Happy Un-Birthday to Me!

Look at all the fun goodies that I received in a package this week! Dawn Mercedes decided to celebrate her birthday by sending me Happy Un-Birthday surprises in the mail! LOL, how fun is that?! And surprise me she did! I never suspected she was up something, haha. I was trying to be all quiet and secretive about my own birthday package to her and we laughed over how we had everything planned for each other, mailed on the same day and received packages on the same day, etc.

And you should have seen me trying to get everything squished together to fit into a photo. {grin} I love how Dawn can take a theme and coordinate everything so it all fits together and is matchy-matchy. She used stars for my un-birthday. She found this perfect sparkly iron-on with my initials and stars around it to personalize that blue t-shirt for me. That decorated little tin was filled with, what else, starbursts! She found that gorgeous ornament with a pointy star-shape - it's going to hang year-round in my craft room. {wink} And I just love the accessories she picked. The ribbon is so bright and cheery, the sticker stars are so sparkly and the cuttlebug embossing folders are so cute! Then she laminated a dozen pages for my ever-growing unmounted stamp collection! And missing from this pic is a tube of glow-sticks that my boys claimed as their own. {grin}

And here are my very, very favorite parts of the un-birthday package - Dawn's art! I have always admired her watercoloring and her use of shapes and sparkly accents in her designs. This card features Moody for Rock from Paper Makeup Stamps. I just love the angles she used with the background papers and the different sized and colored stars. And look at that little ribbon tab peeking out and all the bling scattered across the card. And then that moody girl is colored so perfectly! I love how the watercoloring varies in shade and all the splashes of stickles on the drops around her.

Now the best for last - Melody! She's my very favorite Paper Makeup fairy - the one I got to design last year when I won a PMS contest. I just love how Dawn cut her out and popped her up on the card. And look how sparkly those wings are! {sigh} I think Melody looks great in red too. Even better, she's decorating a wall-mount that I can hang in my craft room and enjoy seeing her every day.

Thanks for stopping by and listening to me gush over my fun surprise from my fun friend. I hope it inspires you to do something nice and unexpected to surprise someone in your life too.

Blessings,

Caffinated Cropper Customer Blog Hop

Caffinated Cropper is having a customer blog hop today! You should have arrived here from Emily's blog. If not, you'll want to go back to the beginning and start at Caffinated Cropper. Be sure to leave comments at every stop along the way and then again back at Caffinated Cropper because one lucky person is going to win a mini kit just for commenting! Woo-hoo!

My card uses items from the Birds of a Feather kit. Melody (my favorite Paper Makeup Stamps fairy) and the sentiment "With a Smile and a Song" are stamps that come with it. I colored Melody with prismacolor pencils and baby oil to match this beautiful designer paper from the Birds of a Feather packet. Her wings, belt, shoes and music notes are all sparkly from a clear spica glitter pen, you just can't see it in my photo well. I used the nestie Labels Four to cut out Melody and a second of the same shape in the darker paper so that I could add accents with the same corner shape on my card. The music notes were made with a Cuttlebug die. The little flower was one of the many, many accessories that come in this fantastic kit! The saying is emobossed in white to make it stand out and add texture.

Here's a close-up of Melody. {grin}

Thanks for stopping by. Next your off to see what the talented Christi Thorsen has created for you!

Blessings,

My Favorite Melody

Paper Makeup Stamps - Favorite PMS Stamp
Makeup for the Weekend - Pink and Lots of Bling
Flutter By Wednesday - Fairy, Butterfly or Angel
Splitcoast Limited Supply Challenge - Framed Art

Here she is - my favorite PMS stamp is Melody! She is the result of a PMS contest that I won to design my own fairy. Diem drew her singing to this little bird just as I imagined and I named her Melody. I think she is just the sweetest fairy ever! And yes, I am totally and completely biased. {grin}

I decided to combine her with the other Paper Makeup Challenge this week to use pink and lots of bling. After coloring her in with ink and a blender pen, I added dazzling diamonds glitter to her wings and spica glitter pens to her belt, shoes, music notes and around the circle's edge. The saying is embossed for a nice shine and gems added for even more sparkle. {heart}

And of course, the perfect finish for my perfect fairy is a frame. Now I can enjoy seeing her in my craft room every day.

Stamps: Paper Makeup Stamps: Melody, PMS Swirl, Dreams Come a Size Too Big
Paper: Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White, Razzleberry Lemonade DP
Ink: Melon Mambo, Pink Passion, Pretty in Pink, Almost Amethyst, Blush Blossom, Riding Hood Red, More Mustard, Close to Cocoa, Creamy Caramel, Versamark
Accessories: Circle Nesties, Label 3 Nesties, Fancy Tags Nestie, glue pen, dazzling diamonds glitter, spica glitter pens, clear EP, gem stickers, dimensionals, blender pen, 5x7 Frame

Another Melody Card

Paper Makeup Stamps: World Card Making Day to make a new card with PMS stamps.
Stamptacular Sunday Challenge: Make a card with a pull-out feature.
Splitcoast Featured Stamper Case a card by Clownmom

Here's another Melody card. You can scroll down and check out her story in my previous post if you haven't read that yet. :) For the first time I did not glitter a fairy's wings! (gasp) I wanted the stickles to stand out on her belt and the white part of her dress. I wish you could see the sparkle better in the photos above. I used a blender pen and ink to color her in and tried to make the little bird she's singing to resemble a robin this time. Putting the saying on a pull-out tag was the perfect way to use a larger sentiment without making a bigger card or covering up part of Melody. And I loved Clownmom's card (linked above), so that gave me a great starting point. I switched out the black for brown, only added scallops on the bottom of the image mat, and made my sentiment tag a pull-out one instead of dangling. I still liked the ribbon going across the upper corner though, so I kept that on my card too.

Thanks for looking and have a blessed day! :)

Introducing Melody

In August Paper Makeup Stamps had a Custom Fairy contest and I was delightfully surprised to win. I had allowed myself to think about what kind of fairy would I want made if I got to choose, and I'm so glad I did! When Katie announced my name (after the shock and shrieking wore off and I could type again) I knew exactly what kind of fairy I wanted custom designed. Her name would be Melody and she would be singing to a bird. She would have ringlets and be wearing a simple dress and tiny shoes (always colored to match, haha!) I've just always loved to sing along with the radio or my CD's. It's my favorite part of any church service or program at school. And I've always loved being outside and watching little creatures go about their daily lives. This is the perfect idea of a Beautiful Day Fairy stamp for me.

I just love how Melody is drawn - she's exactly as I imagined her. Kudos to the illustrator Diem Pascarella! You can look at the PMS Blog for other sneak peek cards and she'll be released for sale on Wednesday night, October 7th during their release party. While you're checking Melody out, don't forget to leave comments there and have a chance to win the ENTIRE October release of stamps - now that's a lot of rubber happiness! AND as if that's not enough, Paper Makeup Stamps is having a 12 Week's Countdown to Christmas Sale every Saturday starting today for the next 12 weeks! Lots of exciting things going on over there. :)

And now for a couple cards! Melody is so much fun to color! I used a blender pen and ink and was thinking of Giselle from the movie "Enchanted", so this Melody has strawberry blond hair. :) I went with a pastel scheme of Certainly Celery, Bashful Blue and Apricot Appeal. Of course, I had to add dazzling diamonds glitter to her fairy wings. The saying is from PMS set Nature's Song. I like how the scalloped oval mimics the scallops on her dress and the cuttlebug music embossing folder gave me a great accent for the apricot panel. :)


In addition to mounted or unmounted rubber, Paper Makeup Stamps offers their Beautiful Day Fairies in digi form for the first month after they're released. So, for my second card I shrunk Melody down before I printed her. I wanted her to be the correct size to go with the cottage and willow tree (also from PMS!) After I colored her, again with blender pen and ink, I held my breath and oh so carefully cut her out. I sponged the grass and sky to add some texture and ripped a brown strip of paper to be a path leading from the cottage. The cottage was much easier to cut out after it was colored in and I added clear glaze pen to all the windows. I used markers to color in and "huff" the willow tree stamp and cut that out for the front yard. Then the clouds I just cut free-hand. As for the saying, well, there's this song that I grew up singing in our little country church and I just had it going through my mind and was humming/singing it while making this card. :) So, I decided why not print off the title from my computer. I used a small label nestie to cut and stencil the saying.



Here's a close-up view of Melody. Isn't she darling!? :) I used a glitter pen on her wings.


Thanks for looking and have a blessed day! :)