Making Beautiful Cards #5

Here's another card I made using blue card stock. The horse part is stamped on glossy paper, which absorbs the ink so incredibly that it ends up looking and feeling like a photograph. You absolutely cannot smear the thing once it's done, even if you run your finger across the checkerboard surfaace.

I inked the checkerboard stamp first, then used a paper towel to rub away the ink from one part of the stamp. Then I stamped it on glossy paper. I then sponged a small amount of topaz ink off-center, for drama. Next, I stamped the horse.

Then I glued the glossy card onto dark blue paper, and glued that to the blue card stock

Free Books for Reader Groups

Do you belong to a reader group or book discussion club? Do you know of any such groups? I am looking for legitimate reader groups that I can send free books to. My client is a well known NY Times bestseller. She writes both historical and contemporary romance, and the free books are brand new reprints of her popular backlist. At the back of each book is a teaser chapter from her next book, which will be released in September. It is hoped that these books will introduce the client's work to people who haven't read her before, as well as create interest in the new book.

If anyone knows of a reader group I can send books to, please contact me privately at sholmes (at) holmesedit.com. (Replace "at" with the @ symbol, and no spaces before or after.)

Loretta Chase at Book Smugglers

Come join the fun! Over at The Book Smugglers Loretta will be their guest for the next several days, starting today with a review of her latest book, Your Scandalous Ways. Today and tomorrow will be open for comments, and on Saturday The Book Smugglers will interview Loretta, and again, it will be open for comments.

Ms. Chase will be dropping in now and then to respond to reader comments, so if you've ever wanted to go one-on-one with Loretta, now's your chance! Bonus: leave a comment and be eligible to win an autographed copy of Your Scandalous Ways. Loretta will be giving away three copies. See you there!

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

Friday I had 2 tons of hay delivered. It was so beautiful that I ordered another 2 tons, and today they delivered those extra 2 tons. But first, I had to clean out the barn to make room for the extra hay. I nearly killed myself doing it. The picture above shows a small portion of the 4 tons.


I'm not a packrat, but I had accumulated far too much "stuff" in my barn. Some of it I'm hauling to the dump. Some of it I'm burning. Some of it I'm giving away (my 2-wheeled horse cart and harness--sob!). It's liberating to get rid of junk, but it's depressing when your body just doesn't act like it's 27-years-old anymore. My feet hurt. My back hurts. My knees hurt. Getting old is not for the faint-of-heart.



To end on an upbeat note, here is a picture of Lord Byron, my cat. He is Official Hay Inspector. He likes to climb all over the bales, poking around and, I suspect, looking for mice. He sits on the bales and talks to me as I work. He's great company!

Making Beautiful Cards #4

This card I made for my best friend, Carol. Oddly enough, the darling little dragon blowing out a candle was a freebie given to me when I purchased some other rubber stamps at a stamp show. Vendors often tuck a little freebie in the bag with your purchase. It's a nice touch, and while the freebies are often something I wouldn't normally purchase (like the little dragon), I frequently end up finding many uses for them. This dragon is my "birthday" stamp. I've made many birthday cards with it.

Everything except the smoke is a stamp. The dragon and candle are one stamp. The stone floor is another. I made the smoke by tapping a Q-tip on my ink pad and drawing the smoke freehand with the Q-tip. Then I added "Happy Birthday Carol" with a gold ink pen.

Come Join Us & Win Free Books!

This is the official me doing my official duty. I have two announcements for today, 6/9:

1. Edith Layton is being interviewed today over at the Word Wenches blog in connection with the release of her latest, His Dark and Dangerous Ways. Come join us, and if you leave a comment you'll be eligible to win a copy of her book!

2. Today, Loretta Chase is joining The Romance Bandits blog to talk about her newest book, Your Scandalous Ways. Visit the blog and leave a comment and you'll be eligible to win a bookmark or a copy of Your Scandalous Ways!

Awwww . . .

I just had the cutest thing happen. I bent down to pet my cat, Christopher the Assassin, and he stood on his hind feet and reached his arms up, just like a toddler wanting to be picked up. I realized that's how I always pick him up: a hand under each armpit, fingers circling his chest, and up he comes, nice and comfortable. It's how I put him down, too, so he's very comfortable with that method.

He's actually been doing this for some time, now, and I just didn't realize it. I think it's so endearing, and shows a level of trust for a cat. Christopher is the Bwana, the Great White Hunter (thus the assassin part of his name), so it's a double pleasure to know that such a fearless hunter likes his cuddles so much that he practically begs for them.

How do your pets let you know they want a little affection from Mom? (Or Dad!)

Making Beautiful Cards, #3

This is a card I made for my friend, Jacquie Rogers, who writes totally fun books about faeries and dragons, and pirates and such. I printed out a copy of her most recent book cover and designed a card for her. She promptly commissioned me to make a couple dozen more! Now I have a sideline doing author cards featuring their book covers.

Making Beautiful Cards #2

Shock! I'm back the next day with another card to display. Not much news in my life except to say that while unloading groceries I opened a bottle of new shampoo I'd bought and sniffed it to see what it smelled like. Got a dab on my nose and wiped it off. Now I can't get the perfumey smell out of my nose! Have scrubbed & scrubbed with tissue. Headed for the shower now. Hopefully the smell will stay in my hair and not my nose.

This card shows my love of the Asian influence in art, and also my love of combining textures and patterns. Oh, and my love of monochromatic color themes.

Making Beautiful Cards

Confession: I am a rubber stamper. I make cards. I used to be an artist in my former life (oil, watercolor, pen and ink). And while I no longer have time for art, I still crave that creativity outlet. So I do the next best thing. I make cards.

I used to look down my nose at stampers, considering them second class citizens compared to REAL artists. Also, I was secretly afraid that if I got started, it could easily become a passion. But a client kept telling me how much fun it was and one day, she sent me a couple of rubber stamps and a set of ink pads. I was doomed.

Since I've been so darned busy, and haven't had time to post regularly to my blog, I thought I'd try posting pictures of my cards. At least it won't look like a barren desert here. The card above is one I'm particularly proud of. The Asian cat and Asian writing are stamped in a dark purplish-maroon color called "eggplant." The bands of color in the background were made using a sponge and Q-tips.

The images I'll be posting will be compressed, because Blogger doesn't like big files, so the pictures won't be the highest quality. But hopefully they'll give you a good idea of the types of cards you can make with rubber stamps. I'll try to post a new card every few days or so, schedule permitting.

What is your hobby? Any artists out there?

Up Your Nose!

Gross!!! Yesterday I picked a gorgeous spray of flowers from my rhododendron. It's a rare scented rhodie with a lovely, sweet smell. As I walked to the house, I buried my nose in the flowers and took a deep sniff. And came away with a hideous black garden slug on my nose and upper lip.

I'm not a freak-out person, but that got me good! I slapped it off my lip and hurried to the house with my upper lip stuck out so as not to contaminate my lower lip. I wiped it off with tissue, then soaped up a sponge and scrubbed my nose and lip.

Ahhhhh, nature. Sometimes, I think Mother Nature is a practical joker. Have you ever had anything unexpected happen to you as a result of Mother Nature?

Have You Seen a Funny Lately?

What's the funniest thing you ever saw?

I remember the time I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, creeping forward by the inch. I noticed a guy in the next lane whiz by me at 3 MPH, and he was laughing. So was the next guy. Then I happened to glance in my rearview mirror and saw why. A very professional-looking man in a business suit and driving a Beamer was directly behind me. He had a hand puppet that looked like a dog. This "dog" was barking at cars.

I burst out laughing. The "dog" saw me laughing and barked at me. I laughed harder. The dog stuck his head out the driver's side window and barked at a passing car. The driver pulled the dog back in with his collar, so then the dog scrunched up his face and pouted when the man shook his finger at him. Then the dog saw me continuing to watch him through my rearview mirror, so he crept below the dashboard and then slowly peered over the top in a peek-a-boo way. I laughed. He slipped below the dash again, then popped up quickly. Once more I laughed, and he ducked below the dash and then s l o w l y rose up so that all I could see was the top of his head and his eyes. He played peek-a-boo for a while, then rested his chin on the dashboard and did what was obviously an exaggerated sigh.

During the hour I was stuck in traffic, I had a blast watching this puppet dog perform his antics. Barking at passing cars was hilarious, especially as his eyes locked on like radar and he continued to bark as the car passed. You could see his head swivel and his mouth going. It was just too funny.

When our lane finally started moving again, I waved goodbye to the puppet dog, and he bounced around in his car barking excitedly. I've always wondered about that guy in the Beamer. Why did he happen to have a hand-puppet in his car? Did he have any idea how much I enjoyed his performance?

That's not the funniest thing I've ever seen, but it ranks right up there with the best. Have you ever encountered something similar? Or have you ever seen something that struck you as particularly funny? Or did you do something that was funny? Do tell! We need more humor in our lives!

Have You Eaten a Cockroach Today?

I did. Well, it wasn't a cockroach, but an ant. Every spring I get this hugely annoying invasion of ants. I hate waking up to find one crawling on me. I sit at my desk and they race across my keyboard or up my arm. I lean down to pick up a shoe and one falls out of my hair. I go to dry my face with a towel and find an ant staring insolently at me.

Well, I've been working at my desk all day, nursing my daily cup of coffee. Just one cup. No more. I can sip on a cup all day. So I reached over and took a couple swallows from the dregs of the mug, and something bumped my lip. I looked down. There's a drowned ant on the rim. A very disgusting drowned ant that looks like he's been there a long time.

I am NOT amused. I have little ant bait stations all over the house and they ignore them. They're supposed to eat from them, then go back to their nest and tell their buddies, who also eat from the bait station. Each time they return to the nest, they infect the nest with the bait. The theory is that eventually the whole nest gets poisoned from the bait and dies.

So far, the ants are winning. I even Googled ants, to find other methods of eradicating them. One popular and totally useless piece of advice on all the sites is to follow the ant to its nest. HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO FOLLOW AN ANT??? I spent 20 minutes hovering discreetly in the background, following an ant that rambled all over my kitchen counter, then the floor, then here and there, but never to its nest. So I picked another ant and followed it. After 15 minutes, I got tired of going nowhere.

We won't even talk about the rats that are eating me out of provisions in the barn. They go through rat poison like it was candy, and when I replace the little empty trays of poison with new stuff, they can't wait to get into it. I tell you, it's downright scary. I think they must be a strain of uber rat. I fully expect them to be waiting at the barn door one day, hands on hips, tapping their feet impatiently, chastising me for letting the bait stations go empty.

What about you? Have you ever inadvertently eaten a bug? What did it taste like? I accidentally ate a ladybug once. It tasted like green grass.

My First Photoshop Job

Happy me. I just completed my first job using Photoshop. I designed a bookmark for a client whose book is coming out soon, and the printer wanted a 1/8" bleed on all sides, to allow for slight trimming errors. In essence, a bleed is when you extend the margins of the bookmark beyond the trim area. That way, if the paper twists just a little, as often happens when cutting through a thick stack, you don't end up with a weird, cockeyed white border on one side.

This may not sound like a big deal, but it's pretty standard in the printing industry to require a minimum 1/8" bleed. And it is harder to do than you think. You can't just enlarge a bookmark and then tell them to trim it down, because enlarging it brings the text too close to the trim line and letters may be cut off.

So I'm a happy camper today. Not only did I come up with a spiffy bookmark, I also came up with a great (IMHO) book blurb. If I could figure out how to isolate the bookmark as a JPEG, I'd post it here, but I can't figure out how to do that. Do you collect bookmarks? Do you use them? Or do you turn down a page, like I do?

Random Acts of Silliness

The house is shaking! Earthquake! Leap from chair and run around in circles.

Oh. Wait. It's just the washing machine on the spin cycle.

Return to computer. Feel stupid.

P.S. More silliness: I was writing tags for this post, and I wrote "washington machine" by accident. Made me laugh, as I live in Washington State.