A bit of Vintage for The Retro Rubber Challenge.....

Hello Everyone: Well, it's time for a new Challenge at the Retro Rubber Blog , this time the theme is Vintage with a bit of lace.  I really had fun with this challenge, so much so that I actually made 2 cards, one with lace the other without. Here is the first one:

I used some old DSP from The Paper Studio, I love the fact that it looks like wall paper.
This cup board image is from I Brake for Stamps , I got it out of the clearance rack along with other ones a while ago. This image reminds me of visiting our sweet grandma, (my mom's mom) over the Summer and staying in her little house with a backyard that had a fantastic chicken coupe among other glorious things for us kids to play with.
My other card was inspired by a baby card I saw on Pinterest, it was a baby's dresser and I just loved it, you can see it here. I decided to make a hutch using a very old SU Bigz die called Peek-a-boo Frames. I hope it's ok I post two cards on this challenge, I just couldn't decide which one to choose. Here is the second card:

I used the same DSP because I really love the golden tones. The plates on top of the hutch are cutouts from a magazine, I just snipped them out and glue them to CS and snipped them again. The stuff "inside" the little doors is also a cut out from a crafts magazine, it fit perfectly inside the cabinet. Here is a close up of the doors, I glued a piece of transparency for the glass.

I stamped the little design on the drawers with another very old SU stamp called "Kindness Matters" I remember those old hutches almost always had a pretty design inlaid in the wood.

The legs of the hutch were done with SU Decorative Label Punch , I love how it makes perfect "legs" for this 3-D cards plus a ton of other things.

So there you have it, a couple of Vintage cards (I hope they look vintage enough) I had so much fun making and I hope you like them too.

I want to thank you so much for your comments, I want you to know I appreciate every single word you write, your visit always makes my day.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Have a wonderful day.  

Father's Day for the Pals Paper Arts.....

Hello everyone: Well, when I saw this sketch this morning on the Pals Paper Arts blog, I had to sit back and kind of study it a bit to be able to think what I was going to do to with it.  Then I thought that, Father's Day is just around the corner and I was going to make some cards anyway so why not use this fabulous, never seen before, challenging sketch Ms. Nicole Watt provided for us today.
This is my card.

It's always challenging for me to create masculine cards, I tend to buy flower stamps and cute critter stamps, romantic stamps but I have to confess I have very few sets with beautiful images like this one on the SU Wet Lands that fortunately and happily is being carried over in the new catalog, this is truly a must have set for masculine cards .  Another of the difficult parts of making this type of cards is that they can't really be embellished to much, (that's just me) maybe a unassuming ribbon and bow, or a bit, just a bit of bling?? I just chose to add neither, instead I stamped the sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes and placed a couple of Candy Dots on the edges.  I embossed the Pistachio Pudding panel behind the image with the lovely (and on the retire list) Argyle Embossing Folder, just to give it texture, I love the way it looks.
Here is the sketch that inspire my card. I want to thank you for visiting today, I appreciate your comments immensely. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.  Have a fabulous day.
Maria.

Sleeping Beauty.....

Hello again, everyone: I have a question for you.....Do you believe in Fairies?  This magical, whimsical, ethereal, lovely and, at times, mischievous little creatures, really mesmerize me. Whether you are a believer or not, the images of them, real or created, are a delight to see and enjoy.
I was given a box of un mounted rubber stamps my aunt bought at a thrift store a couple of years ago, they were all dirty and stained but, with a lot of love and a good soapy soaking, I was able to wash away the ink and dust from them to reveal the most amazing images of Faeries I've ever seen. For a long time I didn't know who made them, what company sold them, etc. until I came across one of this images on Pinterest.  I found out that they are from a company called Sweet Pea Stamps and the artist who designs this magnificent images is Rachel Anderson , if you click on her name you will be in her gallery, just enjoy it.
Here is a card I created for the May Water Color Challenge over at LiveLoveCards

This is just a lovely scene, funny to, I think. This little Fairy is sound asleep and a drop of dew is about to fall on her, perhaps her little furry friend is trying to wake her so she wont be startled. Here is a close up of it.

I stamped the image on Canson Water Color paper and colored with SU markers and Prismacolor Pencils and baby oil. When I finished I felt that her beautiful, little wings needed a bit of dimension so, I inked up only the wings with gray Stazon onto Calque paper, colored them with Prisma pencils and snipped them out, leaving a little piece on the bottom to insert them through the small slit I made on the base of the stamped wings.

I hope you can see them from the pictures, this paper is very thin but it worked great for what I wanted to do with her wings. I tried it on Vellum but it was very stiff, her wings needed to be very transparent.
I applied a bit of Wink of Stella to them and to her pretty face, arms and hair. The twigs you see in both, the foreground and background are done with a stamp that has corals, I just inked up the ones I needed.
I hope you like this card, it was a joy for me to color.
Thank you so much for visiting, I want you to know that I truly appreciate your comments and, as always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Till next time, keep on stamping.
Maria.

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!

Mojo Monday 397.....

Hello everyone: I finally got around to post this card for Mojo Monday 397, I got a bit delayed by "stuff", to long to explain, mainly I've been doing some reorganizing and cleaning up my craft room, (among other things), in a few days, you will see why.
Ok, this is the card I made for this challenge and, once again, I use two of my most favorite, current SU sets, In This Together and Corner Garden.

The pretty girls and gorgeous flowers on this stamp sets are so beautiful, versatile and fun to color.  Corner Garden is a big stamp, you can use it whole or in parts.  I love adding a bit of bling to the girls outfits, like I did here.

I hope you like this card, as always, I used Stampin Up! write markers and the Aqua Painter, my constant companions for water coloring.
Thank you for visiting my blog, I appreciate your comments so very much, if you have a question about this card, please don't hesitate to ask me, I'll be more than happy to answer it to the best of my ability.
Till next time, happy stamping.
Maria.

Supply list:
SU ink pads in Mossy Meadow, Hello Honey and Costal Cabana.
SU markers in More Mustard, Old Olive and Baja Breeze.
Stazon Jet Black ink.
Stampin Up! In This Together, Corner Garden and Petite Petals stamp sets.
Stampin Up! Petite Petals Punch and Scallop Trim Border punch (retired).
Stampin Up! Hello Honey and Costal Cabana card stock.
Ribbon and bling from my stash.

A really special day!!!!!

Hello everyone: Well, as I said, today is a very special day for me as I have the honor to be invited as the guest stamper for The Retro Rubber Blog May Flowers Challenge.
I feel so excited and happy, this is an unexpected and delightful surprise and I hope the card I made for this challenge lives up to the privilege of this invitation.
Here is my card.

When I learned that this weeks theme was May Flowers, I immediately thought of Tulips, they are the first flowers that bravely start peeking out of the frozen ground and right now, they are in full bloom.
As always, I used my Stampin Up! write markers and my aqua painters to color this image, I just love how the inks blend so beautifully when you water color with them.
Here is a close up of this beautiful blooms, I added a bit of Wink of Stella shimmer to each.

I hope you like and enjoy this card as much as I did creating it. Here is the Retro Rubber banner that inspired this card.I want to thank all of you at The Retro Rubber blog for choosing my Teddy and Train card as a winner of the last challenge and for your sweet invitation to be your guest stamper for this one.
I look forward to seeing all the lovely creations that will be submitted in the next week.
Thank you also, for visiting my blog and for your comments, I appreciate them more than words can say.
Till next time, have a wonderful week.
Maria.
Supply list:
Stampin Up! markers: Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, So Saffron, Old Olive, Cajun Craze and Chocolate Chip.
Stampin Up! ink pad in Hello Honey.
Stampin Up! Window Frames Collection 
Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Square Dies and Spellbinders Tranquil Moments die set.
Canson Water Color paper.
The image and sentiment is from retired Flourishes "Tulips for Friends"