Flying High...

First here are the pegs before and after...  LOVING the after!

Again with the photo loading incorrectly...  Seriously people just have your monitor on a swivel so you can tilt it to see my photos the right way up.  I'll continue to work on it - I promise... Now on to the real reason for today's post.


I am not a stamper...I play at it but I smudge/have uneven inking/etc so many that it is a chore still I drool over images from Hero Arts, Unity Stamp Co, Stampabilities and many many more.  But I have put myself on a buying freeze until I get every stamp I currently own inky!  Now that I said it out loud for you all to hear will it help me do it?

I am also not a color-er (is that a word)...I try but it is not the fun, relaxing activity that so many of my talented friends claim it is. I stress over staying in the lines, picking the right colors and on and on and yet I am out of room in the small tote I have for my Prism markers and some of my Stampin' Up Watercolor Wonder crayons are showing use. I went with Prism after seeing all the pretty colors my friend Nej has and fondling them when we got together to craft - they were less expensive than the Copics and frankly less intimidating with all those numbers to figure out (wink wink).

All of this being said I am sharing a card I made last night after stamping and coloring and that, surprisingly, I LOVE. That might be due to having hubby sitting beside me and helping with the colors (so if they are *off* it's his fault) or it might be due to the fact I did 7 of them in one sitting so one was bound to be pleasing.

I have had this patterned paper from SugarTree (the J.Q. Outdoors Scrapbook Collection JQ30) so long I thought I'd never use it.  I literally bought out the store I found it in because it had a German Shorthaired Pointer on it (see the bottom left corner) and those are hard to find in scrapping stuff.  The card base and mat are random cardstock pieces from by stash.  The sentiment is from Stampabilities - love that it is masculine. The image is from SU Wildfowl set released in 2004 I believe (think I've stamped each of the 4 images once and ran from the room in terror at the thought of coloring it) and I colored it using SU Watercolor Wonder crayons and a very small tipped paint brush...  And now because I know you are dying to know the color list: eye - Rose Red, head - Glorious Green, far wing & tail - Close to Cocoa, close wing (underside is always lighter I was informed) - Creamy Caramel, back - Brocade Blue, foot - Summer Sun, beak - Yoyo Yellow, underside - Really Rust at neck blended with Bravo Burgandy as we progressed to the foot, the wind currents - Bashful Blue.  The ring on his neck was left white.

So what do you think?  Did we (hubby and I) get the colors right - no comment on the actual coloring itself needed [wink]

What I Did This Weekend...

But first some catching up as I have been remiss...  We had a hard drive crash and all the photos I promised to upload were on that hard drive but thankfully our camera's card rarely gets deleted. Here are some of the photos taken of Reece in his last session with his Speech Therapist Miss Amanda...  We miss her.

 

On Friday I was inspired by a fellow crafter posting photos of her progress on re-organizing her scrap room and so I started mine.  It has been over taken by boxes and 'stuff' moved to allow us to get some items needed for my husbands hunting adventures.  We have little storage here so often to get something seldom used out we need to relocate things that are in front or on top of it...  I can't believe I am going to share these...ICK!  I'll do this in stages - first my peg board

Frankly I had grown to hate it!  I had pegs that were not serviceable and just gathered junk.  Jay asked if cutting them down would help...ummm YES! So off they went to the angle grinder to lose the top totally useless piece and shorten the bottom piece.  After that was done and I went through things this is what I ended up with...

No idea why it loaded sideways but I can't get it to reload at all so while I work on that and find the ones other of the 'altered' pegs this will need to do...   I am loving that is more a decorative element now than storage and what items are on there are tools I use frequently or things I don't want to forget about.  In fact I just realized I have a cut stickles storage that was added after this photo so will retake it and try to get it to load correctly (wink)

I will be sharing the closet next but it might take until after Thanksgiving as I am not 'loving' it at the moment so it is still a work in progress.

Feeling the LOVE...

It's November so it must be time to be making Valentine's cards - right?  Well it is if you make them for Operation Write Home to send to deployed soliders so they can write home to loved ones with them.

I have a bunch to share but will be starting with the one done for this weeks sketch challenge at OWH Stars & Stamps blog.  I used one of my favorite stamps from Unity Stamp Co - So & So Loves is perfect for anytime but I really like to use it for Valentine's as it allows the giver to 'carve' their & their loved ones initials in the trees.  I stamped it using Tuxedo Black from Memento and then colored it with Prisma markers (PM-1, PM-19, PM-79).  I also barely skimmed the edge wanting to give just a bit of definition but not to distract from the image.   I had this scrap of black paper with the metallic pink hearts in my stash that was just waiting for the perfect card to come along and the base is from my stash as well and I believe it was from a cardstock pack I picked up several years ago.

Below are a pile of the othe Valentine's cards we made this weekend and a few from last when I was at a crop.

Now my favorite - which surprised me just a bit... I'm not a huge black and white flower person nor am I all that keen about ribbon but I love this. 

Sometimes you find a patterned paper that stands alone and for those times a little something in the card is all that is needed.  I uses such a paper this weekend - Sugar Rush from Basic Grey - and I put the love birds inside for interest.

I then did up some birthday/general use cards as the images I had didn't really fit with the whole Valentine's day thing.

I plan on being back a couple of times a week at least and tomorrow will be sharing some photos promised long ago and some of what else I was up to this weekend. I hope you enjoyed the visit as much as I enjoyed being back blogging :)