A double helping of bloggy goodness!

Hello happy people! I've been MIA so long that I'm feeling guilty even though I promised myself I wouldn't. Sheesh. All I can say is... thanks. Thanks for sticking with me! :D

It's been so crazy for me since the new year started. I'm still working on getting things moved to the new laptop (grr, still doesn't want to play nice with others!), learning my new PSE (umm, yeah, I had to use the old version to get these pics blog ready), and just generally finding time after our trip to NM. As if that wasn't enough, I fell down the stairs. Yup. Crash, bang, boom. At 4:30 in the morning - and I was carrying the not-so-little boy. I think I got a little extra hurt *because* I was carrying him, wrenched myself around so he didn't get hurt too. He's fine. Me, not so much!

Anyhow, I thought I'd give you a couple of different cards. A little variety!

First up is this 'cute' card. Very springy IRL. The pictures are a little wonky - I couldn't seem to really correct the color as well as I wanted to - the base card is bright textured white. I used a matchbook card base that already had those lovely scallops on it and ran the edge through the Cuttlebug with one of their embossing borders. The long piece was trimmed down and punched with a Martha Stewart punch, then layered with a metallic Aloe paper that had also been punched. The bird from Inkadinkado was stamped with my new techie (I haven't forgotten, just haven't had time to write it up - it's coming, I swear!). Once that was dry I added the ribbon around the fold... but it still needed something. I punched out a bunch of little flowers & creased them with my fingernails to give some dimension. They needed a little color though... after rooting around in my stuff for a while I decided to glue down some Dew Drops (heh, they're actually blue, that color thing really wasn't working out for me) and pop the flowers up with sticky foam tape. Cute, no?

Next up is this Distress Ink piece. I *love* how it came together, even though it's not quite what I envisioned! I'm pretty sure that I used every color of brown and yellow DI there are, even if you can't see them all! This gorgeous wheat image came from River City Rubber Works - isn't it lovely? I was so excited when it came that I slapped ink on it before mounting, trimming or washing! lol After stamping I embossed with clear powder (you did know that you could emboss over distress inks, didn't you?) used the brayer and sponges to add a ton of different colors of brown on the background. Sadly, I tried to use a wood grain background too, but it was too fine to really get in the empty spaces. Even IRL you can't see it! I distressed the edges with my paper distress tool (best 99 cents, evah!) and inked them some more. Then (of course) I had to distress and ink the red layer (Basic Grey, luscious!) before adhering. The textured cs base looked a little naked by then, so... I went DTP with my brown pads again, leaving marks and streaks for even more texture. That red/gold ribbon was pure serendipity!

So, faithful readers, either of these strike a chord? I know you're out there! Leave me a little comment so that I know what you like... maybe what style you like better, or what colors? I know which one *I* like better, can you guess? :)

As always, thanks for visiting! I hope you can come back soon!