Long time no post!

My daughters and I opened up a booth at the Public market here in town in Sept and just closed this past weekend.  It has been one of the most fun things I have ever done, but was very tiring.  We have decided to maybe do something with some others a couple of weekends a month and then in the spring start going to some various craft shows.  This is the website if you are interested.  We don't have many photos up yet, but it will give you an idea of what we have been doing.  http://setinstonesisters.biz/

Now today I have been making Christmas cards.  You would think I would be tired of that, huh?  I always enjoy recycling Christmas cards, but this year I am trying out reusing tissue paper, ribbon and the clear paper that goes around a basket.  I made  a couple of cards for winter and then one Christmas card for next year.

Happy New Year.  It is good to be back.

Beautiful Saturday

I am entering two challenges this weekend and hope to add a third, but don't want to press my luck timewise!    The first is the weekly image from Designed2Delight and is called Autumn Harvest.  I added a couple of other images also.  Faith is the only designer I know who makes the white filled PNG images and includes them with each image.  I always loved combining images and this makes it so easy!

Next is a card I made using one of the Cheery Lynn dies.  The current challenge at Cheery Lynn Designs blog is Anything Goes.  I only have a few of their dies, but really love using them.  The detail is just amazing!!  The paper and ribbon are from Stampin Up.

Fall is here!

Today the temp is supposed to be close to 100, but then Tuesday it drops to 75.  So, I am more than ready for fall.  This week the image from Designed2Delight is really sweet.  I had colored it and then cut it out to go on another card and that didn't work at all so not to be outdone I put it on this background made with my new Sizzix embossing folder.  The card doesn't look nearly as crooked as the pic, so hopefully the recipient of this one won't have a ruler handy.

School days

The last time I made a card for the Designed 2 Delight challenge I forgot to post it on the D2D blog!  So I need to make sure when I finish here I go there!  I like this little girl, Maisie Belle.  The pencil sticker and books sticker are part of the goodies I got when I took an online course on Color at Big Picture Classes.com.

Every Flower is to bloom

I have had a good time making cards the past two days.  The first is the Designed2Delight image this week called Every flower.  I added  more flowers and then added last week's border along the bottom of the flowers.  Faith's white filled PNG images are so much fun to play with that I have to try and combine at least two images every week.  The sunflower paper is one of the background papers from TLC.
The Asian card was made with my new Cuttlebug Asian set which has four folders in it.  The stamps are from Stampin Up.
I got the Aspen leaf and lady's face stamp from Stampland and combined those with stamps from Darcies to make my first Autumn card.  I don't like snow and am not really looking forward to winter, but wouldn't mind a little cooler fall weather!

Happy Thursday

I had a friend visit for a week and we went to the stamp convention in Cincinnati.  What a great time we had!  I really like the Cheery Lynn dies that I bought from Our Daily Bread Designs. The first card uses the current image from Designed2Delight and paper and ribbon from Stampin Up.
The second card uses a precious little image from Lily of the Valley, ltd.

Mice Wishes

I made a card using a Designed 2 Delight image.  Great image for a birthday card-even for an adult.  I love the little Mice sentiment.  I hate, hate real mice, but love the little digi mice.  They leave no droppings behind, except for a little paper!
The second card is one I did using an old SU stamp set because one of the ladies on one of my groups mentioned making an Egyptian card and didn't have a charm for it.  Even though I used inkjet shrink paper for my main image, it is great to use for a smaller embellishment.  I really love this paper.  The charm I used is from Hobby Lobby's clearance section and is quite thick so am not sure if I will even mail it.  Maybe I can hand deliver it to someone.

CDAC progressive challenge

Crafter's Digital Arts Center is giving free images this month for us to make cards with and post to the site.  There are six this month and I love all of them.  I made cards last night using four of them.  The first  is a little dancer from Whoopsi Daisy  designs.  I have ordered a lot of images from this site and love using them on cards.  The punched border I made using a punch I just got yesterday from EK Success.

The second card, using two of the images, are from Sandi's Samples.  The sentiment is from my very favorite blog and store-TLC Creations.

The last precious image is from Anne's Digital Art.  I added another sentiment form TLC Creations.

I really like all of the images offered this month.  I am going to enjoy making the other two into cards also and will use these again.

Livin' the Good Life

I am loving this image!  This week at Designed 2 Delight Faith gave us an image of our choice for playing last week.  I got this pretty Lakeside Shack image and added Mary, Mary.  I think she is so cute and looks like she is having such a good time at the lake.  I thought this was a very restful, cool, peaceful scene.  I need that!!

Ladybug Kaela at the beach

This is for the At the Beach challenge at Designed 2 Delight.  I love the lighthouse and really wanted to put a sitting Kaela on the beach so here we are.  I am not sure who I will send this card to, but I bet I will think of somebody!!

Peacock Beauty

I never miss a week making a card with Faith's freebies on Designed 2 Delight but occasionally forget to post the image to her site as was the case last week with my strawberry card.  Sigh.......!   This week she has a beautiful peacock image for us to play with.  I really have a difficult time coloring  these so chose to do watercolors using Stampin Up ink pads and wc crayons.  The border and corners are Spellbinder's Floral Doily Accents.

Fun in the Sun

I picked up my new Stampin Up order last evening and just had to have a go at a card.  This is an I Brake for Stamps Humorous Senior image and is for the  Fun in the Sun challenge.

Vintage Paris

This card serves two purposes.  First it is for the European Inspired Saturday Challenge at D2D and then for my Big Picture SB Color Class.  This week we are doing orange and yellow.  When we were in Paris a few years ago we took a picture of a beautiful flower garden and it looked like it bordered the Eiffel Tower.  That is one of my favorite pics and I think of that scene when I think of Paris.  The flowers and sentiment are from D2D and the image is from Tibits Trinkets.

Strawberries

I love strawberries!  Just this morning I cut some up and had a fruit salad for lunch. I have a strawberry pot on my deck and it is so much fun to watch the plant grow and to get a couple of fresh strawberries a day off it.  Which bring us to the delightful image from Faith at D2D.  I colored it with copics and SU markers, which are really good to color in the small spaces.

Fun Cards

The first card I did for the Designed2Delight Saturday challenge, which is to make a birthday card.  I used the Wish Big image and, of course, went overboard with my distress inks again.
I ordered some new stamps from I Brake for Stamps, which is my favorite stamp company!  The dancers are two of four on the sheet and there are two other sentiments beside "Dance."  I used my distress inks again and some beads I got from a local bead store.

Sunshine and smiles

Ah, what a restful scene Faith has created this week with the freebie over at Designed2Delight.  I got the free sentiment at Scrap-a-licious.  I went back to the basics with watercolor crayons and torn paper.  I don't use much patterned paper but really do like the look so am trying to learn to mix and match.  Now that I look at the picture of the card I think I should have let the paper edges be even on the left side.........................Sigh!  Have a Happy 4th!

Summer Hibiscus

This card came about quite by accident.  I colored the image and then planned to add just a little watercolor to the edges but...................I dropped the cardstock into the puddle!    I actually kind of like how it turned out though.  This is D2D's new image and the hibiscus is my second most favorite flower in the world.  The first being a daisy!!  I stamped the flower embellishments onto shrink inkjet paper and then punched them out with a punch from Purple Daisy.

Fresh Cut in Pink and Orange

Here is the same image from D2D but using the colors red and orange.  I like doing the Saturday challenge and especially enjoy using the same image from the day before.  Once again I used Distress ink but on watercolor paper this time.

Fresh Cut

This week's image is a delightful little vase with flowers.  I distressed the image and used a paper stack from The Paper Studio.

Goin Buggy Challenge

I enjoy doing the Satreday challenges over at Designed 2 Delight but more often than not run out of time.  This week the  challenge is to make a card with a bug so I chose one of my favorites-a dragonfly.  This image is called Dragonfly Collage.  The sentiment is also one of Faith's.

Tiptoe through the Tulips

This is this week's image from Designed 2 Delight and is called Mary, Mary.  All I could think of was  Tiny Tim's  1968 Tiptoe Through the Tulips!  She kinda looks like a little flower child, doesn't she??

Creating with Collage

I am taking an online course (at Big Picture Classes) on Collage composition and having about as much fun as I have ever had with one of these classes!    The first card I made for the lesson on Asymetry and the next two I made for the Horizon class.  The third is for a Shrink Plastic swap and I printed the Louvre onto inkjet shrink paper from Darcies.  The fourth card I made for my granddaughter's birthday and on this one I included a butterfly I crocheted.

Spring Fence

This is a great image from Designed 2 Delight!  I was also able to practice my copic coloring for the online class I am taking.  The sentiment is from TLC Creations and is really one of my favorites.

Fun Flowers

What a fun image Faith gave us this week.  It has been a long week for me since I have worked the past 6 days and have one more to go.  Making this card is just what I needed to relax.

Summer Days

My least favorite thing to color is bears, but I was determined to use this precious image from Designed2Delight.
It is a very simple card, but I think-very restful!  I used a magazine page for the background paper.

Two for this Saturday

 Designed 2 Delight's Saturday Challenge this week is to use a handmade flower on a card.  I have been crocheting flowers for the past  few weeks and finally found a pattern I am happy with!  I dyed it to match the SU cardstock.  I love this image from Faith.  It is all about surviving!!

This little Skater Boy is this week's free image from D2D.    I had the background stamps from I Brake for Stamps so made the card simple.  I don't send many card to boys so may add a sentiment later when the appropriate occasion arrives.

Flowers and Birds

First is the birds! I went to Nashville to visit my son this past week and was delighted to see birds that I have only seen once in my life. These are beautiful Rose breasted grose beaks and are migrating through on their way northeast, I think. I am so glad I could get these pics.
Now to my favorite thing to do-make cards. This is this week's image from Designed 2 Delight. I added the little ladybug Kaela image and the butterfly to make it a little more feminine for the challenge on the same site.

Flutterby Fairy

What a cute little image Faith had for us this week at Designed2Delight. I kept the design simple since I added extra images to it to make a spring scene. I used copics, SU markers and Twinkling H2Os.

Life really is a balancing act

When I saw this image from Designed2 Delight today I thought of how young people have to balance so many things to stay afloat in their everyday lives. All I have to balance is a couple of part time jobs and a couple of fur babies. Not difficult at all in the scheme of things.

OK, on to my card. I colored the main image with copics, but the background paper is colored with SU markers. I also used my Martha Stewart Cherry blossom edge punch.

Dancing Mice

This is another image from Designed to Delight. Every Saturday there is a new challenge posted on Card Ideas and this week the challenge is to make a card for a young child. It is not necessary to use a D2D image, but it is fun for me to use Faith's images. When I make a card specifically for a child I like to use bright colors but keep the design simple.

Let's have a Garden Party

I really look forward to Faith's images every Friday morning. This week I added three other images of hers to the scene. I am loving those white filled PNG images of hers. It makes merging the images so much easier! I am thinking I made the butterfly a tad to big-he looks like he could maybe hurt the little bluebird! Anyway all the coloring is done with copics.

Christmas already?

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. Sunny and warm and today is supposed to be even nicer. I did a lot of yard work and have more planned for today, but a girl has to have her priorities! I decided at the first of the year that I would make 5 Christmas cards a month so I would be ahead come holiday season. I have to do a card using the Serendipity technique for one of my group swaps and even though it is time consuming I love the end result. I made six cards using this technique-three of them for Christmas. I used two Nestabilities dies and a sentiment from TLC Creations.

Spotty Dotty Watering Can

Today it is cold but the sun is shining and that is a big plus. This week at Designed2Delight the image is free to everyone. Faith has designed a watering can with pretty flowers for us to use. I used my new Martha Stewart double edge punch and my filigree butterfly punch. I used my copics to color it, but paper piecing would work perfectly on this image.

Ladybug Bloom card

I decided to do something totally different with the Designed2Delight image this week. I put Tim Holtz tissue paper strips on cardstock and then printed the image on it. Copics work, but they have to be the dark colors or they don't show up. The rectangle die is one of my new ones from Spellbinders, the background paper from Tim Holtz, the sentiment Stampin Up and the flower is from Hobby Lobby. I am very happy with the way this one turned out.

Guest Designer

It is kind of exciting for me to be asked to be a guest designer this week at the Designed 2 Delight Challenge Blog. Tomorrow a new challenge will be posted. This week's image is a precious jar with ladybugs.

This is the Poppy image I have had for some time-very simple and versatile. I used a Spellbinders die and my new decorative paper pack from K & Company.

Here is Caring Kaela and is one of Faith's newest images. She has the mouthless version as well, but I prefer the sweet little smiling one. The sentiment is from D2D also.