Pretty Simple Card

Quick blog tonight...I'm just working on Christmas cards tonight. This set is called "No Greater Love" and I love how the Mary and Baby Jesus stamps. It's almost like from a newspaper or something. It's hard to describe, but it's neat. The paper is from the "Everlasting" paper pack. I'm working on cards for the upcoming card workshop and thought I'd take a minute to let you see one thing we'll be doing. That's it for tonight...

You are Close To My Heart,

Yvonne

Yes, I Know I Have Glitter on My Face!

You probably can't tell from the photos, but this snowflake ornament is covered in glitter (and so am I!). I took four stamps (in large to small size) from the New Fallen Snow set and stamped each twice. I cut each of them out really close to the lines. Divide them into two piles and work with one pile at a time. Each pile will have one of each size. Starting with the largest snowflake, I glittered the outside. Then I added a foam square to the back of the next size snowflake (but I didn't take off the protective paper on the double side yet) and added glue around the outside edge. Now, using the foam square as a "handle" I was able to dip it into the glitter and then add it to the biggest snowflake. I continued on until I had half an ornament. Then on the backside of the half I attached ribbon to make a hanger for it. Then starting on the other side I repeated the steps above until it was a 3-D ornament. I'm not sure we'll be making these for workshop because of the time factor and all the glitter--I'd be finding glitter until Valentines Day if 10 people made these! I just thought you might want to try one for yourself at home so I went ahead and posted it.

You are Close to My Heart,
Yvonne

The Only Kind of Mask I Like

I was getting ready to put away all the stuff from the first scrapbook workshop tonight and I decided to make a tutorial on masking. It has nothing to do with Halloween because like I've stated before...I'm not much of a Halloween girl :0) When you need one object to appear in front of another you would do masking. I can never get the pictures to cooperate with me as far as appearing beside the correct text so I've typed right on each picture. You'll need to click on each one to get a better view. Now hopefully they'll all upload :0)

You Are Close To My Heart,
Yvonne

UPDATE: If you have questions please don't hesitate to ask in the post section and I will answer them there as well. If you want you can also e-mail me at jwick@cableone.net .

Better Photos? Trying Again

Ok, I wasn't happy with the way the colors turned out on my fall layout last night so I took it outside today and tried to get some in natural light. Well, as it turned out I'm lucky to get these two pictures because the wind kept blowing them off the table! URGH! With natural light comes other natural elements. Oh well, trying again anyway. Don't forget you can click on then to enlarge them.

You are Close to My Heart,

Yvonne

Fall layout

For those of you that know me, you'll know that Halloween is my least favorite time of year so coming up with a Halloween themed layout for workshop was a stretch for me. Don't worry...if you're signed up and don't like Halloween either we can make some very easy changes.

The primary set used for this layout is called "Autumn's Gifts" with a couple other stamps thrown in. The paper set is called "Expedition". We're going to be doing a really fun technique using water color pencils. I feel like such an artist when I use them (but I'm really not!). Another technique we'll be doing is masking (see pumpkins in front of the fence). That would make an easy tutorial which I'll think about putting on here...in my spare time LOL! Really, I'll work on that. Anyone know how I made the checked paper?

For this layout I used a pattern out of the new Imagine book called "In the Groove". It's a pattern that allows you to make a quick and simple layout or you can take it up a notch which is what I've tried to do here. Thanks to Stacy and her suggestions for what I had done earlier today I now like this layout!

Ok, if you're coming to this workshop it would be a great idea to bring a chocolate pad and while you're at it, you can throw in an Autumn Terracotta pad as well. I got all through with this one and realized that it mostly uses chocolate which will make for a wait to get stamp pads if we only have mine. If mine is all we have then we'll play nice and share :0)

It's late and tomorrow is another long day so goodnight and...

You are Close to My Heart,

Yvonne

And We Have a Winner!

Is it really already Saturday? I did select a winner on Wednesday but I'm just getting around to posting tonight. How sad is that? Thank you to all of you and your wonderful suggestions. My honey had the best one though I have to say... "How about I get the air fixed?" He had the fix-it guy come over and we're all cooled down again which is very helpful for my mental well being :0) So now we'll be good to go on the next workshop night (thank you Ann for offering...I would have taken you up on it!)

So, our winner is Amber Korn! Random.org picked #3 and so Amber, I can either mail your cards to you, you can stop by and pick them up or I can give them to you at the unit meeting in a couple of weeks. What works for you? E-mail me to let me know.

Speaking of unit meetings, I showed you lots of fun stuff from the last one but I didn't have a picture of Gwen's Halloween project until now as she so graciously e-mailed a picture to me. My camera was dying (note to self: don't forget the batteries!). So here is her cute little card using some plastic spiders. It's Bootiful! Thanks Gwen!

Now that it's cooler in the house I'm getting into the creating mood again so be on the lookout. Besides that I'd better get in gear because there's a scrapbook workshop coming up on Thursday!

You are Close To My Heart,

Yvonne

I'm Going to a Beauty Pagent!

Ok, well I won't be participating as a contestant. I'm heading to a college in Miami, OK where the contestants are having a pampering night and I'm providing one of the stations for them to visit. (Is that right Tammy H.?)

Stacy braved the heat at my house and came over this weekend to do the prep work for it. We made up enough packets to see 35 girls in a period of 2 1/2 hours so we'll see how we do! We might be doing stamping aerobics to get them all done.

For those of you keeping up and commenting on my heat situation I want to thank you for your encouragement. It rained today so the house is very bearable! Thank you Jesus! Don't forget you can still post your reason for me to be thankful for the heat until the 10th and then I'll be drawing for someone to receive 10 stamped cards :)

UPDATE: This was a girls night out for the homecoming queen candidates at NEO college in Miami, OK. There were 32 candidates each representing a different club at the school. So that means that between Stacy and I we helped them make 32 layouts! The girls were great and each layout was unique and beautiful. Good luck to all you girls this next weekend!

You are Close to My Heart,
Yvonne

I really want to stamp BUT...

Our air conditioner needs recharging. It has a slow leak in it so my honey doesn't want to charge it up until next spring. So, in the meantime our house is very hot and humid probably close to 80 degrees. I want so badly to stamp, but it's too hot to even move! My stamp closet doesn't even have air that moves at all. The bad thing is that it makes me very crabby. We need a break in the weather soon or well, I don't know what. I'm even thinking that if the weather doesn't get cooler by the time workshops come around that I might have to cancel them or move them to someplace else. Anyone want to volunteer their house for an extra two punches on your card? What in the world did we do before air conditioning? I'm trying to think on the positive side so here's my Top 10 reasons to do without air conditioning.

1. Angie's curly hair is really cute!
2. I don't have to shave my legs as often as I do when I'm cold. Maybe I'm the only one, but cold air just negates a good shave for me.
3. I think I have a new weight loss program. We'll see when the weather cools off. I'm too hot to eat and I think I'm sweating it off.
4. I'm drinking more water than I have in a very long time.
5. It does cool down to liveable after about 9:00.
6. "Sorry honey, it's just too hot to run the oven. It's PBJ's again :0)"
7. I'm really considering that cute little younger looking haircut.
8. It's actually cooler outside so the kids actually will go out and play.
9. The house doesn't get as messed up because we're all just laying by the fans to get cool.
10. Going to Wal-Mart doesn't sound all that bad. At least they have air conditioning!
    

You are Close to My Heart,

Yvonne

p.s. Please post more reasons for me to look on the bright side. I will pick a random number with random.org and send the winner a stack of 10 stamped cards! Let's see, today is Friday so let's go through next Wednesday the 10th. Post away!

And the Winner is....(drumroll please)

Stampmonkey! I had a list of everyone that commented, subscribed or submitted artwork (in order of appearance) and my honey picked a number between one and 160. He chose number 17. Here's Stampmonkey's comment: "I love the card -- I love fall, so this card is taking me there a few weeks early!And I think Joel is adorable with his hair the way it is. ;) I have a 21-YO son who used to look something like that several years back (he's got quite a receding hairline now so is shaving his head - boo hoo), and with the exception of the Japanese, they have the same interests! ;)"

So stampmonkey if you will contact me I will be sending out your new paper trimmer! Congratulations!

Gotta blog and run today. I wanted to even blog early because the evening promises to be pretty busy with soccer.

You are Close To My Heart,

Yvonne

Did You Miss Me?

Well, it just didn't work out for me to post while I was away, mostly because my honey was worried about not being on a secure wireless connection and putting in my password which is what I'd have to do to post. Then at my friend's house we were so busy visiting with old friends that we didn't have time.

The wedding was beautiful and I was soooo excited to find out that the bride's colors were black, red and white since I had made her card in those colors. It was a blast hanging out with family and I especially loved it when both my boys (ages 3 and 18) went up to grandma and wanted to dance with her. It made for very warm memories. BUT, guess who left her camera in the motel room! Me! I'm hoping that others will share pictures with me :0)

So, here are the last three entries in celebration of National Scrapbook month (last month). The first is by Megan Sabo and it uses the Caprice papers. She used a flower from the Dimensional Elements to make the crumpled flower.

The middle picture is by Sheri Evans and she used a background stamp from the adorable backgrounds stamped in blush. She then embossed the letter from the Baroque Alphabet set. It's very elegant!

Third we have a layout by Amber Korn. She used the Expedition papers to create the cutest pumpkin patch layout. The background paper is embossed and sponged and looks like paneling. I love the creative clip over the picture. Amber will be teaching this layout for a class in the Joplin area.

Well, that's a wrap on our celebration for National Stamping Month. Of course I'll still be here posting (not quite as often!) so stay tuned.

You are Close to My Heart,

Yvonne