Stampergyrl July Sketch Challenge

Stampergyrl July Sketch Challenge

It's that time again.  Here is my entry for the sketch challenge over at stampergyrl's blog.

You can see her challenge here:  stampergyrl  I used the Stampin' Up! Mini Treat Bag thinlits to participate in this month's challenge.  This project was a lot of fun to make.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

June Stamp Club - Card #4

Crazy About You Stamp Set & Hardwood Background Stamp

And here is card number 4

Supplies:  Hardwood Background Stamp & Crazy About You stamp set; Early Espresso, Crumb Cake & Very Vanilla cardstock; Early Espresso Classic Ink Pad; Hello You Thinlits dies; stampin dimensionals; white glue.

June Stamp Club - Card #3

You've Got This Stamp Set

Here's card number 3

Supplies:  You've Got This stamp set; Whisper White & Watermelon Wonder cardstock; Smoky Slate, Watermelon Wonder & Stazon Black ink; Blender Pen; Watermelon Wonder 1" Dotted Lace Trim; stampin dimensionals; 2 1/2" Circle Punch.

June Stamp Club - Card #2

Happy Birthday, Everyone Hostess Stamp Set

Here is card #2.  Supplies:  Happy Birthday, Everyone stamp set; Whisper White & Real Red cardstock; Night of Navy Classic Ink Pad; Real Red 1/4" Cotton Ribbon; Hearts & Stars Decorative Masks; sponge dauber; rhinestones; sponge daubers; glue dots.

June Stamp Club - Card #1

Tag Talk & World Map stamps

This is one of the cards we made on Saturday night in our stamp club. This is a nice masculine birthday card. Our stamp club is on the 2nd Friday night of each month. Come join us and make some cool cards!

Supplies:  World Map Background Stamp & Tag Talk stamp set; Whisper White, Pacific Point & Basic Black cardstock; Memento Tuxedo Black and Delightful Dijon ink pads; Lucky Stars embossing folder; Deco Labels Colllection Framelits; Label Bracket & Scalloped Tag Topper punches; Pacific Point 3/8" Stitched Satin Ribbon; stampin dimensionals.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Stamper Gyrl Sketch Challenge

My sis over at Stamper Gyrl is having a monthly sketch challenge.  Here is my entry.  Be sure to check out her blog and the challenge here!

This is my entry:

Supplies:  Whisper White & Cucumber Crush cardstock; In Color DSP; Cucumber Crush, Watermelon Wonder & Delightful Dijon classic inks; Stazon black ink; 2 3/8" Scallop Circle Punch; Tree Builder Punch; stampin dimensionals; rhinestones.

New 6 x 6 Paper Stacks

I think I may have a new favorite designer paper, but then I'll probably have a new favorite with every one that I use from the new Stampin' Up! catalog.  This one is a 6x6 paper stack and is called Pretty Petals. The stack contains 48 6x6" double sided sheets.  That's 4 each of 12 patterns.  The patterns in this paper are all fresh and very pretty.

Care to guess which of these cards is my favorite?  The butterflies of course!  I'm not sure what it is about butterflies, but I just love them.  These cards also us the new Tin of Cards stamp set. This may be my new favorite set!  I just love the swirly border stamp, and the words in the set are wonderful also.  

If you would like to order the paper and/or the stamp set, you may do so from my online store.  Click here to shop now! If you don't currently have a demonstrator, I would love to be yours.  If you are in need of a catalog, please let me know and I'll get one out to you right away.

New Background Technique

New Background Technique

This card turned out so pretty!  The background is made with foil and it's an alternative to using the foil cardstock. We all have aluminum foil in our kitchen, right?

To make the background:  cut a scrap piece of cardstock to the size you want your foil piece to be.  It can be any color because you won't see it in the finished card.  Use a glue stick and cover the whole piece of cardstock with it.  Lay the foil on it (the foil piece should be larger than the cardstock piece so you can wrap it around to the back after gluing it down), shiny side up and brayer the whole piece.  This will smooth out the foil and make a nice shiny image. Wrap the edges around to the back, then emboss it with any embossing folder.  Attach to your card and finish as normal.  

Supplies for this card:  Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Garden Green and Whisper White cardstock; Petal Potpourri and Painted Petals (retired) stamp sets; Elegant Eggplant classic ink; Fun Flower, Extra Large Oval and 1 3/4" Scallop Oval punches; Lovely Lace embossing folder; rhinestones, stampin dimensionals and sponge.

New Catalog!

Here is my first card with the new 2015-2016 Stampin' Up! catalog.  

I love everything in the catalog and made this card for a design challenge over at Mojo Monday.  They are looking for new designers, and I would love to be chosen to be one of them! You can check out the challenge and the beautiful samples here.

This card is also a sneak peek for our June Stamp Club.  Come join us!

All supplies are Stampin' Up!

Supplies:  Petite Pairs stamp set, Basic Black & Very Vanilla cardstock, Timeless Elegance DSP, Floral Frames framelits, Decorative Dots embossing folder, Memento Black Ink, Metal Rimmed Pearls, Stampin Dimensionals.

Check out all of the new Stampin' Up! goodies on my website here.

April Stamp Club

Here are the cards we made Friday night.  They were all a lot of fun to make.

This first one was made using the newer photopolymer stamp set "Lovely Amazing You".  It's a very fun set to play with.  Cardstock:  Whisper White, Island Indigo, Tempting Turquoise, Pear Pizzaz.  Inks: Island Indigo; Tempting Turquoise, Pear Pizzaz.  Also used the large circle embossing folder and the Hearts Aflutter thinlits. Oh, and gold glitter paper.

This second one is made using the new Mini Treat Bag thinlits set.  Cardstock: Whisper White, Basic Black.  No ink involved, but it uses the new Spring Flowers embossing folder and the Back to Black dsp.  Very fun to make and I love this new die!

This card is made with the Vivid Vases stamp.  Basic Black and Whisper White cardstock.  It also uses the Zig Zag embossing folder and the envelope punch board (for the bow). It has an acetate piece in the middle to showcase the vases.  The vases were colored with markers.

This last card was simple and easy, but looks very elegant.  The cardstock is Whisper White and Pink Pirouette. It uses the scallop border punch and butterfly embosslits, with the Love & Sympathy stamp set.

Holiday Bazaar Gift Items

A few years ago I started participating in Holiday Bazaars again.  I normally wait until a couple of months before the bazaars start to begin thinking about what items I need to make to sell.  Each year I tell myself that I need to start at the beginning of the year and make some items each month so by the time the bazaars get here I'll already have a supply of items to sell.  The way that I decided to do that this year is to evaluate the cards that we make in our monthly stamp club to see which ones would be good as a gift set.  Here are photos of the first set of the year to make the cut for the bazaars.

These cards are from our January Stamp Club and use the Lotus Blossom stamp set.  They were a lot of fun to make.

Stamping Retreat

I went to a stamping retreat at the Grunewald Guild retreat center in Leavenworth WA last month.  It was a wonderful weekend of stamping and the weather was beautiful. This is a photo of the lodge we used for our stamping time.  It has windows on 3 sides and was an awesome space to stamp in. The only drawback to this place was the drive.  It's 6 hours from Salem.  That's a long time in a car!

This photo is the cabin that I stayed in.

February Stamp Club

Here are the cards we made this month:

This card was made using the Butterfly Basics bundle from the Spring Catalog.  The card itself was cased from brandyscards.com.  She always has beautiful cards.  The supplies used were Whisper White & Pacific Point CS; So Saffron, Old Olive, Pacific Point & Early Espresso Inks; and a rhinestone for the butterfly.

This card was cased from Karen Titus and you may see hers here (you will need to scroll down a bit): click here

The supplies used were Whisper White & Real Red CS; Real Red Ink; Stacked with love DSP; You Plus Me Stamp Set; Sweetheart Punch; and rhinestones. This card was quick and easy and a lot of fun to make.  You could make this card as a thank you or thinking of you card also.

This card was made using the Irresistibly Yours DSP in the Sale-a-bration catalog. This paper is very elegant and you can get it for free until March 31, 2015 with a $50 purchase from Stampin Up!.

The supplies used were Whisper White & Calypso Coral CS; Crazy About You stamp set; Hello You thinlits dies; Stazon black & Daffodil Delight inks; Daffodil Delight & Calypso Coral reinkers; Spritzer Bottles, and rhinestones.

This last card design came from one of the Class in a Flash tutorials.  It was lots of fun to make also.  The supplies used were Whisper White & Basic Black CS; Hello You thinlits dies; Crazy About You stamp set; Bermuda Bay Ink; Bermuda Bay Sequin Trim; Large Polka Dot Embossing Folder; Birthday Bash Designer Washi Sheets; & Bermuda Bay 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon.

As always, you may purchase any of these supplies from my website here

Thanks for looking and happy stamping!

January Stamp Club Cards

Don't you just love this guy? He actually reminds me of my friend Bethany's husband, Peter.  Same beard and I can see him wearing the hat.  I found this card on Pinterest click here . It was made by another Stampin Up! demonstrator.  I only changed a couple of things from the original.  I like both of them and it was fairly easy to make. For most people the hardest part would have been cutting out the woodsman, but I stamped 20 of them on white cardstock and then cut them all out at once with the machine my awesome husband gave me for Christmas. It's the Brother Scan N Cut, and does really cool things.  Doing just this one thing alone was enough for me.  I love the way stamped images look when they're cut out and popped up, but I really don't like cutting things out.  This solved that problem for me.

This was my 2nd favorite card.  It's very simple, but I love all of the elements.  We had fun making them, but there was a lot of frustration also with getting the word out of the die.  About a week later I found a really cool video tutorial that showed a simple way to take care of it. Run the die through your Big Shot machine with your cardstock, then run it through again, this time on top of a fabric softener sheet that has been folded in half. It was amazing!  The fabric softener sheet grabs the cardstock right out of the die.   The only stamping on this card is the butterflies in the background. They are a stamp from the Perpetual Birthday stamp set. I can't remember right now where I found the original, so I apologize to you, but I'm sure I found it on Pinterest also.

This card is made with patterned paper from the same pack that I used for my shadow box in my original post, and a stamp set from the Sale-a-bration catalog.  From now through March 31, 2015, you can get this set (or one of many others) for free with a $50 Stampin Up order.  Check it out on my website here: click here .  This is a 3-step stamp set and makes beautiful flowers.  The name of the set is Lotus Blossom and I found it on Pinterest here.

This was our 4th card for the night.  Again, same paper pack as the other card and the shadow box.  The butterfly is made with the new Butterflies thinlits dies from the spring catalog. There are 3 sizes of butterflies to chose from and they are all beautiful. I found this one on Pinterest also, here.

So, do you see a theme here?  I don't have very much time for stamping, and creating my own cards usually takes much more time than I have.  I love Pinterest and am very grateful for all of the people who post their wonderful ideas there.

Happy stamping!

Birthday Gift for a Friend

I needed a birthday gift for a friend at work and saw this framed art.  I apologize to the person who originally made it as I can't remember where I found the idea.  This is a 5x7" shadow box frame from Michaels. The inside is Stampin Up!'s Painted Blooms designer paper.  I absolutely love this new paper!  It has 12 sheets: 2 each of 6 double sided designs.  Every one of them is beautiful.  This frame used only a small piece of one of the designs in the package.  I embellished it with some SU ribbon, a metal butterfly, and a very nice stamped saying by Eleanor Roosevelt.  This would make a beautiful gift for anyone and was very quick and easy to make.  Let me know if you would be interested in a class to make this gift.

Don't you just love this saying?