Best Friend Award

I am so honored to be awarded this from two of the nicest ladies in the world. My friend Kathy at the Lucky Stamper gave this to me first and I hope you can stop by her blog and check out the beautiful work that she does. She is always such an inspiration to me. Then before I knew it, I was honored again when the lovely Olga at craftieodamae bestowed this to me. Thanks Olga, I will always cherish our friendship as you were the very first online person to become my friend and to think we only lived a few miles away from each other. You need to check out her beautiful work as well....such talent in all of my friends and that includes you reading this.
When receiving this award you need to thank your givers and then link back to their site. You then need to pass this on to followers for your blog that inspire you with their visits and comments. I so appreciate each and everyone of you that stops to visit with me and want to pass it on to all of my followers and readers, if you have not already posted this from someone else, please accept it with my love and gratitude. I hope each of you is having a happy, special day!

It's a Garden Party

Don't you just love a party? Well if so, then you need to join in the one this week at Designed 2 Delight . This is my entry for the progressive challenge that Faith puts on each Friday. For each week that you play and post a creation, you will get the next weeks digi free. I made a 5 1/2 inch square card for this week using some card stock from Rubber Cottage and some unknown purple and dp from my stash (these are oldies but goodies, I guess). The sentiment is also by Faith and is in a set she sells by the name "Willow Whimsy" which has the most beautiful tree image included.

I was looking at my collection of cards and saw that I am light in the Happy Birthday ones, so that is what I will be concentrating on for a bit. I will have another post a little later on , so if you have time be sure and check back in. Happy Day to you all!

Magical Monday for Paper Cupcakes

Well gang, it's Monday again and that means time for my card for this week's challenge for Paper Cupcakes where Chelsea Barnes is our hostess and challenges us to use fabric and stitches in our creations. As you all know, I do not sew with a machine so I had to resort to my old cross stitching days and decided to use a piece of aida cloth that I am still holding on to. I love to cross stitch but my eyes don't like for me to do it as much as they used to. My papers are from the new Prima pack called Madeline that I recently ordered and my coloring was done with Prismacolors and OMS. I really love this image by Nina which is called "Decorative Egg" I hope you can join in on the challenge this week. You can use any image you would like to, but if you use a PCC image your name will be entered in the draw for our prize, twice.

I hope you all had a super weekend...Rick and I got away for a few hours on Saturday to shoot in a fund raiser tournament for a local church in our area. It was such a blast, we were able to meet up with some friends that we haven't seen in quite and it was a gorgeous day set up on a local horse farm and next to the beautiful New River that runs through our area. Here's wishing you all a happy day!!

Vintage Easter at Sugar Creek

Well gang, it is my second Sensational Saturday guest designing for the wonderful group at Sugar Creek Hollow and I am still so excited to be a part of this exciting adventure. I created a card this week for the challenge to make a vintage Easter card using Tracy's image "Liza Bunny" , isn't she a cutie? I found on my computer some library cards designed by Heather Nichols that I had downloaded....so I printed some of them out and used one on this card, distressing it and stamping the sentiment from Stampin' Up's set Well Scripted. I love how this turned out, won't you come along and play with us this week and show us your beautiful Easter cards. Here is the inside of my card. I just used my trimmed pieces for an accent.

One more picture, this is my card along with a basket that I made from a template and basket stamp that I picked up in Winston-Salem last year on my girls trip with Olga and Becky to meet up with some of you....I am ashamed to say that this is the first time it has seen ink. It is by a company Rubber Cottage and I am really happy with how user friendly it was. These are round eggs...lol from my spring basket by Jim Shore. I love his decorative items and since I forgot to pick up some candy for my basket, I thought these would work just fine until I can get some real goodies.

Card Details:
Paper: Bazzil, 7 Gypsies "Victoria", Library card Heather Nichols, watercolor, Stampin' Up
Ink: Versafine Vintage sepia, Memento, SU , Prismas
other: Ribbon from Dollar Tree and Walmart, GinaK buttons, flowers gift from a friend, Queen Bee pearls
Image: SCH "Liza Bunny", SU well scripted

Butterfly Garden Tag

Last week I received my first and not to be my last package from Joan's Gardens .  She had recently posted a new collection from Pink Paislee called Butterfly Garden which I immediately fell in love with. My tag comes from some of my new goodies. My base is a standard manila tag...I used the back ground piece of printed card stock that came in my new clear stamps which I cut into pieces the size to use for tags. It is one of the same prints that is in the paper pack. I stamped the doily from the stamp set and heat embossed with white embossing powder. The word stamps are also from that set. My bird is from the Butterfly Ephemera set that is also available and chocked full of beautiful images. I used some of the Stampin' Up hardware and lace from my scrap basket to add some dimension. I  am totally in love with this collection....the stamp set is full of beautiful images and was only $6.99...can you believe that? Hope you like my tag....I do! Happy Weekend everyone!

Spotty Dotty Watering Can....

It's Thursday....almost the weekend, Yeah! I am posting a card today for the progressive challenge put on each week by Faith at  Delightful Inspirations and since  this is the first week of the month, you can pick up the "Spotty Dotty Watering Can" for free and if you create something with each weeks freebie, you will continue to receive Faith's new image each week. This will also work for the challenge to use dots or spots on your creation at Card Ideas which showcases Faith's images from Designed 2 Delight.

For this card, I tried the faux pressed flower technique that I found on SCS here . I used design paper from DCWV and some solids from the same pack to layer my papers. The flowers were punched from some of these with a Stampin' Up punch and I used the Swiss Dots embossing folder to complete the technique. I can't wait to try this again with some other images. I colored my image with copics and SU markers and highlighted with my stardust glitter pen. For the inside I used some more of the paper and used a rub on that I have had for quite a while which is from Stampin' Up.
 Hope you can join in on the fun and pick up your freebie this week....she has already done a sneak peak for next week and it is adorable. Talk to you soon.

Birthday for Joan's Gardens

Hello my friends....thanks for stopping by to check out my latest card. It is a birthday card that I created for the challenge at Joan's Gardens where we were asked to create a

• Window Top Card ( an opening in the top of the card with the design on the inside)
• Add three colors of flowers for the focal point.
• A Birthday card

I cut a piece of Bazzil card stock 5 1/2 x 12 and scored at 4 and 8 inches. This created a double fold card (or at least that is what I call it) My left section, I cut a piece of dp (K&Co Ancestry.com) along with the card stock with my Spellbinders Labels 4 and then cut a piece of GinaK ivory in the next smaller size. My flowers were made using more of the dp (which is double sided),mulberry and scraps from my stash with a Sizzix die. I added a GinaK button to the center of the one. I stamped the floral image from my new set of Butterfly Garden stamps that I got last week in my order from Joan. These are the best stamps....I can not get over the beautiful image they stamp and I am in love with the ephemera pack, also from Pink Paislee.

This is the back side of the card. And here is a picture of the front and inside.

I used the pieces that I cut out of the front to decorate the inside. Just placing the die cut design paper and adding a piece of ivory card stock with a sentiment from Stampin' Up. I left the green die plain to give a place for a personal message. I layered a piece of coordinating paper from my stash with more of the dp.

Sorry to make this such a long post, but wanted to show you all the parts of this card. Hope you enjoy it and I hope your week is going well. It was beautiful here in VA and Rick mowed the lawn for the first of many times. Temps were in the 70's with a wind, but opened some of my windows and aired out the house. Love springtime. Stop by at Joan's if you have time, her challenges are always so much fun. See ya soon!

Flowers for Paper Cupcakes

Welcome to another Magical Monday for Paper Cupcakes where one of our newest design team members Belinda Lewis has challenged us and you to use flowers on our cards....nothing more, except to have fun doing it!
I decided to use one of my favorites by Nina called "Wildflower Bouquet". I had just gotten this paper by Memory Box "Pixie" and love the design in this one. I hope you can stop by and see what the rest of the team has created and play along with us this week. Nina will have a freebie if you don't have any of our images (you will be entered twice for the prize) or you can use any image of your choice.
Wishing you all a fabulous week!!

Guest Designer for Sugar Creek Hollow

I know that I teased you with some news to be announced this morning and here it is:
I am Guest Designer for Sugar Creek Hollow for the month of April. It is super news for me, as this is one of my favorite challenge sites and you see me post cards using Tracy's images each week. I was so excited when she asked me in February and it has been hard to keep it to myself.

The challenge this beautiful Saturday morning is a sketch..... and here is the card that I created using the image "Wedding Cake".

You may not be able to see in my picture, but the image has shadows and depth when you print it out that is just gorgeous. I needed a card for a cousin that is getting married soon and I love how this turned out. I used the colors from the challenge at The Color Throwdown using these colors:

I hope you can stop by and check out the rest of the talented design team at Sugar Creek Hollow and play along in this week's challenge. You do not have to have one of their images to play, but you are entered to win the prize twice if you do use one of them, plus Tracy has some freebies, if you would like to try before you buy.
Thanks for stopping by for a visit.....Happy Day to you all!!
Card Details:
Paper: GinaK, K&Co Black and Ivory, Bazzill
Extra: Martha Stewart border punch, Dollar Tree ribbon, GinaK rhinestones, Spellbinders Peony die

Scrapbook Day at my House

It's Friday and time for the weekend....hope you have lots of fun things going on for you and yours!

I spent the morning working on some cards and the afternoon in my craft room with my good friend (I used to work with her before quitting to take care of MIL) creating a scrapbook of her dear dogs. We did pretty good too, creating 5 pages...I think that is a great start for one day. She wanted a CAS look to her memories and I think we accomplished that , why don't you take a look---

   

It's been a while since I made a scrapbook page, but since Donna already had
an idea of how she wanted her pictures, it was just a matter of getting all the pieces together. She fell in love with my Spellbinders and Bigshot. I told her to be careful or she would be hooked. She was amazed at what I had in tools and supplies, she should see some of your stashes, right?

I also wanted to show you all what came in the mail today....I won at two of the blogs during the blog hop for Sugar Creek Hollow . One of these was Moe Joe Designs where Mary sent these sweet goodies:

Isn't that a pretty card that she made for Sugar Creek and now it's mine. I love that crinkled seam binding.

Then I also got a package from Nancy at Southern Yankee Crafter  , and here's a picture of those goodies and her card that she sent:

And I know this is a long post, but I just have to show you all the new papers, stamps and goodies that arrived from Joan's Gardens , after winning a stamp from her last week, I decided to place an order for some of the new Butterfly Gardens items she had just shown and they are even prettier in person....

I am so excited and can't wait to play with all of my new goodies. Keep an eye out as you never know when they may show up. See you tomorrow, hope you all have a great Friday night!!