My first Bella order came today. Yippie! So here is my first Bella card. I love it! I just 'happen' to be near Michael's today so I picked up the pink papers and ribbon. I love this card so much, I am making quite a few and making up all kinds of excuses why I need to send them. I haven't sent my sister a thank-you for the tasty (read fattening) goodies she sent for Christmas. My stamping buddy is in need of a get well card...the list goes on.

Here is my January 08 card for Splitcoasts challenge to make 10 holiday cards a month. The inside of the card says smile at everyone, spread sunshine, be an elf. Gosh, I just noticed it says be and elf. I've just created a nice project for myself....remount 10 cards. That will wait until tomorrow because we went to Disney yesterday and my back is screaming at me.

Well here is my first sewn card. I posted it on splitcoast and got many comments on how it looks like a fish. I guess it does on the computer screen. It was quite easy. I scotch taped the pieces together in the back then zig zag stitched them all on the front. The card looks deceiving in that the dark color blue is actually the inside of the card. I will make some more sewn cards that hopefully don't look like fish :-)

Here are my latest cards. One is a Christmas card because I joined a challenge on Splitcoast to make 10 holiday cards a month...and because I had got these cute trees and I just had to try them out. They weren't as easy as I had thought since they were mostly the background color of the tree. Does that make sense? So I used a black ink pad on them, scanned them into my computer, then I was able to change the colors to whatever I wanted. When I thought I was done, I decided it needed some bling, out came the rhinestones. Now it looks like a card I would make :-)
The next card was a 3 day process. I put the ribbon on the card, then didn't know what to do. Then I put the square on...still not right. So I drove to Violette's ( my local scrapping store ) and got the flowers...now it looks lovely. Don't you agree?

Sisterhood of the Blogging Stampers-7

Sisterhood of the Blogging Stampers-7

Todays project is to join the Sisterhood of the Blogging Stampers-7
If you are quick enough you will still be able to join group 7!
Here is some info about me for the rest of SBS-7
My name is Michelle. I am a domestic goddess who is a very young 50 year old....ughh, sounds awful to say it. I am adjusting to the age thing but my old bones are rebelling. I have issues with my back with no solution in the future. I live in the sunny state of Florida in the USA. I am originally from Portsmouth NH where it is mighty cold with plenty of snow at the moment. I certainly don't miss the cold, but I do miss the first snow falls, after that the snow just gets yucky looking. I have two children, who aren't really children anymore. My son is 23 and attending the University of New Hampshire and plans to graduate this May. My daughter is a freshman conveniently attending University of Tampa, which is 45 minutes from me :-) My husband and I moved to Florida last July because of a fabulous job offer which just happened to be 1 hour from my snow bird parents. Lucky me! I met my husband online, 6 years ago and I met my first friend, here in Florida, online as well. This friend got me hooked onto ATCs which was loads of fun trading with people all over the world. We ended up taking a stamping class at Michael's and we were the only two in class, the following week, I was the only one in class. The teacher (Betty) and I bonded and the rest is history. She showed me the world of rubber stamping and I jumped in with body and soul. I look forward to chatting with other like minded Goddess's. Well that's enough blabbering...time to stamp!

The past few days I have been putting together some thank-you cards using a stamp from Hero Arts. My favorite card is the blue one. I used an embossing punch on the card and it came out beautiful. The green card was done only using the computer. I found the background on Two Peas in a Bucket. A fun web site to check out. I enjoy trying to merge the computer with card stamping. It gives me alot of new opportunities to be creative.
For my family (and anyone else who wants to take a peak ) here is a link to our Christmas 2007 photos. Enjoy! And I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas.

You must see this, it is a riot! Just press play, cmon, you know you want to. Merry Christmas everyone! And I hope you enjoy my movie. hugs

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

Isn't this card awesome?! It was very time consuming but it sure came out great. My friend Betty made one of these for me so I just had to figure out how she did it. With patience. It's embossed with gold and then the different layers were cut out and I used pop dots for dimension. I mounted it on mirror card. You can even see my reflexion.

I am starting to find my way around Splitcoast and today I came across the challenges. This is my entry and I must do it correctly. This card was cased by a card created by Beverly on Splitcoast. The original card can be seen here Texasgrammy I used bright pink and light pink bazzil card stock, Chocolate Dotty Flowers from Overton, ribbon from Offray and the stamp is from Inkadinkado. This is from a challenge in November. Tomorrow I'll start attacking the December challenges.

I've got all my Christmas Cards out. Yay! Now I can work on other projects.
This was my last Christmas card. It was quite a challenge to make but the effort was well worth it.
Here are a few non Christmas Cards that I have made this week.

December first already. Amazingly I went into the pool today. The water was a chilly 72 degrees. How quickly I have gotten spoiled! We also put up the Christmas tree. It's my first unreal tree in my adult life. I don't know why I waited so long, it's beautiful. I won't have to water it, worry about a fire hazard or clean up all the pine needles. The big plus is that I can move the branches around so the ornaments can hang how they are supposed to be displayed. I love it.

The holidays are upon us. I have been very busy making Christmas cards. These four were my first creations using my new cuttlebug. What a fun gadget! My friend Betty has got me hooked on card making and I am loving it. I now have the birthday and anniversary of everyone in my family. Now I need to get my husbands family, too, so I can send them all hand made cards. As for the Christmas cards, I am proud to say I have all them made and in their addressed envelopes, except for some special cards. I
saw them made on The Carol Duvall Show and I have been working on them all day today. All sorts of folding, very frustrating at times. When that would happen I would just go sit in front of the tv and heat my back for awhile then come back to it.

It's time to start the holiday crafting. This is an ornament I made for a yahoo group swap. I made 6 and will get back 5 different ornaments from 5 different people.
I bought myself a cuttle bug. How fun is that! I love creating things with it. I am using it for the background of my Christmas cards that I've started putting together.

The weather here in Florida has changed. I woke up to a chilly house...had to put a sweatshirt on. This kind of weather makes me sleepy and I wanted to just snuggle back into the covers. I had to force myself to do a project. I made my Dad a birthday card. At 76 he loves playing tennis. He plays everyday, gosh I'm having a good day if I get dressed.

A cute card I made for a friend who recently had a baby. The photo is in a magnet frame that she can remove from the card. The inside sentiment is "...to have a child ...is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." Tomorrow I'll be dropping by the post office to mail it and the Pennywise Calendar.
This is my entry for the month of May. We each make 12 of the same month then send them to the host. She will then make each of us a year calendar that fits into a CD case and send the year back to each of us.
Today we celebrated DDs 21st birthday. uggggh She was impressed with the birthday card I made for her. My parents came over to share the day with us. DD and my dad shared the champagne.

Here is a picture of one of my gardens. Most of these plants are now a year old and so nice and big! I love it.





Deb and I took a beading class where we made earrings and a matching bracelet. They came out beautiful. I bought more 'fixings' to make another pair of earrings at home. I didn't have all the right tools, but I think they came out great. I'm going to take apart the sterling earrings and put it back together using gold. The sterling makes my ears itch.
This is a picture that I painted for Butch. He's from Texas and I thought he might enjoy having this in his TV room. I first bought I painting at Goodwill, then applied gesso. Once that was dry, I penciled in the state and painted. It came out pretty bright so I then applied a stain to the picture. That is exactly what it needed.
The picture came out beautifully. I made some (faux) cow hide pillows and covered a couple of ottomans with the same fabric. His room is starting to look finished.

Interesting...I got a request from someone on one of my Yahoo groups that would like to do a trade with me. She wants the first ATC in the pictures posted on October 9th and one of my very first Asian ATCs. I'll see how that goes. I am also in touch with someone who I am going to be doing a fabric ATC swap with. Here is the first one I have made. I love it!

The clerk at the post office was not very surprised for my wish to send Sadie her Halloween bottle. I guess they see all sorts of crazy things go through. I was pleased that it only cost $1.49 to mail!

I've been pretty busy making ATCs, I think I've found my nitch. I love vintage photos. I'll be sending six of these off to a swap called Vintage Women and then another six are going to a Keep It Going swap. Sometimes it's hard to let them go, but that's the fun of making them ~ that someone else will be receiving them. Hopefully I'll receive some very nice art back. To get a better look, you can click on these photos and they will open up in a new window.

I also completed the Halloween goodie bottle that will be going to the post office today. I'm wondering what the clerk will say when I hand it over.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Noble Excellency Michelle the Implacable of Greater Sodbury Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Turned out that I needed to make 4 Glitter ATCs. I love glitter so that was no problem. They are sitting on the counter in their hand-made envelopes, ready to go in the mail. I also put together a Halloween surprise for my niece. ( I doubt she reads this) It was a neat idea they have on the Go Make Something site. Take a clean plastic bottle, put a slit down the side and put the goodies in. Then seal up the slit with the address label. That's ready to go too. I'll have to bring it to the post office to see how much postage it will need.
BF and I took a stamp class at Michaels. Lucky for us there were just the two of us and the instructors BF, who is a skilled stamper and probably there just to support her. I enjoyed the class, we made three Halloween cards and saw about 50 beautiful cards that the instructor (Betty) brought to show us. I just might get hooked on this crazy making cards stuff. I'll be going next week too, and I get to pick what kind of cards we'll be making. I am leaning towards a shaker card and flocked card.
I am almost completely done with an old school desk that DH and I got out of someone's garbage. I have sanded, stained it and it now has 4 coats of poly on it. I think I want at least 2 more coats because I want it to be shiny.

No phone, no tv and no internet for 24 hours. What's a girl to do!!??? Well I thought of a few things to keep myself occupied while I waited for the tech to show up. I finished the 6 emboss resist ATCs that Deb (BF :-) and I had started. It was hard to do because I usually start with an image. These backgrounds were doubly difficult because they looked so good without any embellishments on them. They're done ~ in the mail ready to move on to the next project. Moms birthday is coming up, so I decided to make her a card. Having never made a card it was a learning experience but it came out great. I made two so that I'll have a copy. I also made two ATCs for a Glitter ATC swap on swap-bot.
I guess I should also include that I did do some housework. I vacuumed all the floors in the house plus the laundry room which is technically not in the house. It's where the bugs usually go to die. When that was finished, Liyah (dog) and I had to take a break in the pool.
I didn't win the Beadie Buddied Bonanza at Pennywise, so I'll have to mail out my entry to the winner. She got alot of good loot. I am definitely staying for the October BBB.

Turns out that I didn't sleep very well last night and did some art while I was half asleep. Half asleep Michelle is not very tidy nor very talented. When I was fully awake and had eaten my oatmeal I was ready for a wide awake project. I worked a bit on the CD that I painted with acrylics. The paint seems to be staying on pretty well. I also did a collage on another CD. They both need some embellishments so I'll work on that tomorrow. I still don't have a plan for what purpose they are going to serve. Can they just be pretty?
Speaking of pretty, DD went to the doctor about her bad knees. The doctor is referring her to an orthopedists, plus she needs to get blood work and x-rays. I guess we'll be getting to the bottom of her pains finally. Hopefully it won't include knee braces or arthroscopic surgery.

Creative Crafty Chicks had their first night of creating. We first followed the directions in Bernie Berlin's book on how to make an emboss-resist card. We both made two, then realized we needed to make 6 each for the swap we were in. We didn't have enough backings to make 10 more, so we moved on to our next project, an altered magnet using UTEE. Directions are by Judi Wellnitz. I would say the night was a success. We had plenty of fun and brownies...who could ask for more!

On the family side ~ Colby (DS) took his LSAT test on Friday. He won't find out how he did until Oct 22. We are all glad the stress of taking the test is over. Sickly Ciara (DD) came home for the weekend. She and I tried the emboss-resist technique but I didn't have the correct embossing powder and the cards didn't quite come out right.

Pictures of the first ever Creative Crafty Chicks night ~