Anniversary Card for Dennis

My friend Dennis will be married for six years in a couple weeks, and he asked me to make him an anniversary card to give to his wife. I really hope she likes it.

I've been doing some things recently that are French and Marie-Antoinettey, so I started off with by making the big white label shape and embossing it with Swiss dots. In order to make the "Swiss" dots "French" dots, I brayered black ink over top of them. Thanks to Mel McCarthy for this idea!

The owl and the swan are from the new Inkadinkado clear set Patterned Birds and Bugs. I am going to have so much fun with this set! They were embossed, cut out, and colored with Stampin' Up! markers.

Speaking of French things, have you checked out Oxford Impressions new Marie Antoinette plate? Fabulous! I understand Suzanne over at Oxford Impressions is going to be releasing another plate really soon that will complement this plate. I should probably make some of these polka-dotted labels for her!

Cyndi

Well, here it is! This is what Shelby and I came up with for our challenge (see post below). Unfortunately, you can't see the color on two of the hearts, but in real life this is a pretty cool looking piece of art.

What happened to the color in the two dark hearts? This is much prettier in real life.

Well Shelby, it turns out that copper (any metal for that matter) doesn't scan real well.

Why don't you photograph it instead?

I would have done that, but last night when I tried to do so, my camera wouldn't work. I checked the batteries and . . . there were no batteries in the camera. Do you know anything about that?

Oh. I might have needed them for something else.

Okay, so this is how we made the card: Shelby punched the hearts out of the copper, then I ran them through the Big Shot in Cuttlebug embossing folders. I colored them with alcohol ink to get a base coat, and then used StazOn pads to color the embossed parts separately. Then I popped them with Pop Dots onto another sheet of copper which had been run through the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder. The sentiment is embossed in white. Finally I folded the corners.

The corner scrunching was my idea.

You, Shelby, are a creative genius.

Cyndi and Shelby

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything in a long time.

I've been dieting and exercising though, and Shelby and I are looking better and better.

Instead of posting something I made, today I'm posting something I found in the Acacia Catalog. It's a piece of metal wall art, that I thought I would use as an inspiration piece.

I tell you what we'll do: I'll make a piece of artwork inspired by this wall art and post it to this blog. If you want to make a piece of artwork inspired by this, post it to your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comment section of my blog. Or, if you don't have a blog and you know me, email me your artwork and I'll be happy to post it on my blog.

I expect great things from my friend Becky who has recently purchased metal and tools from Ten Seconds Studio.

Cyndi

Friends 24-7

I made this card with my new stamp set, Friends 24-7, and my new Stampin' Up! designer paper, Parisian Breeze. I added three brown stripes to the background paper with red-liner tape and Martha Stewart's brown glitter. The stripes are very sparkly in real life, but the card itself is not "too" sparkly, just the right amount for the dignified person I'm sending the card to.

Thanks for the glitter, Cyndi. Apparently it got not only on the card but on a couple of cats, who then decided to play on my bed.

I noticed you looked a little more sparkly than usual this morning, Shelby. Actually I think it becomes you.

Tell everybody how faithful we've been with our new walking regime.

Shelby and I are walking two miles six nights a week. I wear a heart rate monitor to make sure we're keeping our heart rates where we want them to be.

I don't really see how you wearing a heart-rate monitor tells you anything about my pulse.

Don't start. I let you wear it once and you refused to keep an eye on it. So now we have to walk according to my pulse. Anyway I think we're doing pretty good with our diet and exercise plan. The scales aren't moving as fast as I would like, but my pants are noticeably looser today.

Tell them the other thing about the heart-rate monitor.

What other thing?

When one's heart rate exceeds 85% of maximum the alarm goes off. On the last part of our walk last night Cyndi decided to see how high she could make the numbers go. She got it up to 87%. Your heart is not a toy, you know!

Shelby's just jealous because she can't keep up with me when I'm walking that fast.

Until later,

Cyndi and Shelby

Fun with Fairies

Well, what do we have here?

Hey, Shelby. What you see to the left here is a cupcake fairy.

What in the . . . I don't even think I want to know.

No, it's pretty cool. You see, two big trends right now are fairies and cupcakes, and when you put them together . . . well you can see how cute that is. Plus, as you may know, 3D art is stepping way out of my comfort zone.

Is that what you were doing at your friend's house Tuesday night?

Yes, I went to Suzanne Melvin's house and we played with Oxford Impressions' new Fairy Sweets stamp plate. I actually MADE the cupcake out of a tart tin, air-dry clay, and flower soft. The fairy, as you can tell, is pretty glittery; and I think that's exactly what one would want in a cupcake fairy.

Now, this little fairy to my right is set in a tiny little flower pot with faux moss and flowers. She has flower soft on her dress and stickles on her wings.

So, Cyndi, can we expect more angel art from you?

Shelby, they're not angels. Angels have bird wings and fairies have insect wings. Please keep your mythological figures straight.

You know you're probably going to hear about that.

About what?

Calling angels mythological figures.

Well, sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between who's real and who isn't. Maybe angels are like that. Who knows what's real and what's not? Maybe fairies are real. Maybe angels are real. Maybe I'm real.

Maybe I'm real.

Maybe not.

Cyndi and Shelby

No Time to Stamp

I regret to inform you that Cyndi has no time to stamp right now. She and I have commenced our New Year's diets and are busy scoping out healthy new recipes and scheduling time to exercise. Cyndi has actually done some exercise (I plan on walking with her tonight if it's not too cold). We are drinking lots of water and therefore spending lots of time in the loo.

Between the two of us, we plan to lose 100 pounds in 2009. I won't be so crass as to tell you how that's going to be allocated.

Shelby

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

So while many of you were out partying last night, I was home making this card from my new Oxford Impressions plate "Winter Snow". The backgrounds were made with the Faux Designer Paper technique from the Technique Junkies Newsletter. The little girl was stamped in black, but then lightly colored with chalks using a Q-tip.

Because of the glossiness of the paper and my camera's flash, the image of the girl didn't turn out as clear as I would like, but the girl is popped up on foam dots, and when I tried to scan the image (instead of photographing it), my backgrounds were blurry.

Although it is past noon, Shelby is not awake yet, but I did want to share some sad news about her. Her band was playing last night at a party, and Kelly, the wife of guitar player Chris, was there. It was the first time Kelly had heard the band play, and she told Chris that if he was going to be away from his family, staying out until all hours practicing with his band, he had to find a better band to play with.

This suited Kevin the drummer because he had also been getting a lot of static from his partner Ron.

So now Shelby and Corky are at loose ends band-wise. Perhaps they should find jobs or something.

Cyndi