Flower Challenge

First of all I have good news my sister did receive her card today, it took two weeks to go from Illinois to Michigan but it got there and she said it was in good shape!!

The Flower Challenge blog had an embossing challenge, you can read about it HERE.  





I decided to do heat embossing, stamped the flower stems and leaves with white embossing powder, then I took my inks and sponged them over the embossing.

There are some really good encourageing sentiments in this group of word bands.

Heidi Grace Designs -- Winnefred St. Stamp set, white embossing with ink sponging over it
Distress Inks -- Broken China and Peeled Paint
Lawn Fawn -- Fancy Scalloped Rectangle Stackables die
Tim Holtz -- Idea-ology Word Bands
Ric Rac
Dew Drops

It has hit the 100's two days in a row and they are saying again tomorrow.  Getting some things done inside that I haven't had a chance to do since I have been so busy outside.

Hope you all are keeping cool and thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Sports

A couple of my great nephews are into sports big time and this nephew just turned 11, so I went with a sports theme card.

All the stamps are from the same set, I stamped the shoe with a light blue and then added a bit of darker blue to some areas to make it look a little worn. I fussy cut the star, arrows and the star after stamping them.

The sentiment was part of the paper set I used.  Cut the border with a punch.

My Mind's eye -- boy crazy paper and stamp set
Memory box -- stitched circles die
Fiskars -- Border punch

Your comments on lost mail were very interesting and it makes me wonder how many people I think received a card from me really never did, this is two now that I know for sure never made it.

Wishing you a fantastic week ahead, I will be spending most of it indoors this week I am afraid, they are forecasting with the humidity feels like temps in the 100's.  Keep cool!

Thanks for stopping by today,

Connie

Lost Card

Do you ever wonder how many of your home made cards actually make it to the people you are sending it to.  I made this card for my sisters birthday in June and it still hasn't made it to her, since she visits my blog I didn't want to post this yet, hoping it would make it to her but you see we have been gone to Michigan once again for the past 4 days we went up to Mackinaw city to see the firewords shot off over the water and I like to post at least every other day.

Still hoping it makes it to her some day but for now she will see it here :(

I tried to do a form of this card HERE, hers is a bit more fancy looking.  What gave me the inspiration for this is the park we went to that had two arched gates on either side of the garden that I showed in an earlier post, this garden has two gates on either side :)

It was a bear to try and cut the fence so that the fence was still part of the fold of the card instead of totally cutting it out, it might be a bit easier doing one like she showed on a curve like that.

I added some flower soft to one of the trees to make it look like a flowering tree, the rest is all colored with markers. I did cut the fence twice and glued on top of the other to give it a little more stability.

Northwoods Rubber stamp, colored w/markers
Poppystamps -- Picket fence die
Flower soft -- Sweet Pea

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today and hope you have a great weekend!!

Connie

Sunflower

I decided to use this background I had made a while back when doing a challenge in my stamping group.  I had mixed Modeling paste and glitter and then applied it through a dotted stencil onto pattern paper.  I also found the sunflower stamped in there also, so all I had to do was color it, I decided to add the bee button, I cut off the shank so it would lay flat on the card.  At first I was going to add a lady bug but I just liked the color of the bee better with the other colors on the card.

I colored this one with pencils and did a bit of shading with inks around it.

Modeling paste mixed with glitter through a Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil on pattern paper
Hero Arts -- Sunflower stamp colored w/ pencils
Spellbinder -- A2 matting basics A, Labels 18 and Circles large dies
Impression Obsession -- Sentiments II stamp set
Bee button
Spool O ribbon

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by, I apprecaite your leaving a comment to let me know you have,

Connie

Ozark National Scenic Riverways

I finally looked at the pictures I took on our last 2 day trip we took and found some to share. We stayed at a Motel that was located in Eminence Missouri, and just went out from there to the different parks in the area.

First up is the Alley Spring Mill.

I love the sound of rushing water so I enjoyed that part of the trip, but oh my was it a very HOT day, as we were headed out I think a bank said it was 93 degrees out and it was very humid!!

Here is a picture with more of the Mill.

There was a trail that went behind the spring.  The sign said that the spring produces 81 million gallons a day!

 
I will have to say the colors in these waters is just amazing in this whole area!!
I did manage to capture a good picture of one butterfly and one dragonfly, but there were many all along this trail.

I loved all the little waterfalls along the trail too!

This next picture hubby took of me when we were almost done with the trail back to the car.  It was quite hot :)

We cooled off in the air conditioning of the car and drank a lot of water and then we headed to Rocky Falls.  I didn't take many pictures there, the bugs were just terrible, I wondered why all the people were sitting in the water and then Greg told me that when he went crawling around on the rocks to get a close up picture of the falls there were no bugs there just down where I was, but I wasn't about to try and climb those rocks.  I bet you can tell which person is my hubby.

I took pictures of the sunset that night from the porch of our motel but I took them on my phone and haven't even downloaded those yet.  So the next day we were off to check out Blue Springs, I can see why they named it that, it is the 8th largest spring in Missouri and is the darkest blue of them all.  87 million gallons of water are from this spring a day.

You can see a little bit in the picture above that it was quite humid around the spring, it was a misty day so I don't know if it was clouds or humidity from the spring but remember the picture above from the day before, by the time we got back to the car from the hike down to the spring I felt about the same. This picture shows a little more of the Mist hovering over the water.

That's it, after we were done with this hike and we drove back  to the main road we started getting a bit more rain than just misting so we were lucky we made it back in time, so we just headed home.  Hubby wants to go back because he was able to get some nice night shots but I get motion sickness and all the windy and rolling hills kind of got me a bit sick, but it was a nice get away about a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house.

Thanks so much for stopping by and hope you enjoy a great 4th tomorrow!

Connie