Birthday Cake and a trip to the strip!

Before I start rambling on about our "trip to the strip", here's a birthday card I put together right before I left for one of my dearest friends.  The stamp is called Lulu's Birthday Cake from Stamping Bella. The image was colored with Copics and shaded with Prismacolor pencils/gamsol.  I've had it colored for awhile so it was just a matter of choosing some paper and a layout. The paper doily was calling me to use it as the background matt and I love brown and blue together, so when I saw this paper, grabbed it! 

I really didn't want to add too much more to the front of the card, so I did some stitching around the edges - if you look real close, you can see it.......kind of a swirly leaf design.   

Here's a closer up shot - click on it to see the detail.

I added a little Glossy Accents to the icing on the cake, then I got a little crazy with the Stickles and added some to the flowers and the dp too!!  Don't you just love Stickles?!!!  How could you not?!

Do you have a favorite color? Star Dust is my absolute favorite!! The other 'clear' colors have other colors in them too - this one stays clear, which I really like. Some have a green, gold or silver tendency to them - have you noticed that? Well, I actually love all the colors!!!  I could put Stickles on everything!!  You've noticed that, right? (hee hee!) 

Here's a shot of the inside. Again...I didn't embelish much and kept it pretty simple.  I love this die - can't remember now who the maker is - but I think it was a European company that I bought from online. I'll try to track it down and post it later. :) 

I used Chocolate Chip and... hmmm...not certain what color the other one is... might be Baha Breeze... or Bashful Blue (?). The cardstock is Stampin' Up! except for the white, which is Bella's Bestest White.

Now on to my trip to the strip!! 

We just got back from a week long trip to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles.  We stayed near the south end of the strip and I loved coming out each morning to the beautiful sunny skies and this view of New York New York!!

The weather was in the high 80's to mid 90's all week with clear, sunny skies every day - perfect for walking, which we did a lot of!! We didn't do a ton of gambling and, of course, lost everything we gambled so I'm glad we didn't do a lot!

We made a side trip one day to Valley of Fire State Park, which was really beautiful.

Made up of incredible red sandstone formations formed back in the time of dinosaurs, the park has hiking trails, picnic and camping sites along with a great visitor center that tells you everything about this fascinating place.  We had intended to hike one of the trails, but it was about 95 degrees (in the shade!) so we didn't do any hiking! It took about an hour to get there from Las Vegas, but I'm really glad we made the trip and it was a nice break from the bedlam of Vegas!!

Also while we were in Las Vegas, it turned out that our oldest son had a wheelchair rugby tournament there! We didn't know about it when we booked this trip so it was a really nice surprise! Another bonus....my sister-in-law, who lives in Mojave, came out to visit us we were there too!!  We were able to have dinner together one night and our waiter was kind enough to take a picture for us!

We headed to Los Angeles hoping to get last-minute standby tickets to the Ellen show. The directions were to call between 8 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. the day of the show, leave your name, number of tickets you wanted, and phone number. I'd say we were one of the first, if not THE first, to call in the morning at the designated time, but never received a call back. I was disappointed, but it was a long shot anyway. Being the celebrity seeker I seem to be, we headed for "The Grove" outdoor shopping mall in L.A. It's where they always show the celebrities walking and shopping. And - since it's located right behind CBS studios, a lot of the celebs on Dancing with the Stars and other shows wind up there!

I had forgotten that Mario Lopez and "Extra" films LIVE there!! When we saw the set and all the people, I was really excited!! Of course, we had no idea who Mario was going to be interviewing, but I didn't care who it was - I was sure it'd be cool anyway!!  We had lunch outside at a restaurant right near the set to wait for the interview to start.

Turns out it was Snooki from Jersey Shores!! Now I have to tell you.... I am not a Jersey Shores fan - in fact I have never even seen the show! But true to my (just realized!) celebrity seeking personality, I was excited! I have no idea what they talked about in the interview....I was too busy trying to get pictures on my cell phone! There people involved in the show were between us and Snooki/Mario, so it was really hard to get a good shot. It was really funny because there were lots of professional photographers there and the minute there was any kind of clearing, the sound of shutters clicking was crazy!!

It was a fun trip and now that we're back to this cold, gray Michigan weather, I am so glad that we had a week of sun and warmth!! 

It's always fun to go on vacation....but sooooo nice to be back home!!  At least that's how I feel anyway. :) 

Have a great weekend!!

{{hugs}} 

Where has my mojo gone??

My mojo has up and left me once again! What is it with that? Sometimes I just can't get it together no matter how hard I try.  This was a perfect example.  I needed to make a card for my sister-in-law. I already had the image I wanted to use and everything, but just had some kind of mental block when it came time to putting the darned thing together!  It ended up okay, but not one of my favorites.  I'm going to have to make another attempt to use this image because I really LOVE it!!

Okay....so here goes.... The image is a digital one from Dude Time Doodles and it's called Fannie Fart!  How funny is that?!! They have some really cute images.
As with a lot of the funny images I've found, this one was discovered on Jeanie's The Spotted Chick's blog! She is so funny, clever and talented - and she always has such a great spin on the images she uses. You'll have to check out her blog if you've never visited because she is one funny lady!

I printed Fannie on Bella's Bestest white cardstock and colored her with Copics. I paper pieced her dress using some paper from the Basic Grey Offbeat collection, the ribbon in her hair and the bows on her shoes. A little shading was done with my Prismacolor pencils and I sponged some chalk ink around the inside edges of my Nestie. For once, I remembered to do some stitching! (my memory finally kicked in!!)

Okay....so all that was the easy part....

Then came the actual 'putting together' part. (ugh)  I don't know why I struggled so much, but I did. There were all kinds of possibilities of layouts and papers to use, so why the struggle you might ask.  I wish I could answer that! Finally, I came up with a plan and put it together. It's very basic, but here is the finished card:

I wanted to incorporate some green into the card so I used it as shading around the image. At the time, I had no idea how that would turn out, but it kind of looks like the "stench" coming from her "poof", doesn't it?!!  (hee hee!) Then I still needed to add some more green to tie it together and I just got this great die from MFT - Fancy Flourish - I LOVE their dies!! They cut so nice and clean! MFT has a new website and I couldn't find this flourish to link it, but I know they still have it - maybe they're just out right now. Once I cut the flourish out of the green paper and put it up against the card....oh my...it kind of looked like part of the plan!! It looked like another part of the "poof"!! 

Well, sometimes everything just falls into place even when you don't have a plan. That's what happened this time anyway.  Because there really was NO plan!!

Here's the inside of the card.  The sentiment was borrowed from Jeanie's card - it was just so fitting, how could I not?!!  The sentiment was computer generated so I was able to use part of the digital image (the "poof" part!).  Another green swirl, a little bit of the paper used on the front and FINALLY I got this together! (whew!) As always, I just had to add a little glitter:  clear gel pen to her eyelids, earrings and shoes; Stickles Star Dust glitter glue to the fancy flourish die.

I guess that's it for today!

Have a great weekend!