In Memory of Lucy

Our Sweet Lucy September 5, 2003 - October 22, 2012

Picked from a litter of purebred Aussie pups, Lucy was the only redhead in the group. From a tiny puppy she grew into the most beautiful, most intelligent and loyal companion we've ever known. 

We were blessed to have 9 wonderful years with Lucy, before she swiftly succombed to a

hemangiosarcoma in her liver and/or spleen.

Lucy at around 8 weeks

From age 4-5 months, Lucy was our devoted fishing partner on the Hoh River, which quickly became one of her favorite places to play and explore. On each sunny day we went fishing, she would run up and down those gravel river bars, chasing the shadows of the birds which taunted her from above.
Her excitement grew each time one of us hooked a steelhead, jumping into the river to try to herd the fish to shore.She quickly earned the nickname of "Hoh Dog".
Our last trip out there was just this past September.

We are so happy we had that time with her while she still seemed a healthy dog.

Lucy herding a steelhead, sporting her spring puppy-cut

I miss her so much, 

my heart aches to hear her bark, 

or her little whine when she wanted a treat, 

to feel her silky coat beneath my hand 

as she greeted me at my car when I returned home.

You are missed Sweet Lucy. I know you'll be waiting for me.

So Thankful

I made this card to send to my best friend, my sweet younger sister. She and I are leaving on a girls trip in a couple of weeks  (which she organized). We live about 1-1/2 hours from each other, but with our busy lives, we just don't get to hang out together that often. So we really value our time when we get together. This year we will be hanging in Cabo San Lucas!  I can hear the mariachi band playing from here.

All products used are from PTI, except the flower, (which is pre-made from unidentified source.)

Spooktacular Halloween!

I just love these little guys from Tremendous Treats: Halloween by PTI.  They are so simple to stamp and color, then fussy cut - just like the old days before we even dreamed of home die cutting machines. 15 years ago we would purchase card stock at the corner stamp store in Seattle and pay the store so much per sheet to use their Ellison  die cut machine - mostly small boxes and such that we decorated with stamps. Look at us now - a die cut machine in every crafter's home!

Stamps: PTI Tremendous Treats: Halloween, Ann-ticipations
Cardstock and dot paper: PTI -  Melon Berry, Stamper's Select White, New Leaf
Scallop Die: PTI
Estate Fence Die: Memory Box
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic Marker
Googlie Eye: Darcie

ColourQ Challenge #158, Mojo Monday #262

I've been receiving the ColourQ Challenge email for a few weeks now - it's about time I actually entered a challenge. I love this color palette for Halloween. But the thing that really attracted me is the Jim Shore Witches hat hinged box. Isn't this awesome!

It did cause me a little distress to not use green on the tops of the pumpkins - but somehow I live through it! :-)

I am also entering this design in Mojo Monday #262. 

Lavender Card Base: GinaK Pure Luxury cardstock
Orange cardstock: Stampin Up!
White cardstock: PTI
Designer paper: PTI
All die cuts: PTI dies
Stamps: Stamps by Judith, Savvy
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Ancient Page Foxglove, Copics
Other: Black Stickles, Glossy Accents, hand punched stars

Papertrey September Blog Hop Challenge

The theme this month was about wrapping and packaging, working with fabric or felt. I've actually admired several very cute felt cell-phone pockets on Etsy over the past year or so. I thought I would try my hand at one for this challenge.  I didn't have a template or any formal stitching instruction. So please don't laugh at my needlework - this is what you get when your first blanket stitch lesson comes from a You Tube video - Lol!  BTW - Wouldn't this be cute using the telephone die from Heart-2-Heart #4 ?!!

  

Cream felt is from PTI. I used Edgers #3 die on the folded edge, the house die from Love Lives Here and the birds from Little Bitty Birds.

Textured Stamping and Will

I've been slowly accepting that Autumn is upon us. There is a definite chill in the air once the sun begins it's descent in the Western sky and I'm already needing to turn on headlights as I drive to work at 6:30am.

 






I had some burlap laying on my stamp table from the PTI blog hop. With my sister's birthday just days away, I wanted to try stamping directly on the burlap for her card.  I re-inked my Avocado ink pad just prior to stamping and was pleasantly surprised to see how well the burlap took to dye ink
 (All supplies Papertrey Ink - except burlap from my stash)

I also wanted to share a photo of our youngest Corgi, Will. We spent last week camped out at the Hoh River, near the Washington coast, with our two Corgi's and Aussie Shepard. To get back and forth to his good steelhead fishing spots on the river, DH decided to take his ATV. Our youngest Corgi, Will, LOVES to ride on the back of this bike. It makes me laugh out loud to see the expression of pure delight on his face whenever DH is buzzing around with him on the back.
Enjoy!

                                       

August 2012 Blog Hop

It's that time again, PTI Blog Hop. The the theme for this one was a bit more challenging for me. The theme is Autumn Textiles. I am not yet ready to stamp fall colors but as I am trying hard to think more creatively outside my comfort zone, I decided to play along. I chose to make this a sympathy card, as I have had two occasions recently when I needed one, but had to buy them. (I need to keep a couple in my stash.)

     

This is my take on this month's theme. I had some burlap leftover from the wedding favors I did for my niece's wedding earlier this month. I used a Half and Half die and some fabric glue carefully around the edges so it wouldn't unravel. DP from Fall Prints and Patterns. Stamps are from Tag-It's #3 and Peaceful Garden, another one of my favorite sets because of it's versatility.

Here is a close up of the burlap and detail: 

Leaf Prints

This card is inspired by PTI's Senior Design Team's challenge for August. Leaf Prints is one of my all-time favorite PTI sets, complete with matching dies, of course!  I was inspired by Heather Nichols design here (which I shamelessly CASed to a large extent.)  I am especially fond of Heather's natural, earthy use of color and texture in much of her work.

I chose to use a variety of green and blue alcohol ink and gold pigment on white glossy card stock for the background. After this was dry, I stamped and embossed various leaf prints directly on the background. This is stitched to a watermark stamped kraft card. "I just love you" and border
die image is from Fabulous Frames, stamped in Kraft.

A Simple Thank You

This is my new favorite color combo - Melon Berry and Black. I've wanted to use this combo since I first saw a similar card from one of my favorite stampers and bloggers, Laurie Willison, whose work you can view here. This lady is one talented stamper and blogger!

I used the Cuttlebug Textile embossing folder. The focal point is PTI's Mat Stack 1, stamped in black pigment ink and clear embossed. I embellished with black ribbon and rhinestones colored with Copics to match. A very simple design but quite striking in appearance.

Quatrefoil and Bloombuilders Birthday

A birthday card for my niece  using Papertrey Ink's Quatrefoil and Bloombuilders 3 die. This color scheme is new to me, and way out of my comfort zone. I like challenging myself to trying new color combinations, though still refer frequently to PTI Color Combinations chart to guide me on color choices. 

(Thanks again to Steph Ellis for providing this MSWord file - it really is invaluable!)

  

Baby, Baby

Seems like I've been making a lot of baby cards lately. For this one, I wanted to use the Sweet Baby dies from PTI, and a technique Erin Lincoln taught during SAF, but the dies for the three little critters in this set were manufactured as one solid die. DH got out his Dremel, and now several of my dies have been cut apart by his skilled hands. I will no doubt find my dies more useful, as I did this little Giraffe from Sweet Baby.


For this SAF ribbon technique, you can find the video Erin presented here. She used twill tape, I used satin. (BTW, Erin too just had a baby boy...go figure!)

Supplies: 

Dies: PTI Shape Up Series: Onesie, Giraffe from Sweet Baby; SU lace border punch 

Stamps: Sweet from Sweet Baby, baby girl from Impress, Inside Out: Baby (for inside sentiment)

Paper: PTI Stampers Select White, 2008 Bitty Dot

Ink: Dark Chocolate;  Ribbon: PTI Simply Chartreuse; Tiny Buttons: Impress

Papertrey Ink July Blog Hop

I've been on a stamping roll lately! After the fun of Stamp-A-Faire I thought I'd challenge myself to keep the mojo rolling and participate in the July Blog Hop.

This is the inspirational photo, the colors of summer.

Nichole's post with this photo "as this wonderful season begins to come to a close " made me laugh out loud! I live in the only state of the lower 48 which has not yet experienced summer weather. We are anticipating sunshine and temperatures  in the low 70's this week; nothing makes me happier!

But I digress. For this Blog Hop, I chose to work with Peaceful Garden and Fillable Frames 10, both sets from PTI. I absolutely love Peaceful Garden and it's dies - great for making gender neutral cards.

(All products from PTI)

Papertrey Ink Stamp-a-Faire 2012

I had a good chuckle as I was reading over other stamper blogs this weekend - a common theme was "I haven't blogged in so long" - so I know I am in very good company in the fact that I haven't posted since February. Yikes!

Stamp-a-Faire brought us all out of our hiatus, at least for the day. I love stamping, but this blogging business places another demand on my time, of which is limited, and I prefer to use mine stamping. I will try to do better though, as I have done some awesome stamping lately, all of it for special days for loved ones.

You can read all about the festivities at Papertrey's Stamp-a-Faire here. This was the best online stamping event I've participated in 17 years of stamping. SO many tutorials and videos from the fabulous designers at Papertrey. Participants ranged from single stampers to large groups, around the world!

What a day - far too much to accomplish or view in one day! Hope to do some of the remaining projects for which I did not have time, as I had to go to work the following morning.

This is my version of the first project, the Morning Make-n-Take, using the exclusive Natural Beauties stamp set created just for this event. All supplies are Papertrey Ink. Two of our sons married two weeks apart 14 years ago...so this competition gave me dedicated stamping time to get their anniversary cards completed. Yay!

The remainder of the projects for this special day involved earning badges as if we were at Summer Camp. A cute idea for someone of my age :-) The badges ranged in theme from Knots, to mini-books, to notecard packs to beaded friendship bracelets using a new die and paper pad from PTI. I didn't get to complete many of these, but will continue to plug away at them, as the tutorials the design team presented were so inspiring.

Here is my entry for the Knots Badge. The "Knot" involved taking green ribbon and creating little leaves for a center embellishment. I didn't have the grosgrain ribbon recommended, but like how this turned out a lot!

And the only other badge I was able to complete was the Conservation Badge using limited supplies from the SAF pre-purchased kit. I had been wanting to try this technique for the background using the large rick-rack die, and think it didn't turn out too bad for my first try. Unfortunately, it took much more time than I had anticipated, which is why I didn't get much more accomplished on Saturday during the hours of SAF!

Again, all supplies from Papertrey Ink, even the little bow around the leaf die cut! 

 

PTI 5th Anniversary Celebration Day 2

I look forward to the anniversary celebration now in full swing for PTI's 5th Anniversary!

I was not able to participate in Day 1 festivities, but have a late entry for Day 2. All of the designers have created digital images available for a free download. The challenge today was to choose one of the designs to create a card for todays contest.

I chose to use the image designed by Dawn McVey.

(It is 10pm and the worse possible time to try to photograph. I much prefer natural daylight, but will miss the deadline if I wait until morning.)