Friendship and tulips in bloom

 

When you live out among the tulip fields and invite artist friends to visit in April, they generally shout, YES!!!"

Friendship and tulips bloom in springtime.

The blooms are so brilliant that walking through the fields you have the illusion of everything being photoshopped to maximum saturation. Our normally reserved Pacific Northwest colors are abandoned in favor of the brightest brights.

You can hardly trust your eyes.

We could hardly make it into our own driveway some days due to tourist traffic on rural roads that can't handle the volume but nobody minds much. The tulip bloom season is short and now as April ends they're vanishing again. But wow- the beauty.

Tulip time in the Pacific Northwest

I bike at sunrise along tulip fields, listening to birdsong, knowing there is hot tea and a muffin in my backpack to devour whenever I choose to stop. Living here continues to astonish me, especially in spring.

The hours stretch and I accomplish very little in April except sketching and taking in this amazing place I get to call home.

Blog Hop: The Imaginative Thrifty Crafter

I never waste anything. That's why I use every little scrap.

And I LOVE to win great stuff! Do you, too? To win a $25 gift certificate from my crafting partners, Spellbinders Paper Arts, leave a comment below and be sure to include your email address so I can notify you that you won! 

I designed the Little Loves collection of crafting dies as a perfect place to use the tiny leftover precious bits and use that die for more than only baby birthday cards (sweet as they are!)

This time I used the Baby's Birthday etched die and all those sweet scraps too nice to throw away.

I simply layered little scraps of paper and ribbon and attached the die cut with dimensional glue dots. Using big fat dimensional glue dots gives height, so your cut paper casts shadows.

Using different papers changes up a look entirely and is just plain fun.

And I used one of the cards for my sister's birthday, reminded of how wonderful it is to have friends for a lifetime.

So even though I usually snip everything with scissors, it's good fun to cut something out in a jiffy and make a special card in just five minutes using tiny scraps any thrifty person can't possibly throw away.

Don't forget to leave me a comment and your email for a chance to win, and if you're blog hopping, click here to go to Lilybean Paperie, the next blog on the hop.