A Walk Down Memory Lane

Last Impromptu Crop post!

This is the last post I have left for the projects that I completed during the Impromptu Crop last weekend.  :)

A member challenged us to post a sympathy or thinking about you card.  I like to have some of these on hand as well, so I thought I'd play along!

First, I started with a layer of brown cardstock in an A7 size ( 5x7).  Next, I used a piece of October Afternoon Weathervane in 4 3/4 x 6 3/4.  I used my Tim Holtz blending tool with my Memento ink to go around the edges of the card, to give it a little softer feel.  I did the same thing with the other pieces of the card.  The Jenni Bowlin mini bingo card...I didn't just keep to the edges.  I tinted the whole card with the blending tool and ink.  I used a Penny Black sentiment for the card, and a piece of brown grossgrain ribbon.

Impromptu Crop Challenge card

I've got a few projects that I completed during the Impromptu crop that I need to get posted!!  This one here is a really cute little card.

One of the members challenged us to make a pocket card, and the challenge was it had to have 3 flowers on it.

So...I made my card with Bazzill cardstock in an A2 size.  Then, I used some Kraft Bazzill cardstock to make the pocket, and sewed it onto the Whirlpool CS base.

Next I used some October Afternoon Weathervane striped paper, a Heidi Grace It's My Party sticker flower, and colored in the middle of the flower with Dimensional Pearls from the On the Dotted Line card kit.

Next, I stamped my Changito monkey and colored him in with my Copic Markers.  I adhered him to a piece of Bazzill cardstock, and then punched the top with an EK Slim Shapers Binding Punch to make the "notebook" looking top of the card.

For my friend...

Here is another card I created with the June 2009 card kit called Chocolate Roses.

This one starts with a Bazzill cardstock base that I found in my stash.  I added the striped paper from the kit, and then the glittery lace, self-adhesive border to the card.

Next I took the We R Memory Keepers foil/glitter/flock adhesive included in the kit and rubbed the adhesive to the green patterned paper from the kit.  Next, I took the glitter from the kit and rubbed that on to the adhesive.  It's so cool to watch the glitter go onto the adhesive, without any glitter spilling all over!  Next, I took my Copic Marker and colored in the clear rhinestone to put in the middle of the flower to match my glitter.

Last, I stamped The Greeting Farm ballerina and colored her in with my Copic Markers.   When the Copics were dry, I colored in her tutu with some Copic Atyou Spica clear pen to give her tutu some sheen.  It's so very hard to see in a photo, but I did take a close-up.  Hopefully you can see that.  I very carefully cut her out and adhered her with some foam adhesive, to the circle that I made with some leftover cardstock.  I used a Kaiser rubon included in the kit, and finished off the card with a few rhinestones from Heidi Swapp that is also included in the kit.

You're Invited

Good Tuesday to you!  :)  My daughter will be celebrating her 8th birthday, very soon, and she wanted me to make some invitations for her birthday party.  We have invited the girls from her class and we'll set up the camper in our backyard and have a sleepover.  We plan on having a campfire full of s'mores, hot dogs, etc and then they can all snuggle in their sleeping bags in our camper.

The invitation is pretty simple.  It started with a Bazzill cardstock front cut to 5 1/2 x 4 1/4.  Then I cut the Imaginisce Twitterpated paper to 5 1/4 x 4.  I took that same Twitterpated paper and used the backside.  I cut it to 5 1/2 x 1 1/4 and then punched the bottom with my Fiskars border punch.  I adhered all three pieces together, and then sewed them together.  I wrapped around some twine that we have at the store for purchase by the yard, and then layered an Imaginisce flower.  Last, I stamped the You're Invited sentiment from Stampendous in a Memento Ink and carefully trimmed around it, leaving a little border of white cardstock.  I adhered the sentiment to the flower with a bit of foam tape to give it a little lift.

Inside I used that same Stampendous stamp collection to write the details of the party on another piece of Bazzill cardstock.  I addressed the invitation to all of the girls, 'cuz who doesn't love mail when you're 8 years old?  Hope they like the invitation, and I hope the girls will have fun!

June Card Kit is here!

Our June Card kit is here!!  This kit called Chocolate Roses is just to die for!  It's so pretty with some fantastic embellishments.

We are featuring the We R Memory Keepers Tiffany's collection this month.  This collection has beautiful colors including a rich chocolate brown, oranges, kiwi green, a beautiful teal, and a pink.  The embellishments are so much fun to play with!  The white paper flowers (like in this card...yup, they started out WHITE!) and the Heidi Swapp bling are perfect for coloring with your Copic markers!!  Make them any color you want!  Plus the Kaiser Craft rubons are great...lots of different sentiments to create a bunch of different cards for ANY occasion!

The card at the left is made with the card kit.  I added a piece of teal and white cardstock and the orange ribbon from my stash.

First I cut my teal cardstock to a standard A2 size (5 1/2 x 4 1/4").  Then I cut out the brown flower (with GLITTER!) 1/4 inch smaller so I you could only see about 1/8" around each side.  I sewed the brown piece on to the teal cardstock.

Next, I used some of the orange paper (which was the backside of leftover paper from a few other cards) and sewed that on too.  I rubbed on the sentiment and attached that.  The stripe paper was cut from some leftover and then punched with my Fiskars border punch, and then I attached my orange grossgrain ribbon with some Scor-Tape so it would stay secure.

Now...the flowers.  :)  If you are collecting the Copic Markers, you will have all of the colors in your stash already to match any color in this card kit.  I chose a large flower and used my RV34 to color the flower.  I started in the inside of the flower and "flicked" my marker to the petals to color it in.  I did the same thing for the blue, smaller flower as well.  To finish it off...I used a Bazzill Bling Brad in the middle of the flower.  Easy Peasy to make custom made flowers using your Copics!

Just A Little Note

This is the last card I have made up with the May card kit On the Dotted Line.  I have a bunch of stuff leftover, I just didn't have the energy to make a lot of cards this month, due to my recent surgery, and I apologize.

OK, this one was kinda fun.  It used a bunch of fun goodies inside the kit, as well as a few "add ons" that are new to the store.

The yellow piece was a standard A2 size at 5 1/2 x 4 1/4".  I next layered the black polka dot and the blue circle paper and then used my sewing machine to stitch down the blue piece.

I then used my Tim Holtz mini attacher to attach the little bit of transparency left over from Wednesday's card.  I stamped the sentiment in the little folder that comes in the kit and let it dry (or use Staz-On 'cuz they have a little sheen to them and don't stamp like regular paper).  Then I wrapped my ribbon around and attached the little folder.

Hello!

Oh it's so good to get back into a little routine again!  I hope you're enjoying the cards using the May Card kit.  I have one more tomorrow for you, and then we'll be moving on to the June card kit.

This one again was a pretty easy one to make and everything is from the May Card kit called On the Dotted Line.  The sentiment is a stamp I found in my stash, and I'm sorry but I'm not sure which stamp set it is anymore.  I made this card about 3 weeks ago, and I just can't remember.

The circle and the graph paper were cut a little smaller than the stripe paper.  The graph paper I also used the Fiskars Border punch on.  Next I stamped my sentiment and used 2 brads to hold the library plaque in place.  Last, I used a little Scor-Tape 1/8" to hold down my ribbon so it didn't slide all over the place.

Have a Beautiful Day

This is another card I created using the May Card Kit On the Dotted Line.

This one is a bit different, because it uses the transparency included in the kit for the card base.  I cut it at 5 1/2 x 8 1/2.  I sewed the yellow piece to the back of the transparency and added the sentiment to the blue piece.  Then scored it on the top to make the flap.  I also added some Dimensional Pearls (included in the kit) to the flowers and tied a ribbon around the card front.  Very easy card to make, but in person, it is very stunning!

I'm ready for summer!

Well, I tell you what, I think I have had the worst spring EVER!  :)  I'll tell you about the details of this card, and if you want to find out about my spring, you can read the rest of this post.

This card uses all kinds of goodies found in the May card kit called On the Dotted Line.  The papers from Fancy Pants, ribbon from May Arts, Candy Dots from Pebbles, and the Copic colors are from the May Copic kit too.
I think you can see the details, where I actually SEWED on my card today!  I bought a new sewing machine about a month ago, just specifically to sew on my cards.  I am NOT a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination, but I am excited to be able to sew on my cards because I think it gives a really cool handmade look that you can't get with a store-bought card.  :)

The image that is front & center on the card is The Greeting Farm Ian Skater.  This is a relatively new stamp company for the store, and I've fallen in love!  These are some nice big images and work GREAT for the Copic markers.  They are cling-mounted rubber stamps and have some cool boy images, animals and the most adorable little girls!  I have a few more cards for the May card kit that I'll show you the rest of this week.  I have started on the June card kit this past weekend and oh I'm having soooo much fun!!

Allright, now, about my absence the last 5-6 weeks on the blog...like I said, I am sooo ready for spring to be over!  :)  If you're reading this and a guy, let me just first say...it's a girl problem, so if you get squeamish about girl parts, don't read!  LOL

I have had some fertility issues and was diagnosed with PCOS (Poly-Cystic-Ovarian Syndrome) about 9 years ago.  I've struggled with that for years, and finally decided to have a hysterectomy in April.  We go in for the surgery on Friday the 17th of April and about 20 pokes with nurses and anestesiologists trying to get an IV started, we're ready for surgery, however about 5 minutes before the surgery, the doc comes in and says he wants to do a D&C instead first, because there were a few concerns he had with an ultrasound I had a couple days before surgery.  NICE, right?  Well, I guess he's concerned with cancer and he's being cautious.  Which I totally respect, but darn!!  That means I have to come in that next Tuesday to do the actual surgery if everything comes back clear, and that means another 20 or so pokes in order to get my IV in!!

Thank God the tests from pathology came back negative, so on Tuesday the 21st of April, we went back in for the actual hysterectomy.  Again, about 15-20 pokes in order to get an IV in, and this time there were 2 of them going on each arm until they got it.  Sooo not fun!  I looked like a pin cushion and had all kinds of bruises all up and down my arms and hands for a long time!

So, they did an "open" hysterectomy because I had a fibroid about the size of a grapefruit and one of my ovaries had a cyst about the size of a golf ball.  The surgeon made a scar a little bit larger than my C-section scar, but only about 1/2 inch above it, so pretty much is pretty invisible.  :)  Everything looked great from the surgeon's point of view so I ended up staying in the hospital until that Saturday afternoon.  I had some issues with some pain meds they gave me, and got sick to my stomach one night and wasn't keeping down fluids, etc so they ended up having to put in another IV (yay again right?) for another day or so until I felt better and was finally let out late Saturday afternoon.

Came home and was pretty miserable for about 2 weeks after the surgery.  I was really sore, and exceptionally tired.  Thank goodness my mom was available to work at the store.  She was absolutely awesome!!

I started to come back to the store for a couple hours in the afternoon, which went pretty well, but realy wiped me out.  :)  OK, so fast forward to May 11.  I was really tired that day, so I brought my daughter to school and came back to sleep.  My mom was at the store until 2 when I was going to take over for the day.  My hubby came home, woke me up, and handed me some insurance papers for one of his employees that they didn't understand.  I tried to explain what the paper meant, and just could not find the words I wanted to use.  I kept repeating myself, and I had a horrible headache.  He got frustrated with me, and said he was gonna let me go back to sleep.  That day I went in to the store, and my mom said the same thing.  I wasn't making sense, I was repeating myself, and I was searching for words to help customers find products, etc.

That next day our Christian school had an event that I was the co-chair, so I went to help set up, and was just not feeling right.  Kinda like in a fog and still searching for words.  I talked to a friend of mine, who was a nurse, at the event, and she thought I should go into the clinic the next day.  I did, and blood pressure was fine, but the nurse didn't like what I was describing so she had a doc come look and talk to me.  Ended up I got a CAT scan and then after that, they scheduled me for an MRI on that Friday.

That Friday the MRI truck was in our town and I got a call about noon that the results were in and the doc wanted to see me in the office to talk about the results.  But, about a half hour after that call, the doc called back and said nope, I had to go to Sioux Falls to see a neurologist because I had a stroke!!!  I was completely floored!!

So, that's what we did.  I talked to the neurologist and then went through a bunch of tests to find out the cause of the stroke.  More pokes for an IV, blood tests, an echo cardiogram, an MRA, and found out that I have a hole in my heart that I've had since birth that I never knew I had!

So, they told me that I probably had a little clot after surgery and because I was starting to walk around more, etc that it broke free and slipped through the hole in my heart and lodged in my brain. I was very lucky as it was a pretty mild stroke, but scary nonetheless.

I am now on Coumidin, which is an anti-coagulant.  I can't eat any food high in Vitamin K (like cauliflower, broccoli, cranberries, etc).

If you are still reading this, thanks.  I just really felt like I owed you a bit of an explination why I hadn't been around much the past couple of weeks.

Wishing You Well with May 2009 Card Kit

I'm back at the store with a bit more regularity now, and thought I'd better show off a few of the cards that I've made with the May 2009 Card Kit On the Dotted Line!

The papers included in this kit are Fancy Pants Daily Grind.  I loved these papers because they are so bring but yet muted and have some great big bold prints as well as some very tiny ones, and last because they had some great colors that I haven't included in my Copic Marker club yet.  *wink*

OK, this one was pretty easy.  It's a regular A2 card (which most of mine are) and the stripe is the 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch measurements.  Next, I took the yellow and black polka dot pieces and made them a bit smaller and then rounded the corners on 2 of the corners.  The black polka dot piece I punched with my Fiskars Threading Water punch.  I used a Memento Black Tuxedo ink pad to ink up the sentiment and then used one of the library plaques with some brads that came with the kit.  Last, I used some of the May Arts ribbon that came with the kit.