired by the items in that store. This week they were inspired by Stilleto Heights, a store with very cool vintage collage pieces. I was particularly inspired by this piece in their store

I love the border on the left with the distressed looking green and black, and the vintage picture of the couple with script overlay. The old fashioned picture reminded me of some old photos we were recently given of Jason's great grandparents. No stocking and suspenders in these pics lol, but I love them for the style and colours in the photos. I decided to use my favourite of the family photos to make an anniversary card inspired by the above design. Here's what I came up with..

I printed the photo onto regular paper and then adhered it to a piece of cardstock. Then I black embossed the bottom piece onto a piece of cardstock using Hero Arts S5213 Dots and Flowers and inked over with Faded Jeans Distress Ink, rubbing Metallic Rub Ons on top. These were both adhered to a blue metallic look card. I punched a scallop edge on the bottom of a piece of vellum and attached it to the card using eyelets, and a little Glossy Accents along the bottom edge. I then stamped K5344 La Letter and a Martha Stewert butterfly stamp randomly onto the vellum using Pumice Stone Distress Ink. Finally I embossed the sentiment (from Hero Arts Everyday Sayings) in white at the bottom.

I really enjoyed making this card, and I think it's one of my favourites so far, what do you think?

Thanks for looking,

Lynsey x