No crafting today

but boy am I tired. Took the day off work today to paint - not creatively paint - that is definitely NOT my forte. Nope, practical painting in the house. Windows to be exact. I have decided that painting windows is my LEAST favourite type of painting, particularly the windows we have on our main floor. They ALL have transoms above them and take screen inserts so there are lots of finicky bits to paint. One coat down, at least one maybe two more to go.

Going to work would have been an easier and shorter day. Oh well, it has to be done.

Update: So, it being guitar night at our house and all I thought I might get to do some stamping of images to colour at a later date. Nope. Believe it or not, my hand is too sore to stamp! It even looks bruised where I was resting the paint brush. mmmmm...methinks I need a new painting technique - or staff.

Time to mellow out and find something on the tube to watch that I am NOT already PVRing.

a productive weekend

Ahhhh....it's funny what you can accomplish with a sick sweetie in the house. Because my dearly beloved has been ill the last several days, I did NOT feel guilty just sitting with him on the couch, catching up on our PVRed shows. While doing THAT, I FINALLY got around to mounting {most of} my doodlefactory stamps onto EZmount - still have sentiments to do but that's okay. Mounting those was put on hold until I got to Heather's today to get some more EZ mount storage pages on which to put the stamps. I'm getting ready for our doodlefactory-aholics {not so} anonymous day at Jenn's a couple of weekends from now. Tee hee - I also picked up another Magnolia stamp while I was at Heather's -- too cute. Now I just have to get around to using them!

Didn't actually make any cards this weekend - which is why this one that I made during the card workshop at the Crop for Cure comes in handy for tomorrow.


As soon as I made this card, I knew to whom it would be gifted - my neighbour's little boy who will be seven tomorrow. I just love all the little critters. I know this is a new paper from the CTMH Summer Catalogue.

SASMR4 - For my chick flick pal

Ahhh...the final sketch challenge from Stamps and Smiles, SASMR4 .



This card will be going to my movie-going pal who celebrates her birthday this week.

The papers are CTMH - from the Key to my Heart paper pack. hmmm...now that I've cracked it open I can't seem to stop using those papers. I just love them!

Both sets of panels were cut with my nestabilities. The sentiment is from my favourite CTMH stamp set and look, what's that? Yup, another one of those flowers!

SASMR3 - For my Aunt

This card will be making it's way south of the border tomorrow to my Aunt who celebrates her birthday next week.

The sketch uses the SASMR3 sketch from the Stamps and Smiles challenges this week.

The papers are from the CTMH Key to My Heart package and the flower, vase and sentiment are from one of my favourite CTMH stamp sets (judging by how badly the stamps are stained!) The flower and vase are each stamped twice with the second image popped up on dimensionals. The colonial white panel was cuttlebugged with my swiss dots folder.

Hope she likes her card! I'll be seeing her in Newfoundland this August as she is planning a visit so I am going to go home at the same time to see her - for the first time in over twenty years! Maybe even 25......or possibly 30....

SASMR2 - Happy Anniversary

On May 7th my dearly beloved and I celebrate nine years of being together. So, the card I made for him had to be a little special. The SASMR2 sketch from Stamps and Smiles came to the rescue.


I decided that the sketch screamed APERTURE card to me so out came the nestabilities and the cuttlebug. As you can see, my photography skills on aperture cards are even worse than usual. This is the front of the card (yes, that's my finger on the left and a camera shadow on the right) held flat so you can see the sentiment clearly through the aperture.


Above is a standing shot of the front. I layered CTMH paper from the Key to my heart package on top of colonial white cardstock which was layered on sorbet cardstock. Precision cutting with the nestabilities required some invisible tape to hold the dies in perfect position as each layer was cut, starting with the largest opening.

And this is the inside of the card. Frugal me used the offcuts from the DP and the colonial white for my sentiment panel on the inside. The sentiments by the way are from the friendship word puzzle stamp set from CTMH.


I think my dearly beloved will like it -- even if it has an awful lot of "pink" tones.

Shout Out to Sheetload

So have you had a chance to check out Sheetload of Cards yet? It is an ezine published monthly with truly awesome sketches, highlighted by the projects featured.

This is the cover of the May 2009 issue


You crafty folks out there who avidly follow "Markie's Mom" Faith will recognize her as the featured artist on the front cover. I have already used this awesome sketch for a couple of regular A4 size cards but have not yet done the little scrapling and card combo. As Jenn suggested when she saw this, the little scrapling would make a perfect bookmark (with a magnetic closure). So, I am sure I will be making a few of those. I'm thinking they would be great to mark favourite recipes in my vast collection of cookbooks!

If you check out the post Labels in my sidebar and look for sheetload, you will see the cards I have made using various of the sketches.

For My Mom

This is the card I made for my Mom for Mother's day. It uses CTMH paper and Verve sentiments. Another of those flowers from Zellers! The sketch is from Sheetload of Cards.


Anyhow, I seriously thought of making this a funny card instead. At some point in the future I still might - maybe for her birthday in June. See, everyone who sees me and my Mom ALWAYS comment how much I look like her. And the older I get, the more I hear that comment. Mind you, I tower over my shortie Mom. So, I had thought of crossing out hope and writing {KNOW} and crossing out little bit and writing {LOT}. I have some of the doodlefactory stamps in their larger sizes and smaller sizes and think I could play that up with using two of those identical stamps. Or maybe by playing around with some of my digi-Anyas. Anyways, I'll be toying with that idea.

Now, the other thing I made for my Mom is a memory book. It has both old and more recent photos of her with each of her children and grand-children and, of course, with my Dad. I'm going to TRY to add it to my blog (or this post) as a slideshow. We shall see how that goes momentarily.

Update - well, I was able to add the slideshow on the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can check it out on Picasa Web Albums here . I think.

If only I could figure out how to put the slideshow IN the post itself.