40 Words of Wisdom

 A fun card for a birthday next week, inspired by  
Paper Crafters Corner Magazine Mondays, week 40.
I love the colors and layers of the magazine cover.  
Thanks for the challenge Steph!

Merry Christmas!

I know my followers are few, but each and every one of you is special and I wanted to wish you a 

Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Too!

Feliz Navidad y Propero Ano

Looking Through My Card Stash

The Fiskateer Orange Blog Hop is this weekend and it reminded me I still need one more Halloween card for DH...

So I dug through my card stash drawer and found these four, using two different techniques.  I think I'll wait until Tuesday to decide if he should get the spiders or the pumpkin.  Or... you can tell me which one you think DH should get.

Wood instead of Paper

Have you ever tried stamping on Wood instead of Paper?

It can really add a nice touch to any card or layout.  I love the grain running through my image and I love the way the ink bleeds just a little.  I used Ranger Distress Ink and love the look, but if you want to stamp without the bleeding, try using Ranger Archival Ink or Staz On Ink. 

Layout Event - Challenge #2

I squeezed out another layout while having fun with my cropping group on Sunday afternoon.  The Fiskateer challenge was to use the negative space from a punch in some way.  Because I was away from home, I kept it simple and punched the sailboats along the top and bottom.  To keep the sailboats upright at the top of the page, I cut a slit along the top of the picture mat.  Then I tapped it back in place from the back.  If I had it to do again, I would run the slit clear to the edge.  It would be easier to punch and it taped back together so well, you would never notice.
This is Bill on our Sailboat Sirius, in 1993 when we are in the Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada.  We spent a year there preparing our boat for blue water sailing.  (That means being out of sight of land for long periods of time)

Fiskateer Games

See that cute little badge to the right?  

The one that says Fiskateer Games?  

Well... the Fiskateers are having a bit of fun during the Olympics with four events of our own.  The first week, the event is Layouts and there are four possible ways to enter.  Time is short for me, so I may only have one, but here it is:

I designed this with two special pictures I have of Billie (our dog) from 1999 when she first sailed with us.  She would site atop our cabin (on the sailboat) and watch the whole world go by.  Sometimes, she even chased the pelicans, only to find it wasn't so easy to stop quickly on the deck of a fiberglass boat.  LOL!

Unfortunately, our printer gave up, so I don't have the pictures just yet.  I have a new printer ordered and hope it arrives soon.

Summertime in Cardstock

During a recent online crop with the Fiskateers, one of the challenges was to get back to basics and use only cardstock.  I could resist grabbing a bunch of Fiskars Punches to have some some creating this little summer scene.  I love the dimension it has, yet is still flat enough to mail without hassle.

Feeling the Heat

It has been so long since I've posted, and never consistently, so now I hope to add a card or layout or ???  now and then.  Today, it is all about the humidity.

It has been so hot here during our monsoon season, that I needed some time to dream about cooler places.  I made this framed layout (8 x 8) for a challenge on the Fiskateer site using some of my new digital papers and some of the seashells I collected when we lived on our sailboat.  The base is an embroidery hoop and I used Tattered Angels paint to color it blue.  I like the effect of the ColorBok glitter paper (white) and think I might just go back and add glitter to the blue frame.

In honor of

 St. Patrick's Day, 

I am posting four of my favorite green cards. 

I hope you like them too.

Berry Sweet

Just a fun layout kit Mom and I just finished for the Color Suite Challenge at Scrapbook and Cards Today.  The strawberries have glossy accents and each leaf is folded and inked for dimension.  Loved making this layout.

An Altered Book for My Friend, about Her Garden

This is my first altered book and my first project as a Scrapbooker.  I made scrapbooks while growing up, but nothing like what we make today.  Mom showed me an altered book while I was visiting her and I was hooked.  I wanted to make a book about my friends' garden for her birthday.  I selected a book from the early 50's and the binding fell apart to the point that I decided to cover the book in denim so I could hide the repairs.

This page folds out (see following 3 pictures) and I tried to coordinate each set of pages as it unfolds.

It is all about friendship, therefore, it is a friendship garden

I spent a day with my friend, taking pictures of her garden in bloom.  She did not know what I was up to because I told her I wanted the pictures to use as a screensaver.

The colors in her garden deserved to be showcased, so I just added velum between these two pictures to keep them from sticking together.

The dedication page that I include in every book

I love having 3 half pages that coordinate in a series.   Ready...

Set...

Grow!

Oh how I love pockets.

The watermark paper on left page is from an actual picture, as are the tags.

The rabbit in this picture was a playmate to my friends little dog.  The rabbit would sit by the sliding glass door every morning and wait for the dog to come out and they would run around the yard chasing each other.

Not every page turned out as I intended, but they all had meaning, so I kept them.

There were so many great pictures, I added 4 envelope pages to hold the extras.

The picture on the right is also from her grape vine trellis.

This pathway represents all the journeys we have shared over the years as friends..  The pebbles are real.

More fun with nature.  The plants on these pages are all weeds from Oregon.  I glued them in by sealing them with gel medium. 

We worked together and were instrumental in the design of these two collector items.  So I just added a page to commemorate our careers.

The last page is a tribute to my friends wonderful little dog, Thor