Cheeky is sometimes good...

I love these pictures of my little guy! Future plumber? Who knows, of course it won't be so cute down the road... I cut the c out with a die machine using a transparency and painted it with some acrylic paint and used MM rub ons and used up the last of my black Scrapper's Floss by Karen Foster. Anyhow if this lo "cracks" a smile then I've done my job. BR-T

how could I have forgotten...

About this lo, I created it 3 years ago for an album contest there a lot of picts so you can see whats going on

Texture please..

kids, lets make your valentines...

My children and I decided to make magnetic valentines by decorating the backs of dominoes. This is time consuming but not difficult! If you want to try this at home go out and find some dominoes, I suggest the biggest box you can find. These not only are these addictive but if you forget your baking in the color these puff of like psychedelic marshmallow's for sure. I am a space cadet so I figured this out the hard way many times hence the biggest box out there suggestion. Now that you have your dominoes you want to sand the white side to get rid of the shine. I suggest rinsing them off and wiping them dry because you don't want the powdery residue all over your stamps pads. My children had a great time with the next part from lightest to darkest pick out a few colors and rub your sanded dominoes across the surface of your stamp pad you can go for total coverage or not whatever you want. My kids wanted multicolor so we edged the dominoes in different colors or just smeared on some color on other. Again go from light to dark! I suppose one could wait days for these to dry but when it comes to time I'm on a budget. Place your dominoes ink side up on a parchment lined cookie sheet and put in 250 degree oven and stay in your kitchen and check every so often for the shine of the ink to diminish. Allow to cool and then stamp image,use some caution as the dominoes tend to be slick! Reset the ink again in oven at same temp, allow to cool and spray with an acrylic fixative and apply magnet. See easy peasy!

gotta love clearance...

Hi all remember the other day when I went to Archivers? I picked up this great stamp set by Autumn Leaves called doodle tabbed. It was really hot a couple years ago but my patience (yeah right I forgot all about it!) paid off and I found it in the clearance section 75% off under $4 for the set! Here's a fun lo of my son's Birthday with the tabs and also the little stick fellow came from my last Valentine posting.I just cut the sticky couple apart, but don't worry, when I stamp them together you would never know they were separated. Who ever thought of the idea is brilliant, it's much less time consuming than trying to mask off parts of a stamp or hope you wiped the ink off thoroughly! PS I'm a 2 page lo type of girl so you'll always seem them side-by-side and then individually.

That would have been SO COOL...

I really wanted to design for Spellbinders this year but I didn't get selected to go on to the second round... I begged and pleaded with God but perhaps I wanted it for the wrong reasons. Seriously whats wrong with wanting to go to Arizona for a 5 days and get a bunch of free stuff and have people think your art was cool for a year!

I bought a cutsie stamp...

I'm not sure what the reason however, for me, buying a cutsie stamp just doesn't happen. I'm very glad I broke down and bought this Heidi Grace collection called Valentine's Day. I haven't been to Archiver's for ages and it was like a kid in the candy store! My DH said I could have a mini spree if I wanted, why didn't I take advantage of his generosity! Oh well next time...

Simple beauty...

Life has been so busy, between going to school, catering to my children and trying to create I don't know what is what anymore...

last minute change...

So, at the last minute I decided to whip up another card to submit rather the the Life Delights card from the previous post... So last night I sent everything off and to my horror I realized I sent the wrong image! I resent my submission along with a humble apology and the receiver graciously said no problem, whew!

And here they are...

After many long sleepless nights I have my submissions to send to Spellbinders to for the design team I am happy with the results but confound it I have no idea how to change the dpi setting!

Thank You Juli...

Yesterday was an amazingly intense day and I am so glad it's over all except the part of receiving an adorably crafted cupcake from Juli aka The Stamp Teacher. Check out her post you'll see my awesome prize and then drool over her newly designed chocolate covered strawberry!

My new favorite technique...

I guess it's actually two techniques & I'll start with the easier to explain: the usage of lots for black, black stamping and black matting it really makes colors pop big time! The other is a technique I recently saw on SCS I believe it was smash inking or something to that effect. You start with 2 sheets of shiny cs the same size, (I used cheap photo paper not suitable for pictures but perfect for stamping and inking) picking 3 or more colors of reinkers drop a few drops of each color on one sheet of cs then spray each side with a water bottle a few times and press uninked side onto inked side (working quickly) and press down all over. I suggest you work on some scraps and possibly wear gloves if staining bothers you, excess ink and water will seep out! Peel apart the two sheets take clean sheets of copy paper place on top of each piece of cs to absorb extra water and ink. Allow the cs to dry completely before stamping any images or they will bleed! The rest is up to you... BR-T

There are never enough thank you's in the world...

I'm going to try to say these two words at least once a day!

For those who share....

Thank you to those who share your techniques and ideas! Tiff, I remember many moons ago you posted a brilliant card with Alcohol Inks on vellum her is my attempt in the form of a Valentine card.

A Hip Tip...

I came by a happy accident today while playing around with the Cuttlebug. I unknowingly ran through a die with a scrap of paper in the mix and to my dismay the shape of the scrap was impressed into my intended frame. My dismay quickly turned to excitement, I cut out several heart shapes stacked them up ran this black frame through with the nestled hearts under it and a rubber mat over them and this heart impression remained. In this instance it's pretty subtle but I plan on doing some more experimentation in the future...