Simon Says Stencil

 

Greetings! It's been a minute, eh? I am finally back to doing a bit of crafting. I've made a bunch of cards lately, posted a few on Instagram, but figured I should also use my blog a bit as well. This card I made for the Monday Challenge at Simon Says Stamp. It was to use multiple stencils on a card, so I used the moon stencil from Tim Holtz along with a small 3x3 bat stencil that I had from SSS. I thought they worked well together. The big BOO is also from SSS, albeit an older set. I haven't bought much lately, but I have a whole room full of stuff. lol 

We've added and lost some family members since my last blog post. This little void is one of my new children, Dewdrop Ann aka Dewey. She enjoys reading and napping on top of people. :) She and her sister were my first two bottle baby fosters and well...  they both live with us now. Ha! 

Snarky Cat for Inkspirational 354

Hello,

It's been a long time since I tried to create or blog, but here I am. The past few years have been tough on my mental health, so I'm trying to get back into cardmaking to maybe help a little. :)  I figured I'd start with some Tim Holtz Snarky Cats. The image worked perfectly for the Inkspirational challenge since my kitty is wearing a knit sweater. 

I do apologize for my photo quality. I don't have any type of light box set up right now so I just had to snap one as my card was on my desk. The quality really decreased when I emailed it myself from my phone. Normally my phone camera is pretty good! Oh well.  I gotta relearn what I'm doing and come up with a better system. Baby steps. 

Rita

MFT Color Challenge 231

Howdy strangers. Believe it or not, I'm still here. I haven't made a card in ages, but I'm here. :)  My goal is to try and get back into crafting this year. I don't know what happened (life, maybe?) to cause me to stop, but I do miss it. I saw the cutest card my friend Lee had made for the MFT Color Challenge and thought it would be a fun challenge to jump back into. I don't have the best picture to post since I have torn my craft room up to paint, so I had to snap one with my phone and send it over. 

I hope anyone who will see this is doing well. Take care. 

Rita

Lawn Fawnatics 109

 Hi friends! Are you enjoying the first week of autumn? It's been cooler here in Texas, so we have been loving it. Anything below 90 degrees feels amazing. lol I wanted to play along with a challenge and use some of my fall stamps, so I decided to finally ink up my cute apple set from Lawn Fawn for their Lawn Fawnatics challenge. I decided to go with a clean and simple card to let the red of the apples pop. 

That's it for me. I'm a Jeopardy fanatic and strangely it comes on in the morning in Texas. I gotta go get my laundry folded to get ready. 

Have a great rest of the week!

Rita 

MFT Witch

 

Hi friends! I wanted to pop in real quick and post my entry for the MFT Design Superstar Coloring contest. I feel a bit foolish posting it now that I've seen some of the other entries, but I did try, so... 

I love the MFT watercolor stencil. It makes for such a fun background. I used some of the colors from my witch to to stencil that and then layered my images on top. This witch is my absolute favorite image to color, so I had a blast sitting and coloring. 

Things are okay here. I've been having a lot of sinus headaches lately and struggling with that. We got a cold front in last night and it's a wonderful 70 degrees this morning. I hope my head appreciates that. Have a great week. 

MFT Cool Day Colors

 

Hi friends! Just wanted to pop in and share my card for the current MFT color challenge. I've been playing around with my gel press a bit this week thanks to the Gelli Arts ABCs of gel printing. My background is one of my prints from earlier this week. :) 

I hope you are having a good weekend. I know it's a sad one for our country here in the US on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. <3 I just don't have the words, but I know none of us will ever forget where we were that day or all the lives lost. 

Cardstock Class

Hey all! I thought I'd pop in and show you some of the cards I've been making for the newest class from Online Card Classes. It is called Crushing on Cardstock and it's been super fun. There's so much packed into the four days of class. It's been so fun!! 

Things here are about the same. This week has been a mentally challenging one. Hopefully I can get myself together a bit better. I have been walking at least 30 minutes every night for the past month. I've tried to make that a part of my day that just has to happen. I think I've lost 7 pounds so yay! It's about time for my walk right now, so I'll sign off and go suit up. lol

(Andrea, I swear I saw your email and keep meaning to reply. I am not good at life, but don't give up on me. lol I'm a mess.)

Lawn Fawnatics 106

 Hi, friends. I hope your week went well. Can you believe it's the weekend already? Wow! I don't know where the week went, but it's been so hot all week that I think we just sweated our way through the days. I'm so over summer, especially now that I've started walking every evening. I end up a sweaty mess. Anyway, I wanted to share my card for the current Lawn Fawnatics challenge. They had a sketch challenge and I decided to play along I love this cute little camper set. 

Have a great weekend!

Rita

Camp Create 4/5

 

I am running so behind!!  I finished Camp Create days ago and need to share the last two with you today so that I can enter them. :) My first card is for day 4, Background Bonanza. I love how it turned out. I wasn't sure at first if it was going to look okay, but once I saw my finished card I loved the effect. Of course I love coloring this image. :) 

Now on to the last one, Delightful Die Cutting. 

And my last one! The sample for the challenge was a cute wreath, but I didn't have any foliage dies to make anything like that. I did have these cute sunflower dies though and I decided to use them for a my card. I put them again a simple background I made using distress inks. Simple but I like it. It's cheery and happy. 

And that's a wrap! :) I hope you are having a good week. 

Rita 

Embossed Roses

 Happy Saturday, folks! Back to share another card from MFT Camp Create. This is day three, emboss resist. and I used one of MFT's awesome background stamps. I used my distress inks in oranges and yellows and then diecut my friend sentiment again. Pretty easy card. :) I love the effect of emboss resist though. It's so fun. 

I have two more cards I'll share with you from this event. The next one is my favorite of the group. 

Camp Create Shaker

Hi friend, friend, friend! I need to post all my cards from the MFT Camp Create. I have one last one to finish up to do all five days and it's been so fun!  This card is for the first day's challenge to make a shaker card. This die is the only MFT word die I have, so I worked with that I had. :) I think it turned out fun and cheery. 

It has been so hot here today. I had to run a few errands and came home just exhausted from the heat. My poor garden is a garden of weeds at this point because it's just too hot to be out there. I try here and there, but they grow so fast. We have had a lot of amazing butterflies lately though, so at least the flowers are being visited. 

Have a great weekend. Do something fun and crafty!

Camp Create: Watercoloring

 Oops. I am behind on blogging all my crafts. It's been a bit crazy the past two weeks. I did get a card made every day in July though. :) It was a miracle. lol  Now I'm playing along with the MFT Camp Create challenges. The second one is watercoloring and I tried. It's hard for me, but I powered through it. I love the little bears in the Cool Day stamp set. I had to use the big snowflake die I recently got as I love it. 

I bought a size 2 round brush before I tried to color my image and it works much better for me to have a small brush. I may actually try it more often. I used my distress inks and just smooshed them on my silicone mat to get some ink to color with. 

I hope you're having a great week. 

Penny Black Kitty

We made it through Wednesday!!  Well, almost. lol Tonight I wanted to share the card I made for the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. It's monochromatic and I love doing those with grays. I grabbed my stamp and my warm gray Copic markers and went to work. After I finished my image panel, I made a background on watercolor paper using distress inks. I added some clouds at the bottom with a stencil and some white splatters at the top to be stars. I finished it off with some twine and a few star sequins. Oh, and the moon is shiny!  Wink of Stella just had to happen. :) 

Laila's hair is a huge part of the upset in our house some days, so I bribed her with some color to go and get it cut. lol The stylist layered it and thinned the back out some to try and help with the tangles. She likes it, so we'll see how this goes! Having to brush tangles for 30 minutes with a hyper, uncooperative kid is exhausting. 

Thankful Mistake

Hello! Tuesday... my least favorite day of the week. It seems like everyone is in a bad mood here on Tuesdays. Weird. Anyway, here's another card I tried with that same stencil from yesterday. It started as a bright happy card but it looked awful and I quickly turned it into a fall card. I made it for the challenge at Beyond the Blue. They are having folks use a stencil this week. 

I used my yellow distress inks and then went over it with some of browns through the stencil. It's an easy way to make fall cards I guess. lol I promise to put away that stencil for a bit. It seems like I just mess up my cards I attempt with it and end up with fall colors. 

Have a great Wednesday. 

Falling Mistake

 Monday....did you make it through okay? We had a decent day here. Laila's anxiety got her just a bit when we sat down to do the standardized test, but once she calmed down she sailed through the first 3 parts. Tomorrow is math though and even the simplest problem can get her anxiety going in full freak-out mode.  So send good thoughts our way tomorrow!

This card is one that I totally messed up and tried to save. I was trying to do gesso resist and well, my gesso didn't resist the ink. Oops. So I made it into a fall card. Kinda. lol I think it looks okay now, but it was NOT what I intended. lol 

I'm off to see Jason before he goes to bed. Hope Tuesday is kind to you.

Rita 

Repeat the Dahlia

 Happy Sunday!!  Whew. I feel so behind with life, but I did manage to get a card made for today. This card is actually yesterday's card and it's for the challenge at A Blog Named Hero. They wanted repetition, so decided to try out a new stamp set that I hadn't inked up yet. It's pretty fun to color. I stamped it four times on the background and then shaded it just a little with some gray Copics. I stamped again on a scrap and colored it and die cut it. Super fun! My sentiment could use a bit of work. I just learned this weekend that there's different embossing powders for different things. I ordered some super fine white to see if it helps my sentiments stay more crisp, so I can't wait for that. My current jar is just regular. 

We had a little outing today. Just Costco and then a plant nursery. I got a little lemon tree and we planted it in a pot. I can't wait to watch it grow. ...and hopefully make lemonade! 

I hope you have a great week. Laila and I are going to be doing a standardized test so that I can make sure she's on track with her schooling. I hope she does okay with it. I want her to have some experience with those type of tests as well. Fingers (and toes) crossed. 

Hungry for Cupcakes

Hi friends! I hope your weekend is going well. It's been such a long day here, but I did get my card made. We are 17 days into our card every day challenge and we all three have stayed on track! It's crazy. This card I made for the new challenge at TIME OUT Challenges. Their prompt is hungry and well, who doesn't love a cupcake? We have a house divided on icing here, as Jason hates buttercream icing and I love it. So we don't get a lot of cupcakes. He's more of a cheesecake person anyway, so that's what he gets on his birthday. 

Look at my gorgeous visitor from yesterday. She stayed around and visited my flowers for a bit and I loved watching her. I think I got a bunch of mosquito bites while standing there, but she was so worth it. These butterflies are pretty rare to see in my area, so it was such a treat. 

Shark!!!!

 Hi friends! We made it to Thursday. Sorry I didn't blog my card yesterday. I felt a bit under the weather and barely got it made. Since it is Shark Week, I wanted to use my shark stamps. I thought they paired well with the Summer Fun challenge at The Paper Funday since one of our favorite parts of summer is watching all the shark shows. :) I don't like hot weather, so inside watching shows is the best place for me to be. lol 

Now if I do venture outside, it's to watch the butterflies in my butterfly garden. Here's a beautiful Giant Swallowtail that visited us yesterday. So pretty!

Have a great Friday tomorrow!

Rita 

Darth Troll

Hello! Happy Tuesday. I hope your week is going great so far. We are having a pretty good week here. We are learning about the start and spread of Islam, plus doing some plant experiments. I love learning along with Laila. Anyway, for my card today I wanted to play along with the TIME OUT Challenge. I knew I had this Trolls/Star Wars set I hadn't inked yet, so I grabbed it since their theme is Movies. Now strangely enough, I hadn't seen Star Wars until a few years ago when we got them to watch over the winter holidays. Laila fell in love with Darth Vader and everything she asked for, wore, or loved was him. We had light saber fights ALL day. It was crazy. She's calmed down with it all now, but she did recently go back and watch the first one a couple of days in a row. 

Here she is at Halloween that year. :) Obsessed! She wanted to wear this all the time. lol 

I'm off to read a book I picked up from the library today. I've seen some people say they couldn't put it down, so I may be in for a long night. Yikes. 

Lifesaver

 Hi friends! I missed you yesterday. lol I was so exhausted by the time I got my card made that I didn't get a chance to blog it. I did stamp though. I'm doing this with a couple of friends and we have all made it 12 days in a row so far! Amazing. Today I played along with The Crafter's Cafe Chalelnge blog. It is anything goes. I hope they like my card. :) 

Now I am off to rest as it has been a super long day!!  Super long. We thought that Jack got out the door and we spent a lot of time looking and crying. He must have been napping hard under the guest bed or something because he ended up coming out looking sleepy. I was so scared I had lost him. That put us behind with school, but we made up time and got it all finished.