Long time, no post...

I've been slackin' on my bloggin', but that's because I've been organizin'. I have a "stamp closet" in my stamp room and I think the contents had been spontaneously multiplying when the door was closed. It was to the point that I couldn't find what I was looking for, although I had a general idea of where everything was. My stamp sets had no room in the closet and had migrated to a bookshelf in my stamp room. I would have taken "before" pictures, but the chaos actually looked organized. Everything was stored in neatly labeled boxes, but there was just TONS of STUFF... stuff I'll never use and hadn't thought about using in a year or more. I have downsized considerably and will be having a sale on Saturday, May 3rd. I've already notified all my fellow stamp addicts, and I can envision this turning into a stamp party quick, fast, and in a hurry. I am TOTALLY not against a stamp party, so come on over!!

Our little canine visitor has moved on. I absolutely didn't want to take him to a shelter, but we wound up taking him to a local no-kill shelter and making a donation to help with micro-chipping and neutering. He was just the sweetest little guy, but he was a nervous pee-er and you never knew which direction it was going to go. We have fairly new carpet and furniture so we tried putting him in the kitchen with a baby gate. The little guy was quite a jumper, though, and could bound over the baby gate in one leap. We put him outside, but he just cried to come in and tried to dig out under the fence. We never got any calls from anyone trying to claim him and couldn't seem to find anyone who wanted a loving, nervous, peeing, leaping, digging Dachshund. Ernie had had enough by the time the little guy left, too. He had a great time playing for the first 24-48 hours and then the "new" wore off. Ernie realized someone else was begging for my attention and he just wasn't going to have it. We're confident that he'll find a new home soon, if he hasn't already. The shelter was sure he'd be adopted quickly based on his size and age and the fact that he was so stinkin' cute.

I have some more big news... MY SEWING MACHINE IS HERE!!!! I had ordered the Singer Futura CE-250 sewing and embroidery machine through JoAnn's (it was out of stock when I went to buy it) and it arrived today! Curtis just doesn't understand my excitement, so if any of you would care to jump up and down while screaming and embarrass yourself with me, I would really appreciate it! I really, really want to take it out of the box and play, but I have to finish some other projects that I had already started. Like reorganizing my stamp closet and getting everything ready to sell. Hopefully, I'll find some time this weekend to get it set up and play around a little.

This card is a result of cleaning out the stamp closet. I had stacked all my patterned paper up next to a stack of "traitor" (that's non-Stampin' Up!) card stock and the floral piece happened to be lying on top of a piece of brown. I kept looking at that paper and saying to myself, "Self... that floral paper looks splendiferous on that brown cardstock and it kind of reminds me of the Doodle stamp sets". I used the "traitor" patterned paper with Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery, and Blush Blossom card stock. The Blush Blossom was supposed to be cut 1/4" larger than the Certainly Celery piece all the way around, but I was on the phone with my sister-in-law and cut it the wrong size. It still worked and looks quite nice, if you ask me. I stamped the corner swirl stamp from "Doodle This" on the Certainly Celerly panel in Certainly Celery classic ink. The flower was made by stamping Ruby Red card stock with Whisper White craft ink and heat embossing it with detail white embossing powder. I stamped the flower again on Blush Blossom cardstock using Ruby Red classic ink. I used my glue pen to add Dazzling Diamonds to that piece, which you can't see very well in the photo. I stamped the flower again on Certainly Celery card stock and just cut three petals out to use as leaves. The stamped image is on the back side, so I just stamped it to have the shape to cut around. The center of the flower is a "Build A Brad". I used the 1/2" circle punch on Certainly Celery cardstock and then added dots with my Signo white gel pen. Once that dried, I added the acrylic topper on the brad. The flower was added to the front of the card using Stampin' Dimensionals.

Well, I guess that's about all I have to say right now. Hope you're having a fabulous week! Toodles!