Wow, I can't believe the last blog I made was right before Christmas, that was quite a long time ago. So much has happened since then. I went down to NC to see my family the day after Christmas, and ended up staying longer than I wanted due to car issues. The fuel pump died on me while I was down there. My dad replaced the battery in my car, then next thing you know, it wouldn't start. I was upset because I wanted to leave new years eve day early, but car wouldn't run. I guess it was a blessing that it happened while I was there and not in the mountains somewhere driving home! The trip down was exhausting, it is a long drive, but this time especially trecherous for me. I had fog and freezing rain for the majority of the day. I was what you call, "white knuckle driving" for quite some time. I wanted to meet up with my SCS friends that live down there, but I was just beat after that.
We had some nice family photos taken too. I look terrible in the pictures, but it was nice to have the family with the kids getting so big now. The last time we did the photo thing was back in 2004, my son is 10 now so quite the difference in him and my niece (they are 6mos apart). I looked different too, I was much much bigger then, my face was huge. I guess I was too. I guess outside of the recent 30 pound weightloss, I must have lost more along the way but just not at one time.
I'm starting a website for my cards. This is quite the project. I have 5 photoboxes full of my cards, roughly 400 cards. The website is a pain in the butt, cuz I have to take the photos, obviously, but I have to shrink them down in paint before they look right. One photo box alone, took 3 hours to photo and sort, now I have to shrink them too. OMG, this is going to take me forever, and the worst part is, I really have no clue what I am doing there. Hopefully though, it will be worth it. When I do craft fairs, several people have asked if I had a website, so maybe I can sell some more cards.

Here are some of the cards I've made in the past few months:
This card was made for a color challenge on SCS. It called for pretty in pink, rich razzleberry and soft suede. I didn't have suede so I used the close to cocoa.
I made this card for my friend Anne (jdmommy) featured stamper challenge and the color challenge. I really like it with the red, blue and brown, I think it came out pretty, and it was a tribute to my friend, so what is better than that.

This card was made for the sketch challenge found on splitcoaststampers.com I used olive, razzleberry, pale plum and Stampin Up Designer series paper, (dsp). I just got this stamp set so I decided to play with it a bit. It is a fun set to you. A little out of my comfort zone as far as images, I think I'm more of an elegant, vintage type of stamper, this is a little more playful. I like it!

I made this card for a challenge on Splitcoast (SCS), it was to use pink, so I used several pinks for this. I actually was looking thru SU's book, and saw a sample card where they stamped a flower and cut it vertically three ways, then it had crinkled paper in the background (bg), I thought it was cool, but I wanted to change it up, so this is what I came up with. Cutting the main image equally was the challenge. I had to stamp it first, then cut it. The mounts were easy just 1/4 inch larger.


This card was made for the inspiration challenge on SCS. I saw this pendant, it was a circle it had a green square with a dragonfly on it, then it had 3 little baubles hanging off of it. The circle pendant made me think, oh lets make a circle with a dragonfly in it, then this card just evolved. It was tricky with the top panel because I wanted 3 dragonflies, and to get them to fit the right way was an issue. Also had an issue with the placement of the circles. This truly is a hand-crafted card. It took me a long time to get this card "just-right".

This card was part of the challenge, but it was a blue pendant with black flowers and a dragonfly on it. It was hung by a silver chain, hence the silver ribbon. I stamped with black craft ink, then heat embossed the image.

This card was for a color challenge, bashful blue, ruby red, and close to cocoa. Again, I wanted to use my fun stamp set. I gave this card to my friend Tracy for her birthday. She was impressed. To me, it's not my greatest work, because this stampset isn't really my style as I stated before.
This card was for a SCS challenge too, to "cut it out", I wanted to make a masculine card, I seldom make these. I was looking in the SU idea book, and saw a picture from Halloween, and liked the layout, so I adjusted it a bit using this Asian set. I changed the colors to Kraft, Choc Chip and Kiwi Kiss. I really like this card. I think it is elegant and classy, and very masculine.


This was an inspiration challenge card. I got so many compliments on this card, and it was a quick and easy card for me. I think it took me about 15 minutes to make. What the inspiration piece was, was a dark purple scarf with a black lace border. So I used Lavendar lace for my base, then took a piece of black, used a punch to mimic lace, then took another piece of lavendar and stamped my images in lavendar and black. I went around the edge of the base of the card with another stamp from the same set in black. Easy peasy! I added a sparkle ribbon too.

This was a featured stamper challenge card. Karen Barber, who makes awesome, vintage cards, and just elegant cards all around was the featured stamper. This card is very similar to hers. On these challenges, you change two or more things. I kept the integrity of her first card by using pretty much the same colors, and used the same SU dsp. I like it.