By The Tide Mini Notecard

Today's Lesson From The Craft Room:  Sometimes It Takes Extreme Measures!
I have to confess that part of what has driven the lack of daily posting has been my travel schedule of late.  I'm hoping to get back on a regular posting schedule - I just couldn't make it happen yesterday!  We'll see if I can finish out this week strong and get back to normal by next week! :)  Anyway, I was on the plane and wondering about what, other than my travel, was getting in my way of creating every day and guess what reared its ugly head again?  The darn internet!!!!!  Yes, I have fallen victim once again to the senseless compulsive checking of sites like CNN, local news, People - what has happened to me????  The iPhone has not helped since all it takes is the tapping of a few buttons and I'm at it again!  So on the plane (without the distraction of technology), I began to consider what measures I might take to rescue myself from this time-sucking habit!  I came up with an extreme measure that actually got me excited...Parental Controls!  Maybe I could block these sites on my desktop, my laptop and my iPhone!!!!  That would be AWESOME!  Then, I wouldn't be able to visit and, in the event of an emergency I could access the news by inputting the parental control code.  I was laughing at myself for how ridiculous this extreme measure sounded.  At the same time, it seemed like it would work for me.  So, when I arrived home, I went to work to find out how I could do it (since I had never set up parental controls before).  Well, it's not so easy...because your "child" has to have a separate account without administrator access and, if I followed instructions other than the parental control option, it looked like it would be much too complex to try to access the sites if I ever needed to.  So much for extreme measures!  So now I am back to the most powerful weapon I have...willpower!!!!!!!  I have made it through almost one full day as I am typing this and yes, I am proud!  I'll take it one day at a time and hopefully I can break the senseless habit and get back to what matters - creating art!!!!!!
Today's mini-card was a ton of fun to make and it definitely went through its awkward stage!  I started out with Marina Mist ink and an aqua painter and painted some ink onto the card base.  Then I stamped the script stamp from By The Tide with Marina Mist ink and yes, I stamped it before the other ink was dry, so the ink dissolved and ran....but it looks beachy to me!  Next came Soft Suede ink and the coral stamp and then restamping the same stamp using Tangerine Tango.  Some Crystal Effects was added to the bottom of the card so that I could adhere some play sand.  Once that was dry, I used the aqua painter with some Crumb Cake ink to add a bit of color to the sand.  The shell was stamped on Sahara Sand card stock with Wisteria Wonder ink.  I used the blender pen with a few different colors of ink to add a bit of dimension to the shell and then added a touch of Crystal Effects around the upper edges.  The anchor stamp was the final touch - stamped and punched and then adhered to the front of the card.  I hope you like it!