A Blog With No Name

This week’s challenge for the Hambo Hoedown was sparkle – shine – glisten!  I used their adorable digital image “Bailey Devil” to make this card.

Sparkle Challenge with “Bailey Devil” – Hambo Hoedown 85

The orange cardstock has very fine glitter in it — I’m not sure that shows up really well in the picture.  I thought it needed a little extra bling so I added the sequins.

Thanks again to the awesome artists at Hambo Stamps for the cute digital images and for the inspiration!

It’s been another beautiful week, with some fall-like temperatures in the morning.  The Hambo Hoedown challenge this week was a sketch challenge using their precious digital image, “Harvest Bunny,” and the sketch above.

My card plays just a little fast and loose with the sketch….I made a small card, and I made the stripes of patterned paper not go all the way across the card, because I wanted to be able to see all that pretty apple green embossed paper.  A circle would have covered up more of the card than I wanted to, so I just fussy-cut the image and placed it where the circle would be.  Here’s my card.

Hambo Hoedown Challenge #84 – Sketch Challenge using “Harvest Bunny”

Join the Hambo Hoedown’s weekly challenges for free digital images and free inspiration!

Happy Fall, y’all!  Finally the weather is turning just a little bit cooler here in beautiful Virginia, and although it’s been a few weeks since I participated in the Hambo Hoedown Challenge, I’m back and better than ever 8-).  This week I am using their adorable digital image entitled “Monster Yell” from Hambo Stamps.  The talented Bacon Bits challenged us to use chevrons on our project this week.  Here’s my offering.

Chevron Challenge (Week 83) with “Monster Yell” from Hambo Designs

The chevron designer paper is from a DCWV Mat Stack “Rock and Roll.”  The little tag is from the dollar bin at Target and the “boo!” is a little clear stamp I got for a buck somewhere, which I had never used.  So maybe it’s a little early for Halloween cards, but there ya go.  Thanks again to the amazing folks at Hambo Stamps for the free digis that participants in their challenges get.  They are the only challenges I ever bother to do, because their digis are so cute.  Everybody enjoy what’s left of September!

Paper, paper everywhere…..and ribbon, stamps, embellishments, brads…..you name it.  And no clue how to even begin to organize it all.

Until fate brought an e-mail to my inbox from Tiffany Spaulding inviting me to join her “Get Organized Challenge Series.”  Step One — “Use your craft supplies to create a ‘Big Benefits’ reminder, and come up with ways to reward yourself when you complete each of the 8 challenges.”  Here’s my Big Benefit layout!

The Big Benefits of an organized craft room

You can totally blame the talented and hilarious designers of Hambo Stamps for my lousy puns.  They totally put me up to it.

This week’s Hambo Hoedown challenge was to use the looks of wood or wood grain in a card, along with one of the adorable Hambo images.  I didn’t get a chance to participate in last week’s challenge, so I didn’t get the cute lighthouse image they gave away.  I looked back through the archives and through my own folder and dug up an image I got last February — Pelican!  I thought this looked very nautical and appropriate for the patterned paper I chose for this challenge.

Wood Grain Challenge – Hambo Hoedown #79, featuring “Pelican” digital image by Hambo Stamps

For once I know where the patterned paper came from, since I bought this Colobok pad at Wally World specifically for this challenge!  I love the colors and the way the blue paint is chipping off of the wood — very nautical looking.  The sentiment is a sticker from Miss Elizabeth.

Thanks again to the lovely people at Hambo Stamps and the Hambo Design Team for a challenging challenge and a great collection of images!

Another week gone by, another Sunday night, another Hambo Hoedown challenge!  Where is the summer going?

This week the amazing artists at Hambo Stamps challenged us to fly our Olympic colors!  The colors of the Olympic rings are red, black, blue, green, and yellow.  Using the free digital image we got for participating in last week’s challenge, “Cheeses” (or any Hambo digital or rubber stamp), we were to create a card using a combination of any two Olympic ring colors (or all five!).  I chose yellow and black for my card, and voila.

Hambo Hoedown Challenge #77 – featuring “Cheeses”

Join us at the Hambo Hoedown!  And enjoy what’s left of summer!

Snorkel Boy Tic Tac Toe Challenge card – Hambo Hoedown 76

This week’s Hambo Hoedown challenge (number 76 — wow, we’ve been at this for a while!) was to play a little game of Tic Tac Toe.  You kind of have to see it to understand it — the awesome design team at Hambo Stamps provided us with a little chart, and we had to choose three elements to use in this week’s card.  I chose the color pink, an octogon shape, and brads for my three elements.

I haven’t played in the challenge for a couple of weeks — a lot going on in August! — so I didn’t get the free octopus digi, so I dug out TWO of my favorites from times past!  Above is the card I made with “Snorkel Boy.”  Honestly, I have such a huge pile of scraps that I have no clue where the papers came from.  The blue brads are supposed to look like bubbles, and I painted the Snorkel Boy and fish with watercolors I got for half price at Michael’s 8-).

Below is the second card I made featuring “Cool Cat”,  an adorable digital image you can get for FREE from the Hambo Stamps website.  The sentiment on this card came from the “Snorkel Boy,” above.  I had originally intended to switch the sentiments, but you know how it is when you get going with the glue and stuff.

Cool Cat Card!

I am donating these two cards to Operation Inasmuch, which is a one-day local missions event that many of our community churches are involved in.  They will be given to shut-ins and nursing home residents.

Thanks again to Hambo Stamps for their adorable rubber and digital stamps, and to their design team for their inspiration!

I’m baaack into the Hambo Hoedown!  I missed the last few challenges, so I had to use an older digital image from Hambo’s digital stamp collection.  This is the adorable “Catching Butterflies” with a small adjustment….my little guy is catching a falling star.  This is going to be a get well card for my brother in law, who just went thru hip replacement surgery.

Hambo Stamps’ “Chasing Butterflies” Tall Card Challenge #73

Check out the Hambo Hoedown weekly challenge and get cute digital stamps!  Looking forward to seeing what goodies are coming up.  Thanks to all the great artists at Hambo Stamps and all the great inspiration from the super craft cardmakers there 😎

I sure do miss my college girls, but there is one good thing about my babies growing up and moving out:  a spare room!

Here are two of the prints that started it all.  I got four beautiful vintage framed prints at a local auction for fifteen bucks.  I love the oriental feel and the colors, so I decided to do the room around these prints.

Two of my four beautiful oriental prints.

I wanted a classy kind of warm gray for the walls.  Here’s what the walls looked like before.  I think we re-did Pattie’s room for her one summer while she was away at GA camp.  She picked the light purple paint and the dark purple butterflies stenciled on the walls.  It must have been at least six or seven years ago.  It’s a little sad to see them go, but little girls grow up and change from butterflies on the wall to Hello Kitty 8-).

I must admit I patted myself on the back a couple of times for fixing all the little nail holes in the walls rather than just painting over them.  In truth I just did it to procrastinate.  I put off actually painting for a long time, afraid that I would mess it up.  And to be truthful, I did.  Instead of waiting to get to the hardware store to buy an edger, I just did the edges with a sponge brush, and ended up getting gray paint all over the white trim.  Now I have to repaint the trim as well.  Here’s my gray, and my little painting buddy.  I don’t know why, but Stargazer likes to watch me paint.

Yikes!  That’s a scary pic of Stargazer.  She actually looks more like this:

Jessica says she looks like Wilfred T. Brimley.

I used Glidden paint plus primer, from Wal-mart.  It’s a little more expensive, but one gallon is going to do this whole room.  It covers really, really well.

Pattie had a pretty beat up white bookshelf with some stains and stickers on it, so I painted that with semi-gloss paint in a rich brown.  This is where I’m going to store most of my scrapbooking/card making materials, in baskets.

I have done two walls.  The next step is to move everything off of the other two walls and get the other walls done, and then I get all the fun of putting everything back and trying to arrange it all.  Updates to come!