Thank Ewe

Many moons ago, Main Squeeze, Princess A and I hosted an Open House. At that point we had owned our new home for 10 months, so it was time. Here we are two months later and I still owe some thank you notes. All I can say is we never expected gifts, and the stamp room was in complete disarray (Hence the sporadic blog posts for such a long time) Fortunately Scrappy came to the rescue!

My one goal for this week was to complete a card for the Crafty Hos. After all, I am supposed to be a member of the DT. Now that Princess A is back in school,  and I have had some time, I was able to finally organize the stamp room with my new storage units (I ♥ The Container Store!). It is not quite done, but I can walk across the floor without injuring myself or breaking anything, and I can easily access all of my supplies! As Princess A mentioned the other day upon glancing in, "wow, this room is cleaner than it has been since we moved in!"

This weeks Crafty Ho Challenge is a Sketch Challenge:

Immediately, I thought of the farm as the main image. The rest followed from there. Princess A looked at the card for several moments and stated, "I don't get it".

I really need to find a "Thank Ewe" stamp.











Card Details:
Image: SU
Sentiment: Stamps by Judith
Cardstock: GP, SU
Ink: Memento, SU
Tools: Crop-a-Dile II Big Bite
Coloring: Prismacolor markers
Embellies: Unknown eyelets, SU dimensionals

A Little Night Music

My, my, my it has been a loooooong time since I have posted.

This week a good portion of the Hos are in North Carolina enjoying themselves at the HPC (Ho and Pimp Convention, I believe). Sadly I could not attend this year. Again. I cannot tell you how many times I have kicked myself for not going when it was in NJ. But I was new to the stable then and feeling rather inadequate. If only I knew then what I know now...

So anyway, as I was saying, since many of the Hos are away from their computers and more importantly their crafting desks, I figured it was high time I did my part for this DT and made a card.

Audrey came up with the sketch challenge this week,

and a challenge it was.

I just was not sure what to do with that split panel thing in the background. I knew right away what image I wanted, but nothing else. Once I decided on background, however, it all came together.

I will leave it to you to decide, is this little girl staying up way past her bedtime, or is she dreaming?

Card Details:
Image: SU
Sentiment: SU
Cardstock: GP, SU, unknown designer paper
Ink: Memento
Tools: Cuttlebug embossing folder, SU Punch
Coloring: Prismacolor markers
Embellies: Unknown brads, generic pop dots

Sparkly Lily Fairy

When I first discovered Stampin Up, I was all about the pastels. Now I find myself leaning towards Bold Brights more than anything, so it was fun for me to open up the Soft Subtles drawer again. For using pastel colors is the Crafty Hos challenge this week.

Lily is all decked out in her fairy wings, which are painted with Twinkling H2Os before outlining the outside edges with Cotton Candy Stickles. The designer paper is from a new-to-me stack by DCWV which I just picked up at Michael's. Doesn't it look as thought Lily is floating away on little glittery bubbles?


The rhinestone are random generics I found in my stash, one of which appears to have slipped while in the scanner. I will have to fix that on the card, but I do not have time to re-scan, so it'll have to do for this post...






Card Details:
Image: Pink Cat Studio
Sentiment: SU
Cardstock: GP, SU, DCWV
Ink: Memento
Tools: Nesties
Coloring: Prismacolor markers
Embellies: Twinkling H2Os, Stickles, generic rhinestones

Recycling the Crafty Ho Way

Perhaps you did not know this, but the Hos are an environmentally conscious group. Every once in a while one of them will put a bunch of supplies she no longer needs into a box and mail it to another. That person takes what she wants and adds in her own stuff. And so it goes til eventually the last person on the list sends the box back to the first person. I have participated in this swap a couple of times and have gotten some really great things, as well as cleaned out some extra supplies.

This year Earth Day falls on April 22nd. The Crafty Hos are honoring this day a little early with this weeks challenge, Recycling.

The first recycled element of this card is the background. Princess A, for some unknown reason, does not throw her garbage from lunch away in the school cafeteria. She brings it back home again in her lunchbox. Not too long ago she brought home the piece of waxed paper that had been used to wrap her sandwich. It did not look soiled at all, so into my stamping supplies it went. It was just the thing I needed for wax paper resist.

The next recycled element is the paper bag. Most of the time I bring my own bag to the store, but sometimes I forget and end up with a new paper bag. As soon as the groceries are unpacked it goes on the floor for the kittens to play. It will usually stay there for about a week, then moves out to the breezeway to become the receptacle for paper recycling. This week it got a chunk cut out of it.

The final recycled item is a newspaper. Joy offered a fabulous paper flower tutorial on her blog and made it look SO easy! Thankfully it was.

Oh! I almost forgot! The layout (rather loosely) follows Tuesday Morning Sketches (#39).






Card Details:
Image: SU
Sentiment: N/A
Cardstock: SU
Ink: SU
Tools: Iron, Brayer, Nesties
Coloring: N/A
Embellies: generic rhinestone brad

Critters Love Jellybeans

This week's challenge with the Crafty Hos is inspired by this prayer:

Jelly Bean Prayer
Red is for the blood He gave,
Green is for the grass He made.
Yellow is for the sun so bright,
Orange is for the edge of night.
Blue is for the sins we made,
White is for the grace He gave.
Purple is for His hour of sorrow,
Pink is for our new tomorrow!
A bag full of jelly beans,
So colorful and sweet.
Is a prayer, is a promise. . .
Is a special treat!

Is it any surprise that my card is all about jellybeans?  The sketch came from The Pink Elephant (#59) and the color scheme from Catch the Bug Challenge Blog. My card is a three-fer!

Every year on Easter, Main Squeeze and I set up an egg hunt for Princess A using plastic eggs filled with stickers, safe candy and pocket change. One year we thought we would be smart and set it up the night before. Most of the eggs were fine (I had to say that  up front so you would not worry that Princess A was disappointed), but there were a few that the critters had opened, and one or two that had bites taken out. I am talking about the plastic eggs; the inside candy was nowhere to be seen. I still wonder what they bought with the cash...

Perhaps this little fellow was there that day. Even if he missed it, he certainly looks happy with his latest stash of candy. I stamped the cascading jellybeans in the three colors on the yellow card stock, then again on white and cut some out. The extras are on generic dimensionals so they stand out . Then painted with Twinkling H2Os, just to give them another reason to feel special. The jellybeans in the mouse's hands (and the one between his feet) are coated with Crystal Effects; they look and feel more like jellybeans than paper.

This year will be the first Easter in our new house, with 4.3 acres of land to hide eggs. Princess A is going to need all the help the little critters are willing to offer.






Card Details:
Image: House Mouse Designs, SU
Sentiment: N/A
Cardstock: SU, GP, unknown designer paper
Ink: Memento, SU
Tools: N/A
Coloring: Prismacolor markers
Embellies: Twinkling H2Os, Crystal Effects, generic dimensionals, unknown ribbon

A Cappella Sheep

I have been wanting to make a card with these sheep ever since Marilyn made a comment in rehearsal about "Lazy Day" making her feel like a sheep. (All you barbershoppers out there who sing the harmony parts know what she was talking about!) Channeling harmonious sheep or not, it is still one of my favorite songs to sing.

Today's card is for the Crafty Hos. One of our members, Scrappy, drew the sketch for this week's challenge. You can see that I did not follow it exactly, which though unusual for me, is exactly the beauty of a sketch. Words as the largest focal point is another abnormal feature (for me at least). Since my inspiration is a fellow chorus member, however, I thought the sentiment was particularly apropos.

Crystal Stickles cover the butterfly which was first colored with Prismacolor markers and the "sky" in which it flies was sponged. The sheep are plush with an addition of Liquid Applique.





Card Details:
Image: All Night Media
Sentiment: Inkadinkado
Cardstock: SU, unknown designer (glitter) paper, GP
Ink: Memento, SU
Tools: SU punches, Fiskars Border punch, sponge, heat gun
Coloring: Prismacolor markers
Embellies: Stickles, Liquid Applique

Pink and Black Challenge

Welcome to my first project for the Crafty Hos Challenge Blog! As I joined late, I only had a couple of days to complete this challenge - I did not want to miss my first one!!

I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but did not own a brayer, so off to the LSS I went. Despite chanting, "Brayer, brayer, don't for get the brayer" in my head the entire ride, I came home with a cute raccoon stamp I have been coveting for months and an embossing folder I had special ordered in December, but NO BRAYER. Yup, totally forgot.

Got up early on Saturday morning and arrived at A.C. Moore shortly after opening, 50% coupon in hand. I am now the proud owner of a Speedball Soft Rubber Brayer (isn't she gorgeous?).

On to the challenge: Pink and Black. That's it. Simple, right? My, how I struggled. Took me a while to come up with an idea, then two trips to actually remember to purchase the brayer, and finally to put it all together. You would laugh if you knew how many times I needed to start over because I forgot to mask out the circle for the moon.

The expanse of snow needed a little something, too. I experimented with prima flowers and brads, but finally decided, between the sunset background and the house in shadow, "With Sympathy" was the most fitting.





Card Details:
Image: PSX
Sentiment: SU
Cardstock: SU, GP
Tools: Brayer, Scallop blade (in rotary cutter) 
Coloring: SU pads (brayer and sponge), Prismacolor marker
Embellies: N/A

Crafty Hos Challenges

I finally got around to sending my head shot to Audrey so that I could be linked up with the Crafty Hos. What took so long? Well, I am really not a fan of having my picture taken. I used to like it. In fact I used to dive into all sorts of photo ops, with or without an invitation. But then along came prednisone (vile stuff!) and pigment changes on my face in inconvenient areas. And well, I am just not a fan anymore...

But if I want to be on a DT, a head shot is a necessary evil. That said, you can find me on The Crafty Hos Challenge Blog sidebar. Somehow being last put me at the top of the page.

New challenges are posted every Sunday and you have until the following Saturday at 11PM EST to upload your creation. Now if I could only figure out where to find the challenges BEFORE they are posted with the DT samples I will be all set.

Please join us if you can!