Theme Thursday....

...and a little habit of mine.   Notice the background from the card below?  It's actually the cover of a large slab of 12x12 paper I just bought.  Thought I'd share a little (strange maybe?)  habit I have when I buy a new pad of paper--which I seem to be doing a lot of lately.  Anyway, I cannot leave the paper in pad form.

I have to rip out every sheet (and in this case it was 48 of them).  I cannot stand having paper I don't like mixed in with paper I do.  So I sort out the "don't like's" and usually pitch them and then organize the papers that I'm keeping.

When that is done I feel compelled to immediately do something with the samples that are usually on the front cover.  Which is great because it's heavy cardboard and can be used for a number of things.  My last pad of paper was punched into heart shapes, which gave me a variety of colors and designs to use for upcoming Valentine's Day projects.  But this pad I've used above really had a nice sized grid pattern to it, so I used this piece for a card background.  The larger shape on the grid worked perfectly for my image. 

I worked this into Theme Thursday's challenge for this week of "fly."

My image and butterfly are from Digital Collage Sheets. 

The sentiment I stamped in two parts is from Hampton Arts.

Theme Thursday -- Colorful Skinny

My colorful skinny for Theme Thursday's challenge. It seems fitting with the sentiment I used to have a lot of color.

Stamps by Oxford Impressions and Studio G.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've had a lot of inquiries as to how the craft fair went on Saturday. I'm doing another one this Saturday, so I thought I would report on both at the same time. I'll have some pictures to share then too.

Theme Thursday

I got the Winter edition of Take Ten in the mail yesterday and found a sheet of free artists quads contained in it. The pink patterns just jumped out at me, and I immediately set about making this Christmas card with the pink sheet music quad.. I love pink and brown ..... and it seems to work well for Christmas, too.

I've just put this up in my Etsy shop, but am submitting it for the patterned paper challenge this week at Theme Thursday.

You can see all the patterned paper submissions at http://themethursday.wordpress.com/.

Theme Thursday - Wings

New "Haunted" stamps from Oxford Impressions fit in nicely with Theme Thursday's wing challenge.

Theme Thursday

Theme Thursday's challenge is to use script or text. I've chosen this page from an old shorthand textbook to use as my background.

Theme Thursday

The theme this week is Vintage Women. I used an image from CollageVisions. I placed it under an image of the Eiffel Tower

which I printed out on Vellum.

The background is an ATC stamp from Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz. I forgot I had this and I really like it....makes a great vintage

background.

For those interested this is ATC #150! I am done!

Another Halloween ATC

Well, this was easy. Why you may ask? Well, frankly, I've got a ton of them stockpiled -- okay, maybe about 30 or so. And it seems as it is the theme for Theme Thursday this week. So here you go!

Theme Thursday -- Seasons

Here's my calendar page for August which I just completed and which fits in nicely with this week's Theme Thursday challenge of favorite seasons.

All images are by Oxford Impressions. Calendar by Jenny Bolin.

Theme Thursday

We went from purple last week to orange this week at Theme Thursday. I made a bunch of Halloween ATC's for my cruise collection, and this one happened to have quite a bit of orange init.

The Color Purple

The theme today is "Purple" at Theme Thursday. I used this prompt to create my 100th ATC for the 150 or so I need to make to exchange on the cruise. Whoo Hoo!.....I hit the 100 mark! The background text and image are from Oxford Impressions. The frame is by Rubber Stampede. My little violets are cut out from a vintage greeting card.

Theme Thursday -- Stripes

Here is my ATC for the challenge at Theme Thursday calling for "stripes."

My mannequin stamp is by Lost Cost Designs. The label is from Inkadinkado.

Theme Thursday

A very simple card combining a great vintage image offered up by Nancy Dooren on her Vintage Freebie blog and a color prompt from Theme Thursday of pink and brown.

Theme Thursday - Hats

The inspiration for my Theme Thursday challenge piece came from the sheet music that I found in my trash can. I don't know why I had thrown it away, but I had. I retrieved it and decided that this image from Collage Visions would go perfectly with it for this week's theme of "hats."

I don't know which one is Pietro, but it seems it could be either one of them.

Theme Thursday

My submission for Theme Thursday this week. The challenge was "tags." (Something I kind of like creating:)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those of you that asked what I bought at the stamp store yesterday, sorry I didn't take a picture. But I can tell you this tag contains a couple of the things -- well, the tag itself in fact. But I also bought the background stamp (Paper Artsy) and the little inchie stamp I used on the puzzle piece (Hero Arts).

I live in an area where there are a lot of craft stores. So if I travel an hour and a half out to a stamp store, I make it a point to buy only those things I can't get nearby and can't use a coupon for such as Michael's and Joann's. They had a good selection of Paper Artsy stamps which I can't find locally, so I bought a few of those. The Hero Arch inchie stamps are three years old and discontinued so I wouldn't easily find them. But I like them quite a bit and was able to revive my interest in these puzzle pieces by stamping on them. I also bought a flourish stamp from JudiKins (wood mounted, too, which I almost never buy anymore), but I realized I don't have a single flourish stamp I really like. They also had a lot of old 7 Gypsies papers (going back five or six years) which were of the vintage/collage variety. I grabbed a few of those, just loved them. A few odds and ends like watch faces, cigar bands and that was about it.

Oh, and DH was very good -- dropped me off and waited for the full hour before he came back to find out if I "was done yet."

Theme Thursday -- Numbers

I spent some time this week creating some submissions for the Stampers Sampler template that appears in the June issue. I had so much fun with it -- and this particular one just so happens to coincide with the theme at Theme Thursday which is numbers.

Watch for this template in the new Stampers Sampler. If you can't get ahold of the magazine, they usually post the templates on the Stampington website.

Theme Thursday -- Men

Sarah from Vintage Figments sent me this collage stamp quite a while back. I knew it was waiting for the perfect challenge to be inked up, and today's challenge at Theme Thursday of

"Men" was just that. I believe the stamp is from Artful Illusions. I know Sarah will let me know if I've got that right or not.

Theme Thursday -- Hats

Here is a 4x4 I made from an image of Marie by Oxford Impressions. Stamps are by Oxford Impressions, too. Background paper is by Basic Grey.

Theme Thursday -- Famous Faces

I just recently acquired this stamp of Mt. Rushmore with its famous faces, so I thought I'd use that and this image of George Washington I've had so long it just needed to finally be used!

(I know the map background is not correct geographically, but it was the only map paper I had of the U.S.)

You can see the rest of the submissions for this challenge at http://themethursday.wordpress.com/.

And now I'm off to watch American Idol to which I'm terribly addicted to see who the next famous face may be in the music world!

Theme Thursday

Here is my "glamour girl" for the challenge this week at Theme Thursday.

April in Paris

I was working on a swap (coincidentally the theme was Paris) and I had all my stamps and ephemera out when I saw the challenge at Theme Thursday was Paris. I had it in my head that it needed to be a 4x4, so here is my Paris 4x4.

Transparency is by ArtChix Studio. Stamps are by Paper Studio, Rubber Stampede, and Inkindinkado