Coffee Fix

It seems like Blogger still acting up?! I added a lot of text to this and the last post today and it is gone!! Grrr... guess I start over? I will never get caught up if this keeps happening! I also had to go check where I entered my cards because I noticed that my entry had disappeared. That would have been ok if the collections had not been closed!

Coffee - one of my necessities. I love to get my fresh hot cup of coffee with flavored cream and sit quietly thinking of what to write on a blog or what next to create. Half the time I browse through other blogs and follow links to their DT or links to even more blogs - it is very inspiring! Even though I don't have all the new gadgets or as many stamps or embellies, I think I can still make a decent card ;o) I truly like the CAS though there are some absolutely stunning card photos out there with tons of stuff on them that still don't look too busy but you can't stop looking at them! LOL This card is a little more than CAS, but I feel it is still clean and simple to an extent. I got really lucky for this card inspiration - the colors (which are not showing up just right on these pictures so I might have to retake them in natural light) were in my favorite category from PPC, and PIO had the "funny bone" that fit this Fairy Knoll digi perfectly. There were a few sketches to choose from but I kept going back to The Secret Crafter sketch even though other sketch challenges were closing sooner. Sometimes things just all fall into place and it sure is nice!

So, on with the card details... The one sided heavy paper really goes with another paper that you will see properly combined later, but it went well . I actually have a coffee bacgkgound paper somewhere but could not find it and my printer is acting up so I could not print one

Challenges this card qualifies for:

The Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - #134 Sketch

Prairie Fairy Fridays - #52 Here Come the Girls

PIO - #19 Funny Bone

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge CFC2

Going Grey with Scrap Creations Challenge: Circles

Picture Perfect Creations - CC#58

Crafty Sentiments - Buttons Challenge

Stamping Vacation - NO NO embossing!

Stamping Vacation - Embellish It - Beads

Stamping Vacation - You name the challenge

Delicious Doodles - #25 What inspires you to create?

Pail of Flowers for Mom

I am going to try to add the links for the challenges of this card before Blogger goes back down. Forgive me for not writing much, I haven't been able to post much for days! I hope they got the problem fixed, but I am not taking chances.

Challenges this card qualifies for:

Designed2Delight - Pail Of Flowers

CPS - sketch #217

CR84FN - color challenge27

Paper Playtime - #45 Tall Card

Creative Stamp Friends - #24 Motherday

Tall Friends

I barely got this posted last night in time to be entered for a couple challenges because Blogger went down, so I could not even finish working on this, and I missed being able to post another. I also found out last night that I won a challenge at Paper Playtime for challenge#44! I have won 5 digis from Di's Digi Downloads and discovered I will be having a hard time selecting only 5! I think I am going to find all blogs she sponsors and try to enter them to win more. If you have not seen her work I suggest you go look, I made the link for you to follow.

Challenges this card qualifies for:

MelJens challenge #57 - Make a tall card

Paper Playtime challenge #45 - Make a tall card

Prairie Fairy Fridays - #52 For the girls

Let It Snow - Sledding

Growing up and living in Florida for 25 years I only saw snow twice. Once was in elementary school while we were walking to the bus stop, and I think it was about 38* but it was coming down, sticking on the roads and piling up on the cars. It was actually feeling warmer as we walked and the snow was falling and I remember taking my coat off. The second snow was Christmas eve 1989 and it was SNOWING lol. The ducks were all swimming in the jacuzzi of the apartments I lived in and the steam was rising out of it like crazy but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. We had rolling blackouts because of the power load of people cooking for Christmas, using more heat, and maybe even that darn jacuzzi! Holly was 2 and Christy had just been born Oct 24th so I had to bundle them up real good and preheat the car to go to my Grandparents house for Christmas Eve dinner, celebration and Santa coming to give out gifts for the kids (young AND old kids hehe).

Blessed Day

Every day is a blessed day - whether it feels like it or not, lol. We are blessed to be alive, blessed to have: shelter, food, loved ones, pets, vehicles, clean running water, commodes that flush (I thank God for that on a regular basis!), an income of any kind, etc... After all the recent tragedies or natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, floods and tornadoes, we should be even more thankful if we were not affected by any of them!!

Challenges I would like to enter this card in are:

Designed2Delight - Flutterby Fairy Digi stamp

Card Positioning Systems - CPS sketch #216 ----->>>

The Play Date Cafe - TPDCC #80

Simon Says Stamp - Paper Piecing or Piercing

Mom by Christy

My daughter, Christy, really wowed me when she made this card for me. It was a few years ago and I didn't even know she was making it! How could any mom not be proud to receive a card like this for Mother's Day??? She is extremely artistic, as you can see, and was in band and dance at the time. When I started papercrafting she really picked up on it and loved playing with me and we made some bang up cards. The craft area was in the basement and she must have been working on this somehow when I wasn't down there with her, or she was hiding it REAL WELL!

Bloom

Bloom. Something we all should do daily! Bloom in life, attitude, with family... No matter what, we can always choose to bloom - love, joy, peace - spread it around!

I made this card for a friend, but it can be used for just about anything since you can add any wording inside for it to fit the occasion you need. Mine just says, "I love the way our friendship has blossomed." I like simple, lol.

What I used for this card:

3 patterned papers (one made by stamping a background design on plain paper.

Designed2Delight bloom digi stamp colored with watercolor pencils and blended with a water blending pen.

A glitter envelope sealer sticker cut into 4 for the corners.

4 colored metallic beads in green, blue, pink and purple.

3 flowers punched out of glitter paper.

2 ribbons of blended purple to blue color.

I chose the colors based on a challenge but since we lost power for a day I didn't get it posted in time but like the card enough to blog it. My daughter who loves purple approved of it highly so that was enough reason to add it to my collection! I hope you like it also :) Thanks for viewing it and giving me any feedback. I am so happy to have a 4th follower now, so maybe you can be #5 and make my week!

Many Blessings to you! Deborah

Challenges this card is entered into are:

CPS #215

Paper Playtime #44 - Friends

Stamp Fairy #20 - A bit of sparkle, 3 DP, 2 dies or punches

MAWTT #96 Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes

PIO #17 - 2 or more ribbons

Oh Hoppy Day - Bullfrogs & Butterflies by D2D

Not only is this an adorable Digital Doodle set by Designed2Delight that can be used on a card for almost anything or anyone, it also makes me sing! "Oh Happy Day... when Jesus washed my sins away..." Having just celebrated Easter - Resurrection Sunday - I am again humbled at the sacrifice Jesus made by dying on the cross to take our sins and sickness away. Now relate that to Spring - new birth, new growth, sunshine (Son-shine), flowers and cute critters coming back out of hibernation for an overall feeling of JOY.

I wanted this card to depict the vibrancy of Spring. Though I was tempted to use my favorite color orange, I refrained this time and came up with another purple theme that my daughter Christy would love. The butterflies were the driving force since I do not have any frogs digital or on paper (hint hint to the digital designers!). I colored the butterflies pink and purple since I had the digital paper that I printed out. The secondary paper had purple and blue and the sky in the image is blue, so I added the dual color ribbon to tie in the blue and purple (glittery butterfly) buttons and added a purple ribbon bow. I wanted to add another paper so the card would fit into another challenge but I just could not figure anything into the card layout that would work without making the card way to busy to enjoy. Overall, I'm happy with the card and I printed quite a few of this digi to use on more cards which I will add to this blog post when done.

I want everyone to be able to go get this digi, so I have a few links to the blog. What I love Love LOVE is that you can buy this and use it for the next challenge and get the next weeks digi free just for participation in the challenge! Free digi stamp every week, how could you pass that up? I also just found another blog that gives digis away just for following, commenting on their blog and yours - Digi Stamp Boutique - and there is one day left for the April give away so don't waste any time!

This card would have been entered in a few challenges, but due to the nasty storms and power outtage, I could not post it until now which is too late to enter in D2D and some others. I still hope it can be enjoyed for viewing and that I might find somewhere to enter it.

Many Blessings today!! Deborah

Card Challenges:

Designed2Delight Bullfrogs & Butterflies - too late to enter bc of storms & power outtage :(

Paper Playtime - Challenge #44 - April's Digi Monday - Friends

Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes (2nd Anniversary)

Stamp Something - Things With Wings

The Stamping Boutique - Challenge #5 Winged Things

Pile It On challenge#17 - 2 or more ribbons

Just Because

What better reason to let them know they matter to you than no reason at all? On top of that making something more than a basic card says that you took the extra time to make a special embellishment, use real stamps and hand write a sentiment really shows them that they are special. We all like to feel special! Texts and emails are nice, but something you can hold and look at while it's displayed at home fulfills a basic need in a not so basic way. This card was made for a man friend, but can be for anyone.

Blue skies and sunshine brighten our mood, right? That is why I chose these colors: light blue sky, aqua, cream (made from white and yellow because I did not have a cream that would show up on this cardstock) and some complimentary colors in the spotty paper to draw focus inward. Of course the flower centers are orange because by now you probably know that is my favorite color ;o) I double stamped the flowers with good old rubber stamps - the white went down first and then the yellow on top making a creamy color matching the cream in the patterned paper. The surprise outcome is that the flowers look highlighted which looks cool, lol. Since the card was fairly basic after just paper and ink, I offset the sentiment to add an embellishment. Adding more flowers would have made it to girly so I dug through my cabinet and found my wire tote. My husband is a contractor and I have helped him do wiring many times so wire said manly to me. Silver seemed to be the right choice over colored or coated wires because most men are basic and not frilly, but I did add beads at the end to tie the wire into the card colors. I had to staple the wire crafted embellishment to the card to make sure it was secure enough to mail. So much for basic, hehe.

Since the wire crafted embellishment was an afterthought, the staples showed on the inside :( To cover them, I cut a couple flowers out but had a hard time attaching them over the staple wires, even with pop dots. They will probably need replaced since they look kinda sad right now. Instead of double stamping the flowers this time, I just tried the yellow and white separately. Not the look I was hoping for with the yellow, but too late so that is a lesson learned - practice on scrap! I decided to hand write the sentiment instead of computer generate it just because, lol. Sandi Genovese was on a Scrapbooking show, and she is big on hand written sentiments and journals for that personal touch, so I did it. Please be kind when you comment!!

Many many blessings, Deborah - JoyfullyOrange

P.S. I now have 3 followers! Woohoo!!

Challenges this card is being entered into are:

CR84FN Color Challenge - CR84FN24 lt. blue, aqua, & cream
Craft Your Passion Challenge - You've been spotted (use dots)

Pile It On Challenge - PIO#16 Smells like rubber

I've Been Thinking Of You

   These days of digital technology are great BUT... Nothing says personal like a handmade card! I'm not OLD, just old-fashioned! Yes, I have a laptop, wifi router, smart phone, fax, etc... but I also have paper crafting supplies galore and I love to make cards to send to the people I care about! And, they love to receive them, heck, I love to receive them!!! I have a special place that I keep handmade cards given to me so I can look at them over and over. Just knowing that person thought enough about you to go out of their way and take the time to make a special creation is enough to make my day no matter what is going on. Tell me you don't feel the same way and I will make a card for you to change your mind! LOL!

   As I have stated before, I am new at blogging, and even newer at digital stamps, but I think they are so wonderful! *I like exclamation points if you can't tell, hehe* I have spent HOURS in the stores looking at rubber or acrylic stamps and trying to choose. They are expensive and take lots of room to store and they come in one size only, and not one size fits all. I have even SAT on the floor in the stores with stamps laying out in front of me trying to choose what I can buy that won't break my budget and will work for the most projects. I thank God for the wonderfully talented people that not only can draw, but can put it in a program to change it to what most of us can use with the programs we have. My husband told me today that I could do that. Well, I probably could, he has seen me do drawings for my stained glass patterns and other stuff, but what he didn't see was the hours of frustration and amount of paper I went through to do them. And, the fact that I can't draw like the people I have seen so far with digis, WOW!!!

   So here is digital stamp card #2 that I made. It is bright - my favorite color is orange, so you will be seeing a lot of it - and cheery, and CUTE with the expression on the ant's face pondering the one being thought of. This digi is from The Doodle Pantry's freebies page. I am using it to enter their challenge Bursting with Buttons and use a Doodle Pantry image. (Both of those are links, but I think I need to change the color on my layout for them to be more noticeable) I got this one done too late to enter the previous challenge of theirs but it just happens to fit the new theme - YAY!

   Of course my ant is orange, you do not need to adjust the color settings of your monitor LOL! Since most ants are red or black, I figured it would be fitting to have an orange and red combo. I wanted Casual and Simple so that it could be for anyone - man, woman, or child. I used watercolor pencils (I don't have copic markers, I am still old-school there too) and a blending brush to color the whole picture then added the glitter crayons like I did on the last card w/digi. What can I say? What woman doesn't like bling?? The ribbon is from my Christmas stash but the sparkle fits with the glitter crayons. The buttons are edged with a metallic marker red/silver combo because I wanted to make sure the red button stood out on the red paper, and it does in this picture but was closer in color looking at it at home. I popped the ant topper with foam tape - the cheap stuff you can get at the hardware store since it didn't have to be acid free to protect a photograph. (My husband is a contractor and I shop at the hardware stores with him a lot. You can find amazing stuff there!)

   Who are you thinking of? Go get the digi (you can't complain about the price!), make a card and send it out! Until I find a recipient of this card it will just be seen in challenges. I hope you like it. And I hope you will click to follow me. I am not sure how that works, as I have not found where to look to find the links to pages I have clicked follow for, but I am sure it does something or it wouldn't be there hehehehe. Someone give me a clue where to find those I am following?

Many blessings! Deborah - JoyfullyOrange

Card challenges this card can be seen in:

Doodle Pantry - Stock the Pantry #1 Theme: Bursting with buttons & use a DP image