Wonderful, Fabulous, Tags!

At the end of this month I will be celebrating 10 years of employment at Mayo Clinic.  I have a tradition of thanking my colleagues at work for "putting up with me" all year!  I bake brownies, and purchase Girl Scout cookies to give with a hand-made tag each year.  It's really delightful to visit some people later and still see the tags on their bulletin boards.

This was one stamp set called Wonderful You - - I absolutely love this sentiment.  There are two different bird images and both make a beautiful card quickly and easily.  

The diamond pattern is so easy to use (it's a double row but matches up easily so you could cover a much larger paper) and I used Sweet Leaf for that design element.  The bird was colored with the new CTMH alcohol markers. The sentiment is stamped in Momento Truffle (like the CTMH cocoa ink).  I like the Momento inks when I'm going to be coloring more (with water brush or alcohol) because it doesn't bleed.

I started these during Open Stamping and made great progress that day.  After work this week when Steve was away I finished up 24 tags.  That's enough for work and to put some on the packages that just arrived for my friends!  

We're looking forward to some rain here . . . hope your weekend will be wonderful and fabulous!   

Happy Birthday!

 

I can always use more birthday cards in my stash!  This was a case of a card by Barbara Anders here.  I guess I held onto this longer than I realized because I had the devil of a time finding the original post! I used stamps I had on hand - The music, sentiment, chicken wire and butterflies are all Close-to-My-Heart although some are retired.  The stripe was from somewhere else, a cling mount - could have been Hero Arts?  Not sure.  

I've had a busy week and my knee is getting stronger daily.  My last sutures fell out last night from my oral surgery so my mouth feels better now, too!  Finally - the end of the tunnel is ahead!  

My Love led a quiet day of meditation at our church today and it was just amazing.  I treasured the time to "hang out with God".   I hope your Saturday was good - what have you been up to anyway?!

Birthday - vintage CTMH

These stamps and papers are retired, but I'm having so much fun re-discovering the "old" stamps with the "new" tools!  I used alcohol markers to color this - it went so fast and is so easy!!  I added a little sparkle by way of Spica gel pen (stardust?).  Do you recognize the "base" of this card?  Last year about this time I held a workshop fund-raiser at church and we made valentines.  There were a few leftovers and I pulled out the bag while cleaning the studio the other day.  Here was the original card. 

Tonight Steve has invited the neighborhood to dinner!  No, I'm not kidding!  (You just gotta love this man!)  We think there might be 16.  The menu is low key and fun (grilled hot dogs / brats and sloppy joes). Some of our neighbors we don't know at all except to wave "hello".  I'm excited to get to know them better and thankful that my darling husband is such a generous and gracious host.  Hope your weekend is starting out as wonderful as mine is!

Hugs!!

New Spring/Summer 2014 Close-to-My-Heart Catalog!

The new Close-to-My-Heart catalog is here and there are a LOT of wonderful things in it!  I had a limited budget and had to really narrow down my choices, but these feathers (C1584) spoke to me - and I'm really, really glad I got them as I know I'll enjoy them!  I should tell you that the center feather doesn't come with white spots - I added those with a white pen after the ink was dry. 

Another brand new product on this card is the diagonal stripe cardstock.  This is a new paper pack called Paper Fundamentals - and the first set (I'm hoping there will be more! *wink*) is in the Basic color palette.  The side you can see is a rich Cocoa on white.  The other side (which I chose not to feature) is Cocoa with a shiny diagonal tone-on-tone stripe.  Very rich!  Each color has a different pattern featured with color on one side and shiny tone-on-tone on the other.  Don't miss these - they are beautiful!

I've been visiting your sites even if I haven't blogged recently.  The knee surgery went fine, but I must have thought I was Super Woman or something and scheduled oral surgery, too!  I hope to be back to my "normal" wacky self soon. (not sure if that's a promise, or a threat!)

Hugs!!