Sunshine

Today I'm playing along with the sketch challenge (#318) at Try Stampin on Tuesday.  I chose to include the optional theme of A Trio of Words.  As soon as I saw the sketch, I knew what I wanted to do.  Here in Minnesota we are trying really hard to get some spring-like weather so I wanted to bring some sunshine to my paper. I used the sun image from Kinda Eclectic from Stampin' Up.  I used Altenew's Half Tone Circles on top and heat embossed in clear to bring some shine to my sun.  The sentiment is from Hero Arts and I thought it was appropriate for these images.  Pretty clean an simple, but I like it.

I don't think the photo shows the shine on the sun so I'll risk a close-up on my embossing skills (boy did I have to fight the embossing on the sentiment).  Hopefully this shows the shine a bit better.  Sorry for the photo quality, I don't have a photo station set up yet.

And here is the sketch.  It is a really fun one with lots of possibilities.  There is still time to play along.  

Some of you may be wondering where I have been.  Well, life got in the way we had some surprises and some health issues (we are in good shape on that front now).  We had the usual sad and happy times along the way.  From a happy perspective we celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary with a lovely party, we now have a great nephew, our niece was married, our son and his lovely girlfriend are now engaged and we had a lovely vacation in Arizona to celebrate a cousin's wedding.  The biggest change with the most impact was that we unexpectedly bought a new house.  We were not planning on moving, but it was time.  At the old house we had started a remodeling project which eliminated a bedroom so we had to put the bedroom back and get the house ready for market.  Happily, we did sell without being on the market too long.  But it has been a very long road and we are now settled in the new place and loving it.

I sure do miss my time in my craft room and I'll let you know that it's tough to get back into the swing of things, but this challenge sure helped me along.

Happy Stamping,

Dana

Popping in for Darnell's NBUS Challenge

Wow!  I've been gone much too long but I had to pop in for a quick post to play along with Darnell's NBUS challenge.  Darnell is such a generous and fun lady and has been so kind to me.   I have so missed making cards, playing along with challenges and most of all the fabulous people I have virtually met along the way.  I hope to be back again soon on a regular basis and will fill you in on my absence.

The challenge is to use never before used stuff with an optional theme to use bubble wrap.  I remembered a technique I used a while back with Perfect Pearls and plastic wrap to create a faux pearl background so I decided to try it with bubble wrap. I had to laugh when I saw that I used that technique on the last post before my long absence - seems like a lifetime ago.

I made 4 background panels, some were more successful in my mind.  I like the pink and orange combo of distress inks.

I ended up selecting the background with the softest color, love the shimmery bubble effect.  I used a couple of sets from Unity.  The butterfly is from "Only You" and the sentiment from "...May Hope Sustain You".  I added some Wink of Stella to the butterfly and a few borders, tough to get the mojo back though.  I'll admit that I happen to have a lot of NBUS as I haven't had much time in the craft room and my rate of acquiring new stuff has slowed only marginally.

Happy 5 Year Blogaversary Darnell!

Happy Stamping,
Dana