Paige aka Cow Doggie

Whoa!!!  I almost forgot I had to get this layout posted so I could enter it in Imaginisce's Monthly Challenge for July!  I've had this layout done for a week!

Pictured is my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Paige with my best friend and husband Larry.  We use the mule to check on the cattle and Paige is my constant companion when I'm out and about on the ranch.  This day Larry and I would be checking on the cattle and you can just see her head poking over the top watching Mommy take the picture.  She seems to be saying, 'Hurry Mommy!  Time to be Cow Doggie!'

The 4x6 cut-out's on the B side of Doggie Mail Paper was perfect to use to display the photo of Larry and Paige.  The dotted frame to be a journaling spot begged to be stitched in outline stitch to form the frame.  Some Washi Tape from the Love You More Collection to make it all look like it was just taped to the page.   I just couldn't resist using the Imaginisce stamps from the Good Dog line And their Love stamp from a couple of years ago   The Dog House was painted using Zig Brushables to create my water colors.  I couldn't resist using pink and green for Paige. For the collar and the word "Love" I took some mixed media paper and sprayed it with Tattered Angels Candy Apple Red Glimmer Mist.  Once dried I stamped the images and cut them out.  The red matches but the glimmer has a tendency to turn color on me when I photograph the layout.   For this month Imaginisce had only the sketch with no other added rules other then you had to use Imaginise product.  I love this sketch!

To make this even better challenge I incorporated the Pet Challenge at A Cherry on Top.  I had to use a quote and chose the first Stanza of Elvis Presley's song 'A Dog's Life' in my journaling.

Great fun with this layout, thank you Imaginisce!!!  Love your monthly sketch and challenge!  And thank you to Sher who hosts the Pet Challenge each month!

Odds and Ends

I thought I would just share a few thoughts and fun things going on today along with a little ranching layout.

First up is over at A Cherry On Top.  There is a huge amount of fun going on in the message board with loads of Points being able to be earned this week!  It is more like a week long mini crop while not a crop as the board celebrates CHA Summer 2013 in Vegas.  I was given a huge amount of points to share along the way this week and saving a few for next week.  So stop by gather some points towards your next purchase from ACOT and enjoy all the activity!

So what are a few of my pics for the new lines coming out:

From Imaginisce:

From Bo Bunny Kraft especially the envelopes:

From Elle's Studio Penelope:

And there are so many more I could share!!!

I found this morning Imaginisce announced their sale to American Crafts via their blog.  My hope that American Crafts will keep the original owners to design their products!

Looking back I realized I never posted my example for the 4x4 Challenge at A Cherry On Top!  I love hosting this challenge, and supplying each month's example.

This is EZ Sabre aka Murphy Dude!  Murphy in temperment is exactly what a Lowline is suppose to be.  He quickly worked his way into my heart.  His half blood heifers grace our pastures and are now giving us their son's and daughters.

What was undoubtedly the most favorite thing I enjoyed about this layout was using a stencil and Art Anthology's wonderful dimensional paint.  Here's what it looks like!

What grand fun to finally have three bottles in my stash and one of the paint sticks!

Until next time!

Sketch 268 - Nuts About Sketches!

Sketches are my go to inspiration. Sometimes it is multiple sketches which inspire me sometimes a single one.  I just loved this week's sketch and decided on something really simple to represent my best friend!  

Paige is so adorable, loyal and always my constant companion.  She makes my heart warm and my face light up!  LOL....she's even had Daddy (Larry) smitten like I've never seen him smitten over a dog before.  I heart Cavalier King Charles Spaniels!

And here is the sketch!

Imaginisce Good Dog line was absolutely perfect for these photos!

Hop on over to Nuts About Sketches and find that special sketch(es) to inspire you!

Bloom & Grow

It's just after 11:00 pm and although I finished my layout at 4:00pm I found my camera dead.  I also had to get to Home Depot because I didn't have a single pot at the house small enough to plant my Money Tree which arrived from QVC today.  It wasn't suppose to arrive until May 1st.  Found not a drop of potting soil either.  I guess all of my plant pots over the last four and a half years made it to the ranch or Lynn asked for them along the way.  LOL....and never as a scrapper let your camera battery go dead!

Well all is solved, the roots currently soaking on the Money Tree.  Beautiful pot Larry picked out and correct soil purchased along with rocks so I can plant it in a mounded and not loose the soil when watered.  Camera battery charged and the layout to an amazing Challenge is uploaded.  Once the post is done I still have to plant my tree, pack some scrapping goodness to scrap this weekend at the ranch. and pack my bag.

And I was relieved to find I still have a little over two hours to post my layout to Imaginisce Blog's amazing challenge this month!  This layout was so much fun and with one of the requirements of using Twine I was all in!  Photos were taken in 2009 at the ranch along the county road we live on.  The bluebonnets are always amazing and they are still in bloom.  With the cold temps the wildflowers were late arriving by two weeks so we will enjoy them well into May this year.  The cold weather just doesn't want to break.  I'm hoping for cool weather right up into June.  Means we get more rain at the ranch and maybe a cooler summer this year.

Thank you Imaginisce for a great sketch this month!  I loved working on this layout!

Products used from Imaginisce Berrylicious, Hippty Hop, Love You More and Soul Sisters.  Included some Ink from Tim Holtz to ink the sides of the photo, Twine from The Twinery and Kaiser Kraft Pearls to make my flowers and leaves, Gesso to to tone down the base paper.  My favorite part of the layout is a little bunny is peeking out of the left photo!  We have some cottontails who have been living in the yard for about eight months now.  We see one or two of them early in the evening just before sunset.  I have yet to have my camera with me.  Need my telephoto to catch most of the shots I would have had if I had had my camera.  We have an abundance of both cottontails and the biggest jack rabbits I have ever seen anyway at the ranch.  The jack rabbits will push 8-10 lbs. and stand as tall as a Checkered Giant Rabbit.

See you again in the morning!

Contentment!

I definitely have been in a progressive state of of MIA!  That terrible process of thinking I need to blog today....I'll do it tomorrow thing going on.  So today as it's 11:30pm CST on the 23rd and I'm doing at least one post for early tomorrow morning.  I have so much I wish to share in one post!

Some wonderful things going on in various places I visit!  Imaginisce and The Twinery have teamed up this week on their blogs to showcase some awesome projects their design teams have created via a blog hop!  Two great prizes to be awarded so definitely check this Blog Hop out.

Yesterday (4/23/12) Prima launched a new Ustream video 1+1 with Frank and Liz doing a mixed media album cover which I viewed.  Totally Awesome and you just have to watch!  I have more ideas in my mind for a mixed media mini album I'll be making for my mother this summer for her birthday in November.  Not to worry my mother is terrible at navigating the web and has no idea I blog or even what a blog is.  Thank you Frank & Liz!

I have been more scrappy though since my last post and wanted to share with you one of my new favorite layout with Belle as the subject!  I used my Paper Bakery Kit from March and just fell head over heals with the layout when I was done.  I also used Nuts About Sketches # 260 to do the layout.

I just love March's Kit!  It's colorful fun and so inspiring.  Unfortunately it has sold out.  Paper Bakery teamed up one week in March with Elle's Studio via their blogs and had some pure awesomeness going on.  This month's kit has also sold out!  If you hop over to take a look be sure to find the Exclusive Elle's Studio Flairs Sarah Designed and I used one this layout!  They are so much fun!

I had one of those moments where I didn't attach the photo of this layout to my email....dumb I know....and it's not on the Nuts About Sketches blog.  I was so busy I didn't go back and check my email either until after the layouts were posted to the blog!  Honestly, it started to thunder and the computers at the ranch and my scrapbook room are in the same separate building.  I hate being outside when a storm is coming in as I've almost been struck twice in the past.  That hair raising thing is a terrible  feeling!  So I was hurrying to move to the house.

Until next time and I hope it's a much shorter time period between posts enjoy your day to it's fullest!

Cloud Gazing

Whoop two posts in one day!!!  This one is for this month's Imaginisce Blog's Monthly Challenge!  I am so excited about this one!  No red!  Tough to do in the month of love, but hey when your following the rules it's easy!

1. Create a layout/card, etc using the sketch above as your inspiration.

2. Use THREE different patterned papers.

3.  NO RED is allowed on your project.

4.  Theme: LOVE

5.  Remember you must use at least 75% Imaginisce product on your creations.

Here's the sketch!

With a 5x7 photo to scrap I dropped it down so I could build my own thunderstorm going on in the upper right hand corner!  I used papers from the Love You More Collection and Hippity Hop Collections!  I get to see so many things happen around me at the ranch and it reminds me why I love being a rancher.  One week after I graduated with my Masters (Summer 1982) I went through my first hurricane, Alicia.  I've been asked over and over from my urban friends what I would be if I wasn't ranching.  If I had to choose as I think back it would have been meteorology, the study of weather.  Yet when I analyize it the catalyst that sent me down the path to my love of  BAD weather was Hurricane Alicia.  They say you forget the true sound of the wind after seven years.  Yes, at around seven years I stopped waking up in the middle of the night when the wind picked up, but the sound I have not forgotten.  The images out our windows I do not forget.  Feeling the slab of the house vibrating I have not forgotten.  In the late 90's I remember seeing my first tornado up towards Sugarland and I was living in Rosharon at the time at the Darrington Unit.  I had been trained as a storm spotter while I worked at TDCJ.  My second tornado was a storm I chased down the road from the ranch two days before the killer tornado that hit Joplin in 2011.  The next day I had to leave our ranch because of a super cell that produced F1 tornadoes that touched down on TSTC's campus in Waco and the other in downtown Groesbeck.  When I left the ranch I stopped in Groesbeck to pick up a Doctor Pepper and headed south to Thornton where I came out from underneath the cloud deck to see one of the most amazing super cell thunderstorms I had ever seen.  I was memorized and wishing the mesocyclone on the south side of the storm would have dropped a tornado, but it didn't.  And yes our ranch was ok upon my return.

Last week a line of storms developed to the east of us and I sat on the porch after dark watching the light show occurring some 50 miles away.  I got to see my very first positive lightning bolt.  That was so cool!

This is not a picture of the storm that day.  I was so stunned by the shear power of the storm I forgot completely to pull out my camera.  This storm is to the NNW of our ranch about 30 miles in the summer of 2010.  It was popping lightning like crazy and so pretty at sunset.  To even get this photo I had to turn on the flash or the cloud was drowned out.  I added the chipboard key painted with Tattered Angels Pink Lady Glaze to get the exact effect I wanted and to portray that a farmer or rancher is very in tune to weather because we rely on rain to grow your food.  Then the bunny added is to remind me of all the great wildlife I get to see on the ranch including the cottontails and jack rabbits. 

Our ranch just off the peak of the highest hill in the county allows me to truly enjoy my passion for bad weather.  At the same time I am overly mindful of just how dangerous bad weather can be because I have had that hair raising feeling just before a lightning strike.  I head for indoors or the car quickly, but I spend the entire time running from one window to the next to watch the clouds.  Living in Cental Texas allows me to enjoy my passion for severe storms.  And some day I want to do a tornado chase vacation...bucket list!

Thank you for taking the time to look at my layout!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Home from the crop one would think I would be tired from playing with paper, but I always need to be doing something with my hands.  If I'm not doing house or farm chores you can usually find me at the computer or tablet in hand or scrapping.  Monday and Tuesday watching TV I was happily playing with Imaginisce Love You More Collection and Martha Stewart's Circle Edge Punches!  So here's the 6x6 cards I created!

For the love of my life, Larry!  His valentine card!

My playing with Unscripted Sketches # 197 and my very special daughter's card:

And then some playing with ACOT's February Card Challenge and my son's card:

I'm so hooked on this line!  And of course the amazing Martha Stewart Circle Edge Punches!!!

Now off to make another card for Mom!

Enjoy your Valentine's Day with the ones you love!