New Baby under a Blue Moon

Good morning! We are hunkering down in anticipation of another big snow, so I decided it was time to make a bright and cheerful card.



I was trying to use the Stamping 411 sketch for this week to make this card, but I just couldn't resist moving the sentiment off-center so that I could add a little ribbon knot. I kept taking it off and making it fit the sketch exactly, but in the end, I decided the knot needed to stay. The card seemed more balanced with it, for one thing, and for another, I had that scrap of ribbon left from another project and wanted to use it up! So I altered the sketch a bit.


The color inspiration came from a card of MaryJo Price-Williams' from last fall, I think, but this card has nothing to do with it other than the colors used. I like how the Ballet Blue gives the So Saffron and Garden Green a little pop.

Supplies:
So Saffron, Garden Green, Ballet Blue, Whisper white cs, So Saffron dsp
Nursery Necessities stamp set
So Saffron, Garden Green, Ballet Blue ink
So Saffron 5/8" ribbon (retired)
Scallop oval and large oval punches
dimensionals
paper snips
Hugs die cut (Occ. Mini)

Asian Artistry Mojo Monday

So we got buried in snow this weekend--28 inches in 24 hours!--which melted a little yesterday, but we have another storm coming on Tuesday night, so I think we'll just get pushed under again. Thank goodness for my hubby and his strong back--the city regulations state that all sidewalks have to be cleared within 5 hours of a snowfall and we have quite a bit of sidewalk in front of our row house! Luckily, we also have great neighbors on our block, so everyone pitches in and helps out. It was a regular snow-shoveling block party on Saturday morning!


Because of the snow and needing to cook (I made a huge pan of vegetable lasagna and a chocolate cake for Cheesefare week this week--last dairy before Lent!), I didn't do any stamping this weekend.

So this morning, it was time to get back to work. I'm pretty proud of myself; I actually did a Mojo Monday sketch on a Monday! I almost didn't do the sketch this week because I thought it looked pretty hard, but then I saw Mary Fish's take on it, and decided maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all. My card is definitely inspired by hers, but I made it my own with the PPA color challenge of Melon Mambo, Pretty in Pink and Black, plus the Asian Artistry set.The tricky thing about the sketch, as you might imagine, was the central panel with the curved bottom. I fiddled and fiddled with it before I had something I liked. Actually, I spent most of the morning on this card! I couldn't believe how long it took me to figure out all the elements, especially since the stamping was so straight forward--no coloring or anything!


Supplies:
Basic Black, Melon Mambo, Pretty in Pink, Whisper White cs, Night and Day dsp
Asian Artistry, Vintage Vogue labels
Melon Mambo, Basic Black ink
5/8" black satin ribbon
paper snips
vintage (black) brads, paper piercing tool, mat pack
big shot/circles #2 die--I cut a bunch of these at my upline's house a while back just to have them around!

Sun Rises over Japan

Huh?, you say. Well, lemme explain. No wait, is too long. Lemme summarize. (Yes, I'm a Princess Bride fan). La Zindorf posted this funky tutorial earlier this week and I had to try it right away! Her card had a more vintage funky vibe to it, but because of a few substitutions I had to make, I think my final project kind of has an Asian flair to it and vaguely reminds me of the Japanese flag. So there you have it.

I actually had almost all the ink and most of the other supplies on hand--that always makes it easier. I just substituted the vine from Thoughts and Prayers for the vine on the Vintage Vogue set, which I don't have. The other little thing I changed was the gold stamping--my cheapie generic gold pigment pad that I had for a long time dried up, so when I went to stamp with it, that was a no-go! Instead, I stamped in Versamark and embossed it clear, following the tutorial instructions (except for the vine--I had to stamp/emboss the vines before sponging the tempting turquoise to resist the ink) and then at the end, I used a gold uniball gel pen (like the white one but gold) to go over all the embossed parts and make them look gold stamped. Sort of gave it a gold leaf look, but I like the funky vibe and the bright colors. Oh, the other change was to use Rich Razzleberry instead of Elegant eggplant because I don't have that color ink yet and it was an easy substitution.

The only little oopsies are that I didn't quite get all the crumbs of clear emboss powder off the page before embossing, so there is a bit of feathering here and there (live and learn, and then get Luvs), and I forgot to wipe off the darker sponged ink on the embossed edges before applying gold gel pen, which gives the gold a gradient effect, but actually, I kind of like it!

Snowpocalypse!

Well, my son woke up this morning after sleeping a record 14 1/2 hours (!) and seems to be feeling fine this morning. He drank a ton of water shortly after getting up, but otherwise seems normal. I'm grateful it seems to have been a short-lived bug. Plus I got some much-needed extra sleep--my hubby has been traveling this week and sleep is usually the first thing to go when single parenting!

The only bummer of the morning is that I wanted to go grocery shopping with my Phil and Ted's stroller because of the greater basket capacity, but as I pulled it out, I realized that the other tire had blown as well (one of the rear tires blew a few weeks ago after my husband over inflated it--sounded like a bomb went off when it blew!-- and we had to replace it). Oh well. Thank goodness for the internet, where one can replace parts on an Aussie stroller pretty easily. So out came the umbrella stroller, which was okay, but definitely left a bit to be desired in the basket department. But we have a major snowpocalypse on the way (12" expected tonight!) and we needed food for the onslaught!


Today's card was made using the Colour Q color challenge for this week, which was to use Melon Mambo, So Saffron, Old Olive, Baja Breeze and white. I liked the challenge of incorporating the Baja Breeze into the other colors, which already seemed to suit one another. I had a cordouroy Baja Breeze button left over from a swap from last year and decided that would be the accent. The card design is basically CASEd from the last issue of Stampin' Success, which is the magazine that Stampin' Up! sends to all its demonstrators every month. I just changed the colors and textures, plus a few little details.

Supplies:
Melon Mambo, So Saffron, Old Olive, Whisper White cs
Sanded, Razzle Dazzle stamp sets
Old Olive, So Saffron ink, Melon Mambo, Old Olive, So Saffron markers
paper snips
rhinestone brad, baja breeze cord button (retired), So Saffron 5/8" grosgrain ribbon (retired, 2009 SAB)
metal edge ruler for distressing

A wild and crazy afternoon

It's been a wild afternoon at our house. My two year old woke up from his nap and promptly threw up, and then threw up 4 more times in the next hour, freaking himself out every time and necessitating a LOT of laundry. So even though we don't have a television, I let him sit on my lap for about 45 minutes and watch Sesame Street clips on Hulu to keep his mind off his stomach. He wanted to go to bed early and has been quiet since, but I've been running around cleaning up all the messes and keeping the washing machine busy.

The card I made for the Saturday cinema challenge was one of those cards that just did not want to be made. The challenge was to use silver and blue, and the inspiration was the movie Titanic. I tried yesterday and came up with the card below, which I didn't like at all. I thought that the car reminded me of the car that was hoisted onto the ship and later part of a memorable love scene. I let it sit for several hours to see if it would grow on me, and it didn't. I think it needed more color or something. So I dismantled it and set out supplies for a new card for today, which I made while my son was napping and before all the fun began. This one just uses blue and silver, which I generally think look good together. I also pulled out my Serene Snowflakes set from the last Holiday mini catalog (also bought at the 11th hour!). Originally the layout didn't have a sentiment, but I thought it looked kind of bare without one, so I added the "Thanks", which was a SAB set I got in January. I'm not sure I like it where it is.

I'm still not totally satisfied with it, but it will do for now. I think after working with all the color challenges of the last week, this card is too monochromatic or something. Maybe it will grow on me in time.

In any case, given the day, I'll just be glad I made a card today. Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it.
Edited: I couldn't leave it alone, so I redid the central panel (the crooked snowflake bothered me), reoriented the card and changed the sentiment. And I think it works better now!

Owl on an Easel

I received Forest Friends yesterday with a Sale-A-Bration order and had some fun playing around with it last night. I needed to come up with a Make-N-Take for our monthly Philly Inker's meeting next Monday and also had in mind to make an easel card--suddenly these babies are everywhere! You can find a tutorial here.


The make-n-take came together pretty easily (I'll show that off next week after the ladies have had a chance to make it!) but I struggled a lot with this card. I had been stamping with Creamy Caramel for the make-n-take and liked how the Forest Friends looked with it, but I didn't realize how hard that color is to use as a base color for a card! It works better as an accent, I think. In any case, I wanted to use Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday Sketch for this week, which lent itself nicely to the easel format, since it was square, but I had a lot of trouble with the layers and the dsp, getting the composition right. I also wanted to use my scallop corner punch to create a cool border on the circle, an idea I got from Lynn Pratt over at Stamp-n-Design, but had to fuss around a bit with it to get it right. I keep thinking I should have done some sponging or something else, but in the end, I just had to put my hands in the air and tell myself to walk away from the card. (I've been known to tell my mother that very thing many times!)



Supplies:
Creamy Caramel, Pretty in Pink, Very Vanilla cs, Sending Love Specialty dsp (Occ. mini)
Itty Bitty Backgrounds (SAB!), Forest Friends (SAB!), Warm Words stamp sets
Creamy Caramel ink
Very Vanilla 5/8" satin ribbon (Occ. Mini)
Open scallop border punch (SAB)

On healthy food packaging

Have you ever noticed that so-called healthy foods are packaged in ways designed to keep the user from opening them, whereas "junk" food is ridiculously easy to open? Case in point: yesterday for lunch I was going to have leftover taco salad and needed some lettuce to make it a bona fide salad rather than just corn chips and meat mix (recipe is below--I should add that my husband thinks my version of taco salad is against all rules of order for tacos and I always have to make two versions when I make this dish).

So I pulled out a pre-washed salad mix (because I'm lazy that way) and attempted to open it without using a scissors. Mistake number one. As I was pulling on the seam of the bag, I thought to myself, this is going to end badly, just get a scissors, at which point the bag promptly burst open and salad mix went flying EVERYWHERE! It was like a lettuce bomb exploded in my kitchen! I think I will be finding small bits of carrot shreds and radicchio for some time to come. My son was sitting in his high chair waiting for a waffle to come out of the toaster and he said something like "Oooh!" when the lettuce leaves started flying and the subsequent clean-up occupied his attention long enough that his waffle got toasted without his whining that it was taking too long. Enough of the salad landed on the table to salvage for my lunch, but what a mess (and a waste of lettuce)! I'm definitely not a salad person, but it frustrates me when food packaging isn't intelligently designed. Plain mini shredded wheat is another culprit, but that is a story for another day...

But enough food packaging debacles. Here is today's card, which features Gretchen Barron's sketch challenge and the Embellish.com color/ribbon challenge for this week.

I love these colors together! They look so fresh and modern. The card is going to some friends in Brooklyn who had some hard times a little while ago that we just found out about and I wanted to send them something special.



Notice the new Pretty In Pink corduroy brads? Love them! Oh, and the new epoxy brad? And the satin ribbon? It is all new from the Occasions Mini catalog! I love embellishments. A little adhesive trick I picked up recently when using brads on the edge of a layer is to use mini glue dots to help the edges stick down better.

Another little stamping tip--my newest little technique (picked up from Diana Gibbs) is to stamp the sentiment over another image, as I've done here. The trick is to make sure that the image is faded enough for the sentiment to stand out. On previous cards where I have done this, the colors of the card made for a faded image, so it worked out, but on this card, Taken with Teal and Chocolate Chip are pretty strong colors. I first tried stamping off the image once before stamping, but the Chocolate Chip was still too strong and the Taken with Teal seemed to dominate the image, making everything look too busy. So I started again, remarkered my stamp, subbing Close to Cocoa for Chocolate Chip and and then took the corner of a scrap and stamped off the Taken with Teal once by hand, and then stamped off the whole image once before stamping. That seemed to do the trick! Then I inked my Sincere Salutations stamp with Chocolate Chip and it was finished.


Supplies:
Pretty in Pink, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Taken with Teal cs, Bella Rose dsp (retired)
Of the Earth, Sincere Salutations, En Francais stamp sets
Close to Cocoa, Taken with Teal, Pretty in Pink markers, Taken with Teal, Chocolate chip inks
PiP cord brads, PiP epoxy brad, PiP 5/8" satin ribbon


And the Taco Salad Recipe:

1# ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning (we like the Whole Foods brand one, Simple Goodness, I think it is called)
1 8oz. bottle Thousand Island dressing
8 oz. shredded Mexican cheese (I like a fine shred)
3-4 fresh tomatoes diced finely or 1 15oz. can diced tomatoes well drained (put it in a colander for about 30 minutes to drain and use a wooden spoon to push out the excess water)

Shredded lettuce
Fritos corn chips (Scoops are nice)

Brown the ground beef and add seasoning according to packet instructions. Let meat cool slightly and transfer to a serving bowl. Add cheese, dressing and tomatoes. Let cool to room temperature. Serve over lettuce and corn chips.

Refrigerate left over meat mix and you can eat it cold or allow to come to room temperature. Don't reheat it or the cheese will melt in strange ways.