Texas Tuesday Challenge

"Texas Our Texas", our State Song. I used Zing embossing powder to bring out the lovely details in this Deadbeat Designs stamp, then added Distress Inks in various colors to blend in the background. Added a bit of Signo Gell White ink to the star to make it stand out a bit. Hope y'all enjoy looking at my card.

Y'all get ready for some rainy weather the next few days. It will be a good time to stay indoors and do crafty things. Hermine is on her way, and we are hoping she moves through quickly and doesn't do too much damage, although the NWS says we will be under a flash flood watch beginning later tonight and to expect 3-5 inches of rain over the next couple of days. That should bring the lakes up and make all the creeks run. Take care out there if you have to get out in the weather.

Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day Weekend! Back to the grind tomorrow.

It's Texas, It's Summer, It's HOT!

The weather has tempted us a few times in the last week.  There was a touch of fall in the early morning air.  Just a tiny hint of things to come.  But now we seem to be back to our regular summer weather patterns with highs in the 90's.  We have 93.5 on the thermometer right now. At least it's not 106 like we had a couple of weeks ago.  Is anyone interested in what heat can do to canned sodas?  A couple of Friday's ago, a friend of mine ran across a special on diet sodas at the local store and bought 4 12-packs. She took 3 of them in the house and left one in her car to bring to work the following Monday. It was one of those weekends where we had 100+ temperatures both days. Too hot to go anywhere, so the car sat in the driveway for 2 days in the hot sun.  When she next went to her car to come to work she found that several of the cans in the 12-pack had ruptured.  The ones that didn't had both ends puffed up from the pressure. Not a good thing to find diet Dr. Pepper all over the interior of the car when you need to leave for work.  We estimated that the temperature inside the car probably got to around 180 degrees.  It's no wonder we hear of tragedies every summer of chilcren and pets left in hot cars.  If the heat can do this to a canned soda, imagine what it does to a living, breathing being.  Evverybody be careful out there!

Texas Tuesday - 08/17/2010

Welcome! This is my first post for the Texas Tuesday Challenge. I practiced several techniques before I actually chose a final design to share with you.

When I saw the Lady Bird Johnson quote stamp on the Deadbeat website, I knew I had to have it. I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Johnson once and she was a true Texas lady. My DH has even more connection with her. He worked at a local grocery store when he was a teenager and met Mrs. Johnson when she shopped there. Well, they didn't exactly "shop". Mrs. Johnson and her beloved kitchen foreman at the LBJ Ranch would bring in their monthly list and store employees would fill the order while she waited for it and the foreman oversaw the preparation of their prime beef. Each time she was most gracious to each and every employee she encountered and became friends with quite a few including the DH. A few years back, the DH was playing in a Fredericksburg Polka Band and they were invited to play at the Christmas tree lighting at the Visitor's Center for the LBJ ranch. The Johnson family always turns out for this event. The DH was able to have a good visit with Mrs. Johnson. They talked about old-time Austin and how they both missed it.

Enough reminiscing for now...on to my card. The card base is from my stash of paper. I think it is an S-U color. I used Neenah classic white for the mat. Stamped the flowers with a Snow White Adirondack dabber, then grunged it up with several colors of Distress Ink using foam blending pads. Finally, stamped the quote in Jet Black Archival Ink. I almost gussied it up with some Glimmer Mist, but decided against that. I decided I wanted to stick with the muted tones.

Hope you like the card. Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Summer!

No picture to see today, but I did find this cool quote on a FB page:

Thought for the day:

The Wizard of Oz is now 71 years old. Today, if Dorothy were to encounter men with no brains, no hearts, and most of all no courage, she wouldn't be in Oz. She'd be in Congress.

AMuseAPalooza Pajama Party

Last night was the Pajama Party on the AMuse Lounge. Such fun to stamp and chat. Our hostesses did a fab job of providing 4 great summer-themed challenges. The first one was to create a card inspired by the word "HOT"! I decided on a BBQ card. Here it is. That little BBQ pit is so stinkin' cute!


The second challenge was a beach party card! I decided to use the “BEACH” sign that was in last summer’s stamp release and changed it to “PARTY”. Added the little cabana and a sunny sky to complete the scene.


Challenge #3 was a water-themed card. I again chose a beach scene. The little BEACH sign points the way. I had to have some surfboards to and a fence to stand them against. The wood for the signpost and the fence were done with the Modern Wood Block stamp and I trimmed pieces to make the parts. The surfboards were done with black embossing power first, then colored with PearlEx paints to make them sparkly.


The 4th challenge was summer food. When I was a kid we had an A&W Rootbeer stand near our home. It was always a treat to go there on a hot summer evening and have a root beer float. Although those long ago floats came in frosty mugs, the Milkshake stamp was as close as I could get in my stash of stamps.


These online events are always so much fun. It's the fastest 2 hours to spend stamping and online chatting. As usual I spent more time watching the chatting than I did stamping so I had to do the cards later. I guess I'm not much of a multi-tasker.

Over on the Amuse blog, the sneak peeks of the newest release are on. The stamps are for Halloween and Christmas and as usual they are SOOOOO CUTE! Check them out if you have time.

Rock Star Sighting

Music, Music, Music! From Rock 'n' roll to country, to John Phillup Sousa, he's tunin' up for the start of Aquapalooza.

Glenda's Challenge

This week, Glenda's blog challenge (http://papersscissorsrocks.blogspot.com) is to create a card with a free-hand element. This sounded like fun, so I decided to play along. It's way too early for summer, but we hit 91 here today. The heat made me want a nice lemonade. I had a House Mouse stamp on hand with cute little Mudpie relaxing in a glass of lemonade, so that's what I used for the card front. Along with the H-M stamp, I chose an AMuse sentiment, and AMuse paper for the base card. The striped matte is from my scrap box. Inside the card is another AMuse sentiment - "sending you sunshine". I added a little AMuse sheer polka dot ribbon just because I could. The free-hand element is the faux stitching around the edge of the die cut done with a black Copic Multiliner. This was a nice challenge because it let me practice with my Copics. Thanks, Glenda, for another super challenge idea!