Where Has the Time Gone?

I guess that should be the name of my blog since I always feel like time slips away from me so easily! I have been so busy with my boys' school that I haven't had much time for crafting. I am helping out with the book fair for their school, going to meetings, trying to meet other moms since we are new to that school, setting up "playdates" (not sure what you call it when they're in 4th and 6th grade), and going to parent-teacher conferences. Whew! And when I do have time to hit the craft table, it's to make gifts for their teachers or for friends. I never remember to take those pics in the wee hours of the night when all I can think of is how tired I am and how hard it will be to get up in the morning... I hate feeling like I rush from one thing to the next but that is how my life seems to be right now. It's just a season and I know it will slow down again.

Here is a card that I made to play along with a couple of challenges. Over at Card Patterns they have a cute sketch that I used to make my tag. And the color scheme came from ColourQ challenge #108.

I wanted to try a distress stain resist element to my project. SweetSteph Card Creations has a tutorial here. I am loving the Tim Holtz distress stains and couldn't wait to try this out. Remember what I said about not having time to craft in the last two weeks? I had some of these distress stains that have been sitting there, unopened! so sad...

Anyway, I used a stamp set from Tim Holtz since I liked the grunge look these stamps had. I used versamark to stamp the starburst image on some manila paper. After heat setting some clear embossing powder, I got out my stains and started to apply them. I have to play with it some more because dabbing straight from the bottle is just too heavy for me. If you have any tips, I'm all ears.

Once I got that all set with my heatgun I looked through my scalloped dies and realized that it looked kinda like a shell. So that is the theme I went with. A beach/surf theme of sorts. I made the card to be a sort of encouragement card. A reminder to get up and try again.

Thanks for looking! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. My kids are on Fall break starting today so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to craft. I have some ideas of some projects I'd like to get started but we'll see. :D