THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST

Hey Kiddos!  How's your Wednesday going?  Well I hope.  I love the name that I have given this post, and since I've made my official posting day Wednesday, that is what the future Wednesday's posts will be called.  Kinda has a nice little "Norman Rockwell" sound to it doesn't it?  LOL  OK, on with the post:

I'm going to have to come up with a new way to photograph my cards.  Quite honestly, I'm not happy with the quality of the photos of the cards I got today.  Whenever I shoot them in pure direct sunlight, the color bleeds out, as well as some of the definition.  I even tried to use the setting on my camera that says "bright sunlight", but the pics came out even worse.  So I had to screw around a lot with the lighting in my photo editing software to try to make them as presentable as possible.  So I apologize for the less than great quality.

Here is the first of 3 cards I'd like to share with you this evening:

As all of you who know me even a little, you know that I LOVE Fall and Halloween.  For once, this card looked exactly like the one in my head after I created it.  The leaf stamps are by Martha Stewart and I stamped them with Versamark ink and then embossed them with copper embossing powder.  I then used sponge daubers and sponged them with Staz-On ink in mustard, pumpkin, and olive green.  I cut them out and applied them to the strip on Bazzill card stock.  I don't know who does the background paper, it was from my "scraps bin", but I loved the lattice print on it.  The sentiment is computer generated and popped up with dimensionals.  Added a bow tied with my Bow Easy and done.

Next is a Halloween card.  This card was created around a single element:

The haunted house scene is an intricately die cut sticker!  When I saw these (at Archiver's) I went nuts over them.  The orangy yellowish background was created by sponging watercolor paper with Staz-On mustard and pumpkin inks with a touch of black towards the top.  The moon color was created by masking that area before sponging with the other colors.  I then removed the mask and lightly sponged the center for a little more color.  Looks like it almost has a little light behind it doesn't it?  Once the sponging was done, I peeled off the sticker and aligned the moon part of the sticker with the masked moon area, pressed it all down and tah dah the main image.  Looks like it was stamped.  The other thing I did with this card was to "dye" the ribbon.  The checked ribbon was originally black and white, but since white really wasn't an option for this card, I used my Staz-On pumpkin ink and a dauber and rubbed the ink onto the ribbon turning the white parts to pumpkin.  Worked perfectly.  I put the ribbon on a black strip of card stock so that it would show better.  The sentiment ($1 stamp at Michael's) was stamped directly onto the background paper and embossed with detail black ep.  I then added the black brads with an orange dot in the center and the photo corners at each top angle to complete it.

The last card I have to share is one that I couldn't have done without the help of one of my sweet blogging friends.  You know who you are and thank you again (long story).  Anyway, I saw a card she had made with this stamped image and I emailed her right away to find out where to get it.  She told me where, said it was pretty pricey, and offered to send me a few of the stamped image which she did.  Here is my card:

I made this card for my best friend's partner Richard for his upcoming birthday in November.  He collects wolves, and as a matter of fact, has adopted two real wolves at a preserve.  When I saw this stamp, it screamed Richard.  So that is why I asked her where she had gotten it.  I so appreciate her sending the stamped images.  I colored this one with my ccps and oms.  I gave the leaves a Fall treatment since it is a November birthday.  The background paper is from a Fall stack.  It kind of reminded me of debris on a forest floor which went perfectly with the image.  I added the brown cord with the "wolf paw print" LOL and added the matted image to the card with foam dimensionals.

Well that's it for this post.  BTW, I'm at 93 followers and I've decided that when I reach 100 followers I'll be giving away some blog candy.  So stay tuned.  And in my next Wednesday post, I'm also going to give a little tutorial for you Bow Easy users on how to use the Bow Easy in a different way with a little tip I came up with.  

Again, thanks so much for stopping by.  I'll be off looking at all of your blogs this week to see what you have been doing.  It is always a couple of hours that I so look forward to.  I get my favorite beverage, sit back, and start blogging and leaving comments.  You are all such inspirations to me and I'm so lucky to have each of you as readers of this weekly stuff I put out.

P.S.  STORY:  Don't forget the pic of the week below.  I have a quick story with it. . .I drug my poor 72 year old Mom down to a dried up creek bed to let the boys run lose to explore.  I was walking ahead of her and all of a sudden I hear this blood curdling scream.  I look around and here she comes running faster than a Colt's receiver with her little dog Chunk in her arms like a football.  I couldn't believe she was moving that fast. . .What could have caused all of this you ask?  See pic of the week below!  LOL  To make the matter worse, I got one of those blank card things where you slide a photo onto the front to make it a photo card.  I ran it through my Cuttlebug to give it that snake skin look and inserted the picture.  On the inside I wrote "Enjoyed our visit. . .next time maybe you can stay a little longer.  Snakey Licks!  Sammy Snake"  LOL  I mailed it to her today.  She is going to KILL me!  I'm so evil. . . .

Take good care all!

Best,

Curt O'Brien

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