Happy Birthday

Hey there! Thank you all so much for sending me birthday wishes yesterday! I really enjoyed them. I celebrated a little this weekend with my family and hope to get one more celebration in next weekend! I always like to stretch it out a bit! I planned on not posting yesterday at all, but was moved to list some of my thoughts at that time. Oh how I love blogging and thanks for reading!

Recently, we have been very busy with photography. We created Ashley McArthur Photography. I like to joke and say that McArthur finally decided to hire me! :) You can view the site here, become a Facebook fan here, and check out some additional photos on Flickr here. Hop around and check out some of our recent work. BoldLifestyle will remain active, but as McArthur's personal and creative photography blog.

I've also been working on a major project. I am donating over 450 cards to soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan from my A New Design shop. I am shipping at least two APO flat rate boxes on Wednesday and I am super excited about this! I have a long-time family friend who is currently deployed in Afghanistan and she helped me organize the shipment. She is due to return very soon. She will probably be back before the box arrives! :) The shop will be all cleared out and new cards will be added as they're created. At least that's the plan!

That leads me to my next project. I am still working on organizing my craft studio. I've been in my new space for about a year now and have everything I need; however, some items are being neglected. I plan to post more items up for sale and really hope you all will grab them up and use them to your heart's desire. Once I get my studio in some organized state, I'll photograph it for you, but I've also decided to photograph what a "real" studio looks like - when it's all a mess - not those magazine and clean photos we all see and love! Hey, I know I don't live the magazine life, so I want to show you all what's real! So stay tuned for that...some time! :)

I've also been working on a new blog. The new blog will be a new design (ha ha get it, a...new...design) and a new web site. I have thought long and hard about creating my own site and finally made the decision to go for it. I really love Blogger, but have outgrown it. Also, with my own dedicated web site, if I ever change anything again, the site will not change. What does this mean for you? You will have to subscribe to a new site feeder via Google Reader or E-mail all over again. I apologize for any inconvenience up front, but want you to know I am making this change specifically for my blog readers and to interact with each of you more. Some new features will include my ability to respond to your questions in the comments and even chat! The Blogger site will still be live, but will automatically redirect to the new web site. I will let you know when the change will occur, so if you read my blog through a feed, you will see one post that announces the switch and then I'll provide the new site and feedburner links as well. I just wanted to give you all a fair 'warning' of what to expect in the near future. I appreciate all of my readers and welcome you to join me on the new site in a few weeks.

That's it for now! About today's card...I created it last week and wanted to emboss the wood grain patterned and use some of Papertrey's new basketball stamps. I ended up creating a version of a basketball court on the card. Notice the faux stitching is like a basketball court? Maybe it's a stretch, but it's a correlation at least!

Thanks for stopping by and reading what's been up with me! Here's more about the card:

Instructions

1. Trim blue cardstock block, stamp wood grain pattern, and heat emboss with clear embossing powder.
2. Mat cardstock on an orange block.
3. Trim white cardstock block and stamp text background, then mat on orange cardstock.
4. Adhere orange cardstock to a black A2 card base.
5. Die cut one scalloped oval die template, cut in half, then add white faux stitching with gen pen.
6. Adhere one half of oval on white cardstock and the other half on blue cardstock.
7. Add black ribbon and loop it at the ends.
8. Stamp three basketballs and color with Copic markers.
9. Cut out and pop off card front center.
10. Stamp sentiment and pop off bottom right corner of card base.

Supplies

Stamps :: PTI - background basics (woodgrain, text style I); birthday basics
Ink :: Versamark; Memento - black; Uniball - white signo gel pen
Cardstock :: PTI - stamper's select white, spring rain, orange zest, true black
Embellishments :: PTI - true black twill tape
Tools :: Spellbinders™ - petite scalloped oval nestabilities large (S4-139), wizard