"Shaping up" to be a great day!

Giovana challenged us to step outside our "boxes" literally this week for the smARTworks Tea Party, by creating shaped cards. After she threw the challenge down, I was flipping through blogs and found my inspiration. Here's my card: My card is based loosely on a mini book by Melissa Phillips that I saw in this interview post here. I made my own template and went to work adding touches here and there. Don't look closely at my stitching...I had the stitch length way too short anyway, and my machine skipped for huge lengths of stitching for some reason. I will just pretend "I meant to do that..." - and say it adds to the shabby side of its shabby chic-ness! Heh...

I used stamps from Birdhouse Trio, Frames, and Happy Silhouettes. Love that flourish from Happy Silhouettes - it just works well at different angles. Happy Silhouettes, remember, is one of those "SBO - Smart Bucks Only" sets...are you saving up those smARTbucks? You can earn them with purchases, referrals, and cards created for the smARTworks gallery, then spend them on your order from smARTworks or on exclusive products available only to smARTbucks holders! Remember that free shipping special runs for a few more days (till the 24th)...

The other DT girls have cards to share as well - be sure to check out their beauties!

Trish @ Tah-Dah!
Susan @ In the Works
Giovana @ A Place to Praise and Craft
Donelda @ Wiggy’s World
Donna @ Dee’s Studio

BTW, some of you have asked about my thumb...there are some things I've been able to return to doing - I can stamp and type pretty well, but I can't put much pressure or weight on it, which makes it hard to do some normal things very well...primarily anything that involves gripping or pinching or lifting. I don't have it wrapped anymore but it definitely reminds me if I'm doing something it can't handle...ow!