Heart Speaks

Since this is my very first blog, am I supposed to introduce myself or anything? This stuff is all new to me…..and after watching my niece Clairey make this all happen for me……I’m not really sure if this might be my first and LAST blog…….. since when she goes home…..well….let’s not think that far ahead. Anyway- I am blogging my latest creations…..and I wanted to share a little bit about how I came to make them. Since my move to Ohio about a year and a few months ago, my passion for stamping had waned….mostly because with my new job I am kind of a noodle when I get home, and my passion for anything is like, well, like a noodle. One night when I was feeling absolutely exhausted I called my kindred spirit friend Tinabeana to kind of cry on her shoulder. Seems these days with our empty nested menopausal mood swings, we do that to eachother a lot. As I bellyached about how I had no energy for stamping, she started in with one of her lectures……come on Karen, it breaks my heart to hear you talk like that….and as she spoke I thought how can I just let this love of stamping slip away because I’m tired? So as she spoke I snuck up to my stamp room and by the time she was through with her pep talk, I had made a card like the one above, well something like it. I stamped that night until I had made around 8 cards with this new set, Heart Speaks, that’s a good set for me to have been stamping with, as Tina was speaking her heart to me, and I was feeling her energy giving me the shove I needed. What would we do without friends like Tinabeana to push us back where we belong?? The next day, you know how it is, I dragged those cards around with me and I kept whipping them out and looking at them over and over again. I took them to work to show my co-workers and let them tell me which one to use for a swap I was doing hosted by Kirsten Smith. They voted on the one above. I took them home. I slept with them by my bed that night so I could look at them again in the morning. I went to work, and came home at 3:00 to let the dogs out…..(I was dogsitting for my daughter Rebekah’s golden retriever Moseley, and of course we have our own golden, Luca.) I dragged those cards out again and looked at them again. I put them in a zip lock baggie and left them on my kitchen counter, and headed back to work again. Three hours later, I came home exhausted. Have I ever told you about Moseley? He is kind of a rascal. I love him anyway, but he is a rascal. Luca is not such a rascal. If you had a big fat hamburger sitting on the kitchen counter he might eat it, but not a zip lock baggie full of cards. YUP, you guessed it, when I came home,,,,there were my 8 cards…..only 1 was still intact – the red one and my least favorite……all the others were in pieces on the kitchen floor……and I sat down on the floor and cried. Moseley had taken the bag off the counter and eaten my cards……and that was as mad at Moseley as I have ever been. The first day, when he ate my curling brush, I didn’t get that mad. And the second day, when he ate my socks, no big deal. The third day, when he ate some mail off the table, it’s okay, maybe he ate some bills. But the fourth day, when he ate my cards…..that was NOT okay. I stayed up until 3:00 am that next morning remaking all of my cards. Some have salvaged pieces from the ruins, with what I call the Moseley technique, cuz you can still see his tooth marks in them.

You know, in the end, they were only cards, and I could recreate them. You gotta love Moseley. He’s just the most lovable dog…most of the time. But back to Tinabeana…..isn’t it just so cool how friends can kind of set us straight when we need it most?? I’ve been all excited about stamping since….and though I still don’t have the time I used to have, I am dreaming up cards in my head like the old days…..and I feel like I found a lost friend. Here are some of my other creations from Heart Speaks….I am now trying to decide what should be the next set I play with…..there are so many that I love and so little time!!

This one I used the new polka dot dry embossing thingamajiggey…..don’t you just hate to dry emboss? I do, but I love the look so much that sometimes I just have to do it….but the ultimate punishment would be if my coworkers voted on doing THIS one for the swap…..that would have been the pits and I think I would have said thanks for your votes but NO. I want a Cuddlebug or whatever you call those things that do this for you…..those are just the coolest thing….but since I rarely actually SEND cards….and I can’t put cuddlebugs in my sample basket….what would the point be? I’ll have to settle for the occassional dry embossing……when I forget how much torture it is. Does anyone else hate to dry emboss as much as me??This next one below was one of my favorites too….when Moseley ate this one he spit out the pearls from the pretties kit……they were all over the floor. He is such a rascal. One day I shut him in my kitchen, went out my back door and had