adventures in synchronicity

I've been bumbling along today on not-quite-enough sleep for the second night in a row.  Earlier I ran across this article on bnet.  The gist of it is that we need eight hours of sleep, and without it our ability to focus and productivity levels suffer, without our recognizing it, and the effects worsen over time.  I found the defensiveness of the people who posted comments to be very interesting - puts me in mind of some old saw about protesting too much.  I could probably recall it with a little more accuracy if I'd had enough sleep.  This evening while I was debating whether I had anything interesting to post about, I ran across an article from Real Age on preparing for a good night's sleep.  It always strikes me when I get two (sometimes more) related messages from different sources like that.  So that's all I've got, that obviously I should have gone to bed about thirty minutes earlier than now, and evidently my computer is trying to tell me that.

Oh, and I had a great time with the wonderful women who stamped a stack of ten cards for $10 with me this evening!  I don't know whether the chatting and laughter are more fun than the stamping and creating, but they all fit together so well!  We made two each of these cards:

Some other fun people will be joining me to make these cards next week Saturday - we'd love to have you join us!  The last Thursday and Saturday of June I'll have five new cards, and I promise not be stuck on butterflies and ovals again.  I do love butterflies and ovals, but there's always something new to play with.  Sometimes I try to design cards that are all completely different in style or color or purpose; other times I try to have some cohesiveness, like a theme that ties the cards together.  Seeing these cards all together like this makes me think a theme might have been a good idea.  I'm open to suggestions if you have any to offer!

adventures in cardmaking

After mowing the lawn and working on the laundry (adventures in domesticity), I did get to spend some time in my craft room.  Here's what came out:

Why, yes, it IS a Christmas card.  The first challenge I started playing along with this year was jingle belles, where Stef and Lauren are "taking back December...one holiday card at a time".  

The challenge this week is a stunning style board, from lovely guest star Amanda Profumo, giving us visions of sugar plums. I was immediately attracted to the image in the upper right corner with the beautiful plum bowl full of glittery snowflakes.  Although I prefer to use all Stampin' Up!® all the time (so I don't have to spend my crafting time trying to find matching papers and inks), I just couldn't convince myself that Perfect Plum is a sugar plum color, so I went searching through my old papers and found this fabulous glossy snowflake paper.  I have no idea where it came from; truthfully it looks like gift wrap.  

After digging out some retired Pale Plum card stock for the base, I cut some Sizzlet snowflakes out of adhesive sheet and added fine glitter.  I thought a little ribbon might echo the ribbons in the three images at the bottom of the style board.  I use Stampin' Up! multipurpose liquid glue for everything because that's the only way I stand a chance of getting things stuck together straight, but I recommend against using it with the Whisper White organza ribbon as it tends to make little soak-through spots :(  The anywhere glue stick was a perfect second choice!  

There are some amazing cards linked up to this challenge, and you can link up a card through 6pm May 25 - give it a look!

adventures in blogging

I figured out how to get my llama badge on the side bar (that took way too long), but I can't remember where I saw the instructions for linking to the Stampin' Up! catalog, and just like my Stampin' Up! blog, the font on this one resets itself without warning.  Blogger only offers eight choices of fonts and evidently there's a strong preference for "default".    So, I'm kinda feeling like this is a pretty lame start for adventures in blogging, but on the other hand, that means it should be easy to improve, right? 

One reason I finally decided to give blogging a try was to have a place to post entries for the challenges I've been enjoying.  The first one I'm going to share here is the second one I learned about from Leslie, the Crooked Stamper  (seriously, check out her amazing cards and sense of humor, but please come back) - Shopping Our Stash.  The first assignment is to show off your stash or crafting spot; a "virtual open house".  Fun!

Here's some stuff I "had to have" that hasn't been used yet (as well as some projects in process) - hopefully I'll be shopping from this stash in weeks to come!  No rash promises from this stamper about no new purchases, though, not with a new catalog launch in 39 days (not that I'm counting)!  The white fleurettes did not go back in the cabinet - they're slated to end up on Stamp-a-Stack 10-for-$10 cards this month.

Thanks for stopping by - I hope you'll come back again - I'm thinking tomorrow's adventures will be in card making, since I've got two challenges (one is the first one I learned about from Leslie) bouncing around my brain.  There should be a report soon on adventures in beekeeping, too!