Happily Ever After

Hi Peeps! I hope you've had a good day. I had the most wonderful icecream today. It was a new flavor by Ben &Jerry's called "Mission To Marzipan" . Yummo! In a waffle cone too. So I was in a good mood to create something cheerful. :-)
Todays card was such fun to make. I made a few mistakes but then used them to create an even better creation. My recipe is as follows:

DPs assorted from my stash
Image Lili Of The Valley
Colors Graphitint pencils
Pearls Recollections
Flowers one handmade with papers and silk petals, the others by Recollections
Stitching Machine done
Scalloped edge Borderabilities

Here is a frontal view of the card:


And a close up of the sweet couple.....

This is the handmade flower and pearly/stitchy area. The small flower at the center of the large bloom and beside it is not handmade.

And the bottom detail...

Well I hope its been worth your stop over to see! I'm really pleased with how it came out.I love these muted colors. They work so well for a wedding card, don't they?

I am entering it in the folowing challenges:

Paper Sundaes Handmade flowers

Totally Papercrafts recipe

Midnight Madness sketch

Creative Craft Challenges Here comes the Bride

Thanks for coming by and taking the time to leave some love. It's much appreciated. :-)

What's On Your Work Table Wednesday

I just found this site while blog hopping called "What's On Your Work Desk" Wednesday and thought I would join in. I'm afraid my desk isn't too exciting today. I finished my card last night around 10:45 and cleaned up. And this morning it was all about sorting through school books. (one must keep up a measure of organization while homeschooling! lol)

Man, where have the days gone when it was crayons and counting M&Ms? This 7th grade business stinks! We're buried in books!! and this is about half of them!

Below are some seed packets that Tweety made yesterday to put her zinnias and cornflowers in...

And the dreaded math.... fractions and graphing functions....say what? But I can at least glance up wistfully at my colred pencils while I sort it out and set rewards for myself for finishing the dreariness quickly so I can get back to crafting! My wobbleheaded cat keeps me focused...hahaha

And my other worktable, or workstation. Its pretty tidy today, just a few paper scraps waiting to be put away.

So there you have it. Maybe next Wednesday I will have more to look at!

Happy Wishes

Yes, I am at it again! I am defacing or rather re-facing a cutie patootie magnolia image. Its amazing how much more I like them when they can smile back at me! lol Below is a front view:

See, you can smile... .....My recipe is as follows:

Image Magnolia

colors copics

papers DVWV and K&Co

embellishments assorted

sentiment Hero Arts

A close up...

and bottom detail...

And ribbon detail! Love those little pearls.

I am entering this into the following challenges:
Papertake Weekly Cutie Patootie

Cooking It Up With Katie yellow, sketch and stitching
Creative Card Crew sketch

Thanks for looking and I love all your comments everyone. Thank you so much for visiting. :-)

Machine Sewing On Cards

Yes, as my friends can tell, I LOVE sewing on my cards! Sometimes its pure convenience. I run out of my tape runners and I don't want to use glue sticks cos they bubble my paper so I just "sew" my card together instead! lol I've been asked what I use and its really very simple. I just use a normal full size sewing machine. Do you want my opinion of the craft size machines?
They stink!
Well , its like this:
The idea is apealing. A small portable craft-size machine is convenient. Its also much cheaper. And if you don't mind your machine flopping around your table like a dying fish while you're trying to sew it may be just the thing for you! but I surmise that you will be disappointed with it, find it awkward to use, and give up on sewing on cards altogether. That's my opinion. (you also need special bobbins and spools with these small machines)

I paid roughly $200 for my Singer Touch and Sew about three years ago. I use it for "real sewing" as well as paper sewing so its well worth the money to me but honestly even if I didn't quilt etc, I use my machine for almost every card I make , so I think that it's still worth the investment to me.

I simply click on the stitch I want. See how it lights up?

Put my paper in and oilla I'm ready to go! You don't need to use any special thread or do anything differently than if you were sewing fabric. Just insert paper, click the foot down and step on the pedal.

Ooooooohhhh.........

These are just a few of the stitches you can do with the Singer Touch And Sew. Are they pretty or what!!

One thing to keep in mind is to sew your panels before you add them to your card. Even if your stitching is very neat, most people don't want to see them on the inside of the card! Besides, its awkward to sew through all those layers!

Hope you've had some fun and oh! One more thing! Could you all please keep your firearms locked up. I don't want any vengeful husbands coming after me when they recieve their credit card bills at the end of the month!
Much obliged. :-)

Faux Stitching

Sewing on cards is wonderful and I love it to pieces. However, what if you don't have a machine? Well there's several ways to achieve a "stitched look" without going into debt over it. There's lots of methods out there but I am going to show you a few things that I do . If it helps one person out there then I haven't wasted my time. :-)

Sometimes I've run out of thread in my machine or forgotten to stitch before I've taped down my panels. In these cases I just grab one of three things:

A Gelly Roll white gel pen
A Scorbug
A paper piercer

A gel pen is self explanitory. I simply draw on my stitches. If you're worried about drawing in a straight line, don't panic, just grab a ruler! Personally, I'm not worried about a "handstitched" look with wonky stitches. In fact, maybe you want that effect sometimes,depending on the card and so a gel pen can be a better choice than a machine. Gel pens come in all kinds of colors and they even have puffy gel pens now so you can feel your "stitches". How great is that?

For those who haven't seen a Scorbug before, it is a cool little tool with a retractable wheel with spokes that pierce the paper as you roll it down a groove. I use my scorpal board so that I can line up where I want my "stitches" but if you don't have a scoring board you can also use the groove of a kitchen table or something similar.


The Scorbug doesn't pierce all the way through the paper. It simply makes dents, see?

And when you flip the paper over, you have an embossed stitch line like so... this is the side that I would want showing on my card.

There's also the handy little paper piercer/embosser. See below. Using the sharp end, simply poke holes in your paper (with a strip of carpet or foam underneath to protect your surface) to make a "stitched" border . You could also then hand stitch through the holes but I'm not that ambitious. I would leave as is (as it looks quite nice), or, every third hole I will poke the needle all the way through . See how the piercer has a sharp tip but goes thicker as you go up the shaft? If you pull all the way up the shaft you'll have a bigger hole and can achieve a nice "eyelet" effect with patterns. You can see what this looks like back at the first picture, top line.
(I'm sorry if its not very clear.)

So I hope this helps some and gives inspiration to those anxious to try something new! Happy "sewing"!

Beach Babes

I love things that make me laugh. A good, hearty belly shaking laugh. These old folks from Bugaboo stamps do it everytime. I think of all the quips I could put with them and just get laughing at my own silliness. Below is maybe a clearer frontal view of the card I put together last night:

I used the following:

Image Bugaboo

Colors Prismacolors and copics (for skin)

Papers Assorted

Ribbon Dashes and Dots

Sentiment a variation of the sentiment that came with the digi which was "At my age I can wear whatever I want"

3Dimentional sticky pads

Stitching machine done

A close up of the beach babes.... I just love his belly and speedo. So gross. And all the hog hair on their legs. lol And the "cool" hawaiin shirt...so funny

Close up of the ribbon detail...

And the stitching/sentiment on the upper left corner.

I made this using the themes from the following challenges:

Paper Play Sketch
Allsorts Summer Days

Bee Crafty At the Beach (using a digi)

Hope you have had a good chuckle. :-) Come back tomorrow and I might embarass myself further! I might actually get into a bathing suit! LOL (just kidding. I wouldn't do that to you all)

A Donkey's Hello

This donkey stamp was a mistake. I ordered two Whiff Of Joy images from a company and they were out of stock and I waited and waited longer than politeness dictated and finally complained. I could have got a refund but I decided to just choose two other stamps instead. This was one of them. And I gotta say he's pretty stinkin cute! :-)

DPs DCWV and Coordinations CS
Ribbon Offray
Image Whiff Of Joy
Colors Graphitint plus prismacolor yellow and sky blue
Stitching Machine done
Punched edge Martha Stweart
Gold studs Recollection
Banner Don't know. It was a gift.

Here is a close up of the cutie patootie donkey. I just love him!




And the punched bling area....

And the juicy ribbon...

I would like to enter this card in :

Whiff Of Joy sketch

Play Date Cafe purple, lilac and lime

Totally Gorjuss thinking Of you

Well, I think that's it for tonight folks! Happy Crafting!

Smiling All Over My Face

Hi Everyone! I hope you're having a happy Saturday. It is finally raining here so we are very happy cos that means we don't have to water the garden at 6:30 tomorrow morning! Yay! Today's card I made using my new graphatint pencils. Although I did add a bit of Prismacolor where I didn't have the color I needed in graphatint. My ingredient list is as follows:

DPS assorted from my stash. (the striped is Penny Lane)
Ribbon Offray
Stitching Machine done
Image Kraftin Kimmies
colors Graphatint and Prismacolor, copics for skin
Sentiment Inkadinkado

Here are some close ups:

The sentiment edged with distress ink...

The buttons......aren't they the cutest?

And the bow that "ties" it all together. :-)

This card fits into these challenges:

Kraftin Kimmies bows

Pixie Cottage sketch & triple play

Crazy4Challenges buttons

Have a great weekend!!

Graphitint Pencils

I've been eyeing these graphitint pencils for some time...today I saw them on sale and couldn't resist them. They're pretty awesome. They're a graphite pencil with a touch of color and also water soluable. So you can make your picture as rich or as subdued as you want to. Now I want all the colors! (They only make 24 so its not a huge investment. lol)

Have a look at the images below and see how the results differ from ordinary pencils. the only thing that is not graphitint is the skin (which I colored with copics) and the yellow color you see, graphitint doesn't come with a yellow so I used a yellow prismacolor.

I think they're pretty cool. I like the different effects you can get with different products. It's almost like getting new stamps!

Good Night, everyone!

What's A Little Scat Between Friends?

Look at my sweeties...aren't they growing up? So sweet. They're about 7 weeks old now and have about 70 % of their feathers. And do you know, ducks are pooping miracles? They are. They poop and within five minutes there's no evidence of it. It just kind of becomes one with nature and disappears into the ground. Here they are below playing follow the leader. Or something like that.

And here are our resident geese. they're very regal looking and command respect from everyone. They even had our grown ducks quacking in submission. They're not like ducks though. they leave their calling cards everywhere. I guess its part of their prideful nature. they want everyone to know that they've been there. "I Wuz ere...." But now I have a rather humiliating story to relate.... The things I'll do to give my peeps a chuckle, I dont know...lol

I was tending my ducks the other morning while my daughter was in 4H. I fed them. I cleaned their cage . I picked some veges from the garden and then just found a clean spot of grass and sat down to watch them for a while. After some time passed , I went indoors.

I kept smelling something rather nasty but I couldn't place what it was. In the end I was looking under tables etc but to no avail. Nevermind, I had to go and pick up Tweety so my hound dog antics would have to wait.

I went into the building where her class was being held and chatted to everyone and saw everyones knitting they'd been working on. Then I told my daughter that it was so hot I decided to take her for icecream. But before we went I needed to run to the bathroom. (always a good idea you know)

After I washed my hands I did a little twirl in the mirror to check out my butt , like ya do, lol (had to see how it was looking in my cute little cream colored capris).... and *gasp* OMGoodness!!! there on one butt cheek was a three inch circle of smooshed duck/goose (can't tell at this stage) poop. Scat. Doodoo. Whatever you want to call it.

Do you have chills yet? Are you feeling embarassed for me yet?

I tried pulling my shirt down to cover the , you know, but it was too short. then I told my daughter to walk behind me which she promptly refused to do. Yeah, nice kid. I'll do the same for you someday. I reminded her that as her mother I had in my hands (or seat) the power to embarass her in front of her classmates.

She still refused.She said she would be laughing too hard to be embarassed.

I think I got out to the car without being seen.....

We went home.

I had eaten so much humble pie that I wasn't too hungry for icecream anymore but being the good mommy that I am I got changed and we went out again. Was it worth it? Is it worth being a duck owner?

I take one more look at those cute ducky faces in the picturesd above and ask myself "awwwwww.......what's a little scat between frinds?"

I Said What?..

I just love these digis by Bugaboo!! They have so much quirky character. :-) I have colored the image with Prismacolors and "goo gone" for blending. The papers are assorted from my stash and the sentiment from my own sick mind. The pearls are Recollection. And the stitching was done on a full size sewing machine. Here is a close up of the loving couple:

Hahahahaha!! And the pearly stitchy detail area...

And the other pearly stitchy detail area...

I made this for the folowing challenges:

Priscillastyles Midnight Madness sketch

Incy Wincy distress it (I distressed all the quilt pieces as well as the image)
The ABC Challenge You And Me

I think that's it for today! Thanks For coming by for a look. :-)