"Raindrops keep fallin' on my head...

...and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed, nothin' seems to fit, those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin'..." 

Okay, so it isn't really raining (it is actually a gorgeous day again today!), but the song fits my card quite nicely! I admit, this is another 'woke-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night' cards. I was fiddling around on My Digital Studio last night, trying out this week's great ColorQ challenge, made something that I liked but didn't love, and then went to bed hoping to fix it in the morning. I woke up in the middle of the night with the idea for a physical card using the same Mojo Monday layout I'd been working with in MDS, as well as the great color challenge (love me some Island Indigo!).

I'm quite happy with the way this all came out, with one caveat. I wish I had the Perfect Pennants die because it would have been a better size scallop circle behind the little girl. I ended up using two 2 3/8" punched scallops and layering them to make the size right, but the die would have been perfect. (sigh) I guess I'll have to put it on my next order! I will say that I had a hard time photographing this card, and that it is prettier in person than in the photo, but I think you get the idea. I also had to substitute Daffodil Delight for Crushed Curry since I didn't have any of that color left. Close enough, I say!

Did I mention how much I love this set? It is called Lean on Me, and when I first saw it in the catalog, I blew right by it because I don't tend to gravitate toward line image stamps. Then I saw a bunch of samples that my upline Claire made, and made a card at a shoebox swap that featured the set, and I was hooked! I love that the bold lines made for easy marker coloring--no watercoloring involved! And the images are small so the coloring goes very quickly. And yes, I did hand-stitch the sides again. I really should just bite the bullet and pull my Bernina up from the basement, but the stitching by hand went pretty quickly and it just seems like a lot of time and trouble to set up the machine in my little crafting space.

38 weeks 

In other news, I had an appointment with the midwives today. I got my favorite nurse and she said, "is it just me, or does it seem like you've been pregnant forever?" I won't say that was the best thing I heard all day, but I did chuckle and agree that it did seem like it had been forever. I also had my favorite midwife and asked nicely for a cervical check and got one. So right now, I'm sitting between 1-2 cm and have a "rim" (whatever that means); the midwife asked me if I wanted her to "wiggle it", and I said, sure whatever it takes to get this baby moving! So she did that (ouch!) and now we wait! I usually have my babies between 38-39 weeks, which is right where we are right now, so hopefully things will get a move on in a few days. I've had some encouraging prelabor signs, plus a few real contractions every day since Sunday, so perhaps it won't be too much longer.

Supplies:

Island Indigo, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White, smooth and textured Old Olive cs, Pumpkin pie dsp (retired), Lean on Me, Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp sets, Island Indigo ink, Early Espresso, Island Indigo, Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Pool Party markers, Baker's twine (white), needle, white embroidery floss, mat pack, piercing tool, 5/8" old olive grosgrain ribbon (retired), Daffodil Delight designer button, Scallop border punch, scallop ribbon punch, Stripes emboss folder, Designer label punch, 2 3/8" scallop circle punch, circle cutter (non-SU!), dimensionals

Watercoloring

Thank the Lord, the heat has really broken! Last night it got down to 61 degrees and I even slept with covers on me for the first time since I don't remember when! The house is a lovely cool 72 degrees, and it is only supposed to get up to 81, so I'm leaving the windows open today. I did yesterday too and it was wonderful! Last night we made a family outing to Trader Joe's after dinner and walked all the way down and back (2 miles round trip). I have to say, after that walk, this 9 months pregnant mama felt like a total rock star! My hips are killing me today, but it was totally worth it. Besides, maybe that walk will get things a movin'!

One of the numerous cards I made last week was this simple card using Greeting Card Kids. I don't always take the time for watercoloring (even though I like the process) and was looking for something simple yet stepped up to make. I really like how this came out! It was different from how I envisioned in my head, but the end result is rather cute, I think! Love those in colors!! I seem to be gravitating to Crumb Cake a lot for card bases lately; better make sure I have a good supply stocked! I also went back to watercoloring with a blender pen and markers after receiving a good lesson from "Aunt" Karen Barber a while back. I still like my aqua painter, but for fast watercoloring, a blender pen, some watercolor paper and our marvelous markers are great! I'm actually thinking I might just stamp a bunch of line images and bring my marker box with me to the hospital to have something to keep me occupied. Well, occupied in between the nursing and night wakings. :)

Supplies:

Island Indigo, Calpyso Coral, Crumb Cake cs, watercolor paper, Island Indigo dsp

Greeting Card kids, Friendly Phrases stamp set

Staz-on ink

Island Indigo, Calypso Coral, Real Red, Crumb Cake Soft Suede, Daffodil Delight, So Saffron, Blush Blossom markers

blender pen

dimensionals

calypso coral ruffled ribbon

circles #2 die

circle cutter (non-SU!)

Creative Nesting

I think I must be going through some kind of creative nesting instinct--this is the second morning in a row that I've woken up in the middle of the night with a card idea in my head that I just had to make first thing in the morning! I decided to use Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday sketch for the main layout, and had the idea of trying to make paper poppies out of the butterfly punch. I looked up a photo of a poppy and thought it would work fine, and it did! I'm pretty pleased with how the card came out--it is pretty close to the vision I had in my head. I even used Poppy Parade for my cardstock color--perfect!!

In other news, today is Transfiguration on our calendar, so we spent this morning in church. My boys were up at 5:00 a.m. this morning, so our sleep is all kinds of messed up today. My toddler fell asleep on the way home, and then climbed onto the couch first thing and went right back to sleep when we got home (a never-before occurance with him). I'm hoping Boo will take another nap as his 40 minutes in the car isn't going to cut it until bedtime. I keep hoping that their sleep schedules will get better; since we put them together in a room, sleep has been a rare and precious commodity around here and I dread adding the night time wakings of a newborn into that mess. On the other hand, today would be an excellent day to have a baby! We are going into the weekend, my husband is creating work for himself to stay busy, we are a few weeks out from preschool starting, which would give us time to make some of the transitions before school starts, but these things happen on their own schedule, I know. I'm just impatient. And huge. And achy. Mostly just ready to have my body back and meet this new little one.

Supplies:

Crumb Cake, Basic Black, So Saffron, Very Vanilla cs, first edition dp, poppy parade dp hostess pack (retired)

Friendly Phrases stamp set

Poppy parade ink

Circle punches (1", 1 1/4", 1 3/8", smallest itty bitty circle punch)

Butterfly and boho blossoms punch

Scallop border punch

black brads

sticky strip

corner rounder

water spritzer

handheld 1/16" punch

square lattice emboss folder

Fruit Challenge

I know, second post of the day, but I can't help myself! Click HERE to see the first post of the day. I noticed that this week Our Creative Corner is hosting a fruit challenge, and since one of those 25 cards I mentioned features fruit, I just had to post it before the challenge ends! It is a CASE of a card I saw around the blogosphere, so if it looks like yours, drop me a line and I'll give credit where credit is due. I did tweak the design quite a bit, and I may have overdone it on the vines (my husband said it was "too busy" when I got done with it), but I still like the overall effect!

Supplies:

Real Red, So Saffron, Whisper White, Wild Wasabi cs, Washington Apple dp (retired)

Just Believe stamp set

Real Red, So Saffron ink

sponges

Open Scallop border, Boho Blossoms, Ornament, 5 petal flower and 2 step bird punches, 1/4" circle punch

Swiss dot emboss folder

dimensionals

Nesting...just a little

The heat has broken at last, I think I can say, although the humidity is still pretty high. But at least we can cool the house down to reasonable levels during the day after weeks of not even being able to open up the house for some relief. I went to Whole Foods this morning and thoroughly enjoyed the cool breeze on my walk down; I even thought (fleetingly) that I could stand to be pregnant a while longer if the weather was going to stay like this!

I do feel a sense of watchful waiting in the last day or so; I've had a few nesting urges strike me, and while I'm having no more than my usual Braxton-Hicks contractions, it just seems like we are all waiting with baited breath. My husband even remarked that he has run out of things to do at work and is restless, waiting for the baby to make an appearance! Until last night I was completely ready to have this baby. And then, just for a moment, I panicked. I worried about how this new addition would affect my other two children; I wondered how the dynamic of our family would change; I started to be a little afraid of the labor itself. I have good natural births, as a rule, but there is grace in the moment, and I confess that I feel a little apprehensive about the coming pain. I know once things get rolling, I'll be fine, but it is hard to wait. In the meantime, I've been incredibly productive on the card making front this week! I've made about 25 cards this week, mostly working from my "idea file", so not a lot of original work, but satisfying nonetheless. (It's probably some odd creative nesting urge coming out, rather than the traditional cooking-cleaning type...)

I do have an original (gasp!) card to share this morning. I woke up in the middle of the night (no shock there) to go to the bathroom and started thinking about this week's Color Q challenge, and suddenly a card idea popped in my head. I know, I'm weird; I think about cards in the middle of the night when one should be sleeping. :) I got up this morning and pulled out my colors and went to work! The final result isn't quite like what I had in my head, but I think I like it just the same. I added a Pool Party layer to the card because it was on the flowers in the picture for the challenge and I thought the card needed a lighter color to balance the darks. I love all these green-blues this year! And I even had a few scraps of Bermuda Bay lying around just waiting to be used up. I will say that the layout definitely owes a little something something to a card I made recently at a shoebox swap, but I changed a bit here and there and tweaked to make it mine.

I will say that I think I'm officially over Taken with Teal--Island Indigo is a wonderful replacement, and I'm really digging all the in colors this year! They all work wonderfully together and I'm finding new ways to pair them with our core colors all the time! I'm so happy we get two years to play with them. So look for more Island Indigo from me in the future! (I expect I'll come back to this whole color combo again too. It is so bright and fresh and makes me think of cool weather.

Supplies:

Island Indigo, Lucky Limeade, Pool Party, Bermuda Bay, Soft Suede, Whisper White cardstock

Soft Suede ink, Pool Party, Lucky Limeade, Blush Blossom, Soft Suede markers

Lean on me stamp set

Soft suede polka dot grosgrain ribbon (retired)

Scallop circles #2 die

Circles #2 die

circle cutter (non-SU!)

Stripes, Square lattice emboss folders

In which I complain for no good reason...

I'm absolutely not going to apologize for my sporadic blogging these last months--I can't even claim to be too busy to post. I actually have quite a back log of (edited) photos of cards, and so forth. Mostly I just haven't made time for blogging, or haven't had the energy at the end of the day. I keep holding out hope that I'll be in a better place once this baby is born, but I also know that I'll be more tired from the night feedings, the birth and everything that attends having a newborn. Or perhaps not. Pregnancy and me don't particularly get along, and I always feel better after the baby is born, even though the nursing, crying, night wakings and such are very disruptive. Mostly I'm looking forward to being able to walk more than 3 blocks without pain and holding my older children on my lap without discomfort. (I'm looking forward to having a lap again, for that matter!)

In case you are wondering, I'm at 36.5 weeks, and am officially ready to have this baby. Not that anything seems to be happening right now, other than increasingly painful Braxton-Hicks contractions and a pelvis that seems to want to split in two. I (illogically) think I just might be pregnant FOREVER and I'm tired of sleeping only on my side and generally feeling like a beached whale. This is the point in pregnancy that I always feel like burning all my maternity clothes, and start looking longingly at my pre-baby wardrobe.

I shouldn't complain--I've had a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy, and until the heat wave hit in July, was feeling pretty good all the time. The extreme bladder problems that plagued me in earlier pregnancies have been largely absent this time around, and my weight gain and water retention has been reasonable. The baby is active and growing on track, and I have every reason to be grateful. Except for the fact that I'm just so uncomfortable and soporific! I just want to be able to take care of my family again without feeling like I need to lay down every five minutes, or put my feet up all the time so my left leg doesn't swell up like a balloon.

Well, okay, I'll stop griping now and show you a card or two. I've actually been pretty productive the last week, but not so original. I know that my low energy is making for low creativity, so I'm just trying to focus on recreating other people's great ideas. Sometimes you have to do the creative cardio in order to keep the muscles limber for the creative weight lifting later on.

Today's cards are actually my originals--this stamp set was one of the sets in the new catalog that went straight to the top of my wish list. I've gotta say, I love this set for little boys! And since I have two little boys, plus two nephews, I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out of it! I've got a great project in mind for this set that I'm hoping to finish before babette arrives, but if not, a good thing to make in September. The first card I made for my nephew's 3rd birthday on Monday, and the second was for one of Piglet's little friends.

We were invited to his friend's birthday party on Saturday and I thought I better make a card to go with the gift. The new mini brads are the perfect accompaniment to this set--they are just the right size for the screws on the trucks and diggers in this set. Oh, and while I wasn't going to get the Houndstooth embossing folder for a while, I saw a card that used it and it reminded me of tire tread and suddenly I knew that this emboss folder was made for this stamp set! I think the brushed silver cardstock makes for a nice accent, although tinfoil would work well too.

Congrats

One of the highlights of the Stampin' Up! year is the annual Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was unable to attend this year, but hope to go sometime in the future! It is a big event with about 3,000 demonstrators attending. There are tons of samples, swaps, make-n-takes, great ideas, and awards! Every year, Stampin' Up! announces the top 100 demonstrators in the whole company, and this year, my upline, Claire, and my sideline, Kristin, both made the top 100! Claire was number 58 and Kristin was number 20! Wow!! I'm so proud of both of them and grateful for the support and leadership they provide, so naturally, I wanted to congratulate them with special cards. These are the ones I made for them. The first one I CASEd from Krista Fenton and the other one is all me!


I love the colors on the pennant card--the original used Lucky Limeade and Island Indigo, but I haven't got any of the new incolors yet, so I swapped them out for Old Olive and Not Quite Navy, which worked fine. I'm looking forward to playing with the new colors though!!