Baubles & Bling

Here's another card inkspired by Silke Ledlow's My Life blog. I could draw inspiration there all day long.

My color combination is funky and a little out-of-the-box for me. The peach ink is Stampin' Up's Apricot Appeal. I bought it with hopes that it would be a match for CTMH's Taffy paper. While I love the Taffy paper, I think the coordinating ink is sick looking. I even ordered a different pad thinking that I'd received a bad one. No such luck. Anyway, SU's ink does not match the CTMH paper, so it looks like I need some Stampin' Up Apricot Appeal cardstock, too. Back to my card, the bling (CTMH Sparkles) don't sparkle in the photo, and you can't tell that both the stamped piece and the Breeze background piece are mounted using foam mounting tape. I initially used red grosgrain ribbon but changed it out to the multi-colored ribbon after I saw the first photo. As for the stamp sets used, it's a combination of several sets.

Materials & Tools: White Daisy and Ocean cardstock; Stampin' Up Apricot Appeal and CTMH Holiday Red, Ocean, Sunflower, and Citrus Leaf ink pads; April Word Puzzle, Made by Me, It's a Party, and Happy Birthday stamp sets; Ribbon from reasonableribbon.com; Sparkles; Acrylic discs from Michael's; Liquid Glass; 3M foam mounting tape.

The mailman brought me a surprise today - Close To My Hearts Stamp of the Month sets for the next four months. I'd cancelled my catalog autoship commitment and assumed that the SOTM autoship would cancel as well. Guess not. The May set is a very nice 40-piece word/phrase set that you can see here. The others are very cool, too - a cute zoo animal set, a fun flower set w/funky vases, and a set called "Today's Date" that kind of a calendar-type thing. My dilemma is that past May, I don't know what set is for what month. I suppose I'll find out once I see a catalog.

As for my big project at work, I sailed right through it and felt like a rock star when I was done. I best keep liking my job, too. My husband picked up a prescription today to replace one that had been incorrectly prescribed. When I saw that one was $276 for a 90-day supply I got curious about the others. His medication, without insurance, would cost about $600 a month. That's crazy! A three month supply was $77 out of our pockets. I won't complain. Still, it's nuts, and I can see that the remainder of our lives are going to have to be carefully planned. When I left my job at the newspaper, my decision was rather abrupt, and I took six months off before finding another job. I won't be doing something like that again. Like you wanted to know all that. I'm just blowing off steam. A month ago, I never would have considered any of this a minute possibility.

It's all good though. Marv's here, looking great and pretty much his old self, with the exception of some new eating habits. He starts cardiac rehab on Wednesday morning, which will give him an idea of how physical he can be. I'm willing to bet he'll be swinging his golf clubs in a few weeks.

Thanks for stopping and listening to my banter. I'll be back, but only after I clean up Kathi's corner. Once again, my work space has been reduced to a 6 by 6-inch area, and I kind of have to jump over some stuff to get into my chair. Just a little creative clutter! Later!