You Color My World

My apologies for this quick post, but today got away from me. Also, I tried adding this photo in Edit mode, and it wouldn't transfer for some odd reason. I've decided the internet gremlins are messing with my head. More apologies to all who get a red x in your email. Please click to the blog. It's a cool card, I promise!

This is a GREAT sentiment. Oh how I love it! Just think of all you can do with it! *squeal*

For my readers in the US of A, have a lovely long weekend! For everyone else, have a lovely weekend!

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Happy Trails, Grunge Me
ink: memento
paper: PTI
accessories: square punch, dimensionals

Stress Reduction, Colored Card Bases, and Pursuit of Missing Photos

First up, my new favorite toy in my craft room:

A stress-reduction sound machine. My favorite setting right now is Ocean. I bought this beauty on Monday, when my children were driving me up the wall with their bickering and whining. Summer's not half-over, folks, and now I'm so much calmer after spending a half hour in my craft room drowning out the bickering and Pokemon battle noises with this lifesaver. If you need one, I highly recommend you run to Target and get one.

Today's cards are on colored card bases and use my new Mehndi Medallion set from Papertrey. What a very cool set. Yippy!!!! Or should I say, "Ohmmmm." Yeah, that works better, doesn't it?

The pink card above uses the large, medium, and small medallions, although there are a few extra-small ones in the set that I haven't used yet. The inks are Memento, and the papers are SU's pretty in pink and chocolate chip, with a random white popped on dimensionals. The sentiment is from Clear and Simple Stamps.

The baja breeze (SU ink and cardstock) card is cleaner than the first, using just the large medallion, and has a slightly smaller white panel. The sentiment is another from Clear and Simple Stamps.

Okay, the mystery of the missing photos deepens. A number of you have had problems, and a few have figured them out. Others are still as baffled as I am; certainly the feed shows normally for me in both Google Reader and in my email, so why in the world wouldn't it show normally for everyone? It's a mystery.

Here's what I've learned...any one of which or all of which or none of which might be true for you. The answer could be something completely different, which is entirely possible because I am VERY much out of my element with tech stuff.

1. Some email programs have security settings that block photos from downloading automatically. I use Windows Mail and I get a bar across the top of emails asking if I want to download pictures. I click the bar, and the photos appear. For other programs (or different settings in Windows Mail), if you right click on the photo box, a drop-down menu might appear offering you the option of downloading photos. If neither of these work, check your security settings to see if there's some other way to get photos. At least two people have fixed the problem this way.

2. Some of you just started experiencing problems in the past week or so. I assure you I am doing nothing differently, so the mystery thickens. One reader suggested using Edit mode to add photos to the post, so I added the sound machine photo in Compose Mode and the card photos in Edit Mode as a test. If you have been experiencing this problem, PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you can see any photos on this post and tell me which ones. If this is the problem, clearly there's a code difference in how they load, and perhaps there was a browser or Blogger or Feedburner change that's invisible to me but affects the way the photos show depending on the code.

I read all the code on the photos on this post (what the heck does it all mean?!?!), and it's definitely different depending on the mode in which the photo was loaded.

Thanks so much for all your patience and help in getting this problem solved.

Quick Question

How many of you are still getting little x's where the photos should be? I have no idea what is going on with that, as everything looks normal on my emails and on the blog from my computer. Any ideas?

One-Layer Wednesday 60: Quick Layers of Ink

This week's OLW challenge is to make quick and easy cards with nothing but layers of ink by overlapping the stamped images and/or sentiment. The idea here is to practice whipping up a quick card or even an easy card set at the last minute with just ink and cardstock!

Come on. You KNOW you've been caught needing a card or gift and having next to no time to produce it. Here's your chance to eliminate the sense of panic and feel confident that you CAN respond with a GREAT card with just a moment's notice any time you have a need!

In a pinch isn't the time to reinvent the wheel, and for this challenge, you can't use techniques like masking or sponging...they'd just slow you down! Stick to layouts that work for you, too. Some things that make these types of cards more interesting include fun color combinations, textured or natural cardstock, strong images, asymmetry, and plenty of white space.

I used my Grunge Me set to make these two cards. The first takes just two stamps in bright, punchy colors and puts them in the lower right "sweet spot" of the card (the place where imaginary lines dividing the card into thirds meet). The bright blue sentiment overlaps the grunge circles by about a third of its length, which lends nice balance to the focal point and helps it look deliberately placed, not accidental or random.

The second card uses three stamps overlapping in gray, black, and a punch of bright blue. The right angle of the sentiment and vertical blue element is softened and balanced by the random spatter background.

Layering ink adds interest and takes WAY less time than layering cardstock. So whip up some easy, peasy, QUICK cards this week!

OLW60 Rules

1. A one-layer card is just that: one layer of cardstock folded in half...no other layers of cardstock allowed!

2. Make a card that layers ink. USE ONLY STAMPED IMAGES AND/OR SENTIMENTS. No masking, no sponging, no embellishments of any kind!

3. Post your card somewhere on the internet and link to it using the InLinkz button on the sidebar.

4. The most important rule of all: HAVE FUN!!!!

A Muse Hey, Man

One of the A Muse sets I bought was Hey, Man. Actually, the real title is Hey, Man! with an egregious exclamation point, but you all know how I feel about those. Marketers really should not do that. Only bloggers are allowed. And people commenting on blogs. Oh how I love when you're so happy you have to hold down the exclamation key!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, Hey, Man has this groovy television set in it. Not sure a guy card should have pearls on it, but hey, man, orange pearls work for you. Dude!!!!!!!!!!!

How-To Chatter: The sentiment is from an old, old, old Hero Arts set...I have a whole bunch this size that happen to fit perfectly into the tv screen. YEEE-Haaa! I colored this with markers and without shading because it's too small for my meager shading skills. The line was drawn with a pen and ruler. That's about it.
A few bits of news...

1. I'm going to post some SU stamp sets for sale soon. I'm also selling two stacks of assorted SU cardstock (about 90 sheets per stack) because I figured I'd have to live to be 250 years old to use up all that I have. Please buy them so I need not feel guilty about buying new stuff.

2. Stampin'Treasures is still open for business and has bunch of product--especially Hero Arts--on serious discount. Yes, I placed an order, and no, they are not paying me to promote their sale. I'm just telling you because I love you and can't help myself.

3. And for something entirely non-stamp related...my golden retriever, who embodies the word enthusiasm in canine form, has to take doggy downers while she recovers from her knee surgery. Every time she starts to behave like her normal self (that is to say, when she starts behaving like Tigger...bouncy, jouncy, flouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!), I have to push a pill down her throat. It's the saddest thing I've ever done. Well, that's not true. Saying goodbye to people is the saddest thing, saying goodbye to dogs is the second saddest, drugging my dog so she doesn't injure herself by being perky is the third saddest. PLUS, the recovery is really slow...three whole months. And at the end of three months, we get to do it all again on the other knee.

I feel like I'm taking her downers. Woe is the Daisy. Woe is me.

I'll shut up now. Thank you for listening.

Grunge Me...More Color Contrasts

For today's Grunge Me cards, I'm sharing a pair of one-layer cards that use essentially the same stamps as yesterday's cards only in a cleaner way...sort of what you'd expect of me, I suppose. *wink*

Who asked for happy colors? Marty? Well, there isn't any green, but here you go with Memento Bermuda, tangelo, grape, and whatever they call the hot pink.

While I like the happy colors, they are just a tad too bright to have the sentiment stamped over them. The words are too hard to read with all the background noise of color. It's a bit--just a bit--visually confusing.

So here is the same idea with softer colors of Memento ink: cantaloupe, yellow, lavender, and pear tart.

See? That's so much easier on the eye.

And I got to type the word pear, which makes me giggle.

Oh, the spatters from Grunge Me are enhanced by the ink blots from Happy Trails, also a PTI set.

Supplies
stamps: PTI Grunge Me, Happy Trails
ink: Memento
paper: Beckett Expressions Iceberg
accessories: not a blessed one

And Now for Something Completely Different...

One of my biggest challenges in crafting is to loosen up and have fun. Ninety-nine percent of everything I make is tightly controlled, carefully planned, and precise. But as Betsy's acrylic block proves, loosening up and not fretting over a smudge here or there has its distinct advantages.

When I bought the Grunge Me set from Papertrey, I immediately sat down and made half a dozen cards that are what you expect from me: neat and tidy with lots of white space and fun color combinations. I'll share those later, of course. But then, I made this:

It made me smile. It's loose, happy, and fun. But something about it didn't feel right. The colors are some of my favorites...SU pumpkin pie, Memento canteloupe, and rich cocoa...but the warm scheme seemed a bit off considering the sentiment. The "paint" looks like earth, terra cotta, dust.

So I reached for SU marina mist and baja breeze and Memento black and tried again.

Oh. My. Gosh.

The cool, water colors on the crisp white are perfect. Just perfect.

Now, if you look closely, you'll see some order in the chaos. For instance, I stamped the big spatter three times in full-up marina mist in a triangle arrangement. The small spatter is also stamped three times full strength in baja breeze. Then I filled in all the holes with off-stamped, lighter images.

See, this AR/OC tiger won't change her stripes.

But she might spatter some ink around every now and then.