Happy Easter

Enjoy your day peeps!

Happy Earth Day...

                    ...today and every day.

"There is hope

if people will begin to awaken

that spiritual part of themselves,

that heartfelt knowledge that

we are caretakers of this planet."

 ~Brooke Medicine Eagle

um Mom, there's a little problem with my lunch...

just having a little fun creating transparencies...

LOL!

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Birdie Birthday Card

After fighting off a migraine all week (and not winning a couple of the days) I finally finished my birthday card for Dustin Pike's current It's A Party challenge.  What made the brain pain even worse was that I had my fancy schmancy new Prismas sitting on my table all lined up purty and staring at me the whole time just waiting to be played with.  I used my first two images that I was finally able to color for the card and WOOHOO how I love these pencils!  I used odorless mineral spirits with them and I'm amazed at the blending effect.  I did figure out some tricks to the blending and shading while coloring these images, but for me these are really so much easier than the Copics and Bics that I've been struggling with.  I think I've found my favorite coloring tools!!

For the card I decided to try the swing design that I have seen so many times and it totally amused my 5 year old, lol!  It is really such an easy pattern I'm not sure why I've never tried it before.  Paper is by K&Co (recognize it deb?? heehee! ).

CLOSED CARD VIEW

OPENED CARD VIEW

"SWINGING" CARD VIEWS

Another fun challenge in Pike's Playground!


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Who documents this stuff anyway?? LOL!!

Do you know what today is??  I didn't till I logged on my 'puter this morning, but from now on we have a new holiday to celebrate in my house!

Check it out:

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Easter Checkers Game

I'm entering another of Dustin Pike's challenges and this week he has challenged us to make an Easter themed non-card project.  Oh I love non-card challenges but gosh Dustin, this one week time frame is killin me, LOL! 

I decided to make a checkers game for my 5 year old using some of his pre-colored images.  I used an Easter digi for the regular side of the checkers and then I used a different image on the other side and added a crown that I cropped out of yet another of his images to make the checker "Kings".  I was afraid that the checkers would be difficult to grasp so I decided to put a foam pop dot in between the front and back layers and this made them just thick enough to easily pick up. 

For the board I cut strips of two patterned papers and wove them together and then glued and zig zag stitched the edges.  I didn't think through the board design well enough beforehand because the checker part of the board ended up 12x12, so to make a mat border I had to cut strips of paper on the diagonal and then glue under the edges of each side and trim.  I kind of got stuck when it came time to find chip board the right size too, oops.  I used cardstock pieces to fill in under the entire board and it did turn out pretty sturdy but a 5yo is kinda tough on toys so we'll see how long it stays flat, LOL!

I also made a little box to put the checkers in and I used another Dustin digi that I added the text "Checkers" to on the banner.  This image is colored with my Bics and Copics and I added stickles and a bit of Diamond Glaze too.  There's also some stickles on the checkers.

My daughter has driven me crazy the last couple days asking if it was ready to play with yet, and I kept telling her that I had to finish it and take pictures first.  But when that time finally came - I was missing ONE checker!!!!  It appears that this morning my darling daughter could not resist stealing one of the checkers to play with when I wasn't looking.  She had misplaced it and it took 20 minutes to find it tucked inside one of her coloring books, yikes!  I guess I should have made extra checkers to begin with...  LOL!


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Dance in the Rain

Dustin Pike's challenge this week is to use his digis with a "Spring Showers" theme.  I wanted to do something different than a card and decided to make my daughter a small wall hanging for her room.  I used the same quote that I put in her high school yearbook when she graduated.  I love this quote.  Words to live by indeed.

It was fun doing a non-card project again, I miss that.  I was going to hang this in her room at home but she is stealing it for her dorm room instead and that is ok with me because that means she really likes it, yay!


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Out of This World

I told you I'd be playing with stair step cards again, LOL!!  This time it's a birthday card for my niece and I used TWELVE Dustin Pike images.  Oh this is addicting and was even more fun than the last one! 

I did the combo trick and used both my BICs and my Copics to color.  I spent lots of time fussy cutting and pop dotting everything for dimension including the eyes of the monsters which I also coated with Liquid Glass.  The space ship is my favorite part I think - his expression is just too stinkin funny!  I used Liquid Glass on the top of his ship and when I added the banner I curled the paper a bit to make it wavy.  The balloons were cut from patterned mirror paper with a Cuttlebug die and then I attached wire to them for the strings.  The "inside" of the card is again on the back so I made sure to pretty it up since it would be on display too.

When I went to assemble each step layer I thought I'd add a matted frame to each section which caused my card to be wider than the standard 6" and no longer square (need to plan better the next time!).  This made the envelope size tricky and I actually had to make a dimensional one too because this thing was way to thick to slip into a flat envelope.  Also, the whole thing ended up so heavy with all the layers that I had to add a tab underneath to connect the front and back to stabilize it and keep it upright.

Such a fun project, and the best part is that my niece really loved it when I gave it to her!  (ok, I'm secretly mumbling "rats!" because I was hoping I could steal it back, LOL!!)

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Sympathy Card

Sympathy cards are never easy for me to make but I wanted to make a really nice one for a long time friend who just lost his brother and his dad.  I found inspiration from a beautiful friendship card by Linda's Works Of Heart and some really nice sentiments at Imag-e-nation.com.  I used Creative Memories papers from their Nancy O'Dell Hummingbird line - oooooohboy! you have to try these because they are just GORGEOUS!!  The frame design around the front sentiment was a freebie from  The Graphics Fairy.

Special friends deserve special cards and this one is filled with lots of love.

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What is better than a Dustin Pike digi?

SEVEN OF THEM! 

I've been wanting to make a stair step card for a while and decided to finally try one for my mom's birthday card.  I knew I wanted to use one of Dustin Pike's new spring digi's so I could enter his challenge HERE, and then I decided to challenge myself  further and combine a bunch of them into a scene.  I ended up with ... count them: SEVEN! 

Dudley: FebDay24B
Background: TreeB
Flowers: BottomB
Rainbow and Sun: JanDay6B
Butterflies: vbflysb
Dragonfly: Dragonflya
Flower circle border: RingB

This was fun.  I mean really FUN!!  It is one of those projects that you start tinkering with and keep adding to and then when it is done you don't want it to be because you had so much fun in the process. 

I used my BIC markers and Copics together, sitckles and glossy accents, and I used foam to pop up Dudley, the dragonfly and the front sentiment.  The butterflies were printed on the background and then also printed and cut out separately so I could overlay them and pop up their wings.  The back sentiment is edged using the Martha Stewart Deco Shell punch around the page set (absolute  fave!!).  I fussy cut everything I could and it took quite a while but I love to do it so I didn't mind.  I put what would normally be the inside of a greeting card on the very back of the card.  To be sure it would stand up and not droop, I cut a strip and, running it under the entire card, I glued one end behind the first layer of flowers and then tucked the other end in between layers glued on the very back accordion piece (when I glued the greeting part to the back of the card I left a small opening on the bottom for this tab to tuck into).

I have to make another of these for myself now because it is taking every ounce of energy to pull my grubby paws off it to give it away, lol!  It certainly won't be my last stair step card!

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