It's mostly a guy thing!

Many of you know that I walk the kids up to the school twice a week....Little Mr P doesn't start kindergarten till September so we walk back to the house and stay together till his Daddy gets home just after lunch.

Now that DH is retired he has learned the joy of the random conversations we have on these little walks. We have discussed house maintenance., science, snow shoveling, leaf raking, birds and their sounds, playing, sports, and a realm of other topics. We let them chose the topics and it is a blast to hear their points of view!

Little Mr P has started discussing boat motors and the difference in the speed the boat is capable of with various horsepower. He seems to have a great understanding of numbers...he can add and subtract in his head and apparently understands speed and horsepower. Yesterday, he had a long conversation with DH about how his Dad's "tinny" has a 3 horse and a ten horse motor...and that makes the boat go very slow...
He explained that his Dad's boat was just a fishing boat due to this.
He then went on to elaborate on the difference between DH's  speedboat and another's friends speedboat.  The friend has a secondary, small motor to allow him to fish (slow) or use the big motor to tow a water skier...He advised DH to purchase a secondary motor like this as the lack of such a quiet, slow motor was what was causing DH to be consistently skunked at fishing!!! He followed this up with a fishing lesson of how to play the rod in small bobbing motions to entice the fish.

Poor DH...he feels bad enough that he didn't have any luck out on the lake last year...then Little Miss C pipes up with a promise to share all the fish she catches with him, when she goes on her yearly camping/fishing trip with the Dad's this summer!!! All the Dad's their circle of friends rent cabins at a  fishing lake and they take their kids up to fish and fish some more,...and the kids love it...boys and girls.

So this card is for DH on Fathers Day...but as you may have noticed. from the sentiment, it has a twist...

This year we are having a non traditional Fathers Day. We are having our daughters and the grandkids join us at the end of June for a camping/fishing trip up at the lake  Getting the whole family together for family "do's" can be difficult. Everyone has busy lives and commitments, so when we have a date that works for all of us, we make it work! We will celebrate Fathers Day while we are all together up there.

Our girls will be giving him Fathers Day cards so I thought I would give him this one as a  Happy Retirement card. Although he has been finished with work since Oct 1, 2012...today was his first official day of retirement! I will save it and give it to him on Fathers Day...it will solve that "I'm not your father" comment he always makes to me when I hand him his card!!!
sorry about the funny yellowish  cast...I was rushing to hit the road for my mini vacation and couldn't get rid of glare...I used the flash and got the funny cast...it is actually a Kraft card.

As soon as I saw the photo downloaded to this post, I could see I needed to place some sort of  coloured mat behind the fisherman's hat. I am thinking the red or blue shades that are on the fish hooks. I think it will help the hat stand out more on the card.  While I am still up here at the lake, I can't post any new pictures of the corrected matted version , but thought I would share the card anyway!

No recipe today as I don't have the stamp or sentiment stamps up here to ID...I will update later with a recipe once I am home and have a chance to retake the photo with the new coloured mat!

Water themes

I have pulled out baskets of supplies to make a series of water themed cards.
I will be going to visit my Mum and then up to the RV so my crafting needs to be compact and well planned.

Into the box I have placed some ivory and some white card packs, mermaids and other water themed images I have already coloured, pads of matching papers, twine, die cuts of shells, fish, and other sea and water themed elements, jute, string, chalk, hair nets, coarse cheesecloth, and finally card stock  I have even packed in some ribbon of various colours and types, and a couple of charms! .

Hopefully it is enough to keep me busy and allow me to get some cards finished. I have an extra tool tote that I take...just slightly smaller than my big tote. They are the same colour so they don't look so bad when they are stored side by side in my scrap room during the winter...but in the summer the smaller tote lives at the lake. I have duplicates of all my basic tools in it so then can just leave that bag up there all summer.

All my paper supplies and embellies have to fit in an area about the size of a standard box of photocopy paper. There is room just beside that for my cutter and tool tote. All of this slides into a cupboard in the living room of the RV. It must be put away every night and dragged back out if  I wish to create again.

So I have agonized over the contents, put things in and taken them out again and finally I think I am finished with that basic part.. I just have to emboss some card stock sheets and die cut some frames and  borders, stamp my sentiments and then I am done!

Creating this way really hits home the need to have a clear mandate of what you need to accomplish. I need to know if I will be creating Birthday cards or Thank you's, Anniversary or Sympathy etc...as all sentiments need to be stamped and die cut before I leave.

I did a trail run this am and made a card up from those supplies...more just to check and see if I had everything I needed. It is a birthday card for my son in law...Hope he likes it! Sorry about the terrible photo...the Happy Birthday is stamped properly...I chalked it and now it seems the camera does not focus on it properly. No time to retake it now!

As you can see,  I tore the Kraft paper for the beach. I see on Pinterest that it is now in style to cut the paper into a series of curves and layer them...but I learned (well over a decade ago) to make sandy beaches and sand dunes by tearing paper and it does not look right to me unless I do it that way!

Recipe:
Card base and envelope from my stash (5 1/2x5 1/2 square)
Cardstock -Kkraft from my stash  (snippet)
DP - cloud paper was a snippet from my stash, ID strip long gone
Die cuts - Palm tree, seagull and shells from my stash (originally K and Co.)
Stamp - Sentiment Inkadinkado 130609
Chalk - Stampin' Up brown  -

I am entering this card in the following challenges
1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets
2. Crafty Sentiments - Something Fishy
3. Papertake Weekly - anything goes
4. Sister Act - always anything goes
5. Gingerloft Challenge - Creatures of the Sea (my starfish)

WOYWW 209 ATC's the unveiling

It is time again to join Julia over at Stamping Ground for another week of WOYWW. Come peer into the heady world of just what is on creative desks...desks of crafters all around the globe!
Last week was so much fun. So much energy, and camaraderieship was evident as I worked my way through the blog roll. I tried very hard to visit every desk...but only got around to 125 blogs!  I had some difficulty with a couple of blogs who didn't allow me to leave a comment unless I signed up to be in someones circles.

If I missed you I am sorry...it took all week to visit who I did manage to get to. I saw so many fabulous ATC's. I learned that special stamps exist to record the deets (who knew!) and learned that some people (you know who you are)  created very lovely holders to protect their ATC's in the mail,.and then made their envelopes into works of art as well!

Now we have 12 months to plan our next ones. I sent off my very first ATC's...I had never taken part previously as I was up at the lake with no internet last year.
I was so lucky the dates worked for me this year and I learned a lot about what to do next time and also what not to do!!!. I think mine were a little too contrived and would like to try something more "Arty" next year! I know it will be fun to plan them ahead!

I made eleven ATC's in all. I had two themes and within each theme the ATC's were quite similar..with a few slight differences. Alas, I did not take a pictures of them all laid out! Silly me, I popped them into their envelops and mailed them off. tout suite! I have one of each theme that I managed to remember to photograph...perhaps some people I sent to may take a picture of what they received.

I managed to make my ATC's with scraps of old scrapbooking projects and stash I alrady owned! That made me happy:)

My first smaller theme was WOYWW4 Creativity Blooms. I made 4. Here is a sample.. I stamped a flower on the back of the teensy envelope.

I learned a couple of things as I made the bloom series
1. Do any finely detailed stamping  on your background before embossing it!
2. Large stamped words look better stamped over the embossing.
3. After embossing the backgrounds get a bit crooked...they look a bit askew.
4. Smooshing and swirly those small pieces of paper through TH Distress stains make your finger very mucky!
5. Smooshing and swirling makes the back of the ATC backrounds mucky!
6. Cutting another ATC and glueing the two layers together gives a nice clean back.
7. Inking the edges of the glued layers helps hide the join line of the layers.
8. Investing in some thin surgical type rubber gloves would be a wise investment.
9. Investing in an ATC details stamp would be a lovely luxury but downloading a free version and running the backs  through the printer BEFORE you glue them together would be a good alternative.

I am entering the Bloom Series ATC in the following challenges
1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets.
2. Papertake Weekly - Anything goes
3. Kraft Journal - Make it Monday ; Clean and Simple - must use kraft


My second theme was WOYWW Spans Sea to Sea. There were different types of seahorses used on these...There were a couple of really pretty silver delicate looking ones...yep, you guessed it...they were the ones that escaped B4 I thought to take the camera out.
Instead, I have this sample...

On this series, I was reminded of something I already knew...that often Canadians, and most often a certain lady with concussion related problems, take instructions very literally. Julia mentioned that if you could work WOYWW4 into your card in some way, that would be great.
 I think I kind of took away from my ATC's by hand writing this onto the pattern of the embossing folder... I was not happy with the look so gave my ATC's a liberal dose of sparkly shimmer spray to try and tone it down.
I finished inking and spraying and realized that I was just stuck with it on them and needed to just live with it.
I turned them over and started drawing the lines for the details...then it hit me...I didn't need to draw it on the front as it was in the deets. Duh!

Hope you enjoyed this little peek into my foray with ATC.s. I really liked making them and am planning next years already!!!

P.S.  I will be away 2 weeks visiting my Mum and then up to the lake. Won't be able to open my mail or access my post for 2 weeks so will show the ATC's that I receive on June 19th.. Just don't want anyone to think I am being rude in not thanking you for so long...

I am entering these Sea inspired ATC's in the following challenges:
1. Pixies Crafty Workshop - must use snippets...my ATC backs and fronts as well as the little pieces of kraft cardstock  were all  made from my snippetts drawers.Hope they qualify Di...I am trying for that lucious water droplets so need all the entries I can muster this busy week!
2. Crafty Sentiments Designs - Something fishy
3. Gingerloft Challenge - Critters of the Sea
4. Papertake Weekly - Aything goes