End of the month...

really...where did July go..anyone else feeling this?
Well I will be at the boys school today helping at the PTA table during registration. Can't believe it is that time already. So I better make this quick since I gotta run! Here is a fun card I made with my cricut cartridge called "Stretch Your Imagination". I have never used one of the card frames. so I thought I would try this one out. The sentiment and flower are rub-ons by Marcella K. When you rub these on they are almost embossed feeling. Very cool!
Thanks for looking today and don't forget to head on over to Paper Crafts to vote, my username is PASdreambig. You only have until noon MST to vote, so hurry!
Thanks and have a great day. Tomorrow is Friday Card Flick day..woo hoo. My video shows you a simplified version of how I made my 3 hour cupcake card, per request!

Wednesday Already?!?

OK so its the middle of the week already, hello where is this week going. I pretty much have the rest of the week spoken for with school registration and birthday parties. I am not sure that I am ready. Can this week just slow down a little please! Seriously only two weeks and my kids are back in school...how crazy is that! Where did the summer go? OH and in two more weeks exactly is the launch date for 3D Design Challenge!! Now that I can't wait for!! We are going to have all kinds of fun!
Well I do have a card to share today, this is the card I made with Laura's sketch from 2S4Y. I love it when left over pieces come together! Can anyone tell me what the name of this lace paper is and who makes it?? I can't for the life of me remember and of course it is all cut up and I am sure the name is on the back of one of the glued on pieces of another project. Lovely!
Just a reminder that you have until tomorrow noon MST to cast your vote for the Gallery Idol contest. My fingers and toes and other body parts (that is for you Karie!) have been crossed all week...hope I make it with this card. Thanks again for your support. I luv you guys! OH and speaking of luv...I was awarded by 1 Crafty Gal this cute little award. You are too sweet girl, thanks!
Have a great day!

NEW site for PC Gallery Idol Round 3 and Something New and Exciting!!

Happy Monday! Well first of all it is time to vote again. Gee this will all be over with in just two more weeks, well that is if I am lucky enough to make it to the top 5. This is my card for Gallery Idol Top 10 round 3 "Attributed Quotes". I chose a quote from John Lennon, when I read it the vision of this card popped right into my head. I love when that happens! In case you can't read it the quote says "Love is the flower you've got to let grow". Of course it took me a lot of messing around tearing apart and replacing pieces to get the card to look the way I wanted. The hardest part...finding a flower that wasn't too big, wasn't too small and just right color. Hopefully I did alright.
Paper Crafts has changed the gallery to be on the front page of their NEW home page, which is awesome and will make the whole voting process so much easier. You can look at everyone all at once and then just click the link to vote! Awesome!!! Again to vote you do not need to sign in or sign up for anything, this only takes like 2 minutes of your time and I really really really appreciate it!! I am so excited to be in the Top 10, you should see who I am up against...I am really nervous!! Thanks for your help!

Click here to check out the gallery and cast your vote!


Now for my new and exciting: My bestest Canadian friend Carrie ( Artistic Avenger) and I have a new kind of challenge for you! I CAN'T wait...on August 13th we are starting a new challenge blog called 3D Design Challenge here are the deets:

• Week 1 - Wednesday: 3D Design Challenge posted with great samples as well as a downloadable template. You are encouraged to participate and link back to your photos of your projects.
• Week 2 - Wednesday: 3D Design Challenge participants will be linked from 3D Design Challenge and we will spotlight someone's great project.
• Week 3 - Wednesday: 3D Spotlight Challenge posted. A Spotlight Challenge happens when a company or person gives us a heads up on a great project to be spotlighted on our blog. We will link to that person/company's website, give them props and encourage you all to participate in making your own variation of their project.
• Week 4 - Wednesday: 3D Spotlight Challenge participants will be linked from 3D Design Challenge and again, we will spotlight someone's interpretation of the challenge.

So now what? Can't wait for us to get started? Here is what you can do to help:

• Send us your challenge ideas with links to your blog or online gallery.
• If you are a company who would like to be spotlighted - please contact Carrie or myself and we will be happy to accept your kind donations in return for amazing advertising and promotion via 3D Design Challenge.

This is going to be SO MUCH FUN!! Yippee!! Go check out Carrie's blog to see some of the links she has posted with cool 3D projects she has made.
Since Carrie and I are starting 3D Design Challenge blog I am very sad to say that I will not be able to be a part of the 2 Sketches 4 You design team. Kazan and Laura thought that in the best interest of both sites that I bow out. I will continue to see all of you over there for their fabulous weekly challenges, but as a participant.

Thanks again for your comments and support!! You guys ROCK!
Big hugs!!

2 Caardvarks 4 You! & A Toot!

Two of my favorite challenge blogs have joined up. The challenge over at Caardvarks right now is to make two cards using sketches provided by Laura and Kazan from 2 Sketches 4 You. How awesome is that! Not only do you get two sketches to play with, Caardvarks is also choosing one person to be their guest designer for their August 20th challenge. Woo Hoo! Sounds like fun to me, so here are my two cards. The first is from Laura's sketch and the second is from Kazan's sketch. I used some scraps of paper and ribbon on the first card along with the rub-on sentiment & Soft Sky card stock from SU. the flowers and eyelet are from Eye-Lets Etc. On my second card I used Whisper White, Pretty In Pink, Only Orange & Pink Passion SU card stock and hodge podge hardware. The images are all from the Fancy Pants stamp set "Bella Brush". I bought that set over at my favorite LSS, Scrapbook Destination,love that set! The bottle cap in the lower left hand corner embellished with the Bella Brush stamped image I also received from ELE ( they sell them at trade shows). The body of the butterfly is just a piece of wire I twisted and attached with glue dots.
Now for the toot... I have made the Fall design team of 2 Sketches 4 You. Go check out their blog and see who else made the team. Everyone of these ladies are extremely talented artists from all parts of the world and I am SO honored to be in the same group with them. WOW! I am sure from previous posts you know how much I adore Laura and Kazan, so you know how much this means to me.
Please don't anyone push me off of cloud 9, what an amazing month I have had. I feel so very blessed. None of it would mean so much if it wasn't for all of YOUR support, well wishes and comments. Thanks so much!! Tomorrow I will have my Paper Crafts Gallery Idol Round 3 card displayed after 12 noon MST when the voting begins once again. See ya later!

Friday Card Flick "One Layer Card"

UPDATE: I made it to the top 10, thanks again for all of your support. Look for my Round 3 card on Monday!! :)
This week's FCF is a simple card and a single layer. Nothing fancy, but I think it still has some depth and texture. Hope you enjoy!
Today is the day I found out if I made it to Round 3 of Gallery Idol. I will keep you posted.
See you tomorrow!

*Shout out to my Canadian partner in crime Carrie the Artistic Avenger. Carrie made Stampin' UP! Featured Artist Of The Week. Way to go Carrie!! The two of us have something BIG coming your way soon!!

The 3 hour cupcake

Here is the 3rd card I made for round two (if you haven't voted you have until noon MST today). This card is ginormous, like 7"x8" something like that. The *flowers have *eyelets in the center and then I placed mini pearls in the middle of the eyelets. This is the card Al thought I should have turned in for the contest, but didn't tell me until I had already turned in my green card. I told him he isn't allowed to keep this kind of info from me anymore. LOL! Keeping my fingers crossed! Thank you thank you so much everyone who has voted for me!! I really really do appreciate the support. I am sure you are getting tired of me talking about this, but it really does mean so much to me. Thanks!!
So, here are a couple of pictures from the our zoo trip yesterday. It was SO HOT yesterday morning, which made our visit short. Most of the animals were hiding in the shade, so you couldn't see a lot of them. The ones that were out in the open were either in the water or from Africa. It wasn't quite Africa HOT, but hot enough for us. Aly got a blister on her ankle from her new shoes, so my Mom, my Aunt and I all took turns carrying her that last half of the "tour". When we were leaving I noticed that they have these really cool statues out in front of the entrance. I am not sure what kind of metal they are made of, but I had to get some pictures of them. The first is of me and my kiddos and the second is Aly with the "Ali"gator.

THE 6 hour card

OK so I am not absolutely positive that this card took me 6 hours to make, but with all of the steps it must of. I know it took me a good half hour to just to get the shape cut the way I wanted. Then I went through two cards just stamping patterns to see what I liked best which was another hour and a half. Since I used Chocolate Chip Craft ink I had to emboss each stamped image individually so that I wouldn't smear it when I used my stamp-a-ma-jig to line each little stamp up. I also took the time to measure and mark the centers of everything, which I never do. After I stamped half of the images I took a break, (my neck was killing me from looking down) I colored some Crystal Effects with Creamy Caramel re-inker and covered the white pearls and all of the flowers in hopes of making them look like candy. This took a good couple of hours to dry. I then finished stamping and embossing and decided to add what was left of the CE "glaze" to the card itself to make it appear as though glaze was dripping from each layer. Had to wait for that to dry. When all was dry I punched holes in the flowers and added rivets then a dimensional to the back of each and attached to the card. I had to put them on and take them off several times to get them spaced enough since I had only made so many. Finally added each pearl, made a candle and wrapped a ribbon around it. Why would I take so much time on a card, well I was planning on this being my entry for PC Gallery Idol "monochromatic" round 2, but after it was all done thought it was too much. One of those ideas I had in my head but didn't quite turn out how I had envisioned it. OH well! I actually made three cards for the round 2 and in the end decided to go with the green card. Of course after I turned my green card in I started second guessing myself...well its done and we will see if it was good enough for me to make it to round 3, fingers crossed.
Maybe tomorrow I will show you my 3rd card, the 3 hour cupcake..tee hee!!

Off to the zoo..

I will post my 6 hour card sometime this afternoon. YES, I said 6 hour card.

"Monochromanic" Round 2 Vote Now!

Who knew that using only one color would be so difficult. I struggled all weekend long making three cards for the Paper Crafts "Gallery Idol" contest. I will show you the other two cards I made tomorrow, but this is the one I decided to turn in for the contest. Of course now I am in panic mode that I turned in the wrong card and should have gone for one of the others. The problem with making too many cards.
One of my favorite colors as of right now is apple or citrus green. Unfortunately this picture doesn't really show how green the flowers and bottom portion of the card really is. Everything down to the rhinestones are green here, so it is truly monochromatic. Didn't want to take a chance by adding any white and breaking the rules..LOL.
So here is how you vote: Click the on the thumbnail of the card you wish to vote for. When it brings the card up on a page of its own scroll to the bottom and under the description it says "To vote for your favorite, click here! " That is where you vote, it will then take you to Survey Monkey with a list of everyones usernames, mine is PASdreambig. Just a note, the "love it" button does not cast your vote it just shows me love :) You have until this Thursday at noon MST to vote, so hurry and do it now!!
Thanks again for all of your support. It means the world to me! BIG hugs!!

Here is my card PASdreambig to vote for me.

Here is the Top 15 gallery

This bag is awesome!!

Just wanted to share something exciting that happened to me a few weeks back. I received an email from Paula Kreigar the President of Daily Window Bags asking me if I would be a part of their online gallery. WOW what an honor! Daily Window Bags carries a line of handbags and handcrafted cards. Here are samples of my bag and cards that I made for the gallery. I LOVE my bag! The quality is amazing first of all and second it is lined in a nice apple green which is one of my favorite colors...bonus! In the front of all of their bags they have a large clear window pocket that you can put pictures in or any artwork of your choice. How cool is that! Another idea for you Stampin' UP! demonstrators or anyone who uses a small catalog for sales...place a mini catalog in this pocket to show off everywhere you go. For the gallery I decided to make a card for each season of the year, to the left is my "Spring" card. I have a link to Daily Window Bags blinkie on my side bar, so please use that as your link whenever you want to go there. I think I need one of the "Eight Days A Week" bags now. The lunch boxes & back packs would be really cool for my kids this school year. Here are the other 3 cards I made and displayed in my bag "The Very Neccesary Mini". Sorry about the quality of the pictures, it was hard not to get a glare on the window.
Thanks for looking!!
See you tomorrow with Paper Crafts "Gallery Idol" voting details..yippee!!

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