Flower Power

 Morning all, I am still not in sync with my blog postings but getting there.  Last week a neighbor let me capture a few photo images of his garden, not only wonderful flowers but some yummy veggies are growing there also.  I was fascinated with this yellow flower and decided I needed it in my stash of elements.  PhotoShop6, Silhouette Design Studio, Copic Markers were my supplies of choice.  It always seems to me as I pull a new element off the Cameo cutting mat that there must have been a bit of magic involved also.

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I keep meaning to look this flower up as it is not one I am familiar with but the bees and butterflies love it. Hope your weekend is filled with a little magic and that you stay safe, hugs

Muffin Up

Happy Monday morning, I hope all the moms had a Happy Mother's day.  A neighbor this weekend shared some muffins, not only were they healthy and delicious but they were also pretty.  I thought they would be fun to do a card with a Starbuck's money card tucked inside, so I went to work.  The background was done with a Tim Holtz stencil and some hand doodling.  The corners are EKSuccess.  The muffin image and word bar were created using PhotoShop6 and Silhouette Design Studio.  So "Muffin Up" and a good week to all, hugs

Puppy Love

Dogs, they melt your heart, greet you with enthusiasm and treat you as if you are the only person in the world on meeting.  This dog and I have history, he is a neighbors dog and when a pup, he jumped the fence and appeared at my front door, fearing he would get lost and knowing the neighbors were not at home I kept him in my kitchen for a day, that is when our love affair began.  So now when his human mom walks him and if I am outside, he will sit and park himself on my sidewalk and wait for me to come and love on him.  I had an opportunity to do a tiny, wee photo shoot of him last week and this shot captures all of his majesty.
Photoshop6, Silhouette Cameo and Copic markers helped to bring this card about, have a great day, hugs

Authentic

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I love words, they are definitely on my top list of inspiration.  I can lallygag for a couple of days over a word, it draws images and colors for me.  They cause me to reflect and reach deep within.  I believe "Authenticity" is a blue print to my soul, it is reflected in my eyes and evident in the words I speak.  It is so easy in our world today to follow the in, striving for the latest in cars or fashion.  Being "true" to myself is not always easy but it does help me sleep better at night and allows me to focus in better on what is really important.
All new elements and colors on my card today, pushing the computer, scanner, printer and camera to their limits as I break-in this new system.  Feeling blessed and inspired.  Hope your week happy, safe and productive, hugs

go fish

 

It is Sunday and we are going fishing today, lol, well in card land anyway.  Pretty much generic with a male influence  The background is a woven piece I scanned in, I have started cutting and collecting 1/2" to 1" strips for more weavings, they really lend themselves to interesting backgrounds.  The fish is a Fred Mullet Stamp, I used photoshop6 and Silhouette to turn it into an element for this card.  The branch is also one of my images.  The font Sizzix "Wingo Zingo".  I am hoping for a fish dinner soon. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Hugs

Yes, yes,yes

If you are thinking I am back up and running, you are  correct.  After almost two months without a computer, which by the way, is not something I want to go through again.  Even though it was an amazing journey of friendship and support.  A friend offered to see if he could extract and save my files on my crashed computer, thank goodness it was a "Mother Board" that crashed not my hard drive and he managed to retrieve and get it stored for me.  Another friend gave me an older laptop, which I figured would just make it possible for me to email and access the internet when I wanted, but after seeing it my friend then offered to look into the possibility of rebuilding the laptop to fit my needs.  The laptop operated under Windows XP, so I had to decide if I was going to go to Windows 7 or 8, I had to be able to load Photoshop6 and my Silhouette Studio Software and some other minor things, so he went to work to figure out if it would work.  About a week later he said if you want to

give it a go, the laptop will take it and you will have at least twice the power and space as before. This meant that I could possibly be up and running before I dared dreamed.  My primary concern then became the lack of usb ports and I began looking at hubs, one day while at a chain supply store I saw my dream Epson printer on an almost 1/2 off sale, I stored that away until I knew if the laptop would work. So to make a really long story short, I pretty much have the setup of my dreams.  My printer will take my heavy card stock and has the rear feeding dock that I wanted.   But none of this would have been possible without friendship and so much support from friends and for that I am so truly blessed.  I have been doing a lot of playing with shapes and doodling, everything has been hands on work because no computer.  The above card is a result of some of my play, I scanned in the polka dots on the left and the bar and printed that directly to my card blank, 110lb cover.  The decorative "tabs - yes"  were created with my Wacom and Photoshop, font is LD Inventive from Silhouette Library and photo corners are an  EKSuccess punch.

just be

A quirky little note card for Spring this morning, it has definitely sprung, almost 80degrees yesterday, windows open, all that fresh air went to my head, lol.  Card blank and inside inset, created using PhotoShop 6 and my Cameo.  A new spring butterfly for the right outside corners. "just be" is a Tim Holtz rub-on.

this shows off the inset inside, sorry about the blurry pics, light has changed in my studio with the time change and I have not gotten it down yet, lol.  Hope the rest of your Sunday is springy and bright, hugs

Embark

Happy Friday, and it is a good one here.  A dear friend had back surgery this week, over the last couple years she has been in a lot of pain and it has really put a kink in her very active life.  It was a great success, yippee and she will soon be zipping around like her old self.  So this card is to celebrate and cheer her on.
Copic markers and Tim Holtz distress inks.  Hope everyone has a great weekend, we will be having late spring temps here this weekend, great opportunity, to get the windows open and air out the house, hugs

Wild

I continue to work with my ideas on energy and movement in my cards.  I think I love the chevron because it is a wave pattern, waves equate life and energy.  Conscious or unconsciously waves surround our life.  I want my cards to be upbeat and happy, I want the receiver to feel the energy.  I took a photograph of a small flower grouping to PhotoShop and began erasing some of the pixels, so that the background looked like flowers being tossed in a breeze, I then distressed with Tim Holtz "Old Paper".  The font for wild is "LDDotty" from the Silhouette Library.
Hope your day is filled with wild and wonderful energy, hugs

Thinking of You

After I do my line drawings and decide it will work as an element, I take it to my Cameo and set it up and cut, I will cut three or four so that I have the option to do different color techniques.  I don't always color immediately after I cut them out, sometimes they will sit on my table for a week or more before I get to them. The cornflower was for a specific project so I colored it quickly and the spares were sitting on my table and this card came together.  I like just the line drawn flowers on the chevron background, bringing my color out in the bee, ribbon and little word block.  The chevrons and little fly lines under the bee give this card a sense of energy and movement, so the lack of color in the cornflowers work.

Here is the same card with photo corners added, the subtle difference is that instead of the background having rounded corners they are now squared off with the addition.  I also wanted directional photocorners so that the word "love" was in the correct reading position top and bottom.  I used a piece of index card, distressed with Tim Holtz distress inks, wrote "love" and then cut with the cameo.  I know, I know I have this thing for photo corners.  So here we are smack dab in the middle of the week, hope yours is progressing well, hugs.