Summer flowers

This stamp was love at first sight for me. I just love the old fashioned charm, and of course I love colouring-in. It's a retired hostess set from Stampin' Up, possibly called Country Morning. This was previously coloured-in and kicking around my desk so I decided it was time to get it on a card before it got paint or ink on it or too dog-eared to use. I coloured it with Bruynzeel pencil crayons and blended with odourless mineral spirits. Under the unforgiving eye of scanner the I see that the "haze" is blowing downwind a bit. Let's just call this a new "technique". Any suggestions as to what to call this?

This country image just called for some fresh country paper, so I went to some October Afternoon (Fly a Kit pack) and chose some coordinating blue and yellow patterns to go with the Baja Breeze cardstock. I dithered a bit about the layout, and found a nice piece of marigold morning already scalloped. Again under the harsh light of the scanner, it's not the best match (I had picked out a PTI yellow that was better, but this scrap was cut and trimmed already). I found a cute little sentiment "You are my sunshine" (A Muse) and that was the perfect thing to finish it off. In retrospect, I would have liked it stamped higher, but as usual I was stamping kamikaze-style, so that's where it landed.

A special thank you to the ladies who came out to my make-and-take class at Heather's Stamping Haven today. She's celebrating her fourteenth anniversary this August and is running her traditional fundraising classes for Victims of Violence: It Shouldn't Hurt to be a Child. We did emboss resist and I had a lovely time with the delightful people who came to the class.

Speaking of classes, I finished up my October class samples for Heather. We're going to be doing... [drumroll please].... zombies! More specifically, how to make zombies out of otherwise cute stamps (e.g., Roly Polys and Magnolias). It's a bit of a risk - I'm not sure how many zombie lovers there are out there, but there is a certain appeal, to me anyway, in the element of the absurd. In the contrast between the almost saccharin-sweet Magnolia images and colouring them up grubby style. It's also nice to have a change of colour combination for skin tones, nothing like good old green and purple. And best of all it doesn't matter if you smudge! For more traditional folks, my next class will be Sept 18th, in the afternoon, and we will be doing a Magnolia (Lady Tilda), ol' skool. (Except for the face - I will show you how to add a mouth and nose, if you want to. Nu skool.) (Can you tell I learned to text message over the holiday? Yes, it's true, I joined the 2000s and learned to text message. I still refuse to type the ancient Sumerian city for "your" and "you're", or "U" for "you" (and presumabley "ewe" and "yew", though these arise less frequently in text messages).) We could get a cell phone signal from the top of the hill behind the cottage. Well, DH could with his arm fully extended upward. I'm too short for cell service. I got endless amusement providing the soundtrack for these electronic communications, lustily singing the theme song for Hercules alongside DH on the hilltop, with his arm high aloft, cell phone pointed heavenward. (Hercules was a cartoon on when I was a kid and Herc would encounter various monsters, who roared with one of two sound effects, and put on his magic ring, raise his fist in the air so lighttening could strike the ring, charging it up so he could smite his foes, who were waiting, patiently roaring/hissing, in the wings, to be smitten. Not one of these simple-minded beasts ever discovered they could have taken Herc out while he was getting his ring zapped. And Great Zeus!, why was Helena blonde? Perhaps I was overthinking things a bit.....)

Thanks for stopping by! Time to go do something worthwhile like a load of laundry before I cuddle up with DH to watch a movie. I love holidays!