Bright Birthday!

Today is a Friday that thinks it's a Monday at my house... SO many things this morning. I was excited to make a card IN my craft room today (first time in months! - it's been way too messy!) buut that meant the card wasn't exactly like the things I was trying to follow. So we'll go with 'based on'... 

The sketch is "based on" the latest from Freshly Made Sketches. (the two panels don't line up)
And the colors are "based on" the colors in the inspiration from Just Add Ink. (should have used Crushed Curry instead)
And the result is happy and fun and it's fiiiine. I also mixed old with brand new, ha. The greeting is from the new catalog. Everything else is retired.

Supplies:

Stamps: Simply Said, Creative Elements (retired)
Ink: Calypso Coral, Lemon Lolly
Paper: Calypso Coral, Basic White card stocks, Bright & Beautiful DP
Accessories: White Baker's Twine, Dimensionals 

Retiring Butterflies!

Just a quick post for today...last week of school and it sure is busy!!
Here's another bright, sunny card for a teacher! I used up some more supplies that are so close to retiring! The butterfly stamps, the DP and the arrow clip are almost gone!
This time I used a Freshly Made Sketch, but I was too late to link it.

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements, Lots of Thanks, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink: Coastal Cabana, Tangerine Tango, Baked Brown Sugar
Paper: Coastal Cabana, Tangerine Tango & Whisper White card stocks, Retro Fresh DP
Accessories: Hung Up Cute Clips

Create!

Here's a soft card that I made to thank my recent hostess for hosting a workshop! I used the Viva La Verve May sketch, and color challenge- aqua, gray and yellow
And a glimpse into my brain...I had making and sending this card on my to-do list (yes, I write down each card that needs made and mailed!) but then I thought maybe I'd already sent one....?? Nice, haha... I decided to make this and send it, I mean, no harm in two cards, right? I took advantage of the chance to use Creative Elements again, and some retiring Washi Tape too.

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements
Ink: Soft Sky, Coastal Cabana, Smoky Slate, Daffodil Delight
Paper: Soft Sky, Smoky Slate & Whisper White
Accessories: Gingham Garden Washi Tape, Mini Silver Brads, Big Shot, Chevron Embossing Folder

Blog Hop: Last Chance!!

Hello again! First of the month means, of course, another blog hop, and this time we're featuring soon-to-retire items! That means the things you see in this hop are going to be gone by June 1st (if not sooner!) so order them fast if you want them!!

Today I've got two cards to share with you...

This one is nothing but retiring products! The only thing sticking around is the white card stock of the front panel! For this card I used the current Mojo Monday sketch.

Supplies:
Stamps: Simply Sketched
Ink: Gumball Green marker, Raspberry Ripple marker, Basic Gray
Paper: Raspberry Ripple, Primrose Petals, Whisper White card stocks, I Am Me DP
Accessories: White stitched grosgrain ribbon, Vintage Trinkets


This next card used the latest Nacho Average Sketch and some retiring stamps and products. The colors stick around, but the Tag A Bag Accessory kit, and the stamps, do not! As I said at my workshop last weekend- I love how easy collage stamping is with the Creative Elements set! I am really going to miss it! And again, using the tags is just as cute on cards as it is on gifting! Isn't this one fun?

Supplies:

Stamps: Creative Elements

Ink: Crushed Curry, Bermuda Bay, Smoky Slate

Paper: Bermuda Bay & Whisper White card stocks, Tag A Bag Accessory kit (striped yellow and blue frame)

Accessories: Hexagon punch, Big Shot, Banner Framelits dies, Tag A Bag Accessory kit (gray pennant)

 

Now head on over to Cheryl's blog and see what she's made with her retiring stash!

And be sure and hop thru all the blogs and leave some comments. We all love to know what you think of our work! *grin

Creative Elements

Sooo I haven't got to stamp a whole lot in recent weeks. Most of what I've shared is digital or like my class that used the journaling tags instead of stamping. ...basically, I've traded stamp time for workout time, which is good for ME but not so great on my business....or my creativity! Today I took some time to stamp a few things, and prepare for my workshop this weekend. And you get to enjoy the result!
First up, I wanted to try out the latest Retro Sketch to use with the make n take for my workshop, but maybe because of a lack of stamping, I was a bit overwhelmed with possibilities! Does that ever happen to you- when you could go a dozen different ways with one sketch? Well, I am going to miss Creative Elements, so that's what I played with first.
(no matter what I do, I cannot get the colors to look true to life...its really cloudy today, thinking about raining, and nothing seems to make it right, so just pretend with me, kay?)

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements, Simply Sketched
Ink: Calypso Coral, Coastal Cabana, Basic Gray, Crumb Cake, Daffodil Delight
Paper: Pool Party, Calypso Coral, Very Vanilla
Accessories: Epic Day Washi Tape, Glimmer Brads

The stamps, and the brad are retiring very soon, and only available while supplies last- so place an order if you love these!

Hanging Banners

I found this card on pinterest, and then visited the blog shown in the watermark. Wow, she has lots of very cool projects- more than one that I'd already pinned, haha!
Anyway, I loved this idea and made it a valentiney card, for my upcoming class!

I also made a friend option, incase you don't want so many Valentine cards! :) For the 'friend' card, I thought the hanging towel look suited this word stamp, haha.

and here they are side by side! The banner stamps, the punch, and the DP all are Sale-A-Bration items, so if you want them, don't miss out! :)

Supplies:
Stamps: Banner Blast (SAB14), Crazy Mixed Up Love, Creative Elements
Ink: Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe
Paper: Coastal Cabana & Whisper White card stocks, Sweet Sorbet DP (SAB14)
Accessories: Banner Punch (SAB14), Hung Up Cute Clips, Dimensionals, Glue Dots

Butterfly Cards

Today is the day of my All-Occasions Card Class! This is a stack of 12 cards, perfect for a gift, or to keep for yourself! Attendees can stamp any greeting they like and use the cards for whatever occasions they need. The cards I'm sharing today are springy, butterfly cards.

This one uses a recent Freshly Made Sketch, but when I had it all stamped I decided the panel worked better with the card going horizontal instead of vertical.

Supplies:

Stamps: Creative Elements, Yippee-Skippee

Ink: Soft Sky, So Saffron, Calypso Coral, Wisteria Wonder

Paper: Wisteria Wonder, So Saffron, Whisper White

 

And this one is totally inspired by a card my upline designed! I posted her card HERE in May, and this is my redesign of it.

Supplies:

Stamps: Papillion Potpourri, Yippee-Skippee

Ink: Coastal Cabana, Calypso Coral

Paper: Whisper White, Calypso Coral card stocks, I Am Me DP

Accessories: Itty Bitty Butterfly Punch, Big Shot, Chevron Embossing Folder

Birthday Mojo In Gray

Since I took a few days off, here's a double feature for you, haha.
Last night I made both of these cards. The first uses the current Mojo Monday sketch.

Supplies:
Stamps: Banner Greetings
Ink: Midnight Muse
Paper: So Saffron, Smoky Slate, Whisper White
Accessories: Tea Lace Doilies, Denim Ribbon, Hexagon Punch


And this one uses a slightly older Mojo Monday sketch:

 

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink: Daffodil Delight, Basic Gray
Paper: Daffodil Delight, Smoky Slate, Whisper White card stocks, I Am Me DP
Accessories: Gingham Garden Washi Tape, Dimensionals

World Card Making Day 3

Here's my favorite card for the day, the autumn card, which uses the current Freshly Made Sketch! I really like this color combination and I'm pretty sure I haven't used this set with richer colors yet!
Don't miss the other cards I've shared today! *grin

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements
Ink: Rich Razzelberry, Pumpkin Pie
Paper: Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Very Vanilla card stocks
Accessories: Lace Doily, Basic Pearls, Scallop Edge Punch

Guess what I just saw? Stampin' Up! is running a contest today, along with all the card making going on! Check it out and play along! Here's the info:
 World Cardmaking Day is this Saturday, October 5, and to celebrate Stampin' Up! is holding a contest you won't want to miss. After all, what's not to love about a holiday dedicated to card makers worldwide?! There are two ways to enter:

• E-mail a photo of a card, or of you making a card, made with Stampin' Up! product on World Cardmaking Day to wcmd2013@stampinup.com.
• Post a photo of a card, or of you making a card, made with Stampin' Up! product on World Cardmaking Day on Instagram. Mention us by typing @stampinup and use the hashtag #wcmd2013 in the description.

This contest is open to everyone-demonstrators, customers, friends, spouses, children . . . you get the idea. However, there are a few conditions:

• You must be over the age of 18 to win a prize.
• You can enter as many times as you wish, but each entry must feature a different card.
• Contest will last all day on October 5, from 12:01 AM to 12:00 PM.
• We will randomly select 100 winners from our North American markets to receive a Paper Pumpkin Kit (valued at $19.95 US/ $20.95 CA)*, and we will select 50 winners from our South Pacific and European markets to receive the Naughty and Nice Rotary Stamp and Season of Style Designer Washi Tape.

A selection of pictures will be posted to Stampin' Up!'s World Cardmaking Day Pinterest Board and the winners announced in a later current update.

Chevron Punch!

Today I have the third card we made at my Neutral Accessories class. This card uses a Freshly Made Sketch.
I was in the mood to use brown, but had a hard time coming up with what to put with it. This might possibly be only the second time I've used Raspberry Ripple, lol, but it makes a nice autumn color combination!
We put the buttons across the top for the accessory, and we used the new Chevron Punch! Love this!! This time we punched Raspberry 'arrows' out of a bit of paper and laid them on top of the Chocolate Chip strip. I'm excited to see what else we can do with this punch...!

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink: Raspberry Ripple, Early Espresso
Paper: Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, Raspberry Ripple
Accessories: Chevron Punch, Neutral Buttons, Glue Dots

Block Stamping

Happy Friday!! Oh how much I'm enjoying the weekends right now, haha!
Today's card uses the current Freshly Made Sketch. I fiddled around trying to figure the right "shape" for their oval and finally realized that using my D block would make a cool shape and a nice background for the flower! Love it when things work out!
This card was made for a specific someone, and I had the ribbon in mind from the beginning. It is retired, but I liked it for this card.

Supplies:
Stamps: Simply Sketched, Creative Elements
Ink: Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Coastal Cabana
Paper: Coastal Cabana, Soft Suede, Whisper White
Accessories: Soft Suede Polka Dot grosgrain ribbon (retired)

Graduation!

Here's a second layout from my scrapping night. The pics are of my sister's high school graduation, and all the nieces and nephews managed to attend! (and no I am not the shortest...the bottom right photo is my parents children. I'm the oldest, but my sis is wearing reeeally tall heels and I was in flats, lol!)
This time I used Cheryl's EMS 47 sketch as my base, but I didn't quite follow it exactly. I used three different packages of DP and I think they blended very well. I colored in the butterfly and the flowers on the retired First Edition DP, and stamped the butterflies on the current I Am Me gray chevron print DP. I love it!

Supplies:
Stamps: ABC123 Sketch, Creative Elements
Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Blushing Bride Marker
Paper: Pink Pirouette card stock, I Am Me DP, First Edition DP (retired), Sycamore Street (retired)

Happy Hello!

I love how this card turned out and it was really simple to make! I used a little bit older Retro Sketch that included this window...It would have been much easier to just make it a layer and trim off some flower, lol, but I went the hard way! I trimmed out the square using my paper trimmer, stamped the flourishes and greeting, and put the flower on a white insert sized sheet, glued to the front of the card! Yep, complicated, but simple, haha! I added a little Rhinestone to the center of the flower for a bit of somethin'. Its bright and happy and I love it!

Supplies:

Stamps: Creative Elements, Six Sided Sampler

Ink: Calypso Coral, Coastal Cabana

Paper: Coastal Cabana & Whisper White card stocks

Accessories: Rhinestones

A bright card!

Today's card is bright and happy! I used the current CAS sketch, tho this card didn't turn out very CAS...I wanted to play with all the images so I did! Even if they turned out a little wonky....sigh! Instead of making flags I used the border image, which has the little points so it worked for me, too bad it didn't come out straight...just pretend! *grin

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements
Ink: Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Melon Mambo, Coastal Cabana
Paper: Daffodil Delight, Coastal Cabana & Whisper White card stocks

Teacher Appreciation

Last week school ended around here. I like to put together some kind of teacher gift to thank my kids' teachers for their efforts through the school year. I've been staying simple in recent years (I guess since having two kids in school...) and here's what I do...
I take the kids to the store to pick out a treat for the teacher, like movie-theater candy usually. Then I include a package of microwave popcorn. I choose out a variety of cards from my stash, and put it all in a stamped lunch sack, along with a card I've written in to the teacher, thanking them.
And here are the projects from this year, photos taken about 10:00 pm, the night before, because ya know, I didn't have any warning that school was ending soon...? hee hee...

 And the finished sacks with some cute little tags so we know who's is whose.

Supplies:

Stamps: Creative Elements

Ink: Midnight Muse, Coastal Cabana

Paper: Whisper White card stock, Midnight Muse card stock, lunch sacks

Accessories: White Baker's Twine, Designer Label Punch

Something pretty

Happy Memorial Day to my American readers! There is also a birthday in my house, and school ended Friday so we are going to relax and enjoy this day!! But I also had to start the week off with a new post for you! *grin

I've been working on filling up my display board, just like I do every spring, haha, and here is a card I came up with the other day. I used several different things but its really a very, very simple card. I just wondered what it would look like with collage type stamping over this big flowery, flourishy image. I really, really like how it turned out!! Four simple stamps on one sheet of DP and that's really all there is to it!

Supplies:
Stamps: Thoughts & Prayers, Creative Elements
Ink: Calypso Coral, Basic Gray
Paper: Epic Day DP, Basic Gray card stock
Accessories: Pearls, Iridescant Ice embossing powder, Heat Tool

Its a bit of a challenge to see the butterflies I embossed over it, but this close-up helps. Isn't that nifty?

Hope your day is happy!

A Shoebox Swap!

Today my upline had a quarterly meeting, and I finally got to attend. This time it was a shoebox swap and I was super excited because it was a huge help in filling my display board with the new catalog! After the retired lists struck, it was looking awfully dismal... haha!

A shoebox swap means that everyone designs a card and brings enough supplies for everyone else to make it. The supplies box stays put and people move around putting together each card. There were 18 cards there and they're all so fun and pretty! Today I'll show you my card, and I might share the other cards in the coming days too...but first I need to know who designed which card!!

I stewed about this a lot. A silly lot! I tell my friends "stamping is fun, not stressful" all the time, and most of the time it is, but since this was for other demonstrators I wanted it to be impressive, haha. You'd think that after 9 years of doing this I'd be confident in my skills, but maybe not.

Anyway!! Here is what I put together:

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements
Ink: Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake
Paper: Epic Day DP, Crumb Cake, Calypso Coral, Pool Party & Whisper White card stocks
Accessories: Very Vintage Buttons, White Bakers Twine, Honeycomb Embossing Folder, Big Shot, Glue Dots, Dimensionals

I showed both sides of the DP, so people could choose, and both possible word choices. There were plenty of comments that people liked it so I was happy about that, hahaha....

I had a lot of fun today! You know you could join my team and attend these fun meetings along with me...its a great chance to learn a lot from other people's experience, and to spend time with people who GET your hobby. *grin. Until May 30th, you can get a free $30 extra towards your Starter Kit! What are you waiting for??

Mother's Day Dress #2!

Happy Mother's Day to you!
Today I have a very quick post with another dress I am in love with. This time with a cute jacket, and more of that same embossed detail, which is hard to see... I have to say, the embossing is my favorite idea ever, haha!

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements
Paper: Melon Mambo, Basic Gray & Whisper White cardstocks, Sunshine & Sprinkles DP
Accessories: Dress Up framelits, White Organza ribbon, Clear Embossing Powder, Heat Tool

Mother's Day Dress #1!

You knew those dresses were going to come back for Mother's Day, didn't you?? Today and tomorrow's cards I am super excited about!!

First up, this sweet apron over a classic print dress!

I distressed the DP with some Crumb Cake sponging to age it, and clear embossed this fun detail onto the apron, using the edge stamp from Creative Elements. I seriously love it! You might have to click on the picture to see it better...
Come back tomorrow to see another fun idea!!

Supplies:
Stamps: Teeny Tiny Wishes, Creative Elements
Ink: Basic Gray, Versamark, Crumb Cake
Paper: First Edition DP, Marina Mist, Basic Gray & Very Vanilla card stocks
Accessories: Dress Up framelits, Big Shot, Crochet Lace, Vintage Trinkets, Clear Embossing Powder, Heat Tool

Welcome Summer!

Or spring...whichever...lets just bring some sunshine! It keeps raining here, which is not really bad at all, I'm just missing the sun today.
I had fun with the latest Clean & Simple sketch. It really was such a quick, easy card and I love how bright and happy it turned out! What are you creating today?

Supplies:
Stamps: Creative Elements, Summer Silhouettes
Ink: Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Rich Razzleberry, Tempting Turquoise
Paper: Melon Mambo & Whisper White card stocks