Sympathy

I shared earlier a sympathy card for my friend, well a week after she lost her mom my other friend lost her Mother, so much sadness in our little group.

I mixed Distress Oxide inks onto my palette and when dried stamped the flower pattern onto them and hand cut them out, the oxide inks gave it a softer look. Those colors were also used for the butterfly and the sentiment tag.

Hot off the press - Botanical Frames stamp set
Colorbok - Homespun paper
Spellbinders - Labels one, Majestic Labels one and Labels eight dies
Distress Oxides inks - Tattered Rose, Peeled Paint, Worn Lipstick
Ribbon
Wink of stella clear sparkle pen

A week after that a man in our church lost his father, so I did a more masculine card for him.

Used an embossing folder and sanded the raised areas, and added the sentiment.

Darice - Grass embossing folder, sanded
Taylored Expresssion -- Care & Comfort sentiment stamp set
Tim Holtz - Distress collection card stock

We have almost 5 inches of snow this morning and it is still snowing, thick wet snow.  I guess it hasn't snowed this much so early in the season since 1951, last year for the whole winter we only had a few times that it just barely covered the ground.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today and hope you are safe and warm where you are :)

Connie

Birthday Flower

I actually made a fall card without fall colors, I just love this time of year but I know not everyone probably wants fall themed cards for their birthday :)

I have been seeing so many blogs where they are not coloring flowers all the way but leaving some tips white and using strokes of the marker to color, so I tried my hand at it, not sure what I think of it yet, LOL!

Inky Antics - Furry Friendship, colored w/markers
Lilybee designs - Head over heels  paper
Lawn Fawn - Fancy Scalloped Rectangles die
Ribbon
Sequins

I am sharing the 2nd trail we took at the Garden of the gods in Shawnee National Forest.  As you can see by the first picture this one was nicely laid out, it was quite hilly and a bit uneven but other than that it was clearly marked out, I do like that :)

If you have been following my pictures lately you know how I love the roots and different style in the trees, it always amazes me how things can grow in the rocks.

Such cool textures in the rocks

I believe that they said there was 33,000 acres in this park, you can look forever up here.

I didn't get many good picture of the sunset but how the sunset looked on the surrounding area was just beautiful

I think I mentioned in my last post how tired I was after doing both these hikes, I am not use to constant walking for that long and up that many hills but oh the reward you get, especially at sunset!! So nice to be able to relive the day in the pictures I took when I am not so tired :)

We are supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow this evening, we normally don't get any this time of year so this is a big deal around here, all the talk :)

Thanks so much for taking out the time to stop by,

Connie

Anniversary

We celebrated our 35th Anniversary last month and I forgot to share the cards we made for each other.  We also went out hiking for the day so I will share a bit of that also :)

First the card I made for hubby.  When going through my stuff to figure out what to do for him, I came upon this set and I loved the sentiment, so I just went along with it.  It took a bit of time since I had to hand cut everything out.  I just wrote the 35th in instead of trying to find my small number dies, that saved a bit of time.

The stamp set is supposed to be a birthday set so I just stamped the sentiment inside the balloon stamp.  The leaves were perfect since we had already decided to go on a hike for our anniversary.

Doesn't the Rino look like it has been colored on vellum or something, that is just the color combo that came out when I combined the marker colors, I couldn't do that if I tried any other time, LOL! I told him I hoped he didn't feel like this was too childish looking.

Avery Elle - Wild Birthday, colored w/markers all hand cut
Ms. Sparkle & co. - Fall paper
Spellbinders - Curved rectangle die

The card my hubby made me was all done in pencil, I like how he has our initials on the tree trunk :)

Since we had recently went to Michigan we didn't want to go far so we headed down south to Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest. We had been here once before shortly after we moved to Illinois so it had been a few years and we had forgotten how beautiful this area is, of course the changing of the leaves makes it that much more beautiful!

I am going to share the first trail we went on, this was the more rugged trail but we knew we wanted to go on the easier one closer to sunset.  It was a beautiful day, we couldn't have asked for better, beautiful blue skies and the temps were perfect!

I took so many pictures of the trees with the blue sky, it had been awhile since we had such blue sky, and the leaf colors along with it was just so pretty!

You don't know how long it took for me to get this picture of the house way down there, such a beautiful place to live, my camera kept wanting to focus on the trees, I finally got it to focus on the house!

When we reached the top you wouldn't believe the amount of lady bugs or Asian beetles there were flying around, my hubby took pictures of the ones landing on me, we thought they were lady bugs when we were up there but after seeing the picture of the ones that landed on me hubby looked it up and he thinks they were asian beetles instead.

As you can see there were still spots that were quite green yet, we were not in total peek yet on this trip.

I haven't even looked at the pictures of the second trail we went on yet, but I will share some from that trail at a later date.

Hope you have a wonderful week, Thanks so much for stopping by,

Connie

Autumn wishes

Back to Birthday cards with Autumn theme :)  As we got our first snowfall of the season last night I feel like Autumn has passed us by way too quickly, so we will just keep it going here on the blog :)

I have been seeing more torn cards here lately, thought I would use it on this card, adding a bit of ink to the torn edges.  I had some of these leaves left over from the Memory Box grove leaves die and they matched the ones in the stamp so I added a few falling onto the card.

Taylored Expression - From my window stamp set
DCWV - Amber Autumn and Old World Stack papers
Spellbinders - Decorative Labels Eight die
Gina Marie - Birthday Words sentiment
Memory Box - Grove leaves

Hope you are enjoying a fun and creative weekend,

Connie

Multiples

Today I am sharing the last of the challenges I did in my group. This one was to make 10 stamped projects all the same but it couldn't be a card.  Well the only thing I could think that I would want to make multiples of is Christmas tags.

Used more stamps from my cardmaking magazines. You can't see the sparkle but I used my sparkle pens to color the tree.

Poppystamps - Pinpoint Main Street tag die
Cardmaking magazine - Sentiment and tree stamp
Our Daily Bread design - Mini tag sentiments (to and from)
Spectrum noir sparkle pens

I don't often make my own tags, do you make your tags or buy them?

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend,
Thanks for taking the time to stop by,

Connie