Card Club is under way!!!!!

Here is my kitchen table, all set up for my Card Club that was here last night! We have a great group of ladies that come out once a month to make cards, and socialize also! Last night we made two different card designs, a Quilted card, adn a Brayer card.

Each month we make 6 cards. The dates vary by month depending on my hubby's days off. Check out my website for the upcoming dates!
http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/gina_thornton/

Hope to see you soon!!!!!

Fall Fest 2009 here I come!!!

I am headed to Fall Fest tomorrow and I have to say I am excited! I made these cards for the swaps that will be happening amongst the Demonstrators that will be attending. Fall Fest is a gathering of the Downlines of Tina Rosenkratz. She would be like my Great Grandmother (I think) in my Stampin Up family. I have never met her, so it will be nice to finally meet her also! Aunt Karen (Barber) will also be there, and Michele Zindorf! Yeah it will be like Hollywood! LOL!

Anyway I planned on making 75 cards fronts for the swap, but had to stop at 58 as I ran out of Dusty Durango cardstock (gasp!) I colored the image with my new Dusty Durango Stampin Write Marker highlighted areas with my Really Rust marker and the stems are Old Olive. Luckily last weekend my daughter had a busy social calendar, and I was able to color most of the images while she was attending birthday parties. :)

These cards are a perfect example of not judging without giving a chance. When I first got the Dusty Durango, I wasn't too sure about it. Then I made the Card for Heather, and then these, and I have to say that I am glad I gave it a second chance!

The pumpkin is from Autumn Harvest.

Cardstock Dusty Durango, Very Vanilla and Soft Suede, Dusty Durango Designer series Paper.

Asian Artistry revisited

I have a confession to make. Often times I look at a stamp set in the catalog and I just am not sure what I would use it for. I always love getting in orders for my stamp clubs so that when they order sets I can see what they look like in "real life". My friend Albert was always costing me money when I would see his orders!! LOL. He would order sets that i wasn't really sure if I "needed" and they would arrive and then I would HAVE to have it! But since I enabled (this is a term we fondly use on my favorite Message Board. Someone shows us a project, or a tool etc and we in turn HAVE to have it. There are a lot of enablers on that MB! :)) him into Stampin' UP I guess it is only fair right? Well this time my friend and Downline Michelle enabled me to get this set.

This card was made using the new In Colors. Melon Mambo, and Soft Suede, and paired with Very Vanilla cardstock. The inks are the classic inks also in Melon Mambo and Soft Suede. I stamped the sentiment on the Scallop oval punch and matted it with the Wide Oval punch. I gave it a little pop with Dimensionals. The stamp set I used was the Level 2 hostess set Asian Artistry. The little bird (I choose to make him to be a Bluebird) is colored with my Brilliant Blue watercolor crayon using my blender pen.



We made a variation of this card in my card class last month. I made a few samples, and I found it really neat that the ladies that attended made the design their own by switching out te main image, sentiments, adding and taking away elements. It was cool to see how they came up with new versions of my samples.

A room with a View

This is one of the views from my craft room/office window. Actually this is the window that is right above the computer desk. I love the Spring and summer when I can get lost in thought staring out the window at all of the little visitors to my butterfly bush. I've seen all sorts of butterflies, and bees and birds flitting from branch to branch. Its nice because I could literally reach out and touch each one of them, but they either don't see me, or don't think I am going to cause them any harm. On this particular day I just happened to have my camera within reach and snapped these photos of a Tiger Swallow perched on one of the flowers. These pictures are shot from my room looking out.

Has it been that long????

Ok so my goal of posting to this blog once a week isn't going so well. August has been such a whirlwind of events, running here, running there, you know, life. We had birthday parties, and preparations for yard sales, and another birthday party, and trips to the zoo, and being sick.

I DID however make a few things and as soon as I can find my camera to take pictures I will post some of them.

Don't give up on me yet, I will try harder I promise!

7 days until I got back to work. For some reason summers just don't last long enough! Three months fly by so quickly! Sadly the weather put a damper on so many things I had planned on doing. The pool, camping, fishing etc.

So anyway, I just wanted to come and let you know that yes I am still alive and I will try harder at getting back here to post!

Keep Creating!

Crazy About Cupcakes and In Colors!

I am working on using all of my current stamp sets by Stampin' Up! This time I used the Crazy For Cupcakes stamp set. The background is doe using Stampin Up's Backgrounds 1 Texturz plates, which I ran through my BigShot. I used Melon Mambo and Very Vanilla Cardstock. The image is stamped in black StazOn ink and colored using my Stampin' Write markers. (The cupcake liners are actually a mix of two colors, as I made a booboo and started coloring them with the Going Gray instead of the Bashful Blue that I had meant to color them). Then I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to properly line up the sentiment over the top of the cupcakes. And I finished it all off with my Ticket Corner punch.

Again, no sun. I may need to come up with another light source!

A card for Ann Marie

Some of the PhillyInkers are taking part in a mail swap where we make one card and send it to someone in our group. We draw names of who send to. For July I drew Ann Marie. And since am so into the brayer cards right now, I decided to make her one! I used my brayer to layer the colors (one by one) onto the card. The inks I used were Summer Sun, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie and Dusty Durango. Then I stamped the Upsy Daisy image onto the labels. The cardstock is hard to tell (still no sun), but it is Bravo Burgundy, Basic Black, and Whisper White. The ribbon is Basic Black. The sentiment is from Heard from the Heart and stamped in black StazOn.