"HOPE" card for Japan

I'd been wanting to make a card, for Japan, to say "GANBATTE!". This word can be used in many ways but in this situation, you can translate as "hang in there", "Be Strong!". People say this word to cheer them up, others & themselves. Anyways I became to know this challenge through my "mouse friend" Mary Anne, and I finally made a card. For this week's challenge, the owners of this blog challenge are donating to the RED CROSS , depending on the numbers of people who plays for this challenge. Great timing :-) For the challenge, 1. I have to use Stash which has DUST on it! (lol!) and 2. I have to use color "RED" in honor of Japan. well, the STASH I used which I hadn't used is this DCWV "The far East Stack" 8"x 8" printed textured paper, which I found at Joann at Clearance section, over a year ago? I've hardly made Asian themed card but the price was soo good (70% off! ) to pass it up! lol... The crane stamp is Posh Impressions. I made a "Japanese flag" and stamped the crane over the center of the "flag". The sentiment is my own handwriting, "KIBOU" (meaning "HOPE"). There is always "hope" in everything...

Color Splash

at Lawnscaping Challenge this week. This is what I came up with. Still having a bit of snow on the ground, these "critters" found GREEN leaves, the sign of Spring! :-) It's a bit hard to see, but i randomly dotted on the stamped ground image, with Sakura Gelly roll Clear Star pen, thinking a bit of snow left. I tried different colors of stickles, but nothing worked well in my image, so I used this gel pen. In person, you can see more of it, and a bit silverish, although the pen says, "Clear". Actually not only this is the sign of Spring, to me, this shows the "HOPE" for survivors & all people in Japan.

"Welcome Spring"

at House Mouse Monday challenge #91 this week. Despite of my emotions being overwhelmed by Japan's quake & worries, I really wanted to make some cards, and I made this before the challenge expired :-) It's still cold here though, for "Welcome Spring" challenge...lol... I guess I wanted to make Cheerful card & punched out many flowers as you can see them on my card :-) The front petals of the flower & the mouse are colored, trimmed and layered with foam adhesives, but for the flower petals, only the top part, and the bottom parts which are connected to the stem are attatched with regular glue. It gave the depth for the flower, looking like the flower is actually blooming :-) Glossy accent on rain drops & mouse's eye. I don't mind the rain as long as it's WARM, pleeeze!! lol :-)

"Cute & Cuddly" Challenge #48

at Wee Memories this week. Sorry that I couldn't make any cards for a while after Japan's devastating earthquake, but I'd been wanting to use this Lawn Fawn stamp set ever since!! I planned to finish the card & post it yesterday but we had Tornado warning & hails, I couldn't do it, and instead, I posted about that...I'm really tired from these Mother Nature's Fury and I still can't really concentrate on creating things, like BEFORE the earthquake hit, but these "Critters" from Lawn Fawn make me smile everytime I play with them :-) I'm planning to make Many More Cards with these critter sets! :-) And the sentiment is a stamp from old time... "the Boyds Collection" ! I thought of spring for this scene, and wanted to use the Winter Critter/polar bear for Spring, and thought the sentiment is perfect, with bear in dark brown! :-) I used dimentional adhesive here & there, paper piecing here & there. I made the tree, adhering the top of each layer with regular glue and used dimentional adhesive to give an interesting look on the 2 bottom layers of the leaves of tree. Today, it's cooold again. It was like 65F yesterday, and this morning, it snowed! I'm Really Really Ready for Spring!! :-) ps. I'm sorry that I haven't really commented on your blogs... the disaster was too big for me to take...

Tornadoes & Hail in Western PA

It was really scary. In this area, I've heard that a couple of small tornadoes touched down in the past (like in 40years) so it's not common, but it did today... I've been through earthquakes, SUPER TYPOON (wind gusts over 235mph!!) but NOT TORNADO, and I Don't Want to ADD Tornados to my natural disaster list!...:-( When I left the supermarket around 4:15PM, the temp. was still around 65F. When I was about 2 mins away from home, the BIG rain drop started to hit the car window. At least that's what i thought that was. When I arrived home, started to unload the groceries, hail started to fall.. I hurried up. As soon as I came inside, the HAIL started to fall like crazy!! I think it lasted for 5 mins?, and we got this size of hail on the pic. It's MY HAND and this SEASHELL shaped hail was 1.75" x 1.5". We had larger hails than other places nearby, according to the evening news. Then I heard the siren, and turned on the TV, and we had TORNADO WARNING in this area!! I looked outside once again, and it got even darker than before, and could see the funnel of clouds in the distance... I got really scared... the tornado touched down the ground about 10~15 mins. drive away, RIPPED off the roof & others from Hempfield High school, and several houses' 2nd floor were ripped off which were on its' way. Actually there are 2 circulations in one cloud on the rador at that time. In 20 mins apart, another Big cloud was coming from downtown Pittsburgh to this way, with Hails & POURING rain... And this air system is going to drop the temp. to 17F tomorrow morning...sigh... again, today was like 65F!!! I'm glad though that the tornado didn't ripped this house & me... I haven't heard anybody got killed but for a while, I heard & saw many amblance going up & down the nearby streets... Hope everybody was ok... I planned to post a CARD after my last post on Japan's earthquake but I didn't have a chance to finish the card today cuz of this unexpected event...

Update on 3/24/2011 The tornado was EF2, max. 120mph wind, 90 homes were damaged, 30 of them completly destroyed...

8.9 Earthquake hit Japan ~ Touhoku Kanto Dai Shinsai

It's been a week since Japan had a big earthquake & Tsunami. It's been a difficult one week, having my mother living in Tokyo. I've been talking to her every day (big thanks to US tel. companies who is giving us free service.) and sometimes twice a day so that she wouldn't get depressed nor worried, cuz of many big aftershocks and now radiation scare. My mother hasn't decided yet whether she leaves Tokyo or not...I've been trying to live my life as normal as possible but i'm having hard time dealing with my emotions. I've been glued to the news on tv & follow up online about the earthquake. I cry everytime I watch them, the survivors, who lost everything incld. the family members, but my feeling is nothing compared to those people who is facing the tragedy right now.... this morning, I heard from my mother that some relatives who went missing in Fukushima prefecture where those nuclear power plants are located, have survived!!, but again, too close to the nuclear power plants...I'm just praying for them to be able to fix the problem before it's too late...Today death toll rose to 6,900 and over 10,000 are still missing. It's like Kobe earthquake in mid 90s', when the death toll rose by 1,000 per day for several days... Over a year ago, I wrote my thought about the deadly earthquake in Chile, from my experience with earthquakes. I never thought I would be writing a year later, on this earthquake which happened on 3/11/2011 (2:46pm on Friday, local time). The 5th biggest in the world..... when words fail, prayer remains (from angsandy.blogspot)

3 Sweet Surprises!!

well, today, i received the e-mail notification from my flickr, that Kelly-Marie FAV.this card which I made & uploaded it a week ago. Kelly-Marie is the owner of Lawn Fawn. I just thought that was nice. Then later, when i was checking Blogger, I realized she fav. it cuz she picked my card in First Fawny Flickr Friday on her blog! What a sweet surprise!!

Earlier this week, I received Stylish Blogger Award from 2 people (Cricketscreations & HandmadebyTLC) by Surprise, too! Thank you all for making my week Sweeter :-) To accept this award, I need to pass the award to 8 stylish blogs and list 8 things about myself.

1. I am an Island Girl & also a City Girl



2. I was a Mountaineer only during my college years



3. I luv making cards & dolls, and sewing



4. I luv Swimming & Snorkeling



5. I luv SUMMER



6. I'm Multilingual



7. Nature inspires me the most!



8. I luv Baking!... well, I luv EATING FRESHLY baked sweets so I bake! LOL!

The following are my picks for the Stylish Blogger Award:

1. http://www.dancinginthepuddles.com/



2. http://www.seaofcreativechaos.com/



3. http://elizabethallan-blog.blogspot.com/



4. http://mystampingnest.blogspot.com/



5. http://angsandy.blogspot.com/



6. http://simplysandy-sandy.blogspot.com/



7. http://sparkly-train.blogspot.com/



8. http://virginialusblog.blogspot.com/

St. Patrick's Day card

I made this card for my "bestest" friend from college, Laura. We've been friends for many years now, since my 2nd year & her 3rd year in college. Although we haven't been able to hang out as much as we wanted to, after we both graduated, and me living almost always Very Far. ... now she has her own family and works long hours, it's getting even harder to keep in touch closely but I always send her cards for special occasions, so at least she knows I think of her so often. :-) I used this weeks sketch challenge at mojo Monday. I like this sketch! :-) I wanted to make the ROUND card but I really wanted to use this Sentiment from Lawn Fawn, and ended up making a square card. :-) I also wanted to use those tiny shamrock paper I recently found at local stamp store. Inside of the shamrock stamp, in the middle, I attached tiny heart shaped clear gems but when I took a pic. of the card, it seems that the colors of my shirt reflected and shows the dark pink & black stripe on CLEAR gems... lol..All images are heat embossed.

Very "SPRING" card! :-)

I received this Penny Black stamp from Kathy R. earlier this week (thank you, Kathy! ), and had been wanting to use this CHEERFUL stamp, coloring being inspired by her enclosed card! Her coloring is always vibrant & beautiful, and the card has a big butterfly on it, in Green. Since this stamp has a big butterfly, I wanted to color Vibrant like hers in different colors~Yellow. I made it in Yellow & WHITE because I saw the Tuesday Trigger challenge at Moxi Fav. (the pic. below my card). This pic. inspired me with these two colors & SPRING-like card. I'm also submitting this to Penny Black at Allsorts challenge since this month's challenge is "Welcome Spring", a card with Penny Black stamp, and to SCS for "Spotted Canary Spring Challenge". I didn't ink the hearts of this stamp so it would look more SPRING, to me! :-) I colored the image with Le Plume pens in different shades, like Kathy R. did, on her Gorgeous cards! (she uses tombo pens.) They both don't blend, like Copics but it's ok. I got more vibrant color effect (at least, in person! lol!). It's hart to tell from the pic. but I used glossy accent for those dots on the wings & the bottom tip of the wing. I used sakura clear glaze pen for lines of the wings, its' antenas, and the brown body. I did cut one larger wing image, and attached with dimentional foam on the top, but adhered the oppsite side with regular glue (no dimention) to the body. Since the wing is large enough, it doesn't show the gap of the height. I used the impressabilities on the background white CS. The sentiment and the main image were attached with dimentional foams. It's March. I WANT SPRING! :-)