Steampunk and Eagle Festival

This is not normally a style I go with but I am challenging myself this year to use my papers, so here we go, the image is part of this paper pack as is the butterflies, I fussy cut them from a sheet of nothing but butterflies and popped up the wings. I added sparkle to the butterfly wings too.

Graphic 45 - Steampunk Debutante paper pack
Gina Marie designs- Birthday words sentiment stamp
Spellbinders - Labels trio die
Spectrum noir - clear sparkle pen on wings

I thought I would share some pictures I took when we went up to Alton Illinois for the Alton-Audubon Eagle Ice Festival.

On the Illinois side of the Mississippi River they had some ice carvings in the parking lot of the visitors center.

Then we headed across the river to the Missouri side to the Audubon building where they had all kinds of information on all kinds of birds and how they take care of injured birds and this little one stole my heart, just a beauty!

Outside they have a path you can walk down to the river and view the birds, my pictures of them didn't turn out all that great but you can see the bit of snow we had on the ground, it was a chilly day.

We headed back to the Illinois side after our little hike and went back to the rivers edge to get some shots of the frozen Mississippi River. Yes that's my hubby out on the ice taking pictures, I was smart and stayed up on land.

They ice crystals on the water were just beautiful with the sun hitting them just right.

Of course you have to stay for the sunset.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to stop by today and say Hi,

Connie

Robot Birthday

My nephew has remarried this past year and his new wife had a boy, I don't know a lot about him so I am hoping this was something he liked.

My mind's eye - Boy crazy stamps and paper, colored w/markers
Spellbinders - Lg. Deckled Rectangles die
Stamps of Life - Minis 4 circles sentiment stamp
Specturm noir Sparkle pen

It was so nice yesterday we went on a little trip to a park, we saw an amazing sunset, so nice to have these warmer days to enjoy in the middle of winter.  Hope you enjoyed a nice weekend!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and say Hi,

Connie

Friendship

I did a little bit of water coloring with this art impressions stamp, I really liked this sentiment for my close friends.

The window to my heart is a beautiful view of friendship that I treasure.

Art Impressions - Cottage window stamp, water colored
Spellbinders - Majestic Labels one die
Sassafras - Mix and mend paper (tan)
Echo park - Fine and Dandy paper (flower paper)
Paper studio - Washi tape
Gina Marie design - Birthday words stamp sentiment
Diamond toppings - starlight

Hope your enjoying a nice weekend, we had some really nice weather and we went to a trail and walked a couple miles was so good to get out!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by,

Connie

Palette Challenge

I was in need of another masculine card, so when I saw this Inspiration Palette Challenge J1718 over at the Repeat Impression blog I thought it was a good place to start. It looks like they have challenges every week but you have a few weeks to get them done, which is very nice :)

In keeping with trying to use more of my patterned paper I have stamped the image and made the tag and background all from the same paper pack, the punched strip is cardstock. I used the same border punch to punch my sentiment tag.

Artistic Outpost - The Outpost stamp set, stamped w/ Memento London fog ink
Best Occasions - Mixed Media Paper
Spellbinders - A2 matting basics A die
Fiskars - border punch
Our Daily Bread designs - Mini tag sentiment stamp
Fashion Bead paint - silver

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and visit,

Connie

Embossing and Plaid

You all need to sit down because shocker of all shockers I actually made a couple Christmas cards.  Generally I wait until the very last moment to make mine, probably because I pack away all my stuff and so I wait until that is all I do and I do them all at once, but it is getting very stressful to do it that way, so hopefully I can keep this up all year and will be able to have at least half done by Christmas :)

My Stamping groups challenge was to use plaid, so I did that in both these cards and I also saw on Janice's blog, that she is now a team designer for that  they were doing an embossing challenge, so I decided to combine the challenges.

So head over to Winter Wonderland Blog if you would like to play along.
I decided to do both dry and wet embossing on my card.  I forgot to use my anti static pad and after dry embossing my background I was rubbing my embossing ink over the raised area, I couldn't tell if I was getting good coverage so I ended up going over every dot with my embossing pen doing a section at a time and applying the embossing powder, good thing I only did one of these :)  I also used gold embossing powder for the sentiment on the tag.

Cuttlebug- Swiss dot folder (embossed with gold powder)
PoppyStamps- Pinpoint Main Street tag die
Studio G - Sentiment stamp embossed in gold
Button, colored w/marker
Ribbon
Washi tape

Next I stamped the plaid background stamp using Distress Oxide Lucky clover ink onto patterned paper. Used the same paper to die cut my flower.

Stampin up- plaid background stamp
Poppystamps- Blooming Poinsettia die
Impression Obsession- Pine branch die
Taylored Expression - Joy  die

Wish me luck in keeping this up for the rest of the year.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie