ATC Recap. . .

I'm part of a monthly ATC swap hosted by Tracy Clemente, and while I'm busy working on this month's submission, I thought I'd show you the ATC I made for last month's swap.

I went with my favorite little guy from the A Muse A Palooza release, Fishing Penguin.














(Sorry about the funky picture, I was rushing to get it out the door last month!)

The patterned paper is by Memory Box, the ribbon and both stamps by A Muse. If you're wondering why the color scheme looks familiar, it's because I made a matching card back in July using the same supplies.

I'm about to hit busy mode, since we're hosting a pumpkin carving party at our house this weekend. The house still needs to be cleaned, the menu finalized, and everything needs to be covered in garbage bags (to minimize pumpkin gut clean-up). Yikes!

Have a great day and a great weekend!

Pumpkins with a Purpose. . .

Remember that pumpkin I showed you earlier? Are you wondering what I did with it? Let me show you!

I started by making a card for Tracy's Sketch Challenge:


















But then I couldn't stop making pumpkins! So, I started mass-producing cards for a Thanksgiving card drive I had heard about. Here are some additional cards I made:




















































I even made a pop-up pumpkin card:

















They're all super-simple, but I had to make time to write up personal notes to the elderly and homebound that will be receiving them the week of Thanksgiving. Off to make more!

Where I've Been. . .

Really, a better question would be where HAVEN'T I been. As I mentioned in a previous post, we had a couple of visitors come from Japan, and of course we had to show them the sights. The only catch is that they only had two weeks to see it all. So, we did it very efficiently.

The day they arrived we took them around San Francisco:


















Two days later we threw them an All-American BBQ, and the day after that, we flew to Vegas:



















On Sunday, we got on a bus at 6:15am and took off for the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. We were gone until 11pm, but we did get to see this:








Monday, we recovered from our bus trip just in time to catch a plane ride back to the Bay Area, and Tuesday, we went wine tasting in Napa:















Friday, we were back out on the road, one night in Yosemite:
















And a night in Tahoe, where we caught the first snow of the season:














All in all, some great adventures were had. Now back to stamping!

Hey there!

So sorry I haven't been around much lately. I've been playing tour guide to some visitors from Japan who've never been to the U.S. before, so of course we had to hit up all the West Coast highlights. More on that later.

In the meantime, here's a quick project I picked up from some Stampin' Up ladies that were at a rubber stamp show that I attended recently. It's done almost entirely with punches--cute and easy!

















Happy fall!

Sketch Challenge Entry #5

Happy Thursday night! I'm gearing up for a weekend of scrapbooking, but when I heard that Tracy's Sketch Challenge was extended for another week and we got a new sketch, I just had to play. You should too!


















I'm switching from card-making to scrapbooking for the weekend, but I hope to be back on Monday with more cards.

Have a great weekend!

Sketch Challenge Entry #4

Here's yet another entry for Tracy's Sketch Challenge. The numbers aren't looking good (less than 25 participants at present), so get out there and stamp!

















I needed a manly birthday card for a former co-worker at the end of the month, and party owl seemed to do the trick nicely. I've seen the orange/green/blue color scheme everywhere, so I thought I'd give it a go. I think it turned out pretty well.

I'm hoping to make one more card this evening to round my entries out to five. Wish me luck!

Sketch Challenge Entry #3

Are you sick of this layout yet? I'm not! In fact, I think this third card is my favorite so far! I love love love this card!

Want to see why?















It's all about love!

The strip down the side is actually a repeating stamped image by Stampendous. And, although you might not be able to tell in this photo, I Versamarked the Flourish Trio by Hero Arts across the red notecard. The car image is one of my favorites by Elzybells, and the Delivering Love sentiment is by A Muse (although it might be discontinued). The ribbon is by A Muse too, of course.

See you soon!