Bootiful!

Even though I am not huge on clear stamps I had to get this set. The minute I set eyes on the Stampendous Skeleton Style Perfectly Clear stamps I knew it was going to be so much fun to play with.  With a little masking and a little trial and error of a practice sheet I finally got the face in the perfect spot. I cut out my skelly with Cherry Lynn Oval - Scalloped LG Stackers Nesting Dies - XL-8.  The spider web corners are from Frantic Stamper Precision Die - Square Vignette Spider Web Insert. I cut it cross wise to get the corners. This die i 1 1/4 in. so it makes perfect photo corners. I got out my tweezers and some Colorbox pigment ink and embossed the corners with a powder called Rainbow Trout. It is a holographic silver embossing powder by a company no longer in business but the Kaleidoscope embossing powder from Stampendous would work wonderfully too. 

I colored this image with Prismacolor pencils because I needed bright colors with lots of pigment to show up on the deep blue gray card stock. In case you haven't noticed, I use that color a lot especially when I want a moody background. I used some glue on the edges of the scalloped oval and added some blue Beedz from my stash. I had a ticket left over from the yearly senior fair we have here. I used the same holo embossing powder to edge the ticket. I did the words with a couple old alphabet sets from Just Rite Stamps. At the bottom I used some tape from the Dollar Tree. I hope you enjoy my work. Have a great day!

Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror by Stampendous is the stamp I used for this card. I have almost all of the stamps in this style for Halloween. My plans are to make a book with them.   Tombow Recycled Color Pencils. I used a gel pen from the Dollar tree to add sparkle to the frame. I trimmed the edges with a decorative scissors  and then I added some light brown pencil shading and then used 3 different distressed inks over the background.

Then sprinkled with water and blotted off leaving the lighter splotches. I used photo corners to mount this piece to the yellow paper. The yellow and orange paper are from an old purchase. I believe they were called moon dust. I couldn't find them online but they have brilliant color with pearl like flecks. The purple is Stardream. The lime and brown are regular card stock.  

Thanks for stopping by have a great day!

Stampendous/Tombow winnings

These are the awesome goodies that I won from the Stampendous  and Tombow blog hop in September. It was actually double awesome because The winners were announced on my birthday.  it was a hard choice on which stamp set to get but I figured there is pleanty of time to get Christmas stamps. I got a  

• A set of 24 Tombow Recycled Color Pencils
• A roll of Tombow 3D Foam Tape
• A Jumbo Perfectly Clear Handle
• Your choice from Create Fall, Create Christmas, Create Winter or Create a Poinsettia Cling Stamp set and Matching Dies

These pencils are really great. They give a soft finish and I haven't had any broken leads. They aren't waxy like the Prismacolors  so there's no waxy bloom. I do love my Prismacolors still but I can do without the broken leads.

I haven't used any of my embossing powders in a while, so I decided to bust them out. Not your average ep's but the beautiful Pearl Lusters by Stampendous in Sapphire, Amethyst and Carnelian. I used Colorbox pigment inks with the ep's and Stampendous Damask Bats.  I used Glitter Silk Card stock by Core'dinations to die cut the moon and grass. I added some India ink black to the grass and smuged some on the moon to make them darker. 

Stampendous Cling Create Fall Stamps are a fun set of rubber stamps. You can add the faces or leave them off for other holidays like Thanksgiving. You can add the hat or leave it off. The same with the stem. There are many other ideas for these versatile stamps on the Stampendous blog. They have a wonderful design team. The matching dies cut right on the lines so there is no white around the edges. I like that close cut look much better than having white around the edges.  I also used some tiny paper flowers, a bat cupcake pick from dollar tree and a stamp from the  Inkadinkado Gothic Toppers set for embellishments. 

I hope you like my card and have a great day.

About as good as it gets

I have had my computer back for quite awhile but, I am having problems with photo bucket crashing every time I try to crop or delete a picture. It is so frustrating and I don't know how to fix it. Anyway, I guess, instead of ignoring it and doing nothing, I will post what I have, uncropped and all.

I went on an actual, honest to god Vacay!!! We went with some friends on a cruise. We drove to Galveston and stayed overnight before getting on the ship. This little cemetery was the view from our balcony. It is the Rosewood Cemetery. Galveston’s first burial ground designated exclusively for African Americans, founded in 1911.  http://www.galvestonhistory.org/attractions/cultural-heritage/rosewood-cemetery  This is the link if you would like to know more about it. We thought it was pretty awesome to be able to see it from our balcony. We got a few pictures before we left for the ship.As you can probably tell, it was a bit foggy as it had poured rain the night before. We probably got 2 full days of sunshine during the whole trip. 

Our ship was the Carnival Freedom. I particularly enjoyed the movies after dinner at the pool and OMG!!! The food was awesome! I didn't ever have to worry about keeping snacks for my diabetes. I had brought a bunch along, just in case but never needed them.First stop was Key West. This is taken from the ship. We walked past the shops and grabbed a cab to go to the Hemingway House. Afterwards we dropped our souvenirs off in our room and grabbed lunch on board. Then after our break we went back out to the area below to check out some stores and get a few pictures.

These little houses are for the kitties out side at the Hemingway house. The closest one is painted to look like the home. Just an fiy, this house has no air conditioning, so if it is really hot out and you are sensitive, you may want to skip this one.  This was mid April and quite humid. 

Isn't she lovely.... sing along. Yea, that's me. LOL I borrowed a walker to get around but I was nice and shared it with my bestie, so I have a cane here.I guess technically it is a rollator since it has 4 wheels and a seat. It really was the best thing we took on the trip. We named it Homer. I really need to get one for myself. I haven't been able to walk through a store that doesn't have shopping carts for me to use in forever, so yea, that's gonna happen soon. I don't see the point of the regular walker. First of all you have to lift it with every step and second, they don't come with a seat.

This adorable port is the lovely Freeport. It was pouring when we got there. Quite a few of the excursions were cancelled because of the rain. I wanted only to see the dolphins. I really had a time finding a place that I would feel was acceptable. I didn't want to see dolphins in small pools or that were mistreated. It isn't easy because on the one hand, you really want to spend time with these beautiful creatures, but on the other hand I want to know that they weren't captured for our selfish desires for entertainment ala the cove. I read up on several places and all the reviews on the excursion site. In the end I chose to go for a dolphin close encounter at Unexso facility in Port Lucaya. The bus was a bit late arriving but we were able to sit under a roofed area. The rain was off and on through out the morning. 

This man was quite entertaining. He was dancing right outside the covered area and the large painting behind him was for taking pictures with tourists. There were also many shops right in the area. I tried dancing a bit but my back wouldn't let me. So sad. I love to dance and it would have been so much fun.

One of the parrots at the Unexso site. We didn't have much time to explore the site because our bus driver was late getting us to the boat and as it turned out, he was late coming back too.

 I decided to share one of the videos that I took. Ignore the person who sounds an aweful lot like Phyllis Diller....that's me. So sexy, right? LOL

Our last stop was Nassau. We walked all over. Of course it was raining too when we started out. We didn't make any excursions on Nassau so we just wandered around and did the scavenger hunt from the ship at all the different merchants. We scored lots of freebies and just took our time exploring the town. After we got to tired to go on we went back to the ship. We decided to not go out again because of the long walk from the ships dock to the shore. As we sat there relaxing and looking out from the ship I saw...a beach! Can you believe it! We never, at any of the ports made it to one single beach. There was no way I could make the walk at that point.

These folks were outside of the Straw Market.

Walking back to the ship and getting a few pictures. I swear I wore other colors besides white on this cruise. The last day at sea, the sun was shinning. Go figure. Going home. Goodbye beautiful Bahamas hope to see you again someday and maybe even go to a beach and walk on your sands. As we got to Galveston it was pouring rain.

The day I got home. I think someone missed me. She was attached to my lap for 2 days. 

Broken computers!

My computer died recently, so I took it to my friend to help with it and she got it working temporarily. I was able to get a few things done and then splat! It died for real. She called the fix it guy in our building to work on it for me because he installed the hard drive less than a year ago. I also had her work on my laptop because it wouldn't connect. Meanwhile I have been on my CHEEP and nearly worthless tablet. I have such a headache from waiting for pages to load. Oddly, You tube videos work well on it, but reading my email is a massive PIA. You click on something to go to another page and if you try to go back to the email it goes to the opening page. Then you have to open your email again and try to find the post you were reading. It also will have emails on it that were deleted from my email on my PC. So I have to delete them all again. So after many hours I have a massive headache and have done very little. Ok, so yaaaaay! I got my laptop back and tried to watch a video. Everything is fine except it has no sound. I check and when it was reinstalled it didn't get the program for sound but it makes sounds for turning on and off and all the alarm sounds but no sound for videos. I take it back up to her to figure it out and go back to the evil tablet. At least I got a journal page done while waiting on things to load. Well, at least I got my laptop back last night after running back and forth with computers all day for 2 days. Thankfully we have an elevator in this building! Sadly she loaded Firefox on my tablet instead of Google Chrome. I like Chrome. I like where my bookmarks are. I like the way my email looks and works. I also had to spend several hours deleting and reloading my antivirus software from Cox, because for some reason it got disconnected. So, for now I am on again and feeling better.
I remember not long ago, I didn't even own a computer. My friend took me to the library and I learned how to use their computers. I was so excited. I was working with polymer clay back then and must have printed out a books worth of polymer clay ideas. I think I still have those pages squirreled away somewhere. Then my friend and roommate got a home computer and I could check out how to's on anything my heart desired. Now, I can't bear a day without my computer. I am not a cell phone person. I just have an old flip phone that I rarely turn on, but I am on my computer daily. Checking my email and watching videos and signing petitions for good causes and reading to much about politics. Things have changed so much in these last few years.