Happy Valentine Day & Cards Share

I want to first wish you all a happy hearts day and thanks for visiting. The Hubster and I exchanged cards and candy Saturday night, so I will be in a near-sugar coma for most of the coming week. I received my usual request: large bag of peanut M&M's. But I gave something new this year: the biggest box I could find of Pangburn's Millionaires. Well, it did not disappoint! Here's the happy fella with his our (haha) goodies:

I spent some time Friday trying to update and clean up my blog sidebar and links page, but then when I tried to do a new post (as promised), every button and link for that was dead. I have no idea what happened. I just know that everything is back to normal now (I think). I am trying out a larger text, please let me know if it causes problems for anyone in reading it.

First, I want to share a card I made for my dad using the Cutie Pie stamp set from Artistic Outpost.  They have a monthly Show Us Your AO Art Challenge and I'm submitting this. Confession: I've long been a lover, fan and collector of AO. I believe at last count I own 52 sets of their stamps. And 3 single stamps. That's no typo, so yeah, I need to use them more instead of just collecting them (ya think?). I used paper scraps from my Valentines/Love stash box and I colored that cute majorette, puppy, chocolates and sentiment with alcohol markers, chalks, distress inks and though it's hard to see, some Wink of Stella pen. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Vintage images like these are much-loved by my dad. He also loves my card poems, so once again I happily obliged with one created in PSE. I even came up with a couple more diddies for future cards - there is also a football player and beauty queen in the stamp set.

I used this old Split Coast Stamper sketch for my design.

In my last post I talked about using the extra kiddie valentines I'd saved, so I went back and looked for other cards I'd used them on during the time I took a blog break. I found a few that haven't been shared until now:

One I made last year for my mother-in-law...

I made this one last year for my dad...

I made this for my brother in 2013...

Well that seems like quite enough for one post, right? Since things seem to be working fine now, I will try to come back this evening and share some more Valentine cards in honor of the big day! Enjoy your Sunday and thanks again for stopping by! xoxo

Oops, Bless me Blogger for I have sinned...

Well, I let too long happen before blogging again...8 days. My lame excuse is that I was struggling to get 7 Valentine cards made early enough to mail off, and when I'm under stress my brain reverts to one-track-mind linear thinking only. But I'm back now. Glad to see me? LOL I think over the next few days I shall share Valentine cards. Seems appropriate, no?

front

inside



FMS sketch 153

 First up (above), I made this card for my cousin and her hubby, and I used an old FMS sketch 153, turning it upside down. The birds and the sentiment are from Ronna Farrer's Doodle Birds Autumn Leaves set (very old), and the sentiment frame is from Artist Outpost's Whimsical Melange set (I cut off the rooftop of the house frame and used it on its side). I colored everything with Copics, and used a corner rounder punch. The innie sentiment is my own, made in PSE, and I used the round Tim foam tool and fired brick distress ink to make a border.

front

back

FMS sketch 213

Using another FMS sketch #213, I made the card above for my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who live together. This is all old papers and cardstock scraps from my Black Hole of Stash, only two diecuts (I used MFT Die-Namics Pinking Shears Mat Stax on the patterned papers and had a WPlus9 stamped and diecut Cupid left over from last week). Bugs Bunny is one of those kiddie valentines you buy in a pack, that I had left over from Dear Daughter's grade school exchanging 20 years ago. I kept the few extras and through the years have been able to use them. There's only one left now, and I'm thinking of making another card like this with it before putting up the Valentines stuff.

I was majorly sleep-deprived when I finished this card, and it looked really plain so without thinking I whipped out a red gel pen and doodled, yay me! lol. It doesn't look too terribly bad and I give myself props for spontaneity and risk-taking. I was going to go back and pierce holes along the faux stitching but remembered after the envelope was sealed and in the mailbox. Oh well!

 

More Valentine cards tomorrow. Yes, I finally snapped to the fact that since I took a 3-year leave of absence from blogging, I've got a LOT of art that I haven't shared, so I have plenty of material. I shall try to burn the blogging habit into my brain by doing it daily (or close) for a while. Just Valentine cards alone there's gotta be at least a dozen.

 

I had to admit defeat at doing weekly challenges. I'm just too slow and unreliably focused. New rule: only a few monthly challenges on a regular basis. I have piles of materials for about 3 weekly challenge pieces that's as far as I got before the deadlines, but on the bright side I've got 3 pieces of art ready to make. Not a loss, but not a way to live either. I hate feeling like I'm always bad-girl behind.

 

 

I will leave you with a page I recently finally finished in my Little Book of Wisdom quotations art journal. I originally shared how I made the background HERE , if you want to read about it. Then it sat for a couple years waiting for me to find just the right quote. 

 

One night not long ago I was watching an old movie on TCM, an old British WWII war film about a couple of families enduring the London bombings from Nazi air raids. I got so into it that I did some independent research on what that was like. I'm just in awe of the courage and fortitude of the civilian population. I think it's Twilight-Zone funny that this background was originally inspired by Ghostbusters, but was finished by (quotes from) Churchill. Don't run into that too often, eh? After all that research, suddenly the background looked to me to be similar to what the British people must have seen during those dark, scary, ominous nights. Add to that, the collage bits up the two sides were at first allusions to NYC gargoyles and gothic, and then became symbols of the royal courts and governments whose conflicts caused both world wars. When serendipitous things like that happen to me (and they have quite a bit in my life), I get the chicken skin (goosebumps), but I do like it. Makes me feel kinda special, even if in a creepy Carrie-way, lol.

 

Anyway, if I'm not remembering wrong, I believe that the 75th anniversary of the night the most British civilians died during the bombings is coming up on May 10, 2016.  I will definitely be thinking about those brave folks. They knew the REAL meaning of Keep Calm and Carry On! They are the ones who invented and first used the phrase we so casually and faddishly adopt in our arty lives today.

 

Have a great Thursday!

Late-Night Valentine Food

Omg, I almost did not post on The Big Day of Love! It is sad, really: Hubs and I both fell asleep around 8-ish after dining on fried chicken and chocolate. Yep, he chose Popeye's, so I went to pick some up. I'm right now day-dreaming a TV commercial...Lady Godiva riding her horse thru the streets holding bucket of Popeye's and singing, "Love that chicken from...". Are you seeing it now, too? Uh-oh, maybe I should just go back to bed! LOLOL

Oops, wait, then there is the Reese's Pieces type of commercial: "Hey, you got your fried chicken in my chocolate!"

Okay, all joking aside, here is the card I made for the Hubster:

I used the black paper on the insides and the outside back, too. And I wrote a private and mushy poem just for him that I used for the inside sentiment...which is why I'm not showing the inside, hehe.  He liked all of it. I usually buy him his cards, so this was a bit of a gamble that paid off...an occasional one created by me to show him how much I care won't kill him.

I love the card he bought me! And I'm gonna copy it in part before all is said and done, too, because the design is just short of ingenious. It's 8.5" tall and 23.5" wide after it's all opened up. Here's the front:

And opened up like a regular card:

Then, the first unfolding of the right side:

And the second unfolding of the right side:

And the third unfolding of the right side:

And the final unfolding of the right side:

Here's the entire inside of the card folded out:

And, the entire backside of the card folded out:

Pretty cool, huh? I told him it struck me right then as the best Valentine's card so far that he has picked out. You shoulda seen his entire torso swell up with pride. Men, gotta love 'em, I know I love mine!  

Traditional Valentine

(greeting card created by me, using Scrapworks and Teresa Collins for Junkitz patterned papers, Bazzill card stock, May Arts ribbon, Pacon doillies, Fiskars and Martha Stewart border punches, Victorian Scrapworks German scrap, CI file tab sticker, Making Memories sentiment rub-ons)

I distressed the edge of the polkadot heart, then inked it in warm red chalk ink, then took my Tim piercing tool and made faux stitches around the edge. Love piercing an edge after it's been distressed and inked. Love the little edge ridge that the swollen paper fibers make. My final touch to the stitches was little dots of white Sharpie paint pen xtra fine point, not too perfectly. Makes a nice confluence of dots between the stitching and the paper heart it's on, the file tab, the ribbon and the heart border on the paper.

Fun Shine is wonderful

The sunshine has disappeared here for now, but it was glorious while it lasted. So, let the fun shine live on...

(birthday card for my youngest niece, using a Stampers Corner yahoo group sketch...a ton of stickers and rub-ons by Making Memories, Scrapworks, Creative Imaginations...a few of my inchies...Bazzill card stock base...Scenic Route lined paper, left edge punched and distressed by me with the Tim tool...DCWV pink and orange slab papers...all edges distressed and inked with Colorbox chalk ink...Sizzix Sizzlets hearts diecuts)

XXX

I found a ziploc bag containing leftovers from a card I made a few years ago, the contents of which were enough to make another card, so I did!

(greeting card created by me, the second one I've created using the same elements: My Minds Eye card stock base, Offray striped ribbon, Fontwerks hearts stamp and hearts border stamp, QK star diecuts, bird cut freehand (all stamped images doused in Diamond Glaze to produce a glass effect.)

XXX

(greeting card created by me, using DCWV slab and Urban Lily patterned papers on a Wausau 110# index card stock base...QK man, woman and parasol diecut, Spellbinders leafy vine diecut, Offray ribbon, Eyelet Outlet brads, sentiment by My Cute Stamps)

XXX

And, last but not least, my latest big project finally finished and mailed out, a 10-Valentine card swap. I focussed on using some of my stuff, and managed to use the rest of my sequined hearts (I had exactly 10 left!) and some of my red fabric strip ribbon (I did make a dent in that stash, yay!). Here's all of them, lined up in what I call my Valentine Chorus Line:

 

and a close-up:

(10 greeting cards created by me, using Paper Reflections kraft card stock bases, Pacon doillies, red fabric strip ribbon and sequined hearts from my stash, Spellbinders frame diecut)

I hope there is fun shining today whereever you are....