Walking to save lives and honor Will

This year I've signed up to walk the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Half Marathon in beautiful Lake Placid, NY in June. I'm committed to raising $1500 to participate and I'm walking in honor of eight year old William Hamilton.

I've made sets of handmade cards to help meet this goal. Here's a sample of one kit. It's been fun to make these packs and the reception has been great.

My webpage for fundraising is located at

http://pages.teamintraining.org/uny/lkplacid11/aholleger

More fun with Basic Grey

Lots of new cards with Basic Grey Papers

I received my latest Stampassion card kit, Caught a Bug, which came with a pack of Basic Grey's Kioshi paper and a huge pack of Memory Box cards. After making all of the cards in the kit, I continued to play with this beautiful paper against the Parsley green card stock. Good fun.

Wonderful week of stamping

This week I worked on cleaning up started projects and organizing my finished cards and I've had a wonderful time. I love being my art room/studio and once I'm in there I can get lost for hours. Give me my iTunes and some stamping and I'm just happy.

My daughter's come to join me by sitting in the room and listening to Lady Gaga or just talking while I work. We're on Gaga count down for a Madison Square Garden show on Tuesday. Now I have boxes of finished cards sealed in covers with their envelopes and organized by topic so I can put my hands on anything at a moment's notice.

Next on the agenda: finish the remaining card kits I have purchased (and one more on the way) and projects started then prep for some classes I'd like to teach as soon as my outside employment is approved by my employer.

I better start mailing more cards with all these cards organized!

After all these years of stamping, it's still

DeNami Beautiful Buttons Blog Hop

Happy Valentine's Day and welcome to this month's DeNami Blog Hop. Wow - thirty participants. It's full! You should have arrived from the Ruby 2 Shoes blog of Ruby McGuire. We share the same quote at the top of our blogs. It's important to remember that this is supposed to be fun!

If you get lost along the way or a hyperlink isn't working correctly, head to the DeNami blog page to find your way back into the hop. DeNami is offering two $20 gift certificates for visitors to the hop that leave a comment. Leave a comment for each artist to increase your chances to win. Comments must be posted between February 13 at 6 AM PST and February 14 at 11:59 PST. It's very easy to enjoy this prize at the DeNami shop.

I had two ideas when I heard the theme was buttons. First, I wanted to do a tic tac toe board with the new Love Sentiments stamp set. I have three slight variations on this idea. In my aging mind I can't remember if this is my own idea or I saw something similar somewhere else. But

since I can't remember I'm going with the answer thatI didn't 'borrow' another artist's idea :) Second, I have a friend that's always saying 'Peace Out' and I thought to make apeace sign with buttons and a love background. So my greeting is 'With Love and Peace'.

For the tic tac toe cards, I used some old Stampin' Up valentine themed papers. I have soooo much paper in this room. I love the brown, pink and turquoise colors. The cards include the Love Sentiments and Hearts stamp sets, the aqua, sweetheart, and espresso button packets, and turquoise ribbon.

The espresso buttons have a little brown and white twine tied through. I was glad to find a use for this paper that's been hanging around for awhile. Time to put away the Valentine's day stamps and begin thinking about spring and Easter. Please come Spring.

With love and peace includes the Love Sentiments stamp set and Tutti Fruitti button packet.

I'm having withdrawal from football season and since it's still so cold, I'll be hibernating in my studio and thinking warm thoughts. So you leave with warm wishes for love and peace on your way to the next stop which is Sweet Sentiments from Beverly Montez. Enjoy.

DeNami Simply Scallops Blog Hop

Welcome to this month's DeNami Blog Hop. The theme this month is Simply Scallops. The hop is officially open for the opportunity to win a prize from Sunday January 9th at 6 AM PST to Monday January 10th at 11:59 PM PST. You should have arrived from Nicki Scheck's blog. To start at the beginning or if you get lost along the way, go to the DeNami blog site.

To enter for a chance to win one of two $20 gift certificates from DeNami, post a comment on any or every entry. Please make my blog one of the places you comment :) The more comments you post, the more chances you have to win. DeNami just released about 50 new stamps so it would be easy (soooo easy) to spend that gift certificate.

I fear I may regret my choice of a Valentine's day card if the February blog hop has a Valentine's theme, but I've jumped into the Valentine's craft supplies. That darned Martha Stewart's display in Michael's always gets me in trouble every time :) Oh well, I'm not going to have a problem making more Valentine's cards. As far as scallops go, I pulled out punches, stamps, ribbon, embellishments, ..... you get the idea.

The base of the card is Bazzill red textured paper. I stamped love and the small heart pair with Versamark ink in rows across a pink layer of Bazzill paper then topped it with ruby red glitter. (No matter how hard I try, I always have stray glitter. It's probably on my face as I type. Pardon the stray pieces and think of it as extra love.)

Across the bottom I used Clear Snap Design Adhesives scalloped row. I love this stuff:

it can be topped with embossing powder, glitter, beads, flocking, etc. Here I used the same glitter as the Versamark images. Actually, the glitter decided that for me.

The card is topped with a scalloped punched oval of red and plain oval of white with 'love you' from the assorted greeting set in black ink. Then I added some heart shaped rhinestones from Recollections.

While the second card is not my entry, I'm sharing a Christmas present thank you card I made which also has scallops and a DeNami stamp. The base is an A Muse snowflake card, with a band of blue paper cut with a scallop punch and topped with a felt snowflake ribbon (that Martha again). The phrase is from the same assorted greetings set as 'love you'.

Snowflakes and hearts, all over my workspace. Happy January. The next stop in the hop is Ruza Rebel's blog. Enjoy.

Inside Snowmen

The week before Christmas my kids and I spent a night of food and fun with our friend Kerri. She is an amazing artist and great friend. Kerri has had her work published several times but has a two page spread in the current Take Ten issue.

As a mixed media artist, Kerri was inspired by Sue Pelletier's past cover art in Cloth Paper Scissors to make these cute snowmen from plain clear bottles. It's a free fall for inspiration because the options are endless and it's definitely a glitter mess!

It was a blast and I'll make more in the future I'm sure. Check out Kerri's snow family. On Kerri's blog (November 8th posting) is the work of another group of friends. Thanks Kerri for a great play date and a chance to celebrate your divorce becoming final.