Hello, my friends!

Hello, my friends!  I find my sense of humor is slipping during these trying times... it needed a jump-start, so to speak.  So, I was wondering if you, too, were feeling this way?  My friend, Denise, said I could share this... she found it maybe on Facebook?

 

 Tom spotted this sweet little dove - I feel just like her...

 

I shared this next little cutie on Instagram the other day - I thought perhaps you might see the humor in it, too...

 

 

Don't get me wrong, this global pandemic is no laughing matter - I'm taking it WAY seriously. 

 

Tom's home - we'll be fine, and I love him - but I'm used to cooking one meal a day - the clean up, and all these dishes may be the last straw!

 

I do hope you are all hangin' in there, and staying healthy … we can get through this together.  I can't tell you how happy I am to see what you're all making!  I'm also grateful that you've stopped by today - I hope you've left with a little smile!

 

=]  Michele

 

EBE Clever Sausage and dies, EBE Swirl Background a hand-drawn hat, and a mustache from a very old Hero Arts set.

Like many others, Ellen Hutson, LLC is closed, too.  They will fill orders just as soon as they receive the all clear from their Governor … thank you for your support, and patience!  Shopping can certainly wait, right? xx

 



CAS[E] this Sketch #365

Chrissy has one of the coolest [maybe challenging] Sketches for us this week … CTS#365:

I don't know what Chrissy sees/or has made … you know, I never peek!!  But here is my rendition...

A bit of tattered Rose Distress Oxide blending on the left, CP Juniper Mist ink on the right, and stamping in the middle - using both, and adding CP Sand Castle, and Stone Blue to the mix.  Don't think I'm too clever - I cut this panel first!  Gosh I love this sentiment die!  Another sweet gift from a crafty friend!

Okay.  get ready.  set... make!  We can't wait to see what you will see in our Sketches!

=]  Michele

A Sprinkle today!

The Ellen Hutson team is having a Sprinkle [a baby shower for a second baby - or third, and fourth!]  for a fellow Design Ambassador, Emily who is expecting twins!  You can see all the cards our team has made here.

I pulled out a few EBE sets to use today … see if you can guess where these items came from... btw, the words are all mine =]

Give up?  Okay... here you go:

Eggs, and nest: EBE Backyard Bird Friends stamps, and dies

The branch: EBE Thistle stamps, and dies 

Distress Oxides were used to color my eggs! 

shaded lilac, weathered wood, and vintage photo for the branch.

This card is on its way to Emily and her family - hope it arrives before the babies do!  

Just for fun, I made another - are you familiar with my sense of humor?  ... cue the music...

  Pretty Pink Posh Baby stamps and dies!

I found the perfect sentiment in Julie's EBE A Breve Note and the OOH was snitched from HOORAY in EBE It's all Good! 

Congratulations, darling Emily, to you and the entire family!!!  I'm so happy to celebrate you today!  love, and snuggles for those darling babies!

=]  Michele

Inspired By #117... yellow makes me happy!

From the first sight of a Daffodil, I equate yellow with Spring!  Thanks, Laurel, for this ode to yellow for IB#117!

There are many floral stamps in my arsenal to choose from, but my newest Blossom Branch from Rachel Vass Designs digital just seemed to work beautifully for this week's inspiration photo …

 My sentiment is from Altenew's Beautiful Heart

Wonky Stitched Rectangle die by MFT for the panel.

 

I picked up the blues, and greens from the bottles in the photo, and a bit of grey from those lovely shadows... makes me happy... I hope it inspires you to play along!

 

=]  Michele

Catherine Pooler Hop with Ellen Hutson!

 I've made two really fun, out-of-the-box, cards with one of the newest Catherine Pooler Design sets:  Sweet Life! [yes there are dies, too]  It's full of sweet little fruity images... but guess what I saw?
 

Here are the CP inks I've used for my smiles:

Party Dress, Tutti Fruitti, Limoncello, Tiki Torch, 

Sweet Sixteen, and Black Jack.

I even made a little smile from the new 

EBE Essential Circles dies by Heather, and cut my card panel with Heather's Essentials Rectangles! 

We all need to share happy, worry free messages
these days, right?  
Here's another … btw, I've combined a few words of my own with the sentiments -

[those first three lines are my own] are from

CP Sweet Life, with our EBE High Five

My slice of lime was created by stamping with Lime Ricky ink near the rind, and clear embossing ink on the rest,

 it was then clear heat embossed. 

All that with one little section stamp in the set!

These gorgeous papers are from the

CP Fresh n Fruity patterned paper collection, and those fun sequins are part of their Boston [plenty of Irish there!] pack!

It's time to Hop along now … but before you go...
One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the EH shop! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop! Comment before Sunday, March 29th at 11:59pm PDT. Winner will be notified by email.

have fun...

be happy! be well, and be SAFE!



=]  Michele

·         Ashlea Cornell

·         Emily Mydlowski

·        Adelina Starace

·         Michele Ferguson - you are here, thanks so much!

·         Kelly Griglione

·         Laurel Beard

·         Ardyth Percy-Robb

·         Carly Tee Minner

·         Julie Ebersole

·         Therese Calvird

·         Lisa Spangler

Pretty Pink Posh Hopping with Ellen Hutson

Pretty Pink Posh has released a wonderful batch of products for their Spring Release... my EHDA's and I are hopping to share them with you … congratulations to Paulina, and her husband, on the birth of their adorable new baby boy, Zion!

I had so much fun with these new goodies … my first card uses these sweet bunnies from PPP Spring Days - how lucky was I to have that perfect-fit tag to stamp them in? 

I had no trouble 'pruning' that sweet little row of daffodils

to add a little place for those bunnies to burrow!

Up next... PPP Ladybug Friends and dies:

They were SO fun to Copic color!

There's another of those fun tags for a peek-a-boo factor!

I've teamed them up with a sentiment from

EBE Totally Random Sayings Vol. 1 and the paper

is Lawn Fawn's Knit Picky

Inside is another old PPP favorite:

PPP Simple Sayings: Life



My final card used the PPP Hedgehog Friends, and dies is just for Paulina and her family... with my own personalized [old-timey] sentiment...

I borrowed a few little bits of 'greenery' from my

snippets bin to add to the garden they call home … don't

you love the little toad stools from the set that this mama

uses to reach her little one!?

I am so very happy for you Paulina!  Give that sweet little boy squeezes from Auntie Michele, okay? xx

Thanks so much for hopping by!  Off you go now … my teamies have so much to love today!!  OH BTW -
One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the EH shop! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop! Comment before Wednesday, March 25th at 11:59pm PDT. Winner will be notified by email.

Julie Ebersole 

Adelina Starace  

Carolyn Peeler

Michele Ferguson - you are here - thank you!

Ardyth Percy-Robb 

Emily Mydlowski

Kelly Griglione

Ashlea Cornell

Carly Tee Minner

Sandy Allnock

Using Acrylic paint at the CAS Mix Up Challenge

Any birthday should be celebrated, but when there's a birthday for one of my favorite challenges... well, I'm never going to miss out on the fun at CAS Mix Up!

 

Jenny is the host this month, and she has such a fun challenge using Acrylic Paint!

This card I made in February came to mind immediately.  I couldn't wait to pull out the Brutus Monroe paper that a very sweet friend sent to me! 

Here is how it all began: I used the Flowers in Bloom stamp from MFT and stamped it onto a sheet of that gorgeous patterned paper - I might mention a bit of strategy was used to optimize where the pattern would fall on the stamp.

Then, I used some white Martha Stewart acrylic paint, also mixing up a few colors by tinting the white with water color paints.  It was just a matter of allowing it to dry overnight, re-stamping with Versafine ink, die-cutting and mounting it on my card base, and adding a fussy-cut sentiment from the same set.

You have to know I wasn't wasting one scrap of that gorgeous paper … here is my 'leftover' card... colored pencil over PTI Spring Moss paper.

 

Thanks, Jenny … and the entire CAS Mix Up team, for always making me reach, and try new things!

Happiest 4th Birthday!!!

 

=]  Michele

CAS[E] this Sketch #364 Retro Week

For those of you wonderful CTS supporters who have been playing cards with us since the very beginning... this Retro Sketch is just for you:

Okay, wait.  For those of us who haven't been playing since day one?  It's also for US!  Isn't it fun?  the FIRST EVER CTS Sketch!  There are lots of folks on the premier team that I still love [our own Chrissy Larson among them] and a few that I'm not familiar with, but can't wait to meet - think they're still card making? 

Since I was not around in blogland in 2012, I'm happy to have a bit of fun with Jackie's 1st Sketch … a flip and a turn!

More than 100 card makers played in that first CTS Challenge - we'd be thrilled to have that many play again today!  Will you?  Did you then?  Let us know in you blog post if you did! BTW take a look in that 1st gallery - you might spot a few of our current DTs!

Thanks for stopping in today! you can play right here...
=]  Michele

EBE Wonky Backdrops, and EBE So Matcha for the sentiment.

Inspired By #116... hello spring!

 

With nary a stitch, I've manage to make a card that is truly Inspired By #116!  Tell me if you agree [fingers crossed!].

 

 

• I stamped the basic shapes of the letters  H E L L O on cardstock using Altenew's Watercolor Doodles, [adding a few doodled dots with a gray pen] and used their Caps Bold Alpha Dies to cut them out. 
• Just a tiny bit of Copic coloring in the rainbow colors of those embroidery threads, and a bit of texture from my fave SU embossing folder added some interest to my stamped sentiment - EBE 'tis the Season -
• Completed by that sweet little enamel heart  - from Altenew, too

As always, we hope you'll find a bit of something to be inspired by and will join us, too!

 

=]  Michele



Altenew March 2020 Inspiration Challenge

Gosh I love these succulents!  But for today, and Altenew's March 2020 Inspiration Challenge, their Wildflower Garden bundle did me good!  See if you agree...

 

 

Thanks for dropping by … hope you are all

staying in, and well!

 

=]  Michele

The Flower Challenge #42

 

It's anything goes with The Flower Challenge this month!

With a delightful option of using one of the

fabulous:

 

I had no problem choosing a few of Rachel's designs from her Etsy Shop but I did appreciate the bit of hand holding Rachel gave me downloading them... thanks, Rachel - wonderful customer service!  Here is the beauty I picked from the garden of delights:

Inside:  What better way to say it, than with roses?

I printed my digi onto a 5x7 piece of Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper... I learned that the bigger the sheet of paper, the easier it was for my old printer to push it through! 

I've done a bit more dotted water coloring on this image.  This time using Altenew inks - I'll list them below.  My sentiment is from the latest EH release [on sale thru Sunday], called It's all Good by Julie.

Hope you are all settled in, and happily crafting, playing cards, games, or extending the jigsaw puzzle season!  I'll be doing just that ... just as soon as this is delivered to The Flower Challenge - hey! why not play??

=]  Michele

Altenew Inks:
Misty Morning
Cloudy Sky
Soft Lilac
Lavender Fields
Frayed Leaf
Forest Glades
water brush

There's an EBE Sale for that!

I've always thought of the number 13 as my lucky number, but there are those that connect it with bad luck... it's clear Ellen Hutson agrees with ME!

Go ahead... read that fine print … you won't find any exclusions for the NEWEST EBE products!  So if you have a few favorites from that release, now would be a great time to get them in your cart.

Here's another way I've used my favorite from the March release... Mondo Succulent Pot by Julie!  and how I've used a fun EBE Rustic Woodgrain background stamp to add interest to a CAS card.

After stamping the image onto my 80# Neenah Solar White card panel, I stamped it again onto some masking paper, and fussy cut it to cover my stamped image.  Then, I taped it to the pad of my original MISTI... and mounted my background stamp on the lid, and stamped in Twilight ink by Catherine Pooler.

Because CP inks are Copic friendly, I went to work coloring my image. 

 

 

 

EBE Oyster Gray cardstock was the perfect choice for my card base... of course I had to let a bit of it show by tucking my Mondo Succulent Pot down into the bottom left corner.  A few Nuvo Crystal clear dew drops, adding a sentiment from the set that always works, and it's done! 

 

I'll be praying for our friends whose lives have been impacted by the current health emergency.  Stay safe, and wash those hands!

 

=]  Michele

 

Don't forget that code!!!

Happy Easter ... with CAS Stencil Challenge

 

Viv is our host this month at CAS Stencil Challenge: Heat Embossing!  I'm hoping all of you can actually SEE my heat embossing... clearly it might be necessary to put your readers on! 

After stamping a panel with a gingham background stamp, I made my own stencil using a die, and a piece of laminated junk mail … I so love recycling!

Placing my stencil over that stamped panel, I used Versamark embossing ink to add sticky ink, then I added clear embossing powder, and heated it... here's a closeup of my finished card ...
 

and another:

 



 

Because my ink was still wet, the gingham caught the powder, too!  In the end, unless you're holding it your very own hands, I guess it is pretty subtle … but I like it!

I hope you do, too, Viv!! xx
=]  Michele

My little bunny-eared girl is that sweet Suzi's Easter from Jane's Doodles