Photo Stamping

"Wow!" you are probably thinking to yourself (maybe even saying it outloud to your computer monitor) "How in the world did Cyndi make such great-looking snow?" Well, I'll tell you . . . last summer I took a photograph of a cloudy sky, and then last night I stamped on the photograph using black StazOn ink. Pretty cool, huh? It even looks like Santa is stepping out of the shadows. I really liked how this came out.

The only thing I am adding today is that I didn't do the sewing on the card, Cyndi did it. If I had done it, it would have been straight.

I think it just adds to the charm. The stamp is from Artistic Outpost's Snowy Woods plate (see previous post).

Until next time,
Cyndi and Shelby

Renaissance Paper

Check out the cool background on this card. It's called Renaissance Paper and we made it at my stamp club this past Saturday. We took large pieces of paper bag, soaked them in water and white vinegar, and then sponged with acrylic paint, including metallic acrylic paint. It looks so cool in person.

No, it looks bumpy in person. As I'm looking at this card the wadded-up-paper-bag part isn't lying flat at all. Couldn't you have glued it down better?

Shelby's right in that it is not lying flat. But what Shelby doesn't realize is that parts of the background are glued flat to the black base and other parts are held aloft by Pop Dots--the big Pop Dots. I wanted it to look kind of like a sculpture.

Oh, I see it now. It's kind of like a door stuck on a rock.

The door image is by Artistic Outpost and is one of the images on the Snowy Woods plate. I watercolored it on watercolor paper using reinkers and a water brush. The door knob is a brad.

Since Cyndi's last post, which was a week ago (we're not very industrious, are we?), I have been getting a lot of flack from my friends about Corky and the dog and the tire swing. Well, I just want to set the record straight that (1) his living in an RV in my sister's backyard is not a permanent arrangement; (2) the dog is well behaved; and (3) the tire swing is a blast.

Shelby and Corky raked all our leaves into a big pile and jump into them from the tire swing. I have no idea why they don't break their necks.

Corky found an old mattress on the side of the interstate and we put that under the leaves. We're not stupid.

There's an old mattress from the interstate in my back yard!!!??? Ewwww!

Until next time,
Cyndi and Shelby

Totally Unreal!

Tuesday night I came home after a long hard day's work to find a strange man in my house. No surprise there. My sister (a strange woman) lives in my house, so why wouldn't she bring home friends now and again.

The really surprising thing is that I encountered him going from my sister's bathroom into our fenced-in the back yard. That's strange, I thought. It's way too cold for Shelby to be entertaining in the back yard.

A half hour later Bob came home and asked my why there was an RV in the backyard. WHAT? Our back yard is fenced in, and the gates are far too narrow for an RV. "Bob is ten years older than I am," I thought to myself. Was he suffering a stroke? Early-onset Alzheimer's? So I went into the backyard to check it out.

There was an RV in our back yard.

Bob and I knocked on the door of the RV.

Shelby and the strange man from the bathroom (turns out he's Corky, the new 36-year-old bass player in Shelby's band) opened the door and invited us in to share a bottle of wine (probably not their first). "How did you get this in here?" Bob asked very calmly. "Dude, it was not easy. We had to remove part of the fence, drive the RV in, and then put the fence back. Sorry about the tire tracks in your side yard." "You removed the fence!!!???" I asked. "Yeah, but we put it back real good," he explained "because we don't want the dog to get out."

Oh yeah, Corky has a dog.

This is totally unreal. I mean it, it is totally unreal!

Yesterday he hung a tire swing.

Cyndi