Jeff Dunham, Mangos, Mother's Day

First Mother's Day Share of the season!

Stamps/punches from SU.

Morning! Yesterday was an eventful day for me. First off, my neighbor brought me over 5 cases of Mangos, so I canned Mango's yesterday. LOVE THEM!! It will be nice to have them for the winter months when there isn't any good ones in the grocery store, or that don't cost more than 2 bucks a fruit! I got 22 pints and 5 quarts. The nice thing about mangos is that they are a firm fruit and you can put a whole lot in a bottle!!

Then, when I finished that up, for an Easter present, David and I got tickets to the Jeff Dunham show. It was in Pocatello, an hour away. So we went to that last night. They kept advertising that it was only an hour show. NOT! It started at 7:30 and ended at 10:30. He is really very good! They said no camera's or recording devices, but, you should have seen all the cell phones come out!

Because so many people had emailed/called whatever, he brought Bubba Jay out. He isn't normally in this routine, but because of the fans.... It was very funny, because the audience would say Bubba's lines. It really freaked Jeff out. Now I am sure he is going to have some nice jokes about people in Idaho. He thought we were weird enough because in our towns there are no skyscrapers. Everything is single level. Well, except for our Dillard stores...they have 2 levels, and you get to ride an escalator or elevator to the second floor!! (I know! ;0)

Have a good day!!! I am off to see a movie. (Fighting) Oh, and last week I saw 17 again, very funny show. The week before, we saw Adventure Land. Oh please. DO NOT see that one. Usually I don't have anything bad to say about movies, but that one, well, I can't write here what I really thought of it.

3 More Cards from Card Swap

Here is my owl card! I never thought I would use an owl, but he is cute!

He is a little blurry, because his eyes are clear bobbles that someone sent

and then there are the copper rivets on the ribbon that make it stand out.

Although the cherries on here look black, they are actually confetti that

is hot pink! It really makes the card sparkle! For the background someone

sent in a leaf that was cut out with a cuttlebug?/cricket? anyways, I took

it and sponged pink over it to make my background. I did the same with

the owl card, but in brown.

The little rabbit was so cute! To bad scanning doesn't make it clear

and sharp! The big flowers are from some DP someone sent in and they

have glitter all over them. I didn't need to do it! I actually cut them

out from the paper, and placed them on my card, in the exact position that

they were already in. I just wanted to see the yellow card underneath.

Well, that is what I have come up with in the kit so far. I still have

one more piece of cardstock and more images still, so could have another

card sometime!

Card Parts Swap

This is what came in the card kit! Everyone signed up and

sent something different in.
First card I made.

Second Card I made...His coffee steam is fibers from

the kit!

Remember I told you I co-hosted a swap were everyone signed up for different elements of a card? Like paper, dp, images, embelishments....well, we got our packets, and I got to busy making a couple of cards from my packet!

The little girl's bow got mashed in my scanner...but, I think it still looks ok, you get the idea. I also colored her with the Gamasol Technique. I cut the words from a DP someone sent, and the outside top note and scallop punch is also DP someone sent in.

My second card...I like it best. Not because of color or anything, I actually don't like gray. BUT. I thought it was fun to put the shaker behind the word today. It is filled with blue irridensent confetti someone also sent. The little moose was actually sitting in a comfy chair, and I cut him out and sat him on the Y. The swirl was sent by someone and I cut it out of a different DP. I also colored him using the Gamasol.

Hope you like them! I can't wait to see what others have come up with!! I have two more cards in mind with the items I have left!

Gamasol Technique

images from SU, Branch Out & A Kind Word

It is so hard to post on weekends! I went all over town looking for Gamasol. I saw what everyone was doing with it and wanted to try it really bad. Nobody here has it....or knew what it was. So, my friend Joani, came to the rescue! She told me to try http://www.dickblick.com/ and sure enough they had it! Come to find out, it is really odorless mineral spirits. Much like turpentine, but without the stink!

To use it for the technique, you have to have colored pencils, and not watercolor ones, it has to have wax in them, prismacolor pencils works great here. This picture I tried the Stampin Up! pure color pencils, and it seems to work well with those. I have some prisma ones coming from Dick's, so that I have a larger color range.

You use blending stubs, the ones you use if you draw in charcoal or pencil. You dip your stub into the spirits and blend on your image you colored. I was really worried that it would create a ring around the paper, make the paper discolor, warp the paper, tear the paper, etc.... but no worries! It really helps blend the colors and makes them brighter!

This was my first attempt at it. Its ok, but I look forward to getting my other colors and improving on it!

Inchies! First attempt

I was blog hoppin and found this site for inchies! I thought I would try them. From what I gather, the rule of thumb is, the artwork itself is 1 inch by 1 inch. You can then frame it after that if you want to. So, I had a couple of hours to myself yesterday and I got started.

It was so much fun. I thought it would be hard to do just an inch, but you should see how many stamps you have in your stash, that are actually an inch or smaller!

The ape is Hunter's favorite. He loves monkeys. It is actually just her face, my stamp had her whole body. (I believe her name is Amy and she is from Mostly Animals) I found my African stamps and I have the inch version, plus a 2 inch one, so of course I used the inch ones! I combined them to make one picture. (framing is something safe to do with these, I saw some scrapbook pages with them too...)

For all of these, I stamped them on Glossy paper, watercolored them, inked the page with versamark and then clear embossed them. Several times. The background for the pear stamp on the top, I clear embossed it enough times that I could do the cracked glass in it.

Had a blast! Can't wait to do more!

More Recipes

Well, I got busy yesterday, because I liked those other recipes so well, and challenged myself to make 4 more!

What I did was find the recipe I wanted. I printed it out on Bazzil paper (randomly color) when I had my four printed out, I went down to the creation room and pulled out all my DP's. I mixed and matched and came up with what you see! What was really cool, was (except for the sour dough one) all the papers and embellishments were freebies I got from going to a scrapbook day. I received the papers and things and thought, hmmm what in the heck am I going to do with these, they are not my style ect. ect. But, I think it worked for these!

Hope you like them!

Recipe Tuesday!

Morning!! I joined this recipe club. We get a kit every month, it has 4 recipes in it. There is instructions on how to make the page up. It includes the recipe and the items to make the page.

Here's the problem. I am not a big fan of the way they make the recipe look. Remember, I am simple and clean. So. I redo the pages using the stuff they provide. Every once in a while, like this time, I have to add items from my own stash.

I thought I would share a couple that I have made. I used their recipe, and some of their papers, usually I end up taking papers from one kit and using them in another kit, which is something I did today.

Hope you like them. The actual recipe page is 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 so a half sheet of paper. There is albums and page protectors this size and that is what I keep them in. We did a class and decorated the outside of the album and the divider pages. I made the teacher a little upset with me, as I redid her design to make it look better to me.... unfortunately, the other sitting at my table also thought my design was better than hers. (she said we could personalize!) I don't think that if you are teaching something, you should be upset if somebody changes something. After all, it is their project too...

Jade's PopUp Card

Jade and His Creation
A closer look at his popup

Jade came home from school, and in his Language Arts class, they had to read a book, a science fiction book and instead of writing a report on it, they had to make a pop up card.

Cool huh! So, he and I got busy, and this is what he came up with. His book he read was, of course, the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. I think he did a pretty good job on it!

Bug Jar

I'm working on some things today. First I was sewing a dress, but became very discouraged when I had to put the dang sleeves in. I really hate fitted sleeves, and thought that this pattern was not, but, I was wrong. SO. I still have to hem it. And put new sleeves in it...

But, I went to the creation room, and made me a little clear paint can with bugs in it.

Hope you like it. I made a tag on the side of it, that says, Hunter's Bugs. He always seems to have a jar or two of them around!

Slider Ring

Ok, this is how you start. You take 8 papers, cut 4 by 4 inches. Try to do two different colors as it will look better and you will be able to see what you are doing better. Fold the papers in half like a hot dog. Then unfold and fold corner to corner like a triangle. Unfold and fold the other side like a triangle. You can see the three folds here.

Um. These two photos are out of order. SO, follow the bottom one first, you fold the paper to look like the start of an airplane. Fold it in half, and you get the picture above this one.

The picture above this writing is the next step. With the airplane point in your fingers, reverse fold the end of it. It will make a diamond shape.

Take two of the diamond shapes. In the dotted piece, the airplane nose is at the base of my thumb. The airplane nose for the grey piece, it at the top. Nestle the grey piece into the reverse fold of the dotted piece. Make it go about a quarter of an inch above the dotted one.

Here's a end view of what it looks like.

See the two little ends that poke up. Fold them around the grey piece. That is what is going to hold the two pieces together. Once they are folded in, you can pull the grey piece out so that it is even with the dotted piece.

It will look like this. Next, take a dotted piece, nestle it in the grey piece, and repeat all of the steps again, and you will end up with this!

This is the Slider Ring Open

This is the Slider Ring Closed.

Hopefully this will work. I am going to attempt to show you how to make the slider ring that my son made at school. I think its cool. His job in class, was to make shapes in the center of the ring. By sliding the sides, you can make a triangle, a square ect. All the way to an octogon.

It is very fun to play with, and quick and easy to make!

Here goes!

Saturday Evening Post

Hello! I'm kinda excited today. I got the second to the last package for a swap I am co-hosting. In this swap, everyone signed up for a certain element to make a card. Then they are all sending me the items, I put them in a kit and send them out. Then everyone makes a card(s) with what is in the kit. We all post them and have a contest to see who was most creative, or who's card we all like the best!

It has been fun seeing everything that comes in and how things match or don't match and wondering what people are going to come up with!

I am in the swap too, so I will post my cards when I get them done!

Also, my son came home from math the other day, and had this really cool thing that he made out of paper in his class. The challenge was to get the thing they made, to make shapes, you can make a triange, a square, a diamond, a pentagon, a hexagon, 7 sides and a octagon. So, of course I had to make one! I am now experimenting with decorated papers and it. When I get them all done, I will post them for you. It is kinda a little addicting to play with! It is a ring, made up of 8 papers and you connect them all together and they slide in and out around themselves.

I know, promises promises of posts to come!

Well, the pic posted is of my puppies. I have purebred Bassets. The bottom one is Beau, he is my personal pup and he is lemon and white. The top one, is Annie, she is Hunter's dog. And the one in the middle, is Lonesome. He is one of the puppies from Annie and Beau, and he belongs to Jade. He has the cutest freckles on his nose! I love Bassets and collect Basset stamps. I have always had a Basset dog, since I was around 8 years old.

Wed, Yippee

It's Wednesday. I like Wednesday too.

Well, I got to go to the creation room again today. I made something I think you will like. I have to re-do one part on it, my words got a little too close to the side, but overall, it came out like I wanted it to. SO I guess I am happy with it!

And I don't even like blue...

I used my round punches to get the ring of foam around the inside of the shaker. I then send it through the xyron machine and double sticky it. Much easier that way than wondering if you got all the edges sealed and nothing will fall out.

Well, hope you like it!