Big Blooms

Have I told you how much I love the stamp set Big Blooms? It is in the Spring mini and I have to admit, when I first saw it I wasn't so impressed and didn't think that I would be get it. But it has really grown on me and I want to use it on everything. :)

Anyway - I sat down with Big Blooms and some of the Prints Designer Series paper (currently available as a promotion, but will be in the catalog coming out on July 1st!). I wanted to use only solid cardstock and the prints, but I just kept coming back to Au Chocolat (love it). That is when I decided that I could combine some of the prints paper with Au Chocolat and this is what I came up with. I love how just about everything looks great with chocolate!

After I was done with it, I surprised myself to see that I had chosen the print with the paisley on it - I am not such a paisley fan. The neat thing about the Prints paper is that it will come in a variety of Stampin' Up! colors so it will match everything great!

I actually made that one a few days ago, but didn't want to post it yet until I had done another one. A few weeks ago I bought some really cute ribbon from the bargain bin at Michael's. In fact, I sorted through and picked out ones that I knew would match Stampin' Up! colors. The one that I used in this card I knew would match Taken with Teal, Tempting Turquoise and Green Galore. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever used Taken with Teal so it was an adventure. :) I also used some of the Petals & Paisley Designer Paper on this one.

One Sheet Wonder!

Stampin' Up! gave all their demonstrators access to a template where you can take one 12"X12" sheet of designer paper, cut it according to the template and be able to make 16 great cards. It took me a while, but I finally got mine done. I first did one (pictured above) with a sheet of paper from Petals & Paisley (from the Spring Mini) and then did another (pictured below) with a sheet from Au Chocolat (also in the Spring Mini). Enjoy!

I am such a bad blogger!

So, I have been really terrible about updating this blog lately. The truth is, I really have had no time to stamp at all. I gave my final exam this week and had grading to do and believe it or not, Colby (the puppy) really does take up a lot of my time.

Anyway - tonight I hosted a Bunco group and was cleaning and cooking all day. But once they all left I had some work to do. Mother's Day is this weekend and I had to get the cards made. So here it is:

The formula for this one is very simple. I used some of my favorite paper - Petals and Paisley, paired with some Old Olive and Regal Rose. Only one stamp was used for the whole card and it is from All-Year Cheer II which is retiring on June 30th.

Speaking of retiring - the retired list is out and it is incredibly long - over 220 stamp sets are retiring. There is some good news though. Anyone who purchases retired stamps from me gets them at 15% off. If you are interested in seeing the retired list, or want to order something from me, just let me know.

Happy Stamping!

Shhh - don't wake the sleeping puppy!

CPS put up another template and I decided to give it a try. However, with a sleeping puppy downstairs I needed to do things very quietly - which means no eyelets, nothing needing the heat tool or anything else that would wake him up. Here is the very simple card that I came up with:

My favorite thing abou this card is the embossing done on the background. I have seen people using these Cuttlebug embossing folders and been very jealous that I don't have a Cuttlebug. That is until this week when I was actually checking out the embossing folders at Michaels. It just so happens that they work in my Sizzix!!! Although by the looks of it the Cuttlebug is better - I really can't get another $80 die-cut machine - but now I have learned that I don't need to in order to use their oh so cute stuff! Yay!!!



The other things that went into this card are some of the Petals & Paisley Paper and a retired set that I have called Something to Celebrate. The cake was colored with Pastels and a Blender Pen. Then I added another one of those really cute flower-shaped brads that I bought at Michaels.



As time passes and Colby gets more used to us here (and housebroken) I hope to have more time to make cute things for the blog. Happy Stamping!

Templates

There is another blog out there that gives ideas for card templates, then people make cards that fit the template and email them in to whoever it is that manages the blog. The blog is CPS (Card Positioning Systems - not sure who came up with that name). Some of the templates I feel only so so about - but this one I wanted to give a try so I did 2 cards for CPS#9 (not that I sent them in - but I still did them).

This one uses some of my favorite designer series paper - Petals & Paisley (in the current Spring mini). I used stamps from two different stamp sets - Springtime Stems (a current hostess set) and All-Year Cheer II (retiring at the end of June and 20% off until the end of April).

Then I pulled out some of my paper that I have that retired a year ago. It may be retired - but I still love it!

The stamp set used in this one is Eat Cake (love it). The colors in this one are so bright - sometimes I don't think about how fun bright colors are until after I put them all together.

I hope to have more time and chances to stamp this next week than I did last week - my husband and I adopted a puppy a week ago and he is a lot of work! Happy Stamping!

Delight in Life!

Mainly because I wasn't overly impressed with the cards that I posted yesterday I had to make one that I felt was really cute to make up for it. But I ran out of time and wasn't able to post it until today. I just wanted my top post to have a card that I thought was really cute - don't get me wrong though - I think the ones I posted yesterday look nice enough in person - but after scanning them in they don't look nearly as nice. :( Oh well! I can't always make something that I think looks like a masterpiece, right? So - here it is :)


The recipe for this card was super simple:
Stamps: Delight in Life (Sell-a-bration 2007)
Paper: Whisper White, Cameo Coral and Lavendar Lace cardstock
Ink: Black Stazon and Classic cameo coral
Accessories: Watercolor crayons (yoyo yellow, cameo coral and lovely lilac), a large flower eyelet (leftover from the Spring mini a year ago!) and an aquapainter

I really haven't used my water color crayons that much, but when I do I love them!!!

First try at a new technique

I went to a Stampin' Up! seminar a couple months ago and they taught us all kinds of new stuff - some of which I am just getting around to trying out myself.

So the supplies for one of these techniques are: Mulberry paper, Glossy White cardstock, stamp of your choice, VersaMark, white embossing powder, a cotton ball, rubbing alcohol and some reinkers. You rip or cut the mulberry paper the size you want - I ripped mine the width of a jumbo roller stamp and the length of my card. Then I inked my roller stamp (Petals - love it!) with the Versa mark and rolled it over my mulberry paper. The next step is to use the white embossing powder to emboss the image onto the Mulberry paper. Make sure to heat the EP just until it melts - you don't want to scorch the paper!



Once the embossing is done - lay the mulberry paper over the glossy white cardstock (cut to size). Wet the cotton ball with the rubbing alcohol and then put 2-3 drops each of 2 or three colors of reinkers onto the cotton ball. (You might have to play around to find some that work well together - the rest time I put purple, pink and yellow together thinking they would be great spring colors, but the result was not pretty!) Next, gently dab the color from the cotton ball over the mulberry paper, the ink will not cover the embossed image and the ink will go through the mulberry paper to your glossy cardstock. Once the mulberry paper is fully covered, remove the mulberry paper and continue to blend the color over the glossy cardstock with the cotton ball until fully covered.



Once they are both dry - you have two items to use for two different cards. The colors turn out really interesting - for my samples here I used the reinkers mellow moss, certainly celery and brocade blue. Once I was done - the color on my mulberry paper was far darker than on my glossy cardstock. So much so, that to make a card using the embossed mulberry paper, I used old olive and not quite navy cadrstock. I also used some more of those really cute flower brads that I got at my local Michael's craft store - but they turned out looking black when I scanned the card - they are really pewter colored.


It is interesting to see how much lighter the glossy cardstock turned out for my next card - here I used cardstock colors that match the reinkers I used - Mellow Moss and Brocade Blue.



It doesn't look nearly as nice as the examples that they showed at my seminar - but it was my first try, right?

A Girl Bunny :)

I know, I know. I should have been writing an exam today. I am about a third of the way done with it, but I just couldn't resist! I had made the boy bunny and now I just had to make his sister. I can't decide which one I like better. I scanned her in before I drew her whiskers, but she has them now. She is all ready for Easter to come on Sunday!

More Easter Fun!

I had so much fun making the Easter Basket card that I posted yesterday that I just had to try to make this Easter Bunny that I had seen a few different places! Just like the card with the basket I only used one stamp on this card, so there would be little white dots all over the background of the card. The Bunny himself is made completely from punches and a marker to draw the whiskers and teeth.

The bunny ears were punched with the Large Oval Punch, and the inside of the ears with the Small Oval Punch (and I used Designer Paper to make it look cute). The head of the bunny was punched out with the 1-3/8-inch Circle Punch. The bunny cheeks are 2 separate punches with a 1/2-inch Circle Punch (and I sponged a little bashful blue ink on the edges so they stand out). The nose was punched with the 1/4-inch Circle Punch out of the same paper I used for the inside of the ears. The teeth were made with a 1/4-inch Square Punch and I drew a line down the middle so it looked like 2 teeth.

The hardest part about this card were the eyes. They are 1/8-inch circles that I punched from a handheld punch. They are super small, so it was a little difficult to get the adhesive on the back of them so they would stick!

I made the scalloped edge by using the Slit Punch 7 times right in a row. The patterned paper at the bottom is the pattern on the back of the Designer Paper that I used for the inside of the ears.

As I said before, I had seen this bunny a few places before but everytime I saw it the bunny had pink ears and many times a pink bow in its hair. I just kept thinking - the Easter Bunny is not a girl bunny so I had to make this one that is clearly a boy bunny.

Say it With Stamps!

The promotion that Stampin' Up! is doing for the month of April is a 20% discount on a choice of 6 different stamp sets - 5 of which are greeting sets and one is an alphabet set. Here is the list of what you can get (click on image to see list larger):

The highlights of this special are - there is NO minimum purchase requirement to get the discount on these sets and there is NO limit on how many discounted sets you can buy.

Also - the stamp sets Tiny Talk and All-Year Cheer II are on this list to be purchased at a discount and they will be retiring soon - this means that after June 30th you will not be able to buy these sets. If you have been wanting them - now is the time to get them!

Here are a couple samples that use these sets - one uses Everyday Flexible Phrases, the other uses In My Thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions!