Embossed Border

Hi Gal Pals!

I was catching up on my Gina K Designs videos and saw this one and wanted to share.  As part of my stash busting this year I've been looking for ways to use all my embossing folders.  I thought this technique was really cool.  And I absolutely love the simplicity of this card.

Hope you had a good weekend and today is a good start to a good week.  

Lots to Like

Good morning Gal Pals.  Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Found some card pictures this weekend and wanted to get them posted on the blog for safekeeping.

This is one from Tuesday card group.  It has so many things on it that I like: the color combination, the cool fonts on the sentiment, the hole-punched border strip, the embossing technique, the circle theme. . . I could go on and on.  This one's an inspiration for sure!

Halfway to a Long Life

Good morning Gal Pals!

Boy! Am I tired today.  It was a busy, busy weekend.  Saturday I took my Mom shopping - a combination of errands for her and errands for the 50% party for Allan.  Mom did really great.  She refused to let me take the wheelchair saying that she needed to build endurance.  How could I argue with that.  I couldn't believe how much she walked.  So very proud of her.

And then Sunday was the big party.  A family celebration of Allan reaching the halfway point in his treatment.  Hard to believe we only have 4 more weeks left.  It was a good party - full of fun, laughter, music, good food and well wishes.  We played games - accompanied by very loud groans from the guys - had some trivia questions about proton therapy and I even wrote him a silly song.  I think he was very done with me by the end of the day.  And I have to say I'm pretty done with my ownself too :-)

So back to work this morning with much gratitude in my heart and hopes and dreams for a long and wonderful life with Cricut Man.

This card is one of the family cards from awhile back.  Used one of the $1 stamps Staci has in the bin along with a stamp from an SU set I can't think of the name now.  I also used one of the Tim Holtz embossing folders - the one that looks like part of a brick wall.  It's kind of hard to tell in this picture but it really looked good with the theme of the card.

Hope you had a good weekend too and that your work week gets off to a good start.

Family

What's Brewin' Gal Pals?  Can't wait to catch up with you tonight.

This is the card I made for the family this week.  I was inspired by this post on Pinterest.  I bought the "Take A Sip" wheel stamp from Stampin' Up years ago and surprise had never used it.  So when I saw the card on Pinterest I knew the theme would be just perfect.  But I can't for the life of me get a good impression from those wheel stamps so I unmounted it and put it on a long acrylic block and just stamped the image panels that way.  

I couldn't figure out how to get the sketch in the Pinterest card to work so I used one from this post.  I just loved the idea of using the scraps from my coordinating paper packs for this.  Plus embossing the entire panel gives it a cool look.  I thought the swirls kind of matched the theme of the steam from the coffee and tea.

I loved how it turned out so much that I made a few notepads to take with me to Easter dinner for my neighbor family.

Aren't they cute?!  Wish I would have kept one for myself.

Birthday Traditions

I don't know about you but I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys tonight, singing "Happy Birthday" to Mona and indulging in an Iron Horse cheeseburger!  Aren't birthdays a wonderful thing? - - - even when they're not yours!

Here's a card that I made for my Dad's birthday last month.  I tried a new technique I saw on Pinterest.  I used the Lovely As A Tree stamp set and a bunch of miscellaneous birthday sentiment stamps that I found in my stash.  I really liked how it turned out.  I may have to give it a try with some softer girly colors.

See ya' tonight.

Unlikely Inspiration

Today's card is truly an inspiration card that just proves inspiration can come from just about anywhere. 

I was shopping at CJ Banks on my birthday and just LOVED!, loved, loved the colors and design on their shopping bags and tissue stickers.

I searched through my cardstock and stamps and found some close matches.  I figured out a good size for the circles and strips of paper and thought bright white embossing powder for the stamp would be great.  But after making the 1st card I ran into a big snag. . . .no matter what I did I kept getting extra embossing powder on the paper that would NOT rub off.  I tried with and without the embossing buddy, tried it with Versamark and with pigment ink but nothing would reliably fix the problem.  I'd get 2 good ones and then 3 or 4 bad ones.  I ruined all the blue cardstock I had.  Man! was I mad!!

So I took my project to Memory Lane Tuesday night and talked to Val and Staci.  They had a few suggestions but were as stumped as I was.  The only thing that we could think of is that my embossing powder was either old or somehow corrupted. 
So I bought 2 different kinds of white embossing powder (in addition to finding more blue paper that was a good match).  I rushed home and tried again. . . .and sure enough I was getting a clean image every time. 

Then I just had to try the old one again to make sure it wasn't something weird like humidity in the craft room the 1st day I was trying or dirty fingers or as Val thought. . .some sort of weird finish on the cardstock I was originally using.  And the old embossing powder produced the same bad results - powder all over the place.

And there you have it. . . .it looks like embossing powder CAN get old.  [And just I was wrote this I popped out on to Google and sure enough. . .there's tons of forum posts about similar problems and confirmations that the melting ingredient in the embossing powder can fade and lose it's sticky ability.]
I'm going to go ahead and send the ones I made on the 1st attempt to the family for their weekly card this week.  They all love me and will understand if the cards are less than perfect.  But I will make another 1/2 dozen of the same design to keep in my Thank You card stash.  Can never had enough gratitude in your life ;-). 

Take care and have a great weekend!  See you back here on Monday.

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Mine went way too fast.  Looking forward to the Halloween festivities today.  This is the picture of the Halloween card I sent the family last week.  I used the cute a la carte stamp out of the Holiday Mini.  Thought it was so cute.

Will have some Trick-or-Treaters come through the office.  I made some Halloween bookmarks for the kids.  I hope they like them.  Will post a pic of those tomorrow. 

Cricut Man also got very creative this weekend and seems to be prepared with his costume and bag of tricks
for whatever scheme they've got going on in the Registrar's Office.  I think this might be a first for him.  Peer pressure must work sometimes! :-)

Have a Spooktacular Day!!

Scraps Day #8

I think this week's scrap card is really cute.  I love the texture of the embossing on the left side plus the stitching which anchors the "flags" to the card.  Hope you enjoy both the card and Wednesday/Hump Day.