Yippee!! The last Friday of Winter!!

   We are now halfway though March and Spring officially starts on Sunday!  WooHOO!  This is the last Friday of Winter and that's one season I am very happy to put behind me.  I am looking forward to warm sunny days and can't wait to see the flowers blooming in the garden and the leaves budding on the trees.   Ahhh...!!

    I am also here to share a very sweet and adorable new release from StampFairy.  This is Betsy a cute little cow and you can find her in the store here!!  I also have a preview image to share and think you'll find here quite fun:

   For some wonderful inspiration, please be sure to hop on over to the StampFairy Blog and take a look at the fabulous projects the Design Team has created!   

   I have been totally behind this week and have not been feeling very well, but I do have some new cards to share that I created throughout the week.   All these cards were created for challenges at 'The Outlawz' and the first two feature 'Clementine' Bunny, who is one of my new favorites from StampFairy.  

  

   

   I also want to remind you all that you still have time to play along with our current challenge at StampFairy which you can find HERE, and also a fun little 'Ribbons and Bows' challenge at  Baby Bud Designs!!

  

   Today, I am finished up cards for next week's new Design Team Challenges and then will be heading over to spend more time celebrating the big 'Birthday Party' at Color Me Creative Classroom!

     Wishing you all a wonderful Friday and a really nice weekend.  I hope we all have some awesome weather and enjoy our very first weekend of SPRING!

Happy Birthday Color Me Creative!!

  Today marks the One Year Birthday of Suzanne's Dean's Color Me Creative Classroom and I am very excited to have also been a member of the classroom back to day one.  Congratulations Suzanne and thank you for a FUN year! 

Come Home to Join the Party!!

  I also recommend Suzanne's Copic Classes and have totally enjoyed every minute of each class.  I'm currently still a student in Level III and Level IV and also taking the Distress Ink coloring class, which is being taught by Angie Hunt.  I also completed one of Marti's (Pezadoodle) fabulous Cricut Classes and look forward to being a student at CMC for a long time to come.  It's a wonderful place and I look forward to the new classes which are coming very soon!

  I am also very happy and excited to be taking part in the PARTY and CELEBRATION that Suzanne is hosting this week in the Classroom.

  Today is Kick-off day and we have a fun sketch challenge that started today in the PARTY Group.  Our project was to create a fun card to Celebrate the Big Birthday Event!  I am here now to share my card.  The card was based on a sketch that was provided to each member who is joining the challenge and can be found over in the PARTY Group for all CMC Members. 

    My card was also created with this week's Copic Creations Challenge in mind and is also being submitted to Challenge # 46 - over at the Copic Creations Blog.    The theme for their challenge is 'We've Go the BLUES', which inspired me to use a variety of ALL blue Copic Colors for my card. 

     Suzanne is also a member of the Design Team for Copic Creations, so I thought it would be even more fun to create my card for both challenges.    I HOPE everyone joins in on the fun and again everyone is Welcome.

     I was also very honored and happy to donate to a wonderful fundraiser hat Suzanne is now hosting at World Vision, which you can find HERE!!    The funds that Suzanne raises will be earmarked for Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami Relief through a FirstGiving site.  Suzanne uses FirstGiving since they are a secure way to donate monies and you can see EXACTLY where your money has gone and what we've raised!

  
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    I have one more card to share and it's one I actually completed yesterday for the weekly CAS Challenge over at 'The Outlawz'.  This week the DT girlz came up with a wonderful recipe challenge, which you can find HERE!   

The CAS Recipe:

1.  Embossing-heat or dry

2.  Ribbon

3.  2 stamps

   

    And this is the card I created based on the recipe.   My stamps are both digital - the first is the actual Friendship Sentiment and the second is the heart, which I added next to the sentiment.  My embossing was done with my Cuttlebug and my Ribbon (hard to see) is pink/white checks and it's located under the sentiment, between the two layers of paper.  It was a fun card for me to make and in person, is even prettier.

     And lastly, I am currently working on three more fun projects.  The next one that will be completed is for today's new Color Challenge also being hosted at 'The Outlawz'.  Our challenge this week and all about the 'Color Green'.  You can find all the details here and I have shared a copy of the Inspiration image below.  The challenge is to create a project using 3 shades of 'Green' and the 'twist' is to also add Glitter!   Take a look at this inspiraiton....Yummy!!!

     I'm also finishing up two more really cute new Design Team projects.  One will be for StampFairy and the second will be for next week's month challenge at  Baby Bud Designs.   Both groups have current challenges ongoing now and I welcome you all to join for some FUN!!   

Is it Monday already....???

......Why is it that the weekends always seem to fly by, yet the weekdays seem to drag on and on?   I had such a fun weekend and most of it was spent crafting and the best time was at the classes I took on Saturday at my LSS.   I totally enjoyed learning all kind of new and fun techniques and it was so much fun to meet Kerry.   Sunday flew by faster than ever, especially after losing an hour for Daylight Saving's Time.  Time sure flies when you are having FUN!!


     And speaking of fun, this morning I'm here to share a new challenge being hosted by StampFairy and delighted to invite you to join us.  StampFairy offers a new challenge every Monday.  The challenges are open to all, you simply need to include a StampFairy image to be eligible to WIN!!!

      Our fun new challenge this week can be found over at our Challenge Blog and this week we challenge to 'Show Us Your Green'.   You may create any type of challenge that you want, use any of the StampFairy Images, just be sure to include GREEN!!  You can find all the details along with some wonderful inspiration created by the Design Team over on the Challenge Blog. 

   For me, the first thing I always think of when I hear about Green in the month of March is -  St. Patrick's Day and that was the theme I used as inspiration for my card.   I picked out one of the new images from the 'Herb - St. Patrick's Day Collection' and was ready to begin.    I colored my Herb  image with my Copics and then cut a variety of nestabilities shapes in my Grand Calibur.  I picked out two middle layers and then embossed them in two different textures to give the card some extra dimension.   All of my papers for this card were from my scrap bin and even my sentiment was recycled from an old card, making my card also a "Green" card in that sense.  It was really fun to create and this will be my Mom's St. Patrick's Day card.  She is 100% Irish and always enjoys celebrating St. Patrick's Day!

    My very bright and happy St. Patrick's Day card is also being submitted to these fun new challenges:

• The Outlawz - Greeting Card Challenge -  Feature an Animal
• Allsorts Challenge Blog - Week 94 - Luck of the Irish
• Easy Craft Projects - Challenge # 33 - Green
• Wee Memories - Challenge # 47 - Spring or Green
• Sentimental Sundays - Challenge # 46 - Sentiment and Green
• Creative Inspiration Paints - Inspired by Animals
• Card Cupids Challenge Blog - GREEN

    And since we want you ALL to have a chance to win,  please be sure to use one of our images.   If you are new to StampFairy and have not started your collection, you can feel free to create a project with one of the Freebies we offer at the StampFairy store.

   While you are in the store, you might want to take a peek at a very cute new release, that Gerda added to the store today.  This new collection with Patsy all ready to hit the beach!!     You can find the collection HERE and I also have a little preview image to share!!

   I hope you all have a very Happy St. Patrick's Day this week and a week full of all things fun and happy!!

 

Spring forward.....and enjoy the daylight!!

....Time to change the clocks for Daylight Saving's time and that means that Spring and Summer are almost here...!   Yippee!   It does take me about a week to get used to the change, especially when it comes to getting up each morning, but I sure do LOVE having the extra daylight!

    It's hard to believe that it's already almost 5 PM and today has flown by.  You should would think we lost more than one hour, because I did not get nearly as much done as I had hoped.

    I did finish up two cards and one I had started last week...talk about slow!  My first card is for the new challenge over at By Lori Designs and it's a color challenge.  This is a copy of the challenge colors that I copied over to share with you here!!

  And this is the card that I'm submitting to challenge.  I do hope the colors work, as it's often hard to determine the exact colors from a computer screen!! 

 

   For my card, I picked this sweet new image (Need a Boost), that is one of the Special Editions, added to the store this month.  I also bought the matching Sentiment was works out perfect for this card.  I found some really cute digi papers and used those along with my Copics to create outfits for these cuties.  I also added more digi papers for my background and for the little butterfly.  A fun and happy card!!

   My next card was created to today's new Sketch Challenge over at the Stars & Stamps Blog, which you can find HERE!!  I have also copied over a copy of the sketch, which you will see in my first picture below.

   As you can see I created my card to match the sketch, but then to make it work out better with my little 'Sending a Hug' Sentiment, I decided to flip it, as shown in this photo.  I think it works either way and I loved the idea of using 1 inch squares.   This would also be the perfect time to get out your 'Inchies' and use them for your little squares!!

  My final project today, was a card I created for a birthday this week and it's a card for a Guy, which I still think are the hardest to create.  For this one I had some fun with my distress inks an some Glimmer Mist and put to use some of the new ideas I learned in class yesterday.    Although it's not showing well in the image, the card is actually a combination of patterns and deep rich colors.  I used five different distress inks and a sand and gold Shimmer Mist at the end.  I then stamped on the Happy Birthday sentiment and embossed it in clear and cut it out with a Nestie die.  This card has a lot of shine and dimension and looks much better in person. 

   My next project (tomorrow), will be to create a card for the new CAS Challenge, posted over at The Outlawz.  I really love the recipe and the cards that Mo and Amy created this week are both gorgeous!  You can see them here, along with all the challenge details.   I think this will be a fun one and I'm excited to start on this tomorrow!  

   Have a great night....

 

Fun day of crafting!!

  Today, was SOOOO much better than yesterday and turned out to be a really fun day of crafting.  I took two craft workshops at my LSS today and learned some great new techniques.  I also met up with one of the Lady Buds (Kerry) from the Baby Bud Design Team!

    The only downside is that I forget my camera, but luckily Kerry had hers, so we could get a quick picture to share!  Here is a picture if Kerry and I taken at the store yesterday.   I have to admit that neither of us love having our picture taken, but I did promise to share!  Kerry is in the blue jacket and I'm wearing 'purple', of course!  This picture was taken in the store, just after class!  We have a great day!  :)

     We will meeting up again in April to take a Jennifer McGuire - Technique Treasury  Workshop and I am very much looking forward to that too.  Today's classes all focused on techniques and were taught by Kate, the store owner.  I've taken a few of Kate's classes now and they are always awesome -- today was no exception. 

     Today we started with Tim Holtz Distress Inks and make a total of (10) different tags, each was different and each was created with a new technique.  The classes are called IPT (by Kate) - Ink and Paint Techniques, will be ongoing and I know I'll go back for more.  Today were completed IPT I and IPT II, which were combined into a nice morning and afternoon session.  We had a hour break which was perfect, enough time for a little lunch and left over time to shop, of course!   I enjoyed every minute and will be back tomorrow to share more details!   This is a picture of all the products we worked with today:  

    You can hop over to Kerry's Blog to see her tags and I'm back with an update this morning (Sunday) to share some pictures of mine.   We created five tags in each session, the morning session focused on Distress inks and the afternoon we added in Perfect Pearls...which I now LOVE!!

    This picture is all ten of the tags and the one practice tag we started with.  Kate provided us with the ring and had typed up a description of each technique, which we then added to the back of our tags.  That way we can look a tag, flip it over and refresh our memory (much need for me), to re-create that technique.

 

      
        Those of most of my favorites and the techniques are all actually quite easy to learn.  I own all the distress inks and pretty much everything you need to recreate these.   You can also use a variety of papers and cardstock colors for different variations.  The possibilities are endless and we covered a lot of material.  These IPT workshops, will also continue and I hope to take them all! 

         Oh....and I signed up a a complete Coloring Series that will run from March - September with one new class each month.   Our first class starts next Saturday afternoon and in that class we'll be coloring with Prismacolor Pencils and Gamsol, perfect for me, as I'm still very new to this coloring medium and have a lot to learn.
      And on one very happy and personal note -- Today was my FIRST day to banish bulky winter coats and shoes...!  Yuk!!  My first official day of 2011 wearing 'Flip Flops' outside and for a full day!!   The sun was shining and the temps were close to 50 --  and for this Girl, my flip flop season has officially begun!   WOOHOO!!!