Wow! I can't believe it has been a week

Sorry I've been slacking on my blog. Busy, busy with swaps. I got the one big one done. Now I have another to finish. I need to take pics of the cards I just did. I am pretty happy with most of them. Here is another card I did earlier this month for an exchange. It was inspired by the Loves Me papers in the winter mini. I think this was the first time I used this set. It is Loving Hearts. I acquired it through a trade awhile ago.

My Twisted Cards for Round 4

Maneater - This one was for the "Love Bites" catagory. The tag is the chorus from the Hall & Oates song. "Oh-oh here she comes, watch out boy she'll chew you up. Oh-oh here she comes, she's a maneater."












You Stink - I love this one. I was trying to use Circus Train to have like a man circus and I just couldn't come up with anything funny to say to go with it. So I looked at the steam and thought stench. I almost paired it up with Bubble Queen and with the girl from It's a Cheer Thing, but this one was cuter.

Can I go home now?

Today is one of those I so don't want to work days. I've been contributing to the deliquency of my team on top of it. I passed on the chick maker from my last post and then the M&M site has a design your own M&M dude too so I passed that on as well. Here is my M&M...

It is really cold today so I put the boots and hat on her. I should've given her the cup of hot cocoa, but went with the ice cream instead!

Here is another card I made for the exchange I was in. Faux shaving cream technique. I think I needed to smudge a little more cause if you look you can see I used the "so very" stamp for the swirl part. Oops!

My first "crack"...

At the cracked glass technique. It was kind of fun. I have to make more cracked glass cards for a swap I am in that is due at the end of this month.

Speaking of that swap...Why do I always do this to myself? I think I have 40 cards to make of 9 different designs all due by the end of the month. And of course I haven't started on them yet. And I have another swap due at the beginning of the month. And I need to make swap cards and come up with a shoebox swap for the Feb 9th and 10th Michigan SCS get together in Okemos. There is jsut not enough time in the day! I sign up for swaps so I am forced to use my stamps. But I get a little carried away some times.

Check this out. This is my alter ego Glorien. Isn't she cool? I made her at http://www.blessthischick.com/btcmachine/index.php You can make your own chick and then they email her to you so you can use it in emails, etc.

Here's a cute card

If I do say so myself. I made this for an exchange I was in. This is the first time I used my Wild About You set. I used the slit punch to make the scalloped edges (Thanks for the tip Crystal).

For the Blog Candy winners - I haven't made it to the PO yet. Hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday. I still need Allison's address.

Drumroll Please....

My daughter picked numbers so you can thank or blame her, whichever the case.

The grand prize of 2 stacking circle punches goes to comment #4

Anonymous said...
hi Lorien.. I really have to open an account so I canstop
being anonymous! :}Glad you got your supplies today for your workshop! That was
fast!I love teh pics here on your sight. Ihaev 2 techniques I think I haev
finally mastered... The cracked ice usignthe UTEE (makes me think BLAdder
infection ugh!) and the SOOT! tech. I love using candle fire to burn the glossy
cardstock ;] you get a different image or background every time. Colorignon it
first before you soot it awesome as well.It's always a WOW! like the cracked
glass and anyone can do it if I can...So glad you survived your first week back
at work. I knew you coudl doit! Happy stamping Hugs KimkSUDF
6:30 PM

The runner up prizes go to comments # 2, #11 & #12 which are:

Allison said...
Hmmm...I am not really good at my techniques just yet. I was going to try ghosting this weekend after I saw a nice Lovely as a Tree example. I like crayon resist and gamsol/prismacolor pencils as well. As you can see, being a relative newbie, I am figuring out the basics before I go to some of the other great things I have seen on SCS (I don't even own a stylus or a heat gun yet...shh!). Thanks for the contest...

3:55 PM

marcie said...
My favorite technique (today) is coloring with the watercolor crayons. Still need lots of practice, but I do enjoy it. Thanks for the opportunity to win!

3:02 AM

Crystal said...
Are you suprised to hear how much I love faux stitching? WITH THE HOLES PUNCHED CHEATER! HA! Punch holes with hole piercer from tool kit and connect the dots with the white gel pen! SO cute! Now my dear friend Lorien does it a cute way too, she just makes the lines with the pen and skips the holes, she thinks it is too time consuming, but her stuff is great even without holes! :)

9:14 AM

I know how to find KimK's address and I have Crystal's so I just need Allison's and Marcie's. You can send them to me at stampsnmore@hotmail.com

Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone for sharing!

Blog Candy Winners will be Announced Tomorrow (1/17)

Sorry for the delay! I've got the crud and need to go to bed, but I wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten. I'll post the winners tomorrow.

Blog Candy!!!

I also promised I would do a blog candy drawing this weekend. Let's see.... Leave a comment regarding your favorite stamping techniques or tips and you will be placed in the drawing for these stacking circle punches. One is a 2 1/8 inch and the other is 1 11/16 inch.

Depending on the number of comments I will also draw for some other prizes....Micheal's $1 bin Valentine stamps. I bought A LOT of them so tell your friends...the more comments, the more prizes will be given out!

ETA: I forgot to give a deadline...Let's say Monday evening 6:00 PM EST.

Name Frames

As promised here is my post on name frames. I bought these frames at the dollar store. They had a couple different sizes. Some of them had scratches so I just took some sandpaper to them to give them that distressed look.

The frames are pretty easy to do. For mine I tend to pick two background colors and an accent color.

The Littleton frame uses Mellow Moss, Night of Navy and More Mustard. I think that is the retired Crazy alphabet and Crosshatch is used in the backround on the moss. There is some Mustard and some black gingham ribbon and black brads.

The Madison frame uses Elegant Eggplant, Regal Rose and Certainly Celery. The letters are Headline Alphabet and the background stamps are Linen and Print Pattern. I used some celery, apricot, rose, white, and eggplant ribbon and some silver eyelets.
The Carter frame has Always Artichoke, Not Quite Navy and More Mustard. The letters are from Headline alphabet and the background is Crosshatch. I added a funky paperclip with mustard, french blue and taupe ribbon and some silver diamond shaped brads.

Thanks a lot Amy R!

Just wanted to put a quick post on here to say thanks to Amy R for her enabling post on her blog yesterday. She gave a shout out to a really cute online stamp store. http://www.stampingbella.com/index.php So I went and checked them out and of course I had to buy some! Ordered last night and got the shipping notice this afternoon. I can't wait to get my bellas. These will be my first unmounted stamps so I ordered an acrylic block and the static stuff. We'll see....

Altered Lunch Box Or Rectangle Tin

Here are a couple of pictures of an altered tin I made awhile ago. I used the Sentimental Journey designer series papers from Stampin' Up! of course! My upline and I did some tin stamp camps a few months ago and they were a big hit. We're actually going to do repeats of this camp next month cause some of the gals that didn't come heard about it and requested we do it again.



The colors I used were Chocolate Chip, So Saffron, and Buckaroo Blue. And the letters were from the Big Deal alphabet.





I'm working on a post for this weekend that will feature name frames and there will be a BLOG CANDY CONTEST so make sure you check back in this weekend.

I love my new camera!!!

I took it out the box earlier this week and took a couple of shots, but not until just now have I really gotten to use it. Now I haven't done anything fancy. I just took some pictures and popped the SD memory card into the pocket card reader I bought, put the card reader in my computer and Voila! You can also hook your camera up to the computer to downlaod the photos, but it takes a little longer and I haven't put the disc in my computer yet to install the software that came with my camera. From what I have read in the reviews the photo editing software that comes with it is pretty nifty, but I didn't feel like messing with that just yet. So it is a Canon PowerShot A540. I think I have mentioned that before. I purchased the camera, a 512 MB SD card (cause the one that comes with the camera is pretty small), a battery charger and extra rechargable batteries, and the pocket card reader at www.zipzoomfly.com. I paid about the same for all of it that I would've paid for just the camera at Best Buy or one of those places. I was extremely happy with www.zipzoomfly.com. They shipped very quick and everything was what I ordered. I read about some people having issues with them because you can pay them with your paypal account and if the address you enter at checkout does not EXACTLY match the one in your paypal account the may not ship until they can confirm it is really you. Now I think that is great that they go through the trouble to do that. I was missing the period after RD and it mentioned that my address wasn't matching so after I completed the transaction I went into the zipzoomfly site and made my address match the paypal one exactly and I had no delay in shipping.

Ok so here are couple of pictures I took with my new camera....

Now you are probably saying "Lorien, your pictures don't look any better than anyone else's" ...but you have to remember I am coming from a 1 megapixel camera. I took these in really low light so I was even more pleased how well they turned out. And click on them. They will get big and you can see every little detail clearly. ooooh, aaaaaah!

So this was an altered altoid tin and a little mini card and envelope that fits inside. I had bought a bunch of altoid tins at www.specialtybottle.com and we used some of them at a stamp camp where we made magnets with the glass marbles and then we decorated the tins and the magnets went inside...They make a cute little gift, but I don't have any pictures of those right now. I was trying to come up with other things to do with those altoid tins and this was one of them. I decoupaged the Spring Showers paper to the top of the tin and I also used it to make the mini envelope. The stamp set I used is Looks Like Spring. I also used the Spring Bouquet Punch to punch out the little flower in the middle of the big one (it is under a clear button). Colors used were Bashful Blue, So Saffron, Chocolate Chip and Whisper White.

I survived!

I made it through the 1st week back to work. I'm exhausted!!! I haven't had time to do much. But I've got some stamping I need to get done this weekend. Now that I have my camera I can take some pictures of the name frames and tins I had done before.

Last night Maddie and I went out to dinner and shopping, just the two of us. It was nice. I think she had a great time and felt like a real big girl.

If I don't have something to show you later today, I will tomorrow

Happy New Year!!!

I haven't stamped again since the other night. This is a card I made for a swap awhile ago. Similar color combo to the fish card in the last post. This one uses Pumpkin Pie instead of Only Orange. I used DTP on the Old Olive, Rough Texture Jumbo Wheel on the Bashful Blue and Flannel Plaid on the Pumpkin Pie. The Just Because is from the Fancy Flexible Phrases set in the Winter mini and the tags were made with the small and regular tag punches. Finished off with the light blue gingham ribbon. All the materials on this card are from Stampin' Up! www.stampinup.com


I'm home all alone right now. Well, just me and Bailey. She is such a good doggie! She is sitting on my lap now. Morgan and Carter are at Grandma Linda's and Madison is at Grandma Gen's. This was Morgan's first sleepover. I wonder how she did...I'm going to go rescue my mom as soon as I get the laundry put away. I had a crappy new year's eve. Corey and I went out to dinner and then I got mad at him and went to bed at 10:00. I should've kept the kids home last night. I probably would've had a better time with them!!! Hopefully this will be a good year, a happy year.

My new camera will be here tomorrow. I checked the tracking info and it is sitting somewhere in Flint.

Tomorrow I go back to work. I'm really having mixed feelings about it. I don't want to get up at 5:00 and run around like a nut trying to get the kids out the door and then drive an hour, or more, to get to work and then the 1st few days I will be trying to catch up on all the emails I missed - if I have a working computer. I think I got a new laptop while I was out and they are supposed to have it all configured for me when I come in tomorrow. We'll see.