Easter bunny

So last week, I challenged the SSUS girls to pull out their contraband stamp sets (non-Stampin' Up!). Most of the girls are Stampin' Up! demonstrators so they don't have as many occasions to use their non-Stampin' Up! sets. I figured we'd get a pretty good turn-out and we totally did.

The challenge was to use your most recently purchased (non-Stampin' Up!) stamp set to make a card for your partner. I had just received an order from Cornish Heritage Farms for Kim Hughes' super cute new Easter set, so that was my choice.

The layout of my card is from this month's Verve Release Sketch. I love all of Julee's sketches.

The eggs were glittered which seems to be all the rage this Easter. Pottery Barn is selling sugared eggs and I think I saw them at Joanns as well. For the bunny, I added some gray highlights with my Koh-i-noor pencils and then flocked him with white flock. In real life, he's super fuzzy. His tail is from a piece of pom-pom ribbon I picked up last weekend at Ryco on the way home from Stamp New England when I was visiting my parents.

Stamps: Sweet Spring from Cornish Heritage Farms
Ink: Palette Noir, Berry Sorbet, Lemon Tart
Paper: Whisper White, PaperTrey White, Berry Sorbet, Lemon Tart, Patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket
Accessories: Green striped ribbon from May Arts, White pom-pom ribbon, White Flock, Icicle Stickles, Dimensionals
Tools: 1" square punch, Fiskars Threading Water punch

Trendy Trees

This week's challenge on SSUS was to use mytime's Saturday Sketch #19. I also needed to make 2 masculine birthday cards last weekend. So, I decided to save time and use the same design.

The birthday card I made is on the left. I just love this cute Trendy Trees stamp set. I love this version. The colors are funky and the design is clean and crisp.

In order to fit the SSUS challenge, I had to make a couple of tweaks. First, all supplies needed to be current and from Stampin' Up! So, I used one of the sentiments from the stamp set and changed the ribbon color since this green is retired. The other change is that the SSUS group requires all cards to have two full layers. So, I put the chocolate card front on a green galore card. This is maybe a bit too bright, but whisper white is too flimsy and I couldn't figure out a better option. Finally, I added a button from the Latte buttons in the new catalog. I just can't get enough of them!

So, which version do you like better?

Stamps: Trendy Trees from Stampin' Up!, birthday sentiment from A Muse
Ink: Green Galore, Chocolate Chip
Paper: Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, Green Galore, Brocade Blue
Accessories: Dimensionals, Apple green grosgrain ribbon, Pumpkin grosgrain ribbon, Latte Buttons, Linen Thread
Tools: 1 3/8" circle punch

Gotta collect them all...

So today I became a Copic certified designer. Before the class, I had never touched a Copic marker and now? Now, I want the all! This is a problem, but I'm sure with enough time I can collect enough for my needs.

Tomorrow, I'm going to Stamp New England and I'm super excited about that! We were challenged to make a name tag for ourselves that matched our stamping style. I took the opportunity to use this little Kim Hughes bird that I colored today at the marker certification. Love it! I also threaded some taffeta ribbon through the cute flower button from the new Latte buttons from Stampin' Up!

See you on the other side!

Stamps: Mocha Chica from Cornish Heritage Farms, Small Polka Dot alphabet from A Muse Art stamps
Ink: Palette Burnt Umber, Chocolate Chip, Memento Black, Copic markers
Paper: PTI White, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Retired Stampin' Up! designer paper
Accessories: Dimensionals, Pink taffeta ribbon, Latte Buttons, Retired velvet ribbon from Stampin' Up!
Tools: Paper Snips, Threading Water Fiskars punch

Baptism card

Eric's baby cousin was baptized on Sunday and I needed to make a quick card. When I was searching on splitcoast, I saw a bunch of christening dress cards based on Lauren Meader's onesie tutorial. Perfect!

I started with a linen textured white cardstock and used my threading waters Fiskars punch to make the eyelet edging. Then I just tied some white taffeta ribbon through this cute flower button from Stampin' Up!

Easy peasy! Thanks for the inspiration everyone!

Paper: Linen White
Accessories: white taffeta ribbon, Button Latte from Stampin' Up!
Tools: Threading water punch from Fiskars, Stampin' Up! 1 3/8" circle punch & scallop circle punch

Etsy challenge

I love etsy, don't you. Sometimes I just browse through the stores looking for inspiration. One of my favorite stores to ogle is joom. Since I volunteered to lead the weekly challenges this week on the SSUS group, I figured a joom inspiration challenge was just right!

I asked my partner ahead of time if she wouldn't mind if I used a non-Stampin' Up! set. Luckily for me, Kim is awesome and agreed. I've wanted to use these PTI sets forever, and they are just perfect for joom's look.

As you can tell, I used the pillow on the right as my inspiration. The sentiment is embossed, but the bird and branch aren't because my brown embossing powder has gone bad.

I think I will be making more joom look-a-likes in the future.

The layout is from the clean & simple blog's Fall To Layout #31.

Stamps: Birds of a feather and Out on a limb from Papertrey Ink
Ink: Palette Burnt Umber, Versamark
Paper: PTI Aqua Mist, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Dimensionals, chocolate taffeta ribbon, detail white embossing powder
Tools: Paper Snips, Swiss Dots embossing folder

Mystery Image Swap

It was time for another mystery image swap about a month ago. I am a little late in mailing and even later in posting my version.

This month's hostess was Ms. Technique Junkie herself, Pat Huntoon, and she sure picked a doozie for us. I bet there are tons of cool stamping techniques that you could do with this giraffe, but I came up blank and just colored him yellow. I did find this cool giraffe print paper in the All Boy DCWV stack which was on sale at Joanns. I thought the giraffe looked like he was laughing, so this sentiment from A Muse worked perfectly.

The layout is from Mojo Monday sketch #63.

Stamps: Mystery Giraffe, sentiment from A Muse
Ink: Palette Burn Umber, So Saffron, More Mustard, Really Rust
Paper: PTI White, Chocolate Chip, More Mustard, All Boy by DCWV
Accessories: Dimensionals, chocolate felt ribbon from Stampin' Up!
Tools: Paper Snips, Threading water punch from Fiskars, Stampin' Up! punches