Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfisher

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

First wedding anniversary

This past Sunday - Sept 24, was my son Mark & his wife Anna's first wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's been a year already.  I still remember the day so vividly like it was yesterday - boy how time does fly.

Well you know me, I stressed over what kind of card to make for them.  I wanted something special, I stewed over this for a week, finally one day last week when I was off, I just pulled some dies, papers and flowers and went to town!

Here is what I came up with:


Not much explaining on this one, although, if you notice the leaf texture on the background paper - well I did that with a stencil and paste.  I didn't want it to be white paste, so I took my distress oxide picked raspberry ink and added a bit of ink to my Teflon mat, then mixed in some dream weavers pearlescent paste. I didn't use the whole stencil, just bits a pieces of it as I saw fit.  Love the outcome!
Paper is from Kaisercraft - P.S. I love you.

I used a Cherry Lynn doily die cut from white card stock and cut it in half.  I also used Penny Black - love is growing die - which is the grey vines with hearts.  I used a corner rounder for the other 2 layers, then added flowers, leaves, ribbon and some little shimmer dots (from the dollar store - love these, they come in a variety of colour in 2 sizes).  I added some glitter with my wink of stella clear pen to the flowers.

I found some crystal stick pens at our local store, so grabbed a couple of those last week as well, cut off the pen part and then glued the crystal heart to the bottom right corner.

So there you have it!

I'm sharing a couple of my favourite pictures of that wonderful day!


Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your week!

Pauline



Friday, September 22, 2017

Fall Birding #1

Good morning. Well it's Friday, which means my last day of my vacation - back to work on Monday. Weather was extremely hot this week, and it is to continue until mid next week.  Temperatures feeling from high 90's to low 100's!   Just way too hot for me.  But I did manage to get some stuff done around the house which is always good, because you just never seem to get around to it when you are working.   I also managed to get a couple of cards done but I need to take pictures first.  So rather than put this post off until I get that done, I thought I would share some more of Bill's photo's.  These were taken in Sept.  Capturing the Warblers in the fall plumage is different for us as we have never captured these beauties this time of year, it's always during the Spring. We found a unique place where the Warblers seem to stop over during their migration to the south.


So, sit back and enjoy (click to enlarge!)








Hope you enjoyed the photo's. Let me know what you think.  I always share your comments with Bill (unless he pops onto my blog and reads for himself!).

Enjoy your weekend, whatever it holds for you.  See you soon,

Pauline

Friday, September 15, 2017

Algonquin Park - summer

I thought instead of a card for this post I would share some of Bill's photo's from our trip to Algonquin Provincial Park last month.

Please click on the pictures to enlarge them.

As we were driving early one morning around 7ish along Hwy 60 which runs through the park I noticed Momma Moose and young bull grazing along the side of the road.  They checked us out for a couple of minutes while  Bill took their picture then they turned and off into the forest they went. 


Next up is the Common Loon.  Many times as we ventured up to the Park our desire is to see the Loons.  We often hear them out on the lakes but never get a change to see them up close.  Well this time we lucked out.  Two mornings, we were able to sit and watch them as they swam fairly close to the lake edge while we were hidden from sight at the lakes edge.  They are such a beautiful waterbird.
I share some of our favourite pictures.  I'm sure Bill took at least 500 pictures! 





Does this next picture look familiar?  I am currently showcasing it as my blog header picture.
These are Lincoln sparrows.  Bill didn't realize he had 2 Lincoln's in this picture until he got home and was viewing them.  I love their little peaked crown, such a pretty sparrow, love the colour tones.
We spotted these guys at Spruce Bog, along with the next 2 pictures.






I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  I will have more soon to share.
Thanks for stopping by,

Pauline



Sunday, September 10, 2017

Elegance in Motion

Good morning everyone, just in from my early morning run.  I have been walking for a couple of years now every morning (well almost) for about 1/2 hour, but the last month or so I've turned my walk into a light jog.  I have been doing 1.5 - 1.75 mile run daily.  It's a killer some days, but I persevere through it.  As much as I dread when the alarm goes off at 5:10 am, when I'm done my run I feel so much better that I did do it.

Okay, enough of that on with my card.  I'm using Penny Blacks - Elegance in Motion. 




I started by white embossing the image into some canson water colour 140lb paper.  I then coloured with my Zig Clean colour markers.  After it was dry, I went around the outside edges with a light hand using distress linen ink.

For the "you', it is die cut 3 times.  I left one of the 'you's in the card stock and before removing it I coloured using the Zig's in colours of  yellow and oranges, to give it a ombre look.  I then glued the 3 together for some dimension. 

To finish I added my wink of stella clear glitter pen to the petals.

This was a fun card to make, I really should make a few more but in different colours.  The Zig's water colour so nicely on this paper.

Have a wonderful day, whatever it holds.  See you soon,

Pauline

Note: new picture at the top.  This was taken when we were up at Algonquin Provincial Park last month.  Bill was able to capture these Lincoln sparrows together.  This was a treat for us to see these Lincoln's as we have not seen them before. Love the lichen on the tree. Beautiful composition!!


Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Plum Purdy - my first 2017 Christmas card!

Well you can say I'm a bit behind, since I figured I would make one Christmas card a month, and I never started until this past week!  I need to get the ball rolling!

The image I'm using is an older Snowman image from Plum Purdy.  She doesn't make stamps anymore - at least not that I could find.  I've had this for several years.  She is just so darn cute!  What do you think?


I coloured the image using prisma colour pencils and blended with gamsol.  I cut her out using MFT - cross stitch rectangle die.  I then layered this onto spellbinders beaded square die cut. Then this where I ran into a road block.  Pulling papers to go with her - geesh - too many papers is what I think - too many choices.  So after a few nights of contemplating what to use, I laid out some paper samples and had Bill decide.  He liked this combo the best.  I must say  he helps me a lot when I get stuck like this.

Papers are from Kaisercraft - Christmas carol (striped paper) and the bottom piece is from - you know what I don't even know.  I cleaned up my work table after and I don't even see scraps from the bottom piece so I have no idea.  I thought it was from the same Kaisercraft pack but I don't think it is.

To finish off, I added some seam binding ribbon, a snowflake cut from Poppy Stamps - Ava snowflake die, white flock for her tassel on her hat, lots of glitter - Tim Holtz distress glitter - clear rock candy - love this stuff, and a wooden snowflake from Studio Calico.

So there you have it, my first 2017 Christmas card done! Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day!

Pauline

Friday, September 1, 2017

B-A-B-Y

Hello everyone, hope you had a good week.  It has been much cooler, it's like we are having fall weather, it's too early for this. Temperature this morning was 43F!, it was a cool run this morning, brrrrr.

Remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned I was going through some stamped off images, and found an image I had coloured but never made it onto a card, well....... here is another one.  I would say I coloured this about 6-7 years ago!  I was still designing for Stamping Bella at the time, and I remember colouring this when we were at  Linda Heavens (Lindabella) house along with Paula Williamson (Paulabella).  I guess I coloured it up and must of got tossed into this bucket of stamped off images.  




In need of a baby card for my basket, I threw this together - yes exactly that because I had a piece of watercolour c/s that I made with some distress oxide inks (playing around one day), and it matched my image perfectly! Did some die cutting, added some lace, ribbon, button and a baby clothes die cut from Memory box and my card was done!  I used my Nuvo clear glitter pen and added some sparkle to the letters on the blocks, along with the stars &  heart on the clothes.

It sold today, so now I'm empty handed for a baby card once again!

I've had a couple of Christmas images coloured this week, but I've spent the last 3 nights stressing over on what papers and layout to use, so still nothing completed on these.  Do you ever had times like this?  so frustrating!

Thanks for your visit, enjoy your weekend, an extra long one for me, I'm off until Wednesday! Woohoo!

Pauline