Maxam Made

On Monday there is the weekly challenge event at Speedy TV , if you enter and post your card you may even win a set of free stamps!!     Go here to check this out:  http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/page/fostv-challenge Today’s challenge theme is the 4 th of July.     My card is clean and simple in style and sentiment.   We are a military family, my husband Steve has put 24 years into the Air Force and is still in uniform, he has served all over the world.   My Oldest Son   Roy served 6 years as a Marine including a tour in Iraq.   My Daughter Lissa is working on enrolling as an Air Force Officer this summer.   Liberty is a very important issue to my family, the liberty of being a United States Citizen and even more so the Liberty of being a Christian.    President Lincoln was so right when he said all men were born equal, in the eyes of God this is so true, I am very thankful to live in a country where I can pursue, Life, Liberty and Happiness.   And more so that I can worship freely bec

 I am blogging about this in the hope that It might cause one of my readers to pause  and not do what I did! Here is a picture of my 2007 Saturn Ion2: This is a nice car, I've enjoyed driving it for the last 6.5 years, low mileage and very smooth.  Best thing about it, It's paid for!    This is a picture of the engine.  Very exciting isn't it? Well after driving about 55 miles on Weds.  I noticed there was a burning odor coming from the engine.  I checked the radiator and thought wow, bone dry, I better add some water and get to a gas station and put in  coolant and more water.  Do you see the radiator?? so I get to the gas station and put in 4 GALLONS of combined fluids. I started the car up and it sounded really bad (  it sounded fine when I got there).  I turned if off and waited a few seconds and started it up again.  This time it sounded REALLY, REALLY bad and was billowing out smoke so bad I couldn't see the gas pump 5 feet away.  I turned off the car and then it

Happy Saturday!!   It’s my Birthday!   I love my birthday!!   Not JUST because of presents and fanfare, but it means I have yet to completely fulfill the purpose of my life!   There is still work for me to do, Love to give and Love to  receive.   My Birthday is a giant "Go"  card that says Happy New Year to you and the Best is yet to come!!   And of course presents are great!!     One of the greatest Gifts I have been given is living in a land of liberty.   None of us has any choice about the   geography we are born into, and geography has an enormous influence in the quality of our lives.   It is a gift given to me by People who choose to move here from their homelands several generations ago,   People   who are nameless to me even though I carry their DNA and have passed it on to my offspring.   People that I had never known, with great courage took up arms and prevented this country from being consumed by other countries who did and do not believe in Life, Liberty and the

It is tutorial Friday time at SpeedyTV      Go here for this weeks tutorial and samples:   http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/page/tutorial-time-on-speedytv The week I tried something new again; Faux tiles!   I liked this technique quite a bit and can see where I will be able to use it in the future.   I made my Faux tiles .5 inch squares.   You will need tools you most likely already have for this simple technique. Stamps, inks, a scoring tool and score board Select your stamps and papers.   I used Marks’ Finest Paper and Stamps Asian Delight set. I thought I would like to do this in muted greens, grays and black, I stamped on white   80lb paper and found this worked well in making the faux tiles. I love layers, especially thin ones, like fine art, layers gives rubberstamping art a defined and finished look.   I am using a Genesis trimmer that I purchased a year ago on ebay for 30.00.   Some of you may know what a score that is.   This is a wonderful tool! One really nice thing about cl

Over at Word Art Wednesday the Verse for the day is :    "For we are His workmanship".  What a wonderful bit of knowledge into the World of the Eternal.  Whether or not you believe in there being a Mighty God/ Creator/ Redeemer, you can not deny the beauty of the Creation,  I can not fathom how anyone can be convinced that this all happened because of a chemical serendipity.  I gave my life to the Lord a long time ago and have never regretted one second of walking in the beauty of His ways.  There have been some very hard solitary times in my life, we all have them, but they did not last and I was never truly alone.  Hope never deserted me because I knew I was loved by my Creator.   My Card for the  Word Art Challenge #86 http://wordartwednesday.blogspot.com/ is fairly simple.  Actually I make most of my cards simple.  They all have to fit in an envelope and be mail-able.  I make cards to bring a smile or word of encouragement ( don't we all need those?).  I don't go

It is once again WOYWW #212, time for a world wide Blog hop of creative work desks!  You can go here To Julia's lovely Blog to pick up the hop: http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ , Grab a cuppa  and enjoy!! I've been very busy with life the last two weeks and it being in the 90's  so for the last two days I've taken a little break from card making.  Sometimes pulling away form a task can help you reenergize and regroup.  I have a friend that produces Stunning cards, time after time and she has decided to sell all her supplies.  Why, because it is time for her to move on in her life, and where she is moving to there is no time and no space for this craft.  It is a firm decision in her creative life to close one door and open another and I applaud her. Some people becomes slaves to their craft, it owns then in the way of time and money,  physical space and emotional real estate.  I can't stress enough the importance of finding balance in every area, especially for w

Monday at   Friends of Speedy TV is all about adding Sparkle!!   Go here to check out the challenge:       http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/page/challenges             If you enter you may even win a free stamp!! I used the   Daffodil greetings set to make this card.  This flower patch was made with several stamped images and fussy cut and colored, the grass was also added from the original and turned upside down, adding more fronds to the daffodils Designer paper and 110lb deckle edge paper for the base. Alcohol markers for the coloring. I know I am always saying this but use the best paper you can, it really makes a difference in the beauty of your card, similar to using the best ingredients in your recipe, the end result always tells!   I made the butterflys demensional by stamping two images for one butterfly.   The Daffodils are several stamped images fussy cut and arranged.   Coloring with Spectrum   Noir pens, glittered with stickels and layered with DCWV paper.     Thanks for stopp

Spirelli is a technique that involves wrapping fibers around paper to create either a lace or pattern look.  Go Here for a great tutorial: http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/page/spirelli-accents  and here for the DT at Mark's Finest Paper and Stamps examples:   http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/page/tutorial-time-challenge-54-6-21-13 .  If you decide ant try this and enter a picture of your card you may win a free stamp set!   here is my card:   I kept the Spirelli fairly simple the the rest of the card was busy.  The stamps are from Marks' also, they are clear and  stamp up beautifully.        I hope you all are having a great weekend and find some creative time! Thanks for stopping by! Ginny M

In our world today we hear so much about diversity and gender or lack of or the importance of or the unimportance, the point of, the ministry of and on it goes.  It has been my experience that in reality we are more the same then we are different.  We all need food, shelter and clothing, we all need love, we all need purpose and no matter who or what you are we all need hope.  I have two friends, that are going through very different crises at the moment.  They boil down to the same need.  The need to have hope and to know that things will change and hopefully get better. I made these two cards for a bit of encouragement in the mail.         While this is not a bible scripture it is a sure word of encouragement.  I love this stamp, it is one of my favorites, I love to just  sit and play and make cards.  The sentiment is arresting in it's point and the art is pure beauty.  Combine this stamp, a little bit of paper, a little love and prayer and you create a treasure for someone and b

There is a great Blog called Word Art Wedensday, it is here: http://wordartwednesday.blogspot.com/ . This Blog is all about it's title, getting the Word of God out through Art , But not only does it do that, it helps people to do it!  Every week there is a new scripture  verse posted on Weds.  Their design team has a bunch of beautiful samples displaying the verse and they allow you to take the verse at no cost and if that wasn't enough, use it and post a picture and you might win a prize of a lovely stamp or stampy type thing!  How great is that?  If that is Wonderful enough, they even allow you to use another uplifting "family friendly sentiment"! This is my first card I am actually submitting, I've wanted to before but honestly I was shy. This is the verse for this weds:   I thought I'd like to make this card in Subtle Greens, in an A7 size.  With this being a larger card and having a larger "face"  I wanted to make sure my colors worked, especial

Already Wednesday, where did the time go since #210?  It is now WOYWW#211 and if you aren't sure what this is all about  go here to Julia's blog as she leads the parade to the world wide desk hop!! http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ **From my little contest last week on WOYWW#210 ** I need snail mail addresses from :   Julia Dunnit Shaz in Oz  (Got it) Lisa Richard and Vickie -Okienurse (can't find yours) My Prize winners ! Please email me at  maxammadestudio@hotmail.com   Thanks for playing!! On My desk today are some quickie cards!!  I made these 5 cards in less than 15 minutes!  I made them to hold sample packets of specialty stamping paper I am sell on my supplies page.  Since this is a new item and lots of stampers have not tried this type of paper I though I'd offer a free sample!  I took the images I originally stamped for the "ad" and made them into cards:                                       coloring done with Tinting in mind, alcohol markers:  I j

For what ever reason it would seem I cannot keep ink off my fingers when I am stamping.  As careful as I can be, I still end up with smudges on my papers, some times it is just a fleck, some times a finger print.  If I am selling a card, I don't want to sell my fingerprints with it, whether it is going to one of my stores or my blog shop, the cards have to be pristine and without things like flecks, fingerprints, halos and embossing splatter.  My solution to all of those problems is this 1.99 sand paper block that I buy from Home Depot: I have two here and they are  about 3x5' and the grit is extra fine.  they are really just little foam blocks coated in a extra fine sandpaper.   here is a card that I smudged just for this post to show you what I normally do without trying: I had to darken this to make the print visible, in real life it is very visible!! To remove the print I just simply lightly sanded the area of the print, I sanded of the ink leaving the paper unmarred. you c

Over the last couple of weeks I joined a Rubber Stamp Design Team.  The Name of the Company is Marks Finest Papers and Stamps, a Heinrich Company. Here is a link to the store in case you haven't heard of them: http://www.marksfinestpapers.com/servlet/StoreFront   .  I am on two of there design teams, one for teaching and one for challenges they are here: http://mfpspeedytv.ning.com/  .  I have found the company staff to be very nice and very helpful, a couple of phone calls, a bunch of emails, yahoo groups and I'm up and running.  My official start date is 7/1 but since Marks so graciously sent me stacks of stamp sets I a decide to get going right away.  Good thing too, ever start something and think you know exactly what you are doing only to discover you really don't have a clue??  I'm waving here as I type because that was me!!  I think I have it under control now, my problem was not realizing the communication I was getting was for all 7 design teams, I didn't r

Steve and I went paper shopping today, Trying to find terrific items for our little blog store and pass them on at great prices.  I think we all like to spend less while crafting and with out sacrificing quality. I'm a big paper nut. I love beautiful paper.  I think if you are card making and use lesser quality papers, you are shooting yourself in the foot.  Better quality papers equals better quality cards.  I have seen beautiful stamps on poor papers and it is such a disappointment.  Unfortunately quality can be expensive.  To my thinking, the final product is worth that cost.  Why spend an hour to make a beautiful card if it comes out looking like a first grade art project?  We want beauty and we want people to feel the love when they receive one of our cards. If you look at cards on the web you can tell the difference immediately when quality products are  used. I've been a long time fan of the Magenta company Rubber Stamps and recently of LeBlanche Silicone stamps.  Both o

  Ping was a little duck that easily became distracted by the world around him and as a result he was often late getting back in the family's boat.  The last duck on board got a spanking.  Ping was so afraid to get spanked that one day he just hid. Ping realized the love of his family and the safety of his little world was more important than doing things he shouldn't, He was never late or absent again!   And that is the Story of Ping the duck that I remember from when I was about 7.  Made a big impression, However I am still frequently late getting places, not deadlines, just places!!   My Prize winners are Julia Dunnit Shaz in Oz Lisa Richard and Vickie Okienurse!   Thanks for remembering and Stopping by, I will be getting in contact with the winners for your information! Ginny M    

I actually posted this a day early, talk about losing it, so I deleted it and am starting over!  Same stuff on my desk though, a busy day running around for me!!   It is really What is On Your Workdesk Wednesday Blog hop time #210!!   Start here At our friend Julia's blog : http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/   I have just joined Marks Finest Papers and Stamps design team and that is what is on my desk!! Admin work for me before stamping.  When it come to deadlines I never want to be Ping the Duck.  Do any of you remember that story?     Some of the stamps to play with, and this was about 1/4 of what came in the mail - the other are Top Secret until the July and August releases!  Fun Fun!!   And lastly on my stand up desk: I'm packaging some wonderful 100# and 80# Strathmore card stocks that will go up  in my shop in the card making and supplies page!  You won't believe the pricing!!  That will be Thursday! Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy your round the world hop!! Ginny