Happy Birthday, Lesley!

Happy Birthday, Lesley!    I feel so honored to be a part of this awesome blog hop celebrating the birthday of such a sweet lady.   I love your positive attitude and of course your amazing stampin' skills.   You always find some kind words to say about even the worst of my projects and for that, I absolutely adore you.  :)   I hope you have a wonderful day!    

For my card, I wanted something cheery and fun because that's what birthdays should be!  I used the inspiration picture from this week's Play Date Cafe challenge to come up with my colors and I love them together!   Be sure to hop on over to the rest of the blogs to see more fun birthday ideas and of course go by Lesley's blog and wish her a very happy birthday.   

Stamps:  Upsy Daisy, Delicate Doilies

Ink:   Lucky Limeade, Poppy Parade, Calypso Coral

Paper:  Lucky Limeade, Poppy Parade, Calypso Coral, Whisper White, In Color Hostess Stack (retired)

Accessories:  Basic Rhinestones, Lucky Limeade ruffled ribbon, homemade shimmer mist

Tools:  Scallop Trim border punch

Here's the list of blog hop participants:

Ann Marie Hile:  Stampin' Anne
Carrie Gaskin:  Artistic Avenger
Cindy Beach:  Stamps, Paper, and Ink
Jaydee:  Stampin! with Jaydee
Jen Mitchell:  I Create
Joan Jeffery:  J J Creations
Lauri Ingram:  Paperville
Laurie:  Hiding in my Craft Room
LeAnne Pugliese:  wee inklings
Nance Leedy:  Canopy Crafts
Cards by Rita:   You are here!  
Sandra Azzopardi:  Sandra's Stamping Spot
Tui Nathan:  Stampin' Time

Inkspirations Flowers

I don't know what I clicked on, but I can't get this darn background color behind the text to go away.  Sorry.  I tried and tried and then tried again to fix it.  :(   Forgive me.   

This is my card for this week's Inspirations challenge.   I love sketch challenges!   I knew I wanted to use some of my purples today and what goes better with it than green?!    I love Lucky Limeade paired with them!    I took pity on Awash with Flowers and took it off my shelf today.   I don't like it very much.   Even if you use the Stamp-a-ma-jig, the images just do not line up.   Yes, I know they aren't meant to, but I like for my color to be inside the lines.   Maybe one day I'll get on some meds that let me overlap dollies or color outside the lines, but for now I just have to be crazy and stress over that stuff.  :)   

Stamps:  Awash with Flowers (sigh)

Ink:  Concord Crush, Wisteria Wonder, Lucky Limeade

Paper:  Concord Crush, Wisteria Wonder, Lucky Limeade, Whisper White, Cheerful Treat DSP

Accessories:  In Color Brads (pretty!), Basic Pearls, Concord Crush ribbon

What?

I finally get chosen as one of the top picks on the Pals Paper Arts challenge and this is what I follow it up with?   Can you see my sad face?   I hate when I have an idea and it turns out all crappy.   This card serves as a reminder for me.  No punch art allowed in my craft room.  Just stamping.  Stamping = pretty.   Hopefully everyone makes a yucky card every now and then.  I am just dumb enough to post mine I guess.  :)  Or maybe I should have made this more positive and totally convinced you that this was a true work of art?     I blame it all on the Daffodil Delight.  We are not friends.

Okay...moving on.

Splitcoast Challenges!

Before you ask, yes, I made this.  It is not my normal style, but isn't that the point of challenges?   We won't talk about how distressing I find distressing or how I cringe when I put things on crooked...let's just focus on the card.    What do you think?   I had to channel my friend Ann a bit on this one.   She is amazing at the distressed look and is the reigning queen of the color spritzer.   I need to ask her  for some vacuuming tips now that my floor is covered with little balls of paper from all the distressing.  :)

So what possessed me to make this and do all the tearing and distressing?    Nope.  It's not the lack of carbs for a week.   It was for this week's color challenge over on Splitcoast!   They asked us to use gray, turquoise, and white.   I love turquoise with red, but I wasn't sure about this gray thing.   I do like how it turned out though.   Now it was also for a secret challenge on Splitcoast as well.   This week they are having the Dare to Get Dirty challenges for fan club members.   So...if you aren't a member of the website. go sign up!   If you are but aren't a fan club member, do that!   It's fun.   Who doesn't like fun?  

Stamps:  Grunge Rock
Ink:  Tempting Turquoise, Basic Gray
Paper:  Naturals White, Tempting Turquoise, Basic Gray, Brights DSP stack, Neutrals DSP stack
Accessories:  Basic Rhinestones
Tools: Big Shot, Stars #2 die, cutter kit, sponges

Finally...

I inked up one of the stamp sets we received at Convention today.  :)   Yay!  I figured I should try to use them all before my new stuff gets here.  

I jokingly told a friend the other night that combining a sketch challenge and a color challenge created 95% of the card for you.   This card made me eat those words a bit.  I used the colors from the colourQ challenge and paired them with the weekly sketch challenge on Splitcoast. I took me a bit to figure out where to use each color and what elements to add in, but I finally managed to get something that I liked.   What do you think?   I am not the best at coloring, so I'm trying to work on it a bit.  Just like I don't like things touching, I also don't like my coloring to go outside of the lines.   That makes watercoloring difficult, but I'm trying...  

Stamps:  Easy Events
Ink:  Lucky Limeade, Basic Gray, Tempting Turquoise, Bashful Blue, Staz On
Paper:  Lucky Limeade, Basic Gray, Tempting Turquoise, Bashful Blue, watercolor paper
Accessories:  Basic Pearls, Bright brads
Tools:  Big Shot, various embossing folders, scallop circle punch, circle punch, scallop trim border punch, aquapainter

Taking a break today...

I know my blogging has been a bit sporadic lately, but thanks for hanging in there with me.  This time of year is really hard on us.   Our son's 3rd birthday is today, but he's not here to celebrate.   He was born with a genetic disorder called Spinal Muscular Atrophy and passed away before he turned 6 months old.   As August is SMA Awareness Month, I wanted to take a minute to pass along some information on my blog.

This is SMA:

• SMA KILLS more infants and young children than any other inherited disease.

• There is NO treatment. There is NO cure.

• SMA is degenerative, eventually hindering the ability to walk, stand, sit, eat, breathe and even swallow. The mind is no different from that of a healthy baby, but the body eventually fails.

• Typical babies with SMA Type 1 have a life expectancy of between one and two years and require around-the-clock medical assistance and monitoring.

• 1 in every 40 people or nearly 10 million Americans UNKNOWINGLY carry the gene responsible for SMA — few have any known family history of SMA.

• SMA is a pan-ethnic disease and does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

• While SMA is currently incurable, untreatable, and drastically underfunded –> There is HOPE.

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) selected SMA as the disease CLOSEST TO TREATMENT of more than 600 neurological disorders.

• SMA is considered a MODEL DISEASE with direct impact on research into many other diseases, potentially benefiting millions of people.

If you made it this far, thank you.  

Happy Birthday, Eli.   I miss you.   I miss you every single day of my life and I always will.

Pay Attention to Deadlines

Ugh!   I spent so much time trying to figure out a way to use the colourQ colors together yesterday and totally didn't realize that I was going to miss the window to actually submit my card for the challenge.  Oh well.  I still used Calypso Coral and for that I feel accomplished.   I do get to submit it for my favorite challenge, The Paper Players!    This awesome sketch was done by Nance, who is a such a sweetheart!  We seem to share a love of woodgrain and pinwheels, so I enjoy chatting with her on email.    But back to the card...what do you think?   Did I manage to get the right proportions of the colors?   You probably can't see it very well in the picture, but the Pool Party layer is stamped in Delicate Doilies and embossed in Iridescent Ice.  It is so shiny and pretty in person.   I also used some homemade shimmer mist on the image panel as well.

Now I'll share a little secret with you...  I love Delicate Doilies, but I don't like for them to touch each other.   I have seen lots of pretty cards where people overlap them and they look great, but I can't do it.  It stresses me out.  I even tried it on this card and had to start over.   For the record, I don't like my food to touch either.  :)

Stamps:  Delicate Doilies
Ink:  Calypso Coral, Early Espresso, Pool Party, Island Indigo, Versamark
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Early Espresso, Pool Party, Island Indigo, Whisper White
Accessories:  Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Early Espresso 3/8 taffeta ribbon, Basic Rhinestones, Shimmer Mist
Tools:  Heat tool, Jewelry Tag punch

Wish Pig

Isn't he cute?    This is one of my favorite color combinations and two challenge blogs asked us to use them together this week!   How cool is that?!    Our Creative Corner and The Friday Mashup! are both awesome, so go check them out and play along with these super fun colors.   If you like poking holes in your paper, try the Pals Paper Arts challenge to do some paper piercing on your card.  It's fun!  

Stamps:  Wish Big, Button Buddies
Ink:  Real Red, Tempting Turquoise
Paper  Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White, Brights Designer Paper stack
Accessories:  Basic Rhinestones, Real Red taffeta ribbon
Tools:  paper piercing tool