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!

Invasion of the Blog Snatchers!

I know, you're going to look at today's cards and think to yourself, what alien has taken over Meg's blog today?  Can you count the number of ways this is Not My Style?

1) White card base (I'm just not a WCB type of gal!)
2) Jewel tones!!  Including PURPLE (PTI's Plum Pudding).
3) PURPLE AND RED.  Living together on the same card!  Right NEXT to each other!  (I was going to include this with #2, but I think it deserved its own bullet point)
4) Massive amounts of imperfection!!  That I LIKE.
Did you spot any others I left off?

I made a set of these for my MIL's birthday.  Here they all are:

I versamarked and white heat-embossed SU's Upsy Daisy on PTI's Scarlet Jewel, Plum Pudding, Ripe Avocado, and Enchanted Evening, then cut out the strips and pasted them back together onto a scrap square of cardstock.  And I must admit, the colors looked pretty good together.  But then I decided to do a little cracked glass technique, and wow, the colors just got so rich and beautiful!  And when I was melting the UTEE (ultra-thick embossing enamel), it melted the original white embossing and made it streak-which I  thought looked all artsy.   I cracked three of them, and the fourth one left alone.  Here's a couple more closeups:

In other Meg news, I recently started devouring books again.  You know how it is when you're reading an "ok" book and it takes forever to finish it?  Then you read a good book and you finish it in a day because you stay up all night reading it?  Then you remember why you liked to read in the first place, and start reading more and more?  And start checking out armloads of books from the library and amazon starts daily dropoffs of used books at your doorstep?

Or is that just me?

Well, the two most recently devoured book have been It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong (of dooce.com)--very funny and very good birth control (ha).  And then I picked up The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber.  Why?  I have no idea.  It's not like I even like historical novels.  But, oh my, once I started it driving home from Atlanta (edit: DH was driving, I was riding!), I stayed up all night to finish it!  Could not put it down.  It was certianly not a story I've read before, and that goes a long way with me.  I would say Sucked is about 4 stars out of 5, and Rachel is definitely a 5 out of 5.

Let me know of any books that have kept you up late recently!