Hippity Hoppity, I've got a Hangover!

Wowie did we have fun yesterday!! Angela was back on Hip Hop! She has some great specials running through today at the Unity Stamp Company. They're listed on her blog, so go check 'em out! You won't be sorry.

I've only got one little ATC to show so far today. I have a couple backlogged Swap-bot items that I absolutely MUST finish and they're to be painted. Once I'm happy with them, I'll blog about them, but right now, I'm still not thrilled, so they shall have to wait.

This one is kinda cute, though, I think. This week's Unity Addicts Challenge was to come up with a tiny Valentine with the following description: "one image, bright and colorful, Valentine-ish sentiment." I forgot the bright and colourful part. Oops?

Both the trees and the sentiment are from the September Kit of the Month: Friendship. Love. Miracles. The DP is from Memory Box's Sugardrop line. I used Brilliance ink in Pearlescent Orchid, Rocket Red and Pearlescent Rust. I also used Copic markers and Judikins Clear Detail embossing powder. In retrospect, I should have used the Rocket Red for the sentiment and left out the Orchid altogether.

That's all from me for now. Come back tomorrow and I'll have pics of the Chef Duff cake...

Valentine's Blog Candy at Scrap-Creations

Another blog candy opportunity! Kristen at Scrap-Creations is giving away some Basic Grey paper, a Martha Stewart punch and some cupcake stamps here. She will announce the winner on Valentine's Day.

Hmm...I don't see any Unity on her blog so far. Methinks she should be introduced!

I woke up this morning with a screaming headache. Instead of getting up early and posting here, bed and massive amounts of ibuprofen were the order of the day. The headache is subsiding somewhat, but I think another dose will be following as soon as it is safe to do so.

There was a discussion last night about gift card holders. I mentioned that I'd recently made one, but hadn't gotten a photo. That wasn't quite right. I forgot to take a photo before leaving the house. The spousal unit came to the rescue and took two photos, one of the inside and one of the out, while we were picking up a couple things on the way to the post office. He used his cell phone, hence the quality, or lack thereof, of the photographs. I am not complaining! I'm glad he was able to get them for me.

So, I don't remember where I found the link originally, but the tutorial for the gift card is here on the Hero Club blog.

The peeking snowman stamp I used on the front is from Impression Obsession. He came from a class I took at my local stamp shop, and is painted with Twinkling H2Os. The background of the card is Unity Stamp Company's Royal Day stamped with a green cat's eye chalk ink, so that the effect would be subtle. Unfortunately, due to the quality of the photo, you can't really see it at all.
Inside the card, I stamped the cute little mittens from Unity's December Kit of the Month with Ranger Distress Ink in Fired Brick. I slid in a gift card to Starbucks and I had the perfect little gift! I will be making many more of these throughout the year. They're really very easy and I think they're darling. Now that I have my first Nesties, I can emboss the circle or oval in the centre, too.

Blog Exposure Swap

Hi Everyone. I've mentioned Swap-bot a couple times before. Well, today I'm taking part in a Blog Exposure swap. Each of us has five partners to whom we send the link to our blogs. The intent is to gain each of us new readers and, more importantly in my opinion, to give each of us something new to read.

For the record, we do not necessarily send to the same people we receive links from. These are the links I received and some random impressions.

http://puddlebugskidstuff.com/blog/ - There doesn't seem to be a lot written yet, but what there is, I've quite enjoyed.

http://maistyle.livejournal.com/ - So far I'm giggling at her Random Facts. The poor dear just broke her first bone (her nose!) and I feel so bad! I've never officially broken anything, though there have been two instances where it has been questionable. But her poor nose! All I can think is "OUCH!!"

The next one I visited was http://afrogladycreation.blogspot.com. OMG, it's a stamping blog! With blog candy, no less!! How have I missed this one before? She also has a more general blog here.

The last one I've received so far is http://craftytammie.blogspot.com. I found a cookie recipe there. I'm a happy girl.

My last partner has not sent yet, but I'm sure I will get that link soon. I am looking forward to seeing what it may be. Now it is my turn to pass along my blog link to the people I am to send to. I wanted to write this first in case anyone wanted to check out my other partners' blogs too. Little warning, though - you might just get sucked into reading for a couple hours. But that's the point, isn't it?

Blog Candy at Crafting & Living in Japan

Good news, Campers! Michelle at Crafting & Living in Japan has some blog candy to give away!! She's got two gorgeous stamps and 5, that's right, count 'em, F-I-V-E Copic Markers!! Click here for the post. She'll be having her daughter draw a name from all who enter on January 31. That's tomorrow, folks.

Hey, and while you're there, check out some of her projects and leave her some love! She's another Air Force wife and she's been doing Project 365.

Eyelets 1, Carole 0

Good morning everyone. Happy Hip Hop Hangover!

I do not know what was wrong with me yesterday, but I worked on this one card all darned day! I just could not get it right to save my life. I was working on two challenges at once, so maybe that was my problem. First was the Unity Addicts Challenge from Wednesday. Lisa challenged us to make a card using blue, red, pink and yellow. Oh, and to make it all about love. Okay, says I. I can do that. No problem.

Well, then I saw Amber's sketch challenge for this week. I thought, why not combine the two. That's where I ran into trouble. My first problem was in trying to decide if a DP was okay to use if it had a little touch of green in it. I decided that would be cheating, so that was out. Then, which card to use as the background? I finally settled on yellow. Okay, which yellow?? Come back to that. Let's work on the main parts first.

Okay, then...we have our hearts stamped. Do we mount them on anything? I'm wishing I had Nesties about this point. I cut the cherry heart into an oval. WAAAAY too much white. Okay, so we'll fussy cut it. By this point, I'd chosen the card. The hearts changed it. They looked too stark against the original choice. Good thing I hadn't glued anything down yet! Change card, glue stuff down. Ooooh, I need to add a little something to that heart. So I stamped it on the patterned paper (from the Basic Grey Euphoria line, btw) and popped up the little bitty heart. Much better.

So, brads or eyelets. I don't have red brads, so eyelets it is. Remember, I'm trying to follow the sketch and it asks for 3 "somethings" down either side. I totally bungled the eyelets. I mean they looked awful. It's only the second time I've used the cropadile and my hands are shaking and I can't hold anything steady. Marks on the card? They no longer matter when the card slips. I put them all in just in case and try to figure out just how I'm going to compensate for that extra hole I've now got.

Well, yeah. I did say extra hole. I should've taken a "before" picture. I covered it all up with Prima flowers. Three on each side, so it stuck with the sketch. And it brought in more of the yellow. Yes, you can see a peek of one of the eyelets in the photo, but I've adjusted the petals and used glossy accents to glue them in place so none can be seen. I may go back and add a little bling to the centres of the top-most flowers.

So that's my little adventure. Hope I made at least one person smile. Have a great weekend everybody!

So, the Craft and Hobby Association is having a show this week out in California. Everyone in the industry is there. No CHA for me of course...big bummer that is! Some day I would dearly love to go. Making Memories is doing a giveaway sometime in the next half hour. They seem to be doing a whole bunch of them during CHA. I'm not sure how many each day, but it sure looks like it would be worth keeping an eye on their blog for the next few days. They're also giving peeks of the show and previews of some of their new offerings. Definitely something to see! So go! What are you waiting for??

Happy Hip Hop Hangover

I've been lax this week. Bad Carole!

The Unity team is off to CHA this week. I admit it. I'm seriously jealous. I really wish I were going, too. I know they'll have a lot of fun, even though they'll be working their hind ends off. I can hardly wait to see what new things they will be unveiling when they return.

The first card for today was done for one of yesterday's challenges. The marvelous Jeanne challenged everyone to use unusual ribbon, trim or lace. Okay. That took me a while, but during Hip Hop, we started talking about chocolate. That was what finally flipped the light switch in my head. Of course!! I had some cut offs from the ribbon we use at work for packaging. Chocolate ribbon and the Kiss stamp from the November KOTM "enjoy YOUR STORY...laugh" - perfect!

I used a cocoa brown chalk ink, which I then heat embossed with clear embossing powder, for the Kiss. I wanted it to really feel like chocolate. The background is another Unity stamp, Deco Hound, which I inked up diagonally with several different shades of pink chalk Colorbox Chalk Ink.
My other upload today is a layout I did back in December. I was talked into posting it on SCS last night after admitting that I'd chickened out on applying for the Unity Scrapbooking DT.
The photo is of my younger son on his first Christmas. He was trying to eat the mallet from a xylophone my Grandmother had sent the boys. The background is brayered Distress Ink, using a technique from Tim Holtz's blog and the Worn Grid background stamp. I stamped the sleigh twice. Three times, actually. The first time was directly on the patterned paper, but it looked bad, so I decided to pop it up. The copics did not look very bright on the dark coloured paper, so I stamped it again on white and then paper-pieced the coloured bits onto the stamped and embossed sleigh. The stocking was also stamped twice. I embossed only the upper portion (the bow, really) on the background, and the full stocking on the white. I then used a red copic and gold and clear spica markers to make it all nice and sparkly. Both of those stamps come from the set Christmas Elegance.
That's all from me for now. I'm off to join the HHH chat on the Unity Forum at Split Coast Stampers. If you haven't been, please do come join us. It's a lot of fun!

Hip Hop Hangover

Goooood morning everybody! At least, I think it's still morning. It is, right? Hip Hop was great fun yesterday, as usual. I think the spousal unit is finally starting to understand that it's a regular occurrence and not just a one-time thing.

I haven't gotten any new cards made, but I did get three new ATCs done. Two are the same and are for a Swap-bot Snowman ATC swap. I used Snow-one Like You from Unity Stamp Company. The main differences are from the different areas of the patterened paper I used for the background. The snow ground was done with Stickles.


The other one I did was for the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer ATC swap. I used All Santa's Reindeer for this one and I'm really pleased with how it came out. The background is Twinkling H2Os and the reindeer is heat embossed, then coloured with Copic Markers. He wouldn't be Rudolph without the bling for his bright red nose.
That's pretty much it from me today. I hope to have a few more goodies to upload in the next few days. I'm off to go create - after a nice, hot cup of coffee! My hands are still frozen from the house being 62 degrees this morning. Hope everybody has a good one!

New Blog Candy Op

Good morning everybody!

Yeah, okay, so it's 4pm. Give me a break. I always say "good morning" no matter what time of day it is.

So anyway, Melissa over at Creating From the Heart! is having a birthday and to celebrate, she's giving away some blog candy. She's including some Shimmerz, which I've been wanting to try out, and 3 Copic markers. If I am fortunate enough to win, I'll be passing along the Copics in some blog candy of my own, since I already have a set of Copics - and I've got a couple things here that I'm holding onto for future candy. Nope, I'm not gonna say what they are just yet. It's a surprise. I bet, though, that if you have been reading my blog, you can get a really good idea of what might be included.

I'll have more pics to post in a day or two. Still dealing with sick kids. At this point I'm beginning to think it's never going to end. At least I've got my voice back. Still coughing, but it's at a level I can deal with. Work is starting to be worrisome. We only worked about 8.5 hours last week. This is exceedingly bad for the paycheck.

Lastly, if you could wave pointy objects or send good thoughts in the direction of the spousal unit - he spent some time in the ER today and is having to schedule some tests. Most likely everything is okay, but he's in some pain and I'm kinda concerned. Thanks.

Hip Hop Hangover

And boy am I hungover!! No, I haven't had a thing to drink, except some fake coffee - you know, that instant cappuccino stuff. It's definitely not the real thing! I'm just plain exhausted today.

In any case, I am SOOO glad that Hip Hop is back! I really missed everyone. This was the first time I actually managed to complete any of the challenges. One of them was a hair too late to count, thanks to an uncooperative computer, but that's okay. It was the first time I'd ever used the Cuttlebug I bought from another SCSer, so I'm particularly pleased with it. I'm not positive on the sentiment. I think I might remove it and stamp directly on the card with plain purple ink. What do you guys think?


I also made 2 more Prince of Peace Christmas cards and 3 ATCs. Two are using one of Lisa's snowmen and one is Rudolph from Bitty Christmas Tags. I think the snowman ATCs need clear stickles, so I'm not posting a picture of them at this time.
Now for the big coolness. Angela has made a few changes over at Unity Stamp Co. This is a good thing! There are new kits (uh oh...the spousal unit is going to faint), new specials and free shipping until midnight tonight! Click on the pic below and it will take you to all the deets.
Well, that's it for me for now. Have a great one!

Copic Candy

More blog candy, peeps. This one is big, big, BIG!! It's Copic markers. Yeah, how's that for big?? So head over here to Melanie Muenchinger's blog, Hands, Head & Heart for a chance to win a set of 36 Copic Ciaos. Trust me, you want to do this. They're fabulous markers. If you already own some, go check out her blog anyway. She's got a great tutorial posted.

Good luck to all!

QKD release party

Queen Kat Designs is offering blog candy, folks. You need to head over there and comment on this post between Jan. 6 and Jan. 15, plus be a follower of her blog and post to your own blog about the blog candy in order to be eligible to win. It's all for her release party, which is today and it looks like a lot of fun will be had with sneak peaks and challenges.

I don't have any QKD stamps yet, so I'll be using either Unity or Lockhart stamps for any challenges, since those are mostly what I have. Come play along. Challenges are a great way to stretch yourself.

Pumpkin Card

Just putting up one of the very first cards I made. The stamp is Karen Lockhart's Pumpkins in a Wheelbarrow. She doesn't sell directly to the public, so either check your local stamp shop, or the link I've provided goes to Ellen Hutson, LLC, which does carry Karen's entire line, as well as a wide variety of other paper crafting supplies. I'm thinking she should carry Unity Stamps, but that's me. The card was done during a class I took at the Queen's Ink - from none other than Karen Lockhart. It was a class on coloured pencil techniques and was a lot of fun, as well as being quite informational. Karen is a lovely woman. I hope she comes back again this year. If she does, I'll definitely be taking any classes she teaches.

Unity Explosion

I mentioned to Eryn, who is sadly blogless, that there had been a Unity explosion in my house. I've mentioned before that I've only been stamping in earnest since August of last year. I bought my first Unity stamps on August 13.

I took a class at The Queen's Ink in Savage Mill and the instructor was teaching us about all the different types of inks and the types of stamps. Then she told us about this new company she'd discovered, which combined the best parts of both wood-mounted and unmounted stamps. Colour me curious, but I wanted to know more. It took me a couple days to get around to hitting Google. The day I did, I bought Love is Toxic, Lovin' From the Oven, Together Forever (no longer available as a kit, but all parts are available as wood-mounted singles), and Angela's "Random Background Special", which was 6 of Unity's fabulous background stamps for $24 instead of $48. Yes, I found Unity online just in time to walk into a fantastic sale.

The thing is, Unity has a fantastic sale of some kind or another every week! Angela, the owner of Unity, always comes up with something wonderful for Hip Hop Thursdays. Often there are new releases, sometimes in bundles only for that day. She really spoils her customers. She and her Design Team give away some $300 in stamps during every Hip Hop, which is held on the Unity Forum at Split Coast Stampers. It's a huge amount of fun, though hard to keep up with at first. I've given up trying to get anything actually accomplished while chatting, even though there are stamping challenges to participate in.

If you go read her blog, she highlights different stampers almost daily. She also posts inspirational quotes. I love to read Angela's blog. It just makes me smile.

So anyway, that was a really long-winded way to get around to the purpose of this particular post. You see, a while back, I acquired a rather large amount of Copic markers. Insane amount is probably closer to the truth. I was hoping to sell some of them, because there were more than I could use, so I put the word out. Long story short, the Copics went to Minnesota and I now have a lot of new Unity stamps...in addition to all the stamps I've bought (and won!) in the interim. I've had a Unity explosion occur in my house. So I took a photograph of them all. I tried to contain them. I was only partially successful.

So here they are, in all their glory - minus the B handle, which was on my stamping table (aka the dining table.) Yes, that's Xander being nosy. He's up to 3.9 lbs now.
For the terminally curious, here is the mess I made getting some ATCs and Christmas cards done. It also shows some of the goodies I got from my Secret Santa...a big shout out to Stephydoodles!! Thank you chica!

Sister Spindle

Just a quick post to show a photo of a beautiful spindle that I got as a gift last year at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival from my friend, Shelly. She has a matching spindle, except her roses are in red and pink. Both were made by Tom Golding of Golding Fiber Tools. I'm spinning some blue silk on mine, also shown in the photograph. I bought it from Flock Bransonas. I'd link a website, but theirs seems to have disappeared. They have attended MDSW each year that I can remember, however.
As you can see, it's a truly beautiful spindle. It's one of my heavier spindles, but it spins like mad. I totally love it! Thank you again, Shelly. I still can't believe it's mine.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope it finds you well and happy.

First things first. There is some AWESOME blog candy over at Papercrafts by Rach. Deadline is Jan. 9, 2009 at 9pm GMT. Of course, if you guys don't post comments on her blog, maybe I'll win??

I'm slowly catching up on everything I need to get accomplished. I've sent out several owed swaps over the past couple days, so that makes me feel better. I'm still behind. I think that's a perpetual state of being for me.

The next project will be a couple snowmen ATCs. The great news is that I got some Unity love in the mail yesterday! I've been waiting for this box for a while, but it was kinda my fault it took so long to get here. I made a massive trade on a large set of Copics that I had for some stamps. It took me a while to decide exactly which stamps I wanted. It was really hard to decide! The problem? I want 'em ALL!! And every time I thought I had it down, they'd release something new! Plus I was trying to maximize the available funds, so to speak. I knew I wanted to use the Snow-one Like You set, which was designed by my friend, Lisa Hetrick. They're here now!

I've also got to finish a watercolour card that I started before Christmas. The painting is done, but it needs to be made into a card. I will, of course, post pictures once they are completed.

I have pics of some of the things I just sent out, but they've not been edited for size yet, so I'll have to post them later as well.

For now, I'm going to go cough, stamp and paint at the table and have a Red Bull while I'm at it.

So, how lame am I? Sara tagged me on...um...November 28. Yes, I'm that lame. So now I get to come up with seven things about me that you guys don't know. The fun part will be tagging 7 of you peeps!

1. I am a massive bookworm. I've been reading since I was 3.5.

2. I am petrified of going to the dentist. I'm working on getting over this one, but really I still need valium for anything more than a cleaning - and I do better with a cleaning if I'm medicated for that, too.

3. I played the clarinet (both B flat and E flat) and the baritone saxophone in high school. I learned to play the flute as well and I still noodle around on both clarinet and flute on occasion.

4. I wanted to play for a professional orchestra. It wasn't a "realistic" goal, according to my family and I didn't have the courage to attend college as a music major, so I lost my chops. Sometimes I still think about it, though.

5. I was born on Easter - and my grandparents' wedding anniversary. My birthday fell on Easter a second time in 1980 and will again in 2042.

6. My children were all born in even years when I was an odd age. The days of the month were (not in order of age) 7, 9, 11 and 13. Holly broke the series and was born at 10:52 pm on the 14th.

7. During most of my childhood, I had 7 living grandparents and 3 living great-grandparents. Nanny (my mom's mother) remarried when I was about 6 or 7, so I briefly had 8 grandparents, but he passed away when I was 12 and I only met him once. Oh! And I had another 2 grandparents when my mom remarried the first time, but I never met them at all, so I don't count them. I got one extra when Mom got married in 1989. She's the only one left and she sends me the nicest rosaries every so often.

Gramps - 1987, cancer
Grandma Rinear - 1989, a blood clot following major surgery
Grandpa Rinear - 1991 (this one was SO hard - he had a heart attack with me standing there helpless to do anything)
Grandpa Pinson - 1992, cancer
Great-grandmother - not sure. They didn't actually tell me until after Papa John died. (I think we were in AK, so 94 or 95)
Papa John - 1996, heart attack
Grandmother - 1997
Grammy - 1999, old age (96)
Nanny - 2001, complications from a stroke
Grandma Pinson - December 23, 2002, a stroke and age (she was near 90)

What made me think of this are the recent losses that Tonya and Marsha (and Jimmi's sister) have suffered. Although it looks really, really bad in print, I was SO lucky! I had them for so many years. I had a lot of friends who never knew their grandparents...and I had an abundance of them. Other than the few I didn't (or barely) knew, I was able to spend so much time with them. I have so many good memories and so many things they all taught me - and the love I was shown. On both sides, I was the first grandchild, and for many years, Nanny's only grandchild.

It was because of them that I wanted to have my children while I was young. I wanted to give them grandparents. I wanted them to have what I did. And while I miss them all terribly, I have pictures. I started scrapbooking in part to keep their memories alive. So I want to thank Sara for tagging me and Tonya, in particular, for reminding me not what I've lost, but what and who I've been fortunate enough to have in my life.

With that said, here are my 7 tagees:
Lisa
Jacqueline
Tonya
Ashley
Lee
Tanis
the other Carole (I had to!)
And if she wants to, my dearest friend Jenny. I won't make it official, since she would be #8.

I guess I've never been very good at following rules.

Hip Hop Holiday Hangover!

I can't believe I hopped until some ungodly hour last night. Er, this morning. But! I have pictures finally. So, without further delay, here we go.

These are all for an ATC swap on Swap-bot that called for ladybugs. I tried to use stamps other than Unity - but I just couldn't do it! I do have a few other ladybugs, but I just like these more. There are actually two swaps involved. One is for one ATC to one partner and the other is for two ATCs to a single partner. I decided to make each partner an extra.

The first two use the Big Cute Bug stamp. I stamped them, embossed them, coloured them with Copics and cut them out before putting them on their backgrounds. The first one I did, I actually cut around the antennae. Never again!!!

I got smart on the second one and embossed the antennae directly onto the background. I think it looks a lot better - and it was so much faster and easier.

I used twinkling H2Os on the backgrounds of the next two. The first one came out really dark. Then, of course, I couldn't find the ink I wanted for the sentiment - I found it last night, but these two have been being flattened, as they were a little on the wavy side from all the water. Once I added the Spica marker and the silver embossing, I think they perked up quite a bit. Both the trail of ladybugs and the sentiment are from the Cute as a Bug set, which I think will be sold only as single wood-mounted slides after the new year. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, Angela!)

The last one has the same brayered background as the first two and the ladybug trail from the second two. The flowers, which were stamped in three different chalk inks, came from the August KOTM - Remember Happiness. For the sentiment, which came from Fall Festival, I used twinkling H2Os and reverse embossing with clear embossing powder.

My next project will be a couple scrapbook pages and then some snowman ATCs for another swap. I'm so glad classes are over. If I can finish up Christmas cards, I'll really be rocking!

Happy December! Where on earth did the time go? I have been a busy little beaver the past week, hence no posts from me.

I had six paintings to do for one of my classes. That was pretty much all I did Thanksgiving weekend (and the weekend before and all this week!) I got the last one turned in and now I just have to make it through the final critique next Thursday and that class will be over. My Drawing 1 class has its final critique on Monday morning. I'll be posting a couple of the drawings afterward. There are a few I'm actually kind of proud of.

So, Hip Hop! Fun as usual! I get so recharged by everyone there. I won the Time for Tea stamp from this Unity kit from the lovely Maren for guessing that she was wearing a red shirt. I don't have that one and it had been on my wish list, so I am totally thrilled! Okay, I would've been thrilled no matter what, but getting one off my wish list made it extra sweet.

I finally found something to finish the Prince of Peace card from a couple posts ago. What do you think? I am thinking it is just about a million times better now. It looks finished. Lee was right. It needed some blingage. I am much happier with it now.I'm working on a few ATCs this morning. I'm using the giant ladybug from Cute as A Bug. I'll post pics shortly. Need to get 'em finished first. I'm having fun embossing right now. I admit it, I'm a glitter girl.

Hey, if anyone knows how to make the background of this blog something other than stark white, can you please let me know? I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

Have a great one.