Is anyone there?

Is anyone there...hello???  hello???

I know, it has been a good year since I've blogged, can you believe it?  I can't and I'm finally starting to get back into the swing of creating some cards.

Last year shortly after my last post, we put our house of 15 years on the market in search of something a little larger for our family.  It was not an easy process for us, as you can imagine, we collected 15 years worth of stuff and had 2 more kids than when we moved into the house.  We got a storage unit, lots of cleaning and purging and my stamp stuff joined some other stuff at the storage unit to clear out my office.

Fast forward to beginning of 2016 and we finally got an acceptable offer on our place.  It happened very quickly and we were left scrambling to find a place to live.  Thankfully our awesome realtor came through after looking at what seemed like a zillion houses and we closed and moved in the last week in February.

First thing on my list at the new house was to get my stamp area together and make my office what I always wanted it to be.  Granted, I'd love a bigger office, but I will take what I can get.  So with the help of my wonderful husband we spent many house painting, assembling cabinets and shelving, arranging and re-arranging and I finally got my office/studio together. (not a great picture, but you get the idea anyway)

Now, I will admit I have to do some more purging and definitely some more organizing but am slowly getting a few cards made here and there in my new area.

Hoping to be more regular when I have the time and always enjoy the comments and seeing others work so thank you for sticking around if you are still following!

The cards at the very top were some quick thank you's I put together after we had a little welcome to our house party.  Hope you enjoy!

Stampotique New Release Blog Hop

You should have arrived from Nellie van Leeuwen's blog for our blog hop.

 I am joined by the Stampotique Design Team to showcase the images released from Stampotique this month.  If you haven't had a chance to see what's new, you can do that over on the Stampotique website here.

As with any of the releases, there is a variety of stamps from our artists for any stampers, scrapbookers and journalers out there.  We always love to see what your favorites are so while you are hopping around, make sure to stop by and say "hi" on our blogs and come back here and tell us what some of your favorite images from this release were.

We'll be giving away a $30 gift certificate for stamps and a grab bag of stamps on two of the blogs-but you won't know which ones they are so stop by and visit them all.  We will pick the winners on our first challenge in September.

I've been the design team coordinator with Stampotique shortly after I begged and begged to be a part of the design team.  I've thoroughly enjoyed my time on the team, the great friends I've made, the way I've grown as a stamper, and mostly being a part of the Stampotique family.  This is my last blog hop as I turn the reigns over to my wonderful design team member in taking over for me, Claudine Criner.  Claudine will do a fabulous job and while I may not be as involved with Stampotique as I have been in previous years, I will always remain a faithful stalker.  Thank you to all of you out there who always took time to leave comments or drop me a note-I always appreciated getting them.

I especially want to say a HUGE thank you to our design teams through the years and all the support they have given me as their coordinator-there are so many extraordinary women out there on our team, and I'm so blessed to have been a part of this team and their lives.

Have fun hopping!

From here you will want to hop on over to Arwen McCullen's blog.

For my card, I'm wishing all of you love and lots of laughter!  I'll be taking a hiatus from stamping for a bit while my family takes the leap of putting out house up for sale and finding a new (and improved) house that fits our family's needs.  So, while I may not be posting my own creations-I'll still be checking all of yours out whenever I get the opportunity.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Card details:

Stamps: Curlz 11013 and Love and Laughter 8994 from Stampotique Originals

Cardstock: Basic Black, Baja Breeze, Real Red and Rustic White

Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, copic markers

Together

I'm not finding as much time to stamp as I used to so I need to kick my mojo into gear one of these days.

I made this card a few weeks ago but hadn't shared it yet.  It's one that I really like how it turned out and finally am using one of the punches I had to have...now to figure out who to give the card to.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting me and sorry I've been MIA.

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Card details:

Stamps: Cloud 9 from Technique Tuesday

Papers: Very Vanilla, Lost and Found Union Square

Inks: Archival Ink Jet Black

Embellishments: SU punch, mini pearls

SDC195: Human with Animal Head

Arwen McCullen is our hostess this week at Stampotique Designer's Challenge and she's visualizing all of us with animal heads this week:

I love to combine designs together.  This time I want to see something funny.  Combines a human body with an animal head.  I'm looking forward to your creations.

As you can easily see from my card, I totally goofed on this one.  I originally thought it was animal body with human head and then after I finished this, I realized a "fairy" probably doesn't qualify as an animal...but oh well-I got creative so I'm posting it anyway!

I broke out the Copics and colored a bit this weekend and kept the card fairly generic so I could add the sentiment on later.

Hope you will join us at Stampotique Designer's Challenge this week for your chance to win a $30 gift certificate for stamps.

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Stamps: Dorothy 9238 and Merry Fairy 6009 from Stampotique Originals

SDC191: Circles

Magda is our hostess this week at Stampotique Designer's Challenge and she has us running in circles:

"I like using shapes in my projects especially circles. They can give interesting effects on projects depends in what way they are used. I would love to see circles on your creations. How you will use them, depends on your imagination."

For my card I pulled out one of Kate Crane's images, watercoloring it in with some bright colors.

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Card details:

Stamps: 11004 Boots, 6184 Circles Cubed and 10019 Barcode from Stampotique Originals

Cardstock: Basic Black, Raspberry Fizz, Soft Sky, Certainly Celery and Whisper White

Inks: Ranger Archival Ink Jet Black, watercolors

Embellishments: candy dots

SDC190: Stitches

Coby vanWilligenburg is our hostess this week at Stampotique Designer's Challenge and she has us in stitches:

I love stitches in my creations, sometimes stamped sometimes made by hand and sometimes with the sewing machine.  I challenge you to use stitching in your creations this week.

Our neighbors just had a baby boy a few weeks ago and so perfect time for me to break out some stitches on my card.

I had a little help from my friend Kristen as I've been in quite a creative slump lately so she made the suggestion on the stamp to use and I went with it.

I watercolored my bunny and balloon and added some Crystal Lacquer on the balloon to give it a shiny surface.  I decided to add the banner by stamping it onto some patterned paper and then coloring it a bit.

I also the Always Playing with Paper sketch challenge #29

Hope you will join us this week over at Stampotique Designer's Challenge for your chance to win a $30 gift certificate for stamps (does not include shipping).

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Card details:

Stamps: 9008 Congratulations, 10001 Banner, and 7310 Upward Bound from Stampotique Originals

Cardstock: Marina Mist, So Saffron, Confetti White and Day Dreamer by Dear Lizzy

Inks: Archival Ink Jet Black, watercolor

Embellishments: twine and button, Cyrstal Lacquer

Hello Beautiful

I missed my stamping friend LeAnne's challenge at The Paper Player's this past week because I was lazy blogger.  I actually made this card last week but it sat on my desk, just begging to be blogged, but was ignored.

I broke out some new to me papers and stamps to create this.  The sentiment reminds me of my good friend and neighbor-she's always so bright and cheerful and uses this statement a lot.

My hubby is embarrassed a little by it, but my nickname for him (before we started dating) was Mr. Beautiful.  Always admiring him from afar ;-)

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Card details:

Stamps: Summer Garden by Simon Says Stamp!

Cardstock: Soft Sky, Night of Navy, My Mind's Eye Now & Then "Dorothy"

Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, copic markers

Embellishments: pearls, twill tape