Well, hey there, foxy mama!

Just a few more days and it will be time for our first ever challenge at Mari Ko Creations! I am so stoked. Oh, wait. Guess I need to tell you a bit about this new company, huh? My dear friend Mari has started a digi stamp company with a variety of images. She's got foxes, snowmen, flowers, sentiments, and then some in her etsy shop. The prices are super reasonable, too. I get the pleasure and privilege to be on her Design Team. This is going to be so much fun!

For our first challenge, it's Anything Goes. Easy peasy, right? Only thing you gotta do is use her mama fox and baby image. It's so cute, it won't be hard to use. Plus, you get it for $1 HERE. You can find a buck. I know you can.

Here's what I did with it.

I am on a shadow box/diorama kick lately. This is my second one and I am having so much fun. It's hard to tell in the pic, but the papers bow out; it's not flat across like a tv. Mama fox and her baby are featured right in front. Then I added in some foxes with their pumpkins and plain old pumpkins behind them. I colored everything with copics: C00, E07, E08, E21 - 25, E33, E37, YR 07, YR12 and YR14. This is the first time I've colored pumpkins with four or five different colors. How did I do?

Mari's going to sponsor a new challenge every two weeks. This first one will run November 5 - 18. The image is available NOW, though, so you can start working on your project. Go on, go get it! Upload your card to the Mari Ko Creations Facebook page for a chance to win. Come on, you know you wanna.

Look what I made with my t-rex arms!

Tomorrow, Dave has another birthday. You know, that annual thing. He doesn't like to make a big deal out of his day. He's one of those people who genuinely hates when you give him gifts for his birthday or spend your money on him, but he loves when I make him a card. He keeps them all.

He loves monkeys so my original plan was to make him a monkey-themed card. I even bought a special stamp set and some paper for it. Then I found this stamp set and it screamed at me to make a card for Dave. T-Rex Love is an adorable set from Fun Stamper's Journey. I guess I should explain why it called to me, huh? Suffice it to say that Dave tells me that I have T-Rex arms. It's a standing joke between us that when it comes time to pay at restaurants, my arms miraculously get shorter so I can't reach the check. Of course, he'll fail to mention that's because he won't let me pay, anyway, but that's beside the point. Now the joke has extended over into our daily lives. I can't reach something? It's my T-Rex arms. I can't carry something? It's my T-Rex arms. You get the picture.

I wanted to do something a little different. Lawn Fawn has this amazing new shadowbox die but unfortunately, I don't own it (yet). I did some searching, found a tutorial, and voila! A diorama card. Check it out:

Now, it's hard to get a good picture of it because of the dimension, so shadows got thrown all over the place. Sorry about that. I used some distress inks to make the background sky and I love how it turned out. I used loads of die cuts, copics to color the dinos and bees, and tons upon tons of red sticky tape to make sure this sucker doesn't come unhinged. So much fun! I'm already planning my next card in my head. Your turn. Stop playing and go get crafty! (thanks for reading my blog first, though. lol)