Sketch Challenge

We didn't get together on Monday night this week, but Sabrina and Diane came over tonight instead. Sabrina brought a new stamp from The Stamp Pad Co. and stamped and watercolored a bunch of these gorgeous coneflowers. She was going to throw them out and I quickly rescued them. I used one on this card for today's sketch challenge on Splitcoast Stampers.

Recipe:
Stamps: The Stamp Pad Co., SU sentiment
Paper: Lovely Lilac, Gable Green, Summer Sun, watercolor paper, Memory Box dp
Ink: Stazon, watercolor crayons
Accessories: brads, ribbon (pti and Mike's $1 bin), punches, nesties

DH is traveling till Saturday, so I'm on my own for a few days. Hopefully, I can get caught up on some crafting! They are predicting moisture (lots of it) headed our way starting tomorrow night. Sure hope it's rain and NOT snow!

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Today's Color Challenge

I had a special request for a card for a teenage aunt. I thought since I'm not sure the sex of the new little one, I'd take advantage of today's Splitcoast Stampers color challenge - So Saffron, Pink Pirouette and Bordering Blue.

Outside

Inside

Recipe:
Stamps: Cute & Cuddly, Congrats, Greeting for All Reasons
Paper: So Saffron, Bordering Blue, Pink Pirouette, Whisper White
Ink: Black, markers
Accessories: ribbon, brads, punches, mini clothespins

Sandy - is this what you wanted? Send me an email and I'll get it sent off to you right away.

Thanks for visiting. I'm still feeling a bit harried trying to get all my ducks in a row before next week, but it helps to sit and create and get myself somewhat centered.

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Couple challenges to start the week

I'm attempting to get myself together after a week or so of chaos. What better way to settle down than to make a card for a couple of challenges. This card is for this week's Mojo Monday challenge and The Little Paper Shop Color Challenge (So Saffron, Certainly Celery and Perfect Plum). I love this Basic Grey Euphoria paper and don't pull it out near often enough.

Recipe:
Stamps: God's Beauty, Hero Arts sentiment
Paper: Certainly Celery, Perfect Plum, Whisper White, BG Euphoria dp
Ink: Perfect Plum, versamark
Accessories: deckle scissors, Angel Wings Shimmerz, Stickles, Punches, So Saffron ribbon

Thanks for visiting. Hopefully this week will be manageable. Since I'm taking the next two weeks off to have knee surgery, this week will be full of getting things done at the office so that I don't have crises arising daily while I'm gone.

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

We have some WINNERS!

Thank you all so very much for all your wonderful comments. I used Random.org to generate two numbers and here they are:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

34 12 

Timestamp: 2009-04-11 22:30:04 UTC

Here's comment 12:

Diane said...

Congrats on all your hits Chris!!
I'm not surprised,cuz your blog and creations are the bomb!!!
You are soooo generous!!! Thanks for a chance to win your awesome candy!

April 4, 2009 8:33 PM

Here's comment 34:

HotStampinMama! said...

Yippeee 20K! But you really shouldn't be surprised, your amazing (and so are your cards!)! Great job, I always look to you for inspiration (and help).

April 7, 2009 12:57 PM

Congratulations to two of my very favorite ladies! Diane, I've sent you an email and Autumn - you can pick up your goodies tomorrow when you come for Easter dinner! I'll have some pix of the lights of my life as they search for their eggs tomorrow. I'm hoping the weather will hold out - it's gorgeous today - and we can do it outside, but if not we'll improvise and hide them inside.

Well DH and I are off to a bluegrass pickin' potluck dinner tonight, should be lots of fun. I don't play an instrument so I bring my knitting and kick back and listen to music and knit. I haven't found an occasion yet where I can't pull out my knitting!

Thanks again everyone for leaving me such wonderful and encouraging comments. I appreciate all of you soooooooo much!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

While I wasn't looking ....

This message stays at the top of the blog until the winners are chosen. Please scroll down to read the most current blog entry.

.... my hit counter went over the 20k mark! Thank you so much to all my readers for coming to visit me and leaving me such wonderful comments. I can't begin to tell you how much that means to me! This blog has helped me so much in my papercrafting efforts. I feel like I've grown a lot in the last 1+ years because of this blog and also because of all my wonderful stamping/crafting friends.

To celebrate, I'm going to give away two blog candy packages. Check these out! I think you'll like them. I will also include some hand made goodies and probably a few other things thrown in for good measure, but this is the basic candy. Just leave a comment on this post and on April 11 I will use Random.org to pick two winners. Thanks again all of you for all your wonderful support!



Thanks for visiting today.

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Yesterday' Make and Take Projects

As promised, here are pix of yesterday's make and take projects designed by the divine Ms. Roselyn!


Should have stamped my sentiment a little lower on that second card, but it'll do! I learned how to make that cute flower!

Cardiologist report - I have a strong healthy heart with a couple question marks. Nothing serious and nothing to prevent my surgery on the 22nd! YAY! Have to be out of work for two weeks instead of the three days I had planned for, but I have plenty of things to keep me busy at home so that will be okay. Thanks everyone for all your good thoughts and prayers and most of all for your words of encouragement. I'll be back in the pool tomorrow getting stronger in preparation for surgery. I'm really thrilled. Have to go back and see him in a month and have another stress test in six months, but those are all bridges I will cross later - walking on two good legs!

Thanks for visiting. Tomorrow is the drawing for the blog candy so if you haven't left me a comment, be sure to do it!

~chris

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Downline Swaps

As always, we had a wonderful and creative meeting today. Here's a slideshow of our swaps and tomorrow I'll show you our two make and takes designed by our fearless leader Roselyn!

Long day today. Tomorrow morning is our meeting with the cardiologist to find out if I'm okay to go ahead with the surgery! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Recent RAK

Here is a slideshow of images of a RAK I made recently. I sent it off and she's gotten it, so I know I won't spoil anything posting this.

Thanks for visiting! Downline meeting tomorrow, so there will be a slideshow of images of our swaps!

~chris

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

My favorite weekly challenge!

This week our little darlin' is dressed up Western style! Take a look at this cutie patootie!

Here's my card inspired by her cute outfit. I am losing my mind as both stamp sets that I wanted to use with this card - Pocket Fun and Wanted - could not be located in this mess I fondly call my "crafting studio." I have got to get it together and catalog my shelves so that I don't go through this every time I need something! Yikes. I also need to make notes when I lend sets as that is the only thing I can think of to explain why these are not on my shelf. If anyone borrowed either of these from me, could you please let this forgetful old lady know you have them so that I don't think I'm losing my mind?


Thanks for visiting!

~chris

Edited to add: no more calls, we have a winner. Both missing sets were here, just not where they were supposed to be! I'm not going nuts, I'm just really messy!

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

A Baja Breeze version

I made a couple more of those wonderful cards inspired by Patty Bennett, only this time in Baja Breeze. Wanted to see what they would look like in that wonderful blue. I'm thinking I really like the lovely organza ribbon from SU with this card rather than a gross grain ribbon. What do you think? The Regal Rose version below is for my swap for this month's downline meeting and I think that it may very well be my project for our Spring Stamp Camp in May too!




Last test finished yesterday. Now the hard part, waiting till Friday to meet with the doctor to find out if there's anything to worry about. Both techs said that they did not see any obvious problems, so I am encouraged and hopeful that surgery will go ahead as planned on the 22nd!

Hope to get a couple of challenges done this week and our monthly downline meeting is on Thursday so look for a slideshow of all the wonderful swaps.

Thanks for visiting.

~chris

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

A Sailor Looks at 60!

We have a good sailing buddy who is turning 60 tomorrow. We're headed up to help him celebrate along with a lot of our other sailing friends. DH got him a bottle of Pussers Rum (comes from the British Virgin Islands) that we know he likes and I thought I'd decorate his bag a bit.

Front

Back

Here's the card that I made for him. All the graphic images I used for these projects are from pcCrafters and the sentiments and "60" medallion were stamped.

Front

Inside

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

Be sure to check out the blog candy post and get your name entered to win some celebration candy!

A Proud member of The Lime Light

Come visit us and see what we've been up to.

Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Patty Bennett totally ROCKS!

I don't know if you've ever visited her blog - Patty's Stamping Spot - but if you haven't, you really, really should! Her creations and ideas are fabulous. I made these two cards that were inspired (read totally CASEd) by this card and this card of Patty's.



I have lots of birthdays in April to make things for, so I'm off to get busy on that. I've got a downline meeting to get ready for as well - swaps and make and take - love it! Five of my fellow demonstrators and I are conducting a big Spring Stamp Camp on May 9. If you live in the Denver/Boulder area and want some more information on this fun get together, drop me an email (my address is there on the left) and I let you know all the pertinent deets! I'll be putting up some of my potential project ideas here through the month as well and you can all give me some feedback!

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

I survived!

I survived my nuclear stress test although they did manage to stop my heart at one point and had to do a quick shifting of gears. I'm left with a headache (probably from no caffeine for 24 hours) but needless to say I have nothing made to show you today. I do have a slide show of some of the wonderful RAK's and cards that I received over that last couple months.

The gorgeous long banner that you see in one of those photos says "Happy Birthday Chris" on it and was made by my oldest friend Diane (she's not old I've just been friends with her longer than anyone else - probably 45+ years or so!) It was hard to get a good picture of it, but take my word for it - IT"S BEAUTIFUL!

Thanks so much for visiting. The counter is creeping closer and closer to that 20k milestone and I really think it is going to call for a bit of celebration blog candy. I've already picked out a couple of things to put in this package and I think I'll do two packages this time one for each 10k! I'm probably not going to get pix up tonight as I think it's going to be an early evening for this old lady, but tomorrow! There is supposedly another horrendous blizzard headed our way this weekend which means lots of stampin' time! YAY!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Cards for Lime Light Task 6

This month all the Lime Light design team members worked on a project for Donna. The project was to make 25 cards for Donna to give as incentives to her students so they can have some hand crafted cards to send out. The rules were - no ribbon, brads or other embellishments - just paper, glue, glitter and ink! Oh no - no ribbon! It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be when I first read the challenge and with the help of my bff Sabrina, here's some of the cards we created:

They are forecasting more snow for us today and even more for the weekend. Yikes - it's April already it's supposed to be SPRING!

Thanks for stopping by today. I'll be back later with some more fun stuff!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

March Christmas Cards

I don't have all 5 of them made yet, but here is my card for this month's Christmas card challenge over on Tracy's blog:


This month's challenge was to use black, white and one other color AND a button! I have everything cut, just not assembled, so I'll put up another picture when they are all put together!

Edited to add:

I got them all done - and before midnight MST! Here they are:



Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Usual Monday Madness

The gals came over last night for some stampin' fun and here's what we made:

Sabrina:

Sabrina also made a whole bunch of cards for this month's Lime Light project. I can't show those to you yet, but later this week I'll have a slideshow showing off her handiwork!

Diane:

Me:

I made some more cards for the Lime Light project as well and they'll be in that slideshow later in the week too!

Things are crazy - trying to make sure that all my pc's in all my offices are protected against whatever payload this April 1 virus might bring. Yikes!

Thanks for visiting.

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

This week in Courtney's Closet

Here's our little cutie patootie Courtney modeling this week's spectacular outfit. Isn't she just adorable!


Here's the card I made inspired by her sweet outfit:


I didn't have the right colors in my dp stash, so I took a piece of black and white in a pattern that I wanted and scanned it in on the computer. I opened the file in my graphics editing software and changed up the colors to match the RGB codes for Tempting Turquoise and Chocolate Chip and like magic I had some dp from my printer to work with! I wish I could get this printer to feed the heavier cardstock, but it just wouldn't cooperate today so I settled for plain copy paper and the colors are not as intense as I'd prefer. I might try switching up the colors tomorrow and playing with this again. We'll see.

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Aloha RAK from Tracy

I have a whole bunch or RAKs to post and there will be a slideshow featuring all of them on Tuesday. I wanted to get this one posted so that Tracy would know I received it though. This is what I got from Tracy - queen of the Aloha RAK - in our exchange this month. Isn't it wonderful? I was really intimidated getting her name this round - I sure hope she likes mine when she gets it!


I got a few things done today and so I don't feel so behind the 8-ball. I'll be back with more fun things tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Quickie Note Cards

I needed a quick gift and found a perfect solution! I used my pcCrafter's graphics from the Season to Season clipart collection.

Here's the front:

Here's the inside:

I used digital paper that I altered to match the So Saffron cardstock, made six notecards, added envelopes and wrapped it all up with a sparkly ribbon and bow and viola - instant (almost) present! Although not hand stamped and colored, it is hand made by me and was well received by it's recipient. Being a computer junkie (read nerd) for quite a long time, I am always jazzed to be able to do creative things with technology. That whole left brain/right brain fun stuff.

I'm playing catch-up today from a whirlwind week full of pesky health issues and lots of creative activity. My craft studio is a total wreck and I really need to get things in order before Monday night's stamping pals show up! Here's what the work table looks like today:


DH is up directing the sail club crew putting the docks and slips in the lake for the season, so I am on my own today to get my act together. Once I get things cleaned up it's on to getting a number of projects finished that I will be sharing with you throughout the coming week! Looks like the old hit counter is approaching another milestone as well, so look for some blog candy this week too!

Thanks for visiting.

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles

Let's get stampin!

I have a workshop tomorrow with some gals that I only see about once a year and I'm really looking forward to it. Here's what we'll be making.


I'm going to hit the swimming pool first thing in the morning - I'll let you know how that goes. My blogging buddy Diane and I are exercising together even though we are miles apart! What an inspiration this gal is! Visit her blog and leave her a little love and check out all her wonderful creations!

Thanks for visiting!

~chris

A Proud member of The Lime Light
Come visit us and see what we've been up to.
Guest Designer for Kaboodle Doodles