Shades of Gray

Hello all and happy summer! It's been quite a while since I posted- life has been very busy here in Wisconsin.

Here is a card I made for the current Embellish Magazine color trends challenge. I used many of my favorite Hero Arts stamps for this and one new $2 stamp I picked up at Michael's recently. I stamped the friends dictionary text using Momento "London Fog" ink and managed to find a few small gray pieces of paper (I don't really use gray much so those were pretty hard to scrounge up). Found some bluish-gray paper and matching ribbon and was happy about that as well...another color that's not my favorite.




I haven't crafted in a month or more so and it was really great to have some inspiration to get me going again!

                                                                     
Stamps used: Hero Arts envelope pattern, HA dictionary greetings, 
HA sentiment from set CL351(friends), botanical flower from Studio G.

On a personal note- my sweet little guy had his last day of school this past Friday (a big Wohoo from him) and has started to play machine pitch baseball last week. I got roped into being an assistant coach of the team- but I actually really enjoy it as I played softball for many many years and love being involved in sports of any kind....plus what could be more fun than trying to keep a dozen 7 year olds focused on baseball! I am cutting back my work hours for the summer too (only 3 days a week- Yipee) so I hope to find some more time and energy to get crafty on a regular basis.

Thanks for stopping bye and have a great weekend everyone! 

Inky Hugs.......Anne

Where's my mojo?

Sorry.....haven't posted in ages..........but I seem to have completely lost my mojo- EEEEK!

I have had no urges to create anything for the last few weeks....which makes me a bit sad.....and wondering what the heck is going on! I walk right on by that craft desk of mine every day but nothing is happening to make me want to sit down and get busy........sad huh?

I've been extremely busy with work and family stuff (work-boring.....family- mighty stressful)) and a little bit of some fun stuff with friends too (yeah)   ......and my home computer has had a virus for over a  week now- Ratz!! The neighbor guy is trying to fix it but I think I'll end up taking it in to get debugged.  Unfortunately my work laptop has no photo software stuff and my memory stick isn't compatible either....so even if I wanted tp upload a picture I couldn't do it. UGHHHH!

Good news: I did stop by Archiver's today and pick up some new goodies today (a beautiful Northwoods rubber stamp and some SRM stickers. etc....)- so hopefully that will spark some creativity soon. If I magically get something made this week I'll take a picture and hopefully I'll have my computer up and running before you know it.

Hope to have something to post about soon!

Hugs,

Anne

Take a guess and win!

Over at Andy Skinner's blog he is having a great giveaway- lots of prizes for all sorts of crafters. Go check out his blog and enter to win some fabulous stuff (newly released Andy Skinner stamps- goodie bags from Calico Crafts and The Craft Barn -Ranger products- and much much more). All you need to do is take a guess at how many paint brushes are in a jar- then post on your blog about his giveaway- it's that easy. You can spend some time browsing his blog as well- he does amazing artwork/crafts and has many great tutorials to browse!

The contest run through the whole month of April- please go check it out and spread the word!

Inky Hugs,
Anne 

Maple syrup anyone?

Hi ya everyone!

I haven't blogged in a while....been busy........we decided to jump in full force to tap our maple trees and make syrup this year! Our neighbors talked us into it......my gosh what were we thinking?

We have been doing a bunch of this.....walking out in the muddy/snowy forest collecting sap every day...my oh my those pails are heavy- my arms and legs are getting a serious workout I tell ya!

                             Then lots of time cooking it down on the weekends (which takes about 12 hours).

This last weekend we cooked down a whopping 65 gallons.......which yields just over 2 gallons of actual syrup. I can tell you it is soooo yummy- the best darn syrup I've ever had.....we have been eating homemade waffles and pancakes just about every day. We have maybe another 2 weeks of gathering sap and then life will be back to normal ( I hope! )

Plan to get some much needed crafting done then.............See you soon!

Anne

New stamps and a few birthday cards

I recently got some yummy new Hero Arts stamps and sat down to play and made a birthday card using my favorite colors: orange- yellow- brown. I used the envelope pattern and the life of the party dots and a few other HA stamps to create this.




I used several distress inks on the dots background (scattered straw-brushed corduroy- spiced marmalade) and the flower was colored using distress inks as well (spiced marmalade). The envelope pattern was stamped using antique linen right on top of the dots. I added a few pearls in both dark drown and orange and that is pretty much it. Pretty quick and easy- yeah! I like how subtle the envelope pattern shows up here.

Here is another birthday card I made last week but never blogged about......another  card using more of my favorite Hero Arts stamps. Again the envelope pattern and the Hero Arts birthday definition behind a tulip digi image from Plain Jane.



Thanks for stopping bye and hope you all have a great crafty-relaxing weekend!

Inky Hugs, Anne