feelin' hot {hot} hot

I did the math the other day. There is actually close to 1000 degrees of extra heat that pumps into the cafe kitchen where I work. 1000 degrees into a small space with literally no air exchange.

We had a handful of super-beautiful, truly ideal summer days last week. Amazing weather - exactly how you want it to be all summer long. That was gone by the time we woke up Saturday morning, it's been downhill since then, and it's supposed to just get worse and worse over the next few days, especially in the humidity arena. I just have to get through 4 days of work and then we have a week of vacation, but I am literally scared about surviving 8 hours in hell tomorrow.

So in the meantime... I had today off since I worked yesterday. I mostly slept in and then sat around, but I did get two cards made. I think I mentioned before I've gotten a bunch of new product recently, but I literally didn't know what to do with it. Seriously. Every time I sat down to try to make something, I started asking myself "Wait, how do you make a card again?" :) Talk about crafter's block! So I started browsing some sketch blogs, and found a couple I liked.

The first sketch I used was a from 2Sketches4You, from last week:

I used the new collection from my new absolute favorite company, Echo Park. It's called A Walk in the Park, and it's really fantastic. The alpha sticker sheet is my favorite - it's these adorable square-ish pennants with coordinating letter stickers - So adorable! The collection feels more like fall colors to me, especially as compared with their uber-summery, bright colored first release. But it's got some really versatile icons with it that I love. They just released a preview of their next release "Life is Good" and it's completely different from their first two collections, but it looks awesome. And I just heard they've got a Halloween collection and TWO Christmas collections in the works. I can't wait! :) Anyway... here's my card.

(I apologize for the quality of this photo. I took it in my favorite spot on the picnic table in the shade, which usually works well. But for some reason it looks really washed out on here. I guess this is why I'm having more success selling cards in person than on etsy!)

I also used my first purchase from Elle's Studio on this card. These little sentiment circles are so adorable! They were a little pricey, but they're pretty handy to have around, and a bunch of them happen to go perfectly with the Echo Park collection.

The second card I made was using CPS Sketch 174:

This is totally not anything I'd ever do on my own, but I was so inspired by the designers' samples, so I thought I'd try it. I used another huge fave - October Afternoon's Fly a Kite collection.

I like the monochromatic-ness of the end result... I really didn't think about it too much as I was making it... I kind of just went with my gut.

I used the ribbon stamp from Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety set from Unity Stamps. I was SO excited about getting this stamp set two months ago, and today was the first time I used it! Why do I let that happen? :) The strawberry sticker in the center is from the Fly a Kite word stickers.

I also used some of the word stickers in lieu of a sentiment. I really like how the blue stickers are so close in color to the background paper, and the look of the larger text on the smaller text paper.

 This one's from the word stickers too. So cute.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you had a great weekend! Stay cool!

:-/