Happy 4th of July!!

I hope that everyone is having a great 4th of July! We are having a great time around Chateau du Williams today. I took Little Miss A to the parade as promised and she had a blast. It is hard to tell from the blank expression on her face in this picture, but really, she is having fun on the inside...lol! I don't know if you can see the red, white, and blue feather boa that I am holding, but it ended up on the crossbar of my bike to help give it that extra "flare".




Here is a happier looking child! We are all lined up and waiting for the parade to get started and some other kids in the line up gave her some candy. This is why she can now cheese it up for the camera, she is getting her sugar rush going. I am just grateful that we got to line up in the shade, lest her knees get all bendy, and her head get all melty. The most funny part was, after the parade (that I did all the pedalling in) she told me that she needed to come home and get a bath because her "...hair got a little sweaty in the back." Oh yes, I know how riding in the trailer while mommy dodges 5 year-olds trying to score some candy in the parade can make your hair "sweaty in the back". My hair was definitely "sweaty in the back" as well. And then I still had to get us home...

So, once I got home, here is what I worked on in between cooking:

This little guy is another one of those extra cute Stampendous Bees....Watermelon Bee! I stamped him on GP white and colored him in with Copics. The patterned paper is from that huge My Mind's Eye pack I got last week. I embossed over it with Hologram Highlights. I think I might have actually cried when that EP retired from Stampin' Up awhile back. The main body of the card is done with Blue Bayou, and the mats are Real Red and Soft Sky. The little sunshine and the sentiment were from a pack of $1 stamps from Michaels. Here are the close ups of the sentiment as well as some of the stars. They are from the "Stars and Swirls" set that is retired SU as well. It is kind of hard to see on these pictures, but I did some blending with my colorless blender pen to give the watermelon some actual melon looking shading. I think I am going to go back and add some stickles to the bee's antennae as well.























Well, it is time to go man the grill. The DH is working today and hopefully will be home soon to enjoy a tasty burger, some pasta salad, cold watermelon and brownies to boot! I hope that everyone has a fun, safe celebration today. Until next time, Happy Stamping!

Kim

First, a Thank you...

...to Lickety Split Scrapbooks! I entered their Friday the 13th contest and emailed some information about them to 13 of my friends, and in return I won this:

Which, when I opened, was filled with this:

So now I have to get to working on some scrapbook pages or cards using all this fun stuff. I already have an autumn themed card in mind for those precious leaves, and the set of colored metal tags with brads is calling to me as well. Thanks again to the folks at Lickety Split for the great gift!

Now, I cannot resist a really cute image, and this little Biker Bee from Stampendous qualifies as super cute in my book. I found this little guy

at the Hobby Lobby and he basically jumped into my basket (along with that My Mind's Eye paper that is behind him), and since they were both on sale I figured I would be completely remiss if I didn't bring him and the paper home with me. I have to say, this is my very first square card and I love how it turned out! I took a cue from Faith Hofrichter (aka Markie's Mom) and copied her style of dotting up the card. She does really neat stuff and is worth checking out!

So, here are the quick and easy details on the card. I cut my card at 5 1/4" square (so that is 5 1/4" x 10 1/2" for my girls who don't like to do the math....lol!) so it would fit in the square envelopes from SU! The mat piece is from My Mind's Eye and I sponged the edges of it with Blue Bayou ink. The bee was stamped using Staz-On and then colored in with Copic markers as well as the Yo-Yo Yellow from SU!, since I wanted to get a bright yellow bee. I stamped the "Celebrate" in Blue Bayou, then offset the stamp and stamped it again with Soft Sky. Now, you can use a stamp-a-ma-jig for this, but I eyeballed it and it turned out pretty good. I added some 1/4" red grosgrain ribbon behind the bee mats, along with the words that were stamped and then cut out using the word window punch. The upper bee and mat was put on dimensionals to pop it up a bit and allow for the ribbon and words underneath it.

I made all those cute little white dots using a Uni-ball White Signo Gel Pen. This is where the grid paper comes in handy, y'all! I just lined up a side at the bottom of my grid, making sure that the two ends of the paper had a grid mark where I wanted, then started dotting away.

In total, I made 3 of these, one for my mom, one for my father-in-law, and one for....well, I don't know who is getting the last one! I want to keep it for me but then again I want to share it with someone else as well. We'll just have to see who is getting it...lol! That's right, fight amongst yourselves! (j/k....you know I would never condone that!)

I hope everyone has a great week and a Happy 4th of July! Be safe, and until next time, Happy Stamping!

Kim