Saltbox Studio

Today the A Muse News blog is featuring Saltbox Studio stamps so I will feature one, too. I'd better get to some stamping soon, though, or I will run out of things to blog! The weather here has not been so great and my kids are going back to school next week. I've been kind of busy, too. It's prevented me from getting much stamping time in.

This was one of the cards I made a week or two ago but couldn't share until the latest A Muse release was released due to the black kitchen notecard. It's really hard to photograph cards when they aren't even at the bottom; this is the best I could do.

Enjoy your day! I have a class this Sunday if you're interested in signing up. Yucky weather makes for a great stamping day! See my schedule in the sidebar to the right for details.

October Afternoon

Life has been very busy this past weekend. Lots of football action going on with my oldest son, kids are preparing to go back to school next week, and my husband was gone on a fishing trip up in Canada. My SIL got more bad news during her MRI on Monday and is having a hard time adjusting to it. We'll have some more answers after Thursday, I hope, and her surgery is scheduled for the 4th. Please keep her in your thoughts. I know she would really appreciate it.

I've created lots of new things over the weekend but almost none that I can share right now. I have a group of friends on SCS that RAK's each other every month. We get a PM with the name of who we have that month. I've been a little behind and just got my RAK done. I used an adorable acrylic set from October Afternoon and paired it with some Sassafrass Lass papers.

If I did this card over again, I'd move the zig zag stitching closer to the edge of the yellow patterned paper (stitching from a Technique Tuesday Stitches clear set).

New A Muse website

Have you been over to see the new A Muse Website? You can access it by clicking on the logo in my sidebar. It's spectacular! A lot of time and preparation has gone into this new site and it looks like maybe a few bugs are still being worked out but it's sure lots of fun to look at. The new Halloween images will not be available until Monday but if you register and log in, you can start your shopping cart!

Be sure to add the Missy B Halloween clear set to your wishlist cuz it's about the cutest thing I've seen! I've had lots of fun playing with it these last few days. For this card I used a 4-bar black kitchen notecard, added a bit of Mango Tinplate notecard, lime peel notecard, and punched out the fence with my new Martha Stewart Fence punch and a Bark notecard scrap.

Last Sneak Peek

Keep your eyes peeled on the A Muse New blog for an update, hopefully this afternoon, for the new A Muse website where you should be able to purchase this latest Halloween release. As promised, here's my last project.





I love how Heather has been showcasing her Halloween designs with patterned paper so I had to copy her genious. For this little treat bag, I took a black kitchen 4-bar notecard and scored it from the center line, 1" on each side. Then I scored it 1" from the top on one side, and chopped 1" off the other side. This allows an accordian type fold in the center and the top of the notecard to fold down over the shorter side. Inside you could adhere a little baggie full of small treats like candy corn. I used the cute little bat and one of the sentiments from Missy B's new Halloween Clear Set. Of course, I had to add some awesome A Muse Sheer Ribbon. Can't get enough of that stuff!

Happy shopping to you all!!!

Sneak Peek

Updates: Well, I managed to have an uneventful workout yesterday. We found out that there were charges made on the business credit card that were in my husband's wallet but so far, none on our personal account. Let's hope it stays that way. My SIL, unfortunately, was moved from Stage 1 to between Stage 2/3 in her diagnosis and the doctors are leaning toward a mastectomy. Thankfully, I have my friend Joyce (Jay Dub on SCS and some of you might know her from the A Muse shop) who had a very similar diagnosis and is a 2yr breast cancer survivor. I am taking her over to my SIL's so she has someone to talk to who has lived through this.

How are you enjoying the sneak peeks so far? The new release will be available for purchase in just one more sleep! Have you been making a wishlist? Does it keep growing? haha. Well, I am going to disappoint you today, unfortunately. It will just be for a little while, though. I thought I had some more of my cards stores on my memory stick but I don't! Now I have to charge my camera battery before I can take some so this is what you get for now. At least I am using the new black Kitchen notecard. The image is from the latest release from Saltbox Studio. Man, I love these sunflowers! Make sure to add this set to your shopping cart when you order your new A Muse releases.

Leaves

Yesterday I promised to show you another image from the new clear A Muse set called 'Leaves.' I also promised to show it to you colored with another medium. It was really fun to switch from my usual Copics back to some Prismacolor Pencils. I started this card with a square image cut from my Nestabilities square die, then layered it onto a brown square of cardstock, then onto a dark brown square cut with a Nestabilities scalloped square die. I colored the image in, then went over the main lines with a Sakura Glitter Pen which picks up the golds in the colors and reflects it really nicely. Now for the notecard...I used one of the new Vintage brown 4-bar notecards and adhered a piece of brown kitchen to the top. I also added a dark brown scalloped line that I cut using my SU slit punch. I tucked that under the bottom edge of the kitchen brown with some glue. I popped the square image up with some dimensionals, added some SU Copper Cord, and added a sentiment using Bamboo Leaves Ink by memento. The sentiment comes from the SU Fancy Flexible Phrases set.

Are you enjoying all the sneak peeks the A Muse Design and Instructor team has been showing? I know I am! Lots of fabulous ideas out there.

It's been a bad past couple of days

A few days ago, my husband was backing out of a parking stall and the parking attendant had parked another vehicle too close to him. He scratched and dented his truck and the other vehicle when he turned too soon. Her estimate is $1600 to fix it. Of course, the auto body shop told him if he paid them cash they'd do it for $1,000. Robbery!

I went to my fitness class yesterday, got overheated, almost fainted, vomited the protein bar the instructor gave me to eat but finally managed to bring my blood sugar up when another class participant found some Tic Tacs and gum in her purse. That same person drove me home and then I got a phone call that my SIL, Lisa, has breast cancer.

This morning my DH was leaving for work and discovered his wallet had been stolen during the night. He has a trip to Canada scheduled soon and I don't think he will get new picture ID in time. He is busy freaking out. The wallet had been left in the center console of his truck (which I am ALWAYS telling him not to do) and the vehicle was unlocked. He sent one of my kids out to the truck to get his glasses and unlocked the truck from inside the house. When my son came in, DH forgot to relock the truck.

What else is going to go wrong???

Well, enough about my rotten last few days. You want a sneak peek. A Muse is not only releasing new wood mounted stamps but there are some acrylic sets releasing, too. One of them is a set of leaves. I really like this set and am finding it to be versatile to different coloring mediums. This particular sample was colored with Copics. In my next post I will show you another image from the set colored with Prismacolor pencils.

Sneak Peek Day!

Welcome to Sneak Peek Day! The new A Muse Halloween release it getting ready to hit the shelves and we always celebrate a new release with some sneak peeks. The new release is AWESOME! Lots of fun, new stuff to play with and use with all the new Martha Stewart punches that everyone's been talking about.

One of my favorite things about this release are the new Halloween sentiments. When I saw this 'You're Bewitching' sentiment, the show 'Bewitched' came to mind. It was one of my favorite shows as a kid. I put Patch on a broomstick along with a big, huge witch's hat and put the sentiment on a broom, too. I added a few stars in the sky using Tiny Star, then colored over them with my yellow atyou Spica Glitter Pen.

Be sure to visit the other Design and Instructor Team blogs for more sneaks! Start making your wishlist!

Farm Country

I received this awesome birthday card from Rhonda and just loved the Green Madeira used as the grass with the Green Kitchen on the Cabana blue-ish cardstock. Well, on Monday I had to drive to Orondo, which is out near Wenatchee, WA otherwise known as 'apple country.' It was a gorgeous drive up through Stevens Pass, Leavenworth (a cute little Bavarian style village) and then through so many apple orchards. Rhonda's card totally inspired me with this creation.

Now I totally could have used the farm house from Saltbox Studio, but it is facing the opposite direction and quite frankly, I didn't pull the sentiment from the Saltbox mini banner set until after I had created the rest of the card. I stamped the A Muse farmhouse onto the Cabana Blue notecard, then again on a separate piece of white cardstock, colored it, cut it out, then mounted over the first stamped image. The pinking along the grass is from the A Muse Fancy Borders clear set using Memento Bamboo Leaves ink. You can probably figure out the rest.

I would love to see any cards you have created that were inspired by a fellow A Muse fan. Feel free to share a link by posting a comment in the comment section.

In a word

I found this over on Lyndsay's blog and thought I'd do it, too:

1. Where is your cell phone? PURSE
2. Where is your significant other? BED
3. Your hair? BROWN
4. Your mother? FUNNY
5. Your father? DRIVING
6. Your favorite thing? STAMPS!
7. Your dream last night? NONE
8. Your dream/goal? SUCCESS
9. The room you're in? LIVING
10. Your hobby? Papercrafts (is that 2 words?)
11. Your fear? ???
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? HERE
13. Where were you last night? HOME
14. What you're not? TIRED
16. One of your wish list items? TOTE
17. Where you grew up? EDMONDS
18. The last thing you did? SNACK
19. What are you wearing? CLOTHES
20. Your TV? ON
21. Your pet? DOGS
22. Your computer? HOT
24. Your mood? CRANKY
25. Missing someone? NO
26. Your car? FREESTYLE
27. Something you're not wearing? SOCKS
28. Favorite store? TARGET
29. Your summer? BUSY
30. Love someone? YES
31. Your favorite color? MANY
32. When is the last time you laughed? LUNCH
33. Last time you cried? ???

Lyndsay's right. It's hard to answer some of these with just one word. Like 'Your father.' I put 'DRIVING' cuz he's driving from TX to WA right now. And 'One of your wishlist items.' Well, I put tote but I really mean a laptop sleeve/bag. Some of them I just couldn't answer. Give it a whirl! See what you come up with.

Whew!

I survived a busy birthday weekend. Friday night our youngest son had a sleepover with a friend at our house. The poor little guy woke me up at 3:30am telling me he couldn't sleep and wanted to go home. I had to wake his poor mother to come get him. Bet he was tired the next day! Saturday was a great day. We decided to hit Toys R Us to buy our youngest son something for his birthday present (he wanted Rock Band). While in the video section my son says to my husband, "We should buy mom a Wii Fit. She wants that." They actually had one in stock! So, I got a Wii Fit from my kids. Saturday night we were childless. My plans were to go to the Taste of Edmonds but the weather did not cooperate so DH and I decided to go see Stepbrothers. When we were exiting off the freeway, my friend called and said they had just finished seeing Mamma Mia and were going out to dinner and invited us along. So, that's what we did...and I'm glad. I had so much fun catching up. Here is a horrible picture of us. She always looks beautiful...me, not so much. The camera was waay too close. Anyway, she turns 40 right behind me in just a couple of weeks.

Sunday, my mom and sister came over for dinner. My mom cooked up some sukiyaki, which is one of my favorite things to eat. I made a pig out of myself. It's all good, though, cuz I start Booty Camp this week with my oldest son's former PE teacher.

No time to stamp this weekend so sharing something out of the archives for ya. I hope you all have a great day. Thanks to everyone who sent me a birthday card. They were all so wonderful!

Images by Saltbox Studio

Life's Simple Pleasures

Did you see this post on the A Muse news blog? One of my cards is featured there. The oldie but goodie highlighted for the week is the Swimmer stamp. For this card I kept things simple: I used a Cabana Blue notecard for the base, used the waves stamp upside down as the birds flying in the sky, the stick portion of the pinwheel stamp as the diving board (got that idea from Scoopy), and one of the best A Muse sentiments EVER...Life's simple pleasures. I also added some glitter along the edge of the 'water' to make it sparkle.

We'll actually be making this card in my class at Stampin-In-The-Rain at the end of the month. This class will celebrate Wonderful Women and will be full of cards showing women outdoors. Great cards to send to a friend for no reason at all than to bring a smile to their face. Class info is in the sidebar to the right. Be sure to contact the store to sign up for the class!

Tomorrow is my big 4-o! My son and I are trying to decide where we want to eat lunch and dinner. My oldest son is actually gone for the weekend so it's all about us cuz my DH will let us pick wherever we want! Lucky for me, my son loves Japanese food as much as I do. He's already talking Blue C sushi.... I'll be at the Taste of Edmonds beer garden tomorrow night. I've hesitated on going because it's such a class reunion but most of my friends will be out of town and I need somewhere to go. I've got a friend going with me, my sister will be there, and one of my best friends from high school. Anyone else is just gravy.

Quick and Easy Birthday Cards

Although I have a gazillion cards in a stash, most of them are not birthday cards. I needed a stash of birthday cards I could just pop in the mail when I needed to. Monday was my cousin, Jane's birthday. Today is one of my SCS gal pal's birthday (Happy Birthday, Tracey!) and there are several A Muse Addicts having birthdays this month. I wanted cards that were simple (once I got past the basic design) and bulk free for mailing. Here they are:





The first card uses the Chiffon Green 4-bar notecard as the card base. I stamped the window, then the Tiny Bird on the ledge and one of the flower pots from the row of pots stamp. I colored it all in with my Copics, layered it onto some SU Choc Chip, used a red striped PLP as my awning (cutting one edge with my scalloped scissors) and added the sentiment.

The second card uses the purple kitchen 4-bar notecard as the base. I stamped the flower bunch, punched it with a pink Marvy scalloped oval punch, colored it with Copics, added the ribbon bow, popped it up with foam dots and added the sentiment.

Easy Peasy! Cute, simple, and quick cards to have ready for birthdays! (Sorry about the poor lighting but it was early in the AM when I took these shots so proper lighting just wasn't there yet).

DH and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary today. We will spend it at our oldest son's football practice. After the first day of practice, my son woke up the next day with a bruise on his head over his right eye. We couldn't figure out how it got there until yesterday at his baseball game. We sat by his buddy Steven's mom who told us they were head butting each other with their football helmets at practice. Boys!

Birthday Countdown

I had a fabulous day today. My husband and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary this Wednesday and my 40th birthday is this coming Saturday so he bought me a new Nikon camera. I put it to good use today taking pictures of my kids, nieces and nephews, friends and good food. My friends RT and Joyce took me to see Mamma Mia and then to dinner at P.F. Chang's. Mmmm, good! And I loved Mamma Mia. It was so funny!


I didn't get a chance to participate in VMAA but I'm still going to make some cards from the challenges and get them posted this week, using my new camera, of course. I did, however, get my new Saltbox sets and got right to work on them. Then, I realized I used some items that I cannot show yet so I will have to wait a little while before I can show you some of the cards. Boo Hoo. Here's one I can share:




I found this fabulous patterned paper by Heidi Grace at Jo-Ann's the other day and knew it would be perfect for the sunflowers from the latest Saltbox release. I cut a 4" square out of it and mounted it to an A Muse Notecard. The rest just kind of came together from there. Can't wait to share more with you!


I also got a great picture of my sister-in-law, Lori's adorable Yorkie today. She brought 2 of her cute little dogs to my MIL's house today and the dogs were dressed up in little outfits. Lori has also been known to paint her dogs toenails pink. Lori didn't want to end up in the picture so she held the dog out for me to catch a picture of. Isn't she just the cutest little thing?!