I'm back!

Yay! DH has our computer back up and running. I still don't have everything reloaded (I miss my Photo Shop Elements!) but I can at least crop photos and post them on my blog, and read my emails, so I'm happy. :)

This card is actually for several challenges. 1) The Copic Color Challenge - I used BV00 Mauve Shadow on Anya's shirt. 2) The Roses on Paper Challenge blog - I used flowers and an Anya stamp from The Greeting Farm, and I combined at least one other challenge with this one. 3) The sketch from the Friday Sketchers blog.

It feels good to be back. :-)

Computer Woes

Our computer's been really sluggish lately and this morning, when I performed my usual reboot, Windows wouldn't load. Eek! DH has backed up our hard drive and will hopefully get to work on the computer tomorrow. But, if you don't see many posts from me this week, you know why.

I'm still making cards. Just hope to be able to share them. :)

Productive Day!

I accomplished a lot in my craft room today. No, I didn't make a lot of cards, but I did get the room considerably tidier! (It still has a way to go, but I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel and not just be overwhelmed by the mess! If a messy desk is truly a sign of a creative mind, I must be one of the most creative people on the planet.)

I finally finished this card which I started, oh, maybe a week or so ago. It just didn't look done and I wasn't sure what to add. I used a white gel pen to add "stitching" around the red circle, then added the three red star buttons on the right and the sentiment on the left. A little less "white space" and the card finally looked finished. Now to submit it to the monthly Magnolia-licous homepage contest! I'm also submitting this to the Copic Creations "wood" challenge because I used their tips to color in Edwin's bench.


This next card was is for this week's sketch challenge (I just love sketch challenges!) on the House Mouse Monday Challenge blog. I had colored this image a few weeks ago (had just bought the stamp and couldn't wait to use it!) so I was able to put the card together pretty quickly. The sketch and this image don't leave a lot of room for extras, and I wanted to put the emphasis on this adorable image anyway. Isn't it sweet?

Make a wish and blow!

Whew! I am sooo glad it's Friday! I relaxed after work today by making this card for this week's Penny Black challenge, which called for embossing (the pink cardstock is embossed with my swirly Cuttlebug folder) and, of course, the use of a Penny Black Stamp (in this case, Party Critters). The layout came from the current sketch for this week's Saturday Sketch challenge. The color scheme came from this week's Pink & Green challenge on the Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge. And, since I used an image with a cupcake, I'm submitting this card for the cupcake challenge on the Pink Persimmon site.


Four challenges in one card. Pretty good for a Friday night!

Urban Tilda

Today I received something TERRIFIC in my mail - my images from Lisa's Monthly Magnolia image swap on SplitCoastStampers! It is a terrific swap - I got lots of great images! I recommend it, especially if (like me) you Magnolia collection is still small. I absolutely *had* to make a card with one of the images, so I made a summertime card for the Just Magnolia and Scrappy Frogs challenge blogs.

I still had my Basic Grey Urban Prairie paper out from making last night's Gingersnaps card. I remembered that it had this cute patterned paper with bees, so I just had to use it! :) Did you notice my little embellishment on top? I just cut out one of the six-sided (sextagon?) shapes with a bee and matted it on a piece of the aqua paper from the same paper stack. Instant, low-cost matching embellishment!

Making a Scene

I love the challenges on the DareU2Digitamp blog! They are always so much fun. I try to play along whenever possible. This week the challenge was "Make a Scene". I used the adorable springtime Gingersnap digistamps from All That Scraps. (I confess I bought them several months ago and hadn't used them yet! That's what I love about challenges - they help you dig into your stash to play with your ignored "toys".)

Supplies: Gingersnap digital stamps (All That Scraps), Urban Prairie (Basic Grey), Marth Stewart cardstock (base card), Copics, watercolor crayons and Niji waterbrush (background), ribbon from Michaels, pop-dots.

Another Sweet Card

There was a fun sketch challenge this week over on the Sugar Bowl challenge blog. Here's my interpretation of the sketch:


We also had to use kraft somewhere in our card, so I used some TAC Kraft cardstock - my favorite kraft cardstock. And, of course, we had to use a Sugar Nellies stamp so I used my sweet Gorjuss Girl - "With Love" - stamp.

A Sweet Card

I used this sweet Sugar Nellie stamp (With Love) to make a card for the sketch challenge this week on A Spoon Full of Sugar.

Happy Father's Day!

Here's a cute card that could be used for Fathers Day or a birthday, depending on what greeting you put inside. I used one of the adorable bunnies from TAC's Some Bunny set. It's one of my favorites. I also used some Winchester printed paper and cardstock (also from TAC) as the colors are very masculine.


We celebrated Fathers' Day early with a trip to the lake yesterday. Here's Ali relaxing on the dock with a book.

Birthday Mice

The latest fun challenge over on the Stamplicious yahoogroup is a sketch challenge. Here's my card, which I am also submitting to the Penny Black Saturday Challenge blog. The blog is celebrating their birthday, so this week's theme was "celebrations". I used these cute mice from the Critter Party set.


If, like me, you like stamps of all kinds you should consider joining the Stamplicious group. There's lots of stamping chat, fun challenges like this one and great cards shared by group members!

Digital Dare

I made this card for DareU2DigiStamp's Chocolate and Orange challenge:


Supplies: Olive (Digistamp boutique). flourish die (Quickutz), flower (Prisma), antique copper brad, brown cs (DCWV), orange paper from Hobby Lobby paper stack, ribbon (Michaels), Copic markers and Prismacolor pencils.

A Very Challenging Card

Too many fun challenges, too little stamping time! I managed to make this card do triple duty. I used this week's great sketch from the Whiff of Joy Challenge blog, the pink & brown color scheme from the Simon Says Challenge blog and two of the colors in the Copic Colour Challenge blog. Whew!


I used my "Willow with Cocoa" Whiff of Joy stamp to satisfy that requirement for the WOJ challenge. For the Copic color challenge, I had to use "close enough" colors - Y21 Buttercream Yellow and RV10 Pale Pink and RV13 Tender Pink instead of the called for Y23 Yellowish Beige and RV11 Pink. (I like to use Y23 along with Y17 for blonde hair).

Oh, and guess what? I was the lucky winner in last week's Copic Colour Challenge! I won two cute stamps (Clive Cockran and Guiseppe the goat) from Toodles and Binks along with a couple of other goodies. Yay!

Happy Birthday, Jessica!

Jessica turned 15 today. She got her driver's permit, so I wanted to use some kind of car image on her birthday card. I used this cute little Tiddly Ink (Stamping Bella) image that I received in a swap a while ago:

Wow, where does the time go. When did this chubby cheeked little toddler...

turn into this willowy, beautiful, taller-than-her-Mom teenager?


Tonight we celebrated her birthday with dinner at TGIFriday's. She celebrated her birthday with a few of her closest friends last Friday. We had dinner at Shakespeares Pizza and then went to the movies.


Here's a picture of her being silly with her friends Tessa and Jessie:


Ali brought a friend so that she had someone to hang around with (and would leave her big sister and friends alone!). She and Hunter had fun making a pizza with some dough they got to play with:

A Shower of Bellas!

A customer recently asked for some shower cards. I knew these Bella images that I received in a swap would make the perfect cards!

A wedding shower card featuring Bella and her wedding party:

I love this shopping pregnant Bella. Now there's a woman who knows how to make every occasion a shopping trip! :)

FYI - These cards were colored in Prismacolor pencils and a Prismacolor pencil. They show that you can get some nice Copic-like shading even with pencils.

Busy, busy, busy....

It's been so hard to post this week! It's been busy the past few weeks with end of the school year activities and then this week we started getting ready for summer school. Here's the card that I made for Jessica's French teacher who is retiring:


The stamps are from a retired Angel Company set that I received in a "TAC bag" a long time ago. I'm glad I held on to them! And I just love that black and white floral paper by Doodlebug. (I have such a weakness for pretty paper!)

Here's Jessica with her friend Tessa at their end of the year award ceremony. Jessica was awarded a Presidential Award for Academic Excellence.

More SOA cards

Here are two more cards that I made during the Stampin' Out Alzheimers fundraising event:


These were both entries for sketch challenges sponsored by Taylored Expressions (hence the cupcakes!). For the top card, I used a small flower punch and large brads to make the flower embellishments. Aren't they fun? :)

WOJ Fairy

This card combines two challenges: the Whiff of Joy challenge blog's requirement to use a charm and the color challenge on the Copic Colour Challenge blog.


I didn't have any of the exact Copic colors, so I used Y02 (instead of Y06), RV13 ad RV14 instead of RV11 and E39 instead of E37. The paper is from another new paper stack (darn all those paper sales lately! I am powerless to resist!) - Garden Party. I think it is by DCWV. I'm not sure which Whiff of Joy image this is - my friend Diana owns the stamp and stamped a few images off for me to use.

A Sweet Ketto

I made this Ketto card tonight for this week's great sketch challenge on the "A Spoon Full of Sugar" blog.

I used the Basic Grey's Urban Prairie paper collection that I just bought today. I love the colors and their swirly, pretty but slightly funky designs seem to suit the Kettos well. This Ketto in particular seemed to fit in with all the swirls and circles of the sketch.

Supplies: floral, black and aqua paper - Urban Prairie (Basic Grey), pink paper (stack from HL), Agnes Ketto (Stamping Bella), flourish die (Quickutz), buttons (Making Memories), glitter, Prima flower, greeting (Swirly Greetings - retired from TAC).

Ketto Cuteness

Here's my card for Mojo Monday sketch challenge #89:


Here's a close up:

I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get the glitter to show up in the photo. I used my Sakura glue pen (LOVE that thing!) to add some aqua ultrafine glitter to the petals on the flowers in her hand and hair. This photos shows the colors of the rhinestones better, too. They are all bright pink and match the paper very well in person.

This card features another adorable Ketto from Stamping Bella, Suzette Ketto. I just love all the Kettos! Expect to see more Kettos and Bellas on my blog in the coming days as I celebrate my "reign" as the June Featureabella on the Southern Bella blog. Southern Bella is a club for Bella lovers brought to you by Funkie Munkie Scraps. a great little store in Greer, SC. How do I know it's a great store? Because the wonderfully talented Katie Cotton (owner of Papermakeup stamps) teaches there! :-)

Speaking of Katie, she is a listmate of mine on the Stamplicious yahoogroup. If you are a stamp lover who enjoys all kinds of stamps, sign up and join us for all kinds of stamping fun! There are lots of great stampers on the list!

June specials at The Angel Company

If you haven't checked out the site lately, visit The Angel Company and check out all the current promotions - there are quite a few! I can't believe that I am saying this, but I really *love* the new sneak peek robots. Normally, I'm into cute & cuddly stuff but these robots are actually cute. (Cute robots - who knew?)

You can purchase them this month at the special price of $13.50 (they'll retail for $17.95 in the new catalog) with any $30 net purchase. Email me (lisajtmo@yahoo.com) if you're interested in more details.

And while you're at the site, don't forget to enter into the monthly giveaway - Miss Moxie paper and hardware and this cute stamp set!

TCP Tuesday

This week's TCP Tuesday challenge was to make a card using aqua, brown and yellow. OK, aqua and brown together - check. I've done that. But throwing in some yellow, too? Yikes! Fortunately, I just bought this beautiful stack of papers called "Laundry Line" from My Minds Eye. ("Hello, my name is Lisa and I'm an addict. A paper addict." LOL!) From there, it was easy to find the right cardstock colors to satisfy the challenge.

Supplies: Laundry Line paper stack (My Minds Eye), Smells Like Cake stamps (TCP), buttons (American Crafts), light teal base cardstock (PTI), brown cs (DCWV), Copic markers, Prismacolor pencils, scalloped oval Nestabilities, CM Shapemaker cutting system with oval templates, Pink Stickes, light teal ultrafine glitter, ribbon from Michaels, raffia.

Sweet as a Cupcake

My wonderful friend, Diana, let me stamp off a few of her newest Magnolia stamps recently. This one is Tilda with Cowberry Muffin. I'm not sure what a cowberry is - would I even want to eat one? But she's cute, anyway. ;-)

I was anxious to make a card with her, so I used her on this card for the June sketch challenge over on the Magnolia-licious Hi-lites blog.

The printed papers are from a new stack I bought at Hobby Lobby this week. It's by DCWV and it's called Blossoms and Butterflies. You can't really tell in the photo, but the pink paper is glittered. I also used glitter on the top of the muffin/cupcake. To add more sparkle, I used my clear Spica pen on her wings and some metallic fiber from my stash on the button. (It's more blue in person.) The flourishes are a Quickutz die I used in my Cuttlebug. That corner of the card looked "empty" without something there. Also, I used some Belle Rose Palette ink to sponge my plain oval (which was cut with my trusty CM Shapemaker cutting system). I liked the dimension it added and it helped tie the lighter pink oval into the bright pink background paper. (This paper is even brighter in person!)

A Passion for Pink

I have made a few uncharacteristically bright cards lately, and I was just dying to get back to my favorite color - calm, cuddly, soft pink. I chose these papers from my scrap pile for this first card because they seemed to go well with the image. This card is for the sketch challenge over on the Penny Black blog. It uses the adorable kitty image from the Party Critters set. The two butterflies on the top of the image are actually separate stamps (separate from the main image). I really like that the set includes butterflies that face in opposite directions. Sometimes I want an image that faces one direction but the stamp faces another. This way, you've got the "right" butterfly either way.

I didn't have a set color scheme in mind when I started on this card, which I made for this week's Sketch Saturday challenge. I decided to use the same papers because I liked them and it made it easier to whittle down my scrap pile by using more of my existing scraps. This card uses one of the adorable Kettos from Stamping Bella. (I received her in an image swap, so I'm not sure which Ketto she is.) It doesn't show up well in the photo, but I used some pink ultrafine glitter on her wings to make them extra sparkly.

Magnolia Challenge

This week's challenge on the Just Magnolia blog was to use an animal or insect image. I used my first Tilda that I ever bought, Tilda with Lamb.


Supplies: Tilda with Lamb, floral paper from glitter DCWV stack, Copics, Quickutz flourish die brads, daisy punch, Primas, ribbon from Mike's, Nestabilities scalloped circle, MM ribbon slot punch.

Olive - One Cute Kitty

Olive is the newest digital stamp from DigiStamp Boutique. I used her for the sketch challenge over on DareU2DigiStamp. Isn't she sweet? You can see more sample cards from the rest of the DigiStamp DT here: Olive cards

[note:] If you looked at my card a few minutes ago and just came back (I don't know why - maybe it's a slow night out here in blogland!), your eyes are not playing tricks on you. I DID just change the embellishments on this card. It looked too plain when I photographed it, but *somebody* (oh, possibly named DIXIE) was expecting a walk. :-) So now that she's a happy dog, I was able to fix my card and be a happy stamper. :-)

Fly Free

Yes, it's another challenge card that I made last weekend for Stampin' Out Alzheimers. It wasn't a sketch challenge, so I actually came up with this card layout by myself! :-) The challenge, sponsored by Papermakeup Stamps, was to use a winged image. I don't have any PMS stamps yet (mine are on order), so I used this cute LeAnn Ellis stamp that I'd bought from FunkyKits a while ago. It was nice to finally make a card with this image!


It's a pretty simple layout but it's probably my favorite card that I made last weekend. (And, no Diana, not just because it is PINK, lol!) I really like simpler, more basic card layouts. They're easier to work with (easier on the eye, I think) and it's more fun to find embellishments to jazz it up.

Another SOA card

Here's a card I made for another one of the Stampin' Out Alzheimers sketch challenges.

The original stamp was a long line of purses on a shelf. I inked up just the center of the image and cut the image into a circle with my CM Shape System cutter. I paper pieced the purses and then paper pieced a third purse to make the pyramid.