Creative Blog Hop

Hello friends.  My very creative and uplifting friend, Susan, over at Faith Words Faith Expressions invited me to join this blog hop.  Be sure to hop over and see what Susan has going on at her blog.

This is a flip card I made for a birthday using the fun spinner from the Spinner2stamp set by The Stamps of life.    If you haven't tried their stamps yet, I highly recommend them.  They're super quality clear stamps.  None of that sub par stamping that you get with low quality clear stamps.  (I don't work for them, just love their stamps.)

This is a zendoodle I did.  I mostly use my doodles on cards or in my journals.  Some I color and some I just leave black and white.

This is a journal spread I did about being a wife and mother.  The journals I share with others mostly contain Bible verses and quotes and art experiments.  My journals where I write my prayers and  private feelings are kept just between me and the Lord.

4. How does your creative process work?  I work on things in bits and pieces.  I never finish a  project all at one sitting.  Partially because I am in too much pain to sit and work on something that long and partially because I like to work on things in stages and come back the next day with a fresh perspective.

This is a background that I have started.  It's not at all what I was aiming for, but I ended up liking how it turned out.  That's the fun of experimenting.  You'll see this background again, either for a journal page or card.

Blessings:

• A phone visit with my sister.
• A friend is home from a long hospital stay and doing well.
• A gorgeous Monarch butterfly in my yard.
• Sweet newborn calves.

Have a fabulous day!!!

Inky hugs!

Shelly

Born Free

It's wonderful to be back! The jury is still out on whether or not my neck surgery was a success. I'm still in quite a bit of pain. We're giving it time to see if it needs to heal more or if they will need to go back and tweak things a bit. Meanwhile I'm very limited with what I can do with stamping. I've managed to color a total of 8 images since my surgery on August 20th. Just call me speedy. :)



This is a card that I made before my surgery. The beautiful horse image makes me think of the song "Born Free". The background is done using the Crinkled Chalk technique. You can find the instructions here. I used dye inks, which don't give quite as vivid of a background, but they're what I had in the colors I needed. The stitching at the bottom is faux stitching.



Supplies:

Stamps: Three Graces - Coronado Island Stamps
Paper: Handmade paper - Provo Craft
Ink: Archival Ink Sepia; Adirondack Caramel and Butterscotch; gel pen
Accessories: Eyelets

Blessings

• The outpouring of love and caring from my family and friends since my surgery.
• Our friend, Lloyd, was able to go home on Friday!!! It was one week short of 3 months after his accident. Please continue to pray for him as he continues to attend out patient physical, occupational and speech therapies.
• Mark purchased $106 worth of groceries for $2!!! He is amazing with his ability to find good deals.
• Mark's faithfulness in caring for me and showing me such true love through all of the physical problems I've had.

Have a fabulous day!!!
Inky hugs!
Shelly

Java Time

Hello everyone. I hope you're finding time to craft even though things are starting to pick up toward the holidays already. Seems hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only 9 days away.
The picture above is of an envelope that I made recently. Nothing fancy, but very cute. I use wallpaper samples to make the majority of my envelopes. Our local wallpaper store gives their old sample books away for free. It's an economical way to make envelopes and I'm keeping the sample books from going to the landfill. I use The Kreate-a-lope template by Green Sneakers for making my envelopes. It's so user friendly. You can visit their website at http://www.greensneakers.com/ . For envelopes like the one above, I use a printer label horizontally on the back side to address the envelope so that I don't ruin the picture. The post office accepts them just fine that way as long as you have your stamp on it. : ) If you want to address an envelope so that it would be vertical, it does cost extra to mail it that way.


The background paper for this coffee theme card was made by spraying a sheet of off white paper with water and crumpling it up. I smoothed it out and let it dry. Then I lightly ran the surface of my Sepia dye ink pad over the paper. The paper picked up the ink in the folds where it had been crumpled. Next I stamped coffee beans all over it with a stamp from My Paper Moon. Then I stamped Java with a stamp from Anita's and last came the Spatter stamp from My Paper Moon. I used sepia ink on all of the stamps. Everything else on the card is pretty self-explanatory. The inside of the card is stamped with a stamp by Heart & Soul Rubber stamps that says, "Java Happy Birthday!". I don't know who the rest of the stamps on the card are made by, because I received them in an image swap. An odd fact: I love the smell of coffee, but don't like the taste of it. I do enjoy using my coffee theme stamps though.


Have a terrific day!!!!


Inky hugs!
Shelly

Acrylic Background

The background of this card is made using metallic acrylic paints applied with a sponge brush on watercolor paper. I used Jet Black Staz On ink to stamp the images. The stamps are from my TAC Light the Path set. That's one of my all time favorite TAC sets.

This is my third day blogging and I haven't told you yet that I'm married to the sweetest man in the world. We've been married 27 years and he still opens doors for me, including my car door.
Most Saturday mornings my dh likes to check out the local garage sales. This last Saturday he came home with a huge box of scrapbooking and stamping stuff that he had gotten a tremendous buy on. It was all current stuff, mostly new in the package. It was like 3 years worth of Christmas gifts in one day. lol And he not only bought it for me, but he sat down with me and enjoyed watching me go through the box and discover each thing. What a guy!

Have a wonderful day!!!

Inky hugs!
Shelly