Welcome 2016!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a great 2015 - but here's to a wonderful 2016!!!

We had a fun celebration with 5 other couples last night - out to eat and then a bit of dancing.  Today.....more celebrating, as we are having some of those same friends out to the farm today to watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play in the Rose Bowl.  More good eats and laughs - and a hopeful WIN for the Hawkeyes.  I really don't want to watch my hubby cry in front of all of his friends if the Hawks lose.  :)

I'm not much of a New Year's Resolution kinda person - but I have a few things in my head that I know I'd like to work on.  One is to be more active blogging.  I'd like to post more regularly - and be able to share with you tips and techniques that I find helpful.  I'll cross my fingers that it's a resolution that I don't break! :)  

So - here's to starting things off right!

I'm loving all of these cups in the A Nice Cuppa set - and the coordinating dies are great too.  I've got a lot of things imagined that I can do with these. Little gifts of flavored coffee with a cute coffee cup tag - or some specialty teas.

This card is rather clean and simple.  I used a piece of Designer Paper from the new Love Blossoms Paper Stack, as my main panel.  For the cups, I was rather strategic with the ink colors, trying to get the individual cups to stand out a little more.  I used Soft Sky for the top cup, Mint Macaron for the center cup and Lost Lagoon for the bottom one.  It turned out pretty much the way I wanted it to.  If you do this, just be sure to ink the lighter color first, so that you don't contaminate your ink pads terribly. This really only comes into play with you are inking the bottom cup (I worked from top to bottom).  I inked the top cup first and was able to avoid the bottom two cups, then when I inked the middle cup, I actually inked the middle and bottom cup, and lastly went over the bottom cup with the Lost Lagoon ink.  You could probably wipe off the ink from the bottom cup before inking it,  but this was just as easy.

I really feel like the card comes alive when you open it:

I don't typically "dude up" the inside of my cards, but it was fun to do with this one.  
I had die cut the tea kettle and then embossed just the pot portion with the heart embossing folder.  I love the texture this gave the kettle.

Well - that's the card for today!  I better keep moving - only 5 hours til the big game!  

Have a wonderful day and New Year!