Keep Climbing

A friend at church lost his sister unexpectedly, and I wanted to do a calming card and he also loves the outdoors.  I took this stamp and to make it go the whole length of the card I stamped again on the sides with just the tree portions of the stamp, all with Grey ink.  Sponged in the sky and then matted it onto black paper and added it to some pattern paper that looked like sky to me.

Our Daily Bread design- Keep Climbing stamped Multiple times to extend the scene
Home made cloud stencil for sky
Ms. Sparkle & co. - Watercolor Pad
Taylored Expressions - Care & Comfort II sentiment stamp

It is so funny that we were below normal temps for so long, had about a week of nice temps and now we are above normal and will be reaching 90's on the weekend, talk about topsy turvy weather. 
But I am all excited that my Romaine Lettuce is coming up, hoping it won't wilt in this heat.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to stop by today and say Hi, Love hearing from you!

Connie

Tiger Lily

Over at A blog Named Hero they are doing a "Put a Flower on it" Challenge.  This was great timing as I had just picked up this stamp set at my Local stamp store.  I didn't have any lily stamps and I do like the look of layering stamps.  There are no leaves in the set so I added some die cut leaves.

Hero Arts - Color Layering Tiger Lily stamp set
Distress inks for the flowers - Scattered Straw, carved pumpkin and Black soot
Spellbinder - Carnation creation (leaves) and Romantic Rectangle dies -- Special Birthday sentiments stamp
BasicGrey - Picadilly paper (black background)
Ms. Sparkle & co. - Watercolor paper (yellow)
Dew drops

Our lilies have not bloomed yet but we have ones that look like these, love the detail in this set.

Hope your week is off to a great start,
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie

What she said

Oh my goodness when I saw this set at my stamp store I thought isn't that too cute.  It has these two characters holding signs and then along with it they give you all kinds of sayings you can put into their signs, I just had to have it :)  They have he said too, so you can make them either gender you want.  This was going to my teen great niece, so I went with girls :)

I just had to make a scene with these two. This hat is also in the set along dies.

Mama Elephant - Dos Amigos stamp set, colored w/markers
WeRmemory keepers- Anthologie paper
Spellbinders - A2 matting basics A die
Memory Box - Wrought iron fence, Bare Sapling and Grove Leaves dies

Thanks so much for taking the time to drop by today!!

Connie

New Markers/ Park part 2

Can you believe I made a card and had no one in mind!  I just bought these markers and I had to try them out and instead of trying to figure out who I could make a card for using them I just decided to make a card and have it on hand, that is just so weird for me, I know there are a lot of cardmakers that have a stash of cards on hand but I usually don't have time to make extra's it's all I can do to keep up with birthdays and anything that happens to pop up in between that needs a card.

These are the new Spectrum Noir Metallic Markers.  Although they can be used on white paper I just think they pop the best on darker colors and especially black.  I brought out an embossing folder with a bit of a scene so I could use multiple markers and started coloring all the embossed areas. I really love how it turned out and they have like a brush end and a smaller nib on the other side to get into even tighter spaces.

Since I wanted to keep with the metallic theme I cut the sentiment tag base out of metallic papers and I colored my white brad with the marker I used on the flowers so they would match the card.
Next I would like to see how they color on a stamped image.

Cuttlebug - Stylized Flower embossing folder
Spectrum Noir - Metallic markers
Spellbinders - Back to Basics Tag die
Impression Obsession - Sentiments II stamp set
DCWV - Metallic papers (tag)
Brads - colored w/same markers

The following pictures are from the same park as my last post just another trail in the park. This one was a bit harder for me to navigate.  I just went back to my foot doctor last week and had X-Rays of my foot and he told me that my foot has gotten worse and that he would refer me to a surgeon that would  have to break, reset the bones in my feet and I wouldn't be able to put any weight on my foot at all for quite some time and he said he knows how much I like to be outside and walk and such so he suggested that I have the surgery during the winter months.  I told him I was going to wait and see if the new inserts he wants to try will help any, not ready to go through all of that right now. So all that being said I understand more why now it is so hard for me to navigate on uneven surfaces.

I loved the textures and colors in the rocks on this trail and they were right next to the trail so you could get some great pics of them, and lets just say I took plenty of pictures of them, I could have some real cool backgrounds with them, LOL!

There were two falls on this trail but this second one is harder to see it is in the middle of this picture.

Do you see the rocks in the middle of the stream there, that is what I had to cross over to continue on the trail, that was the best place to cross over that had enough rocks for me to walk on.

From here to the end we had a better trail to walk on, this is turning back and looking back where we came from.

 A touch of purple coming out on the trees :)

The following pictures were after coming out from the trails and just walking down the stream in the park.

You can tell I was happy to see any type of flower I took pictures of anything I saw :)  The stream was so pretty and clear.

Hope you all are enjoying spring where you are!
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by again today, have a Fantastic weekend!

Connie

Masculine/ Park Part 1

This card first started out for a teen great niece that is kind of a tomboy, by the time I was halfway through I said no this is not going to work, so instead it went to my great nephew who I believe turned 2 this year.

Used my typewriter keys die for the sentiment and country stitches die to give a little something to the panels coming down. For some reason adding a bit of metal to it felt like it made it more masculine, so I added them to either side of the birthday stamp.

Memory Box - Contour Typewriter keys and country stitches dies
My Favorite things - Label Maker sentiment stamp
Ki - Bronze Metal Accents

Have you ever started a card for one person and then it ended up being better for someone else?

I thought I would share some of our trip to Ferne Cylffe State park in Illinois.  My hubby has come a few times by himself but this was the first time I tagged along.  It is a little more rough then I like to do but we got me through it.  We had heard with all the water this spring that the falls had water running over them, my hubby said it has always been dry every time he has gone so we thought we would see if it looks like the pictures on the web site.  Well there was some water going over but nothing like they showed on the web site.

I think everywhere I go I manage to find a weird looking tree and this had to be it on this trail :)  Next time I will try and post the other trail, we took to a smaller set of falls. 

My computer is starting to act up so hubby wants to go looking for a newer one for me before this one crashes.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie