Hello!

I am pretty sick today (don't ask... you don't want to know)... so I am just here to quickly tell you that I will hopefully be back to posting on all my blogs again soon.
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Peace wished to all of you for the New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Matthew 2:6
"O Bethlehem of Judah, you are not just a lowly village in Judah,
for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people Israel."

(Micah 5:2 But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times."

2 Samuel 5:2 In the past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the Lord said to you, "You will shepherd mt people Israel, and you will become their ruler.)

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Luke 3:15-16
Everyone was expecting the Messiah to come soon, and they were eager to know whether John might be the Messiah. John answered their questions by saying, "I baptize with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am - so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.

Acts 4:11-12
For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says, "The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone." There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them.

(Psalm 118:22 The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.)

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Romans 15:13
So I pray that God, who gives you hope, will keep you happy and full of peace as you believe in him. May you overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Punches Make This One

Maybe not the best photo here... but I think you can see the highlight of this card... the punches.

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The main image is a stamp backed with a background stamp... layered/matted with coordinating colors. The sentiment is stamped on the side. The bottom border is a strip of paper the same color as the base of the card with average, notebook hole size punches glued on top. Elegant and easy.

For My Nephew

My nephew was confirmed this fall... I made this gift bag to put his present in. (We gave him a cool flashlight that has a verse from the book of John on it... I don't remember the verse, unfotunately, but it was about Jesus being the light of the world.) The card... well, I admit that at first I went to look for a card at the store! But I found nothing suitable enough for me... funny, huh? So this is what I came up with... we think it is just great and something definitely worth celebrating that my nephew confirmed his faith in Jesus Christ at his program at his church.

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The absolute BEST part of this whole deal? (Well, besides the life forever with God?) My nephew called me on the phone to thank me for the gift. That was awesome! He's a good guy.

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P.S. Thanks go out to Jaimie, my Stampin' Up! consultant, for the introduction to this gift bag pattern!

Variations on a Theme

Just a few cards that I made for church... my Hope Stampers group that I have mentioned here several times. (We make cards used to send to people on our church's prayer list.)

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I have to admit that this group is a fun one for me to be a part of. I love paper crafts and making pretty cards. It is an easy ministy to take part of... and, yes, we don't make nearly the number of cards we need for the entire prayer list and they fill in the need with store bought cards... and that those cards are just as good... well, I just want to say that I try to put my heart into making the cards that I do contribute. I consider it a part of how I worship... a part of how I can include God in on my everyday life.

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And I guess I am including these thoughts here to say that God can be as close to you as the air you breathe. Let Him in, use your gifts for Him, and I will promise you your life will change.

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1 Peter 1:8 For you love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him, you trust him; and even now you are happy with a glorious, inexpressible joy.

Always Thinking About Our Troops

Wow! Thanks, Barb!

So... I have not been the best blog buddy here on my cards blog... and I got this award a while ago from Barb at Made for Keeps!

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She is an incredibly talented (and busy!) card maker and artist... and wonderful photographer, too! I am so glad to have happened upon her in the blog world. Visit her blog and see what I am talking about!

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I need to pass this award on... but I will have to do it another day. I also have some photos of my recent stuff, just not the time to upload them yet. I promise I will get them up here soon!

Scallops Galore!

Here are two cards I managed to get done this morning... all Stampin' Up! supplies. I just love the new scallop edge punch! (As you will see when I post a photo of my Christmas cards after Christmas! And as you have seen in a previous post!)
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Also, I wanted to make some "new baby" cards for Hope Stampers at church. (Hope Stampers being the group I am part of at church that makes cards for those on our prayer list.) Usually I make "symapthy" and "thinking of you" cards (which are the majority of the cards we need), but thought this time I would add a couple of these kind of cards for variety.

Another card...

... for another birthday sometime! (Again, pre-printed, patterened paper for the base. Stamped images on all the layered pieced on top.)

Another New Post!

Can you believe I am actually posting again so soon?! Ha ha!

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This card is in the mail to my sister-in-law right now! She is actually going to get it BEFORE her birthday for a change!

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Patterned paper base. Stamped floral images. Happy Birthday greeting cut from some scrapbooking paper.

A Kind of a Glimpse

These two cards (the way that they are laid out? layed out? which one is it?) provide you with a glimpse into what my Christmas Cards will look like this year! (Love my new scallop punch from Stampin' Up!, too, by the way! Can't you tell?)

Happy Birthday to Music!

I finally get something to post (it has been a while!) and then I have a not-so-good photo of it!


This is a card I made for my mom to give a friend for his birthday. He is a pianist... and he used to play in Hollywood back in the good old glamor days. (Merrill Sparks) So, I used soome music to start my idea: Chopin's "The Wish"


I don't know the song... just Googled some sheet music for free and came across it. I took the word "wish" from the title to make the brad. The background ornate frame is from scrapbooking paper I had (thanks to my sister-in-law and her Christmas gift to me one year... thanks, Jo!) and the rest is pretty straight forward.


Maybe I will get going again here... I will need to get rockin' on some Christmas cards soon!

Day of My Birth

Thank you all for your encouraging words on getting better. My Littler, Little Man is better (he got over things pretty quickly)... but, alas, it is my birthday today and I have a cold. Good day to just take it easy anyway, so I will. Back to posting soon!

Break Time

Well, Littler, Little Man is now sick with tummy flu... and I am not feeling all that hot either. A busy weekend approaches (hubby is already partaking in some of that action today as his dad retires today with a bit of a ceremony at work) so... I am going to lay low for a week or so (not that I have posted much here recently anyway) to try and keep everyone healthy. You all take care! I will be back soon!

I guess today I should have said, "Arrgh! I'm a bit under the weather, me heartys!!! Sit tight while me gets my sails in order and I will be back to share a swig with you once again!"

Okay, okay... Not my best Pirate talk for "Talk Like a Pirate Day." But I tried! (You should have heard me read this aloud.... much better spoken than written!)

Thanks, Barry at Pike Speak, for the holiday reminder!

Here it comes!

What is coming is a wave of creativity! (It had better hit me before the weekend! Hee hee!)

I have a slew of birthdays just around the bend to make cards for. I will be sure to post my creations soon! (I have not done so for a while... and just wanted you to know not to give up on me yet!)

Let me leave you with this... a postcard I made to help out iPost and her family collecting postcards from around the U.S. (and the world!) with Iowa as it's theme. (Not a great photo of it... I took it quickly before I sent it out in the mail.) I listed Iowa Facts on the other side and was so glad to help them with their quest to get postcards from all 50 states!

More Inspiration

The above photo shows a card made by my friend, Jaimie. She is also the greatly-mentioned-in-this-blog Stampin' Up! demonstrator that I know. From this card, I came up with the following cards.

My hand is in the photo here to hold the card flat. Otheriwse it would tip over because of the unique front "cover" of the card. (It is smaller than the back of the card... made by cutting off most of the original base and replacing it with a matted/layered piece.)

Here is another version of the same idea... but the flap of the card opens up (as you can see).

Sweet Stamp Set

Sweet in its design... and sweet for its price! I got it on a used stamp sale for more than half the price. Gotta like that!
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Made this with dye ink so that I could try out some old Heat 'n' Stick powder I had buried in amongst my glitters, re-inkers, and flocking. It did not work the best, but I kind of liked the antiqued effect I got with the leafing only sticking in certain areas. (Maybe you can see the leafing better by clicking on the image to "embiggen" it. ("Embiggen" is a term I adopted from Carmi.)
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My mom and pop should soon recognize this card (sent them a note in it!)
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Everyone have a wonderful weekend!

Post for Today...

This is one I put together for my stamping group at church.

This one was for my niece for her birthday. I liked having fun with this glistening zebra print. I am almost out of it now. It is one of those papers that I got 1 sheet of and now wish I had gotten 20... oh well!!!

Variation

Variation on the color from THIS CARD.

My Pop's Birthday

The main stamp sets used for this card were "Mark the Date" and "Simple Shapes" from Stampin' Up!

So Very...

... nice of a stamp set!
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I started this card with the ribbon (the white with blue polka dotted strip you see on the card). My mom and pop gave me some ribbon... so I was determined to use it in a thank you card to them. So, what you see is what I came up with. Also, I am having fun with my new scallop circle punch from Stampin' Up! (Heard they are coming out with a scallop border punch soon, too! Excited about that!)

For the New Baby

Got to give this one to our new niece! She is a sweetie!!!

Time Out

Have a fun Fourth of July!

One for the Future

Here is a card I made for someone's wedding... but then the wedding did not happen. Oh well...

Cool idea...

Was so excited about this new fold that I learned from Jaimie (thanks once again, girl!!!) that I just had to give it a go! It's a clever idea!
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So, she had a card made at one of our Stampers' 10 get togethers with this type of fold. I got my new stamps from my last order and ta-daa! Another Stampin' Up! success story! ;-)

For the Men

Above is the card I made for my husband for Father's Day. I got the layout and text idea from a card I saw somewhere on the Splitcoast Stampers website. I do not remember where... I just popped "Fore!" into their little search button and found it. ("Fore!" is the name of the Stampin' Up! stamp set that I have... hubby loves golf!)
I derived these two cards from the first one. I used the one on the left for my pop. Hubby ended up buying one for his dad. He likes to find funny ones at the store usually for his family... and that is fine. I am more gushy in my cards, I guess... especially for my parents. I love 'em so much!

Birthday Fun

Made this one for my sister-in-law and three others like it using different color combinations for friends... I had fun adapting a scrapbooking layout I saw on the cover of a magazine for this card. Finally gave them all away so that I could now post this photo!

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Happy summer!

Before and After 4

Just a simple strip of paper and two purple staples to add just a little more to this card.

I didn't realize...

I recently added a feature to this blog in the column at the right that has a slideshow of cards that I have posted here. Well, when I looked a couple of them up, I realized that I had not included them on the blog in the past after all. So, here they are.
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The top one is a Christmas card made long ago. I cannot remember how many I made that year this way, but I am sure that the coloring of the images took some time. (Maybe that was back when I was only making about 60 cards or so for the holidays! :-) I do remember that I was tickled to get the corner punch that made the cute frame and so then I found the rest to fit with it for the card.
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The bottom card, I believe, was one I made for my in-laws for their anniversary. I am going to label it as a "blank" card on the blog... mainly because it could be used for many purposes. I just love that tree stamp when embossed in gold (as seen here) or silver on a dark background... very dramatic!

Before and After 3

Still just another post of taking a card one step further... I am sure that there may be something else that could be done. What do you think?

And others done recently...

Before and After 2

This top image is how it was left...
... and this shows that I added a simple layering piece and one more stamped image to spruce it up a bit.

Before and After

So... the last time at Hope Stampers (the group at my church that stamps cards to send to people on our church's prayer list) there were two wonderful gals who attended who had not been there in a long time (actually, one of them had not been there in a long time - we're talkin' years - and the other was her sister who had never been before). They were only there for the last 40-50 minutes, but still cranked out a number of cards. One of them had some basic things down, but even she herself admitted that they needed some extra little touches to bring them to life. Above shows one of those cards... and below is after I added a little somethin' somethin'.
I have more samples of these coming soon in more posts. What other ideas might you have?

Happy Mother's Day

Here is the card I made to send special moms I know to wish them Happy Mother's Day. (I can post it now because they should have theirs by now.)

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I really enjoyed the colors with this card. I based them off of the accent ribbon that I used (on sale from Michaels!!!) The glitter (from Stampin' Up!) added that extra pizzazz!

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Things that mothers do are priceless... you cannot put an amount on kissing away boo-boos, hugging a congratulations when they finally write their name, saying good-bye at daycare or with a babysitter when they are crying, driving all over the place to let them have their fun, giving up sleep to help them get theirs... and there are thousands other examples I could put here. Just thought that, along with this being my favorite stamp set, that this "Priceless" theme would work for Mother's Day.

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Happy Mother's Day!

French Curve

I usually don't post cards that I might yet use sometime, but here is one and it shows something new that I tried... stitching. I know, this is nothing new to everyone, but I thought I would give it a go. I have seen templates you can buy, but I opted to grab my ol' French curve tool, drew my design on the back of the cardstock and plotted my own stitching pattern.

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This here is my second attempt. On the first try I got the holes spaced too close together and the cardstock tore. So, on this one I pierced the paper with enough space to get a needle through with the floss without tearing.

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I know there are incredible things people do with sewing machines, too. I will need to wait and see if that is something I actually want to invest in. I just can't use my regular sewing machine for this as the paper tends to dirty/jam up a machine. I will have to look into those cheap-ie little craft machines if I want to pursue more stitching.

Thinking of...

I am thinking of spring. I am anxious to get a pair of shorts on for the rest of the season and summer. As for the card... well, we still think of the people in need of a kind word at our church and make cards for them. This is one that I made the other day. (I am still loving the "Priceless" stamp set by Stampin' Up!)

Another Recycled Creation

The image of the birds and flowers was taken from an old card... some new embellishments were added and there you have it!

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More again soon!

More to come...

Don't give up on me yet! I have more cards coming... to be posted next week!

Enjoy your weekend!

Hey, Baby!

New punch used here again... with new stamps... and a new idea for me to use my color wheel to arrive at this color scheme. What do you think about the color combination? I am not sure... but I went with it anyway to make several cards like this for our church stamping group.