Cutie Patootie causes "Kitty Outburst"

This picture completely melts my heart. I was cleaning out emails when I came across this picture and it made me smile. Then I had what Mike (husband) refers to as the "Kitty Outburst". Let me explain "Kitty Outburst". I'll be surfing the web, blogs, checking emails, whatever. I'll come across an adorable picture of an animal or a video or story that speaks to my animal loving soul. I'll turn around in my chair and start looking for a kitty to love on. I'm not sure what I do that clues him in to the fact that I am about to make one of our furry children a victim of love , but he knows. When this happens, Mike proclaims "Uh Oh, Mom's having a Kitty Outburst". :-) So now you know the definition of another one of our funny sayings/catchphrase/terms of endearments. Hmmm...maybe I'll create a section that has definitions of our silly little sayings.

Okay, back to this precious picture. Poor baby...I think he broke his leg and they used a toilet paper roll to brace it. The thought of the toilet paper roll made me chuckle. I just thought it would make your day to see this sweet angel face, so I am sharing it with you. Do you have funny sayings, catchphrase or terms of endearments? Leave a comment and share. Don't have any? Check out this site. Terms Of Endearments

Have a beautiful day and hug your furry babies!

Frosty & Friend

I just couldn't let Christmas go by without making a Frosty The Snowman card! I saw a few variations online, but they were missing a "mouth made of coal", so I had to add little pieces of coal and rosy cheeks. I adore the Stampin Up exclusive Sizzlits Birds & Blooms set and had to give Frosty a feathered friend. This card available in the "Available Cards" area of the blog.

We had snow last week!!! Shocking!! And even more shocking was the fact that is was still on the ground, covering roofs and cars when I headed to work the next morning. I felt like a little giddy school girl. We had enough to make tiny little snowmen, but not enough for a human size snowman. For those of you have tons of snow this time of year, did you make a snowman?? If so, please share pics.

Have a beautiful day!

Award & Blogs I love!

So way back in September, this very talented lady, Julie, awarded me in this post. AWARD! My blog was only a few months old, therefore receiving an award was a real suprise!! So what did I go and do? Fall off the Face of Bloggin world. Duh! Bad blogger! It has been so crazy with Hurricane Ike's aftermath and all my responsibilities of LIFE I have neglected to pass on this award. Better late than never, right?! :-)

Thanks JULIE! I so admire your style! It's Bold, Creative and 100% Inspiration!!

I want to share with you some of the "Blogs I Love" for various reasons.

Veronica
The talented lady that made my visions come true. My Animal Scraps idea came to me the Spring of 2007. I envisioned how I wanted my blog to look, but I did not have the to create it. I finally contacted her Summer 2008 and all my visions came to fruition. It was like she was inside my head. Thanks again Veronica!

Karen
She has videos with tutorials on how to create your own beautiful little pieces of art. I love the unique spin she puts on her designs.

Tessa
I’m crazy about color and this lady uses lots of it! Especially on scrapbook page layouts, which inspire me to work on some layouts instead of cards all the time. Check out her work!

Zalita
For those cupcake lovers, prepare to be AMAZED! This lady is undoubtedly THE CUPCAKE QUEEN! Stunning designs adorn her breathtaking masterpieces. I adore her creations and I know you will too.

Miss Doxie
This chick is funny beyond belief! Be warned! Don’t read her posts while at work. You will NOT be able to contain a burst of laughter. She’s a HOOT!

Dog Lover
Lots of pictures, articles and tips for Animal Lovers. Mostly dog lovers, but who doesn’t melt at the site of a puppy?

Y’all have wonderful blogs and please accept this awards and here are the rules as I understand them:

1) The winner can put the logo on their blog

2) Link the person you received your award from

3) Nominate at least 6 other blogs

4) Put links of those blogs on yours

5) Leave a message on the blogs of the blogs you’ve nominated

I have some pictures and stories to share from the Hurricane Ike recovery, but that will have to wait till I can find the pics again. The computer fried days after our power came back on from Ike, so the uploaded pics were lost. I think they are still on the camera.

Have a wonderful day!

Birthday Purse

No new cards yet, but I wanted to share a purse I designed in July for a friends birthday. I gifted her with some of my jewelry pieces she had been admiring. She likes the art of paper crafting too, so I decided to make a unique gift bag to accompany the jewelry. I used retired Stampin' Up! design paper, lots of die cuts, chocolate chip colored paper and ribbon for the handles. Let's not forget the butterflies! After I completed the purse, I ran the scraps through my paper shredder, crinkled them up and added them as filler.

I just received a huge shipment of rubber stamps, supplies and the Big Shot!! Can hardly wait to play with that! Must concentrate on completing the card kits for the card class. Then I can attack my new toys. Cheers!

Card Class Time

Sorry I've been missing. Busy buzzing around with so many projects. This week I am designing cards for my card class. This is one of them and I will include these in the next "Available Cards" update, coming soon. The other cards designed for my class will be Christmas theme.

I need to update the available cards for the animal shelter donation cause. All are sold out! Many thanks to the fabulous R.H., L.D. and R.C. of Houston, Texas for supporting my efforts in helping animals. Have a beautiful day!

Fritz is my name; Destruction is my game

I have quite a few cat loving friends and they share pictures with me every so often through email. When I received this email, I knew I had to share it with my readers. Her subject line cracked me up!! R.C.’s email is below. We know all too well how they can be such a terror, but we still love them so! Check out his attempt at the innocent facial expression. Ha! We know better.

R.C.’s quote:
* “Fritz is my name; destruction is my game. Can you believe this little guy has chewed through the wire to the base of one of our portable phones rendering it unusable, and he also managed to unplug the DVD player in the master bedroom (which will be difficult to plug back in because the outlet is behind our armoire). He's a terror!! . . . but a sweet one. “ *

Something to make you smile today. Thanks R.C. for sharing your sweet baby and humor!

Owl Scraps

My pink owl was originally created in July 2007 from scraps and punches. This owl was the beginning of looking at my dies and paper punches in a different light. I have a ton of pink paper scraps, so I decided to work on creating an owl with scraps and punches. This pink owl was what I came up with.

January 2008 SCS announced an Animals Punchie Challenge and this is the card I submitted. I was excited to use the owl that was uniquely my own. Tree branches are from Quickutz 3 spiral die set Round scallop punch for owls head. Used the Oval scallop punch for the feathers on bodice and wings. The arched eyebrows are actually part of the butterfly from QZ limited edition die. I used the butterflies bottom wing portion for the his head and antennae for the claws on the branch.

What animals have you created with paper punches and dies?? Leave a comment and link to your creation. I'll check them out when I return from a weekend vacation. Have a beautiful weekend!

Kitty Bears

Time for some kitty pics. I haven’t shown off my most precious angel, Zenia. She is my “Velcro kitty” because she always has to be where I am. If Mike gets home before me and feeds the babies, Zenia refuses to eat until Mommy is home. It’s so sweet. She gets away with murder I tell you! If she isn’t hogging my pillow, she is in my “teddy bear” nook with her paw draped over my hand or arm to show the other kitties that she owns me. See the picture Mike snapped while I was sleeping. : - )

These pictures were taken at the beginning of the year when I was on bed rest for a week. I was propped up on pillows and kitties were faithfully by my side. Zenia is sleeping on my chest and Tonka crawled up in my “teddy bear” nook. We refer to them as “kitty bear” when they decide to occupy that space. The little love bug is really good at that crawling up there. Zenia is light enough (6 pounds) that I can sleep with her on my chest without being disturbed.

I would love to hear stories about the nicknames you have for your little furry angels!! Feel free to share. Have a beautiful day!

I Ruff U

This week has flown by. Have had lots of fun making cards and working on jewelry orders. I'm gearing up for some more card classes. My first one went so well, the ladies scheduled another one. I'm so flattered! I love sharing this art form. I have another card that can be swapped out with one of the card packs available. The sweet puppy on the card is stamped and then I colored him in with colored pencils. For a touch of whimsy, I embossed the red paper with little paw prints. This card is available for those wishing to donate to animal shelters by purchasing a set of my hand made cards. I will be back this weekend with some more cards.

I adore Penny Blacks rubber stamp designs. Her images are so precious. A friend just received a shipment and let me take some home to play with. This is one of the cards I made so far. I used SU watercolor pencils on the images and cut out each one and added to the card with pop-dots for dimension. Used SU slit punch to create the scallop border and SU photo corner punch for the corners. I LOVE SU punches!! Then I doodled around the panel with Tempting Turquoise. Always doodling...you should see my calendar desk pad at work.

Whoo Hoo!! I was so excited to find out that one of my cards was chosen for the Sketch Challenge this week at Split Coast Stampers. What an honor!! Split Coast Stampers is a forum that serves as a meeting/gathering place for stampers and paper crafting members. The site is full of tips, techniques, patterns and challenges. The gallery is filled with inspiration and I have met some really great gals on that site/forum. This is the card they used as the sketch inspiration. Go check out the link to the challenge on the forum here if you are interested in seeing what Split Coast Stampers is all about. I'd love to have you play along!!
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/

George Michael

WHEW!! Still trying to recover from this weekend and Monday night. George Michael was in town. Whoop!! Had a blast despite the heat. They turned off the a/c to save his vocal cords. He totally rocked the Toyota center. We were on the floor, so no need for binoculars. We danced and sang our little hearts out. He still has the moves! I have always enjoyed watching him perform and Monday night was no different.

Saturday I did my first card demo. I heard the demo was a hit and everyone loved the pop-up card I designed. I was thrilled to receive good feedback. I'll post pics on that in a bit. I'm off to take an acrylic album class, gotta go. Wheeeeeee

Thanks Kitty

A super sweet card for cat lovers. I can swap this out with one of the cards in the sets if you like. The little flower is cut out and adhered with pop dots. A rhinestone is in the center. Gotta have my bling! The following is for the paper crafters.

This is one of my favorite color combinations. I used my Spellbinder's Wizard to emboss all card stock panel with little flowers. Used a strip of design paper to give the appearance of ribbon. Water colored image from Pink Cat Studio stamps and matted with purple scallop circle cut using Spellbinder's Nestabilities. Speaking of Spellbinders, have you seen the Birthday celebration they have going on for 2 weeks? They are giving away all kinds of awesome prizes and showing off some fabulous new dies that will be released soon. Heart swoooooon!!

Blog Reveal & Sweet Angels

Okay, so I have been working with a very talented blog designer that is creating a custom design for my blog. I’m so excited about revealing it. I think by the end of this week, it will be up.

** UPDATED TO ADD ** It's completed and here is the new blog design. Isn't Veronica fabulous at turning ideas into reality!!! Let me know what you think of my new blog Veronica designed!! **

For today I have a couple of sweet pictures of our little angels.

Tonka is on the left and Jasmine on the right. I wanted a picture that shows how tiny Jasmine is. Tonka is a solid cat. Weighing in at 18 pounds, Tonka is a big boy! Little Jasmine is 7 pounds, but don’t let her size mislead you. She will have Tonka in a headlock in 3 seconds flat! Both the boys (Tonka and Kona) are gentle with her, despite the fact that she can be ferocious. Jasmine shows her sweet side in the picture of her cleaning Tonka. How sweet is that?

I have some more cards to choose from, I will upload within the week. Please check back and spread the word.

Happy 4th of July

Blessings to you and yours this 4th of July!

From my private collection, a Patriotic kitty lampwork

pendant sure to make you smile.

Dress Them Fine

I just wanted to show you one of my cards I am really proud of. I created the dress card February 16, 2008 for a Best Dressed Baby challenge. The challenge was to create a card like or featuring images that a baby might wear, such as a onesie, diaper, or even booties . When I read the challenge, it reminded me of a story my mother told me. When she was pregnant with my twin brother and me, she was worried (of all things) that we would be ugly babies. She shared her concerns with my father. "What if they are ugly?,” she asked him. He replied with "We'll dress them fine!” I thought that was so funny!! She made it a point to sew matching outfits for us. She would use the same fabrics and colors, but one would be a dress and one little shorts or overalls. Our baby outfits were not the typical baby onesies, etc.

The empire waste baby dress has TAC ladybug stamped images. Stamped in black and colored in w/red marker, then cut out and adhered with pop-dots. White flowers are created with Cuttlebug die. Scallop scissors for edge. Folded the gingham paper (printed off computer) to give it dimension and the appearance of gathers. The card is the shape of the dress, but you can't tell against the white background. The red ribbon straps float freely above the card base.

What does this card inspire you to create??

Bed Lumps

Like most cats, ours love to bury under the covers. When this occurs, we affectionately refer to the cat hiding under the covers as “bed lump”. Eventually one of the other cats jumps on the "bed lump" and rides it like a cowboy. :-) In this photograph, Jasmine was attacking "Kona, the bed lump". Jasmine hops off bed lump and Kona sneaks to the edge of cover. Kona throws back the cover to attack Jasmine. I was thrilled when I got the shot. It captured the moment perfectly as Jasmine reared back with surprise. Gotcha!!


I hope this brings a smile to your face. >^..^<

1st Set of cards

I have two sets of cards packaged and ready to mail. Please specify which set you would like as they are slightly different.
The sets include:
1 Thank You (blue/gray)
1 Sympathy (brown/olive/cream)
1 Celebrate (cupcake)
2 customizable cards (floral pink/green)

The floral cards have 3 different sentiments, which allows you to customize each card. Choose the sentiment, peel off the backing and place in the center of the tag. The cream, brown and blue cupcake card has a embossed confetti background . It is difficult to see in these pictures, but it looks great in person. Click on pictures for a closer look at the cards.

Blessings, Elizabeth

For the love of animals

I am lucky enough to have friends that give me their scraps. They think I am doing them a favor by taking them. I think they are doing ME a favor by GIVING me beautiful pieces of design paper, ribbons, stickers, etc. I have made cards with these free goodies for almost two years now. I don't feel right selling the cards made from donated scraps, so I had this idea. To start a blog called Animal Scraps. With a donation of $25 a set of 5 hand crafted cards and envelopes will be mailed to the address you specify.

All donations collected by me will be sent to various animal shelters. Blog readers are encouraged to suggest various animal shelters they live near or support, which means the donations will be spread around the United States.

We don't have human children of our own. We do however have 4 furry four-legged children who are loved and adored. If we had a bigger house and unlimited funds, we would provide food, shelter and love to all unwanted and unloved animals, but we don't have that luxury. This is my way of taking unwanted scraps and turning them into something more than scraps...Animal Scraps.

I have a full time job, I am a jewelry designer and card designer. I am married to a wonderful man that loves animals as much (if not more) as I do. I hope you will join me in this journey.

I will be posting pictures of cards and payment details shortly.

For the love of animals,

Elizabeth