It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas?

Depends on where you're from, I guess. I've got ribs on the grill, it's 100 degrees out, but my friend, Eugenie, a Saffie from Capetown, tells me that her childhood Christmas usually included a cookout on the beach! So what the heck? Grillin' out and chillin' with some Christmas crafting in make a good combo., anytime, anyplace!

So, this one's for:
Fluter by Wednesday's - Make a Christmas card using a butterfly, fairy, or angel.
Aud Sentiments Challenge Blog - Choose your own Christmas Sentiment
Sketch for You to Try - It seems I'm late, though Mr. Linky says I still have a week. :( 

Ugh. The shiny paper photographs horribly.

 I happened to have this cute little ice fairy and Christmas sentiment from The Pink Cat Studio already in my digi stamp collection. I love this Heidi Grace flocked and shiny paper! While I was in Texas last week, my mom sent me through her fabric scraps, and I found some floaty crinoline-like stuff, which I ruffled and held in place by stitching down a piece of silver ribbon. Here's the detail shot of that:

Well, sort of. It just isn't showing up well. The snowflakes are Jolee's, and the blue ribbon was something in my stash. The blue CS is Bazzill run through the Cuttlebug in a snowflake embossing folder. It's on top of some white CS punched with my MS doily punch.

I sooooo need to save up for a new camera. This thing's great for life, awful for photographing cards and layouts. Any suggestions?

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Please come back soon.
Have a great Saturday, whichever end of the planet is yours. :)
Elizabeth

Surf's Up!

I wish, huh? It's sooooo time for a beach trip! I'll just have to settle for beach-y stamps. At least the laundry won't get backed up! :)

Anyway, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things - it's so nice to abdicate that grown-up role for a little while - and get some crafting in. Found some great challenges and came up with this:

It's a side-step card - my first-ever! Found great directions at juliedavison.com .

Some Odd Girl - Spots, Stripes and a Big Title

Charisma Cardz - Anything But Square

Crafty Sentiments - Use Three Designer Papers

Alphabet Challenge Blog - M is for Men

Color Throwdown - Use these colors:

Recipe:

Papers - Little Yellow Bicycle

Stamps - Surfer Kody from Some Odd Girl Digital Stamps, Other surfboards are CHF, Font is LD Jumpy   from Lettering Delights.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! Please leave a comment; I learn a lot from them! Stay cool...

Elizabeth

Mothra Attacks!

*Yawn* It seems everyone I've run into today is sleepy! Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's just Thursday. Either way, it's on that I'm going to blame my latest fail. I swear, I think I could do a blog just on those!

I'm sooo excited that Flutter By Wednesday is back! I really did miss them, so I wanted to really do one up for it.. y'know, try something new. I've never done an easel before, much less a round one. I ended up with:

I liked it, and then AJ walked in while I was putting on the butterflies. He looked around my shoulder and said, "Mom, I think you'll need to change the size on your girl. The butterflies are huge. It looks like Mothra's attacking."

Drat. He's right. And then, just to prove he's getting older, he added, "Do ya think State Farm would cover that, or would they tell you they don't do Japanese monster attacks?" Yeah. Remind me to call my agent. Probably does need a separate rider.

So I started to resize my uber-cute digi girl from Bee Crafty when I decided, I'm just going to go with it . I know it's out of proportion, but then again, how many of y'all have ever seen a Mothra card? Definitely something new!

This is for challenges at:

Flutter by Wednesdays - open

Bee Crafty - 3D (and using at least one digi)

Craftalicious Challenges - Make something cute. (I tried. Maybe Mothra's cute to his mother.)

The rest of the recipe:

DP Green - Little Yellow Bicycle

DP clouds - My Little Shoebox

Flowers - Prima (pink) and the white one's from Making Memories. So are the brads in the center of the pink flowers.

The sentiment is an acrylic stamp from a set I can no longer identify. (I know, bad job.) Cut with a Nestie, stamped in Brilliance.

Butterflies are Verve and are stamped in Adirondack Denim and Watermelon (hot pink - the photo makes it look red.)

Have a wonderful day. Thank you so very much for stopping by; please come again!

Elizabeth

Red, White and Blue... Through and Through!

Aaaah! We're still eating leftovers from Sunday's big ol' cookout, so that left me some time to knock out something for a few of the week's challenges.

It's a window or an aperture card, one that has the main image inside.

I used stamps from the {Ippity} set, Straight from the Heart. (Which, of course, means I'm singing Bryan Adams to myself, now. Badly. Child of the '80s thing.)

The wings on the heart are a graphics set from Lettering Delights. I used a Nestie to cut the window (Labels Two) Embossing on the inside is a QuicKutz folder. I inked up a Cuttlebug folder with white Color Box pigment ink and ran a piece of Red Carpet Bazzill CS through to make the front paper.

This is for the challenges at:

Paper Makeup Stamps - make a window card.

Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - aperture creations

Raise the Bar - colors of your flag

Oh, Alice! - red, white, and blue

The Shabby Tea Room - embossing

Whew! I hope your holiday was a good break for you. We enjoyed the fireworks at Carowinds. I managed to get bitten twice by a fire ant while watching - I made AJ put on sneakers, but I wore flip-flops. Should have followed my own advice. I'm still itching!

Have a wonderful week. Wear your tennies, y'all!

Elizabeth

Chillin' (at last!) Happy Friday, FWF!

What a relief! Big storms (by our standards - my family in Texas would laugh) rolled through a couple of days ago and it's suddenly bee-yootiful outside! (Yes, in the South, that has four syllables.) Hooray for laptops - I can enjoy the morning sun and relax with some Friends with Flair fun!

I'm sooooo glad you're here! Been on an old-school {Ippity} kick this week, digging out two of the original sets.
Popped these together using stamps from the Because of You set:

A thank-you card for a dear friend.

A layout of our trip to The  Beach (which, if you're in the Carolinas, means Myrtle. If we're going to another, we'll name it. Aren't local-isms fun?) AJ surprised me lately, asking if I would scrap a particular event "by hand". I usually digi-scrap while I'm working during the school year, and I didn't think he noticed, much less cared. Who knew? So, I'm making an effort now that I'm free for a while to do more paper LOs. That bottom picture is his footprints. Looking more like mine every day. *sigh*

This is a card I did for a couple of challenges using the same set:

and one using 'Simply Home'

Thanks again for coming over! I hope your holiday weekend is fun and safe!

If you've misplaced yourself, the hop's back here

Y'all come back!
Elizabeth

Christmas in July

Hello, again!

A couple of the challenge sites are thinking Christmas early. These are probably the same people who did most of their shopping for this year last year, but we'll forgive them.

This one's for:
The Alphabet Challenge Blog - Icy Colors
The Sweet Sunday Sketch

Lots of possibilities here. I'm thinking of using it again with another card that's flitting around in the brain.

Anyhow, my offering:

Shoestring Alert! - The snowflake is a freebie on the Fred She Said website!

 It's been colored with Copics and the center has a blue rhinestone. Middle is up on pop dots. The embossing is done with a Cuttlebug folder. Silver buttons are American Crafts and the blue buttons are from Oriental Trading. CS is Bazzill.

Thank you so much for stopping by today. I hope your holiday weekend is a (safe and happy) blast!
Elizabeth

It's Not Easy Bein' Green

Happy Thursday! The temperature is finally *not* nine zillion! I'm so excited! We'd hit the pool, but AJ's taekwondo team has a demo tonight at the movie theatre for the opening of The Last Airbender. I love the Avatar series on Nick, and hope the movie is as good!

Ever have one of those projects that has driven you so nuts you just want it done. I'm there today. Several of my haunts have green-related challenges up this week, and I've been wanting to ink up this {Ippity} set I've had around for the longest. I started with a gorgeous-but-killer sketch at Card Patterns

I turned it and ended up with:

This is also for color combo challenged at:

Our Creative Corner (greens and blues)

The Color Chef (green, brown, and white) and

City Crafter (shades of green)

Since my shoestring budget doesn't allow for new dies right now (oh, how I'd love some of the new ones at MFT!), I had to get a little creative to manage the scallop. I cut three scalloped squares and played Frankenstein with them until they (mostly) fit, I had to use a bit of lace to cover up a gap.

The hard part was getting it together and photographed! Adhesive came undone. Twice, DP tore when I tried to reposition it. Shelf fell when I was taking the picture. Something jinxed this thing!

Oh, well. At least I've got a new house card in my stash.

Have a great day!

Elizabeth