Quick card

Here's a quick card I threw together this evening. It was a loooong day at work. Not a bad day, just a long one. I also popped out after work to go to Gymboree for some kids clothes and redeem Gymbucks. Now I remember why I never bother to do that! It's a madhouse and involves a lot of decision making. Not a great idea after a long day at work. Luckily things took an upswing when I stopped off on the way home for my Christmas swaps (some gorgeous ones in there) and made myself a cup of tea and tucked myself up in my stamping corner and turned off the world. Aaaaahhhh. Maybe that's why this card turned out faintly zen-like. I just got these rub-ons in the mail this week and thought I would try to use them on a card. They seemed to call out for a simple treatment, so I didn't do too much here. The card base (5x7) is some wonderful tsumugi cardstock in a beautiful oatmeal colour (yes, oatmeal can be beautiful, if you would rather think of it as pearl barley or mushroom blush, feel free, just know that IRL it is a soothing, undemanding colour). The only non-relaxing thing about this card was the vigorous popsicle stick rubbing of the rub-on, but at least I got some exercise today. The card seemed to call for a sentiment in the corner, and I was able to use an uninked stamp that I got from a nice lady in a nearby town when we went in on a PTI order together. It's an old SU stamp, and I have always liked it, but so far have only admired it from afar. It was somewhat gratifying to ink it up. I used Vivid ink in Vintage Green for that purpose, and it is a lovely match to the rub-on. (Unfortunately this only reinforces my tendencies to get every colour of ink around on a just-in-case basis.) I added some of the smaller rub-ons on the inside to continue the theme.

Now I feel rested enough to go and make lunches for tomorrow and fall into bed.

NSR: BBC Canada is showing new episodes of Hustle! I'm very excited. It's a bit of a new crew - Mickey Bricks is back in London and, with old partner Ash, has put together a new team of grifters. I'm not sure if Emma and her brother will be as good as Stacy and Danny, but I was not consulted on the casting. (I'm sure it was an oversight due to timezone or similar.) Mickey & Co can still pull off the perfect long con, to finance Eddie in a new bar of his own. It's on Sundays I think. And the Tudors starts this week (LOVE the costumes!), and the Office started last week (must remember to check out Dwight's blog - it's rotfl funny). Time to start banking up my video debt!

Helpful birds

Hello! I've been away waaay too long. We were on holidays in August - went to Manitoulin Island for a couple of weeks, and then off to Newfoundland for a week too. Our tour of the islands - sounds like it involved a lot of sand and umbrella drinks. Not so much. Still, it was lovely and I even got some hammock time on the Manitoulin. If you are ever there, you must, must, must go to Mum's Bakery and try an apple fritter. Those things should be illegal. In fact they probably are.

Since I've been back I've been madly stamping to develop class samples, stamp club projects, Christmas card class projects, birthday cards, etc. You'd think that would amount to copious amounts of blog fodder. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. (insert evilly laughing emoticon here)

My scanner was out of sorts, and my cord to withdraw pictures from my camera is missing, so I was unable to get my lovely creations from the real world into the virtual world. DH has fixed the printer/scanner so now I was able to scan in a recent effort, if not somewhat crookedly. I figured I would go for crooked+posted over straight+not posted.

I love this image from Stamping Bella, drawn by one of my favourite artists Krista Schneider. I love these helpful little birds. If I were drawing them though, I would have them putting away laundry and combing cookbooks for family-friendly recipes. Still, a bit of early decorating is a more helpful activity than sewing ball gowns. I embossed the image with charcoal embossing powder (zing) and coloured it in with markers (Tombows), forgetting entirely that there is usually snow on the ground at Christmas time. These will be the early birds (snort, get it??), decorating in November. You can tell it's November by the muddy ground and the 3 snowflakes that are there intentionally, and not stray flecks of clear embossing powder that escaped detection until the image was half coloured and it was too late (at night) to bail out and start again.

I fussed and fiddled with the embellies, trying desperately to use wide grosgrain ribbon like all the cool girls. Nope, didn't work. I did use a button, though, and a linen thread (SU) bow. So that kinda makes me cool, or at least a wannabe. And I used Primas, so that makes me trendy in a late adopter sort of way. But all in all, I like this card, and that makes me happy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Other supplies: patterned paper - Wassail line by BasicGrey, cardstock by Stampin Up (true thyme, chocolate chip, cranberry crisp), watercolour paper, brads (unknown), linen