Card Collections and Corgi + Camera

Last weekend I spent some time making a set of cards for my mom's birthday gift.  I started by CASEing two cards I listed in my 2010 favorites post on Splitcoast that both used the Stampin' Up Manhattan Flower embossing folder: this one by hskelly and this one by jovialjudy. I made a couple more with the same embossing folder to round out the set, but I admittedly do not like them as much as the CASE'd ones.  Here's the whole set:

(Ha, sorry for the random background.  Were you wondering what my pantry door looks like?  Mystery solved!).  Here are some single shots of the two cased cards:

(watercolored with SU markers and aquapainter, PTI Fillable Frames sentiment)

(Embossed and sanded pre-patterned Core'dinations cardstock, Waltzingmouse sentiment, white pearls colored black with copic)

I also made her the OH-EM-GEE-CUTEST mini composition notebook.

I mean, check out that one bird reading her name!  This is some Cosmo Cricket paper, Sage Shadow modern label punch, and PTI bitty dot ribbon.

Now, I hate to brag, but I know many, many of you will be very jealous of my next statement: we hit seventy degrees yesterday!  So after taking Addison to the v-e-t (all clear!), I had a photo session with her in the backyard.  Here a few favorites:

Happy Sun-dog, everyone!

Happiness in 4 Inches

This card so sweet that my teeth hurt! I think I've finally gotten the hang of these paper flowers.  I tried making the really smooshy ones like Dawn and the cut-out-a-petal-and-roll ones like Tim Holtz and, well, let's just notice the fact that you haven't seen either of those kind on a card from me and leave it at that.  But the ones die cut from a blossom nestability I am all about!

I started by cutting 3-4 of each size of the three smallest nestie blossom dies from PTI Melon Berry. I then stamped PTI Polka Dot Basics II in PTI Vintage Cream ink, using the smallest dots for the smallest blossom and working my way up to bigger dots for the bigger blossoms.. After cutting and distressing by crumpling them up, I layered them and secured with a brad. The bottom two or three layers I had to attach with glue since the brad wasn't quite long enough. 

I totally cased this layout by dahlhousedesigns, swissdotting & inking some kraft, then inking a big scallop rustic white square with SU Blush Blossom.  The sentiment is from Wplus9 The Birds & The Bees, with the flag trimmed using the same big scallop nestie.

So this morning was fairly exciting: I got a nasty virus on my computer!  Fortunately I have in-house tech support so I'm now back to normal, but just a reminder to back up your computer!  If you haven't tried Dropbox, I'd highly recommend it (unless you don't like things that are awesome)! If you use this link we both get an extra 250 MB of space (you get 2 gigabytes to start with!).

It's Cookie Time!

We all know that it's cookie time all the time, but this week is super cookiebaker time on SCS.  Charlene is not only the Guest Designer for the CAS challenge today, but also the Featured Stamper for yesterday's challenge!  Take a gander at her gallery and blog and just try not to be inspired--impossible!

This is the card for today's CAS challenge, based on this cake from the outrageously expensive inspiration cake website.  I know, I know, who am I with all this orange?!?  The flowers are from some Costco Inkadinkado sets, stamped in Colorbox Tangerine Chalk Ink onto PTI Soft Stone paper.  The sentiment is from PTI Mega Mixed Messages.

This was my card for the Featured Stamper challenge yesterday, based on this card from cookiebaker. I really liked the one-stroke copic coloring she did on her flower, and tried to emulate it using PTI's Delightful Dahlia.  I used R22, which worked nicely with PTI Berry Sorbet ribbon.  The sentiment is from PTI's Birthday Basics.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday yesterday!  Our neighbors decided to set off some fireworks, which Addison was none too pleased about!  We watched The Proposal which was surprisingly better than I had thought it would be. Anyone have any good rentals to recommend?