Beautiful Bride

One of my nicest customers has a son who is getting married this fall. She contacted me for a new catalogue and told me when the wedding and shower were, and asked for some stamp ideas.

This is the card I made for her using the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder on ivory paper, inked with Wheat VersaMagic ink. I used my Scor-Pal to make more embossed lines in the beige mat. The bride is from the Growing Love set in Serendipity. She is colored with Skin Tones pencils and watercolor pencils and accented with a ribbon from Angelee.

Patience Pays Off, or How I Spent My Lunch Hour

On my lunch hour yesterday, I thought I'd go for a walk downtown. The plan was to get some exercise before all the forecasted rain came. However, because I rarely go anywhere without my camera, instead of exercising, I spent most of my lunch hour crouched by some flower boxes trying to capture a picture of a Monarch butterfly that was flitting from one flower to the next. It took a bunch of time, but I think my picture was totally worth it! Here it is:



Feel free to ooooh and aaaah. Especially after you find out that I deleted a ton of pictures from my camera of the sidewalk, peoples' legs, car tires, and flowers that had absolutely no butterfly in them, or shots of a partial butterfly flying out of the frame because I wasn't quick enough on the draw.

Fishy Birthday

Here's another birthday card I made that is on the more masculine side. This one uses the Sea Stamps from Serendipity and one of my old stand-bys Tag Tidbits along with our Hip Hop paper. The stamped image is colored with watercolor pencils.

Retired from Ratings Panel

Tom and I were on a broadcast ratings panel. We each wore a little device that recorded data about what t.v. shows we watched, or radio stations we listened to for two years; and the data got downloaded to one of the companies that compiles it and supplies it to those that make the ratings.

We loved being part of the panel. I'm one of those people that either finds something I love only to have it discontinued, or I'm right at the beginning of the trend of what everyone jumps on. Generally the former. I had been tired of having shows I liked get cancelled on me, and always wanted to be one of the "Nielson Families". Two years ago, when I was away at Seminar, we got called and asked to participate. We faithfully wore our little data collectors every day and downloaded the information in each night.

Yesterday we were informed that our two years was up and we had to send our little data collectors back :(

To thank the company that asked us to be on the panel, and let them know we enjoyed it, I made this little Thank You card and put it in the box with the collection devices.

Now my little meter has been sent back, and my hip feels lighter and emptier. I'm going to miss my little data collector, and making a difference.



This card was made with scraps of paper I had lying around and The Angel Company's More Elegant Sentiments stamp set and literally took less than 5 minutes to make.

A More Masculine Birthday Card

After spending a bunch of time making birthday cards for my girlfriend at work, I realized that most of the birthday cards I create have a more feminine appeal, so I worked hard to come up with one that was more masculine or at least neutral gender.

This birthday card was made using TACs Reece paper collection and matching ribbon. I mimicked the circular pattern with the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder for the larger background and the Spots and Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder behind the stamped image which came from Birthday Wishes.

Another Whimsy Birthday Card

This is another quick card that lets the A Little Whimsy paper collection do most of the work. The only thing I added was the stamped and matted image, which came from the Birthday Wishes stamp set with a cake from the retired Oh Yeah set stamped in the white space. The image is colored with Copic markers.

Simple Whimsy Flower Birthday card

This is a card I made where I let the paper do all the work. I used a sheet from our A Little Whimsy paper collection. The flowers are from Fanciful Flowers, one of my very favorite sets that retired with last year's catalogue. The sentiment is also from one of TACs's retired sets. The Aloe Vera and Concord Grape VersaMagic ink pads match the paper color perfectly, and this card was put together in just a few minutes. In fact, I put together 6 of these cards in about 20 minutes from start to finish.

Cupcake Birthday Card

This is a card I made using paper I got in a limited edition kit from Taylored Expressions. Since I had so many birthday cards that I needed to make in one day, I pretty much took the sketch and idea right from her website too. The cupcake stamps are a combination of other company's stamp sets - Taylored Expression's For the Love of Cupcakes, and a Stampendous, Archiver's exclusive cupcake set from last year. I had originally planned to use The Angel Company's Little Cupcake stamp set, but I forgot that I lent it to a friend, and I haven't seen her to be able to get it back yet. So this one worked out in the interim.

Grumpabella Birthday Card

This card is made using Stamping Bella's Grumpabella stamp set. The base paper is DCWV Yellow #2 that is being discontinued. For a limited time, discontinued accessories are still available through my website at 25% off. You can see all of them by going to http://meri.ismyangel.net and clicking on the Products tab at the top of the page and then choosing Discontinued Accessories from the bottom of the left side bar. The other papers used in this card are Rustic Chic and Uptown Girl. The image is colored with watercolor pencils.

Inside it says "aren't you old enough already?"

Winterberry Birthday

In the next couple of days I will be posting some of the various birthday cards I made for people in the office to give to my friend Jen. The first is this monochromatic birthday card using the retiring Winterberry Paper Pad and the More Elegant Greetings stamp set.

For a short time, the Winterberry Paper Pad is still available under the discontinued accessories tab and is 25% off. You can click here to check it out. To see other 25% off items that are being discontinued, you can go to http://meri.ismyangel.net and click on the Products tab at the top of the page, and then choose Discontinued Accessories at the bottom of the left side bar.

The Winterberry pad is full of bright colors that are great for cards or scrapbook pages going to or about kids, or to brighten someones day, but the colors can be toned down a little by inking them with Cloud White VersaMagic Ink, like I did on my card.

Here's Something You Don't See Everyday

I suppose for a select few, this might be ordinary, but not for me. My husband and I went out shopping yesterday and right over our heads flew a stealth fighter. Of course, he was the first one to notice it, and while I have my camera close at hand most of the time, I didn't get it out fast enough to capture it right away. They're a little quick! However, it circled our area for a few minutes and we were able to take a few pictures. That's a trip to the store that became out of the ordinary.









I'm not going to ask why we had a fighter flying around over our hosue.

An'Udder Birthday?

I have a friend at work that just had a "big" birthday, so I wanted to do something that would commemorate it. After thinking about it for a little while, I decided I would do for her what my mom did for me for my 40th birthday last year. I sent an e-mail to people that she deals with every day and asked them to give her birthday cards. Since her birthday was July 5th, I even offered to bring some cards I made in in the event that people forgot with the long weekend and all. She was very surprised, and said she got many cards on Monday.

Here's one of the ones I made using the An'Udder Birthday set and The Angel Company's Sands of Time paper collection. I colored the image panel with Copic markers. I think this cow looks udderly cool!

New Double-Sided Mimi Paper!

One of the new items in the catalogue that I'm super excited about is the double-sided Mimi paper! I loved the original Mimi, but twice as many matching patters is more than twice the fun. Here's a card I made over the weekend using one of the new Mimi patterns.



The Mimi paper makes this card super easy. I used the new stripe from the double-sided More Mimi Collection paired up with cardstock from the original Mimi collection. I added the Happy Birthday from the new Label Lingo Hostess Set, a pink ribbon, and some Ava Collection flowers and buttons, plus some Cotton Candy Stickles to give it a little extra kick.

Happy 4th of July!

Well, I'm back from Seminar. We had a BLAST this year. I know I say that every time I go away with Angels, but this time it was something special. I'll try to post some pictures later, but before then, I thought I'd post a card I made this morning for a pair of friends who almost share their anniversary date with Tom and I. Tom and I were married on July 2nd, 1989. 20 years! I can't believe it myself. Lisa and Jeff were married on July 3rd, 3 years ago (and were kind enough to ask if we minded sharing our anniversary weekend with them). What could be better than more reasons to celebrate? We'll be seeing them at a party later this afternoon, so I thought I'd make a card that acknowledged both their anniversary and the Independence Day holiday.