I made a Valentine's Day tag for the Ranger Ink monthly challenge. This month it was Heavy Metal. I cut apart a pop can and die-cut it, then embossed in a folder and used alcohol inks to colorize it. I made up a spray using distress ink refills and pearl-ex powders in the mini-mister for my tag. I then used the blending tool and brushed courderoy ink to add some depth to the edges and then used it again to stamp the flourish a couple of times. Pop-dotted my die-cuts and added the words with my Dymo label-maker. Threw some fibers on and called it good. It was fun and I will be using soda cans again in the future. Easy-peasy!

Woo-hoo, I am starting 2010 on the right track. I have my inchies done for my yahoo trading group for both January and February and will be mailing them out tomorrow. I am going to try hard to stay ahead of schedule on my swaps this year. We'll see how that goes! I really hope to have more free- time/ me-time to "make art" this year. Wish me luck!

January was M is for Mona Lisa, February was Letter N is for Nautical, and then the other February subject was Hearts. I couldn't come up with the other January topic of resolutions, so I didn't sign up for it.

In one of my yahoo atc trading groups, we are doing a name swap where we send to two people each month an atc featuring their name until we have sent to all involved in the swap and my turn is January. My very dear and extremely talented friend, JessieMae, made this one for me and I got it in today's mail. I have been smiling ever since! I always tease that Tim and I are engaged since I kind of proposed to him on the Alaskan cruise and he didn't say no. Eat your hearts out ladies! Just look at the way he's looking at me!

We hosted a New Year's Eve party at our home this year and purchased a new couch and chair for the living room to be delivered that day. When we rearranged the family room downstairs early in the week, we discovered we did not have a phone jack for the computer where we moved the desk, so had our neighbor and good friend, a retired phone installer come over the next day and put one in. Then planned how we would arrange the living room to accomodate the new furniture, needed to move the wires for the satellite dish across the room so spent all afternoon before the party doing that and ran out of time to do my wall above the couch! One problem after another but it is all done now and looks great. Here's what I did to the wall using Stampin' Up wall decals. I love the look and will be doing more of these and hope to make some myself with vinyl and my Cricut Expressions! We'll see....

Erika is celebrating her first blogiversary amd is offering such fantastic blog candy. Check it out here and leave a comment. You could be the lucky winner. http://taylordconcepts.blogspot.com/2010/01/happy-blogoversary-to-me.html