Monthly Archives: January 2013

lots of ink

My style through the past few years has evolved quite a bit. I love combining embellishments and they always make me happy. Sometimes though, it’s great to get back to your card making roots and get back to where you began. For me, that is stamping. The basics of paper, ink and stamps. Simple items but the possibilities are endless.

I had so much fun the other day designing with Paper Smooches stamps that I just had to keep creating. This time I’ve left the dies off and focused on the pretty floral stamps. Anyone else in a mood for Spring?

To create this simple design, I first stamped the flowers onto the center panel and then sponged the edges with ink. To stamp the sentiment, I laid the panel onto my card base and adhered it in place with a temporary adhesive so that it wouldn’t shift. I then stamped the sentiment across the card base and stamped panel. You’ll find this leaves a slight space where the layers change levels. Using black ink makes it easy to color in these slight uninked spaces with a Copic Multiliner. Carefully remove the panel and adhere with dimensional foam tape.

Happy Creating!

Supplies:

Julie’s Birthday Surprise

Surprise Julie!

A very happy birthday 50th goes out to Julie Ebersole today. As long as I’ve been stamping, Julie Ebersole has been inspiring me. I love Julie’s superb design skills, her fabulous sense of humour, her kindness and her leadership in the crafting industry. I first got to know Julie through splitcoaststampers.com and was thrilled to hear from my stamping hero wayyyy back in 2006 asking me to be part of the Dirty Dozen Design Team. Wow! Can it really be that long ago?!

While I’ve never had the privilege of meeting Julie in person, I’m thrilled to be a fellow designer in the CLASSroom with her and be part of a few of her online classes. Julie’s designs are clean and simple in style but always have that great pop of spectacular that makes me smack my head and think…”why did I not think of that?!” If you’ve never stopped by her blog, you REALLY need to.

Paper Tufflez

Julie, I hope this is an extra special birthday for you. Wishing you everything wonderful! Thanks for all the inspiration. I wish I had half the creativity you do!

My style can be quite a bit different from Julie’s but for her birthday card, I tried to keep things a little more clean and simple in honor of Julie. One thing Julie and I do share is a love of aqua and so I just had to incorporate that color into this design.

I also know that Julie is quite partial to polka dots, just like myself and so I’ve pulled out a dotted background stamp and dabbed it with Distress Stains to create the background.

Most of the embellishments in this design have been altered. The Thickers number stickers have been colored in with a Copic marker to match the rest of the design. The little epoxy button sticker has a cupcake rub-on added to it and the chipboard butterfly has been color with a Silver Leafing pen.

I’m excited to be just one of many crafters taking part in today’s surprise blog hop for Julie. Next on the list is the very talented…

Cheiron Brandon: My Crafty Life – Cheiron Brandon

You can also find the entire list in the CLASSroom here.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you’ll take the time to wish Julie a very happy 50th birthday. 🙂

Supplies:

Smooches, Paper Flowers and a Hop

Paper Smooches is showing off their CHA release during the entire month of January.  37 designers are participating along with the PS DT, so there will be a ton for projects to inspire you this month.  Paper Smooches is known for their fun and whimsical hand-drawn stamps.  They decided that it was time to broaden their product line to include DIES and wood mount stamps!

I have a project to share using NEW PS product that releases on February 1, 2013 at www.papersmoochesstamps.com along with many retail stores around the globe.

You will find a new blog link (or two) to follow every day in January at the PS Blog.

Paper Smooches is giving away $500. Worth of product! Hidden on FIVE of the participating blogs is a prize package worth $100. each. The prize includes a variety of stamp sets, wood mounts and dies.  Comment on as many blogs as you can to increase your chances to be one of the five winners.

Deadline is January 30th – winners will be announced on the PS Blog on January 31st.

 

I was so excited to design this sweet card for today’s design. I’m just back from the Bahamas and the beautiful waters inspired the color combo.

This card features the new Big Blooms Dies. It’s great that Paper Smooches now carries dies. This die set is actually three flower dies and coordinates with the Big Blooms stamp set. I’ve used two of the three dies here to create these pretty flower accents. Die cutting the flowers from crepe paper gives them a great texture and makes them easy to crumple and add dimension.

I’ve also used the Simply Said stamp set to add sentiments to this design. The love sentiment is small and makes a sweet accent on a burlap tag.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Good luck on winning one of the fabulous prize packages!

i wish…

I wish…

  • for more time with my family
  • for more sunshine
  • for more creative time
  • for more organization
  • for less stress
  • for a simple life

Here’s a little card I made a couple months ago. It’s just a little bit of this and that put together with no special technique. I love the colors of this Jillibean Soup line. Yum! The letters are some white chipboard letters that I’ve colored with a Copic Marker to coordinate.

That’s about it! Just playin’.  Just using up some bits of crafty-goodness.

Thanks for stopping by!

You Are My Reason

Less than four weeks till Valentine’s!

This year it’s an even bigger deal in our house because with the Valentine’s weekend comes a wedding! We are definitely counting it down!

For those of you who haven’t heard, my oldest son gets married on February 16th. They wanted it as close to Valentine’s as possible as that is the anniversary of their first date. It’s amazing all the changes a year can bring!

the happy couple

image credit: Vincent Kember

I’ve created a valentine for my sweetie that tells him just how I feel about him and am sharing it today in the CLASSroom. Feel free to stop by and join me for the tutorial and step outs. I’m pretty excited with how it turned out!

Wishing you a wonderful and creative weekend!

tied up with string & the winners

I love packages tied up up with string. Makes me want to sing a little Sound of Music.

Today’s card is truly all tied up with lots of  Maya Road Twine Cording. It’s just like Baker’s Twine only it’s a beautiful heavy weight. Perfect for tying. No more floppy bows!

As you can see it comes in a myriad of colors. There’s more just being released too so I can’t wait to get my hands on that!

The fun thing about this design is the addition of the trinket pins. They are woven through each color of twine for an interesting basket-weave look. The trinket pins are all white flowers and I’ve altered them to coordinate with the band of cording they overlay. Coloring each flower center with a Copic Marker makes this easy. Because the markers are alcohol-based, the ink will stay put.

I’ve been all tied up the past couple weeks. I had hoped the new year would bring lots of changes but last week I ended up with an infection and things just snowballed from there. So please forgive on my tardiness on announcing the winner of the Seasons Giving Blog Hop! I’m going to combine it with the winner of the 75 Creative Challenges Blog Hop and announce both of them today. Let’s get to it!

Season’s Giving Blog Hop

Thanks so much for your patience in waiting for the winner of this blog hop! I know it’s been an exceedingly long wait.

Wow on all the 411 comments! Thanks so much everyone for stopping by. I used random.org to pick at winner.

#178

Congrats Pat!

Please e-mail me with your address (link at the top of the left sidebar) and I’ll get this out to you ASAP!

75 Creative Card Challenges Blog Hop

I’m excited to give away a copy of this magazine from Paper Crafts Magazine. I think it’s among my very favourite issues to date.  Full of inspiration and awesome challenges.

#95

Congrats to Andrea Steinmetz! Please email me with your address and we’ll get this magazine mailed out. 🙂

Thanks to all who left comments. I appreciated every single one! Wish I had more goodies to give away.

Have a wonderful creative day!

75 Creative Card Challenges Blog Hop!

Time for a blog hop!

I’m so excited about this blog hop as I was so excited to work on this special issue from Paper Crafts Magazine. 75 Creative Card Challenges is one of those issues you are definitely not going to want to miss. It was a joy to work on and so inspiring. Looking through it’s fabulous designs and challenges, I’m inspired all over again. Seriously. The ideas are amazing!

For today’s blog hop, a few of the designers have been asked to create a card for a new challenge. The challenge was to use song lyrics and I’ve  used the Shine Bright song title as my sentiment and also incorporated lots of shiny and “diamond” accents.

It was fun to go through my stash of things I’d been hoarding and put them all together into one glitzy design. Giving a nod to the idea of using lyrics is also using a sheet music motif in the Tissue Tape and also in the patterned paper used.

Most great blog hops have a giveaway and this one is no exception! I’m thrilled to be able to send a copy of the new 75 Creative Card Challenges issue to one lucky winner. Please leave a comment on this blog post by 11 pm EST on Tuesday January 15th. for a chance to win! One comment per person please. I’ll be announcing the winner shortly after that. Good luck! This isn’t an issue to miss!

For more chances to win, make sure you stop by each of these blogs for another chance to win. From here the next blog to hop to is Kim Hughes.

Heather Campbell

Chan Vuong

Lorena Cantó Lavería

Laura Bassen

Julia Stainton

Kim Hughes

Sarah J. Moerman

Amber Kemp-Gerstel

Emily Branch

Vera Wirianta Yates

Thanks so much for stopping by! Happy blog hopping!