Playing at the Cafe

Happy Saturday!

I wanted to play with the beautiful colors of the Playdate Cafe challenge. Don't you just love them!?



Here's what I came up with:

A simple design, highlighting these soft shades. These are the kinds of colors I miss when the long months of winter arrive!


We had such a fun night out on my sister's boat last night, so I thought I'd share a couple of photos. The weather was so perfect! A bit windy, so only got one good photo of my siblings (others are a bit blurry.) Here are two of my sisters, Mary on the left and Laurie on the right.



This is the boat. It is quite large with a kitchen, dining area and sleeping area below, and two decks to relax on. So fun for a large family like ours!



Just a shot of the lake with the setting sun. Ahhhh. . .



Here's where we ate dinner. Al & Alma's. Fab food! Sorry for the blurry photo. . .and I hadn't even had a drink yet!



And here's my hubby, (don't think I've shared a recent picture of him) standing at the entrance of the restaurant.



Today is another beautiful day here. Heading outside to enjoy it soon. I'll be thinking of all the people affected by Hurricane Irene, on the East Coast. Hope those of you hunkered down will stay safe! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Flourishes Birthday Challenge

I'm helping Flourishes celebrate their 4th birthday! There is a challenge on their blog to create a card using your favorite Flourishes stamp. There is no way I can pick one favorite because I have many! They have some gorgeous floral stamps that I happen to own, so I chose one of their roses to play with. It's from the set called I Love Roses, Set #40. Here's what I came up with.



I colored the rose with a mix of Tattered Rose distress ink and water. I then added some darker shading with a Copic Marker. To make the butterflies, I first white embossed the Hero Arts, Flourish Trio onto white cardstock, then used mint colored, Liquid Pearls and water to paint over the image. After wiping off the excess paint and letting it dry, I use a Martha Stewart butterfly punch. I love the shimmer that Liquid Pearls give! The sentiment is from the same Flourishes set. . .don't ya love the elegant font?!

The weather this week has been close to perfect and I've got 3 more days of vacation left. :) Hubby and I are going on my sister's boat tomorrow night with all my siblings and their spouses. Can't wait to see everyone! Then we have a good friend coming to stay for a week, starting on Saturday. Should be a fun weekend before heading back to work.

Hope you all have some fun plans too! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Inspired!

Yesterday, I was checking out all the fab cards in the Hero Arts Flickr pool and I came across this gorgeous one by Agata! I love the way she white embossed one of the frames from the Luscious Frames set! I knew I had a similar set somewhere around here, that I had never used. After rummaging through my clear stamps, I found it. . .yay! It's called Three Floral Frames.

Inspired by Agata's beautiful card, I created this one:


I white embossed the Envelope Pattern on the kraft card base and did the same for the frame. Then carefully cut it out to add to the card. The three butterflies were stamped with a light blue ink onto white cardstock and also cut out. Because of all the embossing on this card, I'm entering it into the CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #16.

I don't normally do two blog posts in as many days, so if you missed my long, skinny card yesterday, with lots of Copic coloring, click here or scroll down, if you like.

I'm loving my time off from work. Beautiful, sunny day today! I'm heading outside soon to enjoy it.

Thanks to Agata for her wonderful talent and inspiration and thank you for stopping by!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Lots of Copic Coloring

For some reason, I really felt the need to color last night. I had the idea of a long, skinny card and wanted to use the Wallpaper Flowers stamp from Hero Arts. The only problem is, this stamp isn't long enough. After a couple of design ideas went through my head, I came up with the idea of lining it up and stamping it twice.



I told you I needed to color last night! :)

The beautiful ribbon is another from the bagful I received from Vanessa and the sentiment is also from Hero Arts.

It's a rainy morning and I'm on vacation from work, so hoping to keep the creativity flowing today. Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful Tuesday! :)