NMBS Swap Card

Our swap cards are on their way back to us from my NMBS group. This was another swap for the Holiday Mini. I signed up for the Season of Friendship set. I really think this is a great set, I know I love all the stamps I order, hehehe! I'm already thinking ahead to spring and summer cards with this set. The versatility of it is wonderful. On this card I wanted to bring in the winter feel and use some of the new funky Frosty Days dsp. So I used the little snowflake on the tree along with a few leaves to fill in some space. Yes, once again I used the scallop bigz die for my main panel. The ribbon is the new felt ribbon in the Alpine ribbon originals pack. Tomorrow is the day, all products from the Holiday mini will be available for customer purchase. Contact me directly or place your order on-line from my demo business website. Hugs,

BOO-A Big Scary Bear

One of my swap groups, NMBS, has a weekly blog challenge. This week was a sketch brought to us from the wonderful, Maggie. I love the sketch and I especially love that she challenged us with a sketch even without the technical know-how of how to digitally draw up a sketch (I don't either, Maggie.). Check it out, she drew it up by hand and the took a picture of the sketch-how cool is that.

Here is my take on the sketch. I am starting to get excited about Halloween, especially because the boys keep talking about it and trying to decide what they want to be. I think Star Wars is going to be the theme this year. We already got Nicholas the little Yoda costume, he is too cute it it. Okay, sorry, back to the card. I do adore this fun Halloween. While I love a good scare, I am just not into all the blood and gory stuff some people are drawn too. But give me a cute Halloween decoration (or stamped image) and I'm all over it. With that being said, I have to confess that I only own 1,yes, 1 Halloween stamp set and that retired last year-Booglie Eyes. I really want to get one or two of the sets in the catty and mini, but since they have such a limited time of usage they always get knocked off my orders. I did a little thinking outside the box with this one and used my cute bear from Under the Stars to come up with a BIG SCARY bear! Look I even made a little mask for him! With some Halloween colors (black, kiwi, and tangerine) and the letters B-O-O cut from the sizzix alpha, Naturally Serif, I think I made a pretty cute Halloween card with a non-Halloween set. Give it a go-try the sketch and even try thinking outside the box by using a non-Halloween stamp to create a Halloween card.
Hugs,

Two from Thursday!

I had my Thursday blog post published before I created these two cards. You know I've been lovin' my Unity Stamp Co. stamps and Thursday is their big day of FUN with the Hip Hop! I had time to play in two of the challenges over in the Unity forum and these were the two cards I came up with. As you can see, I had my SU Hawaii Papaya dsp on my desk thanks to Jeanne's challenge of using your favorite dsp and fave Unity phrase. This first card shows most of the wonderful patterns included in that paper pack. I used the wide stitched choc. grosgrain, and accented with some felt flowers in olive and pumpkin! Man, I wish SU would get some choc. chip brads. They don't, so I used some chocolate dew drops. The next card was for AJ's challenge of creating a "thinking of you" card to send to the troops next week. I'm not sure of all the details, guess those will come next week, but she wanted to get a head start on the card making. I am assuming they will be sending cards to the troops so they have cards to send back home. I know this is a stretch for a "thinking of you" card, but I figured one of the men or women over there would find this appropriate for something! Who wouldn't love to get a "hey Cupcake" card from a loved one?! Guess I am into the paper piecing this week. I used more fun Hawaii Papaya dsp to do the little cupcake. Check out that button, too. I didn't have any olive buttons so I took one of my vanilla ones from the earth elements button pack and colored it with Olive craft ink. I set it with my heat gun and viola! Hope you're having a great weekend. Wow, did that week fly by or what? Anyway, I've got date night tonight and couldn't be happier to spend some alone time with my hubby! What are you doing tonight? Hugs,

Stepping in with Stamp Something

Yep, that's right, I get the honor of being a guest designer again on the Stamp Something Blog! I was sooo thrilled when Denise emailed me the other day. One of the regular DT members needed to have a few weeks off and they asked me to fill in. How fabulous is that! So here I am this week and again in two weeks. Look for me again on the 10th of October. This week's challenge is just what the blog was created for-to just Stamp Something! It could be anything: a card, a bag, your walls, a frame. If you stamp on it, it counts! Give it a go and upload your creations for a chance to win some blog candy sponsored by the wonderful Kim at My Favorite Things! In honor of MTF, I pulled out my mini set from them called Baby It's Cold Outside. I used the very cool and new dsp paper from SU, Frosty Days for my color pallet. I paper pieced her coat and scarf with some funky patterns from the pack. I colored the sky with last years In Color, Soft Sky with a blender pen. I left the snow white but added stickles all over it. this is sooo sprakely IRL. I love how some of the ink "bled" into the glitter, giving it a dirty snow appearance. Snow is rarely ever clean, crisp and white, you know! I added three of the smaller images from the set along the side and punched them out with my circle punches. Tied on some Kiwi Kiss ribbon because you know I can't make a card without ribbon! Thanks for stopping by today. Don't forget to check out the other wonderful stamped creations of the Stamp Something DT and make sure you Stamp Something today! Hugs,

Unity Wednesday Challenge on a Thursday!

Paper piecing was the Wednesday Unity Challenge this week. This is one of my favorite techniques to use with line art images and my FAVE set to use for paper piecing is the Unity Giggle Grove set.
Aside from the stamps, on this card I used all Stampin' Up! products-ribbon, paper, inks, and punches. The sketch is from this week's sketch challenge on SCS. I especially enjoyed this one because I was able to show off five different patterns from the Autumn Vine dsp (new paper coming on Oct.1 in the Holiday Mini). I think I also just found another fun (you'll be seeing a lot more of it) pairing of punches. Look at my sentiment. I used the wide oval punch in Choc. Chip and the 1 3/8 in. circle punch layered on top. I added a few mustard brads to balance the look. Now I'm loving fall more than ever-what a great excuse to make cards in fabulous fall colors! Go on, make a fall card today! Hugs,

A Wednesday Scrapbook Page

Here's another completed page. For some reason these pages are taking me longer than normal. The sketches from the Got Sketch 102 class are fabulous, but I am putting a lot of extra time into bringing my photos to life on the page. The 5th sketch from the class was a single page layout and I made it into a double page to fit the number of photos I have from Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa Henke's. Here is the left side, the page I uploaded to the class gallery. Once again, I used the I Wish Simply Scrappin' Kit-see I am getting lots of pages done with this one kit. To create the right side of the double page layout I just flipped the sketch. I also added two extra pictures. Flipping the sketch is a quick easy trick you can use when converting any single page sketch to a double page layout. Happy Hump Day!
Hugs,

GSG Swap Card

I waited as long as I could. I'm thinking Becky has gotten the swaps out in the mail on their way back to us, so I am probably only a day early on this post. If you are a GSG girl and reading this and you want to be surprised when your swaps arrive then stop reading! I know you won't, but thought I'd throw the spoiler alert in there anyway! LOL! This is one of my favorite cards I've made with this set to date. I used the Top Note Bigz die and then stamped the grass and flower images in kiwi kiss. This photo doesn't show it, but one of those big flowers is embossed with clear embossing powder. After I stamped the full image, I cleaned the stamp and then inked up only the 1 large flower with the Versamarker and clear embossed it. I love the texture it adds to the cards,plus because it was embossed with clear powder, it highlights anything that is stamped behind it. I think it is such a cool effect. I offset the main image a bit so I could show off the scalloped borders a little more. I used strips from the Urban Garden dsp. The whole card was mounted on Basic Grey cs and then again onto Baja Breeze. The sentiment was stamped and punched out with the wide oval punch and finished off with a piece of striped Kiwi grosgrain ribbon. Happy Monday! Hugs,

WOW! Read This!

I've said it before and you have probably heard it before, but I swear stampers are probably one of the most nicest and most generous people out there. I was scrolling through my blog list and followed a link from Joanne B.'s blog (which is fabulous, BTW!) to the super talented, Carolyn King's blog. If you haven't seen it yet, stop right now and go check it out! At first I was intrigued by the blog candy give away, who wouldn't be, but as you read more and take in all that is being done for this one cause, you kind of forget about all the goodies being given away. I am speechless, by the amount of kindness that is being shared all from Carolyn's story and experience with the horrible disease of Alzheimer's. I was moved and wanted to share in the goodness, so I made a card and will be sending it out to the home where Carolyn's grandmother was cared for. I fortunately do not know anyone with this disease or know anyone that is helping care for someone suffering from Alzheimer's. I will also send out a card to the home where my DH's grandmother is being cared for. While she does not have Alzheimer's, she is in a long term care facility and we know how difficult it is to do the job the staff does, day in and day out. Grandma just celebrated her 91st Birthday last week! We love her dearly and it is hard to watch her suffer. Take a moment this week to thank someone you know that is caring for your loved ones, whether they are old or young, sick or healthy. It is a tough job! Hugs,

Double Duty

You know I love a good challenge. There are so many out there I just don't find enough hours in the day to keep up with them all. So every now and again, if I can double up on them I will. This card came together for both the Limelight sketch Challenge and the Stamp Something Embellish It challenge! You all know that ribbon is my favorite embellishment, so these two challenges were just for me! I still had the Cardinal Christmas set on my desk and I knew I wanted to use the Alpine Ribbon Originals so I'm stickin' with this same color combo. I think my next challenge will be to use some different colors with this bird, LOL.
See, I told you you'd be seeing a lot more of this scallop circle. Plus, I'm proud to say I became friends with my coluzzle again. The second and third space from the biggest slot on the coluzzle makes a great mat for the inside of the large scallop circle. I've been using the third from the last slot for my cards, but if you like just a little scallop showing then go with the second from last slot. Have fun and give it a try! I colored the bird again with re-inkers and a blender pen. If you are looking for some stamping fun, go check out these two challenges, plus you'll have a chance to win some FREE products! Hugs,

The Other Set

I ordered two sets on my Holiday Mini pre-order. The Christmas Cardinal is the other set I got. This is the set I will use on my personal Christmas cards this year. I do have to say how proud I am of myself for stepping outside my comfort zone to purchase this set. While I can appreciate the beauty of stamps with a similar style, I normally, actually have never bought a set like this. Now that I have been using this set and playing around with it, I know there will be more sets with this type of art work added to my collection. I designed my GSG swap card with this stamp set last week and I'll hold off showing you that until the due date gets closer. But here are two sneak peeks I can show you. I almost wasn't going to share this first one with you since I really don't like it all that much. It's not that I don't like it, I just wish I had used Choc. Chip ink on the bird image, instead of the red on red. The more I look at this, the more I think I am going to re-work it. I'll share the revamped version later. Plus, I {heart} this new ribbon and wanted you to see it! It is part of the new Alpine ribbon original pack (the other design of ribbon included is that fun brown felt ribbon I showed you on one of the tree cards).

This second card was something I whipped up in a few minutes yesterday. It was for the weekly challenge on the N.M.B.S. blog. The talented, Adela posted the challenge this week and she asked us to use stitching on our cards. It could be real or faux. I wanted to use my machine to sew, but it wasn't cooperating with me, so I had to pull out my paper piercer and marker. I haven't done faux stitching in a long time and aside from the texture missing I actually think it has a realistic look. What do you think? This is a square 4 1/4 inch card and I always see to use this same layout, a strip of dsp behind the main image. This time the dsp comes from the I Wish Simply Scrappin' kit. I adore how my ribbon turned out. I tell you, these tailored bows sure look fancy, but they are super easy to make. I colored the bird with re-inkers and a blender pen. Hope you are having a wonderful weekend. The weather is beautiful here! We are still holding onto summer during the days with some brisk cool air in the morning and evenings. Perfect for me! Hugs,

Crazy for Circles

Or is it crazy for scallops? Both in this case. I am totally in {love} with my new giant scallop circle die for the Big Shot. I have been close to ordering another brand of circle dies, but held off and then decided to get the one that Stampin' Up! sells. It was hard to swallow the price, $20, but it is soooo worth it! It is huge and I love what I have been doing with it. Here are two circle cards I made today. I have seen lots of circle cards, but my friend Vera was the first one I saw post a card using the die from SU. Check this out! The first one is for my BFF's birthday and was for the Unity Wednesday Pre-Hip Hop challenge (use the colors Black and Pink). I finally ordered the Pink Pirouette striped ribbon, so I had to use it on this card. I REALLY love how this second card turned out. I just think it is soooo stinkin' cute. I used the Season of Friendship stamp set along with the colors Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango, Riding Hood Red and some Choc. Chip. I accented it with some striped Tangerine ribbon and a Kiwi Kiss button from the button Bouquet. The scallop card is easy to make, just put a folded piece of cs on the die with the folded edge just inside one part of the circle. This will make your hinge and leave a flat edge to the card. To hide that straight edge, Vera suggested cutting out another full scallop circle and attach that the the card front. Just line the scallops up together and it gives a nice finished look to the card. You will be seeing lots more of this die. It is my new favorite toy, I tell ya! What is your favorite new item you've purchased lately? Hugs,

So much better as an adult...

...Christmas morning that is. I loved Christmas morning as a kid, who didn't? My brother and I literally could not sleep. We would be up way before the crack of dawn, seriously, like 4am and had to wait until 7am to wake up our older sister and mom and dad. Now that I am a mom, I think Christmas morning is even better. Tim and I just love to watch the boys get so excited about Santa. I don't ever want them to stop believing!

I got to scrap the pictures from last year on Christmas morning. The sketch comes from the Got Sketch 102 class. I used the SU! Simply Scrappin' kit, I Wish, again on these pages. I plan on using this kit for all my Christmas pages this year, that way they will all coordinate. I know I will have plenty of dsp and die cuts left over after I'm finished with these pages and I plan to use the leftovers for some Christmas cards this year. The titles were done using two different dies in my Big Shot. The swirly letters are my new favorite Cuttlebug alphabet die, Harmony. My dear friend, Tanya let me barrow it and now I have to have it. The red, Christmas Morning, subtitle is cut using the Naturally Serif alphabet die by Sizzix. SU sells this and for $20 it is a great value! I wasn't sure if I'd like the size of the letters, but I do and I know I'll get more than my monies worth! If you wanted a better look at each page, here is a close up of pages separately. Happy Thursday and thanks for visiting! Hugs,

Some Swaps!!

I can finally share two of the 5 swap cards I made for the new catalog and Holiday mini. I should be getting some happy mail today when I get back swaps from my QC Swappers group. The first card here is the one I made for that group. I signed up to use the new Say it With Scallops , Ronald McDonald House Charity set ($2 from the sale of each stamp set goes to the RMH). I combined it with Washington Apple dsp and showed of the beautiful Riding Hood Red Taffeta ribbon. This second card was for the NMBS group. I signed up for Inspired by Nature for this group. I also used this set for my GSG swap, so I had to design two different cards (there are a few girls in each group and I didn't want them to have any duplicates). I'll share the GSG swap next week since the return date isn''t until then. I don't want to spoil any surprises for the girls. I used the Haiku dsp on this card and went with a water color look. I know I've said it before, but this set is SO versatile! My other card is completely different, wait till you see that one. Anyway, the strip of Haiku paper looks like I pieced together three different patters from the pack, well I didn't. There is a sheet in the pack that has some color block patterns on it. I love this option since it can make a card or scrapbook page come together even quicker. I used the wide oval punch (I think it is my new favorite) for the sentiment and tied it off with some Tangerine Tango striped ribbon! Hope you are all having a wonderful week! I should have some scrapbook pages done soon. So check back! Hugs,

Season of Friendship Sneak Peek

I am working on another round of swaps with a few of my groups. My Holiday mini pre-order came last week and I mounted everything as soon as the order arrived but didn't get a chance to ink the rubber up until today. The first set I played with was Season of Friendship. It is the cutest Tree (humongous, BTW) with four different little images you can add to the branches. The dsp is called Autumn Vine and I drew my colors from that (Really Rust, More Mustard, Choc.Chip, and Sage Shadow). Check out that ribbon...It's a new Ribbon Originals pack with choc. chip felt ribbon! I {heart} it! The next card I did focused on the snow flakes and I drew my colors from the Frosty Days dsp. These are fresh, fun, and funky winter colors. I really like them and can't wait to use them on some winter scrapbook pages. I think it will make for some updated snow pages. The colors are Bashful Blue, Really Rust, Close to Cocoa, and Old Olive. Thanks for stopping by again today! Hugs,

Crazy Winds Yesterday...

Weirdest weather I have ever experienced. I guess I should be thankful for that. We felt the effects of Ike up here in Cincinnati, OH yesterday. For about 6 hours yesterday we had huge strong gusts of wind ripping through our area, like 60 mph and even more at times. Over 600,000 people in the tristate area were without power and most still are. Trees and power lines are down everywhere. We lost power around 2:30 pm Sunday afternoon and finally had it restored at 7:05 this morning. I don't know how we got so lucky, but I was grateful to be able to brew a pot of coffee and the boys were happy to have their morning fix of PBS cartoons. I pray for those dealing with much worse conditions down in Texas and those in my area who are still without power. Needless to say, I didn't get any stamping in yesterday. It is hard to be creative by candle light, and probably not so safe. I did make this card the other day. It uses the new single from Unity Stamp Co., called Hullabaloo. I used the faux diamond technique-I totally forgot how fabulous this technique looks. After I stamped and colored my image I covered the cs with Versamark ink and then Heat and Stick Powder. Hit it with my heat gun to activate the adhesive, then sprinkled with Dazzling Diamonds glitter. Hit it with my heat gun again and ended up with this beautiful sparkle! Hugs,

Yeah it Worked!

So after fiddling with my cable for almost an hour, some how and for some reason it just started working again. My pictures uploaded and now I can share the Birthday ensemble I put together for my dear friend, Dawn, who just celebrated her 40th Birthday yesterday. She had a fabulous blow-out birthday bash with lots of yummy food and drinks! I wanted to give her a little something (even though the invite said, "no gifts please." I opened up my new pack of Hawaiian Papaya dsp and put together a beaded pen, a set of monogram note cards, and a little basket (made with the Baskets and Blooms SU! exclusive die for the Big Shot). For her card I used the Sticky Die cut Numbers and covered them with sparkley green glitter. I added little tags to the felt flower using the word window punch and the words "Fabulous", "Beautiful", and "Amazing" from the Amazing to Zany stamp set. The ribbon is wide celery grosgrain (I finally used up my pre-cut strips that I mis-measured from my last swaps). I used my favorite print from the Hawaii Papaya dsp pack as the main image on the set of note cards and added some more of that celery ribbon and a monogram script letter "D" (Papertrey Ink-Ambassador Alphabet set) to a scallop circle for a quick and fun stack of cards. I used another Papertrey Ink set, Beautiful Blooms to create coordinating envelopes and a matching beaded pen. Dawnie loves coffee so I also picked up a Starbucks gift card and used more of the Hawaii Papaya dsp and the Big Shot to create this fun little basket. The cool thing about the double sided dsp is that you can flip the paper over and use the opposite side to decorate the basket and only have to run the die through the machine once (meaning you don't have to keep running different colors of paper or cs through to create accents for your projects if you don't want to). I put the gift card in the basket and added a little strips of crimped paper for filler to the basket. She loved it and so do I. Well, I am just in LOVE with the paper. I think it would make any project just fabulous. Thanks for stopping by. Hugs,

UGH! Technology...

I am so frustrated with my camera. I can't get my USB cable (I think that is what it is called) to work and upload my latest pictures. I have spent the last hour trying to show you the cutest little project I've been working on. In the mean time, I'll share another few Unity cards I did yesterday. There was a Red, White and Blue challenge offered up during all the Hip Hop festivities that went on yesterday. In honor of 9/11, we were to create a card using these colors. This one uses the little Love Bird from Birds of a Feather kit. I colored him in with bashful blue and real red markers. To glam it up a bit I added some red stickles to make those hearts shimmer. The blue strip is from the Jersey Shore dsp pack and the red dsp is from the hostess patterns pack. I finished it off with a red ribbon. Cute and simple, and easy to pull together. This next one uses the cute Unity cupcake kit, Cupcakes Ala Yummy! I just love that swirl of frosting. I pieced the bottom of the cakes with different papers from the Washington Apple dsp. The Sentiment is from the Birds of a Feather kit. I added some stickles to the middle cupcake to make it a little more special. Hmmmm, I'm suddenly craving cupcakes. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting is my favorite! What kind of cupcakes do you like?

So Many New Toys!

Yes, it feels like Christmas around here and I'm loving it. I do think the spending freeze is in effect. Here are two cards I finished up the other day. They both use stamps from Unity Stamp Co. so with it being Hip Hop Thursday I thought it was appropriate to show them off today! What great images to work with and I still have more to play with! I also got my Stampin' Up! Holiday mini pre-order so I'll have some Sneak Peeks to share in the next few days! I love the colors on this first card. Tempting Turquoise and Pacific Point are FABULOUS together!!! Throw in a little black and really make them pop! The background is a distressed dots background stamp and the butterfly image was a single Angela pulled out two weeks ago from the butterfly set. It looks a little blurry because after I stamped and colored the image I added red-line sticky strip over the whole oval and then applied clear micro beads. It gives a very cool, shimmery effect. This second card uses the wonderful set, Growing in Unity! It is a beautiful kit filled with lots of different flourishes, words, and this AWESOME tree! I added some dew drops and basic grey taffeta ribbon, and finished it off with some punched pieces for the sentiment and here you have it! Have a super day! Hugs,

Staying on Track!

The Got Sketch 1o2 class is keeping me right on track with my scrapbooking. I'm getting a little done each day. This page comes from the third sketch. I love adding strips of designer paper to my pages and when they come from the same paper pack (these are from SU's retired, Jersey Shore dsp) you know they will look fabulous together. I have really been putting my star punches to use these past few months. I also added a larger, star chipboard piece to hold my title. Ryan really enjoyed his tumbling class. One of the highlights of each session was a little awards ceremony where every kid received a medal. It really made them feel special!
Hugs,