Sunny San Diego!!!

  Oh how I LOVE the wonderful warm sunshine we have been enjoying during my visit here to San Diego.   Today was the warmest day, so far and I totally loved walking down to the Farmer's Market in that warm sun.  I am also loving wearing my flip flops, a sun dress and there is absolutely no NEED for any type of jacket or coat.   At the same time, I talked to Hubby and my Mom today and both were telling me how cold and awful the weather is at home.  It's snowing there today and I'm very thankful that I am missing it.  I still have close to four days left here and I am going to enjoy the warmth as much as I can.

   I have loved being here and totally LOVE seeing Brian and Meghan and experiencing their new life.  I have been to many of the favorite places and have also been and enjoyed some fabulous new foods and totally awesome cocktails all over the city, including both of the places where they each spend countless hours working in the fabulous new careers.   With it now being the weekend, I have not had too much time with them for the past day or so and am blown away at the hours they work,  They both got in close to 4 am this morning and both were back to work by 9 am, for another full day/night!!  WOW!!   Needless to say, I could never keep up or begin to function with so little sleep, but they do it easily and take advantage of shorter days and their days off to catch up!!

  Other than a brunch yesterday and some walks with their dogs today, I have spend much of the past two days working on cards and taking part in the newest Clean and Simple Card-making 2 Class that started on Monday,  It's been absolutely awesome and while I'm still very behind, I am loving it and have watched all the videos,  I will very much be looking forward to working more on that when I get home.

   While flying here, I tried to keep very busy and had pre-printed out a bunch of digi images to color on the plane,  I think I finished up about 8 images and have been putting together some new cards with those images for the past two days,  Some of my inspiration came from the CAS2 Class and some came from some recent challenges, that I wanted to try,  Below are all the of the cards I have completed as ot now and the inspiration or challenge that inspired me to create it.

   This first card is my take on this week's Cas(E) This Sketch Challenge, which you'll find HERE!!   I have also copied over the current sketch to share and hopefully inspire YOU to play along too.

    This also one of my newest digi images and it was also bought from Lori's store to use for Heart and Love Cards.  This sweet little Puddle Jumper is Ella and I have her all colored in pretty shades of Pink,  Isn't she just a sweetie, I sure think so.

     My next card is another card that was inspired by a new challenge, the brand new CAS Challenge hosted every Sunday over at The Outlawz Challenges,  The theme for today's new challenge is about short things, being the February is the shortest month of the year.  So instead of making a standard size A2 card, they girls want to see your creations in a 'shorter' size and want everyone to focus on making a card that is 4 1/4" tall, the same size as the standard width - making a fun little square card, which I happen to love.  I started with a light pink card base, which I cut down to size and then picked out some matching papers to go along with a super cute little watering can floral image from Bugaboo Stamps, that I had colored during my flight.

  Once I had those two done I realized that most of what I had colored on the plane, were images that made me think of Spring and warm weather, the kind of weather that I HOPE will be coming early for New England this year/

   This was the first image I colored and It's one of my favorites from The Wax Fruit Company---a wonderful tulip image that I have created with many times and always LOVE!!

 
   My next card also features another gorgeous floral image from WFC and is also another one that I LOVE to color and have used many times for an array of cards.   And like many of my cards today, it also has lots of pretty pink!!

  This card also used up a lot of scraps I had laying around on my desk, from the earlier cards.  It's a very simple white background a few horizontal pieces of scrap paper any my color floral on top.  Very simple and clean and one of my favorites from the weekend,

   My final card was created with another Bugaboo Digi that I had colored on the plane.   However, instead of a clean crisp white background, this time I went with a black card,  which is from the newest Hero Arts Spring 2013 catalog, that I totally LOVE!!

   ...and speaking of new products that I LOVE, I have really enjoyed many of the awesome new products from Hero's Spring collection and am happy to recommend a wonderful craft store on Etsy, that carries them all and has fabulous prices and excellent service.   It's called A2Z Scrapbooking and I have been shopping with them, since I was first introduced to the store by Elizabeth, who is a fellow crafter I originally met in an online craft group.   It's been such a pleasure to now to shop with her and I' been so happy with everything I've purchased, not to mention the awesome service!!   A++++ in every way and now my go to store for my Hero Products!!    Elizabeth makes is so easy and she even shipped my newest order to me here, (at my Son's House in San Diego), so that everything arrived the day after I did and was right after I did, Woohoo!!   Plus, if you shop now you can use the current Promo Code to save 10% on your entire order, even on the brand new goodies!!

      These are some the my NEW favorites and some of the items I bought from the store and am using here now in San Diego -

• HeroArts Black Notecards (and Layering Papers)
• HeroArts - Brand New Shadow Ink Cubes - perfect for travel or trial use
• HeroArts Heart Brads -- Plus all the wonderful new stamps too!!

     My newest WISH LIST tool item is a fabulous brand new Trimmer that I read about and saw over at Jennifer McGuire's Blog.   After using another Fiskars Trimmer, previously used and recommended by Jennifer, I know that this baby is going to be a wonderful upgrade and I LOVE that the blade can cut through multiple sheets of paper or even chipboard.   No doubt, that I hope to have one in my craft room soon.  It's already been added to my Wish List at Amazon, and I loved their price the the fact that it's a PRIME product too!  Yippee!!!

   And that concludes my latest update and a little Hello from Sunny San Diego, where I will be for a few more days, enjoying the the warm sun, before my flight back to a the snow and cold of New England!   Brrrrrrr!!