Pop up Box Card

I try to do something special for my sisters card every year, something other than my normal A2 cards, and when I saw this style card I thought that would be great.  Of course I went with flowers because who doesn't like flowers for their birthday :)  God truly blessed me when he gave her to be my big Sis!!

I stamped out the flowers (they are one and two layered flowers, colored them with markers and then cut them out with the matching dies for them.  I used transparency sheets to glue the flowers to so they stood up and kind of flutter when you open and close the card.  I also tried making rose buds out of the same paper I used on the flaps.

Here is the card open:

Here is a close up of the flowers:

And here is the card when it is closed and the person receives it:

You can find the directions on how to make this type card Here .

The way I took the picture of it opened you can't see the paper I used on the bottom half of the card.  As you can see I had a bit of bulk there so the card didn't lay totally closed , but my sister called me to let me know she received it and she said it was all in tack even going through the mail quite bulky, I was so happy to hear that.  This card does take a bit of time but if you were to use more simple things on the inside which I will probably do if I make another one it would go a bit faster.  The only thing I didn't like about the card and didn't even think of or realize until I was completely done is there is really no good place to sign it and you can't have much of a sentiment either.  I ended up signing it on the inside bottom when it was all done.

K&co. -- Classic K Baily paper
Heartfelt Creations -- Open Vintage Floret stamp, colored w/markers and Vintage floret die
Technique Tuesday -- Happy Birthday sentiment stamp set
Spellbinders -- Foliage and Labels Trio dies
EK success -- small flower punch for the base of the rose buds
Martha Stewart -- butterfly & leaf punches
Stickles -- Yellow (flower centers)
Queen & co. yellow gems
Liquid pearls -- on butterflies

I am sharing my post today over at Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration Link up .  If you get a chance do stop by and check it out.

I can't believe it but we had another really hard rain fall last night and our sump pump is working over time again, it has been nice not having to water the garden though, that is a big plus, so happy we decided to plant our garden up by the back of the house where the flood waters, so far hasn't reached.

Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time out to comment when you do, love hearing that you stopped by,

Hope your week is off to a wonderful start,

Connie

Kissing Technique

Kissing stamps that is, the challenge in our group was to kiss at least two stamps to another stamp, It is best if you use a bold rubber stamp for the base (the flower stamp) I inked that stamp with green ink and then I used a text and music note stamps that I had inked up with brown ink and stamped them right onto the rubber stamp, then I breathed on the stamp to make sure it was moistened well and then stamped that onto my paper.  I hope that makes sense.  You can probably google it or might even be some you tube video's out there on it.

The reason I picked the text and music notes for the background is this will be going to my girl friend that is in my crafting group that gets together every week, although she is a very good crocheter she also loves to read and loves music, her favorite band is Mumford and Sons and she attends every concert that they are in that is within a days driving distance from us :)

Hero Arts -- Silhoutte Flower stamp
Glitz designs -- Distressing Backgrounds stamp set
Spellbinders -- Classic Square, Classic Scallop Square and A2 matting basics A dies
Our Daily Bread designs -- Mini tags dies
Taylored Expressions -- Many Mini's Occasions sentiment stamp set
BasicGrey -- Brad
Ribbon
Stickles -- Shabby shutters (flower centers)

We had rain again but thankfully the ditch out back filled up but didn't reach our fence.  We have more chances of rain this weekend and coming week but they say it shouldn't be that much.  We are working on reorganizing our garage this weekend just incase we get more of that kind of flooding, we are not ready for it.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I sure hope you enjoy a relaxing and hopefully creative weekend :)

Connie

Celebrate

When I did that challenge using items we have had since the beginning of our cardmaking I found this flower, and I just loved this style back then and still do, you will be seeing more because I still have some left, they came on a big 12 x 12 sheet of paper.  I also had to use more of my rub ons. They also came with extra centers so I popped it up and added a button for more dimension.

I was going for a bit of a vintage feel.

Daisy D's -- Flower
My mind's eye -- Signature Life, grounded paper
BasicGrey -- Vine Border and sentiment rub ons
Making Memories -- Doodles Rub ons (white scroll)


 Sharing some of the flooding we had last Friday. These are not when it was at it's worse it was still raining at this time, but my camera battery died after taking these pictures.

The first is our side yard, we were totally surrounded by water, it did reach our house on the sides but thank goodness it didn't reach in the front or back.

 Here is the front, do you see our plant out front in the circle there, that was covered before the water went back down.

Next is a picture of our side yard, the wood fence is our neighbors fence and the water mark line was over 3 feet when it all went back down, so thankful the house is on a slope now.

Our shed is a big mess inside from all the water we received.

You can see a bit of grass at the edge of our deck there, well before it quit raining you couldn't tell there was ever grass there, it looked like a dock more than a deck.

It was quite scary watching it all come up, this is the worse that we have ever seen here. It all happened so fast too.  I can't imagine how it is for those people that get trapped in there home and the water is coming in and flooding everything they have, my heart just sinks when they show people's homes taken away with flood waters too.

Well that is it for me today, I hope you are all well with these storms coming through, and your week is going well.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by, I appreciate hearing from you,

Connie

Hooray!

My Great Niece is turning 6 years old tomorrow, it is so neat to watch my nephews and nieces children grow up, I can't wait to be a Grandma myself one day :)

I stamped and colored the image with markers and then fussy cut around her to make a little scene.

I am linking my card once again today over at Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration .  Stop by and check out all the fun posts!

Hot off the press -- Janie's girls stamp, colored w/markers, image and Hooray! sentiment
Hero Arts -- It's your day sentiment stamp set
Poppystamps -- Picket fence and stitched Landscape dies
Papertrey ink -- Hodge podge papers
Impression Obsession -- Cat set die

Thank you again to all of you who prayed for me during my bad time there.  Now that I have stopped taking that medicine I am back to myself both physically and mentally so they are not good for me at all, they took me to a very bad place.

I will still share those pictures of the flooding we had the next time I post.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and I love hearing from you if you did,

Connie

Memory Box Challenge

Yes I have been doing a lot of challenges here lately, with my cardmaking group, ODBD and now with Memory Box.  This is the first for the Memory Box blog and it is for the whole month so you have time to give it a try all you need is memory box dies, and the challenge this month is butterflies.   I love this butterfly die because they are great proportion to most of our stamps and dies and with one past in your machine you have many to choose from.  I also used one of their flower dies and once cut out I watercolored the dies with distress inks. The sentiment is a dazzle sticker that I colored with  a marker to try and match the flower color.

Check out the challenge HERE !

This is going to one of the ladies in my group that had a heart attack at age 57 and is recovering from a quadruple by pass surgery, we were all in shock as I imagine she was, she seems to be doing well and I am sure she will be receiving many cards here soon.

Memory Box -- Butterfly delights and Zinnia Bouquet dies
Distress inks
My Mind's eye -- indie chic paper
Hot off the press -- Tiny words and phrases dazzles

We had a bit of flooding here yesterday our house was surrounded with water but luckily we had just a little that made it into the garage and we have a small drain in there that was able to take what came in.  I will share pictures of that later.

Hope you are having a nice weekend, with hopefully a bit of creativity in there somewhere :)

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

Connie

Back to Beginning Challenge

Our last challenge I did with my group is to pull out all those items you used when you first started card making, before you even started stamping.  We were to use no stamps, inks or dies on our cards.  Well I went back to products from 2005, yep I can't give anything away, LOL!  Even though a Stampin up party was what got me started in the stamping world, I didn't buy them too fast, instead I used stickers and papers (they were cheaper).

A couple of months ago I shared a baby shower card I made for a couple in our church who was having a baby girl, well a little over a month ago she was born but had very bad intestinal problems and the poor thing has endured two surgeries already in her young life.  She is scheduled for another next month.  A praise to report is that the surgeries so far have done her good and she is even eating from a bottle now a couple times a day instead of all from a tube in her stomach, everyday there seems to be more good news.  This card will be going to her parents.

The sentiment came with the sticker set and the tags were in the paper pack, and yes all that inking was already on the tags and paper so no ink was used by me.

K&co. -- Red Tulips stickers
BasicGrey -- Sweet Pea, Alyssa papers and tags
Paper Doily
Lace scrap

Thank you to all who are praying for me and have given me advice too, it is so appreciated.  I am feeling much better, still getting dizzy spells but my mood and level of what I can do has improved so much and that I am so thankful for.  Praise God!

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and comment, it means so much,

Connie

Father's Day

I was going in the process of making a totally different card for my Father in law when my hubby bought me these dies he knew I liked.  I think he was feeling so bad about the way I had been feeling the past week he was trying to bring some sunshine to my day.  I will go more into that later.

I am sharing this card over on Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration link up. Head on over for Inspiration from all area's of interest!

This is the card that I saw Pam make here when I saw that card I showed my hubby and said isn't that just beautiful, He thought it was pretty cool too.  I tried doing the technique of inlaying the background trees into my water colored background I did with tumbled glass distress inks which is hard to see in this picture, but it didn't work for me, not sure what I did wrong but may try it again with regular paper.  The trees in the foreground have foam adhesive to give it some lift off the card for adding dimension, just love that look.  Everything but the leaves have been inked :)  I loved adding the leaves for a guy card, I may even add little flowers for a guy card if it were in the spring, I am sure you will be seeing that too.

Memory Box -- Grand Forest Archway, small forest archway and Grove leaves dies
Poppystamps - Stitched landscape die
Impression Obsession -- small deer dies
Distress inks --Tumbled glass, walnut stain

I am doing much better this morning, I hadn't shared but I have been having chest pains at one point when I was just at a used book sale, I had shortness of breath, pain run down my left arm and was dizzy, when I came home I called my doctor that got me in that afternoon and he sent me to the heart doctor the next week.  I went through all the testing and he said I am all good but he was still concerned why I was still having a burning feeling in my chest so he put me on some meds that he said if I felt better after a month of taking them that it had cleared things up.  I felt ok the first 5 days but then it hit me and hard.  I had bad dizziness headaches (which are side effects) nausea, couldn't get normal things done around the house and have had no exercise for over a week now.  At first I didn't associate it with the meds because my hubby and girl friend and later her hubby was complaining about the same symptoms, but they were lucky and started feeling better after 2 days.  Then I just thought well it is lingering longer with me as things seem to the older I get, but my hubby encouraged me to get off the pills and talking to others that is what I decided to do and I think it may be working.  The only problem is my chest burning seems to be coming back so we are thinking it has something to do with something else.  All I know is I can't feel that way any longer and won't go back to those pills again.

Well that was probably more than I needed to share but just thought I would let you know, that I am very hopeful I am on the right track now.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to stop by and say Hi!
Have a wonderful week,

Connie

Mistakes Challenge

There are so many mistakes we can make when creating our projects and there was a whole list of them that we can make while card making.  One of the girls in our group gave us a list of mistakes and we had to use at least 3 of them in a way that looked pretty on our card.

My mistakes were
 torn paper
Embossing powder spots
Crooked cutting (on tag in corner)

Rubber Stampede: 15205 sunflower stamp Colored w/ markers
Hero Arts -- Birthday messages stamp set
Queen & co. Sunflower yellow gems
Gold embossing powder

In the first picture you can't see the shine of the embossing on the bottom that I also did so I had to angle the card a bit to capture it in this next picture.

I can tell I am getting better but not quite my normal self yet, but very thankful to be this far. Thanks for all the good wishes and prayers that were said, it really means a lot to me.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and I hope your having a good weekend!

Connie

ODBDSLC242

I will finish sharing my other challenges from my group but I wanted to get this sketch challenge that I did over at Our Daily Bread Designs posted today. You have until Sunday evening if you want to play along.

This card is going out to my brother for his birthday, He is going through some health issues and I am hoping that this sentiment is good for both birthday and what he is going through.

Our daily bread designs -- Surging Sea and All occasions sentiment stamp sets, image colored with distress inks and water and watercolor paper
Stickles -- waterfall added to the water
October Afternoon -- Seaside papers
Fiskars -- Upper crest border punch with added gold ink
Brad on compass

I have not been feeling well ever since Sunday it gets better and worse depending on what I am doing. I have started some new medicine so I am wondering if that is what is causing it but my hubby and best friend had a touch of it too, just not as bad as I have it so I really don't know what is going on, so hard when you want to do things but your body is telling you no.

Hope you all are well and thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and sharing your thoughts,

Connie

Z fold challenge

The next challenge in our group was Z fold card, she had us take a 6" x 12" card stock for the base. On the left side measure 3" from the bottom, place a mark and then cut from that point up to the tip of the cardstock to get the angle.  Then score your cardstock starting at the 3" side at 4 and 8 inches.  At your 4" mark mountain fold and at the 8" valley fold.  It really doesn't matter which way you fold it, if you do it opposite it will open the other way.  Hope that is understandable.  There are many tutorials out there on different folds so you can just google and get all kinds of ideas.

This first view is of it just lying on the table, so you can see what it looks like all folded up.

This next picture is of it all open with the sentiment panel.

This next picture is it standing.

DCWV-- Crafty paper
Hampton Art -- Hydrangea collage stamp, colored with markers with distress inks on the background and wink of stella clear pen on some of the perals
Spellbinders -- Carnation creation die
BasicGrey -- Brad
Stampendous -- Birthday assortment stamp set
Three bugs in a rug -- Bloomin doodles rubons

I am sharing this over at Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration, stop by for some great blogs to visit.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and visit, so good to hear from you,

Connie

Clean and Simple

Our next challenge was Clean and Simple, which is kind of hard for me because I love to add  more kind of gal, always trying to figure out what else I can put on a card without over doing it, which I probably do in some people's taste but that's just me, we were to use one stamped image and have as much blank space as possible.

I used distress inks on my acrylic block then sprayed it with water before stamping it onto watercolor paper for my background.  There was a definite line between the colors and I didn't care for that so I tipped my paper to combine them a little bit, then took a paper towel and laid it over to soak up that access and that is the result I got for the background.  After it dried I embossed the bird image on top with gold embossing powder.  This one went to my daughter and son in law celebrating their 4th wedding anniversary, hard to believe it has been that long already.

Distress inks -- tumbled glass, broken china and faded jeans
American crafts -- seeds stamp for image and sentiment

I forgot to share with you the visitors we had to our backyard a couple weeks ago I think it was, they were enjoying the bird seed the birds had knocked all over the ground.  There is a pond about 1/2 mile from here were ducks hang out so we are thinking that is where they came from, they visited our yard a few days in a row and we haven't seen them since.

Every time I would try to take their picture as soon as I would open the door they would be off, this time I actually caught them before they flew off, not the greatest picture but as soon as I clicked the camera they were gone.

Hope you enjoyed a wonderful weekend, we are having temps in the 90's and it is muggy from all the rain, hope it cools down again soon.  We have a few things we need to pressure wash and a bit of painting on our front porch and deck.

Have a great week and thanks so much for stopping by,


Connie

Sentimental challenge

Still working on challenges from my group.  This one was to use a sentiment stamp on your card as the focal and this stamp was the first one to come to mind that I have and I hadn't used it yet so it was perfect to give it a try.

Stampabilities -- Birthday Subway art stamp, colored w/marders
Sassafras -- Apple Jack paper
Spellbinders -- Classic Rectangle and Lg deckled Rectangles
Taylored Expressions -- Balloons

I had to hand draw the string for the balloons and popped them up with foam adhesive.  This one is going to my great nephew who is turning 6 I believe.  They are growing way too fast.

This is the first weekend in awhile that it isn't raining on a Saturday and it is suppose to get up into the 80's today and 90's tomorrow which may spark some showers.  Hope you all enjoy a wonderful weekend.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and leaving your sweet comments, I do so appreciate them and  love hearing from you.

Connie

Summer Breeze take 2

I am sharing another card I made with my hubby's image, this time the size is about 4". I had to color her with more blonde colors this time, to fit into the circle a bit of her hair was cut off though.

Image hand drawn by Greg, and printed off, colored w/markers
Spellbinders -- Classic Circles and Decorative Labels 8 dies
Frantic Stamper -- Small swirl bows
Taylored Expressions -- Many minis occasions stamp and Designer mini tags die
Queen & co. -- Nightfall rhinestone on tag

Greg said I could share his drawing on my blog for those who would like to use it for your own personal card making or projects.  Please do not give it to others or sell the image.  If you use it we would like you to link back to this post and let us know so we can come and check out what you have done with it.  Thanks.

This is a big size, over 5 " I think he said so if you want it smaller for your card you will have to size it down, I just thought it is easier to size down then try to make the image bigger if you want it for some project other than card making or a bigger size card.

Hope you are enjoying a good week so far and I thank you so much for taking the time out to stop by,

Connie

Paint it challenge

I am sharing these cards over at Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration link up today.  These are more cards from the challenges my cardmaking group is doing this week.

Today's challenge comes from Tim Holtz tags , we were challenged to try out his background technique used on his tag.  She mentioned that she skipped using black paint for the base and just used black cardstock, so that is what I tried on my first card.  I used mustard seed paint and the outcome was a green color, although it didn't turn out the color I wanted I did like the modeled look it gave to it.

Black cards stock for base

Distress paint -- mustard seed

Inkadinkado -- script stamp (background) and garden delight stamp set

Hot off the presss dazzeles -- tiny words and phrases, the sticker is silver so I went over it with black marker

My next card I used 120 lb. cardstock from Gina K and painted it black and added the mustard seed paint on top and the color is more true in this one.

Distress paint-- mustard seed
Black Heavy body acrylic paint for base
Glitz designs -- Distressed background stamp
Sizzix -- Mixed Media die cut from DCWV metallic papers
Silhoutte -- ivy, inked with distress inks
Inkadinkado -- garden delights stamp set for flower, fussy cut
David Tutera -- celebrate sentiments, inked with antique linen distress inks

This was a technique I never would have tried on my own so I like to do these challenges they really have me trying new things.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie