this little life of mine

Happy Monday, and Happy Halloween! I decided to make one last Halloween card for the year before jumping into Christmas. I used the small and large gravestones, scaredy cat, and grass tuft (not pictured, but added later) from Stampa Barbara, the moon face from Stampa Rosa, and the little ghost from Uptown Rubber Stamps. (Pictured, but not used is the Bat Trio (I forget the company), and the Trick or Treat bag from Stampa Barbara.)

 I started out by stamping everything where I wanted it to make my scene. This way I can see what images need to be masked.

Then I stamped and masked the first images, then finished up by stamping the rest of the scene. In the finished piece, I ended up making everything too high on the card, so I nixed the Bat Trio, and added the grass tufts to make the ground to fill in the bottom of the card.

 I coloured it in using a combination of  Prismacolour coloured pencils and Walnut Hollow oil coloured pencils, and because I was feeling lazy, I just hand wrote the sentiments on the gravestones with a Sharpie.

I think it turned out really cute, and I think it might be my favourite one this year! I'm getting my Holiday and Christmas stamps out and organized, and plan to start playing with them soon! I hope you all have a safe and fun Halloween, and I'll see you next time! Cheers! 

After what feels like years away, I've finally returned to my rubber stamping hobby, and to celebrate I did a little shopping at my new favourite rubber stamp supplier Simon Says Stamp. I just ordered a few items, and recently received a good-sized box filled with stampy wonders!

This sentiments on this sheet from My Favorite Things were quite a bit bigger than I thought they would be, but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with them. 

Next I picked up some clear envelopes to store my newly purchased unmounted stamps in.

I picked up the Wink of Stella brush which has clear glitter in it. I had to really fight to get the glitter out of the pen, but I love this touch of sparkle it brings. I can see using it for snowflakes and butterflies and flowers.

I'm not sure why I decided to get a coffee stain stamp, but I did.  

I just HAD to buy this adorable stamp from Stamping Bella! Seriously, it looks just like me: from the red hair, the cropped jeans, and the martini! I like this for my New Year's cards!

I also picked up some cling sheets, so I can unmount some of my wood mounted stamps. I might of screwed up, though, because all my wood mounts already have the cushion, but maybe I'll come across some that need some new cushioning!

Finally, the item I'm most excited for: the Mini MISTI. I've seen stampers using this on YouTube videos, and it looks simply amazing! I can't wait to try it out!

It's really tiny. It's definitely just for card-sized projects, not scenes. 

I'm pretty excited to get to stamping, and see what fun cards I will create with all my new stuff. I think I'm about done with Autumn/Halloween  now, and should really get started on my Holiday/Christmas cards! Hope you're all having a great weekend! Cheers!

So, after posting my Happy Autumn card yesterday, the Halloween card I whipped out for World Cardmaking Day looked a little boring, so I decided to fix it up. I cut out the card trio and sentiment, and adhered them to a piece of corrugated yellow paper. I cut out the largest of the three bats, and used it to cover up the crappy cutting job I did on the sentiment, and stamped my Moon Face from Stamp Francisco and put that in the opposite corner. I think it looks a lot better and much more interesting!

And, here's both of my cards together. I think they look pretty good, and I'm inspired to make a few more for the Halloween/Autumn season!

Have a terrific day! Cheers!

Good morning, everyone! Here's another new card I stamped recently, this time to celebrate autumn!

 I used my pumpkin stamp from PSX, and Susan Branch Numbers and Letters set for the sentiment. I used my two leaf punches for the leaves and a variety of coloured pencils to colour and shade the pumpkin. I stamped the pumpkin with my Distress Ink in Walnut Stain on some card stock and cut it out, coloured it in and attached it to a piece of yellow corrugated paper. I punched out my leaves in yellow, red, and kraft papers, using a couple to cover up the corners of the pumpkin that didn't stamp so well. I stamped "Happy Autumn" on yellow paper and layered it on some of the red, and attached it to the opposite corner from the pumpkin. It's pretty simple, but it turned out really well, imho!

Happy Columbus Day! Cheers!

So, today is World Cardmaking Day. (It's also the first day of Horrordailies, which is pretty exciting, too!) I had no idea this was a thing, but I'm pretty excited to have discovered it! I have been wanting to get back to stamping for a couple months, and fully intended to stamp Halloween cards last month, and Autumn/Thanksgiving, and Christmas cards this month, but I'm running out of time! For today, to celebrate the event, I'm going to whip out a quick Halloween card in the hopes that it will inspire me to do more.

I decided to do a Halloween card, and grabbed a bunch of my favourite Halloween stamps: Card Trio, Scardy Cat, and Gravestone by Stampa Barbara; Bat Trio by All Night Media; "Trick or Treat" sentiment by Peddler's Pack Stamp; and Ghost by Uptown Rubber Stamps. 

 I masked off the three cards, and stamped the Ghost, Gravestone, and Scardy Cat in each card with my black Marvy marker, and used coloured pencils to colour them in. I used my black Marvy marker to stamp the sentiment and Bat Trio. I used a black caligraphy pen to handwrite the "R.I.P." on the Gravestone, and the Boo! up above the Scardy cat.

I think it turned out pretty good, and it only took me about an hour! I hope you're having a great Saturday, and Happy Horrordailies!  Cheers!

My Christmas cards are mailed!! Honestly I think this is the earliest I have EVER mailed out my cards! Granted there are a few people who I know have moved, and I don't have their new address yet, so I'll have to mail cards out when I have their new addy, BUT! All the other cards - friends, family, Christmas Card exchange - are in the mail! I'm actually really super excited about that, and also feel SO relieved! I even have some cards (store bought, but still ...) for my co-workers, so I'm in really good shape card-wise this holiday season!

This year I only stamped one Christmas card design, and only made 12 of them. Last month when I was going through my two boxes of cards, I found quite a few Christmas cards from past years - some hand-stamped cards, some photo cards, some store-bought cards - that I decided to use up this year for Weetabix's annual card exchange. Hopefully no one will be disappointed if they happen to get a duplicate card from me, or even a store-bought one; I'm just trying to declutter my home, and since they were still perfectly good cards, I didn't want to just throw them away! Honestly, I love you all regardless of what kind of card I send you! My hope is that I will finish up all the cards this year, and be able to start fresh next year.

Below are all the leftover hand-stamped cards I've made over the past few years and mailed out this year, including the new design I did this year. Enjoy!

This one above I had my mom colour in for me after I took this picture, so if you get it, it'll look a little different! But it's still super cute!

The above is a photograph I took during a vacation in Pismo Beach, California, and used an online card-making company (sorry, I can't remember now what it was!) to make the cards.

And this is the 2015 Christmas Card! I found these fun "ugly Christmas sweater" stamps at Simon Says Stamp, and while I have lots of Christmas-themed stamps, I just had to have them!

Do you mail out Christmas/Other Winter Holiday cards? If you do, do you make them yourself, or just buy a box at the store? Either is awesome as far as I'm concerned! Cheers!

Prepare to be amazed: I actually managed to make ALL my Christmas cards AND get them mailed off beFORE Christmas!

I KNOW!! 

Well, I did create a pretty easy design and only used four stamps total, but it's still an accomplishment! I used one of the new stamps I bought at Paws on Main in Cambria this past September - a cute little Christmas tree with ornaments by Hero Arts - and stamped it using Espresso ink from Adirondak on some brown, lightly corrugated paper, layered it over some dark sage green paper, then adhered it to an off-white card. The inside greeting, "have yourself a merry little christmas", is by Penny Black and was stamped using Tea Dye Distress Ink by Ranger. And, finally, I stamped a small snowflake from All Night Media and "Happy New Year" by Magenta on the back of the card, alternating between the Espress or and the Tea Dye inks. 

I think it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself! And, so did the Christmas letter I sent off to my family! Cheers!

This week the letter E is being showcased in the All About Me meme. I had a hard time trying to figure out what word to use: energy, exercise, elegant, eggs ... there are so many words to use and yet so few at the same time. To be honest, I just wasn't too inspired this week. Then as I was going through some of my hand-stamped cards my grandmother had kept, I came across a few of the Easter cards, and though hey, I'll post pictures of my Easter cards!

Aaannnd, then I remembered I just did an entry about Easter cards back in April, so I'm basically recycling the whole idea. But, I can't think of anything else, so hopefully no one will mind! Here are a few of the Easter cards I had given my grandparents which my grandma had kept. Enjoy!

This is one of the first Easter cards I did, soon after I started stamping back in the mid-90s and way before I had a computer that now takes up all my time. All the eggs in this basket were individually stamped and cut out and placed in the basket. Some of them are even embossed which is a very time consuming process! I wish I knew what year this was, but unfortunately I didn't write that down. 

Thankfully I wrote the date on this one so I know I made it for Easter 1999. This is another card that took a lot of time to do what with all the masking and cutting out and colouring in. 

I must've been getting busy by 2000 when I made this card, because it's much simpler than the others above. 

This was the last Easter card I made in 2008. The eggs were stamped on decorative paper, cut out and glued on a blank card, and the greeting was stamped with individual alphabet letters. 

A sampling of some of my hand-stamped Easter cards: