Shaped cards

Here are a few of the first shaped cards I made with my new Cricut Expression. I have a Mac so I will not be getting the Design Studio to make them attached card fronts but I think they look just as cute with the brads at the top making them into swing cards. I of course used Stickles and my Clear Glitter Pen to make them sparkle.

This one I need to improve on ... I think the bottle with be a different color next time from the nipple.

Every time I make something I put the measurement I like in my cartridge book so I can mass produce them later. Last night I cut 5 different shaped designs putting 4 per a 12 inch sheet and cut all of the parts out. I put them in clam shells and then I can take them with me when I want a project to work on since they are done except for gluing them together. I can make such cute cards so quickly. I put more print papers in the these since I needed to practice with these first few.

Hope you are liking these. More to come. Watch how much better I get as I learn more. Blessings

Scrapbooking page

I started my personal scrapbook for my cruise and am so excited with the first page of it. All of us had our picture taken on the cruise the first formal night and I am so glad I decided to get it. I think is a great beginning page for the adventure. The little boat in the upper left corner was gifted to my by a great stamper, Joan, as a start for my book. It is so cute since you push on it and the lights of the boat go on!! I used TAC Penelope SWIC tags for this page with matching white core cardstock. Notice how I put the score lines with the Scor-bug lines on the left side and sanded them for detail. But the fun part is that it is in interactive page!!


Hold on to the ribbon on 'This is Us' and pull up the page to see more pictures!!


Many of these are postcards but some are my photos. I could get the postcards and they did not have any people in. This is under the flip up page.

Under the group photo are these pictures of the boat. And I did the little postcards as a waterfall of photos with the name of each location on the boat showing with the postcard. I am loving this!!
Here is a close up of one of the locations on the ship and how it works.

On the bottom of the main group photo, I put one of TAC Dated Disk Stamps with the date on it.

So how am I doing on my first 12 x 12 that are for ME !! More coming ..... Blessings

Pictutes from Victoria

These pictures are from Victoria Canada at the Butterfly Gardens. It was beautiful and I think they had trained the butterflies to be still so we could take pictures. I have never had butterflies so easy to take pictures of before. These flamingos were there with lots of fish around them too and I thought they made a great photo also. I started making cards from some of my photos this evening after my class. I will try and post some in a day or two.





Now the pictures are from The Butchart Gardens in Canada. I have never seen such a beautiful place I want to go back and stay a few days there sometime so I can see all of it. I am loving the pictures I have edited so far but still have more of them to do from the Gardens. Wait till you see the dahlias in a future post. This is a Sequoia tree ... they are huge there!!


This flower is so unusual!! I think it is from another planet!! I can not find the name if it ... does anyone know it???

The water fountain here was amazing .. I even took a movie of it since it changed ever few seconds! Blessings

Alaska - Photo Safari by Sea

If you are local, I will be the Garfield Open Market on Friday night this week and next from 4-8. It is free to get in. Stop in and see me if you have time.

If you are reading this in your e-mail and the pictures are too dark, go to the blog and the pictures will look better.

I have now finished editing my pictures for day two from my AK cruise. These are the highlights from the Photo Safari by Sea Excursion I took with Sandy Allen. The top pictures are the sea lions we found on the boy in the ocean. They were so cut .. some were about to fall off and others were swimming around waiting for a place to get on!



We found a group of 14-16 hump back whales feeding in a method called 'bubbling'. The dominate female starts it and she swims deep and the others line up side my side and make a spiral to the surface of the water. While under water they blow large bubbles the size of basketballs. Then close to the surface they open their mouths and jump up to gather in the fish. It was amazing to see!! They kept doing it over and over. But I am not quick enough with my camera but I hope Sandy got a few more pictures of them in the air. I got mostly tails, fins and their humps when they are ready to jump. I took hundreds of pictures of them too! The seagulls stay close to the whales to get the left over fish.

This picture was taken later in the day so the lighting was different.






The above pictures is of the harbor we went out of. Blessings

Alaska Pictures

I know most of you come here to see my cards, rubber stamping techniques, and information about The Angel Company. But I really want to share with you a few of the wonderful photos I have from my AK cruise ... so if you do not want to see them then come back later this week.

I have so many pictures but I started to go through and edit the ones from when we started the cruise at Juneau, I am on day two now ..... Sandy Allen and I spent the morning shopping in town, it was so much fun. It was so cute and quaint in the town. The mountains behind the city were the largest ones I had ever seen and they took really long stairs up to the homes on the mountain side. Did you know that the only way in and out of Juneau is by air and water!! YES, we saw many planes landing on the water and so many boats. They have no roads that can go through the mountains .... yet!

In the afternoon we took a Photo Land and Sea Safari Excursion with 13 other visitors. I loved the small group and all of the great information the guide shared with use. Here are a few pictures from the land section of the tour. He was a professional photographer and took us to really cool placed to take photos and even helped us if we needed help.



Here is a photo of the ancient wooded area we hiked through. I loved how everything was covered with moss and was so overgrown.


A little water falls we saw along the way .... I love waterfalls as you will soon be able to see.
This is Mendle's Glacier. The ice was so blue!

This is a close up of the waterfall on the lower right side of the glacier (from the above picture). You can also see the blue color of the ice better.

I am not positive but I think these are Sequoia trees. I could not resist the look of the sun coming through behind them. They are all such tall and stately trees.


This beautiful purple plant is called Cleome, Spider Flower, and it grows wild all over in AK.

Here are Sandy and I at the glacier. We are on an overlook far away but doesn't it look like the glacier is right behind us.

Another beautiful waterfall I saw on our hike ....


Doesn't this waterfall look like it is coming out of the rocks! I hope to get the Sea part of the excursion edited this evening. I do hope my whale pictures came out! We saw 14 hump backs at that the same place. It was so cool. Blessings

Black berry Collage

Here is the same images as yesterdays post but made into black berries! I love these stamps. They are the are on sale until the end of June so be sure to get your order to me before that if you want them at the special price. When I was mounting this image I decided not to cut it even with the stamped image. I like to use two different colors on an image and not always all over the image but in parts. This one I left the bottom section larger for an accent. Made with same as the last few but with a different layout.
I am so thrilled!! I have always dreamed of having a large chair in my beautiful bedroom, where I can see my woods, watch TV, read, or take a nap. Well it happened!! My great niece and her husband carried up my chair and a half in dark chocolate plush material. It has an ottoman which opens for storage too!! I can even sit and fold laundry in my room without getting a soar back leaning over my bed. I can not believe I finally found the chair of my dreams and was able to get it in my room!! I am dreaming of tonight sitting and realizing upstairs in my bedroom. I had almost given up hope I would ever have this to enjoy. Thank you God!!!

Happy Father's Day!!

Here is another of my favorite retiring sets, Giraffe. I made this card for my May Mojo class and loved the simplicity in the look and the construction. The words are from Trendy Greetings, a universal set for all occasions, and the dots are from one of my other favorite sets, Linear Sentiments. Check on my side bar or here to see and many other creations I have done with that set. It is a keeper! No it is not retiring ... at least it is not on the list. I used Nude ink to stamp the background with the word stamp, Giraffe. The ribbon is run through slits on the sides of his neck and on the inside too. I love to use the Round-it all for the corners of the card also.

I had a really fun and busy weekend. Saturday I went with angels and friends to a Copic 101 class in who knows where in OH!!! It was an outstanding class and I learned a lot ... yes I have been practicing and you will see some of them soon. I got lots of great new pictures too! Cows.... of my!! more flowers, antiques, sunset, cute puppy and friends, and more. I had a great time and we all laughed a lot in my car! I was going to post some new samples today but my batteries need charged for my camera ... later on though.

Then Saturday I attended a 60 th birthday party for a dear friend of mine who still looks 30 ish. It was great getting to see friends I have not seen in a while and just relax and spend time with them. Yes ... more pictures ... balloons, birthday cake, presents OH MY!! It was fun. I would like to send out a prayer for a teacher I worked with., Mary, who has been hit with cancer and on her last leg of her battle. She is young and a blessing to so many. Please help her to have a peaceful and pain free transitions in her month(s) to come. Thanks everyone! I have been so blessed to have so many wonder friends. Blessings to all of you.

Spring into April ....#2

This time I used the set 'Forever Friends' from the Spring into April TAC promotion sets. I still am working with the Lilly Anna Paper Collection, the black and white ribbon collection, water color crayons and my Niji water brush. I added double diagonal score lines using my Scor-Pal for the background of this card and then added 1/2" strips of the Lilly Anna paper for added detail. YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THIS CARD to see the detailed scoring lines. I have two different types of scoring in one card. I love the look I used the circle punch and it's complimentary scalloped punch for the roses. On the scallop punch I highlighted the scallops with TAC's Tombow white gel pen. On the the vase I used two different colors of blue crayons, first a lighter color all over and then highlighted with a darker shade of the same color. For the roses, I colored them first with light pink, highlighted with a darker pink, purple and a little yellow. I used my Tombow grey marker to add a base for the vase and to outline the image to give it depth. I stamped the words in Noir at an angel along one of the score lines.

For the second card I used the tulip image and colored in a similar fashion but I first used the negative of the largest scalloped circle punch for a template to stipple a background to stamp the image into. I used a stipple brush and yellow and Coquack inks for the stippling. I added score lines and green paper, words in Noir ink, a yellow bow and a corner punch for detail.

Today I will be grocery shopping and cooking for my guests. Then I will meet them at Hollo's for a day of shopping before we come home. It will be fun. Have a great day yourself!! Blessings

Spring into April

I am loving the Spring into April promotional stamp sets from The Angel Company! I will be posting for the next three days with cards from each of the three sets. Here is a link to cards I have already posted using these sets too. These sets are available only until April 30 with a $30 order and they are either $5 or $7 a set. They are great. For these samples I have used the paper collection Lilly Anna in the pinks, blues, greens and whites. I decided the bird would look good with a tail too ... so I stamped the heart in the set three times and cut them out to make him a tail. I pulled out my favorite coloring method, water color crayons to color the bird. I prefer using the Niji water brush with the crayons and i take the color off of the bottom of they crayon so I can save the tips for direct to rubber stamping. Some of my crayons have at least a 1/2" indent on the bottom of them since i use them so much .... but they will last a lifetime! I love the way you can get depth with just one color on this one (future projects i will show you how to get depth with two colors from the same family). Just put down a light layer of color and then add a little darker color where you want it to be darker. I added some scoring with my Scor-pal for detail, a little highlight on the green paper with my glitter gel pen, and a bow from the matching ribbon set for Lilly Anna.

I had a great Mojo class last night, another tonight and one on Sunday and Monday. If you haven't signed up for a class yet and want to be sure to let me know soon. Here is a link to a sneak of those cards. I have a double pocketed gift card or chocolate or tea bag holder, Mother's day cards, a great inside pop up card, a mini card photo album and more. I feature using different color combinations, using the Scor-pal for decorative backgrounds and watercolor crayons. I do sell the call direction sheets with pictures if you are not local ... just contact me for information.

Today is a cleaning day getting ready for my friends to come on Thurs. Ave a great tax day!! Mine are already in. Blessings

Happy Easter!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter and has time to spend with friends and family this year. I wanted to share with you two photo cards I made for the holidays with a picture of a stain glass window in a beautiful church in PA I visited while on a rafting trip. I loved this picture so much, I looked it up to use. I have printed off two different sizes of it to get different looks. I first scored the backgrounds, mounted my pictures, added the ribbons and stamping and I was done. The set I used is called Blessings and has four wonderful stamps for inspirational cards. It is a Thanksgiving set but I personally use it all year round. I hope you enjoy them. Remember you can click on the images to see them closer


I have been busy trying to get my studio (living room & dining room) cleaned since I will be having out of town company next week from Chicago!! I am looking forward to their visit since we always have so much fun with each other. Now if you are local ... you will need to stop by NOW if you want to see my studio clean ... it will not last long ...... so get over here as soon as possible. Otherwise, you can enjoy my creative mess with me like you always do!! Hey ... did you guys know there are TWO tables to stamp on in my room??? And there is a counter for my cutter and now my BIG Shot??? WOW!!! I didn't remember that it has been so long. LOL