Random Cards - Halloween

Happy Sunday everyone! Wow, I'm up early for a Sunday. Do you folks go to church on Sundays? I'm catholic but I haven't been to church for such a long time. . .since we moved to California. I'm not sure why we haven't attended church. I feel a little guilty about it sometimes. Nonetheless, I think what matters most is that you live the life following the values or teachings of the bible.

Anyway. . .here's a few more Halloween cards I found tucked away in my drawer. These are "last years" cards. I have a lot of stuff tucked away in my drawers and closet. It's always a surprise, yah know what I mean.


I had stamped the image on to glossy white cardstock and colored the image with pastels and markers. I then covered parts of the colored image with Crystal Effects. Back then I used CE on many of my cards. The problem with CE is that it sometimes changes the color of your image when CE is applied. It takes on the "base" color of the color medium especially with markers.

What do I mean by base color? Well, all colors have a particular hue or tone. For example some reds have a pink tone, orange tone, etc. . .and when you apply the CE, it sort of pulls out the undertone and make the color more orange colored, pink colored, etc.

Anyhoo, hope everyone have a wonderful Sunday. I'm going to sit down and do some crafting before my family gets up and life gets busy again.

Random Card - Look It's Bella

Good Morning Friends. I'm starting off early today. I plan to clean up my studio today so I won't have the time sit down and craft or blog until later this evening so I decided to start off early before life gets too busy.

Courtesy of lovely Tracy at "Tracy's Happy Place", I was able to make a card with a Bella image. Tracy sent me a stack of Bella images and well, Tracy you've just enabled me to buy a few of them. Ha!

I colored Bella with Prismacolor Markers and colored her skin with the Prismacolor Pencils. I added SU Crystal Effects to parts of the image to give it a 3D effect. Lemme' tell yah, it's hard to apply the stuff with itty-bitty images like Bella's bikini and shoes.

I'll be heading on vacation again at the end of the week. We're heading out to San Francisco this time. SF is my favorite city. I won't be bringing my craft stuff because there's too much to do in San Francisco and I doubt we'll have to many down times. I'll bring my computer and I'll blog a few pictures while on our trip. We'll be visiting the Winchester House - yah know the one with all the hallways and doors leading to nowhere. That'll be fun. We'll also be heading out to Sausalito. Anyway. . .hope everyone have a beautiful Saturday. It's overcast outside right now. . .I believe it's going to rain today. Yay!

Card Details:

Stamp: Bella, Studio G

Ink: Prismacolor Markers, SU Gable Green

Paper: SU Pretty in Pink, Gable Green, Whisper White, Autumn Leaves Designer Paper

Accessories: Hemp Cord, Grosgrain Ribbon, SU Key Tag Punch, 1 1/4" and 1 3/8" circle punch, Jolee Boutique stickers, Ticket corner punch, SU Crystal Effects

I've Been Tagged. . .

Hey Everyone I've been tagged by Gabby of "Confessions of A Stamper" and Tracy of "Tracy's Happy Place". This is a fun one so I decided to participate. . .

Four places I have lived:
1. Hawaii
2. Hawaii
3. Hawaii
4. California

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Washington DC
2. Chicago
3. Colorado
4. Las Vegas

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Hot Crab Dip from Paliminos, Kincaids, and Ryan's Restaurant in Hawaii
2. Anything at the Bellagio's Buffet (Vegas)
3. Chicken Lau Lau
4. Cheesecake Factory Fresh Strawberry Cheesecake

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Inside the Stampin Up factory
2. Bill Gates Bank Vault
3. Jared Leto's living room
4. Paliminos restaurant eating their hot crab dip

Four friends most likely to respond

I'll be back to fill in this one. . .I have to think about this part.

Until later folks. . .

Random Card - Halloween Card

Good Evening Folks. I was going through one of my drawers and look what I found. It's a card I made for Halloween last year. Interesting. . .

I remember fibers were popular a few years ago. I don't see it on cards anymore. I still like using fibers and I still use them on my cards.

I can't give the recipe for this card because I don't know what they are. My style of cardmaking hasn't changed much. One of things that have changed was that I heat embossed my images with embossing powders a lot more often and I used pigment ink regularly. I still love pigment ink because it's a lot more versatile than die ink and when heat sealed, it resist fading with time. It's also a great sticking agent for embossing powders because they dry slowly.

I have a few more Halloween cards I found in this drawer but I need to "update" them a bit. I'll post them later when I'm done. Hope everyone is having a great evening.


Here's the sketch for the card.

OMG. . .Check out what I received in the mail today!!!

My husband brought me the mail today and WOW!! I received some very important things. Important because they were given to me purely out of kindness.

This card is from Tracy from "Tracy's Happy Place". I had mentioned a few post ago that I did not own any "Bella" stamps and she was kind enough to send me a bunch of "Bella" images and this absolutely beautiful card and I mean BEAUTIFUL! The picture does not depict the real beauty of the card in person.

Tracy, I have to say has been so supportive of my weight loss journey. Whenever I felt down and discouraged, I would receive a note from her encouraging me and making me feel better. I cannot express how grateful I am for those little acts of kindness which in my opinion, means more than just a note of encouragement. Thank you Tracy for being such a wonderful person. I will definitely make use of those Bellas.




This card was sent to me from Malieta at "Life's Simple Pleasures". It's a thank you card in return for a birthday card I sent her. She is such a sweetheart and I absolutely love, love her card. As you can see, she is very talented. The picture cannot demonstrate the true beauty of the card in person. Malieta is always there commenting my blog site and believe me, it makes me happy to see her notes whenever she comments. It's very encouraging and makes crafting and blogging so fulfilling.

Thank you Malieta for you kindness. I'm glad you had a wonderful birthday!!!



This group of yummy goodies were sent to me from Joyce, a friend I met online. She sent them to me for no reason but "just because". Joyce lives in Oregon and I've never met her in person but she's like a real friend. She loves to do crafting and wanted to share a few of her things with me. Oh wow, she's fabulous! I can't wait to make some stuff with these awesome products.

Thank you Joyce for your kindness. I want you to know that I really, really appreciate your friendship.

I'm so lucky to have met such nice people online. I mean I've never met these ladies in person but their kindness are very apparent. I've never imagined that I could meet such wonderful people all over the US and Canada. Blogging has been such a wonderful experience. Thank you ladies for being such wonderful friends!!

I have to thank these ladies in private later this evening. I have to head out to tennis lessons right now but I just had to show off these AWESOME stuff I received from these fabulous ladies before I walked out the door!!

Bookmark and Metallic Rub-ons

About a year ago I had purchased a set of coloring mediums called "Metallic Rub On". Basically, it's creamy paint mixed with a metallic type of compound that makes it appear metallic when applied on to cardstock or your art work. Anyway, I really didn't know how to use them; therefore, they sat in my drawer.

I decided to use them because well. . .I bought them and I really hate wasting my money. I need to look up on the Internet samples of projects created using metallic rub ons because I'm sure there's techniques for this product. I just don't know what they are right now.

Not knowing how to really use them, I decided to rub it on a stamped image. I basically stamped an image and heat embossed it with black embossing powder. I then rubbed the colors on to the image. When I was done, it actually came out okay. It has a very metallic shiny appearance to the image. I sealed the color medium with art sealant so it wouldn't rub off and decided to create a bookmark.

Bookmark Details:

Stamp: Stampendous Clear Stamps

Ink: Versamark ink, Craft T Rub-ons, Copper Leaf Pen

Paper: SU Copper Metallic Cardstock

Accessories: JoAnn Brad, Bookmark tassel, multi-colored fibers

This One is For You, Jen. . .What the Heck Does "Emo" Mean?

Several people asked me what "emo" meant - referring to the pictures of my daughter in the previous post. I had stated that I was trying to achieve an "emo" look when I took the pictures of her. If you have a teenager, you'll probably know what I'm talking about.

"Emo" technically refer to a genre of alternative/rock music called "emotive" but depending on who you ask, it's become a mainstream reference to "emotional", moody looking teenagers full of melodrama and demonstratively exhibit their feelings through their makeup, clothing, and moody, sad looking faces. For some, they see it as sort of a softer version of "goth".

My daughter loves "garage" non-mainstream alternative music and is not into goth or emotive type of music and she wants to make it clear that y'all know that. So. . .I'm making sure I get the message out.

In the general sense, you can refer to someone as being "emo" if they appear to be grumpy, sulking, or moody. When I'm in a bad mood, my kids sometimes call me "emo". LOL! In the artistic stand point, the "emo" look is also a fashion statement of sort. . .heavy eyeliner, funky clothing, dark hair, and pale faced. It's the suburban white middle class "soft" version of goth. Kids who are not goth but want to dress like them.

Here is a band that is well known to be categorized as an "emo" or "emotive" band when technically, they're not, check it out:




Hope this answers your question. . .have a good day, everyone!!

Altered Tin With Accordion Album

Whew. . .I actually completed this project tonight. I started this afternoon but kept putting it off because I didn't know where to start. I've recently started scrapbooking and it's a little difficult for me to create a layout without it looking like a card. I guess it's the same concept but I feel scrapbooking is a little more complicated. My problem is deciding whether I want the layout to be busy with all sorts of embellishments or make it simple. I see a lot of scrapbook pages with all sorts of embellishments and complicated layouts and I really like them but when I do it, it kinda looks messy or cluttered. It's the card-maker in me fighting against it.





Remember the DVD size tins that I had bought at Big Lot for a dollar each a few weeks ago and had altered for one of my TICs (Tuesday's Inspirational Challenge several post back). I had planned to create an accordion album for it and just today I decided to finally sit down and make it.



The photos are of my daughter. I know, I know. . .she has a ton of make-up on. My husband isn't too thrilled about it. She typically don't wear make-up but I had asked her one day to be my "subject". I wanted to take "artsy-fartsy" types of photos of her. My daughter really loves listening to "garage alternative bands". . .you know, non-mainstream undiscovered bands. Well I wanted to create the "emo" look so I put make-up on her and the photos I took of her were primarily with her not smiling and looking "emo". For this album I chose a couple with her smiling.





I'm planning to create a "rock-n-roll" themed album with the "emo" pictures I took (similar to the last picture). You'll see what I mean when I create the album.



I actually like this picture of my daughter. I love her smile.














I took this picture while she was "whooshing" her hair from side to side. I have a bunch of pictures with her hair in mid air but this one was the more "mellow" shots This suppose to look sort of like a fashion shot. Looking at it now, it sort of looks a bit provocative but that wasn't the intention. Oops. . . remember. . .the pictures are suppose to look artsy-fartsy.

This picture below is the "emo" look I was trying to achive with most of the shots I took. I like it despite all the make-up. It's okay. . .my daughter is 16 years old. She never wears make-up. . .my husband won't allow her to wear make-up but I don't think there's anything wrong with wearing make up especially when it's for fun. Anyway, I'll stop apologizing. I think the pictures look "cool".

Anyway, I really like how my album turned out. I think I balanced simple and busy and ended at a happy medium. I'm excited to make more of them. Stay tuned.

Album recipe:

K&Co Chipboard Stickers, JoAnn Brads and Eyelets, American Craft Elements Ribbons, Sizzix Folder Die, DCWV Textured Cardstock, SU Bashful Blue, Close to Cocoa, Autumn Leaves Designer Paper, SU Key Tag Punch, Slit Punch, Word Window Punch, 1" 1/4"square punches (photo corners), Fiskar's "Cloud Scissors, KiCreations Tin Containers, Sakura Gel Pens, SU Classic Ink (Close to Cocoa, Baroque Burgundy, Bordering Blue)