Spring-like Artfully Asian

This is the last of my 3 "oops" cards that each had something wrong with them. As I've mentioned, I made them for a friend that wanted some cards to make with her MIL and future SIL. I tried to keep them simple. I really like Pretty in Pink with Basic Black, and I threw in some Certainly Celery this time. It's a fun set and I hope you like the card! This one didn't have anything wrong with it so-to-speak, but I would have liked to put brads on the black strip, or ribbon somewhere, or something for some more detail. Since I wouldn't be there to show the ladies how to do stuff like that, I had to keep it super simple. I thought they would have fun crimping though - that's always a crowd-pleaser. Have a great weekend!!!!

Springy Card

This is card #2 in my trio of blundered cards. :) I had it just right - simple enough for my friend and her family to re-create at her home without me there, and then I had to go and touch it and put a big huge fingerprint/smudge right on the front!! I really like Pretty in Pink and Regal Rose with Apricot Appeal. Not necessarily both of the pinks together, but definitely with the Apricot. As a last little touch, I added some Diamond Stickles to the center butterfly (hope you can see them!) that I got at StarLitStudios - a great store! There's nothing too complicated about this card. Just some sponging, a little direct to paper inking on the outside of the Pretty in Pink square of CS, and some ribbon. That's it! I hope you like it. Thanks for looking and for your comments.

One of those days....

Have you ever had one of those days stamping, where everything you make has something wrong with it? Well, today was one of those days for me. I'm still going to share the 3 cards I made with you over the next few days because I think they're cute even though they have some flaws :)

This is my transparent Easter bunny card, with a somewhat French looking sentiment. I realized after I doodled my grass that I shouldn't have doodled in front of the bunny since I hadn't done any masking to make the bunny not show behind it. So, either the bunny is transparent, or I guess the grass could be too. Funny, huh? Another thing I did wrong was that when I was being lazy I stamped the eggs a little below the line of the basket, so I added some doodles to camouflage that mistake. Also, little Miss Sarah bumped me when I was stamping the sentiment, so not only is it crooked but the "s" has a funny little curly-cue on the bottom of it much like something I think I've seen on French c's or some other letter.

This card and the other two I will show you tomorrow and Saturday, were made so that they could be examples for a friend who wanted some cards to make with her mother-in-law and future sister-in-law because the weather had us all stuck inside this morning. I had to keep them simple because I wouldn't be there to walk them through everything and I didn't know how much stamping experience they all had. I cut all of the paper for them, and let her borrow all of the necessary stamps and ink. She paid me for the consumables which is always appreciated. As you'll see, there's very little embellishment on any of the three cards but I think they're all cute if I could just zap off the little flaws that came along with them at different points. Well, I hope you enjoy the card and get a laugh out of my mistakes. I'm sure we all make them at some point, I've just never messed up every single thing I sat down to make in one sitting before!!! LOL Take care!

How to Create Your Own Blog Roll

Ally Stamps said in a comment: I would love to put you on my blogroll but I am not sure how to do it! I tried and it came out all wrong so I have to get rid of it. Do you think you could explain to me how?

To answer her question, anyone using blogspot like me should be able to follow these directions.

After you've signed in and are viewing your blog:

1. Click in the upper right-hand corner on "customize" and then click in almost the exact same spot on "dashboard".

2. From there, make sure you're in the "page elements" section, which is a tab in the upper left-hand corner - click on it if you need to.

3. After you're there, you should see a column going down the right side of the screen with all of the items in your blog's sidebar. I guess if your sidebar is on the left when you view your blog, it might be on the left on this screen too. Mine are on the right, so that's what I see. Once you see that column, you'll notice that at the top of it is the words "Add A Page Element". Click on that, and then create a title for your blog roll like "Blog Roll" or some similar thing so people know what it is. Mine says "Blogs to Visit."

4. Now you simply fill in the blog URL and give it a title (I always fill the title of the persons blog exactly as they have it) and click the blue colored tab that says "Add Link". Here's the IMPORTANT thing to remember. Clicking on Add Link only adds the link, it doesn't save it. When you're adding multiple links, just keep adding them like you did the first.

5. When you're done adding all of the links you want, then you can click on the orange colored tab that says "Save Changes". This is what will make them stay there and appear on your blog.

When you want to add more in the future, you follow steps 1-2, skip 3, and instead of adding a page element which is step 3, you click on the blue word "Edit" that's in the box with the words describing your blog roll (whatever you decided to title it). Then you just pick back up with step 4, adding them the same way as above by typing in the URL, giving it a title, clicking add link, and saving changes when done making additions. Easy peasy??? Hopefully this helps some of you.

I'm hoping to do some stamping tomorrow morning so that tomorrow I'll have something fun to post. If you want me to add you to my blog roll, please visit this post by me and leave me your blog URL in a comment. Thanks, and take care!!!

No Artwork, But GREAT NEWS!!!!

The baby (gender still unknown, little stinker!!) is PERFECTLY FINE!!!!! The doctor said that there is a spot that a doctor can press on when doing an ultrasound that can actually cause Bradycardia (heart rate below 110 beats per minute - our little one's was 80 when all of this fuss started). She said she could show us but would rather not, and we said it was fine, we believed her :) She did a really thorough ultrasound with some fancy colors to observe the blood flow to/from the heart. Everything looked great. I am so excited about this doctor. At 36 weeks I'll get to transfer to being seen by her in hopes of a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC). She is WONDERFUL and so optimistic and positive. I only wish I lived in San Antonio so I could start seeing her yesterday!!! Anyway, thanks for the prayers, thoughts and comments, we really appreciate them.

I would like to know if your blog links to mine but yours isn't in my "Blogs To Visit" in my sidebar. I would love to check out your blog and add a link. Even if your blog doesn't link to mine but you would like yours added to my sidebar that's fine too, so reply to this post with your blog and I'll add it to my Blog Roll.

Thanks so much and take care!!!!!

Fianlly some stamping!

A good friend of mine is being given a baby shower tomorrow after the birth of a little baby boy. They waited since the family doesn't find out what they're having. Well, I made her a bunch of thank you cards after seeing a card by Nichole Heady in the Papertrey Ink gallery. See her blog here, and see the card on Papertrey here. Below is my card. I used the Stampin' Up! Spring Showers DS paper which I love, Kraft, Whisper White and Chocolate Chip CS, Chocolate Chip Craft Ink, Bashful Blue Craft Ink, VersaMark, Pearl-Ex in Interference Green (it looks silver on the Bashful Blue) and some gold brads. That's about all. I hope you can see that I used Pearl Ex on the "stripes" on the butterfly's wings. I love this set from Papertrey called Butterfly Kisses. I just got it TODAY and actually got to use it within 24 hours!!! I hope she likes them, I made her 14 to give away.


I want to say thank you for all of the kind comments and thoughts that many of you have expressed to me over the last few days. I finally got my appointment set up in San Antonio for tomorrow, so hopefully after that we will be told it was just some weird occurrence and nothing is wrong. The range of possibilities for why the baby's heart rate was 80 bpm ranges from mere position of myself or the fetus to some kind of heart abnormality. It will be good to get answers. I feel like it's nothing because I've been paying extra close attention to the baby's movements, and it hasn't decreased it's kicks or jabs, and I've been told that the movement of a fetus is one of the strongest indicators of fetal health. As long as they're not frantic-seeming movements, of course. Who knows, maybe we'll even find out what "it" is!!! :) So, there will definitely not be anything new posted tomorrow, so take care!!

Sorry, Some Rambling....

I'm sorry you've not gotten any posts with pictures of cards and such. It turns out that what is making me feel lousy is Bronchitis, and of course you can't take a whole lot of anything when you're pregnant.

We're still dying to know 100% for sure what the baby is - I'm at 24 weeks and it's never taken this long except when Emma had her legs crossed and we only got an ultrasound at 16 and 30 weeks where I lived then. This doctor does them EVERY TIME!!! A friend of mine did an ultrasound on me (she's a nurse) and we REALLY thought we saw the family jewels several times, but when I went it for my monthly OB appointment 2 days later the doctor said he still didn't see anything there, but he didn't say "it's a girl" either. We were so excited after the ultrasound with my friend, and thought for sure the doctor would confirm it. His ultrasound machine is from the 80's though, and the place where my friend did it the machine is MUCH newer. The OB did detect a slower than normal heart rate though - I saw it clear as day too, so I have to go to San Antonio soon to be evaluated. I'm hoping that it's nothing. Both of my girls are so healthy I would be stunned to have a problem with this one. It's been kind of stressful and I'm just trying to not think about it.

We're getting ready for my parents to come to visit next week. It will be exciting and we'll celebrate Emma's birthday early with them because Emma thinks Nana (we say it more like Naw-Nuh than Nah-Nuh like most people - just not very emphatic on the "w" sound) and Baba coming means it's her birthday. :) We call my dad Baba because he is from Iran and the word for grandfather is much longer and harder to say, especially for a little one, than Baba (which means father). I don't know if it will stick when they're older but it's nice to have 4 grandparents each called something different so there's no confusion. My husband's parents are Memaw and Pepaw (no idea really how to spell those).

The hubby had to go in to work this morning because the base is getting ready for a big inspection called an Operational Readiness Inspection. When I was in the military I just happened to miss them at each base I was stationed at either by arriving there shortly after one, or moving right before one. They're pretty stressful for all involved because you don't want to be "the one" that messes up and gets called out on it for not having your paper work in line, or not knowing all of the rules and regulations of your job, etc. Since the ORI is the last week of March and the first few days of April, I'm not sure that my hubby will get to go with me to San Antonio for the appointment there to evaluate the Bradycardia.

With everything going on, I just wanted to let you know why I might be posting a lot less frequently for a while. I'm so astonished that there are so many of you who check in daily and even bother to subscribe to my feed to know when I have new posts. It gives me a warm fuzzy :) I promise that when things settle down, I will get back to having my usual "fresh" blog, with posts 5-6 days a week (never Sundays) so that you'll have something new to see every time you check in. If you're not subscribed, it might be beneficial to do that (in the right sidebar, it says subscribe with Feedblitz) so that you know when something's new and don't check each day and be disappointed. A benefit to Feedblitz is that you don't have do anything other than check your e-mail as you usually do, and you'll know if I've posted something new. Also, taking Robin Desko's advice in this post in her blog Rubber Stamped Reflections, I myself have started using Google Reader and it's AWESOME!! It does the same thing as Feedblitz, without cluttering my e-mail - you just log in and check your subscriptions that you've input in one spot. So, if you want to migrate your Feedblitz subscriptions to Google Reader instead, check out Robin's post on how to do it.

Anyway, take care everyone, and hopefully you'll hear from me next week! Have a great weekend!!!