Porch Flag

There's something about a country farm house with a flag proudly waving in the breeze that epitomizes the term "Americana."  While surfing the web for all things card-making some time ago, I happened upon a terrific website called Serendipity Stamps.  It was, indeed, a moment of serendipity.  Don't you just love that word?  Well, long story short, I browsed in their shop for quite awhile, but it didn't take me long to decide that their "Porch Flag" stamp would be among others when I placed my first order.  I love the way Old Glory is front and center, but the details of the rest of the stamp add the perfect finishing touch.  The artist gave us the freedom to decide what kind of tree and flowers are planted out front, so I went with a waxy Magnolia leaf on the tree and a sprawling, blue-violet hydrangea bush.  Today I'm submitting this Copic-colored card as part of the "Anything Goes" challenge this month which you can read about on their blog.  Wish me luck!  See you next time!

Merry and Bright

I really enjoy watching card making tutorials on line.  It never ceases to amaze me how much imagination these creative people have.  I confess that I don't have nearly as much, and I end up being somewhat of a copy-cat most of the time. Today I'm submitting this "Merry and Bright" entry for Darlene's "Holiday" challenge over at Live Love Cards.  It may seem early for Christmas, but we card makers know that August isn't really early at all if we want to get the mail out on time.

Speaking of mail: For this card, as much as I wanted to add a couple of layers of dimension (it seems to beg for it), I knew that it would not likely be a hand-delivery, so I kept it flat for the postman,

I started with the Tiny Star Background by Hero Arts.  I actually saw Darlene use this background stamp on her blog a while back, and I thought it was so cute. Have you ever noticed how inspiration can make your wallet thinner?  I wish that would happen with my waistline instead.  But I digress.

I stamped the Tiny Stars with Versamark ink and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. I sponged Tim Holtz Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink over the embossed stars to make the night sky.  The "Merry and Bright" sentiment is a Hampton Art clear stamp, and the trees are from the Stampin' Up Festival of Trees set, The sentiment and trees were also heat embossed in white.  I used Stormy Sky Distress Ink for the trees so there would be a bit of a color difference between them and the sky. I wanted everything to be mono-chromatic for this particular card. The ornaments on the tree are covered with Turquoise Stickles.  I love silver, blue and white for Christmas! The snowy hills were made with a Paper Smooches "Stitches" die.  That die did not cut through the paper (?), so I'll have to check it again on the next round, Anyway, I trimmed the hills just above the stitch line and then used my Versamark pen and Reflections "Opaque Bling" embossing powder to add a sparkling edge.  The white frame around the sentiment is also heat embossed with that same powder. Finally, when positioning the trees, I decided to put the tip of the middle one just underneath a star and color that one whimsical little star with a gold Uniball Signo pen. I put a "blanket" of yellow Stickles over the top of it for some final pizazz.  See you next time!

Coffee Pot Card - Three Masks

For the Live Love Cards July challenge, I used an antique coffee pot stamp I purchased at a rubber stamp convention/show this weekend.  My family always enjoys visiting over a cup of coffee, and since my brother and I haven't been able to do that for a while due to the distance involved, I made a "coffee" card to send to him.

I used three masks. The first was to mask the coffee pot so that I could sponge Weathered Wood Ranger Distress Ink "behind it" to make the wall while I had also masked off the bottom portion. Then, while the coffee pot was still masked, I masked off the finished wall to sponge Gathered Twigs Distress Ink to make the table.  Before sponging the inks, I scored the top portion vertically (around the coffee pot) to make the wall look like bead board, and I scored the bottom portion horizontally to make the table look like planks of wood.  I finished it off with some Tim Holtz Linen Ribbon for a masculine embellishment.

Live Love Cards - Rainbow Challenge

Maybe things are starting to slow down a bit and I'll have some time to start blogging more often.  Seems like everything has been in a whirlwind since the week before Easter.  I was glad to get home last night after my granddaughter's birthday party and "chillax" for a while before bed.  Of course checking emails, Facebook, blogs, etc. is part of the chillaxin' routine, and I happened across an intriguing email from one of my favorite card makers, Darlene Devries. Long story short, I signed up as a member on her new blog, Live Love Cards, and decided to enter the April challenge, Rainbows.  I'm getting my entry in just under the wire!

Perfect Pearls Resist Technique

Valentines and Hearts

Friday began as a work day for me, but, as is often the case, I traveled that afternoon to visit my parents.  This wasn't just any Friday, though.  This one was special.  Dad and Mom were celebrating 61 years of marriage.  I met Cathy and Mark at their house first so I could deliver the menagerie (three dogs), and we left shortly thereafter to get together with the folks.  When we arrived at their place, Cathy and I were each given a copy of the Farmington Press, their local newspaper.  The top story was a feature article about Mom & Dad's Valentine annivesary.  Sweet!  They had been interviewed by the editor of the paper earlier in the week, and she had written a very nice article which included lots of memories of their years together.  Dad is able to get out to go shopping, so he had purchased a lovely Annivesary card for Mom and had given her a beautiful necklace and earrings.  She had just had her hair done, and, in the words of Fernando, "[She] looked mahvelous, Dahling. Abscholutely mahvelous."  We all went to one of their favorite restaurants and, as usual, had more than enough to eat.  I asked Mom is she is 61 times happier than she was on their first annivesary, and she nodded.  "I'm happy," she said.  It was a fun evening.

My three dogs and I spent the night at the kennel ... er ... Mark and Cath's house where the dogs outnumbered the humans.  Saturday morning after coffee and breakfast rolls, Cathy and I had some shopping to do.  Then she had a birthday party to attend, and I headed back to do some more visiting with Dad and Mom.  I called Dad when I was on the way.  He answered and sounded awful.  I asked if he had been sleeping, and he told me he had been ill for several hours and hadn't slept very much.  When I arrived at his room  carrying a four pack of Gatorade, a jar of peaches in light syrup and (at his request) a bottle of milk, he was sitting in his recliner.  He looked as bad as he sounded, if not worse.  He said that he thought he had food poisoning.  I doubted it.  We had all eaten the same thing at the same place, and the timing wasn't right for this to be food poisoning.  Naturally, I didn't want to stick around and catch whatever evil bug was possessing him, so I told him to try to get some rest and headed over to the other side of the facility to hang out with Mom.  She was doing fine.  A couple of hours later, Dad called me and told me he was going to get one of the nurses on his wing to help him.  Shortly afterward, he called me again and said they thought he should go to the ER.  The hospital is only a few block away, so I took him over there.  While we were waiting, I kept an eye on him while he sat with his eyes closed.  I started questioning him about body aches, etc. and noticed how he was holding his left arm.  I asked if he was having left arm pain.  "Yes."  "Are you having chest pain too?"  "Yes."  That did it.  I went back to the window and gave the young lady attendant the news.  Within a minute or two, a nurse was wheeling him back to one of the exam rooms.  After a thorough assessment and listening to the beeping monitors for about an hour, the decision was made to transfer him by ambulance to the hospital in St. Louis where his cardiologist is on staff.  In the midst of all of this, I had had an opportunity to send a text to Cathy before my phone died.  She had arrived at the hospital, and when the ambulance left with Dad as its cargo, she and I went back to let Mom know what was going on.  She wanted to go to St. Louis with us.  So we got her packed up and got on the road.  After spending several hours at the hospital in St. Louis and answering the routine battery of questions while getting Dad settled in to a room, we arrived back at the ranch at 2 o'clock this morning --  just in time for Cathy to get sick -- same symptoms minus the whacko heart problem.  Poor Cath.

Dad didn't have a heart attack, and he did not have to be put in the critical care unit.  The stomach virus had caused dehydration, and the dehydration had caused his heart to get out of whack (again) -- something with which we have become familiar over the last several years.

Tonight's good news is that his heart rate has gone back down, and the symptoms of the virus have subsided.  Cathy reports that she is feeling somewhat better this evening too, but she's not back to 100% yet.  This is some nasty stuff.

As for me?  I'm keeping a good thought, but in the back of my mind, I'm wondering if/when the other shoe will drop.  So far so good.  Same for Mom.  We keep asking each other "How are you feeling?"  I think I've washed my hands ten frillion times since yesterday afternoon.  Well, let's all hope and pray that Dad's lovely valentine in that picture up there dodges this bullet and that we'll celebrate #62 with them next year -- minus the extra activity, of course.

Catching Up

Obviously, I don't get overly stressed about blogging regularly.  I hadn't realized it has been nearly eight months since my last post.  Well, life takes on a life of its own. Sounds sort of Berra-esque, doesn't it?

I haven't felt up to par today, so I'm staying home.  It's just as well since we had freezing rain last night and it's still dreary and, I suppose, slick too. Anyway, I've been laying low and "Pinteresting" from the couch.  In doing so, I happened to run across a pin that I had posted to my "Card Making Inspiration" board quite a while back. I had seen this Penny Black “Joyful Noise” stamp on someone else's board from this site sometime before Christmas.  I loved it and ordered the stamp on line.

I admired her end result so much that I wanted to recreate it.  She had used Distress re-inkers, though, and I don’t own any of those.  However, I do have plenty of Copic markers, so I played around with them, testing the colors to match hers as closely as possible.  Here's a photo of my version. Sorry it's a little blurry (oops!).  Mom had admired the stamp even before I colored it in, so this card accompanied her Christmas gift.

 

For any of you card-crafters and/or scrapbookers who are interested, this is the “recipe” of the Copics I used:

Scarf and Socks:  C1 (Cool Gray), B0000 (Pale Celestine), B95 (Light Grayish Cobalt)

Hat and Knickers:  YG91 (Putty), W3 (Warm Gray No. 3), W5 (Warm Gray No. 5)
Hair:  E57 (Light Walnut)
Face and Hands:  E00 (Skin White), E53 (Raw Silk)
Coat and Dog:  E31 (Brick Beige), E33 (Sand), E35 (Chamois), Dog only E00 (Skin White)
Gloves and Shirt:  YG95 (Pale Olive) and YG97 (Spanish Olive)
Boots:  T1 (Toner Gray), C3 (Cool Gray No. 3), W5 (Warm Gray No. 5)
Drum Body, Patch on Hat, Dog’s Scarf:  RV34 (Dark Pink), R35 (Coral), and R56 (Currant)
Drum Rim:  Y21 (Buttercup Yellow), YR12 (Loquat), YR21 (Cream)
Drum Sticks:  E27 (Africano)
Drum Skin and Dog’s Fur Above Scarf:  C0 (Cool Gray No. 0)
Drum Strap:  B39 (Prussian Blue) Highlighted with  0 (Colorless Blender)
Ground: C3 (Cool Gray No. 3), C5 (CoolGray No. 5), BG93 (Green Gray)

L'Chaim!

Happy birthday, Mom!  Today is  her 82nd birthday (well, it's a bit after midnight now so actually yesterday, the 9th, was her 82nd birthday.) We started the day with coffee, as usual.  She had two very nutritious oatmeal cookies for breakfast, and then we went to church.  The text for the sermon was the story of the Widow of Nain.  As many of you know, Mom has had quite the bumpy ride lately, so it was quite a treat for me to spend the day with her, and spoil her as much as I could.  Cathy, Mark and I made lunch for everyone after church, and we had a fresh baked cherry pie for dessert.  More coffee too, of course.  It's a staple in our homes.

 

I have to admit that even before I got on the road to go to Dad and Mom's this weekend I was feeling melancholy about this particular visit.  What a blessing it is to enjoy having elderly parents!  It can be trying, frustrating, irritating, overwhelming, exhausting (you name it), but we don't take one moment for granted.  At the core, it's about love, and it's not just about the love we have for our parents or for each other.  It's the about the genesis of love.  This veil of tears is the constant reminder that, because of sin, our bodies will waste away and one day be void of life.  That fact was so easily dismissed when we were children and ignorant of our own mortality, and then, it seems, even more so as selfish adolescents and young adults.  And yet through it all, we know how things are going to be for those of us baptized in Christ!  One of our Communion hymns today was the Easter hymn, "I Know That My Redeemer Lives."  Though Mom continues on an uncertain and somewhat bumpy ride right now, she joyfully sang:

 

He lives to silence all my fears;

He lives to wipe away my tears;

He lives to calm my troubled heart;

He lives all blessings to impart.

 

He lives and grants me daily breath;

He lives, and I shall conquer death;

He lives my mansion to prepare;

He lives to bring me safely there. 

 

It's an Easter hymn, and yes, Easter is over for the church year.  But Easter is what it is all about for all of us. It is the same compassion that Jesus showed the Widow of Nain.  It's about God who gives life vs. sin which causes death.  "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."  In Christ we live.

 

L'Chaim!