OK.  This is a blog.  My blog.  Where I'll post pictures of the cards and things I make and other stuff I do.  Once I get the photos downloaded from my phone, that is.  Patience.

In the meantime, a little about me.  I've been a novice paper crafter for a lot of years.  And a photographer, digiscrapper, and writer.  There's a lot of other things I do which we won't worry about now because they don't really have much to do with what I'm doing here.  Yet.

Cardmaking satisfies the OCD in me- once I glue that layer down, it stays right where I put it lol.  And since I like to make cards in my spare time, this means sometimes in the morning, the afternoon, or the middle of the night.  We don't have a 24-hour rubber stamp store here (or any at all, for that matter), so I have lots of supplies on hand at any one time.  Paper and cardstock, ribbons, flowers and other embellis, enough punches to give a bull moose a black eye.  Cutting things, scoring things, stamps and smearing things.  Things I bought years ago and don't even know what they are any more.  Stuff I use every day.  

Scrapbooking was fun too, but not like cardmaking.  Scrapbooking kind of means you have to have pictures of the things you do and the people you do them with. Well, not really.  I just haven't been motivated to scrap any recent pictures for the last lil while.  Cardmaking is cool because you don't have to relate it to anything else in your life at the moment.  Or you can.  Just depends on your mood of the day.  

I make lots of cards for specific occasions, and a lot more cards for no reason whatsoever.  I may  not even have a recipient in mind, I just create a card.  What do I do with all those cards?  Keep them for a little while.  You never know when you'll find a new friend whose birthday is tomorrow and you don't have time to make a new card.  And I send them out to friends and family after awhile too.  Otherwise, it would just get too crowded in here lol.  I try not to let myself have more than a shoebox of cards made that haven't been sent.  Sometimes I send them in packages for other people to send out.  Sometimes I get paid to make cards for someone else to send out.  That's kind of rare, though, but it is happening more often lately.  

Part of the problem is I was making cards 4-6 at a time.  It's just easier to get an assembly line going when you've got Christmas coming.  Trouble is, nobody wants to get six identical birthday cards in the mail lol.  So it's time for me to slow down, and enjoy the making of the card.  Experiment with layout and technique and new tools.  I know there's lots I have that have been on the market for years, and recently I've been buying new toys.  I have to say, there's been a lot going on in our field of art!  Things are definitely different than just five or ten years ago.  

I remember when water based markers were THE thing.  You had to have 'em if you were a stamper.  You could color in your images, or color directly on the stamp.  You could coordinate your markers, ink, and paper (still can, in fact!) if you were a Stampin Up! stamper.  I do have quite a bit of their stuff, lol. And a little Close to My Heart, too.  Those home parties were a blast.  I'll have to have one of those again real soon.  LOL then we'll all have something to scrapbook!

Now, it's all about alcohol markers.  Copics, specfically.  Too bad I choked on the price tag for those... I think I would have enjoyed using them all this time.  Fortunately, Spectrum Noir has just come out with their line of alcohol pens, and I did get seven of their 6-pen sets.  LOVE THEM!  They can do all kinds of things that I can't do as easily with other pens, paints, pencils, or crayons.  And they cost about a quarter of what Copics do.  You can't beat that, even if you get a stick.

Oh!  The pictures are done.  Here's my first card ever with the Spectrum Noir markers- don't laugh.  I didn't know what I was doing.  Oh, and my first time with a Spellbinders Nestabilities die, too (that turned out fine!).

And this is my second one, which I like much more:

See her pants?  I kind of started to get the hang of the shady-blendy thing that alcohol pens are so great for! And the inside says, "Sometimes I even put some in the food".  lol love it.

So- my first tries at Spellbinders (worked great!) Spectrum Noir pens (getting better as we go!) and a blog about my cardmaking (we'll just see how that turns out later).  

What do you think?  I think I'm gonna love those pens, that's what I think.

Supplies for cards:  Card blanks from The Paper Studio, colored cardstock from Michael's, Neenah white cardstock to stamp on, Memento black ink, Spectrum Noir pens (six pen sets in Blues, Yellows, Pinks, and Essentials), and Spellbinders Nestabilities dies in large scalloped ovals.  Oh, and a Cuttlebug embossing folder and Adtech Dot Glue Runners. Stamps are from Inky Antics (Worldly Women #5).