My other My Favorite Things card

Here's my other challenge entry. I decided to go Christmas this time and see what I came up with.... I got some really nice comments on both, which was pretty surprising! Tomorrow they post who the guest designer will be in March. I would LOVE the opportunity to design for a stamping company! I just want to get my foot in the door!!!!

Anyway, enough chatting! Here's my card:

Recipe:

Stamps: A Beautiful Season, The Snowflake Spot, Everyday Flexible Phrases

Ink: Classic Black, Real Red for the scarf, white Craft for the snowflakes behind and words, silver gel pen for the "stitching"

Accessories: Versamark and white Martha Stewart glitter for the snowman image, Kaleidescope clear embossing powder (Michael's), mat pack for holes for "stitching", ribbon.

Very easy, once I figured out what I want to do. This was the last side of the green paper that hadn't been stamped on! There were 3 drafts before I got this! It was fun to make even if I don't win. After looking at other entries, there's no way I even have a chance! I just don't have the whole creative brain that some of these people do, and they haven't even been stamping for as long as I have!!! Plus, it helps when you kind of have a disposable income to buy all the current stuff that is out there. Hopefully one day, I'll be as good as some of these other people!

Anyway, Olivia is sleeping, hopefully for a while, since she was up all night last night. And Jack is playing, so I can work on my Michael's crafts!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Stamping!

My Favorite Things

Last night I was on a live chat "cocktail party" for My Favorite Things, a stamp company, on Splitcoaststampers. It went by SO fast! I'm so glad I have DSL and not the old dial up! I would never have been able to keep up! There ended up being about 40+ pages of people chatting back and forth. It was really cool!

I found it very interesting how a lot of these people are good friends, and just like I do, lots of these people drool over everyone else's work on Splitcoaststampers. It's a very unique community where these people are from all over the world and they all come together and share their latest creations.

Anyway, the party was because My Favorite Things was releasing 3 new stamp sets. I, of course, bought two! (The third one had a dog in the scene, and if you know me well enough, you know how I feel about animals....) They sent out a coupon, so that just enhanced a sweet deal! And they are looking for guest designers starting in March, so the first challenge to find someone was to make an Artist Trading Card, or ATC, and attach it to a card. So, in essence, it's a card within a card.

Here's mine:

Recipe: Stamps: Sweet Treats, Every Day Flexible Phrases

Ink: Pretty in Pink, Positively Pink, Going Gray, Bordering Blue, Real Red, Garden

Green, Classic Black

Paper: Black, Pretty in Pink, Very Vanilla

Accessories: Mat Pack, Michael's ribbon, Crystal Effects for the fudge, Glitter Glue for the "vanilla" ice cream, aqua painter for the pinks and gray/blue to blend the colors a little bit; Simply Circles brass template for the black dry embossing.

I'm going to make a Christmas one, so I'll post it here as well when I have time to finish it. 1AM came too quickly and I was just too tired to continue!

Happy Stamping!

Splitcoaststampers

If anyone ever travels through Splitcoaststampers, which you can find at www.splitcoaststampers.com. If you ever see a card by Stampin'NPA, that's me!!!! I was always under the impression that you had to be a Stampin' Up demonstrator to have a gallery. Not so! So about a month ago, I started my own gallery! I have received a lot of compliments on the stuff that I have put on there. Some of what you see here is on there. And I'm really into the color challenges, because they are just that. A challenge! I made a Christmas card using Pretty in Pink and Wild Wasabi, which is green. It turned out pretty good! I would never in a million years have put those two colors together!!!! So, I posted it on there, but didn't post it here. So, you'll have to check out my gallery when you're surfing the 'net!

Happy Stamping!

Merry Christmas!

Well, I am on the ball this year. I actually have most of my Christmas cards made and sealed in the envelopes! Last year, I was probably just in the beginning phases of my cards! I don't think they went out until a couple days before Christmas. So, this year, I'm doing much better! Plus, I streamlined my card this year so that it wouldn't take me forever to get them done! Thanks to my cousin, Luci, for helping me attach the three holly pieces to the cards on the way to DC for a girls weekend getaway! What better way to get stuff done, than in the car on a long trip!!!!!

Recipe for this card:

Cardstock: Certainly Celery, Ruby Red, Very Vanilla

Stamps: Fine Lace (background), Etruscan, All Year Cheer (I don't remember which one....)

Ink: Certainly Celery, Red Glitter gel pen from Michaels, Ruby Red sponged ink around the edges of the holly pieces.

Accessories: Brayer (to help get all the ink down for background paper, Stampin' Dimensionals, and comparibles from Michael's

Technique: tearing paper, 3-d effect

This card was SUPER easy to make. I literally stamped everything in like 2 days. I made stuff for 100 cards.

They are going out in the mail hopefully by Friday. I have a few more to make, and we ran out of regular pictures, where my kids look SUPER cute, so the rest of the cards will have our Wal-Mart picture from Hell. I am really sorry to the recipients of these cards. Olivia just would not smile for anything! She was afraid to be on that stupid table. Which I would have been too! That thing was really wobbly!!! Poor girl! And Jack. What a great boy he was! Usually he's the one causing all the headaches. He sat up there, and smiled his fake smile and acted like everything was fine! Oh the trials and tribulations of children! How wonderful they are!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh, it's midnight!

Time to hit the sack!

My Christmas card class is tomorrow evening at Michael's and I am SOOO excited!!!!!!!!!!!! This is essentially my first class, because all of my other classes have been with my mom, or my friends! I don't know anyone in this class, so this should be interesting!!!!!!!!! I just have to remember to bring everything!!!!!!

Wish me luck!!!!

Happy Stamping!!!!!

Roses in Winter

I have decided to make some cards for my grandmother's birthday coming up on Thanksgiving Day as a gift to her. This is for my other grandmother! She is a fellow scrapbooker, when she feels like going up to her attic/workroom to work on her books. So, I know that she would appreciate these cards!

I haven't used one of my favorite sets in quite a while, and now that I have a new package of watercolor paper, I decided to try it and see what I could come up with. All I did was stamp in Regal Rose and Mellow Moss, using regular dye ink (classic ink pads), and then using my Aqua Painter and blended it all in to make it run together. The other card is Pale Plum and Mellow Moss. Same technique. They turned out quite good, I think! I'm impressed anyway! Wish I had more Regal Rose paper!!!!!! How annoying to find a great combination and not have enough paper to make more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, that will have to be on my next order!

Happy Stamping!

Black Magic

The other day I was surfing the internet and I found some samples of "black magic" cards. Where you use black cardstock, and stamp your image with White Craft ink. Then you heat the ink and color your image with colored pencils. I'm sure metallic colored pencils would show up better, but I was surprised at how nice my colors came through. I just used my Prisma colored pencils. I tried to stamp with StazOn White, but it was very faint. The White Craft ink showed up so much better.

Here are a couple samples of what I created. I bought a bunch of 2008-2009 planners at Michael's. They were on sale for $1.00 each! Couldn't pass them up!!!!!!!!! I was trying to come up with an idea to decorate them, when I found the black magic info. So, I tried it out, and really liked the end result. So, I just found all my flower stamps that I could color inside of, and stamped the day away! The only bad thing is that you can see the reflection of my camera when I took all these pictures. Oh well!!!!!

Happy stamping!

Christmas at Michael's!

Next month, I have a Christmas card class. I needed to make them simple and easy to make, since we are making 5 in 2 hours and not use a lot of supplies. I think these turned out ok. We'll see!

They are all using the same Christmas Paper Stack, with embellishments like ribbon and tags. I used 1 stamp set from Michael's. So, there are not a lot of things to purchase to make these cards. And, someone could use either the layout, or the card itself as their Christmas card. They are really easy to do in an assembly line....

Happy stamping!

Family Baby Shower

Tomorrow I have a baby shower to go to. Now that I'm really into alternative paper crafting, and really getting away from scrapbooking and boring cards, I want to make all my gifts and do all kinds of cool stuff to my cards!

So, for this gift, which this is for a cousin who could probably care less about this stuff, I made a cute box called the "2-5-7-10 box", which you can find the directions and all the juicy details at splitcoast. I saw quite a few of these and had to try it! So, this is my first box. It turned out better than I anticipated! I put some of Jack's Halloween candy in there!!! What a great way to give away candy! Give it to a pregnant woman!!!! LOL!!!! But, I just thought this was so cute! And the stamp of this pregnant woman really has a book in her hand. Well, why not tie the gift inside to the outside! So, I had some embellishments from my Halloween cards that I didn't get a chance to use, so the candy bar came in handy!

The last card is called a "Magic Card". This was SO hard to make! This is obviously something that will have to be practiced time and time again. Maybe once I'm good at it, this can be a Michael's class. It took me ALL NIGHT to make this! Well, all evening, anyway. It's a really cool idea, and I love the finished product, but JEEZ!!!!!!! I felt like this card would never be finished! There are more than 20 directions to make this sucker! And mine isn't even that good! But it does look better in real life than online! Although, after looking at some actual Stampin' Up Demonstrators' "magic cards" on Splitcoast, I do have to say that mine is nicer than some of theirs! Good God! That's for another post though! But let me just say that there are some really awesome card makers out there, and then there are some that should just not share their work!
Anyway, so, this card is NOT my best work but it's 11:30 and I'm sick of sitting in this chair!

Off to my romance novel!

Happy Stamping!!!!

Oldies but Goodies!

I'm really excited to have this blog, just to have a place to post my pictures of the cards that I make! There are a bunch of pictures that I'm posting today. I have been quite the busy little bee! I had to make two regular cards, and then a card and a box for a baby shower tomorrow. More on that later....

Anyway, the first picture is a sympathy card. I hate making sympathy cards. I usually don't make them. I make excuses, "I don't have any sympathy word stamps", "I waited too long", blah, blah, blah. I just hate making them! Plus, I never know what to say!!!! So, for this card, I took the background from a Christmas card that I saw on Splitcoast, and then adapted it to what I was trying to get. I really didn't have a picture in my head of the finished product. I just was kind of letting my stamps lead me! It turned out ok. I love it when I can dress things up with ribbon and metal!

The second card which is like 5 pictures long!!!, is a waterfall card that I was taught a few years ago. Nothing like bringing out the oldies but goodies! This is for a family who has moved and the sentiment that I wrote underneath all those trees is "May you enjoy many wonderful seasons in your new home!" I thought it turned out nice.....

Next post will be the rest of my stuff.....

Thank you cards

Last night I worked on these thank you cards for a baby shower. I think they turned out really well! Considering I don't have any dog stamps! And the person who these are going to is not an immediate relative, who I highly doubt knows a lot about stamps and paper crafting, so, it works! I made them so they matched the onesie that I am adding to the gift.

Every time I surf the internet, I find new and interesting things! Today I added a playlist! These are some of my favorite songs from when I was little to now.

Enjoy the music and thanks for visiting!