MIA, A Very Proud Card Moment Courtesy of Patches of Pink, another Thank you to Di and Birthday Turtles

MIA Apology

Sorry that I haven't blogged in what seems like ages, but the weather here in Pittsburgh has been insane lately and the changes in temperatures wreaks havoc on my legs and overall health. We had some temps into the 50s and a day of hitting 60 then rain, snow and ice. Only to be followed with more cold, cold, cold temps and this past Tuesday we got 8 inches of snow! Needless to say...I was out of commission and am finally getting back into the swing a little bit at a time. As I am typing here, it is thundering like crazy! It woke Jake up and he ran to the door barking thinking someone was at the door! LOL I can tell the weather by my legs better than the local weatherman on TV.

Thank You Patches of Pink!

I want to put up a Huge Thank You to Jalisa from Patches of Pink who featured one of my cards on her blog. I was thrilled to be selected for one of my Penny Black Valentine cards which is Mimi dressed in a bunny suit. It was my daughters favorite too! I entered one of my cute cards into her Valentine's Day link up which was combined with her weekly Thursday Party link-up and my card was selected as one to be featured.

I came across Patches of Pink one day and fell in love with Jalisa's blog. Not only did she have tons of pink things (my favorite color), but she also shared the same type of cute, adorable cards that I love! I really enjoyed learning more about her and her family, learning some tips and reading about some really cute cards that she made. That was when I decided to enter one of my cute cards into her Valentine's Day link up which was combined with her weekly Thursday Party link-up.

Also at Patches of Pink, there is sometimes a treat from Jalisa's husband Brandon who drew a couple free digital stamps. I used one of them on this card below and loved how cute the little girl card turned out. Stop over and pick them up, they are really cute!





Not only does the site have cute cards, but also has some great links and tips for everything from cards to treats for the holidays. I think that Jalisa's blog is a true gem and encourage everyone to stop in and take a look around. I have proudly placed the badge that I was featured on her blog with a direct link to the site. If you want to go right now... click here.

Thank You Di Carubia

On my last posting, I sent out a Thank you to Di Carubia from Di's Digi Downloads for the Blog Candy that I won and had received. Well, I would like to send out another Thank you to Di because I used some of the blog candy and made the card below. I had so much fun coloring and putting it together. The papers and brads and bling all matched and the only pieces I added were the little strip of ribbon and the flower in the lower corner. The center brad came from the candy as did the stamp, papers and the coordinating brad at the top of the ribbon strip. I received so many compliments on this card and had to send another Thank you to Di for generously selecting such nice items to work with.



Birthday Turtles

Finally I wanted to share with you some turtle birthday cards that I colored and made while I was MIA. I found this adorable freebie turtle digital stamp from Whimsy and Stars and made it into some birthday cards. I think this digi is so cute and made it into different colors. I used my Cuddlebug Happy Birthday embossing folder to add some depth to the cards and on the blue card, I used a piece of blue acetate that I bought on a clearance sale for 15 cents. I colored them with Copic markers and used Distress ink to soften the edges of the images.


I hope that everyone has a great week and since Im in Pennsylvania, I am going to have to have a talk with that groundhog that told us we were going to have an early spring!!

*Hugs*
~Andrea

A Thank You, A Birthday Card, Some pretty Flowers and Even some doggie updates

A Big Thank You for the Blog Candy!!

I want to send out a Big Thank You to Diane Carubia for sending the fantastic blog candy that I won on her site. Diane is the very talented artist who creates some adorable digital images, and I am a huge fan of her sweet little animal images. I will be making some cards with them shortly and showing them off for everyone to see. If you don't want to wait, check out my right sidebar and there is a link directly to Di's Digi Downloads! You will love the adorable images there!!

Now back to the blog candy....I was so happy to learn that my number was selected to win the blog candy and it arrived in the mail all the way on Friday from England. How fun it was to open up the package and see all of the great treasures inside. Di also included such an adorable card that she made that I had to take some pics to show you! As you will notice, all of the items in the candy match and I am looking forward to using them as soon as I can.

Here is what I got! Thank you again Di for the generous gift that you sent! *Hugs*
















Margie's Birthday Card

My dear friend Margie who is the owner of Stamp Fanci here in Pittsburgh had her birthday on Thursday Feb 10th. I wanted to make her a card, but what kind of card do you make for a woman who owns a rubber stamp/card making store??? She has seen them all, so no surprise factor there...but....what if I use some digi images and make it a bit of a surprise inside in a style that is something different than she would expect...So this is what I came up with. She loved it...Hope you do too!
This is the outside of the card. This image is a digi from Pollycraft. Once you see the next photo, you will understand why I selected this image for the outside of the card. I colored Cuthbert the bear using Copic Markers.

Here is what you see when you open up the card!










Not only did I have a blast making the balloons for inside of the card, but decided to add in a Bugaboo digi image with a pink elephant and it's balloon!

Here is a close up of the balloons that I made for the inside. Let me tell you a little bit about how some have stars and some are plain.

When I saw the idea for this card on You Tube, I thought it would be perfect for Margie! Something that she may not expect, and something fun for her birthday! When I thought about how I was going to make the balloons inside without a balloon punch, my mind went to work. Hey, I have a stamp (Cost me $1.00 at Pat Catans) and it is a Balloon stamp with Stars on it. Ok...I will use that and cut them out...with 24 balloons (front and back), I wasn't looking forward to all of that cutting. An email later that day Michael's came to my rescue with a 45% off coupon and off to Michael's I went in search of a balloon punch! For a mere $9.99 full price Martha Stewart punch and my 45% off coupon, I bought it feeling so proud of myself! Imagine how I felt when later that evening I found out that it fit around my star balloon rubber stamped image perfectly! Wooohooo...and a card was born! I used a mixture of Bazzill cardstock and some inexpensive multicolored and heart swirled cardstock from the dollar bin at Target. I cut the strips of acetate and using my pink 1/4 inch ATG gun I attached matching pairs of balloons to each side of the acetate strips. The hardest part of the whole card was making the insert to hold the balloons which is hidden under the inside dotted paper and covered with the heart swirls. Its a fairly easy design...make the piece 2 inches longer than the card you are using. Fold and score the paper in half and then score at a half inch off of each side of the center and again at another half inch off of that mark. Then fold it hill and valley style and tack down with adhesive until you have only the middle opening on the inside of the card to hold the balloon acetate sticks. Line each side of the inside with adhesive and attach the balloons at different heights. Then simply close up the center, decorate and attach to your card. Cover with your favorite DP and add your sentiments, embellishments etc. Fun and easy....try one the next time you need a really FUN birthday card!

Some Pretty Flowers Card

I can not take credit for this next card except for making it, but the idea was from Carolyn down at Stamp Fanci and her card inspired me to make this card. Her card was on green cardstock and the flowers were all white and it was the most stunning card I had seen in a long time. This is a variation of her card, and I added some Ranger distressing ink to color in the embossed flowers and I love how it turned out!


Pardon the lighting on the card, but the card is made on Bazzill Chiffon pale yellow cardstock. The stamp is from the new Hero Arts line and this one is the smaller sized cling style of this image: CG256 Small striped flower. This image also comes in a slightly larger version in clear acrylic and an even larger full sized cling style. I added white and light yellow pearls into the center of the middle flower and used pop dots to raise the middle image up above the others which were adhered with glue dots. The top scallop edge was made using the Martha Stewart doily border punch. I stamped the image using Versamark on a medium weight vellum and heat set it using Ranger Embossing Pearl Silver embossing powder. It gives such a gorgeous finish. I then 'colored' the images by rubbing each flower with Ranger distressing inks. I used a combination of Spun Sugar, Scattered Straw, Spiced Marmalade and a touch of Fired Brick on the middle flower. I used a yellow art sponge that I cut into pie-like slices and used it to rub the distress ink onto the flowers. Remember when you use the distress ink to start and stop OFF of your image so that you do not have any hard edges on your image where you would start or stop. I used the lightest colors in the middle and the darker at the edges. I then cut just outside of the embossed lines to keep the shape of the flower around the image. This was a very quick but fun card to make.

Sabrina and Jake Updates

Now if I havent totally bored you to death by all of this reading and if you can hang on for another few minutes, you will get to see a little snippet into my life and you will get to see who shares my bed with me too! Ut oh..that didnt sound right, but take a peek below and you will see what I mean!

If you have read the left sidebar of my home page, you will recognize this beautiful face as Sabrina, one of our rescue dogs that I own. Sabrina was our first rescue and she is not only beautiful, but also soft as silk. In this picture she is laying in my bed on a pillow and ready to take a nap.

It was a dreary cold winter day and not only was Sabrina ready for a snooze, so was Jake, but he has his own way of snuggling in my bed. Where Sabrina prefers the bottom of the bed on a pillow next to the footboard of my bed, Jake prefers the top of my bed like a person. Check out this adorable picture!!

Yes, Jake needs a haircut, but all of those curls and waves make him who he is! I am constantly clipping back the hair around his eyes, but he is so cute with his hair longer that I will let it grow until it gets hot outside and then get him a nice cooler cut!

Yes, Jake really does like to lay on my pillow, in my spot with my blanket wrapped up to his chin and he dozes off to sleep.

If you are a dog lover like me and have room in your heart ...and your bed!....run down to your local rescue facility and take some love home for Valentine's day for yourself! They never forget what you do for them and love you forever for it!!

Thanks for bearing with me and my ramblings.

*Hugs*
~Andrea

Valentine's Day Cards with Penny Black's adorable Mimi and Miles!

Since the weather has been cold and Im pretty much captive when the cold weather hits, I decided to put together some Valentine's Day cards for my nieces and nephew. As you already saw, I purchased the Mimi and Miles clear acrylic Penny Black set and 2 other Penny Black rubber stamps. So I colored up some more images.

As I mentioned on my blog before, I have diabetic neuropathy and at this stage of my disease, I have constant pain and find that coloring helps me cope with the severe pains that it brings. So with this weeks ice, sleet, rain and snow, I colored and when the medicine is working well enough, I put the cards together. So here are a few more from my stash. I have 5 nieces and 1 nephew, so the Miles card is for my nephew.

Pink Ladybug Mimi

For this card, I took the Mimi the Ladybug rubber stamp (4119J Love Antennae) and decided to color her Pink and her outfit purple. I used my nestabilities for the mat on the image and some old DP that I cant remember where I got it.

















Big Bunch of Love Miles

For the next Valentine I used Miles from the Mimi and Miles clear acrylic Penny Black set. He is so adorable (just like my nephew) and I cut out the image, mat and all of the little conversation heart candies using nestabilities. I also embossed the deep blue mat using a Cuttlebug embossing folder that looks very much like the swiss dots, but is actually tiny hearts. I bought my Cuttlebug on HSN and I believe it was one of the special folders I got with the machine. I have never seen this embossing folder on sale or available anywhere else, so I assume it was an HSN exclusive, but I could be wrong..LOL Needless of where it came from, I LOVE it!! Hope you do too!






















Mimi with Pigtails

This Valentine I tried a couple different things to see how they would turn out. I used one of my border punches and then added on a strip of pink and white striped ribbon to match with the pink striped DP. I made the bow with a homemade BowEasy that I made from an SVG freebie online. I made it a double bow and I love how it turned out! I have been making my small bows using a serving fork from my flatware and that works too, but I thought I would cut the BowEasy pattern out on my Cricut and give it a try and it works too! I added sparkle on the sentiment with red Stickles and Im sure you recognize the image as another Mimi image from the Mimi and Miles Penny Black clear acrylic set. I love her pigtails!! The little I Love You sentiment was from on old old old embellishment that fell off of something years ago and I have had it sitting on the base of my desk lamp waiting to be used. I think it fit perfectly. Everything on this card was made from scraps of this and that, and Im so please how they all came together so nicely.

















Mimi is blowing kisses your way!

This Valentine I made is from more scraps that I had left over from other cards. I keep all of my scraps in a cloth box that I got at Big Lots for $2.00 and it has a hinged lid. It is about the size of a box of copier paper and I just lift the lid and put in my scraps after I trim them of any little unusable pieces. You would be surprised how quickly those scraps build up and how useful they are when you need just a tiny piece for a sentiment, or need a strip for an image mat. I also keep pieces of my DP that are usable and both this card and the one above are made from the same scrap strip. One side of this DP is the pink striped and this side has a beautiful pink flowered image on it. For this card I used another Mimi image from the clear acrylic set and Mimi is blowing Kisses which I think is absolutely adorable!! So I made the sentiment simply with the Kisses sentiment and more of the conversation heart stamped images in that set. I used my nestabilities labels eleven set for the image and mat. I used my Martha Stewart doily border punch for the bottom border of the DP and also the front card bottom border. I actually cut this card down by less than 1/8 of an inch in order to have the scallops of the border look less sloppy with one little piece of the next scallop punched. Its a shame that sometimes the paper is just the wrong size and it leaves just a touch of the next scallop no matter how hard I try to keep it from happening. If anyone knows a trick to get them perfect, please let me know!! So here is Mimi blowing a kiss your way for Valentine's day!
















Mimi's Big Heart

I sold 3 cards late last week, one of which was the Valentine I made with Mimi and the heart and the Love charm. So I made a replacement but since I only had one Love charm, I used a heart charm on this card. The picture was taken through the plastic card bag, so please excuse the reflection and the super deep red color on the image. Seems it doesnt like being photographed through the bag! LOL I used the same dotted heart embossing folder on this card as I did on the Miles card above. You can see the little hearts better on this one I think. The shiny red glitter paper is actually a self adhesive paper and the glitter is covered so that it is a smooth surface. From one piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, I have matted 6 Valentine images and still have enough left for 2 more.























Love Bunny Mimi

Last but certainly not least is sweet little Mimi in a bunny costume and holding a heart. How cute is that!! I think you will recognize the shapes, the conversation hearts and the embossing folder, but when I am coloring to relieve the pain, my creativity takes a back seat to putting the card together quickly. I dont know about you, but when I put my cards together, I stand at my quilting table and put everything together and keep it all within arms reach so I do not have to walk around getting this or that. With these cards, although many of the basic elements are the same, I tried to make them each a little bit different. With standing on my legs and the limited mobility that I have, I sometimes use the same items over and over so I dont have to dig through drawers and boxes for embellishments, flowers and such. So please excuse the repetition, but rather focus on the adorable stamps and pretty papers..LOL






















Thank you for taking time to visit and I hope that you make someone special to you a Valentine this year. It will put a smile on their face!

*Hugs*
~Andrea

CDAC 5000 Member Giveaway!

CDAC- CraftersDigital Art Center is having a 5000 Member Celebration and are inviting everyone in on the fun!

They are holding 3 different ways to win one of 18 great prizes...read on...


Refer a friend giveaway

Refer your friends to CDAC and win a chance to win a prize. Why wouldnt you refer your friends? You love the site, they will too! Their weekly challenges are sponsored by some of the best digital stamp companies and you get free digital stamps to use if you enter the challenges.

Giveaway for Bloggers

Spread the word and let everyone know that you are a member of CDAC. Post their badge on your sidebar. Post the digi stamp companies and a picture of the great prizes. Like this...



Easy Peasy!!















CDAC Scavenger Hunt

Last but not least, play along with 15 digitial stamp companies to play a scavenger hunt. The clues are numbered with links to each digital stamp site, you have to figure out which stamp they are describing and email the results. Its fun, but beware...its tricky too. Try your best and hopefully you will get a chance to win.

Dont forget to post a comment and link up to Mr. Linky for your entries to each part of the giveaway.

Have Fun and Good Luck!!

*Hugs*
~Andrea