In The Garden That's Not A Garden

We tore down the covering for our hot tub, but left the 4 corner pieces for now because they’re cemented in. A summertime ivy climbs one of the beams, and when it does I start looking forward to the time the leaves turn red.

The remnants of this year’s tomato crop. I didn’t realize tomatoes could be so tiny. And we only got one zucchini, but, man, was it tasty.

 A hardy succulent that desperately needs dusting.

Not a gardener.

Black Birds Singin' In Broad Daylight

These black birds were freakin' me out! If you listen real close, one of them sounds like a barking dog. They're also making clicking noises. Don't know what that's all about, but, man, they sure were making a racket.

And just as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone.

Cards!

I'm not big on Halloween, but for some reason I love making Halloween cards!I started with a 3” circle punch for the white cardstock and stamped the image with this adorable Halloween Witch set by Inky Antics my daughters surprised me with for my birthday. I used colored pencils, glitter pens (Wink of Stella), Glossy Accents on the image, embossed the foil background and popped up the top two layers with pop dots.

I had a tablet of the cardstock with the web edging, which was on the long side, so I cut 2 pieces from it, one for the front, the other for the inside. I was so happy it worked out so well. (There is a sheen of glitter pen where I colored, but the camera picked it up as crappy coloring, ugh.) When I make my cards I usually don’t have a set layout. I’ll pick out a background paper or an image I want to use and go from there. One step always inspires another.

They turned out heavier than I anticipated, which makes for more postage. So I have some different ones in the works that won't have any pop-dots. That's my intention, anyway, we'll see if I follow through.

This was made for a dear family friend who is a young 87 years old. She doodles ladies like these, so I thought she'd like this paper doll stamp by Prima. I fussy-cut her dress from printed cardstock, colored her hair with two shades of brown colored pencil and added sparkles here and there. She was too wide for my folded 8"x8" paper, so I brought part of her dress to the inside. I like how that turned out.

The bicycle card is an anniversary card, the one below it is for a friend who's having a serious procedure to help her heart pump while she's on the transplant list, and the last one is for someone who bought their first house.

I've been a busy crafter the past few weeks!