Spring Fever.....!!!

....Whenever I start thinking about Spring, the first thought that always comes to mind is flowers.   I love that wonderful time of year when every thing starts to grow and bloom again.   The winter months are always so dull and without and pretty colors.   But, when Spring arrives, and the leaves start to bud back on the trees, we start to see all the lovely colors and flowers blooming all over!  

    Lately, I have been thinking Spring often and with the warm winter we have had, I've already had quite a few Spring fever days and today is another of those days.  The sun is shining, the skies are blue and it's actually quite mild.  The sad part is that our weather is going to totally changed and they say, we could ahve SNOW...(evil word) tomorrow.  Can you believe that?   We have made it through almost the entire winter and were headed toward a record breaking year of less than a foot of snow, and now we may get some and it could be the biggest storm of the year?   YUK!   I hope they are wrong and would much rather see more sun and even warmer temps, but this is New England and as they say, our weather can change with the link of an eye and it looks like that may be exactly what happens!   

    Instead of thinking of Winter, lately I'm all about Spring, flowers and all kinds of bright happy colors and that's pretty much showing in most of my recent cards.   The first two cards I have to share today, were actually card I worked on yesterday, but did not have time to post.  The first one is another of my new attempts at creating a Hybrid cards, which is really fun and easy.   I had bought this fabulous set of digi flowers from Two Peas and loved the bright colors.  I knew as soon as I bought them that they would be perfect for Spring and I also love the bright fun colors.  These images are from Hero Arts and can be found here!!

    This is my newest hybrid card and it was quite easy to create.  I simply printed the flower image twice, onto white cardstock), and then cut the center of the second flower to pop on top.  I used a variety of scraps to frame the image and picked out a bright blue shimmery cardstock to use for my base.  It only took me about 10 minutes to put this together once I had the idea!   How easy and FUN is that!   

   My next card was inspired by the newest Greeting Card Challenge over at The Outlawz and our theme for this week was to use Lace and Pearls on our card.   I was not really sure what to do for this card at first, and then I remembered I had some gorgeous peach colored, beaded lace in my Stash.  I had bought it along with some other awesome goodies, from this fabulous store, called Created by Martha, which you'll find over at Zibbet.    I had marginally met, Martha, the store owner in an online craft group and she had invited us to visit her store, I loved it from the first day and have shopped there several times.   I highly recommend her store and think you'll be very pleased with her service. 

   Once I had the lace out, I then printed out a digi image, (from Rainbow Echo Designs) onto cream colored cardstock.  I then used a circle shape nestie to cut out the sentiment and then framed it on a green scalloped die cut, also cut with a Nestie die.  I then picked out some patterned papers, (these are scraps) and put together this fun card.

    Note:    My bow was created with a wonderful new bow-maker that I had found from watching this Video on You-Tube.  I contacted (Sarah) and ordered one and absolutely LOVE it.  This is the easiest and best bow-maker I have ever used and it's also super easy and works perfectly every time.   If you are like me and have struggled with tying your own bows, I highly recommend you contact Sarah and order one for yourself.   The new version of her bow-maker, which I bought, also now includes a second area of smaller holes and two additional mini wooden pegs, so that you can tie even smaller bows!   Awesome and for $7, (plus shipping), this can't be beat!

      I have one more card to share and this one was created today for the new Color Combo Challenge over at The Outlawz.   The challenge today was inspired by this image (sharing from the site) and the theme is Black, White and one more color (your favorite).

 

     I'm sure you can ALL guess right away what color I chose, and if you said Purple...you know me well.   I started with this wonderful digi image from The Wax Fruit Company, printed it directly to my favorite Cryogen White Cardstock and then colored with my Copics.  I used a variety of 5 different BV (Blue Violet) shades.  Next, I cut it out and popped it up some deep purple glossy cardstock.  I then added that onto a white layer and created a black card base.   I finished it off with a little bling and this is the card I now have.  Hope you like it!!

 
   In addition to the color challenge, I am also submitting this card to the current Copic Coloring Challenge over at the Color Me Creative Classroom.   If you love to color with Copics, we would love to have you join us.  This group is totally FREE and open to all!!     

    I'm off now and it will probably best for the rest of the days.   I had the CRAZY idea this morning to try and do some organizing in the huge closet that is in my craft room.   We live in a Cape style home and this closet is one of those very long and deep closets that goes under the eaves of the house.  It's great for store, but is definitely not walk in and once you 'get in' you pretty much have to take everything out to get anything near the back.   I was in there looking for something (can't even remember now), and ended up tearing it half apart.  The good news is that I found all kind of craft goodies that I had packed away, and it was like a little shopping spree.  I also tossed a bunch of boxes that I have saved from things (my Grand Calibur, and old  Cuttlebug box, my photo tent box, plus a ton more from other things I've bought in the past couple of years).    I tend to keep boxes for awhile, just in case something breaks, but I've had all these things a long time, so it's time to recycle.  Needless to say, my closet is now much more organized and I even have lots of extra space, but I also have a big pile of 'junk' to purge and a ton of boxes that need to be taken to our recycle center.

    Update:  I ended up making one more card for a CAS Challenge over at Crafting by Designs.  Our theme was to create a CAS style card using a Stamp and Die Cuts.  I used one of my Hero Arts/Sizzix Die/Stamp Sets - Playful Flowers and Butterflies to create this cute little flower.  I stamped it the flower twice and colored both with my Copics.  I then layered one on top of the other with pop dots and then added on top of the circular frames I had cut with Nesties in my Cuttlebug.  I also embossed the white layer for some more texture and dimension.  To finish the card, I created a cute little bow, with my wonderful new new bow-maker.  This was another fun, yet easy card to create!!  

    I guess I really do have Spring on my mind, to be into my early stages of Spring cleaning.   If I continue to do a little at a time, I might have it all done before the nice Spring weather arrives.  That way once Spring is here, I can spend lots of time outdoors enjoying the sunshine and blooming flowers!