Halloween Thank You

Happy Halloween!! We just finished giving out candy to the little goblins going door-to-door for Trick or Treating. I love watching the kids get dressed up and I really like that we live in a safe neighborhood where the kids can walk and be assured they are getting good candy.

Well my birthday falls around this scary time of year (no it's not actually today) and I needed a Thank You card for a good friend who helped to make my birthday something special this year.

My friend Cindy remembered my birthday and took time out of her busy schedule to make me a card and cupcakes! How sweet is she? I want to be sure she realizes just how much I appreciate her thoughtfulness. So I made her this card:

The base of the card is just white cardstock and all the other pieces come from PaperTrey Ink. The black is Smokey Shadow cardstock, the orange dotty paper is from Heather Nichols Halloween Paper pack, the white oval is more of the plain cardstock that I die cut and embossed with a Spellbinders Oval Nestability die, and the black ribbon started out as white grosgrain that I colored with a black Copic marker. The sentiment is from Dawn McVey's Signature Greeting stamp set. I used an orange Copic marker and their spray can to tone down the bright white of the oval. The inspiration for this layout came from Paper Crafts Go-To Sketches magazine, specifically Maren Benedict's sketch on page 33.

Well that's all I have to share for today. I do need to make another Thank You card for a different friend who also remembered my birthday. Hopefully I can get that made this week and I'll share it with you all next week.

Don't eat too much candy this week! LOL

Janice

Is It Summer Already?

Happy HOT Sunday Evening! It is unusually warm here in the NorthEast. Today it reached 90 degrees!! This is unheard of. I know it won't last very long but it is pretty uncomfortable at the moment.

While I was melting in the heat tonight I put together a fairly quick birthday card for my nephew/god son. He will be 19 years old tomorrow. I really can't believe how fast time goes by.

You will probably notice that I recently made a similar card for a new friend. I really like the layout and the concept and since I was pressed for time I decided to just go with what I liked. The dots around the outside of the circles and the Happy Birthday sentiment are from JustRite Stamps. LOVE them! The card base is Lemon Tart by PaperTrey Ink, the blue and green circles are left over scraps I had in my scrap bucket and the blue and green stripes on the white accent piece are Copic markers which I was shocked to see matched the circle colors.

Thank you for stopping by tonight. We bought some new Dahlia's and shrubs at the nursery today. Once they are planted I will get some pictures and show you all how wonderful our home is starting to look! LOL

Have a wonderful week.

-Janice

Birthday Card

Hello World! It's so nice to be connected to the outside world again. We had a terrible wind storm Thursday night and we lost power for about 48 hours! Our generator decided not to cooperate so we spent Friday making as many phone calls as we could think of. We tried to buy another one, rent one and find someone who could fix the one we have. We finally found someone to fix it but they couldn't do that until Saturday. So we had a couple of rough nights but this wonderful little repair shop came through and fixed our generator for us. We were back in business by mid-afternoon Saturday and then the power came back on Saturday night. Oh well, at least it's fixed for the next time and trust me, living in New England there will definitely be a next time! LOL

I didn't get much crafing done this weekend ... it was just too cold! The house got down to 50 degrees! However I did come up with this sweet little card. I made this totally from scraps, can you believe it?!?
The stamp is from JustRite Stampers and I colored it with the few Copic markers I have. I tried to match the spots on the package to the spots on the decorative paper. It came out pretty close but I'm not sure you can really tell from the picture. I cut the stamped image and the scalloped blue circle with the new Spell Binders Nestabilities that my hubby got me for Christmas. Isn't he sweet? The blue scallop under the decorative paper was made with a Fiskers Apron Lace punch. The layout was a sketch by Michelle Wooderson. I will definitely be using this sketch again for inspiration.

Next week I'll show you my picture of Luke (our cat) which I used on the March page of my calendar.

Until then ... I hope you have an enjoyable, stress-free week.

-Janice

Another Graduation Card

Well it looks like summer has finally arrived in New England!! YEAH! I spent so much time outside this weekend and it truly felt wonderful. The weather has been in the mid- to high- 70's, sunny and breezy. Just perfect! I even broke out the "kiddie" pool for the dog today and spent some quality time soaking my feet while I read a book and soaked up some of the suns beautiful rays! :) Can you tell how happy I am? LOL

Last Monday I had my first in-person inteview since being laid-off back in April. While it was very long; I met with four people and had to take a test to prove my skills, it must have gone fairly well since they asked me to come back in tomorrow for yet another interview. This is the fourth time I am speaking with the hiring manager! I think they should be able to make a decision by now, but I have no idea exactly how many people they have to choose from. Hopefully tomorrow will go just as well as last week and I'll be offered the job by the end of the week. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, on to my card post for this week. In addition to the graduation cap card that I showed last week, I also made the following graduation card.

The background paper is called "Stardust" and is part of the Hello Spaceboy collection by Valerie Foster for Prima Marketing, Inc. The stamps I found as a set at Michael's and are from Hampton Arts. I stamped them in Memento Tuxedo Black ink. The ribbon is from my stash and started out as a white satin ribbon. Since the card was given to a young man who just graduated from high school I didn't think white satin was very appropriate, so I colored the ribbon with my black Copic. Cool huh?

Can you believe I'm still making graduation cards? We have two more parties to attend this coming weekend. I'll post pictures as soon as they are done. Also I got some new Cuttlebug Border Embossing folders so I'm hoping to be able to play with those more soon!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a wonderful week.

-Janice

Happy Easter

Phew, it's been a busy week around here. I have three cards and two baskets to show you today!

The first card was given to my mom with the yellow basket. The card measures 4"x4". The stamps are all by Studio G and were purchased from the Michael's $1.00 bin. The images were colored with Copic markers in the following colors: G29, R32, R35, R39, Y06 and Y08. The beak of the chick was done with a Red Spica pen. I also double stamped the chick and used foam to make the image "pop".



The second card was given to my sister with the purple basket. This card also measures 4"x4". The image is by JustRite stamps using the 2" round stamp with 15 pt Times New Roman font. I used Copics to color this image as well and added a Clear Spica pen for the water and Martha Stewart Yellow Barite glitter to the center of the flowers.



The third card was given to my in-laws. I can't remember the exact measurements of the card but I think they were 5"x4" and the images were all by Studio G. I colored the images with Copic markers again and used the foam adhesive to "pop" the jelly beans. The buttons were tied with DMC floss, all of which I already had in my stash.



I made the baskets by creating a template first. There were a few versions of the template before I came up with one I liked. Each baskets was made using Bazzil card stock and "Happy Easter" image is from Studio G. I first stamped the sentiment with colored ink and then over-stamped it with Embossing ink and clear embossing powder. I liked the end result and so did my family. The bunnies which filled the basket are proped up on irredescent easter grass and were purchased from a Cracker Barrel Country Store. They play three different tunes when you hold them in your hand. Too cute!



Everyone loved their gifts today! Yeah! I hope you all had a fantastic day as well.

-Janice