MMSC25

What a story for this card. For the past couple of weeks we have been battling colds in our house. The children passed the cold on to me. I went to work on Monday and it wasn't a good day. I felt awful. Tuesday I went to work, didn't feel any better and left after 4 hours. I came home and slept and relaxed on the couch. After awhile I got up and managed to work on the midnight madness sketch challenge.

I decided to use Clear Dollar Stamps for this card. I bought this stamp set and I haven't had a chance to use it yet. As I was coloring it I decided to use a cotton ball for the fur around the hood, cuffs and bottom of the jackets. I outlined the whale with green stickles and filled in the fish (upper left) with blue stickles.

Meanwhile the electricity went out. We finished making dinner on my camping cook stove outside and I went around lighting many candles throughout the house. I even got out my headlamp so I could finish stamping! The kids really wanted to play "go fish" so I did that instead. By the time the game was over the electricity was back on and I was back to this card.

The background paper is the faux silk technique. I enjoy this technique as I find it an easy way to make a dp when I don't have one in my stash that will work.

I really wanted a lot of texture with this card so I have the fuzzy yarn, the cotton ball, the stickles, the embossed paper and then I struggled with the doo-dad in the lower right hand corner. I didn't have a buckle piece that would work there as the sketch challenge indicates. I tried a button. No. I tried ribbon. No. I tried more fuzzy yarn. No. I finally slapped on more cotton to make a snow ball! I uploaded the picture and went to bed, but I wasn't happy with the snowball and the fish were so hard to see. I actually tossed and turned about this all night and didn't sleep. Crazy I know. I even woke up around 2 am to come here and pull the first picture off of my blog. A little OCD? Naw! just dorkiness! Remember I am Queen Dork of the Travelin' Dork Sisters!!! I am still sick and with the lack of sleep I decided to stay home. I work in a facility with individuals who are medically compromised so I am sure staff and clients alike are grateful that I am home today.

This morning I changed the snowball to snowflakes, but bits of the snowball are behind the snowflakes which I think adds to the texture of the card. To make the fish pop out more I put them on little circles.

I hope you enjoy this card and I do!

Stamps: Eskimos by Clear Dollar Stamps

Paper: Bashful Blue, Rose Red, garden Green and White

Ink: Memento Black, Garden Green

coloring medium: copic markers

accessories: cuttlebug folder, nestabilities circles and scalloped circles, snowflake punch, stickles, cotton ball, brayer, tissue paper.

techniques: faux silk, trial and error!

Card inspired by Bob and Peggysue

This is my submission for this weeks Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #24. Click here to see the challenge

There's 2 stories behind this card. The first is Bob. Bob was the audiologist who came to the center where I work to do hearing evals one time a week. I coordinate the clinic, act as a liaison between the two facilities and assist during the assessment as needed. Bob started at the center when I first got the clinic up and running. We spent about 7-8 years together before he retired. In that time Bob was a clinical supervisor for Au.D students. Bob LOVED teaching the students. One of his teaching moments was talking about a disorder as if they are a duck. It would go something like this, "If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, feels like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it most likely..." and he'd wait for his students to say, "a duck". His analogy for a hearing loss. If it looks like a hearing loss, the person acts as if they have a hearing loss, people around the individual complain of patient having a hearing loss, then it's probably a hearing loss. Go for the easy answer first. See Bob, I was paying attention!

The second story involves my good friend Peggysue. Peggysue recently wrote an article and used a duck as an analogy. See the article here. Peggysue points out that a duck does everyday what it was intended to do and that is just being a duck. It doesn't know how to do anything else but be a duck (she had much more depth than that, but I will let you read it for yourself). Do you see the parallel between the two stories?? Looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and only knows how to be a duck. Aren't ducks wonderful creatures? Well, until they attack you for bread crumbs!

Stamps: Lovin' and Huggin' by Penny Black

Ink Memento tuxedo black

paper: white, only orange, glitter mat stack

coloring medium: SU marker only orange and C1 copic marker

accessories: satin ribbon (provided by Ashjoy), buttons, oval and scallop nesties, various embossing folders

Socks

These are the socks that I made for my niece. I was making a pair the last time I visited and she looked at me and said, "Auntie Karen, will you make me some socks for Christmas?" Gulp! I took a tracing of her foot and made all of the appropriate measurements. Just prior to this request I had bought some wool-ease yarn I got on sale. I had no intended purpose for the yarn when I bought it. I am sure glad I did though. It took only one skein to make these. They are a nice thick pair and will be great for ice skating or playing out in the snow.

Mother Dork Birthday Card

Today is Cindy Motherway's birthday. Did you know before Teapot Tuesday and before she was really famous she belonged to the dork sisters? Yep, Cindy is a dork. She was nicknamed Motherdork by one of my dork sisters. Cindy has since put her tiara away, but occasionally she dons it and pays us all a happy hello. We have put her on the dork honorary list, aka, the dork reserved list. Anyway, I made this card for Cindy, although it will be a bit late in getting to her.

Cindy, happy birthday to you and I hope you had a splendid day!

Stamps: Madge by Art Impressions

paper: white, certain celery, regal rose, Nana's kid mat stack

coloring: copic markers

Sentiment typed on my computer

accessories: pearls, prima flower

Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge 23 AND Blog Hop

Here is my submission for Midnight Madness's Sketch challenge. Wow, this one was a challenge for me. Some how the 3 layers to the left of the main image just threw me off. My first idea was to make little paper fans. It looked great, but it was too bulky for the card. I was getting close to giving up, but knew that you, my loyal followers (and mostly dork sisters) were waiting for baited breath for my next posting. Okay, go ahead and breathe now!!
I bought this red pattern paper just this past week. I got it in the origami section of Michael's. I didn't realize that it is a kind of clothy paper. Very cool. I used the stamp set Asian Plants from Clear Dollar Stamps as my first idea again went back to the asian paper fans. I'd like to say the rest fell into place easily, but it didn't (:

Stamps: Asian plants by Clear Dollar Stamps

Paper: Real red, garden green, blue (can't remember which one), origami paper, white

Ink: black

Coloring medium: Copic markers, R20, R27, R29, E37, E77 and a green

Other supplies: embossing folder, oval dies for the cuttlebug, the little window brad thingy, pearls and ribbon from my dork sister, Joyce.

*****I would also like to mention that Midnight Madness has a blog hop starting on Friday. Please click one of the links to the side to learn more about their blog hop. Hippity hoppity!!! See you there!*****

Midnight Madness Masterpiece Award

I won! I won the Midnight Madness Masterpiece Award for this week. Isn't that something?
I am so honored! I have only played along with this challenge for two weeks now. That you to the team at Midnight Madness for choosing me!!

Wow! You just can't imagine my surprise when I saw that this morning (at 4:40 AM!)

Well, a new challenge has been posted and I have some ideas floating around in my head. My friend, Jen, is coming over tonight to stamp with me so I will start to work on it then.
If you want to see Midnight Madness or play along in any of their challenges, please click on the icons to the right.

Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge 22

This is my submission for this week's midnight madness sketch challenge. Click HERE to see the sketch challenge.

I started this challenge with another card, but I didn't like it. When I had my guest designer spot for Clear Dollar Stamps I took advantage of my 30% discount and bought a bunch of speciality brads. One of them was a package of these rifles. I figured I could find a use for them somehow (Hubby is a deputy Warden for the DNR). I went to Archiver's today and found this camouflage paper. Suddenly the ideas started flowing in my head.

The inside, well, Eunice just cracks me up! She's so sassy! I typed the sentiment on my computer.

Stamps: Hollis and Eunice by Art Impressions, Pines by Su!

Ink: old olive

paper: old Olive, chocolate chip (or basic brown?)

coloring medium: copic markers

accessories and embellishments: nesties, cuttlebug folder, eyelets, rifle brad, twine

addendum: Someone asked who this is for. I really had no intention as I was making it. I just wanted to get Hollis out again. After I was done I decided to give it to hubby as an early Anniversary card (ours is in November). He smiled.

MMSC21

This is my submission for Midnight Madness sketch challenge. You can see the challenge here.

I had just purchased this stamp set from Rubber Stamp Tapestry. I followed their example on how to stamp the "noel". I struggled with the background of this card as the handsome hunter and the bravo burgandy seemed so dark. As I was riffling through my dp I came across a scrap of this gold glitter paper that I made for an anniversary card (somewhere in my older posts) and thought, aha! this is it. Hmm, then I had some difficulty with the 4 squares in the background. Everything I tried was too busy. Then I thought about the reindeer stamp I got as a freebee from Rubber Stamp Tapestry and that worked great for the upper two panels. The bottom half came together when I found this little background stamp. I then took the scraps of the gold glitter paper I just cut and used that in each corner. For the final embellishment I punched out three snowflakes in the colors of the card.

Unfortunately the picture doesn't do the card justice. It looks much more elegant IRL.

Stamps: "Noel" and "Reindeer" by Rubber Stamp Tapestry, scenery stamp by ??

Paper: gold glitter paper from Ace Hardware, bravo burgandy, handsome hunter, whisper white

coloring medium: none

ink: bravo burgandy, handsome hunter, old olive, mellow moss

embellishments and accessories: snowflake punch

NOTE: CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO ZOOM IN. THE GLITTER PAPER SHOWS OFF MUCH BETTER THAT WAY.

WCMD09B

This is my submission for SCS's World Card Making Day Challenge (WCMD09B) to make something with Pop. I hear pop and I think of a Pop-up, hence this card. I went to Robert Sabuda's website and printed off his template for the birthday cake. I colored in the candles and added the dp for some bling. I had the inside finished before I knew what I was doing for the inside. I decided Tilda would be a good choice for the front. I wanted to have the continuity of the dp on the front on the inside. I only had scraps left and didn't know how to put them together. I finally decided on the layout shown and I think it works well.

Christmas Card

Here's a card I made with my new Stamp Tapestry stamps. They are fun stamps! I have yet to make a card with the Noel stamp set, but I did play around with it a bit.