May Birthday, Plus

Oooh, sorry for the blurry picture.  I thought it was much better.  It's the Hero Arts flower again.  This time in Rich Razzleberry.  A birthday card for a dear friend.  

Another visit to see the grandbaby last weekend.  He's a little wiggle-worm, but so precious.  I must say that to my son and daughter-in-law it must have looked like I didn't know what I was doing - we never had these pillows to prop them up on and bottles with straws in them, so I'm relearning and learning a lot about infant care. But we got the job done.

He was right at home sleeping on grandpa!

Waaaa...Warm UPs

ICAD Creative Warm-Up #8 - Imperfect Circles - Started with highlighter circles and then added the tangles with a Micron pen.  

Speaking of warming up - boy did today warm up!  You can see the temps on our indoor/outdoor thermometer.  Of course, it wasn't really 101º, the outdoor device was in too much sun, but it did reach the low 90's.  And inside the house it was warm too.  Time for the AC - at least for the next few days, then we should get back to more normal temps.

I thought I'd throw in something new I tried recently.  Paint By Sticker.   This book has 12 beautiful pictures that are marked similar to paint by number canvasses only you fill the spaces with stickers which are included in the book.  Everything is coded and with a nice pair of tweezers handy it's pretty easy to do and relaxing.  I think I came across it while reading an article on mindfulness.  

Here is the link from Amazon 

Getting Ready for ICAD 2016

Grab a pack of index cards and give it a try.  I did.  It's fun and not that difficult.  There are 61 days of prompts that start on June 1st and go right up to the end of July.  You don't have to follow the prompts if you don't want to, the only real requirement is that your "creation" of the day is done on an index card no larger than 4 x 6.  Blank, lined, graph, or even index dividers are okay.  Paint, markers, pencils, pens, inks, collage, stencil, watercolor, draw, tangle - whatever you're comfortable with or maybe giving something new a try.  It's a tiny canvas to fill and you can fill it however you want.

I've done my title card as a warm up.  I had this roll of washi tape on my desk at work and a brand new package of highlighters.  I tried something new with the bottom portion of the card.  I took a roll of masking tape and folded back a section of about 1 1/2" onto itself to expose the sticky side.  Then I dabbed the markers onto the sticky portion and then rolled that over the black paper.  I just kept reinking it ever so often and when the tape was too "tired" I just peeled it off and started with a new piece.  

If you're looking for something to get your creative juices going to start off the summer, or to my southern hemisphere friends - to begin the winter, go ahead and jump in.  Here's the link to the FAQ page http://daisyyellowart.com/icad/icad-faq.html.

A Little Bit of This and That

A baby goat came to visit at school last week.  He is part of one of our students' 4-H projects.  The week before, the students' mom came to get him early because there was an emergency with the mama goat.  Mama goat had been sick toward the end of her pregnancy and she was delivering a little prematurely.  She delivered 3 kids but the two females died leaving just this little boy kid.  And then, sadly the mama goat died so the family is hand-raising this little guy.  Isn't it cute!

Below are some not-so-bad attempts at capturing the sunset by HWNSNBP whilst he was at the condo late last week.  He had to meet up with a handyman to go over some work we're having done there and take care of a few errands in the area.  

The night he went down there I was working upstairs on a card we needed for the weekend.  The stamp cave is getting there - things are moved back in, but I haven't been able to organize them so it's taking me longer to find the things that I need.  Anyhoo....... while I was upstairs Kirby decided to have an adventure of his own downstairs.  I had left his door open and usually he just climbs to the top and sits there.  Well something must have spooked him because when I came down, the stinker was nowhere to be found.........and not making any noise.  Despite my calling his name and whistling, he didn't respond.  After about 10 minutes of looking for him I noticed some movement - it was him sitting on this trug that HWNSNBP made for me all the way across the room from his cage. I think he knew he was in trouble which is why he didn't make any noise.  But there's no punishment, just a little lecture.

And here is what I was working on.  We had a wedding to go to in Philadelphia Saturday.  I knew the bridesmaids were wearing this mossy green color and the guys were wearing grey.  The flower looks pinkish in the picture but there was no pink in it, I just highlighted it with some of the mossy green and then over that with some clear Wink of Stella.  The flower is from Hero Arts and came with dies perfect for layering it to look like paper tole.  The sentiment was die cut from some white glitter paper.  The background was scored and looked like the design on the invitations.  I thought I had a close-up of the flower, but I guess not.  

The poor bride badly sprained her ankle the night before the wedding and had to wear a boot but she was a trooper.  The ceremony was cute with the infant niece of the bride and the infant niece of the groom as flower girl and ringbearer - they were rolled down the aisle in a wagon by another groomsman assigned the job of wagonmaster.  The food was out of this world and I overdid the dancing just a smidge, but loved it nonetheless.  The groom is the son of one of our Table 7 compatriots and that's where we all sat - with our family of friends.

A Happy Mother's Day Weekend

Saturday took us down to Delaware to visit with Rachel.  HWNSNBP likes to fill her porch planter twice a year.  She picked out this lovely purple assortment of flowers which happened to come already all together in a smaller pot.  All he had to do was take out the old stuff from the big pot, add some new, nutrient rich soil, wiggle the planting out of it's smaller pot and add it to this one.  Viola! Instant curb appeal.

The robin's egg shell was laying in the bush just off the porch with no nest in sight.  So either the wind blew it there, or the mama or papa bird dropped it while taking it for disposal.  Either way, it looked so pretty sitting there in the rain soaked bush.

We had a delicious lunch together and then did some shopping.  She took us to the Container Store! I've been wanting to check out that chain store for years but we don't have one near us. The one near her opened this last fall.  I picked up a plethora of containers to use in the stamp cave, mainly a slew of them for sorting paper scraps into color families.  There's no sales tax in Delaware so I did save some by getting them there.  It will definitely be a place to revisit in the future.

From Delaware we headed back to Jersey but instead of going home, we side-lined ourselves to the condo for the evening.  I had spent some time the night before die cutting some flowers and gathering up some card bases and such for Mother's Day cards.  

I've seen so many beautiful cards made with these particular dies.

Stacking and gluing - easy peasy.

The finished product.

I couldn't find my sticky pearls, but was glad I threw in the liquid paper to add some interest to the flower centers.

The bluebirds have really gotten big and honestly, I half expected not to see them when we got home on Sunday, but they're still in the box, though I think it will be soon for fledging.  It's funny to see them practicing jumping and flapping their wings.  They get just enough lift to land on the back of one of their siblings, then the next one tries and it's like a baby bluebird totem until they all slide off.

And we did get to see the little guy yesterday morning.  This picture was taken by his mom a couple of days ago - it's the one that has melted my heart this week.  Daddy time and bottle practice.  She is so thoughtful and sends pictures almost daily.  It was so good to spend some time with them all on her first Mother's Day.

I hope all the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, and sisters had a wonderful day.

April Tangles

April 1 - AA's/Judy Murphy

April 2 - Alegre/Carlos Cano

April 3 - G'raf/Jen Morey

April 4 - Moxie/Jane Nicols

April 5 - Try Star/Amy Long

April 6 - B-Twixt/Randi Wynne-Parry

April 7 - BEP/Beth Snoderly

April 8 - Ando/Kim Winebrenner

April 9 - MA-XIII/Chantal Florin

April 10 - LTD/Patricia Cosiano

April 11 - Fran/Shinmi

April 12 - Angel Line/Esther Piszczek

April 13 - Aloha/Suzanne Fluhr

April 14 - 3-D Room/Damy Teng

April 15 - Cathedral/Kathy Barringer

April 16 - 7 /Ina Sonnenmoser

April 17 - Bubbled Up/Texasdoxiemamma

April 18 - Cloverly/Theresa Beebe

April 19 - Gyrate/Sarah Harrison

April 20 - Sixteenth/Theresa Beebe

April 21 - Squares Squared/Bunte Galeri

April 22 - Nautilus/Ina Sonnenmoser

April 23 - Atomic/Ina Sonnenmoser

April 24 - Neit Lite/Annette Plaga-Lodde

April 25- Curls/32 Butka

April 26 - Not-a-Knot/Joyce Block

April 27 - Chence/Ellen Wolters

April 28 - Doozaly/Suzanne Crisafi

April 29 - Jaysix/Eni Oken

April 30 - Cadent Variation/Samantha Mitterer

Not sure I posted this tile using some of March's tangles.  

Tangled Shells

 

Sorry these pictures aren't as good as they should have been but I'm showing the progression of a little spur of the moment project. I had these strips of Sahara Sand paper and had stamped the shell images on them intending to use them just that way on the birthday card for my DIL.  Side-by-side.  It didn't really pan out the way I intended so I went another route, but as I sat looking at those strips I decided to fill in the gaps between the shells with Karry Huen's tangle called Sand Swirl.  I added the tangle with a sepia Micron pen.  Then I took a white gel marker and added some white highlights to the shells.  I added even more subtler highlights with a white pencil.  Then I added the shadows to the tangles with a rose colored Prismacolor pencil.   I think I will trim these up to be bookmarks.

 

Another spur of the moment tangle project was on this shell that I picked up on the beach last weekend.  I had seen some beautiful examples of blue Sharpie on scallop shells on Pinterest and I would share the link but it links to a Facebook page and I'm not sure I can do that. 

 

Here's a point of reference to see the size of the shell - about medium size.  While this wasn't impossible, I think it would be much easier on the smooth surface of a scallop shell.  The ridges on this one were a little tricky and caused me to elaborate on my pattern thicknesses. 

 

I'll be posting my April calendar tangles soon. 

Good Night April

The red-wing blackbird sat in the tree at dusk still singing his sweet song as the sun set and April came to a close.

The day started with some garage saling and then on to some errands.  When the errands were done we headed out to the lighthouse.  Never have we seen so many fishermen on the walkway and rocks.  Not even in the summer months.  There must have been some kind of fish run earlier in the day but as we walked through the crowded walkway carefully avoiding the fishermen's casts we didn't see anyone catching anything.  The picture is deceiving as they are only fishing on the left side.  The poles on the right are either extras or those of the fishermen waiting to grab a spot.  We climbed through the rail at the end and down the rocks to walk in the sand to the ocean.  And we almost made it.  My back was cramping up and we fell just a little short of the goal.

But on the way back there was one seagull (not pictured) and one duck in one of the tide pools.  All the other birds seemed to smartly be keeping their distance from all those fishing poles.  And although the nesting area for the plovers was once again roped off, we didn't see any.

We did do some shelling.  These are the finds that I tucked into the front pouch of my sweatshirt. That first shell on the top left is actually blue when wet and I'm wondering if I add a coat of clear nail polish if it will bring out the color.  

Back at the ranch, er, condo I did an unofficial tasted test of these trial m&m's that I picked up at the $Tree on the way down.  From the top:  Honey Nut, Chili Nut, and Coffee Nut.  The Honey Nut are sweet but not overpoweringly so.  The Chili Nut start out pretty so-so but have a real kick to them. You might not want to eat more than one at a time.  The Coffee Nut ones were good.  They had a mild coffee flavor that was not bitter but not as sweet as coffee ice cream.  Would I buy them again?  The Honey Nut and the Coffee Nut yes, the Chili Nut probably not.

And as that blackbird sang, the sun set in the sky over the refuge one last time in April.