Home....

We spent this past weekend visiting my mom in Tampa. She's got a lemon tree in her yard and it was brimming with lemons, so we brought some home - you can't really tell from this picture, but they are HUGE. That bowl measures 9 inches across, to give you an idea.

One of them was the size of a grapefruit. And they are very mild - with a hint of orange, like a Meyer lemon. We used the large one last night to make one of our favorite dishes - Lemon Sage Chicken. It was great. The lemon produced a little over half a cup of juice.

She also has an avocado tree and let us have one of the avocados - it weighs over two pounds! I see guacamole in my near future!

After being gone a week for our dive trip and then a three day visit home to my mom's, it's nice to be back in my own home again. So, in keeping with the 'home' theme, I decided to post this card today! This is a card I made as part of a design team challenge from Repeat Impressions. The layer with the chair and the border is from a Hambly transparency. The patterned paper is from Prima Marketing's Tea and Silk paper collection.

The sentiment was stamped with Versamark ink and embossed with Powder Keg embossing powder. I cut the panel out with a Spellbinders Label Four die and doodled some faux stitching around the edge of it. I punched slots in either end and ran some wide silk ribbon through the slots and adhered the ends behind the mat layer. The teal card stock is from Prism Papers.

Not a lot to it, but I must say that although using this particular transparency was a bit of a challenge, I think it turned out OK. I like these colors together.
Hope you're having a great week! Thanks for stopping by.

In all things of nature...

This is another card I made for a Repeat Impressions design team assignment. Naturally, I love all the underwater images and thought the sentiment went perfectly with them, as did the scrap of 'wave' paper I had in my stash. The main image was stamped and then cut out using a Labels Four Nestabilities die from Spellbinders. The image was colored with Copic markers and then I masked the fish, crab and coral, and airbrushed the background using two different blue green markers to make the bottom a bit darker. I added stickles to the bubbles to give them a little sparkle.

The three smaller images were stamped directly on inchie squares, colored with Copic markers and then sponged with some matching ink. The sentiment was stamped and cut out using an Oval Nestabilities die and airbrushed while it was still in the die. The image and the sentiment were both mounted with foam tape. Pretty simple, but fun! It makes me want to get back in the water and see some of these critters up close and personal!

Hope you have had a good week. I'm glad it's Friday and am looking forward to the weekend! Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

How great is the wonder...

Greetings! Sorry I've been MIA, but we were on vacation last week in our favorite diving destination, Saba. It had been three years since we were last there, so it was nice to be back and catch up with our friends there. Saba is a five square mile island that rises to almost 3,000 feet, so it's small and hilly. It's located 28 miles southwest of St. Maarten and we stay in a village called Windwardside, shown in the first photo. The arrow points to the house where we stay - Shell Cottage. Our first visit to Saba was in 1988 and on that trip we met the owner of Shell Cottage and we've rented it ever since, except one year when we rented the cottage next door.


The second photo shows a closer view of Shell Cottage. It's fairly secluded and sits at about 1,500 feet elevation with a beautiful, unobstructed view of the Caribbean Sea.

The diving is great and there are several really good restaurants within walking distance, so it's a very relaxing place for us. Our days consisted of diving in the morning, lunch at Shell Cottage, an afternoon nap and dinner out. Not bad!

OK, enough vacation talk, on to today's card! I love this whole Botannicabella line of Graphic 45 paper. The dragonfly paper was perfect for my little dragonfly fairy stamp from Repeat Impressions. I stamped the image using Memento Rich Cocoa and colored it with Copic markers, then cut it out using a Spellbinders Curved Rectangle die. While still in the die, I airbrushed the background and then doodled the dots around the border after it was removed from the die.

I layered the velvet flower ribbon on top of some sheer two-toned rust and gold ribbon to cover the seams of the two pieces of patterned paper. The tag is also from Graphic 45 and was randomly stamped with the dragonflies and sentiment (also from Repeat Impressions).

Not much to it, but it's a cute, whimsical little image. Hope you're having a good week so far! Thanks for looking!

Happy Spring!

This card has a nice Spring feel to it, which is quite apropos considering how beautiful it is in Atlanta right now, with the dogwoods and azaleas blooming. This is my favorite season, and Atlanta is a great place to experience it!

This card was made using five different stamps from Repeat Impressions. The three panel section was made by stamping the LOCKEbility image once on white paper and once on patterned paper. I stamped and colored the butterfly, bird, dragonfly and flowering vine images on the white paper and then cut the centers of each of the three sections out of the patterned paper and layered it on top of the white paper with the colored images. All the images were colored with Copic markers. The patterned papers are from Imaginisce. I mounted the main image with foam tape and popped the right and left sides so they were a bit higher than the center to make it look like a bay window.

The three squares of patterned paper were cut out with a square punch and then I used a circle punch to cut the circular images from the Spring Fling paper. I finished it off with some beautiful silk ribbon from Flourishes.

Hope you're having a great week! Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Easter!

This is a quick Easter card I made using stamps from Gina K. Designs. The image was colored using Copic markers and the flower pot was paper pieced with some paper from the Die Cuts with a View Nana's Nursery Baby Boy paper pack. The background paper is from Making Memories' Flower Patch collection. The mat for the main image is Stardreams Stationery and the sentiment was cut out using a Spellbinders double ended tag. I ran some beautiful silk ribbon through it to match it up with the mat from the main image. I dabbed some Stickles on the flower centers and some Shimmerz on the eggs and that's about it!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, but I finished up the card while I was out of town for work last week and had to make do photographing it in my hotel room! Hope you have a Happy Easter! Thanks for looking!

S.C.U.B.A

I must admit that I haven't been on the Changito bandwagon....until now, that is! Since I am a SCUBA diver, I had to have these two stamps as soon as I saw them, and now I am forced to admit that this little Changito monkey is pretty fun to color!

For those of you who are wondering, this is actually the birthday card I made for our friend Chuck, not the one in my last post ;-) There isn't much to tell about this card - the image was colored with Copic markers and I highlighted the mask, fins, tank and fish with Spica markers. I also added some Stickles for the bubbles. In keeping with the underwater theme, I cut the sentiment layer out using wave edged scissors and layered a couple of strips of Magic Scraps' Coastal Netting under the main image.

That's about it. Hope you're having a good week! Thanks for stopping by.

Another Happy Birthday

Today is our friend Chuck's birthday, so I found myself in need of a masculine birthday card for him. Chuck is a retired Marine and comes across as being pretty gruff, when in reality he's a big ol' teddy bear (sorry to blow your cover, Chuck!).

So, whaddya think - will he like it?? Don't worry, this isn't the card I made for him ;-) This is one I made a few weeks back using some pretty Italian paper and a new stamp set I had just received from Flourishes. There's really not much to it. I stamped the tulip several times on Cryogen white paper using Memento Bamboo Leaves ink and colored it with Copic markers. I cut parts of the bloom out and layered them on top of the main image with some foam tape. I then painted over the bloom with some Shimmerz paint to give it a little sparkle, and added a trio of small yellow rhinestones in the upper right corner. I cut the main image using a long rectangle Nestability die and then used a Perfect Layers ruler to cut the green mat to fit inside the yellow mat, which was cut using a scalloped long rectangle die.

The sentiment was also stamped on Cryogen white paper with Memento Bamboo Leaves ink and then cut using a double ended ribbon tag die. Thread some ribbon through the tag, adhere it to the back side of the Italian paper, mount the panel on the card base and you're done!

This second photo is of the inside of the card. I layered a leftover strip of the Italian paper on a green mat and then adhered the tulip, which I had stamped, colored and cut out. The tulip was mounted with a piece of foam under the bloom to add a little dimension, but not too much bulk.

A simple, but pretty birthday card that will go to a female and NOT to Chuck ;-) But don't worry, I have a fun card for him that I'll share next week!

Hope you've had a good week and thanks for looking! Enjoy your weekend!

Happy Birthday

I made this card for the Caardvarks March 20th sketch challenge. The focal image is from a brass stencil, which I embossed and then colored using chalks while the paper was still on the stencil. Of course I had to make the bird a robin...The image was cut out using an oval Nestabilities die and while it was still in the die, I chalked the blue sky background. I created an eye for my robin with a drop of copper Stickles.

The card base is my favorite Kraft paper from Papertrey Ink and all the other papers are from the BasicGrey Marrakech line. Across the striped paper, I placed some green ric rac, which was then topped with a flower and a couple of buttons. The buttons were tied together with some brown Scrapper's Floss.

The sentiment was stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa ink and then cut out using a double ended tag die. While it was still in the die, I also chalked the background so it would match the bird image. Since the tag was too long for the card, I cut off the right end with some scallop edge scissors and then put a coordinating brad from the Marrakech line through the remaining hole.

I think that about covers it! Hope you're having a good week! Happy April Fool's Day!