Happy Birthday - Doodlefactory style

This card is for a co-worker who celebrates his birthday today. Tomorrow he gets this card:



along with some cupcakes and home-made peanut butter cups. Actually, a whole bunch of peanut cups were made - 6 dozen in fact. Mostly to be taken to his Mom in Nova Scotia (she's a fan of my pb cups). I made so much filling I actually have a whole cake decorating bag full left-over. My dearly beloved made a suggestion for a square I could make so.....I'll be in the kitchen again tomorrow night!

This card is for a few challenges on the Stampin' Out Alzheimer's site. The sketch is from the Little Paper Shop challenge. I decided to play it up a bit and make this a clear card for another of the challenges. I also attached the rectangular panels by sewing them on (for another of the challenges to included stitching on your card). And finally, I attached three buttons for an element of the sketch for another of the challenges.

My little guy is another Doodlefactory image. The cake and sentiment are from Stamps and Smiles. Links to both sources are on the left side of the blog.

Happy Birthday from Cuppy!

So this is my first Stamps and Smiles card with my new stamps that arrived this week! Say Hello to Cuppy! Isn't she cute?



The card sketch is SASSC17 from Stamps and Smiles. The colour choice is from another challenge over at Stampin' Out Alzheimer's. This card is for the two by two challenge sponsored by Taylored Expressions - use pink and brown and only TWO types of embellishments. My DP is pink with white polka-dots. I matted everything with brown. The ribbon (embellie #1) is pink and brown and my dew drops (embellie #2) are brown.

I did two Cuppy images. One is popped up on dimensionals. Cuppy's frosting is paper-pieced from swirly pink paper. Then I masked Cuppy and sponged the background before adding her balloon.

I have to say I absolutely love these images from Stamps and Smiles.

It's Your Special Day

Last Sunday, I spent the morning and most of the afternoon at Jenn's with Tanya , stamping up a storm. We're all fans of the Doodlefactory and each have a different assortment so, we got together so we could each stamp up a bunch of images from each other's collections. Of course, this just adds fuel to the flames for having to get the images we DON'T have in our collection.

So, Jenn was a doll and I tried out her Prismas for colouring up this little guy from HER collection.



I still have a LONG ways to go before my talent begins to even approach her skill, but I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Prismas so I can start practising.

The sketch I used for this card is CPS117 from Card Positioning Systems.

The papers are from a digital paper pack offered as a freebie download on Stampin Out Alzheimer's . The download was offered by Libby Wiefenbach . Aren't they they cutest?

The sentiment is from the Today's Date CTMH stamp set.

Dreamy Tilda

So, I have a bunch of images from my new Magnolia stamps coloured up and waiting to be used on some cards. The opportunity presented itself this week with a couple of challenges. Over at Stampin Out Alzheimer's there is a challenge to use the Mojo Monday Sketch for this week. There is also a challenge to create a card using any winged thing.



This Dreamy Tilda fit the bill. See her glittery wings? Isn't she cute? I have five more of her all coloured and ready to go. Her outfit on each one is a different colour.

Cupcake Box

Time for another Stampin' Out Alzheimer's Challenge.

This cute little cupcake box was made using a free template generously donated to the cause by Kelleigh Ratzlaff (The Digichick). The link to her tutorial on using the template is here .

So, this was an amazingly simple little box to build. I simply cut my DP into 8.5x11 and put it into my laser printer facing down in order to print the template on the white back of the paper (so the lines wouldn't show on the dp side). Then I cut it out and voila! A cute little box to give to someone special.

Warmest Thanks

So, I took a few days off this week to tackle a terribly long to-do list. I did manage to squeeze in just a little paper-crafting to do one of the card sketch challenges over at Stampin' Out Alzheimer's .


Now, I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with this card. I fussed with it an awful lot and ...well, meh. Problem is, I REALLY wanted to use this funky paper. I loved the bleeding colours and how every inch of the paper was different. The piece with the scrollwork stamped on it? That's actually from the same piece of paper! I know, it looks ALMOST completely white in the photo but in real life there is just a hint of blue throughout it.

Anyways, I think I need to do another card with this sketch - maybe with some of my Magnolia images I coloured up last weekend that are lying on the table in the craft room screaming to be used!

As it happens, this card also ties in to the challenge over at Daring CardMaker's today. How cool is that? I had wanted to bring out some of the reds that were washed into the paper and had the ribbon in my stash but thought that my randomly stamped flowers needed a little something. So, out came the brad container and FIVE larger red brads to use as the flower centres. I think they make an okay accent with the CTMH Dutch Blue ink I used on the card.

So, now I have another thank you card for my stash. One can never have enough cards to say thanks.

Stampin' Out Alzheimer's

Jen Tapler has teamed up with Susanna Boyd of Papercraft Planet to once again organize a Stampin' Out Alzheimer's virtual paper-crafting week long event starting May 25.

All the deets can be found by clicking on any of the hyperlinks above.

I made a donation to the event because my paternal grandmother was afflicted with Alzheimer's. I was away at university and then moved away to Ottawa as she began and finally completed her downward spiral with this terrible disease. On the occasions when I was at home during university breaks or visiting from Ottawa, I saw how rapidly she went downhill.

It is truly devastating when the woman you remember as strong and vigorous and who lived next door to you for all of the first 18 years of your life no longer remembers talking to you just the night before for hours on end. When she looks at you in puzzlement, searching for a name and failing to find one. When she gets frustrated because she can't remember why she popped in to your parents house (her house was right in front of ours) or gets angry because your Dad says he will be out in 5 minutes to do a chore for her, not right away.

When you pop in to her house to check on her and see that the stove is on, burners blood red and Nan is nowhere in sight. Or, late at night, in the wee hours of the morning, you hear hammering coming from her house and see her silhouetted in her porch window, nailing her door shut because of the paranoia that has set in because she is forgetting where she put things and thinks people are coming into her house and moving them around.

Then the final stages come and not only does she not remember her grand-children, but also her own children. Finally, taken into care and slipping back even further, clinging to life through the "miracles" of modern medicine. My last memory of my grand-mother is very painful for me and I have to force myself to not think of her the last time I saw her.

Instead, I choose to remember her teaching me to make partridge berry pie as a little girl. I had my very own special pie pan - in reality a little tart pan - to make my own little girl sized pie, lattice top and all. Or making bread - with my own little pan so I could have my own small loaf. And of course, stopping at Nan's on the way home from school at lunchtime to discover she is cooking halibut - and having her dial the phone number to my parents next door to ask if I could stay for lunch, all the while sitting on the counter next to the electric frying pan nibbling on fish as it completed cooking. Listening to my Mom laugh as she said "Let me guess, Nanny is cooking halibut?"

If you have known or know someone afflicted with this terrible disease, check out the sites linked above. You'll be glad you did.