One-Layer Wednesday #19

Today's One-Layer Wednesday challenge (#19) was black and white with a spot of color. Hmmm. thinkthinkthink. I immediately reached for my new Hero Arts Cling Dots stamp, but then I remembered that I used it yesterday. Ok, need to branch out a little more. I saw this leaf background stamp that I hadn't used in a while. What goes well with leaves? Umm, bugs. So I dug out a ladybug stamp. It'll be my spot of color against the black leaves. I always thought that black, red, and white was a good go-to color combination. It's ummmm...very Twilight? Ha ha. I thought the lonely ladybug matched the "miss you" sentiment.

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Warm Red, StazOn in Jet Black
Stamps: Inkadinkado- Gardenia (leaves), Fiskars- Friendship Garden (butterfly), The Paper Company Studio- Greetings (sentiment)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper

Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger: Lipsylicious

Even though I had a 3-day weekend and even though I know it's Tuesday, it still felt like Monday. What gives? At least it's going to be a short week and I have a fun visitor coming to visit this upcoming weekend: Suzie. Fun will ensue.

This week's Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger challenge was a picture of lipsticks. I love the gorgeous bold, fall-y colors. I came up with this card idea while I was in spin class. Is that horrible? I was actively participating in class and not zoning out, I promise! The points of the lipsticks reminded me of flower petals so I took out a petal from a flower set that I had and created my own flower using ink colors similar to the picture. I added some Glossy Accents to the center of the flower for some dimension and a dew-y look.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Chestnut Roan, Yellow Ochre, Lavender, Dark Peony, Prussian Blue. Bazzinks in Juneberry. StazOn in Jet Black.
Stamp: Autumn Leaves- Build-a-Flower (petals, flower center), Studio G (sentiment, butterfly), Hero Arts Cling Dots (polka dots)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Other: Glossy Accents

CPS #183

Today might as well have been Happy Lazy Day, instead of Happy Labor Day. I woke up with good intentions to go to the 9:30 AM spin class, but fell back asleep. Whoops. I went on a run around this neighborhood instead before dinner to get some exercise in. When I was going up the hill towards the house, I heard a car slowing down behind me. I turned my head and it was my cousin and aunt. "Go, go, Tina!" My family is funny. :)

Here's today's card, inspired by CPS #183. The little lines on the side confused me. What am I supposed to do with that? I kinda just mushed that space together with some kraft tags that were sitting on my desk. Next time, I'll pick a color that matches the left panel more. Maybe red? The kraft, although neutral, kinda brings the color factor down a notch. I think the little elements on the tags tied the everything together in the end.
Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Chestnut Roan
Stamp: Inkadinkado (letters)
Paper: Die Cuts With a View- Citrus (floral)
Die: Sizzix- Tags, Scallop Combo #2 (tag)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Foam Adhesive: EK Success
Flower: Prima

Song of the day: "Stuck Like Glue" - Sugarland.

Weekend Wrap-Up

I watched a whopping 3 movies this weekend: Salt, Clash of the Titans, and The Switch. I would have to say that The Switch was my favorite of the 3. Angelina Jolie kicked butt in Salt, but I thought the movie ended kind of abruptly. Maybe they are leaving room for a sequel? Clash of the Titans was a pretty exciting movie. The special effects were amazing, Sam what's-his-head is cuuute, and Pegasus was magnificent. I think I enjoyed The Switch the most because of the adorable kid.

I made the pizza casserole again, but this time I added mushrooms and a can of diced tomatoes to make the dish less meat-heavy. I feel like there was more of a balance this time.

Craft fair prep update: I have almost 5 boxes of cards for the upcoming season, and the first one is more than a month away. I definitely feel better knowing that I'm ahead of the game (well, at least compared to where I was at this time last year).

With the extra 50 bucks in my pocket, I did some craft store shopping. I got some kraft cardstock, some new stamp sets (2 $1 ones and 1 full sentiment stamp set), and a Spellbinders die set. For today's card, I strayed from my usual A2 card. I used the largest Spellbinders die in the set and cut two labels. Then I scored one of the cut-outs at the top. This will be the fold of the card...a trick that I learned at Jennifer McGuire's class last week. This will make any shape into a card, given that you have 2 cut-outs of the shape and adhesive to put them together. I cut out some of the green cardstock using the same die for the middle part of the card. I stamped the fruit and sentiment and used Glossy Accents for the lemons (another trick from the classes last week). Ta da!

Lesson learned tonight: Glossy Accents DOES take a while to dry. Leave it alone. I touched the lemons a few times, and messed up the Glossy Accents and had to do them over until I got them just right with no smudges from my fingers.
Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Yellow Citrus, Warm Red, Tangerine, Olive Pastel
Stamp: Studio G (fruit), The Paper Company Studio- Greetings (sentiment)
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 8
Foam Adhesive: EK Success
Other: Glossy Accents

Whoo hoo, no work tomorrow! :D

Surprise and Fall-To Layout 106

Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh! So, remember the invitation that I submitted to Do It Yourself Invitations? My entry was randomly selected, and I won $50! I have a couple of crafty items in mind to buy. Now it's just a matter of narrowing down the long list! :)

Today's Fall-To Layout (#106) took me longer than I thought it would for some reason. The kraft cardstock piece was either too long or too short. The brad in the center of the flower was not the right color. I couldn't figure out what embellishment I wanted in the lower right corner. Decisions decisions. This card gave me an excuse to use one of the crochet flowers I made a while ago.
Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Stamp: Fiskars- Petals From Scratch (sentiment)
Brad: American Crafts, Large Brads- Blush
Punches: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Embossing Folder: Cuttlebug (Victoria)
Buttons: Favorite Findings in Pink

Song of the day: "Keep on Lovin' You"- Steel Magnolia

Discovery Channel Hostage Situation Aftermath + OLW #18

Thanks for all the comments on yesterday's blog post about the Discovery Channel hostage situation! Yep, I'm okay. It was just so mind boggling to me that something like that happened so close to me. I was a little nervous about how traffic was going to be on the way to work this morning, but everything was fine. The DC was blocked off, understandably, but most of the police tape had been taken down by late this afternoon. I hope the people who work there can get back to some normalcy very soon. It must have been a traumatic experience for all of them and their families too.

Update on the card display drama. I called them on Monday to see what we could do about getting my money back. I got a response on Tuesday. They told me that I had to send the broken one back. Well, WHICH broken one? The one in the original order or the replacement? They are both broken. What are you going to do with them? Did you hear me? They are broken. I asked for some clarification, but have not gotten a response. Ok, you know what?! (*bleep*) that. I went to Office Depot this afternoon, bought a $4 tube of super glue, and did some plastic surgery (ha ha, get it? Plastic surgery? I know. ::groan::). They aren't in perfect condition, but it's the best that I can do. I just want to put the whole ordeal to rest.

For today's card, I wander over to Simplicity's one-layer Wednesday challenge. It focused on trees. I knew exactly which tree stamp I wanted to use, and with fall approaching soon, I wanted it to be a fall themed card. The Stampamajig really came in handy today. To make sure that the trees were floating, I used a border stamp and used it several times with different colors to make it look like a fall-y ground. Smart, huh? ::pats self on the back::

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Chestnut Roan, Dark Brown, Olive Pastel, Tangerine, Deep Green, Amber Clay. StazOn in Jet Black.
Stamp: Fiskars- Border-A-Plenty (dots), Hampton Art- Terrific Tree (tree), Inkadinkado- Autumn Foliage (sentiment)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper

Discovery Channel Hostage Situation

Ohhh, man. It was QUITE a day at the office. I got a front seat to the whole Discovery Channel hostage situation this afternoon. You could begin to hear the sirens at around 1 PM. I was in the conference room, as part of a team interviewing a potential candidate. The interview had to be moved to a different room because of the commotion outside and people chatting about it inside.

After the interview, I went over to a co-worker's window, and there were cops and law enforcement vehicles everywhere...for BLOCKS. I've never seen anything like it. Not even when I worked in DC. Among all the policemen, I saw at least 3 snipers, 2 K9 dogs, and a few armored trucks. It even looked like some of the police had taken over the corner gyro guy's stand and borrowed his stools so they could sit down. At one point, one of the police was tossing another officer some water. One of them signaled "touchdown," which I thought was very immature for the situation at hand. Hello? Everyone's looking at you during this hostage situation. What are you doing, having fun at at time like this?! Anyway, things started to get serious when I saw armored officers go in (SWAT maybe?).

Nothing was really happening for about 3 hours. I was about to pack up and go home when I suddenly saw 2 people run out of the building and heard shots fired. The guy that I could see went down. I didn't see what happened to the other guy. My heart started to race. What if he's dead??? It felt like a movie or TV scene, but oh no...those were real guns and real bullets. About 5 minutes later, I saw the 2 men that ran out of the building escorted away in police vehicles and I heard that the bad guy had been shot. You could tell that the police presence around relaxed just a tiny bit. On the way home, I heard that the bad guy was killed and all the hostages were safe. Whew!

And to think that I was going to go out around 1 PM to find buy some super glue to see if I could repair the damaged card displays. I only stayed in the building because I was called in at the last minute to sit in on the interview. It would have been scary to be outside today!