Inside CHA

This was right as you walk inside:

entry way filling up as people are wanting to get in

getting ready to watch a bunch break out in a dance routine

I tried uploading the video and it took too long. I will see if Aaron can help me upload it to YouTube.

Tombow Booth

GORGEOUS box my friend Melissa made

tomorrow I will share some pics from other booths that I took

What a Difference

I am so glad I was able to go to CHA last weekend, because THIS would have kept me from getting to the airport. Plus it is still snowing, though lightly.

Last week however, it was 44*, clear and sunny and I headed to an even sunnier CA.

Here are a few pics from CHA...(you can click on any of them for a larger view)

Where I stayed and pics around the hotel:



then I thought it was weird that all the fire hydrants were yellow

here is the CHA building I spent the majority of my time

stop by tomorrow and I will share photos from the inside of this bldg.



BFB A Sound Among the Trees

click on the picture above to read the first chapter

• Author's Web Site
• http://twitter.com/#!/SusanMeissner
• More Info
• Read Chapter One
• Author Bio

A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner was a great read! The setting is in a Southern home that withstood the Civil War. 150 years later the home seems haunted by all that took place there.

Marielle Bishop marries into a family that has ties to the home leaving her beloved Arizona desert to become wife and step mother. She is led to believe the house is haunted and it is up to her to set the record straight.

Author Meissner does a fantastic job of writing that keeps you wanting to read to the end to see what really happens. I love this book because you cannot guess the ending.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

I'm Home

I got home from CHA last nite and went right to bed. Ü I will have to get my pics sorted thru to share with you over the next few days. Looks like I just got home in time as we are to have a blizzard tomorrow!

I had a great time and got to FINALLY meet my "sister" Melissa after 12 years! I never thought we'd be able to meet this side of heaven. We didn't get to spend enough time together, but it was great to finally meet her in person.

You Rock!

Can you believe it is already the last week of January? Time is flying fast already this year. When you read this I will be in Anaheim, CA for CHA. I am so excited to be there and know I will have lots of fun goodies to share with you when I get back.

But to tide you over until then, we are finishing our Pantone colors of the year this month on Tombow with Blue Iris. (color of the year for 2008) I am not a huge royal blue color fan, so this was a bit more of a challenge for me.

I made a cover for a package of candy. I wanted to show you a couple of fun things that you could do with Tombow’s Dual Brush Pens. I used #555 to not only color the ink onto the stamp ( by Our Craft Lounge's Every Heart Beats), but also in an air art gun to splatter the ink around the edges.

Do you see how gradual the design fades? That is from first coloring onto the stamp with the marker, then “huffing” on the ink and stamping, huff again and stamp, and repeat until the ink is completely faded. I love to use this technique with markers on stamps and hope you will want to give it a try as well.

I used Mono Adhesive Permanent to attach the sentiment and Foam Tabs to pop up the heart.

Set Your Sails

another Inky Antics card with lots of pencil coloring and Gamsol. Ü

Discover Treasure

images by Inky Antics

OCL 101 Zig Zag

A clean and simple card. These are the hardest for me to create, but I really like how this one turned out.

I used Our Craft Lounge's Every Heart Beat to create this card. I am loving these chevron images.

Birthdays are Best

Inky Antics

Yee Haw!

Yee Haw!! I'm going to CHA in 2 weeks and I've been busy creating for the classes I will be teaching. Can't show you anything yet, but here is a card I made for Inky Antics CHA a couple of years ago. Never then would I have imagined how soon I would really get to go!

Nerd at Heart

As soon as I saw this stamp set I knew I would make something with Nerd candy.

I used Our Craft Lounge's Love Potion set. this set has so many wonderful images for Valentine's cards and projects.

See the "brads" on the end? They aren't brads!

they are this cool product that I got a sample of at CHA by Craftworkcards.

They are these little dots that are shaped like a brad and you can color them!! How cool is that?! So you don't have to have a bunch of brads in colors that don't always match your projects, but can color these to match. You can get them in colors, but I chose a pkg that I could color. I used Tombow's Dual Brush Pen to color.

My Heart Skips

What did you all think of the new Pantone color of the year last week shown on Tombow's blog? I love the tangerine color. This week we have another color challenge that was Pantone's color of the year 2011...Honeysuckle. This color matches Tombow's Dual Brush Pen 743 (hot pink).

With Valentine's Day sneaking up on us, I thought this color would be perfect for a candy box. I found this tutorial here. The tutorial shows to use Hershey Nuggets, but I had some raspberry Ghiradelli's on hand and they fit perfectly! I can get 2 into each little matchbox. The matchboxes were cut with SU!'s die that my friend had and I cut a bunch of them over a year ago. They are now coming in handy as I plan to make more of these boxes for friends and family.

One of the wonderful things about markers and rubberstamps is that the markers are less expensive and you can have so many more colors. I colored Our Craft Lounge's new Every Heart Beat stamp set (the zig zag image) with the 743 Dual Brush Pen and stamped it on a label that also was on the die that I cut. I then stamped the sentiment with black ink.

I used Mono Adhesive Power Bond to put the whole box together. I prefer using a stronger adhesive for projects like this.

Full Quiver

The Bible talks about having a full quiver and Bruce's g'ma left behind a wonderful legacy to 7 children (and their spouses), 20 grandchildren (and their spouses, the 20 grandchildren all below), 26 great grandchildren (some with spouses) and 7 great great grandchildren! How awesome is that?! I told my (2) boys that they needed to have 10 kids each. LOL!!