I'm back!

WHOWWWWWW!  That's me blowing the dust off my blog!  lol  I haven't been around for over a year, with good reason.  A LOT of good things happened last year, but I'll save that for another post because there are tons of pictures I want to share.  :)

I was looking around at some blogs the other day and spent some time looking at Lori Tecler's blog.  She always has a TON of cards to share and I love how simple her style is.  While looking at her posts, I came across one for Poppy Sketches, which appears to be a new sketch/color combo blog.  I thought I'd ease back into blogging by participating with their second sketch:

I have quite a few cards to make for May/June birthdays, so I used the sketch to make my brother's birthday card.  I pulled out my Stampendous stamps since they're sponsoring this time.  Here's my take, with the Changito Bday stamp set:

I started off by die-cutting the red polaroid frame with my Papertrey Ink die.  I stamped the image on my X-Press It cardstock and colored it with my Copics.  I haven't used my Copics in quite a while, so hopefully this doesn't look too awful!  :)  I cut the cardstock to fit behind the frame and then turned my attention to the gray cardstock from Bazzill.  It looked too plain but I didn't want to add patterned paper, so I took some of the small images from the stamp set and used my Versamark ink pad to clear emboss a pattern on the background.  I think it's the perfect solution to adding interest but not color.  :)

Instead of a literal circular element, I chose to tie a knot with some teal ribbon and add a cupcake charm (which I've had for ages!) with some baker's twine.  Any time my mom gets a bakery box, she saves the twine for me.  Isn't she cute?  :)

Here's a close-up of the image.  That wraps up this card for me.  I hope you like it and I will be back very soon to share all the things that happened in 2013 since I last blogged.  I stopped blogging partly because I was busy and partly because I thought no one was even reading my posts, but I realized that this blog is for ME.  It's amazing to look back on my old posts and have a record not only of the cards I've made, but of my creative progress and the things that were happening in my life at the time.  Yes, this blog is mostly just crafty, but it is also part diary, so I need to keep it going for myself.  I can't wait to catch up and keep my blog current!  :D

-Suzanne :O )