Dear ol' Dad....

.....now, pick your chin up off the floor!!!! Don't be so shocked. Yes, you are at the right blog. for real. Two posts in a weekend....I'm feeling like an over achiever!!! Granted, I'd like to be able to post daily, and it'll be easier as soon as lil' Aubrie gets settled into a schedule a bit - or I learn to edit my photos and type with one hand. Not so easy when you have to Ctrl, Alt, Shift, B!!!

So, now onto today's program.......

Totally Cool, er....Totally Tool? I saw the idea to take the measuring tape and turn it to become a 'd' on Splitcoast Stampers....why didn't my light click on and think of that??? Very clever - and I jumped on it and created a card. Now, I will admit, it took me a while to get the card just right. In fact, I inked up the 'dad' portion and colored it (on watercolor paper, with markers and a blender pen). Then, I assembled the background piece, and spritzed it with that new super fun Smooch Spritz - in Log Cabin. (You can't really see here, but it's got some great copper shimmer to it) I layed the 'dad' portion on top of the DSP....then I just stared at it. I had nothing....it was too boring, TOO simple. So, it sat on my table over night. And the next day, I looked at it some more. I turned it, and still nothing. Finally I decided to put a strip of paper ACROSS the card. Normally, I would have used a ribbon, and that would have been SO easy, but not on a Man Card.....I check out my scrap stash in Not Quite Navy - I had a really skinny strip of scrap - but it wasn't enough. I added a second, wider scrap - that was better. And I added yet another skinny strip. It was like eye candy now. Sometimes you just really have to fiddle with a card until you get it just right. This one just took a little bit longer than some....

In the end - I liked my results. I really wanted the outside to say "Best Dad Ever", but I couldn't get that to work out, so - not quite the norm for me:

I decorated the INSIDE of the card too! Guess what? I LOVE it....it sure makes the card just that much more fun! Besides, I always have these funny extra scraps - what a great way to use them up!

The inside was stamped with more tools, which were colored with watercolor crayons and a blender pen - go figure - my favorite way to color. The 'you're' and 'the' are from an OLD retired set - Amazing to Zany. It's a great set for little words. And the 'best' - well, I didn't stamp that at all. It's not stickers. It does use the new Rough Type set. So, how did I do it? MY DIGITAL STUDIO!!!! You know what's great about "stamping" in MDS? You can resize, you can print in several colors, you can make t say whatever you want without having so much trouble lining up the letters. While here, I punched them out, I could have lined them up and just cut out the word. I'll have some more ideas for using MDS tomorrow - that's right - more tomorrow! Please stand by....

Until tomorrow - I have a question for all of you - what is your biggest obstacle in stamping? Is it time, is it getting a clean image, or something else? Please leave me a comment and let me know what your stamping obstacles are. Of the comments I will choose one to receive some blog candy - deadline is Friday, May 21st.

That's it for today peeps - until next time (for real, tomorrow), go stamp something!