Busy Birthday?

I am writing this post on my iPad and I'm not sure which has more limitations - the iPad or me! I cannot figure out how to copy images from the challenge blogs into my post so I cannot do that for this card. I can (I think) link the blog challenge post. So... This cards colors are inspired by The Play Date Cafe's weekly challenge and the layout comes from Mojo Monday. I was quite pleased with this card, but my husband said it is too busy. So now I want to know: is it too busy? Honest opinions welcomed.

for the record: All supplies are Stampin' Up except the silver paint pen with which I outlined the Happy Birthday sentiment.

~La

Double Challenge

I'm on a roll...

I made this card yesterday for two separate challenges. First, the colors are from Color Throwdown:

(And may I just say, these were the easiest colors in the world for me to use. Purple and green together are my favorites. Yeah!)

The layout came from Mojo Monday:

And here is my card:
Stamps are from Verve; papers from SU, Creative Memories and ???. Ink is all SU, the exact colors named in the Color Throwdown challenge. The purple in my flower looks lighter than Elegant Eggplant but that is because I colored it on using a blender pen.

Thanks for looking!

~La

How Exciting!

I am thrilled to say I received an honorable mention for a card I entered at The Play Date Cafe. They call it "The Cream in Our Coffee" and when your card is chosen you get to display their badge on your blog. So, as you might be able to see, I am TRYING to display the badge. Unfortunately I am fairly tech-challenged so while I was able to load the badge onto my page (BIG accomplishment for me!) I cannot figure out how to move things around so that the entire badge shows. Boo! I think when I get back to the States I will have to find a class to take that will teach me something about the mechanics of blogs.

Colour Q Challenge and a CASE

It seems there are endless numbers of "challenge blogs" out in blog-land. I am thankful for them because they provide so many starting points. Additionally, each of them have "designers" who showcase what they come up with to meet the challenge each week. The ladies who are designers, by and large, have amazing amounts of talent. It is wonderful to be able to copy their designs. It seems no one minds being copied, as long as you give credit where credit is due and don't profit off of your copy of their work. Fair enough! (More than fair, honestly.)

As I was perusing a challenge blog yesterday I came across a card that I HAD to copy. Immediately! First though, here is the color pallet from my chosen challenge-blog-of-the-day (aka ColourQ).

I love the blues and purples. I thought I would make something light colored and spring-like. However, when I decided to CASE this card, I ended up focusing on the darker colors in the pallet. I am very pleased with the card and it was a lot of fun to make. I do hope to make another card for the ColourQ challenge and go with the lighter blues. But for now, here is my card:

I actually handmade the dark flower - to my great surprise! I think I have discovered a new thing to put on cards! It was time consuming but fun. A couple of details that I should probably learn to mention: Paper, ink and ribbon are all Stampin' Up; stamp is Verve, fabric flower is from the fabric market in Taipei (awesome place!) and the adhesive pearls are from Recollections, purchased at Michael's in the States.

Thanks for looking!

~La

On My Mind

Knock knock. Hello?! Anybody out there?

It's been 6 months since I've posted a card. So much for getting serious about this blog! In truth I have made precious few cards. Even at Christmas, I just made a couple for people that I felt I HAD to send cards to, but I was just generally not in the mood. I'm not sure if I'm in the mood yet.

We will be moving again in about 3 months and, in anticipation of that I am starting to purge and box up what I will not need for daily life. Several times I have walked into my craft room thinking I would box everything there up, but each time I have stopped, hoping I might actually go in there and DO something. Well, today I finally did something. I made one card. Just one. But it's a start.

I think that I expected a bout of creative genius after my Mom died, because that happened once before during a hard life event - I went crazy with (what I thought were) great cards. That hasn't happened with the loss of my Mom however. So I guess it's time to make cards even if I don't feel particularly creative.

As usual, for inspiration (because I always need inspiration) I turned to The Play Date Cafe. Their colors for this week almost chased me back out of my craft room! Look at this:

I am sorry, but that is just awful to me. But I started looking at some of their cards and realized the loud picture board did not have to mean loud cards, just color inspiration. And so I was able to set to work. Unfortunately I don't have any bright green. I used the closest thing I could find. My colors were: Pear Pizazz, Night of Navy, Marina Mist and Dusty Durango.

This is the best I could do today for a photograph. It's taken with my phone! I have been having mucho trouble with my printer/scanner and my camera - well - I have no idea how a person loses a camera LENS, but I did.

So, if anyone is out there, thanks for looking!

~La

Another Play Date

I guess I need to photograph my cards rather than scanning them. I don't want to hassle with it honestly. It means I have to clear my camera's memory so I don't reload my pictures. (A couple of weeks ago I deleted literally hundreds of duplicate photos from my PC!) But when the cards have dimension to them the scanner just doesn't do justice to how they look.

This is another card for The Play Date Cafe challenge. The colors are black and white with just a splash of red. My white IS pure white, it just looks yellow because of the scanner.

I cannot focus to write this. While I was finishing up my card we found the 2nd baby snake in 2 days in our house. I was not too terribly bothered when we found one, but two has me thinking that there must be a mother some place. Just when I thought I was getting used to things creeping around my house in Taiwan...now things are slithering around! At the moment I am feeling like this year cannot pass quickly enough. I am SO ready to go back to the States where I do not have to be constantly on guard against things creeping, crawling, flying, jumping or SLITHERING through the room!

~La

Challenge: Color Throwdown #157

I am finding that there are a lot of card challenges in blog-land. They are great starting spots for inspiration. The one I chose to work with yesterday is on a blog titled "Color Throwdown", and they had a rather difficult combination in my opinion. Here are their chosen colors:

I pulled out the colors, except crumb cake which I do not own. I substituted Simply Suede because it's the closest thing I have. It occurred to me that this color combination might appear in Asian things and, since I have an Asian stamp set I've been itching to use, this might be the perfect time.

My original plan was to make a clean and simple card, so I stamped the girls and the Chinese lanterns onto one piece of white cardstock. After coloring the girls dresses with markers I stamped the lanterns onto various Asian papers that I've purchased here in Taiwan, and embossed them in gold. (The main reason for the embossing was so that I could see the images to cut. The papers are so busy that I didn't think I would be able to see regular ink!) I then cut out MANY lanterns before choosing which ones I liked best for this card. I ran them through my Xyron sticker maker, which was a life saver for attaching these little pieces!

After stamping, coloring, embossing and assembling, I decided it was time to add some background. Here things went horribly wrong. I created masks for the girls and the lanterns but when I stamped the background images everything just looked like a muddy mess. So I had to cut again. I cannot say how many times I cut lanterns yesterday, between embossed images for paper pieces, masks and then cutting the whole thing off of the original piece I am rather tired of Chinese lanterns!

It was necessary to rethink the background, so I turned to an extremely talented blogger, Michelle Zindorf, for inspiration. (See here if you're interested.) Try as I might, I cannot brayer on color like she does. I always end up with a hard edge. So I just look to her for guidance on colors and then I sponge them on. I wanted a look of glowing light around the lanterns and I knew Michelle would have the inspiration I needed. So here is my card:

And here is the inside:
This card will go to a dear friend who has a listening ear like no one else I know.

~La