Why is everything so embarrassing at fourteen??

My oldest niece turned 14 in June and I can't believe how much she has changed in the past year or so. The innocent, wide-eyed child has been replaced by a too worldly-wise young lady who thinks she knows more than she does. (Don't they all!!)

She still has moments of delightfulness, though these are somewhat infrequent these days. And everything we do/say is just SO EMBARRASSING!!

I am yet to realise the blessing of marriage and children in my own life so make the most of my brother's and sister's little ones. Three girls (though one now lives in heaven - see my earlier post) and a darling little boy.

This gorgeous fourteen year old niece is actually a step-niece and joined our family as a blonde, 18mth old darling. She is the one who has the greatest hold on my heart as we have walked some incredibly sad days together and she used to have lots of sleep-overs at Aunty Michey's.

I don't get to see nearly as much of her as I'd love to these days, however, I try and get a visit in whenever I can. She and I have both recently discovered that gluten is definitely NOT our friend - so we have some funny conversations about what we can and cannot eat and how we get around it.

Anywho, in my previous post I mentioned that my brother had been away for the first half of the year and missed almost all of the family birthdays.

We mostly waited until he got home and had one big combined family birthday bash at his place. In order we celebrated: Jo's birthday (sister); Mum's birthday; Jo's 1st wedding anniversary; Dan's (twin brother) & my birthdays; Jess' birthday (niece) and Cutie's birthdays (Dan's partner). And now we've just had my other niece's 12th birthday and my brother-in-law's birthday.... and Dad's is coming up...then its the bubba's 1st birthday!! Phew. Christmas will be just around the corner then!!

So I had several cards to make for the party - and after all my fluffing around ended up with really only 1 day to do so!! Thankfully, I had stamped and coloured the images during the week, using my favourite new toys - Copics. But I still had to work out layouts and colour schemes etc.

I knew Jess was definitely not going to be impressed by the 'cutesy' images from TGF, so I used one of the Anya's from the Rain/Snow/Shine set and just hoped that I could make Miss Anya suitably appealing, and not toooooooo daggy. :)

IT WAS A WINNER!! Thankfully these gorgeous Anya images are right up Jess'alley - which is great as I have 5 more images that I can use for her cards now!! Yay!! Plus there are some new stamps that have been released recently that I think may need to find their way into my collection and are perfect for teens!!

My biggest difficulty with this card was finding cardstock that matched the Copic colours/blends I had used. I ended up digging out my retired Bali Breeze DSP and matted it with some random red from Kaisercraft paper that I'd picked up at the scrapbooking shop (I can't remember what the print is on the other side). My flatmate has a corner rounder punch - but I couldn't find it so decided to use my scallop circle punch and was even more pleased with this result than if I'd just had rounded the corners.

Recipe:

Card Stock: SU Soft Sky, SU Bali Breeze DSP, Kaisercraft, SU Whisper White

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps: Anya Rain/Snow/Shine "Rain"

Others: Various Copics ;), Scallop Circle Punch, Various Ribbons from Spotlight, Pearls coloured with a Copic to match (R46), Dimensionals & Cotton Candy Stickles on the umbrella, ella. ;)

Thanks for dropping by.

Michey xxx

Gurl Bubba

Its funny....towards the end of 2008 and early in 2009 there were six of my girlfriends/family having babies. I'm grateful and thankful that all mums and bubs (and dads) are safe and sound and continuing to thrive. Can you believe that there were five boys and only one little princess!! They were kind enough to space them out for me though, with one arriving every month from Sept through to January (December had two - though one (my darling nephew) arrived early in the month and the second (the princess, born to my cousin) in the middle). I'm sure they all had me in mind when they were planning their pregnancies too!! LOL!!

Since then.... no one in my immediate world has had a baby or announced that they're expecting. Though I'm off to a couple of weddings in the next few months - so now need to get cracking on some wedding cards.

Anywho, since I'm of an age where lots of my friends & family are procreating, or thus considering such for the near future, I thought I'd get ahead and have a little stock of both girl and boy baby cards on hand.

Here's a quick one I whipped up one afternoon.

The little bubba is a cute-as Stamping Bella image that I got at my local scrapbook shop. I coloured "her" in with my copics and then added a little fun sparkle with Stickles. Until I had actually decided on the colour of the bathmat and then matted this on the pink scallop circle it could have been either a boy or girl. Easy peasy. The sentiment is from SU.

Recipe:

Cardstock: Whisper White, Pink Bazzill Textured 12x12

Stamps: SU 'For A Friend', Stamping Bella "Bella Baby Bubble Bath'

Ink: SU Basic Gray

Others: Various Copics ;), Stickles (Baby Blue on bubbles, Gunmetal on outer edge of bathtub, Cotton Candy on bathmat), Pink Rhinestone brads, Misc Pink Taffeta ribbon from Spotlight, SU Pewter Hodgepodge hardware.

She's still sitting in my stock box waiting patiently for the next little girl bubba to arrive in my world.

Thanks for taking a peek.

Michey xxx

He got teefies.....

I started stamping at the end of January 2009 and by June - just about everyone in my family had received a handmade card - 'cept the couple who hadn't had birthdays yet. BUT my darling nephew hadn't received one either. He was born on 3rd December 2008 and had not had any significant things happen until June. I don't let that be what dictates me making cards - friends have also received 'just because' or 'thinking of you' cards, but a 6-7 month old can't really read or appreciate these. :)

Anyhow....word travelled through the family like wildfire that bubba had finally cut his first 2 teeth. Clever boy!! Aunty Michey was so proud and was NOT going to family night without a present to celebrate Cam's first big achievement!!

I needed an appropriate card for the moment too! Nothing using any of my girly papers and definitely no ribbon - but how to embellish a card without them.

I'm pretty impressed with the result. I think its too cute. I had seen someone make 'popsicle' cards/invites using the scallop punch to take a bite out of the top of the iceblock shaped cards and this got me thinking.....maybe I could do this to a corner. Afterall, we are celebrating NEW TEETH!!

I've used almost only Stampin Up for this card (I just realised). The baby image is from Greetings Galore. When I bought this set and was trimming and mounting the images I cut all the sentiments off so I could use them as a separate stamp and stuck them on the end of the stamp block so I could mix and match. as it took my fancy.

It was a whole bunch of fun making a card for a little boy. The photos haven't turned out quite so well. My last apartment was very dark and dimly lit - and I couldn't get the white balance on my DSLR to find the right temp. If I get a chance I'll play with the photos again so the almost white card stock is actually ... almost white. ;)

Recipe:

Paper Stock: Urban Garden DSP, Pacific Point, Textured Ivory Cardstock (Riot!)

Ink: Pacific Point

Stamps: Greetings Galore (retired)

Others: Scallop Circle Punch (SU), 1 3/8" Circle Punch, Blue Brad, Copics, Dimensionals

Thanks for stopping by again,

Michey xxx

Dan's B'day Card

It took a little while to upload another post - our WiFi has been on the blink since Thursday. Seems to have sorted itself out for now though.

I've been on a pretty wild ride since my introduction to stamping in January this year. Had a whole bunch of fun and found out just how addictive it can be to venture into this world. I'm not really into scrapping (yet!!) but love making cards for my family and friends.

Most of my family has their birthdays in the first half of this year, which kept me on my toes to come up with original ideas for each of them. I don't have a large immediate family, but its big enough when you take 3-4 hours to make each card (usually) and you also have a pretty demanding day job too!! :)

I have a twin brother who we all love and adore and he was overseas serving our great country for the first half of the year. Therefore we mostly put all our birthday celebrations on hold until he was back home and we had one great BIG bash!! But I couldn't let our birthday pass without making sure he got a little package and a little card to open on the day.

As soon as I found The Greeting Farm's website I knew I was destined to have this set. I'm an Army Brat (thanks Dad) ;) and now an army sibling. You may notice I made a little change to Ian's outfit here......no offence guys, but I'm Australian and my brother serves in the Australian Army - so I wasn't about to send him a card with USA on it. My trusty little knife removed that from the stamp permanently, meaning I can adjust it to suit whichever defence force I need it for.

I thought about where my brother was and what they usually wear when deployed and tried my hand at colouring the image to match. This was my very first attempt at colouring with Copics - so was very unskilled and have learnt a great deal about blending, etc. and also added to my collection since then. But I was impressed with my amateur efforts and my brother was absolutely stoked with his card - made my day, month, year (almost). My fav is the criss-cross effect on the helmet - supposed to mirror the netting I've often seen on the helmets of our mighty soldier heroes. :) Colourless Blenders are a marvel....I also used this to help "scuff" up the boots a little.

I've used a sheet of retired SU DSP for the background and picked the Chocolate Chip and Mellow Moss colours to matt the image.

From memory I stamped the image on Whisper White in Versamark and heatset it with Black embossing powder to give me an image that wouldn't bleed when I coloured it in. I've since purchased Memento Tuxedo Black for this purpose.

Here's the side view to help show the layering.

Recipe:

Paper: Outlaw DSP, Chocolate Chip, Mellow Moss, Whisper White

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Versamark

Colouring: Various Copics (didn't make a note, sorry) & SU Markers

Others: Pewter Brads (SU HodgePodge), Dimensionals, Black Embossing Powder

Thanks for looking.

See ya next time.

Michey xxx

Another Early Card

This is another card made early in 2009 for a dear friend's birthday. My friend is Chinese and so I took my inspiration from that. Looking back now.....I'm not really that happy with the card, but in the early days it seemed fantastic!! It could have something to do with the dreadful photo though. I had a tendency to forget to take a photo of my cards before I gave them away and remembered to grab a shot just before I left for the birthday girl's dinner. Its taken with my iPhone in a bad lighting situation - so that makes it even worse.

I think I must have used some red bazzill cardstock as the base and then some basic black/black card stock for the card body. I've used the embrace life image and stamped it in Versacolour Gold and then coloured in the outline using a paintbrush dipped in the stamp pad

Happy Birthday hasn't stamped very well. The ribbon is actually a beautiful maroon/burgundy colour but looks a dreadful pinky/red in this shot. I've used some Kaiser rhinestones in each corner.

Definitely would try something different for her birthday next year. She'll have the physical proof of how much I've grown with if she keeps each card I make.

Recipe:

Card Stock: Red Bazzill Textured base, Basic Black/Black Bazzil

Ink: Versa Colour Gold

Ribbon: Random Maroon from my collection

Others: Kaiser Rhinestones - Clear, Dimensionals

Will definitely need to add another post tomorrow so this one makes it a little further down the list.

Blessings,

Michey