I think I have finally recovered from the tears that were streaming down my face when Joannie Rochette skated in the Ladies Short Program last night. If you are not aware of the story, her mom had a heart attack and died shortly after her flight landed in Vancouver. She was coming to watch her daughter skate... Joannie decided to skate in the competition and her face told the story as she performed her routine. She fully broke down at the end of her routine after the audience gave her a standing ovation. Another Olympic moment and one that shows the wonderful support the audiences have been giving the athletes. 
Yeah, Canada won gold again!!! I for one would not sign up to do the cross terrain skiing event, but then, I'm too old and conservative now LOL! Add this win to our gold in the Ice Dancing the night before and we are a happy nation :D One fun thing they are doing in Vancouver is change the colour of the Olympic rings by the water to the colour of the medal that a Canadian athlete wins on a given day. The rings have been gold for two days now and it feels good :D Okay, I now have the "I feel good na-na-na-na-na-na, just like I knew I would na-na-na-na-na-na-na" song in my head! Bet you now do too LOL! 
What a delightful mix of colours Stacey came up with for this week's Curtain Call Colour Challenge. I love navy and olive together and the other two colours are a fabulous compliment. Will definitely be using this colour combo again. I matched this up with Jen's Sketch For You To Try from this weekend. I had to go with flowers because I saw lots of daffodils blooming yesterday as well as a cherry tree - in mid February!!! We are definitely in not going to know how to deal with the rain once it returns! Warm temps, birds chirping, flowers blooming and a city that is a buzz with the Olympics - who could ask for more :D
When I first saw this sketch I freaked out. Waaaay too many panels for my little mind to have to deal with LOL! However, since Canada lost to the US in hockey last night I was more than a little bit feisty and welcomed something to take it out on - ha!! I think making this card added rather than subtracted from my frustrations of the evening, but at least I can say I've done the sketch LOL! 
This is a picture of all the flags by the Athlete's village. You can see the Swiss flag at the top of the one building and there are others up as well. The Canadian's had a huge flag over a balcony just the right of the picture but the angle was wrong so I couldn't catch it. Wish the wind had been blowing a bit as it would have been a fabulous picture with all the flags extended. These next pictures were taken on the shores of False Creek near the Russian Soshi Pavilion (they are hosting the next Winter Olympics). There was a 4 hour line up to get in so we passed and decided to enjoy walking along the seawall. On our way we tripped across an amazing sight. On the banks of the seawall there were hundreds of Inukshuks people had made with the rocks. It was a truly amazing sight. Lots of adults and little kids were down there making their own to add to the count. It's little pleasures like this that just make me smile. Here are pictures of a few that were made and the bottom picture is just a portion of the ones that lined the short.
Another wonderful sketch by Amber for this week's Verve Inspiration Challenge. The inspiration picture basically made my card for me :D First thing that came to my mind when I saw the plate was: "Darn, I don't have that Nestie shape"....yet.... LOL! So I stuck to the oval as per the sketch. 
As luck would have it, I had some card stock that was a perfect match for the plate colour. I then embossed the flower image in white on Kraft as per the napkin. Then I got stuck because I needed another colour to work with and didn't have any DPs with these colours in it. Back to the picture I went. Since there was silverware in the picture, I figured gray was a good match. I crimped the two gray panels for some dimension and added the brads and some ribbon. The ribbon is actually a perfect match to the card stock but the camera didn't want to show it that way - ugh! A little something was still needed so I added a little border along the bottom and a tag to pull in a bit more of the kraft colour and fill in that side of the card.
It's a glorious day today - blue skies, sunshine and lovely warm temperatures. Vancouver at it's best :D That lead me to butterflies and flowers again. I used my new SU Flower punch and SU Butterfly die for this sketch of Jen's. I ran the butterfly through my Birds and Swirl embossing folder and the flower centers through the Swiss Dots embossing folder to give them a bit of texture. The white panel pattern was made on my Scor-Pal and I curled the flower petals a bit with a knife. 
Another wonderful sketch by Mercy this week, though I did have to ponder this one a bit due to the side panels. I originally wanted to put a butterfly in the oval but a few others beat me to it - a hazard when one does not do the sketch on the day it's released LOL! So I merrily went to flowers because the temps have been so warm here it feels like Spring! I also used Colour Throwdown #79. What a wonderful mix of colours. 
My main panel came together wonderfully and I was able to use one of my favorite Penny Black floral stamps called Blush - very appropriate for this colour combo :D The red oval gave me a bit of grief as it is such a strong colour against the other two in this combination that it needed to be balanced off. After some fiddling with various options, I settled on the two thin strips of red at the top and bottom to hem things in. Since I didn't have butterflies as my focal image, I decided to add them elsewhere - ha! Love these Martha Stewart Butterflies and they filled things in very nicely. I really tried to get ribbon on this card because if felt a bit naked, but it just didn't work so I left things as they were.
This week's Curtain Call Colour Challenge had a wonderful array of colours: So Saffron, More Mustard, Chocolate Chip, Going Grey and Very Vanilla. I paired it up with Jen's Sketch For You To Try to make it a double challenge card. I love this new SU flower punch and can see myself using it a lot. Even though you can't really see it in the picture, I curled the petals of the flower a bit with a knife to give it a bit of dimension. 
On an Olympic bent, I thought I'd show you a picture of what the Olympic Medals look like - in this case the gold medal as Canada is celebrating Alexandre Bilodeau's Gold medal win on Sunday night in the Men's Mogul competition. Click on it to enlarge it - they've done a great job designing them! Alexandre is the first Canadian to ever win Gold when Canada has hosted the Winter Olympics!!! Our family was jumping up and down and screaming when he won, so much so that the poor cat went a runnin' with his tail all puffed out LOL! I had tears streaming down my face when they showed his brother cheering because his brother has Cerebral Palsy and is his biggest fan. What is even more touching is how Alexandre calls his brother his biggest inspiration. Definitely, on on those "Olympic Moments".
