Graduation and the Gators

Isn't she lovely.!! My baby is all grown up. It wasn't emotional like we thought it was going to be. It was just calm and happy. A real enjoyable evening. No tears. I guess we were just ready to move on to the next chapter of our lives. Oh wait that's not Robin. What did he think he was doing. I guess graduating from Biscuit High. Here is the real Robin and her boyfriend.



Tonight we had an unexpected visitor. He walked right across our back yard and my husband, the cazy man, ran out there as fast as he could with the camera and chased him down. He's pretty big.

So much rain

There has been so much rain the last 2 weeks. About 12 inches so far. I thought I'd show you what our girl goat thinks of all of it.

Yard has soaked it all in and the ponds that have been bone dry for almost 2 years are once again full. So that's a good thing.
Monday has come and gone and I am once again late to post my Monday Mojo Sketch. Have no real excuse to be late. I am still on a unexpected vacation so have plenty of time. I'm done tearing the house apart. Been making cards and trying out techniques just hadn't got motivated to do the sketch. But here it is.



Paper is from SU and the image in the circle is an Inkadinkado inchie that I surrounded with a tiny butterfly. The background behind the circle is an I Brake for Stamps background stamp. The technique is one I will be demoing this Saturday at Scrap & Stamp Art Studio. It is a pigment resist.

In getting ready for my demo I have been trying this technique on different colors of card stock. When I picked up this yellow paper and stamped it I really liked it without doing anything to it. Don't know why I don't do this more often. You should try it. Take white pigment ink and stamp on a piece of card stock either a plain piece or one that has been brayered with a rainbow pad. It's makes a nice background.

Mojo Sketch and a quick background tutorial

I should have had this ready yesterday as I am having an unexpected vacation, instead I started ripping the house apart. Everything has moved and all are being tortured as they try to find things. love it!. So while I was doing this I thought I'd show you a quick background. Here's my card and the sketch.


Take your card stock and rub chalk into it with a cotton ball adding as many colors as you like. Fill in your piece.

Now take a straight edge and run the eraser down whatever you are using forming white lines. Make these lines go in all directions and add as many as you want.

You'll end up with something that looks like this. Spray it with a sealer. This Krylon Fixatif is excellent because you can stamp on it.

Now you can stamp on your background. Here I used SU stamp set "Playful Petals". I stamped the larger flower several times colored and cut them out in different sections and layered them. Colored part of the background also using Metallic pencils.

A much better start to the week

The black cloud has moved on and I am right on time this week with the Mojo Monday Sketch. I used a Spellbinders die for the shovel and sand bucket and a Cuttlebug Die for the other embellishments. The Stamped tag was given to me. I liked this sketch as soon as I saw it. Lots of possibilities with this one.


Here are a few cards I made Sunday.The Stained glass fish is from I Brake for Stamps. The Sand Castle and shells are a Spellbinders die. They are chalked. I framed the fish with a glossy black oval.

This last card is a Spellbinders Edgebilities. I stamped the Happy Birthday on acetate and attached it to a pastel paper with V2 Vellum spray adhesive and then attached that to the inside of the opening. Added the extra roses and some Dazzling Diamond Dust.

Copic versus Adirondack refillable pens

Back in Feb. I pre ordered the new Adirondack refillable alcohol pens. They came about 2 weeks ago but I hadn't looked at them till now. Here's a picture with one up against a copic.


Can you imagine how much space these are going to take up!!! They are bigger around than those big chunky crayons for kids. They stressed do not overfill. So I stressed. How do you know how much is too much. Put some in then put more in and then more again. Tip was full of ink so went to coloring and it was dry after a few strokes. I'm sure it's me and I will continue to play with them and figure this out. I bought 6 but will not buy anymore. Tooooo big around and toooo big to store as far as I am concerned.
I also had ordered some of the new Alcohol ink colors. Those I love and I went right to stomping with them first thing this morning.



So with that done I went to coloring in some images I just bought from I Brake for Stamps with both of the alcohol markers. What I found out is you can't use alcohol markers with embossing. It smears it.

See it. This was using detail black. So I went to another embossing powder I bought awhile back at Michaels. It has glitter in it. Smeared also but not as bad. The orange on the fishes head is the new Sunset Orange alcohol ink. See how drab and dry it looks. Not sold on those markers at all.

So with all my coloring done I went to work. The burn is on the inside of my arm so all of this was very trying. Needed lots of padding to rest my arm on the desk. This rose image I got in a swap and decided to try what I saw on a blog to color it with Copics. You first put the darkest color where the darker areas would be. Then go to the next color and blend bringing the color out just a little farther and then repeat with a third color. Don't color to the edge. Take your blender pen and drag some of the color out to the edge. This was not working until I turned the pen over and used the chisel edge. Perfect!!



Here's a color combination that is not ME but it turned out well I think. This is the new Peach Bellini alcohol ink and Slate. Layered it on black, blush and grey SU card stock. The white square is from a Cuttlebug die I bought a long time ago but never use. Must remember to bring it out more and use it. Stamp is from I Brake for Stamps. I also used Versa Mark to stamp the image around the edges.


Last card is similar to the one I made the other day. Using the other half of my technique scrap and another I Brake for Stamp image. Layered that on top of 2 other technique scraps made with the same colors. Well I've enjoyed my afternoon. Temperature feels like 190 instead of 90. Hot flashes!!! Who dreamed these things up?? I'm going to continue to play here until family gets home. Then we will be watching. Marley and Me. Everyone have a wonderful Mothers Day.

Bad week but I finally found my Mojo

Bad bad bad week. Lots of wallowing in self pity and crying for days. Then I was told the devil was having a good time playing with me. That woke me up.I said you are right but he's not going to get me. So no more whining. Last night I sat down and did not go to bed until I got my Monday Mojo sketch done. I ended up with 2 cards. The first one uses my new SU paper that just came in the mail along with a new Inkadinkado owl. Pretty spring colors. It got the thumbs up from daughter as she walked by.




The other one uses more of that SU paper and a new stamp from I Brake for Stamps. It's from the Stampin Back line. I used a piece of a background I had made. My favorite kind of background. The Smooshing kind. This stamp was perfect. I had been wanting a few solid type stamps for just this purpose. I Brake for Stamps was my enabler for this. They had several flower ones and now I have them.


Well thank goodness it's Friday. I am going to play all day tomorrow to make up for my lack of creativity this week. And next week has to be better!!

a great week end

I had another play day Saturday. Husband and daughter were both at work so I took advantage of the time and did all my swaps for May for all of my groups. Going into the mail this morning. Yeah!! So then I started to clear off my desk and put things away. Came across a few images I colored and some Grunge board bugs I put out so I would use sooooooooo I used them. This first card is made from a Zindorf tutorial if any of you follow her blog you probably saw it. This is done completely by swiping ink pads across the paper to make the background. Stamped the tree and added white gel pen here and there. Little Grunge butterfly I inked up with a dauber.



Then I did the soda can experiment with my punches. I have a hard time punching SU paper with my Martha Stewart border punch. Couldn't punch the can with it either but I had a bunch of wallpaper scraps on my desk from envelope making and liked how this particular one looked punched. Added a water colored sunflower from I Brake for Stamps and another inked Grunge butterfly.



I colored images as I came across them mixed in with all my papers. Some with Copics and some with my pencils and Gamsol. I really think I prefer the pencil and Gamsol look to Copics. I even did some with both and I colored over the pencils with the Copics. I'll have to show you that combination when I get a card made. I then found a Sunflower cut out so inked that up, put it together and added a Grunge dragonfly. I colored him with glitter pens so he sparkles. And now it's back to work.