Happy Saturday! Nadya and I made it home from our trip to Montana relatively unscathed – but rather exhausted! Yesterday was asleep-in, do laundry, sort mail, and unpack sort of day… This morning little one had a class at the Natural History Museum, so of course, Mommy and Daddy went too! She liked looking at the live turtles and playing with the models, though the discussion was a bit over her head.  After the “talk” was finished, she wandered through the rest of the Museum, spending most of her time “excavating” dinosaur eggs! And a trip to the mall wouldn’t be complete without a ride… Now she’s napping and DH is finishing the mowing, so I thought I would squeeze in a little crafting time – Father’s Day is next Sunday, therefore my cards need to be mailed Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Here’s what I came up with for my Father-In-Law – and *gasp* I didn’t use anything digital – nope no Photoshop either (except for the photo editing of course). Now that you’ve had time to pick your jaw up off of the floor, let’s have a look: I started by stamping the vintage tractor (SU-Tractor Time retired) in Tuxedo Black Memento ink on Confetti Naturals CS (SU) and then colored it with my Copics (G94, YG63, YG67, W3, W5, and W7).  I trimmed the image to 2×3 and then distressed the edges and stippled all over with Peeled Paint Distress ink (Ranger). My card base is from my stash but closely resembles Always Artichoke (SU).  I trimmed a More Mustard (SU) panel to 4×5.25 and embossed it with my Funky Flowers CB folder.  I used scraps of my CS base wrapped with a sheer mustard-colored organdy ribbon from my stash and layered that over my embossed panel.  I cut a 1.75” circle from a scrap of Confetti Naturals with my nestabilities and hand wrote my sentiment in Always Artichoke (SU).  The circle is matted with another scrap from my CS base.  I used my Peeled Paint Distress ink on the edges and for stippling. I adhered the layers and tucked the yellow Forget-M-Not bouquet (Prima) between the stamped image and the sentiment layers. I added chocolate baubles (Crafty Connection) in place of brads or eyelets.  All in all, I’m pleased with the outcome and I managed to squeeze in a few challenges too!

Challenges I Played In:

• Caardvarks – June Challenge
• C.R.A.F.T Challenge – Father’s Day
• Cooking with Katie – Recipe Challenge #19
• Sweet Stop Sketches – SSS60
• Double Dutch Challenges – Father’s Day
• Hand Stamped Sentiments – Father’s Day
• Really Reasonable Ribbon – Masculine
• Simple Doodles – Just 4 You Dad
• Tellen’s Place – Father’s Day

Now I just have to finish the cards for my Dad and my DH! It’s gonna be a busy weekend!

It’s been one of those weeks here in the Desert…lots and lots of wind! This morning wasn’t too bad – Nadya and I were able to squeeze in a short visit to the park after Scaly Slimy (a class/demo on toads at the Natural History Museum)  and lunch before Mother Nature sent us home! We found a couple of those wind spinner twirly flowers, so at least Nadya enjoys the burst of spinning color through the window. Yasha ended up working until almost 9 PM last night and then had to be back at noon today – I’m still holding out hope that he’ll be home tomorrow so we can celebrate Easter with family time and a little egg hunt for Nadya.  We opted out of a traditional basket filled with candy again this year – I have a few plastic eggs to hide for her and she has a couple of cute baskets from her Baba to collect them in.  Her favorite soccer ball was flattened thanks to the teeth on our male German Shepherd, so I did opt to replace it for her as a little gift from us.

Before I get into my creations – I want to remind everyone of some fabulous deals that you won’t want to miss (ads are clickable): Ok, now that you’ve been reminded, I’ll move on to my creative ventures. I loved the He Is Risen digital stamp set from Sweet N Sassy stamps so much that I “had” to create another card with it – this is one has more digital features than many I have done of late.  Like the bird nest card from Thursday, I created the shaped card base in Photoshop (I need to test cut the SVG files and then I’ll be happy to share them), only this time I used Jodiann’s Ribbon Weave and Easter Cross styles and I opted not to trim the purple edge away from the bracket. I used the 09 KutUps font to create the mat and then added a stroke outline on a 2nd layer with a bevel style to create the embossed illusion.  Then I layered my digi-stamp over the mat, centered it, and removed the white edges to allow the mat to show through.  The fabulous leaves and flowers are commercial use extractions from Kim Broedelet designs – you can find them here.  I printed everything out on Georgia Pacific CS and let it sit for a few minutes to dry, while I rummaged in my craft closet for my Prismacolor pencils and blender marker.  I colored the image with my pencils and then blended with my Prismacolor colorless blender as I still haven’t been brave enough to breakout the Gamsol and stumps in the house.  To add some sparkle and shine to the flowers, I lightly dabbed them with Iridescent Medium (Winsor & Newton) using a small  dry brush – my printer ink is water based, so I didn’t want to smear the image by applying too of the medium. I added the stitching with a purple Pilot G-2 pen covered by coat of clear Gelly Glaze pen for interest/texture and the purple adhesive pearls (Michaels) for dimension.   I’d love to know what you think – and as a little Easter gift, I’m giving you the jpeg printable card (minus the stamped image of course) – you can download it here.  Have a fabulous and restful Easter – and celebrate the greatest gift of all with your family.

Yesterday was digi-day for Sweet n Sassy Stamps at SNR – which means a new challenge (SNSDD10 – Easter) and a new prize for playing along (using Sweet n Sassy images isn’t required).  I tried valiantly to finish my card last night for the early bird prize too – but between gymnastics, the park, and dinner it just didn’t happen!  Fortunately we have until next Wednesday to complete the challenge and still earn a free sentiment set. Thanks Korin! That being said, here’s my card – I think I’ll give it away as well; I already have someone special in mind.I LOVE that cross image – it’s a new release from Sweet n Sassy Stamps – you can find it here.  Though sentiments are included in the set, I opted to created my own in Photoshop – I wanted to tie the usual Happy Easter that’s often accompanied with a bunny or eggs with a deeper reason for celebrating.  I printed the stamp and sentiment on Neenah classic crest white cs – my first time using this paper.  I must say it allowed more bleeding than I expected, but I like the bright white finish. While giving the ink a few minutes to dry, I found an awesome sketch challenge at The Sweet Stop that I decided to follow. For my Designer Paper, I returned to Photoshop and printed one of the awesome papers in Designs By Kristine’s  newest kit – Cheerful (on-sale for a short time). I loved the texture and the color scheme reminded me of dawn about to break – so it tied in perfectly with my image.  My image is colored with copic markers and spica pens.  I used shimmer chalks to shade the background – using a light blue except near the center of the cross where I used yellow and a circle mask to give the subtle illusion of dawn breaking – again tying in with the image and the DP I had selected. Since I didn’t have any fixative spray and I didn’t want the chalk smearing or wiping off, I used some aerosol hairspray – the Aquanet inexpensive type works best, but since I don’t use that on my hair, I used my Pantene since that’s what I had on hand.  It worked well and my card is now lightly scented! I trimmed the image and matted it with Ballet Blue scrap cs.  I edged the DP and Barely Banana card base with a MS punch – our Wal-Mart clearanced several punch around the page sets before Christmas. I added a teeny bit more texture to the DP using my Big Shot and an SU texture plate.  The sentiment was cut out using my Circle Nestabilities and tucked in behind the edge of my image panel.  The ribbon is from my stash.  I added the tiny pearls (Michaels) to the ribbon as a finishing touch. To “round out” my card and anchor my image, I added white and purple flowers from Prima – I love these self-adhesive flowers and wish I could find more of them! There you have it – probably more detail than you wanted, but detail nonetheless.  I really enjoyed creating this card – the image just “spoke” to me and everything came together from there!  I’d love to know what you think too!

It’s time for me to close and begin the much less fun and creative but oh so necessary task of laundry and house tidying!  With a toddler around, it seems like a never-ending task – but she’s beyond worth it!  What? You’d like a little peak from our activities yesterday?  Alright – just a peak (then run to Jodiann’s blog this weekend – she used Kim’s newest kit Merry Around and a photo of my little one to create a STUNNING scrapbook layout):

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Have a fabulous Friday and weekend!