Saying Goodbye to the Lily Pad Pond

For the last year I have had the supreme pleasure of working with some of the nicest and most creative people in the crafting world. As a member of the Lily Pad Cards Dream Team from the start I have been blessed to be part of this special place that was first dreamed up by Deborah and Vicky. It's been a wonderful place for sharing creativity and challenges. And I've loved getting to know the clever and creative people who have played in the challenges and been featured as Guest Designers. Deborah and Vicky have nurtured Lily Pad Cards and made it the huge success it became. I want to thank them both for all the encouragement, love and laughs we shared.

I thought I would include a little retrospective of favorite projects I've done with Lily Pad Cards.

Our little team of pond-ers has included some truly talented crafters who have made Lily Pad Cards a special place to visit:

Lucy    

Suzanne
Sarah
Pia
Latrice
Lin
Alice
Sherri
Kathy
Vera
Virginia
Karin
Barb
Vicky
Deborah

I hope you will visit their blogs and leave them some comment love!

It has been a wonderful ride with Lily Pad Cards. As I'm sad to see it end there is always some new adventure waiting around the corner.....

Blessings,
nancy

Sending a Sweet Greeting

I saw that Jennifer McGuire's friend Jana has organized a unique way for everyone to send wishes welcoming her new baby girl. Jennifer had her sweet baby on Mother's Day, isn't that just perfect? So I wanted to send along my welcome to Lila Grace who I'm sure is blessing her family. Congrats to the McGuire family on your precious new addition!

Lawn Fawn: Sunny Skies and Smitty's ABCs stamp set, Bright Side 6x6 Petite Paper Pad, Lawn Trimmings Twine;

Hero Arts Envelope Pattern stamp; Copic markers

Have a blessed day,
nancy

Memorial Day: Honoring the Heroes in My Family

Well I had planned this post for this morning but I had some major technical difficulties here in the Happy Heart.

I wanted to share this photo of my dad and his brother when they were both serving the US during WWII.

My Uncle Bill was in the Navy and my dad was a Marine. They both look so young in this photo.

My son followed his grandfather by serving in the Marine Corps.

I'm remembering all those who have served and are serving the United States with honor and bravery.

Ben, in the middle, with his fire team somewhere in Iraq 2009.

I have always stored all my photos on my external hard drive and it was always on my to do list to back them up on disks. But before I got to that project my hard drive had a major brain freeze and my PC couldn't access the files. I finally got the hard drive to wake up and smell the coffee so I took the opportunity to do all the copying onto disks. It took most of the day but I'm happy that all my precious photos aren't gone for good. Now I'm looking at online backup programs for another level of security. Anyone have any ideas?

Blessings to you all,
nancy

Seeing Stars at the Lily Pad

If you are looking for the Blog Candy post please scroll down or click HERE.

Please visit Inspired by.... Jill is featuring another one of my cards today!

Stars are the focus of the new Simon Says Stamp sponsored challenge at Lily Pad Cards. I knew I had an ancient little star punch to use and Lawn Fawn had the perfect sentiment so I thought I was set. Then the indecision set in....5 or 6 miserable failures later I finally had a card I could love....and send to someone.

Lawn Fawn: Bannerific, Say Cheese, Too; Bright Side Papers; Lawn Trimmings Twine

The Design Team has some great Star-filled inspiration for you at Lily Pad Cards.

blessings,

nancy

Design Memory Craft Blog Candy!

Since Jill Foster at Inspired by has been inspired by me, it seems only fair to return the favor. So I made my own version of her gorgeous card HERE. I used the new Seasonal Spring Distress inks on the background, but on the die cut image I added color with Design Memory Craft Gelatos. I just love how they are so creamy and the color is so saturated, they can be used for so many great techniques. Here I colored them on the embossed image and blended them with my fingers. Then I spritzed some pearly water pretty heavily and used a cloth to move the color around, lightening it in some areas.

I'm so excited that Jill has featured my canvas project on her blog that I decided to offer some wonderful Design Memory Craft products as Blog Candy to celebrate!

I have FIVE {5} sets of the products pictured above to give away and there are several ways to enter:

• Follow my blog (I'd love to reach over 300 followers)
• Share my blog candy on your blog (you can use the photo if you'd like)
• Follow the Stamp Fever blog HERE
• Like Stamp Fever on Facebook HERE
• Like Design Memory Craft on Facebook HERE
• Leave a comment here telling me each of the ways you've entered. (You only need to leave one comment) 

Thank You!

I will do a random draw to select the 5 winners of the blog candy from your comments left by 9:00pm PDT on May 31st. Winners to be announced here on June 1st. 

blessings,
nancy

Dusting off my cherished Hero Arts Stamps...

....to play at A Blog Named Hero for the first time!

And I had quite a few older stamps to sift through as I'm sure many of you do too!

I chose 3 of my favorites to make a country French style all occasion card. The BoBunny paper (Tuscany Garden) was purchased to use specifically with the Sunflower stamp some years ago, I'm so happy that this challenge finally gave me the push to use them together.

I used my tried and true favorite Old Letter Writing (S4878)- it stays on my desk and gets to play frequently. Then I looked through my stamp drawers to get the Sunflower E653 and Harlequin Pattern Block G3316.

It was fun to use some new techniques with these old stamps. I always added color to the sunflower with pencils in the past, this time I used Copics. The Harlequin was inked with Distress Markers in Spiced Marmalade and Wild Honey, then after I stamped it twice on the background I spritzed heavily with water and let it run and bleed a bit. Then I blotted with a cloth and used a heat tool to dry it. The Old Letter Writing was used in my favorite way; just randomly stamped on the background.

blessings,

nancy

Check out Jill's Inspired by blog HERE, I'll be playing the role of muse for her CASE-ing brilliance.

2 Challenges with One Card

It's not often I get a chance to play in challenges. It's even less often that I make a card that fits the criteria for 2 challenges. But the stars must have aligned for me as I used a technique I first saw Jennifer McGuire use and I've been wanting to try. I even ordered the same Memory Box Prim Poppy die because I was so impressed with her card!

I am so happy with how this turned out....every now and then a plan comes together! The patterned paper is from an older collection by K&Company.

So I will be entering this in the Lawnscaping Challenge #34 to use Dry or Heat Embossing (I used both).
And this also fits the challenge at CAS-ual Fridays to use a punch or die.

The best part is that both challenges are sponsored by my wonderful friends at Lawn Fawn!

InLinkz.com

Blessings,
nancy

Enjoy the Ride

Playing with some new Penny Black stamp sets- Hello Gorgeous and A Little Bird. I just love these fun images, they are perfect for so many occasions.

Here I used some paper scraps that were left over from making kits for my last class....there was a ton a scraps so I think this will be my new style for a while.

I did some really simple coloring with Copics; this image was really fun to work with. The background is another PB stamp Paisley Outline stamped with the new Shaded Lilac Distress ink with a bit more blended over the top.

So, funny story....today was our 34th wedding anniversary and both of us forgot. No worries we had a lovely day anyway.

blessings,
nancy

Teaching a Class Today- Canvas Sampler

I decided to do something different for my class today. It's the last session of my Stamping 103 series and we are making a canvas sampler. Everyone chose a main color and their own stamps and inks to use to personalize their canvas. What I love about a project like this is that each of the nine vignettes would make a great focal image on a card or perfectly embellish a layout. It can hang on the wall to provide creative mojo.

I went for a summery look on my sample. I can't wait to see what the women in my class are going to create today!

Stamps used: Hero Arts-CL599 Picnic, CL596 Pattern Hearts & Flowers, CG405 Leaf and Floral Background, CG197 Old Letter, K5344 La Letter, AC005 Untitled Word Shadow; Technique Tuesday-Bring on the Sun.
Inks- Shaded Lilac, Seedless Preserves, Wild Honey Distress ink, Hero Hues Butter Bar Mid-tone Shadow ink.
Additional supplies: Copic Markers, Gelatos, Office Depot tags, variety of embellishments

Have a lovely Saturday everyone!
blessings,
nancy

It's Vera's View at the Lily Pad

This week our sponsor is Stamp Camp and the Design Team made some fabulous projects with these versatile stamps. I had a set of bird cages and a sweet flower background to work with Vera's inspiring photo.  I love the lined up cupcakes with the pretty embellishments so that was my jumping off point for creating my card.

I have to give a shout out to Sarah who sent me those pretty rolled flowers quite some ago all the way from Belgium; I've been saving them for special projects and this one was the perfect fit.

Make sure to stop by the Lily Pad Cards blog to see all the gorgeous DT cards and enter our challenge.

blessings,
nancy

Catching Up on Scrapbook Pages

I finally had time to work on my Uriah page for March. I had a cute photo of him wearing a little jacket featuring bear ears on the hoodie. I have one set of Paper Smooches stamps that gave me the idea for "bear hugs".

Just a simple layout again, apparently that's my style of scrapbooking.

InLinkz.com

blessings,
nancy

A Few More Cards

I had a friend ask me to make some last minute Mother's Day cards for her last night, I was so happy that I had enough creativity to come up ideas that she liked. For her daughter she wanted a card with a black dog, she's not a mom as yet but she loves her dog.
The dog from Critters in the Burbs by Lawn Fawn worked perfectly and I added a B Line Designs sentiment (a gift from Suzanne a few years ago, thanks Suzz).

I used another newly obtained Hero Arts set "Pattern Hearts and Flowers" for the next card....

I thought the roses paired nicely with the golden paper by Crate Paper.

And now for something completely different. Every now and then I get an interesting request for a card. My sister, Donna, who is a world traveler wanted to send a card to her travel buddy that featured Thailand and a tiger. I just work here folks...

The tiger is attached with an action-wobble springy thing. All images were found online. I included a sentiment from the well-used set "Life is not Perfect" by Hero Arts.


And I couldn't leave you without sharing another photo of Uriah....all dressed up for a Mother's Day visit to the Reagan Library.

He's a handsome little guy!

blessings,
nancy

Mother's Day came a bit early....

I finally had some time just to create, no deadlines, no pre-set themes or products...just my own creativity on a couple of relaxed afternoons. I'm finding that my happy place is once again happy!

Here's a couple of cards I made for Mother's Day....

 And today I had some time to play in the 90-Minute Scramble with the Hero Arts Flickr group. Cheiron was the hostess and the theme was to create whatever made us happy....perfect!

And speaking of what makes me happy....I couldn't stop smiling yesterday when my favorite little guy came for a visit and brought the sweetest gift!

Andy and Uriah, my son with his son.

Precious hand prints and foot prints and some lovely flowers!

 Uriah reading a book with his Pop Pop.

 I'm one happy Grammy! Just look at that precious little face!

Digby enjoying a meet and greet with our special visitor.

Happy Mother's Day...here's hoping we all get breakfast in bed!.....and a clean kitchen :)

blessings,

nancy

Celebrating with Family

I spent this past weekend at a lovely family gathering in Oxnard, California. My Aunt Kay and Uncle Fred were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and my uncle's 80th birthday. Family and friends assembled to fete an extraordinary couple at a Hawaiian themed party. My sister Donna and I had a wonderful time visiting with family, some that we hadn't seen in years, during this 2-day "60/80" event.

My aunt and uncle have nurtured a very close-knit, loving family; two children and their spouses, 4 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.

Donna and I posed with the happy couple! Aunt Kay is my dad's younger sister.

I made a special card so Donna and I could express our thoughts of love and appreciation for our wonderful  aunt and uncle.

I used Distress Markers with Impression Obsession- Full Bloom Hollyhocks and a Technique Tuesday sentiment.

The inside sentiment combines Hero Arts, Lawn Fawn and the love stamp of unknown origin.

Thanks for visiting!

blessings,

nancy