Look Ma, No Coloring OR Stamping!

...HAHAHAHA! You've got to cut me some slack...if this were 'Fixing Dinner' on the Food Network, Thursdays are mine and The Mister's "Fright Night."

I was pretty much all over the place yesterday with work and appointments and a mad rush home to get the house clean-looking (notice how I didn't say CLEAN...*LOL*...just clean-looking!) in time for choir practice. Everytime I think that okay, after this one thing, things will die down...something else happens to replace whatever it is that's just finishing! I'm trying not to think of how full my plate already is and how much MORE things are being added to it to avoid going crazy and just dropping off the face of the earth again (I'm NOT going to, Marti!*LOL*)

Even though things were hectic, I snuck away from Chewy and The Mister during after-practice cleanup to go play in my scraproom - which has reached DANGEROUSLY high levels of mess...so high, it has never been recorded...ever. I have to put things on my lap while I'm working on them to avoid losing them in the craptastic pile of stuff in front of me!

Apparently I was suffering a mojo meltdown because I couldn't really find anything that was turning out the way that I wanted to. Ran out of really nice cardstock, so I tried printing on a lesser quality one and found that my COPICs were bleeding all over the place and the image was already so small that I couldn't even make adjustments to compensate for the bleeding. I tried colouring with Prismas, but I couldn't find my blending stumps in all the mounds of stuff and my watercolor pencils were in the other room and far be it for me to get up to go get them now that I was already sitting and comfy! Okay, so I figured there'd be no coloring and I'd pretty much used all the stamps that would look good with the no-coloring techniques that I had been playing around with this week. So last resort, there'd be no stamping either!

I poked around my scrap stash and underneath layers of...I wanna say crap...I saw cute little faces staring up at me. I stared at them and they stared back...so I stared some more and an idea started forming while we were having our staring competition. I took out the little cuties and my chalks (whom I've been getting along with very well lately!) and got down to business. It always takes a million times longer for an idea to come together, but it only took a few minutes to actually get this card together...

C'mon say it with me, "Awwww!" (I didn't hear you say it, Marti...HAHAHAHA...). Thank you for those who joined me in my "awww-ing". I don't care how bad it sounds, but I am LOVING how this card turned out. As soon as I saw those cute little babies staring up at me (from their holographic backgrounds - ew! I got rid of those as soon as they were out of the packaging!) I knew that I wanted to go for a baby-themed card. With what feels like EVERYONE in my family being pregnant and about to explode, there is definitely going to be a need for some baby-looking cards! Because there were four specific animals I wanted to use on my card, I chose to have it be non-gender specific and I resorted to the four basic baby colours. Baby pink, baby blue, baby yellow and baby green. If I had one more animal, there'd be a baby purple too, but the alligator in the sticker set was a lot longer than the rest, so he would have thrown off my symmetry. Sorry to say he was booted...your time will come, my little alligator friend...your time will come...

Picked out four sponges (in this case, I used makeup sponges. A pack of bajillion for a dollar at the dollar store, you can't go wrong there!) and loaded each up with my chalk colour choices and started circling away on my cardstock. I randomly circled each colour and then went back and filled out the blank spots with the other colours until I had a nice soft tye-dyed effect. Pop-dotted my little buddies on their own chalk-edged mats and voila!

I ran out of sheer white ribbon and the only thing I had that was close was a white ribbon with some silver threading and the white was just SO white it was contrasting hideously with the background, so I did my next favourite thing to with ink pads besides applying them to stamps. I laid out my ribbon and started swiping with coordinating Studio G ink pads!

The Studio G ink pads were PERFECT for this project as the ink on them is a bit chalk-y-like, so the colours definitely worked well on the ribbon. So up there, you can see the white WHITE of the ribbon as it originally was, and with those four little pads, turned it into that rainbow looking swirl of ribbon. I applied the ribbon to the card using the "cheater" method (I also had to finish the inside of the card to cover up all the ribbon taping I did to the inside of the card) and I was done! I considered adding more to it, but I figured since I was doing the no colouring, no stamping technique today, I should also apply the no overdoing of the embellishing technique as well! I did take my Glossy Accents and Stickles and highlighted a few things on my little cuties, otherwise, I reined myself back in to keep the card oh-so-soft and so simple!

Thanks for stopping by today! I know you're probably ready for the weekend about as much as I am (and believe me, I've been ready since last Monday!) Even more fun things to look forward to on this particular weekend as I will be celebrating my first blogaversary this Sunday, March 1st! I hope you'll be able to stop by and celebrate with me! Stay tuned tomorrow for the giveaway roundup of pictures!

MATERIALS
All hyperlinked products and materials are from Pez-a-Doodle Designs

Stamp: Zip, zilch, zero, NADA!
Ink: Studio G
Paper: Plain ol' white cardstock
Embellishments: 3D stickers, ribbon, Glossy Accents
Tools: Chalk, sponge applicators, pop dots

CURRENT MOOD: TIRED CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: AFRICA

News!

...I love surprises! Especially when I don't know there's a surprise to be surprised with.

The Mister and I went over to visit the parents yesterday and my brother and sister-in-law were there for a visit. Which I kind of found odd as they don't normally visit too often since they are an hour out of town.

Anyways, my sister-in-law said that she had a picture for me, and I just assumed that it was from their wedding as they had just got their wedding pictures recently. I grabbed the picture and what did I see???

A little sonogram of a little bean that will turn into my new niece or nephew!

Oh YAY! This will be their first baby (they were pregnant more than a few months ago, but the pregnancy didn't hold). This time they waited three months to tell us, so she's already three months along!

I'm so excited!

Of course with this news, everyone's turning to me asking when it will be my turn. Even though The Mister and I have only been married about six months.

Bwahahahaha, give us a little bit more time! I want to buy more paper and carts and stamps before I switch my sights to diapers and baby outfits, etc!

But now, I have someone to give the baby cards I've been making! And now there's baby showers to look forward to!

I can't wait to be an auntie!

P.S. I hope I get something in the mail today!

CURRENT MOOD: CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Stick With You - Pussycat Dolls