Welcome to my craft room.....

Hello everyone: Today I'm sharing some pictures of my very personal, crafting space.  Here is where I come to really unwind a bit, to look for my MOJO and to let my love for card making really take flight.
My dear friend, Darlene De Vries, has a blog called LiveLoveCards , here she shares her love for stamping and card making, through really fun and detailed videos where she shares fabulous products and the most interesting techniques to help us who follow her, really learn about what is new in the vast world of paper crafts.
About a month ago she asked all of us to please share some pictures of our own crafting spaces. I thought this would be really lots of fun, I'm always curious as to where all of us go to make our cards. As an incentive, she is giving away some fantastic storage units from Stamp-n-Storage , one a month for May, June and July. 
As you will see, this room is filled with some of the things I love the most, from pictures and gifts from my grandchildren to pictures of my other life, my Triathlete life, which I also love so much.
In this room I have my most cherished memories of my humble athlete Journey, from small races to Iron Man, my medals and trophies and plaques I've won, accomplishing what, at one time in my life, seemed impossible.
So here are the pictures, hope you enjoy seeing where I create my cards and where I rejoice in seeing what I've accomplished as wife, mom, grandma and Triathlete.

This is my work table, it's an old computer desk that works perfect for me, I have it in front of one of the windows that way, I get tons of light. To the right there is a book shelf where I keep my SU cling stamp sets and where I display the cards my card swapping buddies send me. As you can see I have a lot of cabinet space but it's not filled with craft stuff, I have some of the winter blankets and bed sheets and other things. Next to it is a pair of small rods for my old "whale" punches and on the bottom, some of my wood mounted stamps from all over the place.

This is a shelve I found at a thrift store and it's perfect for my punches, under there is two containers for some of my ribbons.

Here are some pictures of my grandkids, daughters and one with my dear aunt Norma, when we went last year to see Toby Keith in concert in Noblesville, IN. The concert fell right on my 63rd. birthday and we had a blast!!!!!

To the right of my work table, there is an old, old kitchen table that is perfect to keep my Big Shot, paper trimmer and, on the wall, there is a little metal shelf that I also got at a thrift store for $2.00 where I keep my ink pads.

Under this table I have two plastic drawer units where I keep envelopes, adhesives, my House Mouse stamps, the Bigz dies, my glue gun, extra rolls of paper towels and other stuff.

I also have under there, the scoring board and another big paper cutter. To the left there is another unit of plastic drawers where I keep envelopes of all sizes, the blank cards and big sheets of Vellum. On top of this unit, I have a box with my embossing folders, another one with all of my Flourishes stamps and a basket with my Power Poppy stamp sets.

In the closet I keep plastic shoe boxes with the pink lids with card stock scraps, seasonal stamps, my crosstitch patterns and thread and 5 colored plastic boxes with various DSP and my water color paper.

In this dresser I keep my embossing powders, my Prismacolor Pencils, paper stubs, baby oil and my Triathlon picture albums, the books I read when I was training for my first Iron Man Triathlon and other little things the kids have given me. The plastic tower on the right has more ribbon, my SU wood stamp sets and in the top smaller drawers, all kinds of embellishments.

This are the t-shirts I wore on the 3 Iron Man races I have done, they are all unwashed, I wanted to keep them just like they were, everybody loved this t-shirts, the kids were with me until I crossed the finish line.

This are my medals I've won on my races. All of them are incredibly special to me.

My very first Iron Man Finisher's Certificate.....Swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run  26.2 miles. Finish time, 15 hours, 14 min. 43 sec. Just about one of the most thrilling moments of my athlete's life.

That is my 3rd. place plaque for this race. That picture on the left is my hubby and me just about 23 years ago.  Here are some pictures of me during the bike segment on this races.

So, there you have it, this is my crafting space, this post was hard to do, as many of you know, I'm kind of not to good at this grabbing pictures from this file, putting them in this other place, etc. so I hope you enjoy my hard work, LOL!!

I want to thank you for visiting my blog, specially this time because I'm sharing with you what I love the most.  I know this is a long blog post so, if you are reading the last line of it, I truly appreciate it.

If you have any questions about this just let me know. I thank you in advance for your comments.

Have a wonderful evening.

Maria.

All dressed up for the Paper Players.....

Hello every one: It's time for another challenge at The Paper Players and this time the theme is CAS "girly thanks".  I'm mixing some old with some new stamps and dies from Stampin Up!, some are on the way out, some had just started and some have been retired a while ago.
Here is the card I made.

When I read that the theme was "girly thanks" I immediately thought of the SU Dress Die Thinlits (retired) I bought a while ago. I didn't purchase the stamp set, only the dies so, after cutting the shape on Canson Water Color paper, I gave it a nice wash with Strawberry Slush, I wanted a soft pink for this dress because I wanted to stamp some images on it so I kept it pretty light.
I cut the little "jacket" using Strawberry Slush card stock and split it in half and attached 3 of the small SU pearls for buttons. The skirt of the dress was stamped with another retired SU set called "Sweet Summer" using the cluster of small flowers and again Strawberry Slush, stamping off 2 times before stamping on the dress. And keeping the Strawberry theme here, I stamped the little Strawberry from Happy Hour (on the retire list) at the bottom of the dress.
For my background I stamped one of the images from the beautiful Apothecary Art  and I die cut it with the Labels Collection framelits, which is also on the retire list and colored with just 2 SU markers, Real Rose and Wild Wasabi. The embossed panel is done with the Filigree Frame embossing folder, just to give the whole layout some flair.
My card base was, what else? Strawberry Slush, ribbon and sentiment, from my stash.
Here is a close up of those tiny pearls and the banner that inspired this card.

So I hope you like my CAS Girly Thanks card for today, I sure had fun creating it, specially because I was able to play with this fabulous dies to make this pretty dress.

Thank you so much for stopping by, I truly appreciate every single comment you leave and I will answer any questions about this card or any other card on my blog, please don't hesitate to ask.

Till next time, keep on stamping!