Summer Blooms

I was out in my garden the other day just taking in the beauty of the summer blooms and thought I would share them with my fellow bloggers.

Enjoy!

This flower is the creation of a talented friend who makes them from assorted dishes. They are gorgeous and I will have to add to this lonely one.

Hope you enjoyed your photo journey through my garden.
Teresa

Blue Floral Happy Birthday

Freshly Made sketches came out with this CAS sketch and is designed by Tui:

 here is the link:http://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/2012/07/freshly-made-sketches-43-sketch-by-tui.html
The "Clean Team really out did themselves this week with their "Fresh Made" creations. You really need to check them out and see for yourself how amazing their cards are. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Here is my humble little card:

 I feel like I kind of cheated and here is why: I like to go to the dollar section at Michael's because sometimes they have such pretty note cards without any sentiments on the front. When I get them home I like to decorate them and add a sentiment.. That is what this pretty little floral card is. It already had the scalloped edge and the flower print. I just added the paper strips and stamped the flourish and the happy birthday.

 The best part is that they also had 6x6 pattern paper to match the cards. I also love that the glitter is already on the flowers and I don't have to deal with glitter all over.

I wanted to add some clear gemstones but couldn't find them. Then I remembered I had some blue pearls and used them instead.
My aunt has a birthday coming up and her favorite color is blue so I am making a set of eight of these note cards for her. I will use four different sentiments and stamps but keep the sketch the same.
Have a good evening.
Teresa

{Spooky}

Here is a fun sketch from Freshly Made Sketches that will use up a few scraps. The sketch is from Jennifer T. a Design Team Member. Check what the other Design Team Members did with the sketch: http://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/2012/07/freshly-made-sketches-42-sketch-by.html

 Now here is the card I created with the sketch:

When I saw the long vertical focal mat I knew exactly what stamp I would use. The Halloween cat was perfect. I have another stamp I want to use with this sketch but that will have to wait for another day.

The stamps are all Studio G dollar stamps and the ink is Memento Tuxedo Black.

 I used an EK Success punch to punch out the Happy.

Now for those of you that may be wondering why I am already making Halloween cards, I am making them to send to our military overseas. So you will be seeing a lot more fall cards over the next few days.
Hope you are enjoying lovely summer days!
Teresa

So Thankful For You

I just ran across  a new blog  by Jen Del Muro. Jen makes a sketch as a challenge for each month and I decided to give it a try and play along.

Here is her sketch:

And you can find her blog and sketch challenge for July here: http://iheart2stamp.com/2012/07/07/july-sketch-for-you-to-try-2/

Now here is the card I came up with using Jen's sketch:

 

 The papers I used were all from scraps...even the scalloped circle with the sentiment was something that I had leftover from making Thanksgiving cards s couple of years ago. You might see it a few more times as I still have a couple  more left.

 For the horizontal border I just had to layer the scraps and trim a bit off the ends. I cut a v in the vertical strip and that was it. My borders were made.

 The scalloped circle is adhered with pop up dots and for some reason I had to put it up closer to the top of the card than what the sketch showed. The circle just did not looked balanced when placed lower on the border as it was on the sketch
I am happy with this card for two reasons. First it was made all from scraps except for the card base and secondly it is purple. I really do love purple but rarely use it in my cards.
Note to self: need to use purple more!
I hope you visit Jen's blog and give her sketch a try.
Teresa

Masculine Birthday Wishes

This is the card I made for my dad's 82nd birthday last week:

 When I saw this sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches (You can find it here http://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/2012/06/freshly-made-sketches-39-sketch-from.html ) .

...and this card by Clean Team Designer, Jennifer Brum...

...I knew it would make the perfect birthday card for my dad.

 The numbers were made from orange cardstock die cut with my Cuttlebug and then I used Glossy Accent to make them shiny and add a bit of depth. The background is white cardstock embossed with a Tim Holtz embossing folder and layered on a brown cardstock mat.

The watch image is from  Studio G and is stamped on white cardstock with Vingtage Photo Distress ink then cut out. The smaller circle is cut from white cardstock and I used a chevron mask with Spiced Marmalade Distress ink. I then inked the edges with both the Spiced Marmalade and Vintage Photo and cut a larger brown circle to mat it. 

 Birthday Wishes is stamped on white cardstock that I then cut into a ribbon and inked the edges with both distress inks and adhered it to the circle with foam dots.

The striped pattern paper is from DCWV. I love this paper and I had to get a close up to show you how glossy it is. It also has a bit of glitter but not too much.

I hope to get back in the swing of creating cards next week. I have missed getting ink on my hands :)

Teresa

Back Home Again

It has been a busy two weeks for us with our oldest gradutating from college and two camping trips. Now it is back to catching up around the house and doing all the laundry that accumulated from camping.
Here are some pics from our camping:

This was at Ike Kinswa State Park. The lake is Mayfield.

It is a beautiful lake and we saw lots of deer.

 I thought these trees looked pretty with the moss hanging from the branches.

 A close up of the moss.

 Nanook exploring the water. He is so much like a kid when it comes to the water. So hard to keep him out of it.

Nanook exploring around the lake!

This is the way he waits for us to throw the stick into the water. Unfortunately he drops the stick about two feet from us in the water. Just out of our reach most of the time unless we want to get our feet wet.

We took a drive to Mossy Rock and visited the Mossy Rock Dam.

To get to the view point of the dam we had to drive down a small country road. Along the drive we came across five big birds all in a row down the middle of  the road. We got a photo of one and decided they were some kind of vulture.

Here are the pics from last weekend at American Lake:

The campsites were small but we had everything we needed.

We even had a small view of the lake.

There was a one lonely rose bush to brighten our site.

It was nice to have a little color since it was cloudy and wet the first day.

We did have some sun and a wonderful barbeque with three other couples.

One tired old dog at the end of a day of camping.

I will be back soon to share a card I made last week. Yes, I did manage to squeeze in a quick card.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

Teresa

Back Home

I'm back after being away for over a week. I decided to go back with my daughter to AZ. We just didn't feel comfortable for her to drive over 1,300 miles by herself.  She had a friend with her on the drive up but they had to fly back to AZ before she did. We drove 13 hours the first day and 9 hours the second day. We only stopped when we needed gas for the car.

 I spent some time in Gilbert with our friends for four days before flying home. It was sooo hot there in Arizona, 111 degrees the first day I was there then it "cooled down" to 103 the rest of the time. I wanted to be outside with all the sunshine but it was just too hot to enjoy the sun.

I didn't take many photos along the way but here are a few that I took from the car as we ticked off the miles.
(Click on any one of the photos to get a better look.)

All these photos were taken in Utah.

This was the our second day of driving and I was bored so I just started snapping some photos to pass the time.

 Thought this rock formation was kinda cool.

 Lots of lonely stretches of road for miles and miles.

 Lake Powell in Utah.

 More of Lake Powell as we whizzed by.

 One last shot of the lake.

Glad to be back home which is such a contrast to Utah and Arizona:

 Here it is so lush and green

 with bright colors from all the beautiful plants that grow so well

 from all the rain we get throughout the year. I know we complain that we don't see the sun often enough and it is still only in the 50's and 60's most of the time still but at least everything is beautiful.

I am so thankful to live in such a beautiful place and to be safely back home.

Teresa