THE WEDNESDAY EVENING POST FOR FEBRUARY 10TH 2010

Hey All!  It's another Wednesday and I'm back with my Wednesday Evening Post.  I've evidently had a very LUCKY week.  According to my spam mail, I've won the Canadian, UK, Australian, and Nigerian lotteries!  With all that money, I can now buy all of the Viagra, Vicoden, and other online prescription meds that are in the other spam mail!  Try not to be too envious!

OK, now seriously, on with the  post.  You have to see the "Pic of the Week" at the bottom of this post.  I can't believe that I got the shot that you will find there!  Yes, it is a real tongue.  

I've got a few things to share with you this post.  First up on the agenda is my first "Magic Box".  No matter what I tried I could not get it to photograph as well as I had hoped.  It really does look so much better in real life.  I made this for my Mom as her Valentine card.  Here are the pics:

It is so hard from the pictures to really see the detail when it is opened.  If you click on the pictures you can see it better.  I got my inspiration from the "Queen of Magic Boxes" Elaine at Magic Boxes.  Her magic boxes are astounding, and one of her boxes was presented to the Queen of England herself!  I am so in awe of her work.  There are two large embossed butterflies and several floating hearts.  What I didn't get a picture of was the inside of the lid which is where I placed the sentiment.  These make impressive gifts, and I just wish I could have photographed it a little better!

My next card was inspired by my good blogging buddy in Canada.  Karen at "1 Wacky Woman" did a card back in November which I never forgot.  Take a look at the card HERE.  Here is the card that I came up with based on hers:

She used a stamp for her frog and booth.  I had to "build" mine.  The booth is made of a wood look paper.  I don't know who it is by.  I cut out the pieces and built the booth and wrote "Kissing Booth" at the top.  I then stamped the frog, colored it, cut it out, and attached it with a dimensional (you can see the shadow behind him).  The background paper had a "scene" on it, so I cut out the part that would make a good background for this card.  I thought it made a cute Valentine's Day card.

My last card was born out of an experiment.  I have an HP printer, and every time I buy the set of ink cartridges for it, it comes with 150 sheets of 4 X 6 photo paper.  Well I now have oodles of these and wondered if I could use them in my card making somehow.  Here is what got created:

Here is a side view so you can see the glossy shine there at the lower right quadrant:

I can't get over how weird it was sponging dye ink onto this surface!  I figured it would smear around and create an interesting background, but it didn't!  When the ink hit the surface that is where it stayed.  It was so odd.  And the ink became so vibrant.  Don't know if it was the ink reacting to the chemicals in the photo paper or what, but it was weird.  The image is from Hero Arts and the butterflies were punched out using an MS punch.  It looks like a fiery summer sunset.  It reminded me of these two photos of sunsets I took a couple of summers ago:

Anyway, I kinda like how it turned out.  I'm liking the silhouette stamps like the one I used above.

OK, that's it.  DON'T FORGET THE PIC OF THE WEEK BELOW! It will make you smile if not laugh out loud like I did when I first saw what I had actually captured.  I kept telling him "Gunther!  Look at the camera!  Gunther!"  And when he finally did, I quickly took the picture.  What I was wanting to get was the snow on his face.  I certainly got a little more!  LOL  Quick update on him.  He is still limping at about a 6 on a scale of 1-10.  It's frustrating, but he doesn't seem to be in any pain.  He is just going nuts not being able to go for walks.  I'll be calling the vet on Friday (3 weeks since the accident) to see if she thinks that level of limping is to be expected.  I'll keep you all posted.  Thanks so much for all of your concern!

Thanks for coming by and looking!  You guys and your comments are truly a huge bright spot in my day.  I thank you so much for that!  I'll be back on Monday with another HM challenge post.  So until then, I wish you a very HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!  Sending you all huge blogging buddy hugs!

Best,

Curt O'Brien

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