Rectangles are your friend when artistically challenged

 Cards are fun to make, however, it's becoming tricky each year to come

up with something new using the same ole stash.

The turkey stamped has been used before and

because it's small it needs to be "showcased" or it'll get lost on

the card.

 

 WA-LA----the pilgrim hat.

It turned out cute (I make 10 of them) and how about

                                      that buckle!!!! It was saved from a destashing I had completed

in getting rid of some 2x2 QK dies that I have

been carrying around and not using.

Well....guess what's back in the stash LOL!!

The inside sentiment cleverly says

"Happy Thanksgiving!"

 

My pal, Holli,  picked up a sidekick for me which is perfect for the

2x2 QK dies....

(it does make me wish I kept the QK squeeze).

Ah hindsight.

In case you're wondering, we live full time in a 38' RV and 

space is a premium so.......

and we like to keep things simple.

Snort.

 

Of course there's a pre hurricane page

I apologize for the photo quality - there's shutters up

and it's like being in a bat cave so it

kind of threw me off my game.

Change is good right?

Anyway, took pix of the house readied for Irmageddon,

and it was very calming cutting and pasting.

I even got to use my 2 new stamps - a pineapple and flamingo.

You'll be seeing a lot of them 'till I get over them.

Seriously, the waiting is the worst.

Happy Birthday to my favorite eldest son

 Who's rockin' the facial hair. 

I can't decide if I like it.

So I kinda got my Ashli on - watched her video over

on the flair blog.

I love how she uses the washi tape with paint.

I didn't do that. But I love her placement of it so I sorta

followed that and the stamping.

And the bits and pieces. She brings them all together

like they're supposed to be.

I'm working on it. LOL!

 I did get to use my big antlered animal stamp from Studio Calico.

I can't decide if its moose or elk (I really wanted to say squirrell). 

I didn't come up with that until my go to title maker

came up with the title.

It was obvious when you think about it.

Obviously I wasn't thinking about it. 

I tucked in a tag for hidden journaling and some layering.

Anyway favorite eldest will be umm.....older. While

I'm still really WAY young. Lots younger.

Happy Birthday Nicki-poo!!!

Have an awesome day!

Flower Power

This is the stamp I used yesterday on my Gram's page. I really liked it a lot so I decided more would be better.

Therefore I stamped a bunch with black ink on some white cardstock and broke out the watercolors.

Being the decisive person I am, I decided that one of every color would work really really well. Remember RoyG.Biv? That's how I remember all of the colors of the rainbow. 

 I painted out of the lines because I wanted to cut them out and it keeps the white from peeking out. However, if it does peek on out - that's what layers are for.

Broke out the Tim Holtz scissors - I love them because the big handles are friendly to my arthritic fingers. In cutting the intricate details in the flowers - that was annoying and tedious but oh so worth it, turn the paper and not the scissors.

Also don't have a death grip on the scissors like my hands kept insisting on because it just annoys any tendonitus you may have going on in your arm. 

And Wa--LA don't they rock on that paper. Hmm.....that was totally a lucky toss. 

And then I printed a photo that has nothing to do with flowers. ooooooo a dilema. 

Stay tuned......................

This is old Gram... (not)

I actually started this page with a photo. 

Kinda sweeps you off your feet doesn't it. 

Anyway I've scrapped this photo before several times;

as a page, in my many heritage albums and journals so imagine

my surprise when I flipped the back over and 

'IN HER OWN HANDWRITING" wrote 

THIS IS OLD GRAM. 

Sadly (for me) that woman could run circles around any one of us

any time, any place, anywhere. 

It annoyed me in a good way. I never beat her though

until she was in her 80's. 

I wanna be like that.

Brought tears to my eyes - because she was really never old

to me. I admired her immensely. 

BUT I have her handwriting - how cool is that AND

I refuted her statement that I used as a title.

I KNOW...

I wanted to use the board paper because she is standing on a board.

Clever eh?

So I decided it needed some texture and stuff, so I whipped out

my gesso and handy-dandy onion bag.

WELL...........

I dumped the gesso on and started smearing it around

and the bag moved.

So then it looked like a white blob.

Thinking rather quickly for me, I whipped out a babywipe

and wiped up as much as I could and then

flinged the bag back down and started to rub over it.

I did get some texture back, but just to make

sure I decided to use a black stamp with circles and used it

over top of the white sortof textured blob.

And then a flower stamp was required because while I was

being not happy with my onion bag I found that

round thingy that I also used as a template to smear stuff such as
paint, gesso, ink around with
on other pages.

AND its okay to swoon here the colors were

really perfect with what I sort of had in mind and it ended

up being NOT the colors I had originally picked out.

I copied the back of the photo and cut it down and then couldn't

figure out where it would work. 

Flowers, my fall back in any tense situation, became

the base for the fancy signpost after 

rearranging everything 13984710928374109847 times.

Well I had to be sure.

And that left enough of a gap for the journaling.

Doncha love it when a plan comes through?

AS if.

Anyway my gram is about 23 in the photo and in the 1930 

census her occupation was laundry and living at home.

She lived on Island Park Rd in Glendon, PA.

I had to look it up because I only know one road

through Glendon and that one wasn't it.

If you know anything about laundry back in the day - it

was a lot of hard work. I remember she had a wringer

washer until I was in jr. high. It worked so no sense

fixing something that ain't broke.

People back then totally knew how to do it.

So I used American Craft-Dear Lizzy, Prima, Bo Bunny and Basic Grey.

Sixxix and QK dies.

M's stamps.

Kaiser Kraft flowers.