My Creative Time Color Challenge

Today I'm sharing a SMASH book page I made for the current challenge at My Creative Time. It's a photo inspiration/color challenge and I just happened to take the perfect picture for the colors the day the challenge was posted. That day (Thursday 7-24) hubby and I were playing tourist. With our recent move to Florida, there are plenty of new places to go and investigate. This was a combo shopping/touring road trip. We decided to head to the Tampa IKEA store on a mission to find a bed frame. We were specifically looking at the MALM with drawers for storage underneath it. As I've said before, we are now living in a tiny 500 sq. ft. cottage. Storage space is at a premium and we are always looking for ways to improve on what we have. We loved the bed, but sadly weren't able to purchase it that day for two reasons. One, we didn't measure the width of the room and two, we didn't think we could fit it in our vehicle. We left IKEA with a plan, but needed to visually look at the space we are dealing with. I'll fill you in on how we're going to accomplish fitting it in our space in a future post.

Anyway, after our stroll through IKEA, we decided to head to the neighboring community in search of a restaurant for lunch. Even though this IKEA is listed in Tampa it's really in the community of Ybor City. Ybor City has quite a history and is known to be the Latin Quarter for over a century. Famous for Cuban cigars, Cuban coffee, cuisine, music and fun nightlife. We had never been there before and on first look it reminded me a little of New Orleans architecture. Two story brick buildings with wrought iron railings. Sorry, I'm digressing again. We ended up going into the Green Iguana. We had a wonderful lunch with the tastiest rice I've ever feasted on. It was made with coconut milk and had a sweet taste to it. The perfect accompaniment to my grilled salmon. I took the picture I've scrapped today inside the restaurant. That iguana statue was huge and hovered just over our table.

I used several My Creative Time products to create my layout. I started by cutting the 4 x 4 Stitched Square Journal die from orange cardstock. as a mat behind my light gray cardstock that I journaled on. I placed this mat on the page to mimic the way the restaurant sign is placed in the photo. Next I cut the letters from the Lower Case Fun Dies and spelled out Ybor City around the top sides of the diamond shape. Inside the journaling square I used stamps from Type Calendar for the date, Never Be Lost, and You Are Here. My geotag is also from Never Be Lost, the arrow is from the 4 x 4 Journal Die set and I used the Stitched Camera Die. I stamped Fun on the arrow. It's from the Things I Love stamp set and so is the cute little happy face on the camera. I was so excited to find that I had a Distress Marker in Tumbled Green for journaling and it matched the Ranger Archival Leaf Green Ink that I stamped with. Rarely do you find a picture that matches a color challenge so well, but I think this one really came together with the photo inspiration colors. Hope you'll stop by again soon.

It's a Special Family Birthday

There's going to be a very special birthday in our family next week. My first great grandchild, baby Ella, is turning one year old. I can't believe it's already a year since her birth. Sadly, she is in Michigan and we are in Florida now, so we are going to miss her first birthday party. It is sad that we will miss more family celebrations now that we are living in Florida. That just means we have to work a little harder to keep a connection going. Thank goodness for modern technology and things like Skype and Facebook. With our kids and grandkids living all over it is a good way to stay in touch.

For Ella's first birthday card I just had to make sure there was an elephant on it. It's kind of a little nickname for her, my little Ellaphant. We've given all our younger grandchildren nicknames. This darling elephant is from the Cricut Birthday Bash cartridge. I wanted her to be adorable and pastel. I used papers from My Mind's Eye Fine and Dandy Girl and Lilybee Design Pinwheel paper stacks. The elephant and all her layers are cut at 3 inches. After I had her all assembled I used My Creative Time Stitched Party Dies for the banner and balloons. I was so excited to use this sentiment from the Cardz TV stamp set called Make A Wish. I've never seen another stamp set with the phrase "Look Who's One" so it was perfect for this card. I made a gift card holder for the inside of the card to hold a gift card from Babies 'R Us. I really love shopping for the young grandkids in the family and I hate having to send gift cards. But last year we bought Christmas presents and I wrapped them all up and we put them in boxes to ship them. Do you know what happened? The shipping cost more than the gifts. That's a real shame, but it is what it is. So now it's gift cards all the time. I hope you enjoyed coming by today. I do so appreciate your visits and the comments you leave. They really make my day. Have a crafty good day.

The Cutting Cafe Party Hats

Hello my little Pretties! Do you know what fashionable witches will be wearing this Halloween season? Designer hats, of course.  I just love how my fancy witch hat came together using the Party Hat Template and Cutting File from The Cutting Cafe. Now that my move from Michigan is complete and we are settled in and living in Florida full time I'm able to get back to designing for Regina at The Cutting Cafe. It is so exciting to be back and I'm looking forward to showing you lots of creations using Regina's cutting files and digital stamps. I so love working with them. I used my Silhouette and the SVG file to cut my hat.

The fun part was adding all the pretty embellishments. I used some pleated paper from Bazzill to make the hat brim. Then I added some tulle, black feathers and a gorgeous large black flower. I know I'll have witches lined up outside my door to get their own designer hat. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll come back soon. I should be able to get a lot more crafting done now that all my craft supplies are unpacked. Don't forget to head over to The Cutting Cafe Blog to see the rest of the creations from the Design Team. Have a crafty day!

My Creative Time Challeng

Wow, it sure is nice to have my move to Florida behind me and feel semi-settled in. Just enough, anyway, to have my craft supplies unpacked and put away. I'd still like to get them organized a little better, but that will have to wait until we get a little construction project done so I have a bit larger craft area and more storage. I decided to get a few items out to create a card for the challenge at My Creative Time. It's a photo inspiration and color challenge using this photo---

The last couple months have been quite hectic after traveling north, selling our summer place, packing, moving and traveling back to Florida I found that my mojo has taken a vacation. I really had a struggle to meet this challenge. I always find color challenges to be just that, a challenge. It seems like it should make things easier, but not for me. Anyway, I did get to use some of my more recent purchases from My Creative Time to put this card together. I still haven't had a chance to use some of my new items yet from my last order and I see that Emma has another release coming out next week. You can see a list of the products I used at the end of this post.

I started out with a base card made from kraft cardstock and added a navy blue mat then a white mat. On top of the white mat I added two layers of waves in navy and light blue, an orange port hole, a sailboat and a few stamped waves. Last but not least I stamped my sentiment at the top. I'm disappointed that this is my best effort, but I know I'll get back in the swing of things soon. Thanks for stopping by.

My creative supply list:

• MCT Lost at Sea dies and stamp set (porthole die, boat and wave stamps)
• MCT Make a Splash die (waves)
• MCT Surf's Up die and stamp set (sentiment)

Super Simple Birthday card

Here's a quick and simple birthday card. All I needed for this was plain white cardstock, yellow and black patterned paper, My Creative Time's Stitched Hexy Dies, Fun Paper Airplane Die and stamp (for the heart trail at the back of the bee), birthday sentiment from the MCT Plane and Simple stamp set and bee stickers from Jolee. It's easy to see how I whipped up this card. All I had to do was cut the three hexy cut outs, stamp the heart trail and sentiment then add the bee stickers. Could it BEE any easier? 

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty good day!

Sunshine, Rainbow and a Travel Update

Hello crafty friends! The sun is shining brightly so I thought it was the perfect day to post this card. Hubby and I are still in travel mode working our way back south to Florida. For those of you who follow me you know that we've recently had some life changes (sold our summer place in Michigan) and are on our way back to our new little place in Florida permanently. We've had a wonderful time visiting with friends and family as we go, but I'm definitely ready to be back home, unpack (especially my craft supplies) and settle into a routine. Right now we are in Jacksonville, N. Carolina visiting with our son, daughter-in-law and grandson. This is our last stop before heading to Florida. We will leave here in a few days, plan to stop overnight in Jacksonville, FL which is about 7 hours from here, then finish the trek to Lakeland, Florida. We should be home by the end of the weekend. I can't wait to get back into a routine and be able to craft again.

This card was inspired by Cassandra from My Creative Time's design team. When I saw her card I knew I had to make a similar card. I was able to whip this up in our first few days back in Michigan. I used several My Creative Time products for this card and you can see my list at the end of this post. I started with a white A2 card base and added a background cloud paper. I found this in my scrap paper stash and can't really say who it's made by. Next I cut out circles in rainbow colors, layered them together and then cut it in half. Voila! The perfect rainbow. I cut a couple clouds to place at the bottom of the rainbow. For the sun I cut another circle out of yellow paper and 12 geotags using two different yellows. Then I added the geotags around the sunshine for rays. I alternated the two different yellow colors to give a little dimension to the sun. I stamped a Peachy Keen face, colored in the eyes and chalked the cheeks, highlighting them with a few white dots from my Sakura gel pen. Last, I cut a speech bubble cloud and added a sentiment from the MCT Treasured Moments stamp set. Love this card! I think I'll send it to my granddaughters back in Michigan after I find it again when unpacking. Heaven only knows where it is and in what box.

We've packed up so many times in the last three years and I'm so glad I won't be doing it again any time soon. Every single time we've ended up throwing odds and ends into any box we could cram them in at the end. Something always comes up missing, but eventually we seem to uncover it. A funny thing happened when we were loading the car the day before we left our daughter's house in Michigan. My husband was working diligently to get all the necessities (like craft supplies) into the car. He said to me after he thought he had it all in "I left room for one more box, but I don't think we need it." The next day, as we're driving to visit our friends in Michigan, we stopped at a rest area to get out and stretch our legs. Hubby asked me to get him a granola bar out of the snack box as we were ready to get under way again. I went to the back of the car, but didn't find the snack box. Yep, sure enough, that was the extra space for one more box and we left it at our daughter's house. We still have a few things left to bring down to Florida at our daughter's house. Hubby put them in our daughter's attic, not a very good place for food items to be. We had to call our daughter and tell her to get it out of the attic and enjoy the snacks herself. The bad part is hubby had thrown a few last necessities into that box. Our daughter is going to mail them to us when we get down to Florida.

Product List

• MCT-Bunch of Fun Circle Dies
• MCT-Never Be Lost Stamp set and Geo tag die
• MCT-Stitched Cartoon Cloud Dies
• MCT-Stitched Round Speech Bubble dies
• MCT-Treasured Moments Stamp set
• Peachy Keen basic faces

Have a crafty good day!

My First Box Card

My first weekend back in Michigan from Florida I needed a birthday card for my neighbor. As soon as I unpacked my craft supplies I got busy making my first box card. I had a lot of fun making it and it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I watched a video that Mary had on her Cardz TV blog here.  All of my patterned papers are from a KI Memories paper stack from good old Walmart. That happens to be the only store available in the little town where we had our camper. This paper stack had some perfect papers with pre-printed images including the candles and presents. I cut the balloons with the Stitched Party Dies from My Creative Time. I also used the Fun Stitched Edges dies and the Stitched Fun Ticket die. My sentiment is from the My Creative Time stamp set called Fun Gift Pocket Sentiments. Let me just say, this card made a huge impression on my friend. She loved it and I've never seen anyone that I've given a handmade card to so lovingly touch every little thing on it. She must have spent a good ten minutes opening, shutting and opening it again. It's so nice to have your effort rewarded like that.