Cards received 2

Well look at the weather we are having!!! It's hard to believe that we are having 75 degree weather in October.... don't get me wrong..... I am not complaining. LOL I'm loving it.

I took photos of the last few cards that Susan had received and I wanted to get them posted here  as she is taking them back later today. I must tell you she really appreciated each and every one that she got.

I sure hope I didn't get any of the names placed with the wrong card. Susan was very good at keeping the envelopes with the cards BUT you never know I could have messed up. PLEASE let me know if any are wrong from this post or the previous post.

I forgot to mention in the last post, that you can click on any of the photos to enlarge them for a better look at them.

Merry from Australia

Monica from Indonesia who was kind enough to add my request on her blog too!!!

Gerri from Florida

Lis from Florida sent cards out weekly and this is  her 3rd sent

Barb & John from New York

Lis from Florida..... 4th card

Dawn from Florida





THANKS again for all your kind thoughts, prayers and cards that were sent to my daughter Susan.

Carolyn

Cards received

Hi to all my blogging buddies..... I thought you might like an update on my daughter Susan.

After being sent to another surgeon, due to her complicated case, she finally had her operation on my birthday.... September 23rd. They did remove her cancerous kidney and I was shocked to see that she went home the very next day!!!!

Now Susan  doesn't feel pain like most people and she seemed to be healing great and she insisted on going back to work this last Monday JUST 10 days after the surgery!!!! She just couldn't sit at home any more. She works on the computer and she told me that if she feels tired she can just pack up and go home..... she has a great company that she works for.

It has been over a month since I have posted and I came here today to firstly THANK everyone that sent cards to Susan and secondly to post some of them. I don't know how many will go in one post so there may end up being a couple of postings.

Claire from Portugal

Hannah 9 years old... Claire's daughter

LOVELY job Hannah!

Susan from England

B&B from Ohio

Carole from Florida

Lynn from Florida

Lis from Florida

Andrea from Florida

Sharon from Florida

Chrissie from England

Lori from Missouri

Shirley-Anne from Australia

Laurie from Florida

Donna from Florida

Brenda from Florida

Barb from Florida

Joy from Florida

Karen from Ontario

Another from Lis of Florida







This is the first lot of cards.....more to come in the next post.
THANKS again for all your support.... I really appreciated it.

Carolyn

Cards from around the world

Hello to all my blogging friends and thank you for stopping in again. I want to welcome Monica, Nana Donna, Darlene and Chrissie from Less Is More, as new followers and thank them for joining. I must admit that I have been checking in and did see that I had new people join and really should have thanked EACH of you as you joined BUT my mind and heart have not been on blogging or card making these last weeks since finding out that my daughter Susan has cancer. I belong to a couple of card groups and had spoke on the phone to Donna, a very special lady in one of the groups. Well long story short..... she posted a note explaining what was  happening in a very lovely way so as not to invade our privacy and asked that they shower me with prayers and cards. I posted back that I would rather their prayers and cards go to my daughter as she would need the encouragement. I posted to the other group that I belong to and got very concerned posts from them also and offers to send cards too. Now last Monday after we arrived  home from the specialist my granddaughter walked in with the mail for her mother and there were 5 cards there for her. I can't tell you how it made her feel. She said what a wonderful bunch of ladies they must be to place her in their prayers plus send cards of encouragement to someone they didn't even know. I am now trying to start a prayer chain reaching as many countries around the world for her and I privately  contacted some of my followers asking if they would place Susan in their prayers and if they could also find it in their hearts to send her some encouragement in a card from their country. I received  some lovely  emails back but one was exceptional from a dear lady in Indonesia. This was from Monica, a new follower and she lovingly offered to place something on her blog asking people to send cards to Susan also. She also said that I should really let you know what was happening and how it would be soooo nice to have "Thinking of You"   or  "Your in my Prayers"  cards sent from as many countries as possible. I have seen that I have had visitors from all around the world .....soooo if there are any of you out there that would like to send a card of encouragement from your country please email me privately and I will send you my daughters address. You can reach me  HERE Thank you for even taking the time to read this. Carolyn

Clean and Simple Flower Card

Oh I see I have a new follower so I will take a moment to thank Carolie for joining as a follower. I do appreciate it. 
I have been sooo busy lately that I just haven't had time to design up a new card to todays post so I am going to show you one that I did a few weeks ago.
It is another very simple card that might take 5 or 10 minutes to make up.

The caard base is SU Pale Plum. I stamped the flower then embossed the swirl pattern, coloured the flower and tied a bow for the stem.

I know it is a simple card but somethines simple is elegant. Hope you like it. I am working on a new one for tomorrows post sooo be sure to come back and see what I came up with.

Carolyn

Happiness Shared

Today I am sharing a card with you that was designed by my granddaughter Amanda. I was helping her with her children and therefore didn't have much time for desigining cards for my group. She offered to design a card to help me in return.

Now on to her card..... she used the rose and verse  from Happiness Shared and the humming bird from Elements of Style.

The card stock used was Appricot Apeal and Close to Cocoa which are both discontinued BUT there are current colours close to them that could be used.

All of the stamping and sponging on the edges was done with Chocolate Chip ink. She added a soft pink half pearl to the center of the rose as you will see a close up in the second photo. There is also a little crystal added to the birds eye.... which was suggested by one of the gals in class.

Hope you enjoy her card. Thanks for dropping in again.

Carolyn

Christmas Elegance

Thanks for dropping in again to see what I am up to.

As I was getting my card ready for this post and found I didn't have any silver card stock soooo I had to improvise a little....but it worked great.

I needed silver..... had gold .....but wanted silver and you know what that's  like. When you get something in your mind it's all that you want....no changing it.... sooo I looked around and thought and thought then went into the kitchen and grabbed the foil wrap. I then cut out a piece of card stock the size needed and simply wrapped it with the foil.....worked GREAT! I had to turn the card a little when I took the photo so you could see the silver mat.

Now all the green card stock used was Always Artichoke other than the white striped mat. I used my background stamp with Always Artichoke ink to make that. I also embossed the one green mat with a snowflake embossing folder, then the next mat is the silver piece I made from foil wrap. I also did some sponging with Alway Artichoke ink on top of the embossed snowflakes and around the edges of the all card stock pieces.

I used silver embossing powder and heat embossed the snowflake then I went looking for a silver brad or button but didn't have any sooooo now what was I going to do. Well StampinUp has this wonderful little embosslit die of small buttons so now I went looking around for some way to make a silver button!!!

The foil wrap would stick enough as I would have to use 2 sided tape on it soooo I kept looking and I found a roll of sticky silver tape that is used to wrap furnace ducts....I think. It was in my late husbands stuff and so I cut off a square and wrinkled it up then opened it, took off the backing and stuck it down on some card stock then cut out the little buttons. I think it looks fine. Here is a close up.

For the ribbon, I just cut one piece about 3 1/4 inches long then the second piece 2 3/4 inches. I then laid one on top of the other and wrapped a thread around them to gather then attached to the card with a sticky dot. I used some silver thread cut about 3 1/2 inches and simply threaded through the button and tied, then used another sticky dot to place on the ribbon.

I like the way the silver laid across the ribbon.  That just happened....I didn't do anything to make it go that way. LOL

Be sure to come back again some time and see what else I can find to improvise with. LOL

Carolyn

I am entering this at Make it Monday

Another clean and simple card

Thanks so much for dropping in..... tonight I have another simple card that I did with the little SU stamp set called Happiness Shared. I just love this set and have done a lot of different cards with it.

For this one I coloured the rose but others I have just left it as the stamped image for an elegant black and white.
I embossed about 2/3rds of the white mat using the SU latice embossing folder. The black mat is cut 3 X 3 and the white piece to stamp is cut 2&1/2 X 2&1/2. I did a little piercing in the upper right corner to balance it off.
I am going to use this card for a challenge at Less is More this week. They are asking for a ribbon or a button and this one has a ribbon.
I hope you like it and will come back for a visit again some thime soon.

Carolyn 

Simple & Quick-Quilt Card

Hello my blogging friends. So glad to see you have dropped in again.

I must tell you.....my house repair endeavors are getting larger now. My granddaughter lives in an apartment  in my basement and her toilet was leaking sooooo I thought ...how hard can it be to fix it.... after all I watched my husband do it before. LOL  Well here I go again........

I shut the water off, drained the toilet, undid the bolts holding it down, took the toilet off, replaced the wax seal, placed the toilet back on.....everything was great. I then started to tighten the bolts that hold it in place BUT no one told me they just needed to be hand tightened and I tightened them too much and heard a snap.

I thought I broke the toilet BUT it was ok.... then after taking the toilet back off and  looking I found I actually broke the flange that is glued to the pipe down in the cement floor. I thought ok, don't panic, there must be a quick fix for this soooo off to the store I went. They told me I would now have to bust up the cement with my ceramic floor, dig down through the gravel, cut the plastic pipe then add a new flange, then re cement and tile the floor!!!!!

By now I am having a fit..... then another clerk came by and said there was a brass plate that could be used if I could chip off the top of the flange but leave the neck in place. Well long story short...I did manage to have it done and her toilet is now working fine..... but I think I will really think before I try anything else. LOL

Sorry if I bored you with my plight. On to my card now.

Today I have a really quick way to do a quilt card. My sister found this on the web and then showed me how to do it last winter. I'm sorry, I don't know who to give credit to for this.

I used Rose Red for the card base and a mat of Pretty in Pink.

For the quilt I cut a square 3 x 3 of Rose Red. I then cut four 1 inch squares using a pink pattern paper and two 1 inch squares of green pattern paper.

To assemble these I started by gluing the four pink pieces into the four corners of the Rose Red square.

I then glued one of the green squares in the center as shown here.

Next I cut the second green square in half from corner to corner. Then cut the half's in half again. This photo shows one half cut in half again and the upper one is just the half before cutting again.

I then glued  these as shown here. Continue the same in the next three Red Rose areas.

Once all the pieces are glued, I then embossed it to give the look of quilting. I had an embossing folder that looked like the double wedding ring pattern for this one but have done it with other ones too. After embossing, I glued this to a 3-1/4 inch square of Red Rose and used dimentionals to pop it up on the Pretty in Pink.

One thing that I should mention is that I like the look of the embossing better if you do it so it is debossed.... meaning don't have the raised lines of the embossing coming up on the front. Turn your piece over so it will deboss into the front.

Thanks again for stopping in and I hope you will try one of these too. It is really an easy card.

Carolyn

Christmas card 4

Thanks for dropping in to visit for awhile. I hope you browse around and find something that will inspire you. I love sharing what I do.

Today I have another Christmas card that I taught last night. I bought this snowman stamp on the front of my card at the Scrap Show in Florida last February and the front is pretty well CASED from a sample they had there. I did change it a little but can't remember the changes as I made the card last winter too. I finished off the inside by making it into a pop up card using an old set from Stamping Up called Flaky Friends.

The card base is Bashful Blue, the trees are stamped with River Rock. The snowmen on the front were coloured using some of the Bashful Blue ink that I pressed on to the lid of the ink pad then picked up with a blender pen and coloured.

Here you can see that I popped up the snowmen after I coloured and cut them out.

 This is the stamp I used from the set called Flaky Friends. The verse is from a set called Peacefull Wishes. I also embossed the top part of the inside with a snowflake design.

 Thanks again for stopping by ..... hope you can come back soon.

Carolyn

Same as Acrylic Block Stamping

Thanks for stopping in to see what I am up to. I haven't been as diligent with my posting as I would like to BUT it has been a busy summer.

I know I mentioned how I figured out how to repair my own window and door screens but I haven't told you about the plumbing problems I had when I returned home this spring.

I had jumped into the shower the next morning and found that I only had HOT water....no cold was coming in soooo I have spent the last couple of months or more trying to fix this as they told me they would have to cut a hole in the bedroom wall behind the taps to get access to fix it. Well I didn't want to start tearing the house apart so I persevered until I finally got it fixed...... and I didn't have to tear out any walls either. I am so glad I picked up as much as I did from watching my husband repair things when he was alive as it has really helped me now.

Well enough of that..... on to the card I am posting today. LOL

 I posted a card  in June that I did for a challenge at Less is More (which you can see here) showing how I used my acrylic block for stamping and boy I got more page views than you can imagine.

Now this time I have used a glass out of my kitchen to stamp with because if you think about it all you really need is something non porous like the acrylic block was.

The glass I used had a swirled bottom which gave it a nice design. Now if you are going to try this you need to look for a glass that has a fairly flat bottom. I had lots that wouldn't work for this because they curved up underneath so only the edge of it would ink up.

 I tried to take a photo so you could see the ridges on the glass bottom.

 Now it's your turn.... go and give it a try.

I would love it if you would email me some of the cards you do using this idea. I will even add them to a post later on if you do.  mail to  mystampingroom at gmail.com

Thanks again for stopping in.... hope you like this idea and will give it a try.

Carolyn

Less is More challenge

Well it's time for another challenge over at Less is More and for this one the theme is "legs".... so here are 8 of them running across the card.

I have had this set for awhile and had never mounted it so I thought I would give it a try. This was another very quick card to do. I sponged some grass with Certainly Celery then stamped the little quails that are from a set called Happy Together.

Here is what I came up with.

Carolyn

EZ Mount-tip that worked for me.

Ohhhh did I ever figure out an easy way to use that EZ Mount. I have used it on some of my stamps before BUT hated the way you get the sticky stuff all over the scissors and it just seemed so hard to cut properly.

Well this weekend I figured I would unmount some of the stamps I had. I peeled the rubber right off the foam as I wanted to put the EZ Mount with the foam on. I got the stamps all pressed down on the sheet and cut this area off the rest of the sheet.

 NOW what I did was take this part (with the stamps stuck down on it) to the kitchen and laid it on a piece of waxed paper then I dusted flour all over everything making sure to get a good covering on the exposed EZ Mount. This made the cutting EASY and there was nothing that stuck to the scissors. When I was done I just cleaned the stamps on my stamp scrubber. It worked like a charm!

I didn't think to take the photo while they were ready to be cut but you can see  the ones at the top right corner of the photo have not been cut apart yet.

Now that I have tried this I won't be so hesitant to unmount more of my stamps. I do this so I can take more of my stamps with me when I go south for the winter.

I don't know if this will be of any help to anyone.....just thought I would pass it along because it worked so well for me.

Carolyn

Elegant Black & White

Hi there. So glad you were able to stop in again to see what I am up to. I do love sharing my ideas with you so please feel free to browse through my older posts too.

I couldn't sleep tonight as I was out for dinner with a couple of ladies and we just had to stop in at Tim Hortons for a coffee on the way home and I forgot to get a decafe so I am really wired on caffeine right now. LOL It did work to my advantage though as I wanted to make a card for Sketch Frenzy Friday and therefore I did manage to get that done. LOL

I decided to do a simple black and white card using my new SU set called Happiness Shared. Here is what I came up with.

This card is sooo simple. I just used the embossing folder called Lattice to emboss the top part that is above the ribbon so I could stamp the sentiment on a flat area. I could have used a butterfly beside the square as they did on the sketch but I thought the long stem rose was different. I stamped it then glued it to the black and cut around it for some shadowing.

I think I like it.... LOL I will look at my site tomorrow morning and see if anyone else does.

Well I think I will be able to sleep now sooo off to bed I go.

Carolyn

Another Christmas Card

Hello my blogging friends. So glad you dropped in again. I know I haven't been posting regularly for awhile but I am trying to get back into the groove now.

I have mentioned before that my group likes to make one Christmas card each week so I am posting them here too. I know it seems a bit early BUT just think...... I will be all ready by the time the winter gets here and won't have to rush with my cards. Ok now on to my card......

I love background stamps and have used a plain stripe on this one but just stamped it going two ways to make the plaid. I used Mellow Moss ink for this one so it would match the card base then added a splash of Real Red to perk it up. I also embossed the Real Red using the Lattice folder from Stamping Up.

The stamp set is an old SU set called Festive Favorites. The trees were coloured by pressing some of the Mellow Moss ink onto a small acrylic block then I used the blender pen to picked up the ink and paint  the trees.....this way you get the exact same colour as the card base again.

I hope you like this one and don't mind a few postings with Christmas cards during this hot weather.

Carolyn

Easy Stamped Background

Well I'm back finally after almost a month of MIA.  I see a few of you have been faithfully checking in to see if there is anything new..... thanks for peeking in.

Sorry I haven't been posting for awhile but there were just so many things that had to be done around the property that I just didn't have the time for my favorite thing, which of course is sharing my ideas here with you.

I see that my posting called Clean and Simple-Acrylic block Stamping has had 214 page views since June 9th and I now see people are sharing this on their blogs too. That was one of my favorites and I have done some other things like that too, which I will show in another posting.

When I checked out the challenge at Color Throwdown #149 I saw that they wanted us to use Apricot Appeal, Red Ridinghood Red and Wild Wasabi and while thinking about what I would do it dawned on me that I could use the card that I taught in class last night but just change the colours soooo without saying too much more I will show you the card that I did using the required colours PLUS the card that I taught the night before.... so be sure to scroll down to the second one.

I used an old SU set called Bud Basics and stamped the black outline of the large flowers all over the piece then I used the solid stamp loaded with Apricot Appeal and stamped in the outline.
Then I used the leaf outline with black and stamped leaves close to the flowers, then loaded the solid leaf with Wild Wasabi and stamped in each leaf outline.
It is hard to see but I used the Red Ridinghood Red to fill in the rest of the background with the small outline flower.

Now here is the one I taught last night using  Really Rust,  Apricot Appeal, Cameo Coral, Old Olive and Garden Green. This one seems a little softer as I used the Cameo Coral for the background outline flowers.

Well I hope you like them and will come back for another visit soon.
I have entered this card at Color Throwdown #149

A Quick Violet card

Thanks for stopping in to see what I'm up to. I really appreciate every one of your visits.

Today is going to have to be a very quick and simple card as I have to spend some time putting together my cards for next weeks class. Quick cards are always nice anyways.

I seem to be loving purple these days and that is what I had laying on my table sooo I went in search of a stamp to go with that colour. Then I saw a pile of the violets that I had coloured before.

I first thought ok you have already posted one using this stamp but then I figured I could make it different. So here is what I came up with.

I used Elegant Eggplant for the card base
I stamped a white piece with Elegant Eggplant ink using my En Francais background stamp.
I mounted the violets piece onto a very thin mat of Elegant Eggplant.

Like I said ..... this is a very quick card. Hope you like it.

 Carolyn