Excuses...

  I missed posting yesterday because it was my anniversary.  When my husband came home he announced that he had been able to get the evening shift off (he was supposed to cover for his coworker, again...)and that we were going out to dinner.  Which necessitated a shower, fixing my hair, changing clothes, etc. because I do NOT dress well during the summer when I'm out of school.  In fact, the older I get, the sloppier I seem to become.  The happier, also!  Anyway, it was our 36th anniversary!  I can remember when I couldn't even imagine being married this long, and here it is.  Funny that I'm about to turn 60 also, and I'm getting those "old lady" comments from younger people who do not know me (those who do would never dare to say those things to me, lol) but I don't feel anywhere this old.  Let that be a hint to all of you who are much younger, first that this arrives while you're not looking, and second that we just are not old at 60 the way women especially used to be.  I feel about 20 years younger than my mom was when she turned 60, thank goodness!   


This is just a quick card I made for my daughter.  I saw the sentiment in my cling stamp set from joyslife.com and immediately thought about this joyful little chick.  I just love it.

Thanks for visiting me!
SiskiyouSue




 

SUMMER CELEBRATIONS

This card was made for my mother's 82nd birthday.  I also made a photo album using my Your Story and will post pictures from that tomorrow.  This project kept me pretty busy.  I had a hard time finding the right pictures.  Mom suffers from dementia and I wanted pictures that will have major memories attached, things that would mean a lot to her.  Anyway, this card was fun.  I used digital papers, except for the solid pieces which are actually paint chips.  (Hope no one from my local Home Depot reads this...)  They are surprisingly easy to work with and have a totally different finish than anything else that I have found.  I do wish I had inked the edges of the orange slightly as I did the rest, it gave a lot of pizazz to the border, especially.  The flowers are Prima, the first I have used.  The colors are perfect for this card.

Thanks for visiting me again!
SiskiyouSue

HAPPY SUNNY JULY!

This is A Day for Daisies image, of course.  Isn't she beautiful?  She reminds me a lot of my daughter when she was small.  She was a very petite girl whom I thought of as a fairy child.  However, the real child was towhead, not brownish as this image...  I have no idea how to do towhead with my colored pencils.  Oh, well.  The background paper is DCWV. 

I have to say that Montana has finally warmed up.  We've been in the 80's for 4 glorious days right over the Fourth of July weekend!  How amazing is it that the entire weekend was so nice?  Wow.  I hope you enjoyed your holiday and the sun shone on you also.

SiskiyouSue

LOOKING FOR TANGO!

Hope someone out there can help me.  My daughter has recently begun card making and has asked me to help her find images of tango dancers/dancing.  I've not had much luck, so hope you have maybe noticed something that I've missed.  Thank you!

SiskiyouSue

Creating from the Heart

WOW!  Melissa, at Creating from the Heart, is having an awesome giveaway to celebrate the third anniversary of her blog!  Check it out, it's really worth your time.  Here's what she is giving away (yes, all three!):

 Good luck!  If I don't win, hope someone who reads this will.
SiskiyouSue

Santa in June!

I just love Christmas!  And I am really enjoying making Christmas cards.  I haven't sent many for several years (I'm really very, very lazy) but guess I'll have to this year, since I will have a nice supply of cards.  Hope my husband's family won't all hate me, almost none of his brothers/sisters-in-law send cards.  (Have I mentioned that he comes from a large family, 10 kids?)  But they'll have to forgive me.  I wonder whether I'll keep this up for many years.  Hope so!

Now, the truth is that this is one of those take things from your stash and put it all together.  Santa and the backgrounds are all leftovers from last Christmas.  Santa is actually a tag that has writing on the back.  I just couldn't bear to throw him out!  Hate to use things like that just once.  I think they recycled quite well!

I'm also trying to organize my craft room, again.  Seems like it needs it every two or three days.  I'm way messy, which you can tell before you ever get to the craft room.  One of my goals this summer to CLEAN up the stuff everywhere.  I feel like I'm drowning!   So my living room has to come first.  My family (especially my husband) thinks any flat surface was put there by God for his to leave stuff on.  Old mail, newspapers, VFW club paperwork, I never know what to do with much of it...  So I've given him fair warning, and whatever is left is going out the door!  Oh, that sounds good.  Wonder if I can actually do it?

And I am working in my craft room.  I have scrounged every old CD case I can find for my clear stamps, and tonight I started making covers for them.  Boy, you are all right that it really helps!  I can quickly see what is in each case instead of having to look through each one by itself.  Thanks for the ideas!  You are all wonderful.

SiskiyouSue

BIG CHANGE OF PLANS!

That's right, a very silly card!  But I couldn't resist when I saw this digi cat...  I added EEK! for the mouse,  my sister will love it.  Actually, I might make another for my mom later on...  Nothing fancy, but I really love it!

Well, my sweet hubby is celebrating Father's Day by sending me away!!!  No, not really, but I'll be jumping on the train in about 2 hours for a 17 hour ride to Portland to stay with my daughter.  She unexpectedly has a week off and we'll have about 5 days to play around, the weatherman is predicting nice weather, I can't clean house (can you tell that I absolutely hate housework?), I think I'm the big winner here...  However, hubby and our son have some plans to do a little hiking while I'm gone, and the weather is supposed to warm up here by the end of the week (wouldn't that be nice to come home to!), so they'll have a great time also.  I'll take the train part of the way home next Friday and meet hubby with our camper on the other side of the mountains where we'll spend a couple of days.  Sounds like summer!!!

Have a lovely week.
SiskiyouSue

A Day for Daisies

 I'm finally back...  after going out of town for 4 days, then having trouble downloading my pictures!  Isn't that one of the most frustrating things?  I think the port on my computer is going bad.  Which isn't good because we just got a new computer for my husband, so I'm not liable to get one in the near future.  Guess I'll be borrowing his next time.

Anyway, this card was actually designed for a challenge on CDAC, but it's way, way too late, so I'll just share it here.  I really enjoyed the way this came together.  The patterned paper is a scrap that came in exactly this shape and size when I picked up a pack of odd pieces at a small scrapbooking store.  I've had a lot of fun with that pack!

Meanwhile, I have several more cards finished, and will get them posted in the next few days.  I've really had a very good time lately!

Until next time, have a great day!  Remember that even if you're too hot, you could always be too cold...  and at least you have real summer.
SiskiyouSue

A BLUE CHRISTMAS

I am entering this card in Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge, Wintertime Blues.  I don't know why, but I just cannot walk past the stickers!  I absolutely had to have this one from Jolee's Botique, and I'm wondering whether I'll be able to give it away, or will I have to keep it for myself.  Not, I think.  This is also my first gatefold card, and I see that I have too think a mat inside.  I'll have to work on that...  But I still think it's great.  I have had this blue glitter paper for about a year.  It didn't cut well in my Cricut, but it is perfect for this!

Too early for Christmas, but it was fun to think about it for a few minutes at least!
SiskiyouSue

WINNER!   Expressions by Elaine

I used Random.org to choose a number which was Expressions by Elaine.  Please contact me with your address so I can get the candy mailed off.  Congratulations!  And again, many, many thanks to all you followers.  I just can't believe any of this...

And here is another card that I just finished. 

We're now up to 6 weddings, can't wait until all these nieces and nephews start having babies!  Advice, do not marry into a really big family unless you enjoy buying lots of gifts!  My husband is one of 10 kids, and his dad was one of 12.  We have nieces, nephews, and cousins coming out of the woodwork...  I love them all, enjoy most of them, and wouldn't trade them for anything, but do we really need to buy gifts for everybody!  In this family, yes!  I've given in and am giving gift cards most of the time.  Much easier, especially when shopping is so far away.  Back to the card...  I used Colorblock white cardstock, cut all shapes from Gypsy Wanderings, embossed with Swiss Dots and Elegant Flowers (I think that's the name?) and inked all edges with gold ink.  The ribbons are from my stash, and I got the rings at the dollar store.  Who knew that they'd have a good selection of wedding things?  lol   I think after looking that I'll add a bow to the top of the rings to hide the glue, maybe even put a ribbon through to the reverse side so that they cannot come off???  Hummm.  I'm never satisfies, though I do like this.  Oh, I patted the top layer all over with an embossing pad and used hologram embossing powder to give it an iridescent look.  That was something new that I've been wanting to try.  I realize this is not its intended use, but I like it anyway, and the way to reflects color from the ribbon.

We had sun this morning, but the rain clouds are building again.  I hope the rest of you are having a respite from bad weather, and not getting sunburned!
SiskiyouSue

CANDY!!

I have enjoyed winning a couple of giveaways, so in celebration of reaching 100 followers (or 105 tonight), and in thanks for winning myself, I'm going to have a giveaway.  I'll choose from those who are followers of my blog and those who comment to this post on Monday, June 6 by choosing a random number.  Good luck!

SiskiyouSue

Hello, again.  This will be a fast post, just to post another birthday card.

The chef image is from Chud Tsankov!  Isn't it cute?  I thought it would be great for almost anyone, even a guy.  I really do find making guy cards more difficult.  Anyway, it is pre-colored, which made this very easy.  I chose this unusual card shape from George and welded it to make the base card on silver cardstock.  It's much brighter in person!  I added 3 embellishments, a cupcake brad, multi-colored ricrack and stickles on the frosting.  Oh, stickles on the cupcake, also, just because I like to use them!

Thanks for looking!
SiskiyouSue

My goodness!  I see that I now have 104 followers!  I cannot believe it, though I certainly am enjoying following many other blogs.  Thank you for making me feel welcome here on-line, and for your patience with my learning process.

I'm planning to have a give-away to celebrate my 100 followers.  Will get back with more about that later this week.

Meanwhile, I'm really very productive right now.  Today I had finished two cards by 2:30, and am planning to design at least one more tonight.  I'm enjoying the combination of digis (I love coloring!) and Cricut, but am trying to concentrate more on the Cricut right now because I just don't know how to use it very well.  Thanks to all of you for the tutorials and inspiration!

This is my Father's Day card.  The background is from  signpost is really, really old, from my stash.  The squirrel is from Give a Hoot, made using my Gypsy.  It was really fun.

The inside signpost I made from scraps, the upper sign is a sticker from the same paper.

Oh, and here's my worktable as it looks right now...  My hubby came home just as I finished the second card, and that's the last chance I've had to work.  LOL  It'll still be there when I get back!

Have a great evening.
SiskiyouSue

Hello to everyone!  Hope you enjoyed a lovely 3-days weekend.  I know that I did.  My hubby went off to a wedding in Minnesota and my son was working, so I was home alone for 3 days.  I got a lot of crafting done, mostly because it kept on raining.  It really was great to stay inside and warm and dry... 

I really had fun making this.  The image, which makes me laugh every time I look at it, is from Meljens, colored with pencils.  The paper I printed the image on is a heavy textured watercolor paper.  I haven't liked it for most things, but for the dog's rough fur it worked well.  I'll probably keep some around for times like this.  The green dotted paper is a free digital paper that I've had for a while.  I really like the color variation in it.  And I used my Texture Boutique to emboss the base card.  I'm wanting to get a larger embosser, but can't seem to decide which one.  Any ideas for me?   Okay, now the inside of the card...

The only thing I really wish I had done differently was to use more mats for the white rectangles on both the front and the inside.  Don't know why I am not consistent about that, because I really prefer them matted.  Oh, who knows!

Have a great week!  I'll be thinking about all of you hard at work people...  School is out and while I will be going to work still to finish up paperwork, I can set my own hours and do what I want.  That is really very freeing!

This is another wedding card.  Family, my hubby will take this when he leaves tomorrow for the wedding in Minnesota.  I have really struggled with this card.  I wanted something elegant and all white, but it just wouldn't come together.  Finally, when I saw the new release "Cinderella" from A Day for Daisies, I thought I could make it work.  Purple wasn't at all what I expected.  Funny, isn't it how sometimes your creations aren't really yours at all, but have a life of their own?  Anyway, I'm very happy with it, though I'm still wondering whether I should havew added the swirl at the bottom...  I just loved it so I put it on, and now I'm not sure whether I should have, or maybe I should have put it below the digi...  Guess I should quit second guessing it.  Anyway, the swirl is from pebbles.  I don't remember who made the lace, isn't it beautiful?  I love it. 

As with the rest of you, I am concerned for so many people who have been affected by the storms this week.  Every night the national news has a story about new tornado caused death and destruction, and our state news has stories about flooding caused by a combination of melting snow in the Rocky Mtns. and heavy rainstorms.  I hope we can all agree to pray for an end to the horrible weather and a return to more pleasant summer weather.  I wish the best for everyone out there.

SiskiyouSue