Lighthouse

This is a new stamp set I got from Our Daily Bread Designs called "Light of the World".  I've been looking for stamps to use to make masculine birthday cards to donate to my church.  This is the first one I came up with.  Love that I have a chance to color with my pencils!

Reflecting on You

This is a card I did to try out my new Fleur De Lis die-cut from Spellbinders.  I love the contrast of yellow and black together and decided to use the die as a frame around the image.  This is one of my favorite stamps called "Reflective" by Sugar Nellie.

Baby Boy Card

Here is a card I made for my friend Krista who had a baby boy recently...he is SO cute!  Krista is also my Stampin Up lady!

Matching Card

Here is the matching card...

Scarlett's Baby Brag Book

This a baby brag book I made for my husband's cousin that had a baby girl named Scarlett.  This is one of my first projects getting back into crafts.  It was fun using the Chick-a-dee paper packet with everything matching...I figured I wouldn't have to "think" so hard at creating.  I also made a card to match, but the picture of it isn't the best.  Enjoy!

I'm Back!

Well, it's been almost a year since my last post.  It's been a difficult year for me for many reasons, but its made me stronger and more like the person God wants me to be.  As hard as things have been, I've grown so much and become closer to God.  I have so many new Christians friends now that I alsolutely love to be around!  They have faithfully prayed for me and have been such a blessing in my life.  I have had the privilege of praying for them and seeing prayers answered.

In early August, I walked into a church local outreach facility that someone told me about and asked if I could volunteer my time.  That's when I met Karla the director there.  I have been working there since then and try to work 3 days a week.  I never quite know what I'm going to do there, which makes it fun.  It's enabled me to use my past office skills, decorating skills, organizing skills, cleaning, etc., and even bargain shopping which we did for children's shoes that were brought to an orphanage in Mexico.  As difficult as things have been for me, taking applications for food from people/families whose address is "homeless", really puts your own "woes" in prospective. 

Karla and I have become very dear friends since then.  She has been wonderful to work with and I LOVE to be there helping her out.  She is a HUGE support for me. 

The other thing I started doing again in September is Ladies Bible Study.  I have so enjoyed being with these ladies and learning and praying with them.  They have also been a HUGE support for me each week.  I have so many sweet relationships in my life now.  It gives me so much JOY!

I have also started to do my crafts again, which is once again JOYFUL for me!  It wasn't like that for a long time.  I will be posting things I've done here and on Split Coast Stampers in the next couple of days.  Hope you enjoy looking at them! 

Kathy

Color Charts

One of my big projects lately has been getting my craft things organized.  The first thing I worked on was my Prismacolor pencils.  I created an Excel chart for them grouping them by color and created the charts to fit in a 6x6 display book which turned out to be 3 pages.  I got this idea from Becca Feeken on her website Amazing Paper Grace located here.  The other thing Becca did was to have a sample of the color with the mineral spirits on it which is a great idea.  So when I did my color charts, each color block had a sample on top with dark to light without the mineral spirits and below it a sample of the color with the mineral spirits blended in it.  It was a lot of work, but will definitely save me lots of time when I'm choosing colors for a project!  Here are pictures of the finished product.  I also plan to post the charts on SCS under lists and charts if anyone is interested.

***Updated 1/12/2017: Here is the link to the color charts on Split Coast Stamper.

Color Challenge Purples & Browns

I just finished up a card for a color challenge on one of my favorite designer's website.  It's for Sharon Johnson's blog 'no time to stamp' you can find here.  The challenge was for any shades of purples, lavenders, browns, and ivory.  It's also supposed to be "stamped simply" - the image took some work on this one, but the card itself is pretty simple.

The image was colored with prismacolor pencils.  This is my first attempt to use these without using mineral spirits to blend the colors.  I used the colorless blender and my eraser only.  Wow, it was hard for me to get use to the difference.  Of coarse, it would probably be easier if I know what I was doing!  This technique required me to bear down a lot with the blender which really started to bother my hands and arms...definitely don't want to flair up the fibromyalgia.  I'll have to check this out more, maybe I'm not doing it right.  Anyway, this is what I came up with...not to bad.

Two New Cards

The past couple of days I have been working on two cards for a challenge on Split Coast Stampers.  The first one is done with birds.  I've taken a LOT of pictures of this one, and it still doesn't do it justice.  It must have something to do with the paper (and with my lack of knowledge).  I call this one "Birds with Linen"...the paper collection is called "Linen Closet".

The second card I did is called "Peach of a Hippo".  I love this stamp!  She's so cute!  The orange in the center of the flowers, the balloon, & bow, are tiny glass beads I just picked up.  I'm having so much fun with these.  The package I bought has a bunch of colors (I think 18), so there's lots to choose from.  The card with the birds also has glass beads in the middle of the flower below the bird picture.

That's it for now...time to get back to crafting!

My Blog

It's been a while since I've posted...I've been busy doing all the un-creative stuff I need to do for my business.  One of the things I'm working on is getting my blog to work the way I want it to.  I'm really trying hard to do this ALL BY MYSELF!!  I may need to give in at some point though.  :-)

If anyone is trying to leave me a comment and still can't, I'm sorry.  I'm trying to fix that.  Please be patient with me.

In the next day or two I plan to do some creative things - YEAH!!!  I'll post them when I'm done!

Kathy