Playing with my friend Jen

Today my great friend Jen joined me at my house (with a quick run to our not-so-local stamp store first) to work together on USING our latest Simon Say's Stamp! kit.  We did pretty well considering we spent an hour at that shop and then got down to work.  We each made 4 cards together...Jen's are fabulous as always...and then I made one more tonight.  We are on a roll!  At first this kit didn't grab me but now I think quite differently.  This stamp set is just adorable with the two dresses, clothes line and hanger.  Sentiments are fun too.


I finally had the perfect use for those Tim Holtz hangers!

 Clothes line and sentiment were stamped with Distress Paint in Broken China.

This flower was stamped on assorted patterned paper from the SSS February kit in black ink.  The "clothes line" was used for the stem and then I added the leaves and sentiment all in Memento Tuxedo Black.

These dresses were stamped like the flowers above on the same patterned paper.  The middle dress was pieced together with two patterns.  Sweet tiny pink buttons added at the top of the stamped hangers.  Banner below stamped with the sentiment "wanna hang out?" and stamped with a tiny flower in Picket Fence Distress Paint.

Finally, a very different card from the same kit!  Patterned paper cut to fit the card base with the clothes line stamped above and below.  Sweet little dangling hearts stamped from the line and a panel stamped for the sentiment with more tiny pink buttons below that.

Thanks for looking:)

Clean & Simple 2 - Day One Card

I am so behind.  Ah well.

I, along with my friends Jen and Nancy, are taking the Online Card Classes, Clean & Simple 2 Card Class.  Today is day three, but I am just getting day one completed.   HA!  This is my spin on Kristina's craftsmanship tips.  I used the Club Scrap stencil from Adobe with turquoise Dylusions, and a heart punch for the die opening.  Inside that heart is a heart stamp from Simon Say's Stamp!   Sentiment is from Hero Arts.

Happy Boy!

Nathaniel...our grandson:)  He is one happy boy.   He's walking,  saying mamma and dada and waving bye-bye at 10 months!  What a luv.

Spectrum Noir

January 9:   Never thought I would go down this coloring road but I am hooked.  I learned about these Spectrum Noir markers which are similar to Copics.  Just a ton less expensive.  I love them and I'm beginning to get the hang of blending...beginning to, yes.  This was Bob's Christmas gift to me.  Now I need a better way to store them.  But in the meantime these pens have given my old stamps a new life.

Jen's January Card Sketch Challenge

Each month my friend Jen poses a challenge on Club Scrap's forum.  She assigns us with a new sketch to inspire our creativity in card making.  This month's was one of those sketches that I knew just exactly what I wanted to do.  It's similar to a previous card I made with coffee cups.  The cup stamp, from Paper Smooches, is just an outline allowing the wonderful prints from the Club Scrap paper I selected to shine.  These papers speak for themselves in the images and rich colors.

The Dragons!

As promised here is the outstandingly-jaw-dropping-gorgeous gift Jana made for me.  It is an accordion book that she covered in joss papers and Red Envelopes all with dragons of course.  Many of the dragons are designed to actually be the calligraphic character for "dragon".  How lovely is that!

Each envelope is also a pocket containing a large Chinese coin like below.

If the book wasn't enough, this beautiful window box contained the bejeweled dragon below.  It will have a special place in my craft room.

I'm one lucky girl!

Belated Birthdays - Double Dragons

Remember that card I made for my friend who got me hooked on stamping?  Well today we FINALLY got together to exchange birthday presents and have our Yak-A-Thon.  Jana was thrilled with her card and earrings.  I was WOWED by her gift to me.  Below you can see how gorgeous the wrapped gift is.  I didn't want to open it, it was so beautifully wrapped.  The gold ornament on top is a dragon.  I will post tomorrow what is inside.  I need to take time to properly photograph it to do it justice.

My friend Jana with her card.

The Dragon part:  Jana and I were both born in the Year of the Dragon.  Without consulting each other, we both made gifts with Dragon themes.  My card and the box I made for her earrings have dragons on them.  Wait till you see her gift to me tomorrow.  Dragons galore!

Today's Birding

The Woodbridge Wildlife Area was open to the public today so Bob and I planned our day to include birding that area as well as a few other stops in the Lodi area.  We essentially had the entire area to ourselves.  It was COLD...45, foggy turning to cloudy with an obvious storm moving in and the birds were laying low.  But we did have an interesting variety of the 22 birds we did see or hear.  The most interesting was the Fox Sparrow.  No bird photos on this trip.  These birds were moving too fast for any decent shots today.  But here is Bob walking back up from the Mokelumne River.

We were pretty bundled up as you can see.  I had all sorts of woolies and vests on today.

We ended our day at Heritage Oak Winery (our favorite spot) where we enjoyed great wine tasting and warmed up a bit.

 Then froze ourselves good by picnicking out on the patio on warm soup and rice I had brought.  I had heated our food before leaving home, stored in bento boxes and then placed in an insulated box with our "bean bag" warmers.  It really kept the food warm.  While we sat outside eating we each put a heated bean bag inside our jackets, LOL.  It helped a lot!  You can see one peeking out of Bob's jacket. You can also see we had the patio and birds to ourselves.  We did get some strange looks from other wine tasters.

It turned colder but that didn't stop us from more birding down to the river and back.   But I did have to layer more head and neck ware.  Brrrrr.  Any day birding is a good day:)

A Day Late...

January 4:  Bob's Christmas gift.  What is a TORMEK - T7 you may ask?  It's one amazing sharpening system for every bladed tool you can think of.  From woodworking chisels to my fine kitchen knives...this baby does the job.  Bob has sharpened every pair of scissors, every kitchen knife of mine and several of his woodworking tools.  My knives are now deadly so I had better stay focused when slicing those tomatoes!

Any day birding is a good day...

Today was one of them.  I go to Cosumnes River Preserve about once a week.  Some birds I see, I'm sure, are the same ones.  Like this juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk.  He was quite unconcerned about my presence and moved from tree to tree in the same general area.  I probably spent about one hour just standing in one spot enjoying the raptors and shore birds they were buzzing.

My other best bird was this bright yellow Meadowlark.  He was by himself in a small marshy area that I walked past.   As I crossed the road to enter the wooded area he flew across the road also, perched on a post and sang to me.  Or at least it seemed he was singing to me...I did hear a distant Meadowlark answering back.  It's amazing to see such colorful plumage in winter.

Garage Workshop Begins

Bob has been working on numerous home improvement jobs around the house.  He's got tools for everything but no great way to organize them or use them with ease.  Today he and Charley took the first steps in getting the wall ready to hang Bob's first homemade cabinet.  Creating this workshop of his is going to be a long project but in the end will make it so much nicer and enjoyable for Bob to accomplish all the things he wants to do.  Like making storage for me in my craft room:)  Oh, then there is also the kitchen re-do and...

January One, Two Thousand Thirteen

Happy New Year friends!  2012 was a huge year for my family with special birthdays (my 60th and son's 18th), our 25th anniversary, Charley's HS graduation and the birth of our first grandchild, Nathaniel.  Now I wonder what 2013 will bring us?  My one hope is for good health for us all to enjoy what comes our way.

I also hope to make more of this blog and use it as I originally intended to share not just my crafting but all my interests.  Family, health, birding and of course crafting.

To start out Jan 1 I am posting a photo I took just two days ago of this lovely female Northern Harrier.  I see them in the air all the time but rarely perched or on the ground where I can digi-scope them.  I had been watching her cruising a marsh area when she landed to investigate another raptors "left-overs".  She plucked a bit at it but wasn't interested and took off again with another female to buzz the shore birds.  They were having a lot of fun stirring up trouble in the marsh.