Last one for the day!

Okay, so please don't be offended. This card was inspired by actual events in my short nursing school career. I won't explain the details to maintain confidentiality. The crazy circus background is supposed to indicate the delusions of the patient. Hope you like it! Oh, all stamps A Muse.

Amuse-A-Palooza Challenge #5 Card #2

Here's my second card for Amuse a palooza! I drew the tree (probably obvious) which I am proud of since I lack in the artistic drawing talents. The nest, superhero, and Thanks are from Amuse. I took the Thanks from a block of thanks words from different languages. The dog is Global Solutions.

Amuse-A-Palooza Challenge #5

This challenge is to create a scene with stamps and embellishments. The first thing that came to mind was a beautiful beach on Maui. I'm not this talented however, so here's the next best thing! The sun, sentiment, palm tree and grass are all A Muse. The fly is from Judith (see previous post) and the hula dancer, which my wonderful mother sent from Hawaii, is (I think) Stampettes. I colored her in with prismacolor pens.

I'm a Yap

So, I have an island... it's Yap Island.

It's in the Pacific Ocean, part of Micronesia and just north of West Papua and Palau. I added an asterisk (under the Y) to show you where the island is...



This is the picture that inspired me to do a little more research on my island. It's of a reef scallop that I got from google. It looks so cool. I saw something that looks sort of like this while I was snorkeling off Kangaroo Island, South Australia. I think I saw a sea slug though and it was brighter and had white (ha ha! A patriotic sea slug for former British colonies.) I don't know what I really saw because I get frightened when I snorkel and the current was strong and we were in between canyons of coral (I'm afraid of coral too). Anyway, this thing is neato!



Yap is also known for it's absurdly large, stone money. They probably started with small money and as people got richer, the stones needed to get bigger. I don't know really, but I'm speculating and need to do further research. Here's a pic of a Yapese with three stone monies.



Cool huh? Well, I sure do think so. I just decided that some day, I will visit Yap Island. This is now a part of my list of things to do and near the top. Maybe when I'm rich, I'll bring my dad, mom and brother with me... yeah, I'm dreaming again.

Three Cards in One!

This is a card that I made for Eddie's mom. I actually used a digital camera and since I took it at night and on my messy desk, it looks bad.


I computer generated the sentiment and used Prismacolor color pencils to color the dog (Global Solutions), little bird (Rubber Soul), and wagon (A Muse - see link on sidebar) in. The pink polka dot card, grass and scalloped circle are A Muse.





This is one of my favorite cards (I like simple although sometimes I get carried away). The fly (Judith) and sentiment (Savvy) were just stamped in the middle of white cardstock. I drew the flight path with a permanent pen and added clear glitter just to it's wings. I tried black glitter on it's body but that looked bad.






The same idea was used for this card (obviously). The superhero stamp is from A Muse, colored in with my favorite Prismacolor pens. I gave this to the correctional officers at my clinical site since they always kept me so safe.

Hope you're having a fantastic Memorial Day weekend!

I am tiger, hear me roar!

So this picture is from my google homepage from National Geographic. This was taken in Seoul, Korea. Isn't it interesting? I have no idea where they are in the city... Well, I think it is interesting and wanted to share with you all...

Fuzzy Penguin

I like penguins. I found this picture and had to put it up. They're such amazing creatures... seemingly stupid, but still amazing. I think it's crazy how they live their lives in the harsh conditions of Antarctica. Other than surviving, one of the coolest things penguins do is exiting water. They're such powerful swimmers and literally fly out of water with such force! Anyway, this little one is too cute.

Amuse-A-Palooza Challenge #2!

Not the best but I was just playing around and trying to do a quick card for the Amuse-A-Palooza Challenge #2. It requires no black ink. So I got a little carried away with the tree and hello stamp. I didn't really think it through after the grass, dog and wagon. Oh well. Hopefully it's okay at least for the challenge!

Primate Watering

Hello again. Here's another monkey picture I found. I think I feeling my roots... ha ha. Yeah, I'm a dorky science geek. I think this is funny. When I first saw this picture I thought of this clip that was played on E's The Soup. It was from a Spanish-language television station of a woman spraying her self with water. She was supposedly washing a car but there was no car in the scene. Weird. Anyway, just wanted to share.

A Monkey, an Orange Popsicle, and a Chain

What do you think about this picture?

I see a monkey with creepy eyes and some weird ear curvature that's holding an orange popsicle and chained up. Hmmm.... I got this off Yahoo! News while looking for random pictures.

I am drawn to this picture although it makes me feel oddly weirded out. So many questions...

I guess it reminds me of the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo. They were roaming free in an area built especially for them based on their natural environment. They had blocks of colored ice that had treats frozen in the middle (it was hot and they get two treats in one!). It was fun to see how some just licked the block of ice over and over again, while others tried to bite and rotate, bite, examine and rotate. One smart female threw the iceblock down and broke it on the cemented area of the "cage". That was fun to watch and they all seemed as content as a zoo animal could be.

This monkey, however does not look so happy; in fact, it looks frightened, suspicious and protective of it's treat. Why is it chained up? I just don't understand. If you have something to add, please leave a comment with your thoughts.

My Encounter with Buddy

As my friends and I were walking up the hill in NW Portland to enjoy the sunny day, we came across a man and a tortoise. Buddy was just walking up and down a stretch of grass along side the road and often veering off course into the road. We stopped to chat. Buddy was friendly and allowed me to pet his shell and head! The best part was when he stepped on my foot. They move pretty quick for being "slow" animals. Oh, and he was super duper cute when he ate grass... actually I think that was my favorite part of our visit. I so want one but I know the consequences... they can live for 100+ and grow to be up to 300 pounds! Oh well, we can't get everything we want. So I leave you with a picture of a rare Galapagos tortoise named George.




(from Yahoo! News)

What Up Echidna?

This is my new favorite picture and is currently up on my desktop background. This is Cess, an echidna (a monotreme: part mammal, part marsupial, part reptilian) from Australia. It is blowing bubbles out of it's beak. This poor echidna was found on the side of the road and taken care of at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. It had broken feet (in yellow casts) and a damaged beak (which is probably the reason for the bubble-blowing). So freaking cute!




From BBC News...
These, I found on a blog somewhere.

Another Wedding

Here's a card I made tonight for my cousin's wedding. Their colors are pink and brown...



I used brown organza ribbon and pink satin ribbon, tied in a knot (no pun intended). The "Love is in the air" stamp is from A Muse and is actually on the inside of the card. I cut an oval into the front panel and distressed the edges so that the brown shimmery paper that I pasted on the inside would show through. I cut a scalloped edge to also let the brown shimmery paper show. The background stamp is an inkadinkado in colorbox dusty plum. The kissing couple is also by inkadinkado and stamped in dark brown chalk ink but since it didn't stamp out well enough, I went over it with a prismacolor cocoa bean pen. There is some glitter scattered about. The ribbon around the card is wrapped around the entire card, so the happy couple will have to take that off first. I used the dusty plum ink directly on white paper to make a matching ribbon attacher-thing and wrote out their initials. It might be a little too much, but it took me much longer to make than it looks...

Mother's Day

I decided two days ago to make a set of cards for my mom as a mother's day gift. These are my favorite four cards of the bunch.

The stamp used is currently my favorite because it's so simple and versatile. It's from Stampendous, called Agapanthus Bloom. I added glitter to bits of each flower, which is difficult to see from the scanned image.

The card below is supposed to be a peach color and has black eyelets as accents.


The next card is a little fuzzy because it's been raised with those thick sticky tape thingies (the scanner doesn't like that much). It's supposed to look like a picture frame hanging from a wall. The ribbon is held up by a silver brad and the "picture" is strung with white organdy ribbon tied through silver eyelets. The paper is blueish-silver, sort of shimmery, and matches the stamped image color pretty well.

This next one is the same color as the first, just a different style and sentiment.

There are quite a few people my parent's age that are passing away. Sad as it is, a nice, simple sympathy card is often the best. Again, the white organdy ribbon is tied around the card as an accent.
Sorry I used white cardstock, it's difficult to see. It's actually paper from a ream of 120 lb. cardstock that I bought at Office Max (got the idea from Martha). I cut and scored each sheet with my paper cutter that has both attachments. Works pretty good as long as you use the rougher side for stamping.

So, since I haven't sent these out yet, don't tell my mom!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies out there!