Summer Catalog from Hero Arts!

Hello and happy Friday! It’s a very happy one for me because the Hero Arts Summer Catalog is now live so you can see what the team has been up to, yay! Here’s just a few of the cards that I did that made it in the catalog:

I can’t wait to show you the cards I made that *didn’t* make it in — there just wasn’t room enough for that many with all of the awesome new stamps and yummy BasicGrey papers + coordinating stamps! (Oxford and Out of Print are both delicious!)

And, this time I got to take photos for the catalog, too! (Including the one on the cover!) It’s a dream come true for me, I’m so honored. (And excited!)

Here are just a few of my favorite stamps:

• Big Ticket on page 6 – I helped design this set, love it so much! This time I loosely watercolored the ticket for a different look than how you’d normally see tickets
• Print and Flower Pattern on page 9 – can’t wait to share a little bird card that I made with this :)
• Butterflies and Print on page 8 – another great one to watercolor or color with inks
• Formula Fun on page 10 – I am such a math geek, this one is right up my alley! It’s also fun to emboss in white and rub with black ink — looks just like a chalkboard! I made that card for J, it says “Jason, no matter how you add it up, I heart you! xo L”
• Dash Pattern on page 11 – houndstooth never goes out of style, does it? I can imagine using this one for dapper masculine cards, and well anything, really!

Oh heck, I better stop now — I guess I like them all!  This catalog really makes me feel like packing my bags and heading off on a vacation around the world — it’s so happy and summery and FUN. :) I’d love to hear what you think, what are your favorites?

And! In more great news, I found out this morning that don’t have to have surgery on my torn ACL (at least not yet). Steroids and one more month of PT for me. (Big relief.)

Happy, happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

Can’t believe it’s Friday-the-Thirteenth, because I feel so lucky!

(This is my kitchen window display for May — it’s a little tribute to my Grandma. The chicken was hers, and I saw the creamer and the candleholders at West Elm while talking to her on the phone back in February. Didn’t buy them that day, but had to go back and get them later. Makes me feel close to her. )

We finally got some rain here in Austin — thanks to all you northreners who sent it our way, ’bout time you quit hogging it all!

It was a doozy of a rainstorm. (Texas sized, if you will.) I was driving home from PT for my knee and had to pull off the road for a bit. There was BIG lightening all around. The wind was shaking the car so hard that I wondered if there was a tornado.

But I made it home, safe and sound.

And the light! Oooo the light. I grabbed my iphone and snapped these photos with the Instagram app – loving that app more and more. Do you have it? Let me know and we can share photos!

And in more good news, my knee is on the mend. I rode the bike at PT for 10 minutes yesterday with just a few twinges.

And I was able to meet my work deadline, yay!

Yep, this Friday-the-Thirteenth sure has been lucky so far. (Knocking on wood.)

And, I’ve got a series of card photo tutorials planned out — hope to have the first one for you on Monday.  After that I’ll have another Make-It and Mail-It challenge to go along with the tutorial. Can’t wait.

If you have any card photo problems or questions please leave me a comment and let me know — then hopefully I can work them in the tutorials.

Have a lucky weekend,

Woo hoo, I did it!

I finally painted a board to use as a backdrop for photos! I first tried it out on the Make-It and Mail-It challenge – love how it came out.

Actually, I painted TWO boards! I left one plain and used a nifty wood graining tool on the other one.

I had been meaning to do this for so long — ever since I first read Ishtar’s photo tutorials. And now, it’s done! Yay! (And I even have some paint left over, hmmmm, wonder what I can do with it? J better look out, ha!)

To celebrate, I brought Winslow the Owl home with me. He’ll be helping me photo lotsa projects now.

Do you have fun plans this weekend? I’m going to be working on my entry for the Umbrella Prints trimmings competition! Umbrella Prints is an organic fabric company based in Australia. They hand screen print their fabrics, so cool. Here, have a look:

The trimmings competition is to see what can be made with one packet of trimmings. These are almost too delicious to cut, I just want to sit and admire them…

But, I guess I’ll have to cut into them, as the deadline — May 1! — is fast approaching. Check out the Umbrella Prints flickr group to see what people have made so far — there’s some amazing entries. My friend Mon made the cutest owls, gah!

Hope you have a great weekend — whatever your plans may be! And hope you will have time to enter the very first Make-It + Mail-it challenge if you haven’t done so already. And! Just wanted to let you know that my blog underwent some unscheduled server maintenance last night — so if you tried to enter the challenge but couldn’t, please do try again. (J had an oops! moment, doh. But it’s all fixed now. Sorry ’bout that!)