Cards in the Making and Some Already Made

Here are some pictures of my Little Girl Smelling Roses from Door County. 16 girls in the process of being bleached and painted with Twinkling H2O's. Just started painting the bottom 3 cards last night, so not quite finished. I used different colored cardstock to see how they would bleach up. Will be interesting to see how they turn out, each card will have it's very own personality when finished.

This card is in the process of being made into a card, right now I just have it laying on a white brick background. Have not decided how to embellish it yet.

Have you got any ideas, leave a comment.In this picture, the card is in it's finished state. I had another card almost like her, but in a different colored dress, she was cut out and mounted on fancy vellum, she sold for $4 right away!!!

I was pleased.

So there you have it for this blog. Go to my etsy store, www.cards4ubylouise.etsy.com I am going to put up my little girl for sale there today and see what happens to her. In the next few days I should be putting up some cards I made but they did not make it to Etsy.

Hope you are having a "Glad Day" (Psalms 90:15) in the Lord Jesus Christ!!

Louise

♥37 Years of Marriage and My 1st Wedding Ring♥

Yep, that's right, you are reading the title right!!!!! It was our 37th Wedding Anniversary on Friday. This was the first time ever that JP bought me a ring....and a wedding ring at that. As you can see there are 3 rings, the pinkie ring is my mother's which I inherited, the middle fingered ring is a ring I bought at Kohls maybe about 15 years ago and that lovely ring in the middle is my new wedding ring. Can you imagine it was in JP's budget too. The pawn broker said to take it to a Jeweler for an appraisal, you might be surprised at how much it is worth......I shall do that.

FOOT NOTE TO THE READER........Now you might ask, why was JP buying me a wedding ring now, after all these years? When JP and I got married (by the Justice of Peace in Chicago in 1973) I had to buy my own ring, cause he didn't have time to look and/or buy a ring for me cause he was in the midst of racing and just could not take time off. He just did not have time to get married and a marriage licence, he felt, was not that important. It was to me though. He thought we could live together forever, but we had found a house and I said "I will not move into that house unless we are married". So he repented and we got married at 11am August 27th, signed the papers to the house at 3pm and moved into our little house in Arlington Heights, Illinois by the late afternoon.

So here we are in August 27, 2010 and JP is buying me a ring for our 37th wedding anniversary and we are beginning the hunt.

We went to a couple of pawn shops, and a jewelery store. At the first pawn shop, there were at least 5 large cases of rings to choose from, found a couple of rings but they were way out of JP's budget. He had saved $90 and had an extra $10 to top it off. Many of the rings were $200, $300, 4 and 500 all the way up to 1k or more. The salesman showed us the 50% off rings and the 30% off rings.....I would pick a ring and he would take it out, one ring at a time. Finally came up with 3 rings I liked. Then I had it narrowed down to one ring which was $149.00 ~ just a little over JP's budget, oh gosh but did I like it. We ended up not buying it, we left that store to go to another, thinking we would come back.

We were told to go to a jewelery store where they sell estate rings. So we tried there, didn't really see anything I liked, really didn't know what I was looking for, but you know......when you see what you like, you will know that is the one. It will yell out your name and say "I am the one ~ buy me"!!!!!! The saleslady then took us to some "NEW" wedding rings (gosh, I just knew they would be out of JP's budget for sure) Well, wouldn't you know it, I found the perfect ring, it was gorgeous and fit perfectly......but alas..... it's sale price was $2,800.00.....just out of curiosity I asked if there were any discounts and she calculated and came down to a whopping 2K. Gosh I liked that ring alot. We left there, I was alittle bummed, cause I really liked that ring (LOL)

We decided that Saturday we would go looking again, I had to go to the Share program and would stop at "Mr Money" on the way back home. This was a little-er pawn shop....with one case of rings, there the lady showed me the rings one and two at a time.....till finally I said, show me rings for $100, then she started bringing rings out and telling me what she could give them to me for.....then I spied this ring you see at the top of this page......tried it on and said.....this is the one. They were asking $149 but could come down to $110....I said I would bring back my husband.

To make the long story short, we bought the ring.....cause it was calling my name. Plus it just looked like it belonged on my hand.......don't you think???? We ended up paying $120 for the ring and that was including tax, I think we got a good deal, and both JP and I are happy and HE FINALLY BOUGHT ME A RING!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a "glad day" all day going out to eat at Red Lobster then shopping around for a ring, nice date, here is a picture of JP and I. Hope your days are glad too!!! Louise

ANOTHER FOOT NOTE......I had an extra $20 to add to the total cost of the ring.

♥New Cards a'brewing and Computer Follow-up♥

Here is a new card in the making. It is a bleach technique, which is really lots of fun.

1-Ink the stamp with versa-mark and stamp on the colored cardstock you want to use.

2-Embossed with black embossing powder.

3-Filled a cup with bleach and used a soft pointed blending tool and filled in the places I wanted bleached....which was all of the little girl.

4-Let dry, then give her a second coat of bleach and let dry thoroughly before coloring.

5-My first attempt to color her in I used colored pencils.....looked nice and looked almost antiquey.

6-My next attempt was using Twinkling H2O's, I like this technique, hard to see her sparkle, but she is. Now I shall turn her into a card tonight along with the other little girls I made. I probably will sell one of these little girls in my Etsy store. Hopefully I will have her up in the next week or so. Go to http://www.cards4ubylouise.etsy.com/ I probably will sell her for $3.50 as there were alot of steps to making her. AND this is a piece of art....and maybe even one of a kind. If you like this "little girl smelling roses" stamp, I found her in Door County at Oscars Stamping store.

As a follow-up to my computer problems.....it didn't end when I brought the computer home. I ended up taking it back to Office Depot, because it kept shuting off and rebooting at least 10 times. They could not find anything wrong with the computer, so I took it home and hooked it up. Again, the computer ran like a champ for 3 days then acted up by shutting off and rebooting, so I pulled the plugs and started all over again.......this time I found there was a short in the monitor, took the old monitor off and brought up another old monitor from down stairs.......The computer has been working fine for over a week now with no problems. Although the screen is much smaller now, maybe someday I will invest in a larger-flat screen. But until then, this one is fine for now and is working.

It is our Anniversary on Friday, we've been married 37 years.....where has all that time gone? I guess we are truely vapors.....puffs of smoke, here today and gone tomorrow. JP is taking the day off and we might go to Red Lobster for lunch. We should have a little money saved for that special day. Well, time to end this blog for now, watch for another blog in a week or so, once I get a couple of cards put together.

Blessings~Louise

My computer was SOOOOOO Sick!

Well, here is the inside of my computer after I dust sprayed it....had this computer 6 years and never once dusted the inside. The guy that fixed my computer was shocked....I could tell it on his face. I never was told that the inside of computers needed to be dusted...I didn't even know how to get the side of the panel off, let alone dust.

It all started when my DVD player was hiccupping and would not play properly. I thought I would blow into the player and a big wad of a dust bunny flew out....oh my gosh I was shocked.....then I thought to blow the dust spray in there, then clean it with the CD cleaner. I tried everything and still...to no avail. I thought I was going to have to get a new DVD player.

Oh my computer was running sooooooo slow and I was getting more frustrated and just about ready to throw this computer out on the streets! Finally I could take it no more and called up Office Depot, took it in and found out it needed more ram....only $39.99....cleaning and tune-up was 69.99.....labor was $30.00 plus tax........guess that is cheaper then having to buy a new computer though.

Joel said that I needed to spray dust the inside and run the Norton virus scan. This computer is running like a champ now and oh what joy, feel like I have a NEW computer. Joel says that every time I get an oil change in the car to also spray dust the inside of the computer too. It should be done 3-4 times a year.........I sure don't want my computer to look like it did, just never realized it had to be clean on the inside as well as on the outside to work well.

It's sort of like our spirits.....we can look clean and good on the outside but if we are dirty on the inside we have defeated everything that God is trying to do in our lives. Suddenly our talk does not match our walk........believe me this past week was a real trial for me....people will say God is testing us, well, I flunked the test again. It's like I have to start from ground zero again, two steps forward and five steps back, never quit making it to first base.

Oh well, God still loves me even when no one else does and especially when I am in a hate mode and just want to give up. Thank God for his mercy and grace, without that we would be lost.

Well, I think I shall end this blog for today. I know now it will be easier to blog because my computer is working much better. Yall have a great day in the Lord.

Louise