You'll Never Walk Alone - the 96

Today is 20 years since 96 Liverpool Football Supporters lost their lives at Hillsborough, the youngest was 10. There were many children amoungst the dead and families that lost father and son. Many people have been inspired to blog and reply to blogs about this tragedy such as Steve Wilson from BBC's Match of the Day http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stevewilson/2009/04/hillsborough.html


Liverpool has been "my" club since that day. I watched 8 hours of coverage on MTV (yeah, no 24 hours news back then) whilst doing my overnight university desk job of making certain the dorm I worked at in the USA was safe, having been introduced to them in 1988. The dignity and respect this club have shown their supporters throughout the years has been incredible. Their players know that you don't become a star without the support of the fans.

The fans were villified in some of the English media for being "responsible" for the tragedy which has been proven not to be the case. If you wish to support the family in their continuing fight for Justice there is a song that can be bought through HMV or downloaded off i-tunes - The Fields of Anfield Road by the Liverpool Collective (the last link I have given)

More information here - http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/lfc_story/memorial/

British PM Gordon Brown's http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N163989090413-1024.htm

And lastly information - the Memorial single is now charting in the top 20 and in the Northwest of England is number 1 http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N163994090413-1128.htm

I still tear up when I sing You'll Never Walk Alone and never has that been a truer anthem for a club.

Mother Expression

I got a Cricut Expression in the Black Friday sales (the friday after Thanksgiving) and in its box it sat until mid January when I got it out to do a quick card - yeah right!?!?! Plus my creative mojo seemed to be completely hungover and really was no where to be found - it was so bad that I am considering trying to get substantially ahead in my card crafting which I have never done before.

I had this vision of a card with "Mother" going down the side. ARGHHHH! I'm going to have to tackle Design Studio too. Yikes! My brain panicked. So I played with DS and got discouraged and left it for another day. When I struck up the courage again I played and got it sorted out with a bit math on my computer calculator. I picked my card stock, a lovely pearlescent blue - it was going to be a "jacket" for a base card. Well that was the original thought. In the end I thought it would curl too much so I cut it down to be a mat on the card base.

The daffodils are traditional in England for Mothering Sunday which is where this card was headed so that was the inspiration for the pot full of them.

I'm trying to use up supplies so the daffs were from Michaels cardstock that I have plenty and the pot and base card are Bazzill. I used pearlescent chalks on the flowers and pot for dimension and stickles on some of the leaves to add a bit of bling.

I think I would have been happier if I had layered the letters of the "MOTHER" on the side but I just couldn't work out how and it needed to hit the postbox. Hope you enjoy my attempts with my Cricut.

Ingredients

• Card size - 8.5 in x 5.5 in
• Cardstock - Wassau, Georgia Pacific, Michaels
• Cartridges - Plantin, Walk in my Garden
• Color - Pebbles Inc pearlescent chalks, Stickles
• Ribbon - Michaels

I really love those tiger feet...

I guess I can go old school on my singing - That's neat,that's neat, that's neat, that's neat I really love your tiger feet... Glam rock at its best - gotta love a bit of Mud LOL! Come on and dance along, you know you want to!

This is another card I posted in my SCS gallery. Its about my third or forth attempt with my Copics. All the inspiration for this card is my son's High School - colors and mascot.

Looking back at the image I can see things that I would change but I am generally happy with a good percentage of the coloring and the layout is fine - there is only so much you can do for non-frilly boy cards!

I love the High Hopes Tiger image and bought it specifically to use over and over and over again over the next few years! This card really is a hodge podge of brands so here we go and I hope you like it -

Ingredients

• card size - 5.5in x 8.5 in
• stamps - High Hopes Stamps; Kitchen Sink Stamps
• paper - Georgia Pacific, Bazzill, Michael's value pack, Hobby Lobby black textured.
• Color - Copics (low & middle E numbers and warm neutrals from the Ciaos - yes I have all the Ciaos where is that embarrassed smilie - but I do love them!)
• Ink - palette, versachalk (highlighting the embossing)
• Embossing folder - Provocraft

Let it Rock, let it rock, let it rock...

Because when I'm alive, I can feel the fire. Make you come alive...

oh wait...

this is supposed to be a card blog, not a group sing-a-long! LOL! Someone out there in bloggieland knows what I mean and yes Treacle, darling, we are in the Naughties not the 80's. ;)Another card I did for my son's birthday. I took him to his first concert, Live8 in Hyde Park 2005. We are still deciding if we need to do another gig soon, Franz Ferdinand is pretty near and then there are rumors that Kaiser Chiefs are supporting Green Day, ah but I digress again. I scanned the card so you can't really tell from the picture that the guitar is popped up.

Hope you like because I know people struggle with "guy" cards.

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5 in
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, Bazzill, DCWV Rockstar
• Stamps - Inkadinkado
• Ink - Palette, Memento, Brilliance
• Color - Copics

Oh Boy - Card for an Egg Head

I'm truly blessed to be the mother of an incredibly bright young man, but don't tell him I told you so. He is currently working hard at maintaining his straight A's and is on the school's Academic Team as well.
So when I came across this VivaLasVegastamps image, I just had to use it for him! I hope he continues to try hard and accomplishes his dreams.

BTW the saying is JustRitestampers and it says "Massively" a bit of a play on the E=mc2 equation. Hope you like.

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5in
• Stamps - VivaLasVegastamps
• Cardstock - DCWV, Georgia Pacific, Hobby Lobby
• Ink - Palette
• Color - copics

But it kept looking too masculine!!!

OK this probably isn't grungy but it definitely isn't "perky" maybe muted is the correct expression with softer tones of earthy colors and beautiful stamps from Kitchen Sink Stamps and a Stampendous marble texture cube.

My personal challenge for this was to make a card for my MIL using the beautiful humingbird and the Basic Gray Archaic pad - just like many I'm a patterned paper collector. I buy it will all these ideas and get it home and stare at it wondering why I bought it. So I cut rectangles with the front rectangle being smaller than the next and so on. I was going to stack them in a decreasing fashion however, it actually looked too masculine. I stamped the hummingbird with memento inks (I bought all the little teardrop ones that Kitchen Sink Stamps had!). I then used my square Nestabilities to cut out and emboss the image and then to mask as I dappled brown ink over the entire image, leaving a white frame.

I needed a greeting so I turned to my beautiful stamps again and stamped the greeting in the darkest brown and cut again with the Nestabilities. I then thought the white around the image looked too stark so I did my best to match up my greens and some paler memento browns and used my cube Stampendous Marble stamp on both images. I found some Bazzill brown that tied into the color scheme to mount and then thought again - "it looks too masculine" so then I thought (as you do) "D'oh! Hummingbird! I need some flowers" so that is when I decided to add the flower brads and the ribbon bow (it looks a bit like a flower right? LOL).

Well that is it for today. Hopefully I will get some more of my stash up here soon!

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, Basic Gray, Bazzill
• Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps, Stampendous
• Ink - Memento

When Dinosaurs roamed the earth...

No! that wasn't the last time I updated my blog - you cheeky lot. However it is a reference to this card I made for my older brother in law for his birthday this year.

This "Prehistoric Party" is just his scene. Can you tell I know he doesn't follow my blog? LOL. I colored the party with my Copic Markers and this was about their second airing. I'm happy with with the dinosaurs - not really happy with my attempts at the ground and sky. I think I really got rather impatient so I am now making an effort to notice the backgrounds of cards etc so I can try to emulate what appeals to me!

Hope you like my new update. I got several more ready and will try to get blogging tomorrow so I can get back in the groove of this.

Ingredients

• Card Size 5.5in x 8.5in
• Stamps - Stampendous
• Color - Copics
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific; Archivers