Mystery Image Swap

This month's mystery image swap was a doozy! Not only did Sue send us this cute little Boxer Penguin from memory box, but she also sent us a piece of patterned paper. We had to use a piece of this paper on our card as an extra challenge. I was a little nervous at this prospect until my envelope came in the mail. When I saw the red lined paper though, I knew I had gotten off easy!

I decided t make a Valentine's Day card since the penguin's boxers have little hearts on them So I pulled out Hugs & Kisses from the Kim Hughes collection at Cornish Heritage Farms. I embossed the Xs and hearts with clear embossing powder onto the red panel. For more shine, I used a Sakura clear gelly pen on each of the hearts on his boxers and I filled in the i love you heart with crystal effects.

The layout is from Lauren Meader's Saturday sketch #19. I just love Lauren's sketches!

I hope my partner likes it! I was pretty pleased at the end.

Stamps: Boxer penguin from Memory Box, Hugs & Kisses from Cornish Heritage farms
Ink: VersaMark, Palette Noir; Going Gray, Real Red and Basic Gray markers
Paper: Basic gray, Basic Black, Real Red, Mystery white and Mystery patterned paper
Accessories: Crystal effects, clear embossing powder, Sakura clear gelly pen, Dimensionals
Tools: Hearts cuttlebug folder, Circle nestabilities

Hey thanks

Yes, I am a child of the 80s, why do you ask? Seriously though, this is a challenge card for the SSUS group. We were to make a thank you card using current Stampin' Up! stamps. Sounds easy enough, but most of my sets are retired at this point. I figured I could spell out thanks using the Jumbo Outline alphabet and was inspired to do it in rainbow colors by the name frame I made before Christmas.

Once I made that decision, I rifled through the new catalog to see what else I had and when I saw that Seeing Spots was still current, I figured I had found the perfect match! I inked up each ring of dots with my marker to mirror the rainbow colors in the thanks sentiment. The whole card has a Punky Brewster vibe to me. Totally out of my comfort zone with the bright primary colors, but I was really digging it. I hope my challenge partner likes it too!

The layout was adapted from a Verve sketch, VSHR2 that I found on splitcoast stampers. The thanks panel came out so large that I had to drop the ribbon, but I think it works.


Stamps: Jumbo Outline Alphabet and Seeing Spots from Stampin' Up!
Ink: Real Red, Only Orange, Yo yo Yellow, Green Galore, Brilliant Blue, Lovely Lilac, Palette Noir
Paper: Shimmery White, Real Red, Green Galore
Accessories: Bold Brights Brads, Dimensionals

Fairy Lily Revisited

I decided to make a second Lily the fairy card. She is just to fun to play with. This time I had her sprinkling pixie dust on a field of flowers. If you look closely you can see that the flowers on the left are sparkly, but the one of the right that she hasn't gotten to yet is not. Too fun! I thought this sentiment from Verve stamps was just too perfect!

The flowers on the bottom of the card are from the Dress up Lily stamp set. All of the images were colored with watercolor crayons and an aquapainter. To make it look like Lily had been flying, I created a fairy dust path behind her by dry embossing the flourish from the Priceless classy brass template by Stampin' Up! I then wiped the embossed part with a white ink pad and highlighted it with icicle stickles. I love this brass stencil because it also had holes to paper pierce.

In the end this card was just what I pictured in my head. I love it when that works out!

Stamps: Dress Up Lily from Pink Cat Studios, Starlight Starbright from Verve Stamps
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: Whisper White, Regal Rose, Vellum Cardstock from Stampin' Up!
Accessories: Taffeta Ribbon from Stampin' Up!, Dimensionals, Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Icicle Stickles, Dazzling Diamonds
Tools: Two-way glue pen, Wavy Cutter from Creative Memories

Pink Cat Challenge

I am so excited about the upcoming Lily & Billy Sweethearts set from Pink Cat Studio. To celebrate, Melissa had a contest. She gave us this sweet little Lily fairy as a pdf file so we could print it out and make a card.

For my card, I wanted to have Lily the fairy grant the frog his wish of becoming a prince. I just love the way the frog is holding his scepter. To attach the crown to the metal frame, I used some Tombow Metal glue. It worked perfectly!

This Howdy paper from American Crafts was the perfect match for my little fairy tale setting.

To make Lily, I printed the Lily image out twice, once on Whisper White cardstock and once on Vellum cardstock. While the ink was still wet on the Vellum cardstock, I sprinkled it with Iridescent Ice embossing powder and embossed it. Then I cut the wing section out of the vellum to give them a more delicate look. As a finishing touch, I blinged it up with some stickles icicles.

Don't forget to check back on the Pink Cat Studio blog for the official release on January 15!

Stamps: Dress Up Billy & Billy Plate 1 from Pink Cat Studios, Fairytale sentiments from Starvingartistamps
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Vellum Cardstock from Stampin' Up!, Howdy from American Crafts
Accessories: Ribbon from May Arts, Pewter Hodge Podge Hardware, Dimensionals, Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Icicle Stickles
Tools: Koh-i-noor pencils, Gamsol

1st Birthday

Can you believe my little guy is a year old already? In some ways it feels like just yesterday that we brought him home, but at the same time I can hardly remember what life was like without him. His first birthday is coming up, so I need to send out some invites for his party.

I found this cute paper from piggy tales at a local scrapbook store over the summer and was so excited that the dump truck from the Dress Up Billy set was a perfect match! I had trouble deciding on a color scheme for the rest of the card though. In the end, we went with the orange card because it pops a little more.

Does the sentiment's font look familiar? I really loved the open numbers from the new Number Fun set from the Kim Hughes Collection at Cornish Heritage Farms, but I am on a voluntary post-Christmas spending moratorium. So I opted to buy a couple of Kim Hughes' CK fonts for less than half the price of the stamp set. The number one is from CK Ed and the rest of the lettering is from CK Brandy B. I love Kim's handwriting and am tickled that I have a couple of her fonts now to really customize my cards. The inside of the invitation is also in the CK Brandy B font so it matches perfectly!

The sketch was posted by Lauren Meader a while back for a Pink Cat Studios challenge. I guess it is fitting that I used a Pink Cat Studio stamp on my card. ;)


Stamps: Dress Up Billy from Pink Cat Studios
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: Whisper White, Night of Navy, Pumpkin Pie, Wild Wasabi from Stampin' Up!, Tortoise & Hare collection from piggy tales
Accessories: Striped Wasabi Grosgrain Ribbon from Stampin' Up!, Dimensionals
Tools: 1 1/4" and 1 3/8" circle punches, Koh-i-noor pencils, Gamsol

Twiddle Bug Mystery Image

I am a terrible Mystery Swapper! This card was supposed to be in the mail before Thanksgiving and instead I just mailed it out this past weekend. I'm so sorry Sue! I hope it was worth the wait...

When I first looked at the Balla Weensie images that Kim sent from Stampotique, I immediately thought of the Twiddle Bugs from Sesame Street. So cute!

Anyway, I thought the thin doodled lines from this patterned paper from Pebbles Inc. would go perfectly with the balla weensie. I colored her in with Koh-i-noor pencils first and then covered her green body with Fun Flock and her tutu with blue glitter from Stampin' Up!

The layout is from a Verve Stamps Sketch (VSHR3).




Stamps: Balla Weensie from Stampotique, sentiment by Stamping Bella
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: White cardstock from Papertrey Ink, Chocolate Chip from Stampin' Up!, blue glitter cardstock from DCWV, Theodore Paisley and Stripe patterned paper from Pebbles Inc
Accessories: Chocolate Chip Tafetta ribbon from Stampin' Up, Blue glitter from Stampin' Up!, green Fun Flock from Stampendous, Dimensionals
Tools: Threading Water punch from Fiskars, Koh-i-noor pencils, Gamsol

Christmas Thank Yous

For my little guy's Christmas thank you notes, I knew I wanted to include a picture of him playing with the toys that he was given. He's obviously too young to write his own thank you notes and since most of the gift givers weren't here to see him open the gifts, I thought it would be nice if they could see him enjoying them.

Anyway, when I saw Jennifer's son's thank you note on the Hero Arts blog I knew it was the perfect layout!

I did change a few things. First, I didn't have the Hero Arts sets that Jennifer used. But I do have this cool He Said She Said punch from Fiskars. So I paired it with the Thank You stamp from Family Phrases from Stampin' Up! Also instead of stamping the background, I used the Cuttlebug Snowflake folder and then wiped the card with Brilliance white ink. These cards were so fast to make! I made 18 of them in an hour and a half from start to finish.

Stamps: Family Phrases from Stampin' Up!
Ink: Palette Noir and Brilliance Moonlight White
Paper: Confetti Tan, Real Red, Whisper White from Stampin' Up!
Accessories: Dimensionals
Tools: He said She said Squeeze Punch by Fiskars

Recipes

As part of his Christmas gift this year, I made my husband a recipe box. I had intended to copy all of our favorite recipes down as well, but I ran out of time. I know you are probably scratching your head right now trying to understand how this could be a gift for my husband. Well, he works from home and makes dinner every night so I don't have to start cooking when I get home from work. He's been complaining that our favorite recipes are scattered through several cookbooks and printouts from the internet and that it would be much easier to have them all in one place. So, the recipe box was born!

I was so excited when Papertrey Ink came out with the Recipe Box stamp set and recipe cards. I love their long skinny dimensions and the fact that they fit perfectly in the egg box.

When it came time to decorate my box, I pulled out some patterned paper from Scenic Route that looks like college ruled paper and stamped images from the retired Mix & Mingle set from Stampin' Up! and the Little Gal, Baked with Love and Hugs and Kisses sets from the Kim Hughes collection at Cornish Heritage Farms in the perfect match ink colors from Papertrey Ink. I wanted the box to have a doodled look to it so I didn't color in the images.

On the inside, I lined the box with patterned paper from October Afternoon and used the Recipe Box stamp set to make dividers for each section. I also used the Polka Dots backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms on the dividers.

To make Recipes plural on the lid, I used the s from the Quirky Alphabet set.

Now, I just have the long task of copying over all of our recipes!

Stamps: Recipe Box from Papertrey Ink; Baked with Love, Hugs and Kisses, Little Gal and Quirky Alphabet from Cornish Heritage Farms; Mix & Mingle from Stampin' Up!
Ink: Aqua Mist, Ocean Tides, Berry Sorbet, Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, Plum Pudding & Spring Moss from Papertrey Ink, Palette Noir, Palette Burnt Umber and Palette Charcoal
Paper: Scenic Route and October Afternoon
Accessories: Matte finish Modge Podge
Tools: Foam brushes to apply the modge podge

Emily frame

I love making name frames for new babies. I think it makes such a fun and special gift. For this frame I used VersaMagic chalk ink in rainbow colors and the monogram stamps from A Muse. The frame was $3 at WalMart. The clear stamps and clean design made this a much faster project than some of the other frames I've done.

More baby shoes

For some Christmas gifts and my church's holiday craft fair, I made some more baby shoes. For these two pairs, I used metallic and pearl fabric paint from Tulip so they were sparkly and festive. The ornament is from the Heart warmers set by
Kim Hughes at Cornish Heritage Farms.

I absolutely loved this rainbow pair too. Aren't they fun and girly without having to be pink? he rainbow is from the Little Gal set by
Kim Hughes at Cornish Heritage Farms.

The last two pairs weren't stamped at all. I just loved the print on this corduroy from Joann's, so I just had to use it.

That's all I had time to finish before Christmas. I did cut out, stamp and paint several more pairs, so you haven't seen the last of these yet.

For details on how I made these, see my previous post on the subject.

Happy New Year & New Doodlefactory!

Happy New Year to all of you! I know I've been silent on the blogging front lately, but I have lots to share with you (more baby shoes, Christmas presents and thank you cards!)

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know about the awesome new Valentine's Stamps from Doodle Factory. Check them out here!

They are so cute! I especially love the little monkeys!

Anyway, enjoy your holiday! I'll be back later this weekend to share some stamping goodness.

Photo Shoot

So this weekend, I decided to try and take some pictures of the kid in his new shoes. This proved to be more difficult than I expected. Now that he's "crawling" (more like army crawling), he hardly ever sits still.

The last picture is my favorite! I was kneeling on the floor to take his picture and he decided to crawl up my lap to see what I was doing. I just love him to pieces!

Baby Shoes!

Okay, I am really excited about this project! Soft-soled shoes are all the rage for babies these days. There's lots of brands on the market and they range from $20-$30 each. This pair cost me about $4. I used an old pair of jeans that no longer fit, a fat quarter of flannel for the lining and some Toughtek® for the soles. The pattern is free on Tacky Living.

The fun part about making your own baby shoes (besides the cost savings) is that you can decorate them however you chose! I just love this little snowman from Kim Hughes' Heartwarmers set on Cornish Heritage Farms. Before assembling the shoes, I stamped the snowman on the denim vamps in Palette Noir ink. Once it dried, I painted it in with Tulip soft fabric paints. It took two coats of paint for the white to be opaque. Then once it was dry, I backstitched the outline of the snowman with some embroidery floss.

I absolutely love these and can't wait to try them on my little guy on the morning! Now I can't wait to make another pair.

Fall Wedding

The last wedding we went to was the last weekend of September up in the Catskill mountains in New York. We were expecting a beautiful fall weekend with the foliage nearing its peak, but instead we got tons of rain! Luckily it did stop for the wedding itself, but there was lots of mud to clean up when we got home.

Given the destination of the wedding, I wanted my card to have a woodsy / fall feel.

So, I chose Always Artichoke, Copper, Vanilla and Chocolate Chip as my color scheme. I first stamped the leaves with VersaMark ink on glossy cardstock and let them dry. Then I brayered the artichoke ink over top. I love the results of this technique. It looks so slick. Finally, I stamped the leaves' outlines with VersaMark and embossed them with copper embossing powder. I also had to sand the hodge podge hardware to reveal the true copper color instead of the brownish patina that it had out of the box.

The layout is from the Fall to Layout #11 from the Clean & Simple blog. I really love these layouts. They are so easy to adapt.

I love how this card turned out as well. So what do you think? All three cards look completely different, but I think they matched the various couples well.

Now that I'm all caught up, I can tell you about my sewing/stamping project that I've been working on for the past week. Stay tuned for more!

Stamps: Lovely Leaves from Stampin' Up! (retired), sentiment by A Muse
Ink: VersaMark, Always Artichoke
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Copper, Very Vanilla, Glossy White all from Stampin' Up!
Accessories: May Arts ribbon, Copper Hodge Podge Hardware, Dimensionals
Tools: Plain circle Nestabilities by Spellbinders, Brayer

Wedding Two!

The second wedding on Labor Day weekend was for a college friend. The happy couple has already been to Disney World once and that was also where they were going for their honeymoon, so it only seemed right to use the Fairytale set from Doodle Factory at Starving Artistamps.

I stamped all the images on a square Fabriano Medioevalis folded card in Palette Noir ink and then watercolored them with my Watercolor Wonder crayons and an Aquapainter. I also used quite a bit of clear stickles on the roof of the castle and the horse's bridle. The horse is popped up on dimensionals as well to make the castle look farther away. I was going to color in the ground and sky, but I didn't want it to look overdone or childish and I didn't trust myself to know when to stop. ;)

For the inside of the card, I stamped the happy couple and popped up a heart from a Kim Hughes set between them. I used more stickles on the princess and I used Crystal Effects on the knight to make his armour really shine. ;)

I love how cute this card came out and I think it was perfect for this couple.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the conclusion of the wedding card trifecta!

Stamps: Doodle Factory Fairytale and Fairytale Sentiments set from Starving Artistamps, heart from Baked with Love by Cornish Heritage Farms
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: Fabriano Medioevalis square folded card
Accessories: Crystal effects from Stampin' Up!, Icicle Stickles, Dimensionals
Tools: Paper snips, Watercolor Wonder Crayons from Stampin' Up!, Aquapainter

So far behind...

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. One reason is that I haven't been stamping much. Sewing my little guy's Halloween costume got me on a bit of a sewing kick, so stamping has taken a back burner. I'm hoping to marry the two with my next project so I'll be sure to share that with you soon.

In the meantime, I have some catching up to do. We went to 3 weddings in September (two on Labor Day weekend) and I haven't posted any of the cards yet. I'll start with the first and most simple one.

Our first wedding was for a couple of board gaming friends here in Connecticut. Their wedding invitation was a simple, yet elegant white card with scrolly lavender accents. So, I modeled my card to complement the invitation.

This card was so simple, there's not much to say about it. Come back tomorrow for the second wedding of Labor Day weekend. It has a completely different feel to it.

Stamps: Reversed scallop circle image by Impress, sentiment by A Muse
Ink: Palette Noir, Almost Amethyst
Paper: Shimmery White, Almost Amethyst
Accessories: Retired wide organdy and sweet shop ribbon from Stampin' Up!, Dimensionals
Tools: Scalloped circle and plain circle Nestabilities by Spellbinders

Trifold Challenge Card

A couple weeks ago, I signed up for another challenge on the SSUS group. We were supposed to make a card with the layout from the trifold card on page 16 of the Holiday Mini catalog.

This was a fun fold! I decided to pull out my Crab & Company set from Stampin' Up! and make a Christmas card out of it. The front of the card was inspired by one of Lauren Meader's old Saturday Sketches, #35.

The card itself was made out of a piece of kraft cardstock that measured 11 x 5.5. Then I folded it into thirds. My Score-It made this task nice and easy! I colored everything in with an aquapainter and watercolor crayons.

Stamps: Crab & Company and All Holidays from Stampin' Up!
Ink: Palette Noir, Real Red, Basic Gray
Paper: Watercolor Paper, Basic Black, Kraft, Basic Gray, Real Red
Accessories: Kraft tafeta ribbon, Dimensionals
Tools: Watercolor Crayons, Aquapainter, Score-It

Happy Halloween

I made my little guy a pigeon costume this year for Halloween! He is the pigeon from Don't let the pigeon drive the bus! It was my first sewing project and I am thrilled with the outcome. :)

Halloween

I signed up for the Halloween card challenge on the SSUS group only to realize that all of my Stampin' Up! Halloween sets are retired. Luckily for me, my partner was okay with my using contraband. So, that gave me the perfect opportunity to pull out my new Doodle Factory Halloween II stamps! I just love this line of stamps and really need to use them more.

I used a sketch from Lauren Meader this time. It's My Time's Saturday Sketch #06. I moved the scalloped edge to the right side so it could be the edge of my card, but that was the only change that I made. The card is 4.5" square.

I started by brayering a piece of glossy cardstock with the retired Pumpkin Patch spectrum pad and when that was dry, I stamped the haunted house on the background with Palette Noir ink. This gave me the railings for the house since they were too fiddly to cut out.

Then I embossed the haunted house on glossy cardstock twice and colored it in with my Stampin' Up! markers (Perfect Plum, Going Gray, Always Artichoke, So Saffron and Basic Black.) I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but I cut the house and moon out and popped them up with dimensionals. Then from the second image, I cut out the bushes and popped them up again. This gave it a pretty cool 3-d look. The ghost was also cut out, but I glued him flat on the background.

Since this is supposed to be a Wow! card, I decided it wasn't sparkly enough. So, the black layer is completely covered in Martha Stewart black glitter. It is really stunning in person. The spider web is flocked with Panda Black flock as well.

I really loved this card when it was all done. I hope my partner likes it too!

Stamps: Doodle Factory Graveyard Shift and Witch's Brew sets from Starving Artistamps
Ink: Palette Noir, VersaMark
Paper: PaperTrey white cardstock, Basic Black, Perfect Plum, Glossy White
Accessories: Black Panda Flock from Stampendous, Black glitter from Martha Stewart, Black embossing powder and Heat & Stick Powder from Stampin' Up, Dimensionals
Tools: Brayer, Heat Tool, Paper Snips, Retired large corner rounder from Stampin' Up!

Mystery Image Swap

I guess it's been more than a week, but I finally sat down to make my mystery image card. I absolutely love the Charlie and Charlotte stamps from Whiff of Joy and they just had a new release!

Anyway, I picked up this fun & festive paper a couple weeks ago at the Scrapbook Clubhouse after hitting the outlets for some warmer clothes for the baby. They are from American Crafts and were just too cool to pass up. I added a little glitz with some stickles to kick them up a notch.

Charlotte was colored with Koh-i-noor pencils and gamsol. I then added red glitter and liquid applique to her hat.

For the layout, I thought it would be fitting to use one of Katharina's sketches since Whiff of Joy is her company. I started with Sketch #28, but obviously I deviated a little. That's what happens when you try to go from memory.

I hope my partner likes it! It's been super fun to see everyone's cards. Thanks for playing along!

Stamps: Singing Charlotte from Whiff of Joy, Season of Joy from Stampin' Up!, Clear Ovals from A Muse
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: PaperTrey white cardstock, Real Red, American Crafts patterned paper
Accessories: ribbon from American Crafts, Red glitter, Ice stickles and black stickles, liquid applique
Tools: Dimensionals