Gracious Vases

Yay... it's Thursday already. Before you know it, long weekend is here. Although, being in Texas it's not like there's much that you can do outdoor wise. It's so crazy hot, that all we want to do is stay inside. Growing up in Indonesia, a tropical country, I  thought it was hot. But, boy it is even hotter in Texas.

Anyway, while staying cool inside, I get to play with this new set I got from Papertrey Ink. These awesome vases are from Gracious Vases set designed by Maile Belles. It caught my eyes right away from the moment I saw it during the sneak peek preview. It has such clean, contemporary style to it, which I love.

This week is the last week for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol Open Round Audition and while it's still open, I decided to keep submitting. :)

And, I am only 1 person away from 300 followers. Yay. Time for a giveaway. Stay tune...

Birthday Recap

I have the sweetest blogging friends. Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes. Some left the birthday wishes on my post here, some on the Flickr group, and many on Facebook. Thank you so much for making my day. I really appreciate you all.

Hubby took Monday and Tuesday off. He needed the break from work and we did a staycation. Monday, we went to the zoo. I know, it's so nerdy, but we love it. At the zoo's store, I saw the cutest giraffe stuff animal and hubby got it for me. :) Didn't I tell you, I have a bit of Peter Pan syndrome? I think part of me would never fully grow up. LOL, I do love stuff animals, especially the cute & soft one. Then we went for late lunch at Benihana, which is one of my favorite place to eat, and finish the day chilling at the house.

On my birthday, I woke up and hubby serenaded me with the Happy Birthday song. He's really good at doing the little things that just makes me feel so special. I chatted with my mom for quite a while and then my in-laws called and they're so sweet, they serenaded me with a duet.

We went and saw Mr. Poppers Penguins, which is pretty entertaining and the penguins are soooo cute! Then we decided to do happy hour. And hubby got me my favorite dessert, cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. All in all it was a low key, but sweet birthday. Now, next year, if my family reunion really happening, hopefully I'll be celebrating my birthday in Bali with my whole family! Crossing my fingers. :)

Okay, enough babbling. On to card, shall we? I have this congrats card to enter to this year Paper Crafts Gallery Idol. This year, there are more participants and entries, so, I can only hope that I can be lucky enough to get pick again. :) Here's my card:

 

For the text background and sentiment, I created it myself, using  Microsoft Words. The skyscraper image is from Echo Park Sidewalk Chalk set (from Jessicasprague.com).

Chapter 36 has officially started and I am looking forward to hopefully fill  this chapter with many good things. Again thank you to everyone for your sweet and kind wishes. If I could hug you in person I would. :) Enjoy your day.

Celebrate Life

Happy birthday to me! Today, I am celebrating my 36th birthday. Hubby is taking the day off, so he can spend the day with me. :)

As I celebrate my birthday, I can't help but be so thankful for the life I've been given. I am so blessed in so  many ways and I want to remember to always celebrate life. Yes, life is not all sunshine and rainbow. But, like they say you can't see the rainbow unless you go through the rain. And, even when you go through the rain, as  much as you want to complain, it's aways good to remind yourself, at least it's only rain or storm, and not hurricane or tornado.

My mom taught me one of the most important life lesson. To know how to be grateful and how to appreciate the life I've been given. To appreciate the litle things cause many  times they're more important than the big things.

So, as I finish year 35 and start year 36, hope you don't mind if I share things that I celebrate in my life:
1. I celebrate my family. Greatest blessing of all, the foundation of who I am. I am blessed that I was born to a loving parents who's strict enough to discipline me when necessary so I can grow up to be a decent person, and loose enough to give me freedom so I can find my own self, make my own mistakes and learned from it. My two brothes who are protective, caring, and loving. Growing up, we fight and all, but we love each other and when my dad passed away we promise we always take care of each other.

2. I celebrate my husband. He's so loving and thoughtful. And he does a lot of those little things that matter, that makes me feel like a princess. :)

3. I celebrate the influential people in my life. I told my mom, that somehow I feel like I often meet the right people at the right time and these people help me in many ways and help shape me into who I am today. Especially, my foster dad who passed away this March. I celebrate the time I had with him and the lessons he taught me.

4. I celebrate my ability to appreciate things, to be grateful. This has helped me when I went through some tough times in my life.

5. I celebrate the kid inside me. Anyone who knows me well, know that even though I turn 36 today, I am not even close to 36 years old mentality. And yes, I do enjoy many things that kids usually enjoy. I guess I have a little bit of Peter Pan syndrome. :)

6. I celebrate my life. When I look at people who has to live in a place where there's war, destruction, etc., I am reminded to be so thankful to be born and raised where I was and where I am now. That I have a place to come home to every day, many people don't have a place to live. That I have enough food  to eat, many people go hungry because they couldn't afford or find food. That I have freedom to go wherever I want without having to worry about being attack or gunfire. That I can read to entertain myself, many couldn't.

My  mom always said when you want to complain about life, don't look at those who you think are above you, look at the people who are less fortunate than you.

 

This card makes me happy. Pretty colors, check. Cute image, check. Another thing I like to celebrate is that life is so colorful. :) Thank you to all the loving people in my life. I am blessed and grateful that you enrich my life.

Sorry for the long post,  but hey... it's my birthday! Peace out and enjoy your day peeps!

 

Flower Stamp & Me

As much as I  love flower stamps, I come to the conclusion that flowers especially when they're large size is simply not my forte. For our last day of pairing up, Kelly and I use Hero Arts Delicate Blossom.

Oh my goodness, I was about to give up last night and email Kelly that I want to cancel today's challenge. I was so frustrated and ruined 4 cards, before I finally okay with my card. Didn't help that those fine embossing powder kind of fell on my desk all over. Yep... I was so annoyed with myself last night.


Well, here's the card.

I mean, the image is gorgeous and I saw many beautiful creations using this same stamp, and it frustrated me when I have the idea in my head and it just wouldn't translate in reality. At first, I was going for watercolor technique, but the colors just didn't reach the depth that I want. With my fingers all messy from the colors and fine embossing powder irritated me, those works get tossed in the trash.

I end up using vellum, embossed the flowers, color them with distress ink, and fussy cut them. Almost ditch this, too as when I cut it, some of the embossing flake off. I told myself to just calm down and keep cutting. There should be a way to cover the part where the embossing flake off. :)

Yep, by over lap the flower a bit and using Rangers white enamel to trace the flake off area. So... flower & me... love the flowers..., but seriously a challenge for me. Anyway, after the card and a major desk cleaning, I'm a happy camper again. :)

Oh by the way, for those who likes good deals, at Old Navy today and tomorrow only, all their ribbed tank top only $2 each! It's summer and you can't have too many tank top. Time to stock up in all the colors. I saved their ads because it's awesome for color inspirations. See below.

What do you think? Fun & cheerful color combo? Well peeps, thank you for stopping by and I wish you all a super duper great weekend!

Happy Friday!

Time sure flew by this week. We're already on day 5 of my pairing up with Kelly. Today we're featuring Hero Arts Large Flowers. Like, I mention yesterday, I love flower image, but when it comes to actually using them, I often struggled.

I fall in love with this Hero Arts stamp from the moment I saw it. But, ever since I got it, I have a hard time creating card with it. It's quite a challenge to use this stamp. Well, I decided to go all tropical with it and experiment with the watercolor technique. Another entry for PC Gallery Idol.

The background is a piece of blue vellum that I stamped with woodgrain stamps (click on the pic to see larger pic and you can see the woodgrain). I do love the look of the vellum on this. Feels great to finally use this piece of vellum that I have had since 2003?? Yikes... Of all the crafting stuff I have, parting with papers is the hardest thing to do. Well, it didn't get wasted!

Friday also means new release day for A Day For Daisies and I get to play with this sweet little fairy. The challenge this week is to use pastel colors, but no pink! Since lately I seems to be into purple, I go ahead and use purple on this (hmm... actually the honest reason is this is the only pastel colors I have for my Copics). One of this day, I'll expand my Copic markers collection.The felt flower ribbon is from May Arts.

Since, I was on a roll yesterday, I have another card to share. I swear I don't have a fever! :) It just that I got this cute flower from Birdie Brown by Torico recently and been wanting to use it. I've been eyeing it for awhile and finally got it last week. Isn't this such a happy flower?

This card makes me smile, it just looks so cheerful. Okay, I reach my maximum for the day. :) Thank you so much for stopping by and hope you all have a great Friday.

Let's Chill!

Hi all. Quick and short post today. It's day 4 of my pairing up with Kelly to create CAS card. Today we're using Hero Arts Let's Chill set. This is definitely one of those set that I bought and rarely used. I think this is my 2nd time or maybe 3rd time of using this set.

Somehow I found this set to be very challenging to use. It's cute, but not quite my kind of cute. Except for the crab. And, here's my attempt to use the set. Keeping it super CAS and yes... the crab win over all the other images in this set.

I'm trying to be better and more selective in buying stamps. I don't want to buy set that I only use once or twice. Now, when I am thinking of buying new stamps, I really try to imagine how many cards can I make using it and be realistic of my own expectation. For example, I definitely think twice or quadruple times before I buy more flower stamps. As much as I love them, I often find myself struggling in using them.Will be interesting, as the next 2 days we'll be using flower stamps!! Yikes...

Quick weather report. We finally get some rain yesterday. Not enough to overcome the drought in Texas area, but at this point we take any rain we can get. That's it for today and please check out Kelly's card HERE and thanks so much for stopping by.

CAS Day 3 with Kelly

Good morning peeps! How are you today? I am so happy that my desire to create has come back. Truly, having a crafting buddy can make a big difference.

And, yesterday I received the sweetest email from a blog follower named Mary Pozydaev regarding my Gallery Idol post on Monday evening as well as my entries on last year Gallery Idol. It's a super nice email praising my works and filled with support and encouragement. Out of the blue email that just made my day and remind me why this hobby is so rewarding. Thank you Mary for making my day brighter. :)

With sweet email making me smile and mojo coming back, I had another fun night creating and playing. Today is our last day using Lawn Fawn and we are using Bannerific. After today, for the next 3 days we'll be featuring Hero Arts.

Here's my card and another entry for this year Gallery Idol following the congrats theme.

What I love about this card, it involves lots of colors, yet it's still clean and simple. Playing with colors makes me happy. Even better, I get to used my scraps. It's a good thing not to waste stuff, right? And, that teeny weeny heart, I drew it and then cut it with scissors. Thank goodness for pointy Fiskar scissors.

Can't wait to see what Kelly create for today. Come back tomorrow for Hero Arts day! Have a great day everyone!

CAS Day2 with Kelly

Yesterday was day 1 of my CAS pairing up with Kelly Latevola. On to day 2 featuring Lawn Fawn. Today we're using Critters in the Burb.

Seriously, thank you Kelly for asking me to do this pairing up. I start to feel excited again about card making.  For a little bit, I came to the point where it wasn't much fun, where I wasn't happy with my cards. Need  to remember that when all else fail... I should go back to what I love. Making CAS card. :)

For this card, I was inspired by CAS-ual Friday color block challenge. Lately, I've been playing with color combo that I normally don't use and to my surprise I like them.

Can't wait to see what Kelly created! Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day.

Sew Excited

As I mentioned on my post earlier today, I pair up with Kelly this week to get our mojo back. Well, I am happy to report that by doing this CAS challenge with Kelly I could feel my creativity coming back. This is why I love our card making community. The people that I  met trough this hobby are simply awesome.

This evening I play quite a bit and I am so excited that I get to finish a card for Moxie Fab World I'm Sew Excited challenge. The daughter of a dear friend of mine just graduated from high school and is going to fashion design school and I wanted to make a card to congratulate her.

 

I had lots of fun making this card. The dress form was cut using Silhouette. Now the fun part. According to Glamour magazine lacy dress is a trend at the moment, so I figured it would be fun to create one. To create the dress, I colored a regular white doily, layered and cut it to follow the dress form. The result a classy looking dress, no?

I am entering this card for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol as well. I made it to the Top 5 last year and it was such an unforgettable experience. It was lots of fun and stressful at the same time (but it's worth it). The girls would chat till late at night and we all would wake up super early just to see if we made it or not, and we cheered on each other.  The friendship you gained through it... priceless. :)

Thank you all for stopping by. Hugs.

Lawnscaping Sketch Challenge

 

Hi y'all! Continuing with my guest DT stint with Lawnscaping for the month of June, we have new challenge for you. This time we have sketch challenge.

Now, as I mention before, I've been going through "a blah" moment with my creative endeavor. Well, Kelly Latevola, whom I met through my Caring Hearts card drive, is going through the same thing. She emailed me and asked me if I'd do a week long CAS challenge with her to get our mojo going again.

Well, how can I say no, especially when she suggested we used stamps from our favorite companies. :) All week this week, Kelly and I will pair up and crate CAS card using Lawn Fawn and Hero Arts stamp. Since today is also time for Lawnscaping challenge, it's a perfect time to start our Lawn Fawn pairing up.

First day, we agree to use Lawn Fawn Critters in the Forest set and here's my card.

I think I just found a new favorite color combo. Gray and aqua have such clean feeling to it, don't you think? You'll definitely see me using this color combo again. The texture on the hilly grass was  made by accident. I was thinking of adding cut textures and the hill already glued. As I tried to peel it with my nail, I look at the dent my nail made and I like it. So, using my nail I picked on the hill & that's the result. I drew the heart raindrops.

Don't forget to check out the fabulous inspirations by Lawnscaping DT and also check out what Kelly makes for our pairing up challenge. Hope your week starts out great. :)