CPS #225

Dad's retirement dinner with his family went well last night. Many of my cousins brought their little kids, and they were soooo adorable. Here's Dad with his cake. Mmmm, cake.

Mother Nature was very unhappy last night. She gave us a heavy dose of thunderstorms early this morning (4 AMish), complete with exploding transformers (not the robot kind).

This evening, we invited family members and Robyn and her mom over for a July 4th BBQ, complete with steaks marinated by Julie, pasta salad, salad, corn, and homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Here's my take on CPS #225. I wanted to continue getting some use out of the Inkadinkado stamp set that I bought on Friday. I stamped the images on a piece of kraft cardstock and heat embossed the sentiment stamp with some white embossing powder so that it stood out a little more against the kraft. Then it was time to pick out the paper, and I chose red to match with the flowers and the gray to contrast against the red and black. I adhered the pearls and made sure to save a little room for a butterfly in the upper right.
Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Warm Red, Charcoal
Stamps: Inkadinkado- Nature (butterfly, leaf, flower), K.I. Memories- Pet (sentiment)
Paper: American Crafts- Merrymint, American Crafts-The Goods Ceremony
Punch: Martha Stewart- Classic Butterfly
Pearl: Queen & Co.- Pearl

Yard Sale Success

Yard sale finds: Before I went to bed last night, I planned out a route for my morning yard sale adventure. I ended up going to 4 yard sales, but only had luck at 1. Meh, no biggie. At this yard sale, I found 2 Rubbermaid containers ($1 each), a cute yellow pot ($0.25), and 2 large Stampin' Up stamps ($2 each). Total: $6.25. I was thrilled. I was doing my mwah ha ha laugh in my head as I drove off. When I got home, I immediately wiped down the containers with a Lysol wipe and put my wood block sentiment stamps in one while putting some image wood block stamps in the other. I took the pencils, pens, scissors, etc. out of my two pencil holders and consolidated them into the one yellow pot. True be told, one of my pencil holders was the tall mug that I got for high school prom. The pot definitely feels more grown up.I did some more organizing in my room by deciding what crafty items could go to Goodwill and recycling a bunch of magazines. Settlement is less than a week away. The less that has to go to the new place, the better!

Animals: When I was on my way to my first yard sale this morning, I saw this woman chasing her terrier. He even ran into traffic! I was so afraid that one or both of them was going to get hit by a car. Good thing people were watching. And then soon after that, I saw a fawn running around the neighborhood. Its mommy was not in sight, and it was probably really scared. Again, I was scared that someone was going to hit it.

Card: Here's my card for today. I heat embossed the hydrangea stamp with black embossing powder and used my Tim Holtz inks as watercolors to color in the flower. I went over the flower centers again with my paintbrush to add a little bit of shading/dimension.

Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Personal Stamp Exchange- Black
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Peeled Paint, Vintage Photo, Tattered Rose
Stamps: Stampin' Up- Stipple Hydrangea, Fiskars- Just Between Friends (sentiment)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
White Gel Pen: Inkssentials

Off to dinner with Dad's family to celebrate his retirement!

Fall-To Layout #147

Confession: I haven't been running since the 10K about 1.5 months ago. I am also a) didn't go to spin class yesterday and b) hadn't tried out the running skirts that I bought a while back. ::hangs head in shame:: BUT the good news is that I did go running today WITH a running skirt! I bought them because I wasn't liking how my workout shorts were causing some chaffing. I have no problem wearing capris during the colder months, but now it's too hot to be wearing them. The running skirt was a nice alternative on today's 2-mile-ish run.

Other running related news: Did I mention that the HR director (who's an avid runner outside of work) developed a 8K training plan for me? Yep, she wanted to help me improve my March 8K time when I run another 8K in September. It's an 11-week plan, starting the week of July 10. I appreciated that she sprinkled it with some spin classes.

Card share: Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #147. I had to dust off my circle punch and dig out my circle dies for this card. It was also the perfect opportunity to use the new stamps that I got today.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird, Dark Peony, French Blue, Aquamarine
Stamps: Inkadinkado- Nature (butterfly, leaf, flower), Studio G (alphabet)
Paper: Die Cuts with a View- Mango Frost
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, Fiskars Scallop Sentiment border punch, EK Success Circle punch (1 3/8 inch)
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Standard Circles Large

Onward to yard sale adventures tomorrow! :)

See Ya Later, Roommate

Ugh, today was a sad day for me. It was my teammate/office roommate's last day at the office. Even though I had known this day was coming for a few months, it sucks to have the office to myself. I've been at my job for almost 3 years and have always had an office roommate, so to have the place to myself seems kinda lonely now. Sigh, I guess that's life. :(

One-Layer Wednesday #60

Today was another early day in the office. I owed the survey manager something yesterday, but then I got distracted with a hotel contract and some voicemails that by the end of the day, my brain was hitting a stopping point. I decided that it'd be best to get a fresh start in the morning and complete the deliverable so it'd be waiting for her when she got in. And with the early start, I got to leave early too. Everyone wins. :)

This week's One-Layer Wednesday (#60) challenge focused on doing quick layers of ink with "no masking, no sponging, no embellishments of any kind." I thought the best way to do to some layering was to get a full-coverage background stamp. My trusty music score stamp was standing by for the job. I chose to use my flower stamp again and grounded the image with some grass to make the scene look more realistic. I topped the card off with a newish sentiment stamp and some leaves.

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Warm Red, Blackbird. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Peeled Paint, Antique Linen
Stamps: Studio G (sentiment, flowers), Stampendous (music score), K.I. Memories- Garden (grass, leaf)

Tuesday Trigger: Moxie Fab Inspiration from Stamp It! Cards

I've been trying to track down one of the people that I work with in Colorado for about 3 weeks now. I knew he was out of the country and then I knew he got back home, so I waited a little bit before I started nagging again. Then, today, I got an email and phone call from him, in response to one I sent him yesterday.

"Tina, I'm in X, Maryland. How far is it from your office?"

Uh, like 30 minutes. (pause) You wanna stop by before you fly home?

"Yeah, I don't have anything to do until 2 PM, so I was going to take a cab to your headquarters, if you have some time."

Ok, sure. See you in a few. I look down at my flip flops and toe nails painted with green nail polish while we disconnected. Uh oh. Ok, well, I wasn't really dressed appropriately to have to meet anyone important, but I figured that he'd excuse the informality since we've been working together for a while. So, anyway, he stopped by the office as scheduled and we chatted in the conference room for 2 hours (!). There was much to catch him up on since he missed out on the Annual Meeting in Omaha earlier this month.

Janice the spin instructor caught me zoning out this evening in class. "Tina! Are you working hard?!" Uh, no. Okokok. I'll turn up the resistance and go faster. Gotta get my head in the game.

Here's my take on this week's Tuesday Trigger from Moxie Fab World. The challenge was to get inspiration from a card featured in a recent issue of Stamp It! Cards. I wanted to incorporate the lace, flowers, and starburst found in the Trigger photo into my own card. The starbursts ended up on the vase that I cut out. The flowers sticking out of the vase were stickers that I got for my birthday this year, and I added the die cut one on the bottom for balance. To ground the vase so that it didn't look like it was floating in space, I used a blender marker to transfer some brown ink to the cardstock. I put the lace behind the flowers for a subtle touch. Now that I look at two pictures side-by-side, I don't think I stuck to the Trigger photo as much as I usually do...
Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Chestnut Roan, Blackbird. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Peeled Paint.
Stamps: Inkadinkado- Round Frames, Fiskars- Winter Wonderland
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Die: Sizzix- Tim Holtz Alterations Tattered Florals
Sticker: Sandylion- Heart Flowers
White Gel Pen: Inkssentials

Patterned Paper to the Rescue!

Dad asked me to make a card to send to my cousin, congratulating her on her new baby girl. After watching a 2-hour episode of the Bachelorette (go JP!), I didn't have a lot of time to think about the card's design, so I started out with a card that had a layout similar to yesterday's. I turned the card so that it'd be a landscape card and put the sentiment on the larger panel. I was stumped as to what to use as embellishments for the lower right corner and I was looking around to see what I had out already. The flowers on the packaging of the American Crafts City Park paper caught my eye. Ah hah! I can cut out the flowers in the patterned paper and glue them down. Smaller flowers can be layered on top of larger ones for dimension. The card doesn't exactly scream "baby" to me, but I think the congratulatory message gets across.

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird
Stamps: Studio G- Hello Friend
Paper: American Crafts- City Park
Foam adhesive: Thermoweb
Other: Royal Blue American Crafts Stamp Marker