A few new cards...

We were awakened this morning at about 245am by tornado sirens! I must say, there is nothing more disconcerning than waking up from a dead sleep, hearing this sound, and not knowing if a tornado, at that very minute, is headed straight for you!!!!! Unfortunately, the county I live in feels it necessary to sound this tornado siren for every severe thunderstorm warning that is issued as well. So, this morning, we were awakened not for a tornado, but for a storm that lasted, no kidding, a total of 5 minutes. 30 seconds of that was hail, which sounds awful the minute you hear it start! My hubby's car was out in the driveway, so the first "ping" we heard hit the house, our hearts skipped a beat and we thought, "oh no, your car is toast"! Thankfully, like I said, it only lasted 30 seconds. But this is size of the hail we got....hubby ran outside and picked up a few pieces. It was a solid marble size. I took a picture cuz I wanted to share it with you guys. Storm pics make for great blogging!!!

Needless to say, I'm a bit sleepy now. Got the boys off this morning for their last day of school. My youngest is pumped and was a little hyper while he was getting ready. I am hoping this is not a sign of things to come. Even though they're not little anymore, they are still a handful for the summer! The bickering starts at 701am when they awake!

Ok, on to the cards for today. I'm sharing two because I had another black, white and red card to show you, and I made another card this weekend that I've been wanting to share but couldn't get around to posting it.

Let's start with the black, white and red card. I needed a few wedding cards for my stash, and since I had so much black and white paper out, I just used it up! I saw a card on SCS that used the Cuttlebug to make a wedding dress, and I loved the idea. So, I found some glossy striped paper and had cut a dress template to use as my wedding dress. I used my Textile folder for the dress. I figured since I was making the bride's dress, I could make something that represented the groom as well, so I made a bow tie for him! The bow tie was cut out of basic black and matted with a silver matallic cardstock. I gave the bride's dress a silver metallic sash as well to tie the two together. The card just wasn't complete without a big red heart to represent their love! I used my Uniball white gel pen to color dots all the way around the heart. Isn't it fun? Such a fun, easy card to put together!

The second card I wanted to share with you is a card I made this past weekend to silence those true stampers out there who think I can't do anything without using designer paper (I say this in all joking--no one has ever accused me of only being able to work with designer paper!).....so, I decided to make my own "designer paper" using my Little Lady stamp set from PTI. I've done this a few times before (like over a year ago), so it was a good exercise for me to break away from my designer paper addiction and do something else for a change. To make my paper, I just stamped the mama ladybug and the baby ladybug all over the piece of paper in random positions and in different colors (Cool Caribbean, Lovely Lilac, More Mustard, and Old Olive). I stamped a bunch of flower all over and completeed it all with the ladybug "swirly path" (I have no idea what you call this dotted border). I aged the paper with my Ranger Ink in Tea Stain to bring down the bright colors a bit. A simple scalloped border with a polka dot ribbon tied around it was the final touch. Another easy card! So, did I do ok? Did I prove I was a "real" stamper by staying away from the designer paper? Yeah!!!!!!

Well, that's it for today. I am going to try stamping a bit this morning! I got a bunch of new stamps yesterday afternoon from Electic Paperie, woo-hoo! I got some new Stampendous clear stamps, and some MFT stamps too! Can't forget the Stampendous Agapanthus Cluster stamp, which I've wanted for a long time:)!

One last thing.....I have a question to pose to you ladies....I want your 100% honesty. When you get new stamps, are you able to sit down right away come up with a design? The reason I ask is that yesterday, I inked up my MFT stamps and could do nothing right with them! Everything I did turned out icky. It was almost as if I couldn't come up with anything because I had seen so much many awesome cards out their using the stamps, that I couldn't come up with anything original of my own. Do any of you also have trouble like this, or am I the only goofball? You're insight would be greatly appreciated....I wonder if there's somewhere I could go to seek help with this problem....perhaps there's such a thing as a creative block psychiatrist I could visit?????;)

p.s. My apologies go out to Beate because I said yesterday she sent me a monkey card for my birthday, but it's clear in the picture she didn't send me a monkey card! I was trying to shadow my monkeys like the monkey card she had on her blog, which is here. Sorry Beate!!!