My first Roses In Winter card!

Here it is!!! My first card using Roses in Winter. I am really pleased with the end result of this. I'll admit though that it does take a bit of learning to figure out the best technique for stamping these beauties! It took quite a few practice stamps and some looking on SCS to find some tips and techniques. But I think I'm getting the hang of this. My only wish was that I didn't wait so long to get this great set! And now its going to the happy land of retirement! You've got today left to get your orders in for this beauty...don't miss out!

More about my header...

Thanks for the nice comments about my blog header! I should give a little more background to my header. This is actually a picture my husband, Jeff, and I took on our honeymoon last year. We went to the Cayman Islands for our honeymoon...a wonderful two weeks there! It is truly a spectacular place. We loved it and can't wait to go back. It is on the pricey side, especially for meals out. But the location, atmosphere, beaches, everything there is great!

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This picture was taken on the beach in front of the condo we rented for a week. Talk about beautiful!!! We were on the northend of Seven Mile Beach. This shot shows the beach and downtown area in the distance. Anchored in front of downtown are the cruise ships...usually there were anywhere from 3-5 in port each day. If you notice, there are hardly any people on the beach! The whole time we were there, the beaches looked like this. We were surprised at how few people were actually on the beach. It was never crowded! And the water was to die for!!! It felt just like bath water. Ahh!!! We did a little bit of practice snorkeling in the waters here. It took me a while to get comfortable with the mask and snorkel. Breathing in and out through your mouth is a challenge! During our practice swims, we saw a stingray, halibut (I can never remember if its that or a flounder? Well it was a bottom dwelling, flat fish!) and many other little fish swimming about. It was very cool!!!

Yay!!!

I think I've finally gotten my blog header figured out...yippee!!! I made it in MS Digital Image Pro. Making it was not nearly as difficult as I had thought it would be. *whew* I had more trouble figuring out how to make it fit into the page frame of my blog. Now THAT was a chore. I'm not completely done tweaking my header. I'd like to add a little more to it, but for now I'm happy that I have a custom one!

Happy Birthday!!!

Today is my mom's birthday! Yay!!! Happy birthday to you mom. Unfortunately she has to spend her birthday working. The last few years her birthday has fallen on a day she has to work. Not exactly your ideal way to spend your special day, but it could be worse.

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To celebrate her birthday, I'm planning on taking her our for dinner tonight. Not sure where we'll go, but we'll find someplace nice I'm sure. A nice air conditioned restaurant would be wonderful! It's warm today...ok, its in the 80s...many of you will say that isn't hot at all...but when you're pregnant suddenly everything is hot!! *LOL*

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I made this card for mom. I used these cute little cards from Amuse with the green argyle pattern since mom's favorite color is green. I really wanted to use the new cupcake and sentiment stamp I got from Lockhart Stamps too. I'm really happy with this card and how it turned out. I've just recently started playing with the small square cards that Amuse makes. I think they are so cute, but I've been having a hard time coming up with something I like using them. It's also been a challenge for me to find the right use of the Amuse stamps. I'm sure I'll get the hang of their stamps soon, but for now I'm happy playing and figuring it out!

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Back to this card...I colored in the cupcake using my Prismacolor pencils. No gamsol, just the pencils using the technique the Karen Lockhart showed us at the Snoheaux Swap earlier this year. I think I like using the pencils more this way than with the gamsol. Both images were stamped using Palette Hybrid ink in Noir. The scalloped punches are the giga and mega by Marvy. I added a little extra "bling" by using a res rhinestone from Amuse.

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Enjoy! Happy Birthday mom, I love you!