The Hen House is full of Chicks!!

Hello!
Did you get out and brave the crowd and heat Friday night?  It was the grand opening for Albuquerque's newest scrapbook and stamping store!!  It's amazing what we will endure just to get our hands on new goodies! 

Thank you for helping make the opening an overwhelming success. It was so much fun seeing your happy faces and getting to meet so many of you. Hopefully I'll see you in my upcoming classes at the Hen House Paperie......where chicks of a feather craft together!!  (Posts and pics coming this week.)

Yard Sale Goodies

Do you like yard sales and great finds as much as I do?  I stumbled upon a wonderful yard sale this weekend after dropping a kid off at work.  They had been selling for two and a half hours when I arrived and claimed that their good stuff was gone.  With a quick glance, I knew that wasn't entirely true as this quilt caught my eye from across the yard.

Then these hydrangeas called to me, reminding me of my favorite Hero Arts Hydrangea stamp.

Its too bad I dropped it on my kitchen floor, breaking the front plastic shortly after bringing it home.  I gathered the pieces back together, a little clear tape on the side and it works!!

As I went to pay, this sole old book, a 1917 textbook, caught my eye amongst all sorts of magazines. I felt obligated to pick it up and place it with my quilt and hydrangeas.

My vintage haul cost me less than $5!  Oh yeah, baby!!

Summer Ride

This is a card I made with scraps from my table.  The tag stamped with the Hero Arts Ledger stamp was meant for another card, but the next layer of stamping was a disaster!!  Eventually the tag got pulled from the trash and got this fun scrap of Cosmo Cricket patterned paper stiched to it.  It was the perfect scrap to cover my mistake and give new life to this tag. Stitching it down ensured that it can't be taken apart showing the mess hidden underneath ;D.  A few more scraps were stitched together and tada ...a usable

card to send a friend! 

Stamping with Mom

This afternoon, Abbie who is my youngest at 15 yrs, asked me to help her make a card. She knew what she wanted to make so we went to work. 

She did the CB embossing, stamping and clear embossing, then picked out her purple PP and button accents. 








Watch those black dots come to life with the magic of Glossy Accents!! 

And what is a teenage girl without hair to battle?! 

Thanks for the fun afternoon, Abbie!  I love you......XOXO

Thank You

Thank you to the wonderful ladies who took my class Saturday afternoon at China Phoenix2!  We managed to stay cool and had fun creating two cards inspired by the Florida Gulf Coast and all of its beauty.  These are the two cards  we made. 





Can you tell I'm still trying to figure this all out??!!  So sorry for all of the white spaces!!  Putting together a post is a love/hate task right now. It's a slippery, steeeeeep learning curve while I get it all figured out.  Thank you for your patience.  ;D

IMG_2861

IMG_2861, a photo by kathyrosecrans on Flickr.

Here she is.... attitude and all!

I began with these new papers from Basic Grey's Out of Print line, and decided that this chica with attitude would be the perfect companion for them, She and I have a lot of fun chatting. What.....you don't talk to your stamps? Mine talk back too! Enjoy!!

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IMG_2857, a photo by kathyrosecrans on Flickr.

Yesterday I messed around and made a fun card, but am having trouble now getting a decent photo to share. Better photos soon!

Thank You Cheryl!!

Last Tuesday afternoon, my wonderful friend, Cheryl Valadez invited me to her house for a fabulous lunch and an afternoon of stamping conversation and a crash course on blogging!  She was so helpful and full of information and inspiration. When I became overwhelmed, Cheryl lovingly assured me that this feeling was nothing that some decadent chocolate wouldn't fix!! Thanks to all of her patience and persistence, I left with a blog ready to roll!  Thank you Cheryl for being such a wonderful friend and techie mentor to me ;D

Make sure you check out Cheryl's wonderful blogs!!  She has one devoted to stamping, is the author of theChina Phoenix 2 blog, and has a third blog all about cooking!! 

I'm Sew Excited!!

Experience, a photo by kathyrosecrans on Flickr.

This is a brand new experience for me, but here it goes!! I made this card for the I'm Sew Excited challenge at Moxie Fab World. The challenge is to use sewing icons in an innovative way. How fun is that?!!

Happy Fathers Day!!

 Today I am sharing a card with you that I made for my father last Father's Day.  It began with a simple sheet of patterned paper by K&Co that was just too beautiful to cut into.  The solution??  Pull out my patterned paper scraps, a few well loved Hero Arts stamps, my trusty Janome Sew Mini sewing machine,a sheet of printer paper and get to work!

I began by stamping over some of my scraps of paper that needed "just a touch more".  Then I cut these scraps into strips of varying widths.  They were scraps so the lengths were also uneven.  I arranged them on top of the sheet of  printer paper, using my dear sheet of patterned paper as my guide.

Now came the fun part as  began sewing these scraps down to the printer paper, abuting their edges and sewing them in place.  Some strips were sewn with a straight stitch, others got zig-zagged.  

Of course I had to varry which color of thread was on top, too!  It was so much fun to put together and see my own sheet of custom paper come to life. 

It was easy to cut a piece of this new paper 5.25" x 4" to use as the first layer for my card front and ohhhh so exciting!  I had never done anything like this before and was now on a creative roll. 



 To finnish off the card, I grabbed a sepia copy of an old picture of myself, mounted it on white card stock which I then distressed the edges of and mounted it to the front of my card using foam tape placed on the top, bottom, and left hand edges of the photo.  Using the foam tape in this manner created the perfect pocket for a Tim Holtz tag that I added stamping to on both sides. 

  Back side of the tag. 

With a card this sentimental I knew my father would not care one bit when I added a flower, some ribbon, lace, and buttons!

Dad, should you ever read this, I promise you will eventually get a card from me for Father's Day this year and it will be late as usuall!!  Also.......I still love you !!