Happy Birthday Jan!!

Sending out birthday wishes to my friend and fellow stamper, Jan Marie. Although we've known each other only two short years, we've become good friends and have had some great times stamping.

Jan, enjoy your day - you deserve it!! (I'm doing this post today, but I hope you don't see this until you actually get your card!!)

Happy Birthday Honey!!

I'd like to wish my wonderful husband, Orvil a Happy Birthday!! Honey - I love you so much - you are such a terrific husband and so good to me. Here's hoping we celebrate many, many more birthdays together.

Love always...

Nancy

happy belated mardi gras

Now that the Mardi Gras season is over (several weeks of partying here along the Gulf Coast), we can get back to some serious stamping!!

This card was made simply by masking the outer edges of the card with masking tape. Stamp the images (stamping up) and stipple some color and there you go. A set of these can be made quickly for gift giving.

Palm Trees

While going through my stamps, I noticed that there seemed to be an abundance of Palm tree stamps. How did this happen?? I decided to take a quick inventory and found I have almost twenty (20!!) - seventeen of palm trees alone, and several scenic stamps that have palms as the predominant image. And I just ordered another very cute palm from Amuse......While doing this inventory I also saw that I have a bunch of shoe stamps and clock/watch stamps. How many do I really need....there are large and small, left and right facing, detailed images and outlined. Yes, I live in Florida and use palms often - especially at Christmas...

Do you have a specific object that you tend to collect? Let me know..

Happy Valentine's Day!!

This card may look like a Valentine's Day card, but it actually is my husbands birthday card - to celebrate his day later this month. I used Basic Grey christmas paper, and punched the hearts out using Sizzix die cuts. The very small heart punch is a $1 Michael's punch.

Paris in the spring?

My wonderful friend, Jan Caruso, purchased this Paris themed stamp set from Cavallini & Co. Armed with my Basic Grey paper, I put together this quick card. The paper is a terrific background for this set and I was determined to use it instead of just keeping the paper around for that "special" card.

watercolors

Not too long ago I took a few classes from Zana Clark of Stamp Zia at a local stamp convention. She showed us how to use her colorwash sprays and metallic flow inks. The sprays are pure pigments that she mixes herself and the colors are incredible. As you can see from my card, the sprays provide a brilliant burst of color, however if you do not like the bold colors, you can subdue them by using the obsidian spray, or by watering down the color. It was amazing to see the different results in the class. Some of us ended up with very bright colors, others more subdued, and all were terrific. Check out the Stamp Zia website (link on the left) and see Zana's wonderful creations.

another day in paradise

We are finally getting the warm winter weather down here. Yesterday made it to 70 and it looks like it may be close to that today. My apologies to my friends and family in Chicago and Connecticut.......

I recently purchased some stamps from Fred Mullet and this card uses his starfish stamp. I brayered kaleidacolor rainbow ink (caribbean sea) onto vellum then embossed the starfish in white. If you've never visited Fred Mullet's web site, take a look - I've provided a link to his site under my favorites. He has some very good tutorials to check out. The thank you stamp is from Impress and is stamped with the same ink.

ahhh....my first post!

Why blog? Besides the fact that everyone seems to have a blog, I wanted a place to show my creations to my friends and family, talk about new (and old) paper craft techniques and to share new ideas with fellow artists. I'll try to stay away from the mundane activites of day to day living....but you may find an occasional photo of one of my three dogs (Dakota, Roxy or Brandy).

Here is a card I started a few months ago. I finished the image and placed it on the card front, but I needed a good greeting, so I set it aside. Then came the SU happy harmony set and viola! The card is on violet paper with grey, apricot and black as the mounting squares. The sand dollar was colored with pearl ex, although the photo does not show it very well.