DID YA MISS ME???

Thanks so much to all of you who sent me emails asking if I was OK and letting me know that you missed me. I certainly have missed all of you too! I have no real reason for being missing in action. I don't know what had gotten into me. Has anyone felt that it was a forced effort to go make a card? I swear I felt as if I would rather do anything else than go up those stairs and "create". Each day I would say to myself "OK, after dinner, you are going upstairs." Then, after dinner, I would go check my email, get interested in a show on TV, then not go. Am I going through something that any of you have gone through? I'm also an AVID American Idol fan. So, those nights are completely out of the question, because it is too late for me to "start" something after the show is over. And of course, I would have to watch the news too. Geez! Well, the spell has been broken in a big way! I have a couple of new cards to show you, and in my "creating frenzy" over the past few days, I have created a whole bunch of new cards to share over the next couple of posts. I've also gotten several new stamps/sets to play with, so that has me excited again. So, let's get started shall we?

Here is my first card:


This one is for the House Mouse Monday challenge blog. The challenge this week was to create a "Male Card". I thought this image was perfect for that. It was very hard for me not to use ribbon, but I think it turned out OK. I colored the image with my "cheap" colored pencils and OMS, and then matted it with black and then attached it to the DP with dimensionals. The sentiment is computer generated.



My next two cards are for St. Pat's day. This next one is one of my favorites:



The image is Anna Wight's set called "Fish Friends" made by Whipper Snapper designs. Each image you see up there is a separate stamp. I LOVE Anna's work, and this is my first set of hers. I plan to get many more. With each image being separate, you can create any "scene" you want. I colored the images with my colored pencils and OMS. Also, see the photo corners up there? I bought a package of white self-stick photo corners to color. I used my Copics on these to coordinate them with the colors. This is my first "masking" attempt. I had to mask the frog so that I could have him sitting perfectly on top of the mushroom. The "Kiss Me I'm Irish" sentiment was created in Word.


My second St. Pat's Day card is more traditional, and really I'm not happy with it:







I wanted to use the Irish Blessing on this card. So I thought using Celtic squares to go with it would work. Well, it really didn't. I stamped the squares with Versamark onto green cs and then embossed them with black detail ep. There was too much detail on some of the squares that they came out looking to black. I mounted the one inch squares onto Inchie squares and then attached them to cs. The Irish Blessing was cut out using Nesties and then paper pierced. The shamrocks are sparkly stickers. It turned out OK, just certainly not one of my favorite cards. It also weighed a ton.


Well, that's it Kiddos. I also wanted to thank all of you who were so supportive and left such wonderful comments on Gunther's stamp set. You all certainly made me a very proud "Dad".

It's nice to be back, and I'll try to keep it that way. I'm going to spend lots of time catching up on your blogs over the weekend. Can't wait to see what you all have been up to!


Don't forget the pic of the week below! It is so sweet! I took it yesterday right out of my window of my craft room. She was just perched there, and I didn't even wake her when I opened the window! Enjoy!


Take good care all!


Best,


Curt O'Brien


"God help me be the person my dogs think I am."