Just a quick post to let you know about another blog candy opportunity, but you’ll have to hurry – it ends tomorrow (April 3).  Ida is celebrating her 4000th blog hit and her CT selection.  She’s giving away 3 different prizes:

  and

  plus a surprise prize. Hurry over to her blog – you don’t want to miss out!

How’s that for a title? It’s all I could think of this morning – all of my creativity has been channeled towards crafting! I have really enjoyed playing with my paper and markers.  Last night Nadya joined me and colored a Butterfly with her markers (Crayola Pip-Squeaks) – a first for her and closely supervised by me!

What was I working so diligently on you might ask? Well, Cute Daisy May is having a Design Team call through April 13th – you can check their blog for more details.  If you’re not interested in the DT, they’re also running a weekly sketch challenge; the prize being a FREE download of your choice from the Cute Daisy May doodles collection.  Combine the DT Call, the Sketch, and the fact that my mom’s birthday is this weekend and I had no choice – a card MUST be made!

I printed Cute Daisy May Set 5 onto Whisper White CS (SU) and selected the little girl picking flowers from the set of 4.  I left her to dry for a couple of hours since I didn’t want my ink to run when I started coloring.  She’s colored in Stampin’ Write (SU) and Le Plume II (Marvy) markers with Spica clear glitter marker (Copic) on the flowers to add some sparkle.  I added the sky with my I Kan’Dee pastel chalk set (Pebbles).  After trimming the image, I used my Large Corner Rounder punch (SU) and matted the little girl on Lavender Lace CS (SU) that I had texturized with my CuddleBug Birds and Swirls folder and my Big Shot. The base card is 6×6 textured CS from DCWV and scored with my Scor-It.  I used silver organdy and bright pink grosgrain ribbons (Offray) from Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s.  The flowers are from the Island Pastel Calypso Tin (Prima) and the pearls are EK Success/Martha Stewart, both from Michaels. The adhesives I used were TomBow’s Mono permanent adhesive runner and Multi Liquid Glue.  I’m quite pleased with how my little girl turned out.  I’ll add a birthday sentiment to the inside and give her to my mom this weekend (it’s a good thing my mom doesn’t read my blog huh?!?!).  LOL

I know I mentioned a Mega, so let’s get to that too shall we?  As you may recall all of the OLD DSO Mega kits were retired as of April 1. Today the DSO Design Team introduced our newest EXCLUSIVE collaboration -  April Showers. This spring kit is all about the water -watery skies and watercolors!  Gorgeous watercolored elements (including exclusive spring and April themed WordArt and hand-drawn elements) and 30 textured papers will make this fabulous kit fun to work with and it’s on-sale NOW!

For those that were asking, our first swimming lesson was FANTASTIC! Nadya loved the water and never cried – even when she inadvertently got a face full of water.  The instructor feels she’ll do well and is going to start survival and swimming techniques with her next week. Yea! I’m so glad my baby doesn’t have the same fears I do!

I guess that’s all for now – today is laundry day and now that Nadya is up, I need to strip her bed and conquer Mount “Washmore” (LOL).  On a side note, my blog candy prize from Hanna Stamps arrived – and it’s awesome! I’ll show you in my next post, but I wanted to say thanks to Vicki and Kristi for my treat!

Wow – April 1st, another month is upon us! With that means new challenges at DSO, new products, new stores, and a freebie just for you!

First off, another edition of The Great Exchange is up at DSO.  This month we’re featuring Flitter Flutter (FREE this month) and To The Moon (on sale for $1) by our April Designer of the Month – Melanie Ann. We’ll continue with the QuickPage theme; this time we’ll be creating 8.5×11 or 12×12 QPs. So come on, show me what you’ve got – post a preview (low-resolution marked with preview) in the Gallery and leave us a link in this forum. Send the full-resolution file in either PNG or JPEG format (a zip file is fine) to me – and in return, you’ll get ALL of the QPs submitted this month. How great is that!?!? Here’s my QP using Flitter Flutter and one of Mel’s Scrap In a Flash templates:

We’ll combine the new store and new product categories!  Bannerwoman is now selling at MegaDoodleInspired and to celebrate she’s having a FABULOUS sale!

She has some AMAZING Photoshop styles, so you don’t want to miss this chance to get them without paying full price!

Brandy aka MegaDoodleInspired has some new templates in her store too.  This one is perfect for pool and party layouts or kits (it’s CU friendly).

And then this one (one of my favorites):

My dear friend Kristine of Wenchd Grafix has released Midnight Garden – I love the colors in this one.

In fact, I loved Kristine’s kit and Brandy’s template so much, that I created a QP for you!

Please don’t share my files, if you like the QP, send your friends here to get it for themselves.

I guess that’s all from me.  Today we start swimming lessons with my little one – her first time in a pool, so it’ll be either a great time or a miserable one!  Have a fabulous Wednesday!