Sneak Peek - Valentine Defined (again!)

Hello there! I hope everyone enjoyed all of the projects from the Tour de Freaks blog tour. I loved everything everyone did! It was a nice break from all of the holiday posts lately. I'm excited for Christmas but I'm done with making christmas cards. I'm ready to move on to valentine and spring cards. So for today's card, I have a cute Valentine's card or just an I love you card. I used the Valentine Defined set but did not use the tree this time. I used the cute little flamingos instead. In the close up photo you can see that they are embossed with iridescent ice to make them sparkley. The circle behind them is stamped with the valentine definition stamp from the set. It is layered on a pink pirouette scalloped circle. And then I used the new Love Impressions paper. I actually don't have this paper yet so I decided to download the designs on My Digital Studio and then print out what I wanted. The download has less designs that the actual collection does but it still works when you don't feel like waiting to get the paper. :) The last thing I did was add some ribbon, a button, and the "love" tag. I used the Lots of Tags sizzlets and then just cut the tag to the size I wanted. In case I don't get a chance to post before Christmas, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone has a great holiday!!

Tour-de-Freaks: Occasions Mini

Welcome to the December 2010 Blog Tour. If you've just arrived from Iliana's blog, you've come to the right place! But don't worry, if you have started here, it will be possible to go completely to the end and arrive back here after going to the beginning of the tour!(If you are viewing this before the 20th, all the links may not be working so be sure to stop back again on the 20th).

This month's theme is Sneak Peek at the Occasions Mini and SAB catalogs. My 2 projects today use products from the Occasions Mini catalog. Another great mini catalog. Of course I want to buy everything in it! Everything is so fun and springy.



For my card I used the Valentine Defined set and You're a Gem (for the sentiment). I originally wanted to do something bold and bright with this set but I ended up with vintage. Which just shows you that this set is versatile and doesn't just have to be used for Valentine's either. I just love the tree image from this set and I can see myself using it a lot. I stamped the tree is Always Artichoke, Chocolate Chip and cut out 3 Rose Red hearts. I used a strip of the flower pattern dsp from the Springtime Vintage collection. Some lovely papers in this collection. I used the music notes wheel on the Crumb Cake cardstock. Then everything was sponged with Crumb Cake for the vintage look.



My 2nd project is a wall decoration. I have a lot of friends who are expecting babies so I thought this would be a cute gift idea for one of these friends. Hopefully someone will have a girl! I used some chipboard pieces from the On Board Mix and Match. I covered all of the pieces with paper from the Springtime Vintage collection. I stamped the crumb cake cardstock with the music wheels again. I don't know why I waited so long to get this wheel, it's fabulous! The banner in the top corner uses the Just Perfect alphabet. I actually didn't have any alphabet stamps so I just downloaded this set from My Digital Studio. I opened up a project and added these letters in Not Quite Navy, Rose Red, Always Artichoke, and Baja Breeze. Then I just printed it out on Crumb Cake cardstock and punched them out with the 3/4 circle punch. Then I put it all in a nice wood frame (without the glass) and it's now ready to go to a new baby girl!


Thanks for checking out my projects. I hope you are enjoying the tour. Next up is Lisa Young, with more fabulous projects!

More Christmas

Wow, where has these past week gone?! I had intentions of having a few posts this week but I don't know what happened, I just got really busy and I didn't have the chance. Anyway, here is another one of my Christmas cards that I sent out. The layout is cased from a card by Janine Tinklenberg. I used a strip of the Jolly Holiday DSP and cherry cobbler and old olive cardstock. This is a good layout for using some of the DSP scraps that you have lying around. I colored in one of the critters from Merry Crittermas with some copic markers and then added some chunky glitter around the edges. Overall this was a quick card except that I spent a bit of time coloring but that's ok, I like coloring. That's it for me today. Be sure to come back on the 20th for the Control Freaks Blog Tour. This month we will be featuring projects from the new occasions mini!

Sneak Peek - Valentine Defined

Happy Friday! I had a chance to play with one of the new sets from the Occasions Mini today. I can already tell that I love this set! When I saw it in the catalog, I fell in love with the tree image. I thought it was so cute. So of course that's the first image I played with. I can see using that image for non valentine's cards as well. Today's card could be for Valentine's day or it could just be an any time "love you" card or change the sentiment and use it for any occasion. All of the images are from the set; the line of hearts on the Baja Breeze background, the love you sentiment, the Pink Pirouette heart stems and of course the tree. I also cut out the little pink hearts on the tree and sprinkled them with dazzling diamonds. Oh what fun!!! I really love how this card came out. I can't wait to make more cards with this set. That's it for me today. I hope you enjoyed the sneak peek and I hope to have a couple more in the next week.

A Poppy Pizazz Holiday

Hi! Another holiday card for you today. Today’s color combo is a little different. It’s still red and green, just a different shade of them. I used Certainly Celery, Pear Pizazz and Poppy Parade. I am loving the poppy parade polka pot paper (say that fast!). This paper is the 6 x 6 pack that is part of the level 1 hostess sets. I hadn’t used any of that paper before but I just love these polka dots. I used the Aviary stamp set, which is not holiday related, but I added a couple of holly leaves to the bird cages and now they are ready for Christmas too. The holly leaves stamped on the vanilla piece is from Bells and Boughs. This card is pretty flat so it will make it easy to mail. I think I just need only a couple of more Christmas cards and then I will be officially done. I will probably make a couple more of this one (maybe in different colors). I have all my finished ones addressed and ready to go in the mail. I’m just waiting on some cute return address labels with my new name to arrive before I send them out. Now that the Christmas cards are almost done, I can now start playing around with some NEW stamps from the upcoming occasions mini once they arrive tomorrow. How exciting! Enjoy your afternoon.

Tiny Gift Bags

Hello all! I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Today I have some cute little gift bags for you. These brown bags are about 3.5 inches wide. A perfect bag to fill with candy or even cookies. I found the tutorial for the mouse punch art here. I pretty much followed her directions except used a different punch for the eyes. I then used the same directions and made a cute little teddy bear. For the mouse I sponged the edges with white craft and for the bear I sponged the edges with chocolate chip. I think these bags would be cute for little kids, or even adults...I think they are cute myself!
Tonight I will be writing out my christmas cards. I pretty much have them all finished except for a couple. But the majority of them are done. I'm so glad that I got them done so early. That's one big project to have off my shoulders. I'll post any more cards that I make in the next day or 2. Now I need to get focused on my shopping. Have a nice day!

MDS Notecard Thank You

Hi! I interrupt all this holiday posting with a non Christmas project. Today, I'm showing you my wedding card thank you done with My Digital Studio. I knew that I wanted to do my own thank yous (of course, since I did lots of DIY for my wedding), but I was having a hard time finding a design that I liked online. And also find something that wasn't real expensive either. So then I thought about using MDS for the design of the thank you and then upload it to a site where I could have them print it (like vistaprint). But I still wasn't sure I wanted to do that either. So after fooling around with MDS, I figured out how to print my thank you on the 3.5 x 5inch notecards from Stampin Up. The thank you looks like its simple but it ended up taking me a while. The part that took me the longest was coming up with a design I liked and figuring out how to get it to print on the right section of the notecard. A couple of the original designs I had used our initials (J & J) but then I decided I didn't like that. And I didn't want to have "thank you" on the front, just in case someone wanted to put the picture in a frame or something. So after searching the different stamps in the program I found the "mr. & mrs." and I thought that worked good. I added that on top of the modern label punch and sized everything until I got it to how I wanted it. I do plan on adding something on the back to show that I designed it. Once I printed it, it didn't look quite as bright as it shows on the jpeg version but overall I'm really happy with how it came out. The photo of the actual card doesn't have the best lighting either so it isn't quite as dark as the photo may show. Now comes the fun part of writing all of these out...yeah right!
Tomorrow I will be back to the regular holiday posting. I have a few more holiday things to share.

Holiday Bags

Hello! I saw this bag on splitcoast done by Heather Klump. I thought this was the cutest bag ever so I had to try it for myself. Well I got a little crazy and ended up making 4 of them! I only photographed 3 of them (I messed up the first one a bit). I actually could have made a few more, I probably will, but I currently don't have any sticky strip so I can't make any until I get more. I followed Heather's instructions and they were pretty easy to do. Once I did one, I got the hang of it and they were really easy. They are a good size and fairly sturdy so you can put a few things in there. This was also a good way for me to use up some retired paper I have (although only one in the photo uses retired paper). Well I hope you enjoyed these and I hope you think they're as cute as I do!!

Bells, Boughs and Ornaments

Hello! Today's card is the 4th card for the class tomorrow. This time I used the holly image which I colored with blender pens and then I added the ornament in Crumb Cake. Again, another fairly straightforward card. Tomorrow I will show you the cute gift bags I made for the vendor fair. Later in the week, I will also show you the wedding thank you card I have been working on. I really wanted to use the My Digital Studio for it and I finally had time to play around with it. I'm really excited how it turned out. And I had a lot of fun using MDS. So keep checking back, I actually have lots of projects to show you this month.

Another Bells and Boughs

Hello! I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. We ended up having 2 thanksgivings which was nice but now I've had my share of turkey. Today's card is the 3rd card we will be doing in my class on Wednesday. I used the Bells and Boughs again along with the Deck the Halls DSP. This is a pretty simple and straightforward card.
I'm particpating in a vendor fair at a local school on Friday so I've been working on a few projects for that. I saw a tutorial for some really cute gift bags, so I've made a few of those. Then I tried decorating tealight candles which turned out to be super easy. So I will be sharing those projects in the next few days. Have a nice day!

Bells and Boughs

Hi there! Here is the second card we will be making in the class. This time I used the bells from the Bells and Boughs set. This is such a lovely Christmas set. I’m not really excited about how the color of the ribbon came out. So I might go over it again in a different color. I wasn’t really sure what color to color it in. I just used blender pens and different color inks to color in the image. DSP is from the Deck the Halls pack. Another pretty simple card. Enjoy!

Vintage Christmas Ornaments

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a good weekend and enjoyed the blog tour on Saturday. Today I’m showing you one of the cards we will be doing at my holiday card class next week. I went for the vintage theme this year with the cards. This card uses the Tags Til Christmas and the Bells and Boughs set. I stamped 3 of the ornaments in Cherry Cobbler, Always Artichoke and Crumb Cake. I punched them all out and added a pearl to the center ornament. I did some sponging around the main image and also around the sentiment. And that is pretty much it. A pretty quick card to make. I hope the girls like it. I will show the rest of the cards for the class during the week. Have a great day!

Tour-de-Freaks: Holiday Gift Ideas

Welcome to the November 2010 Blog Tour. If you've just arrived from Dawn Olchfeske's blog, you've come to the right place! But don't worry, if you have started here, it will be possible to go completely to the end and arrive back here after going to the beginning of the tour!

This month's theme is Holiday Gift Ideas. I have a couple of projects to share with you today. I had so many ideas of things that I wanted to do for this tour but everything that I tried was just not working out. I think my crafty brain got fried, lol! Anyway, I decided to make a little gift for my grandmother. My first project is a group of birthday cards. She likes to send out cards to her friends and she loves it even more when they are homemade. I decided to keep them all the same but just change the colors of the birds. I used the lattice texture plate for the Soft Suede background. Then I punched a piece of DSP from the Deck the Halls pack. The sentiment is from Watercolor Trio. The birds are Blushing Bride, Marina Mist, Pear Pizazz and Poppy Parade. I don't know if you can tell in the photo but they are all sprayed with vanilla smootch spritz. I am loving that stuff lately! After I did all the cards I put them all together and bundled them up with some Rich Razzleberry ribbon.




My next project is a little birdhouse ornament. I kept with the bird theme here. :) I saw the birdhouse template on splitcoast and I thought it would be really cute for an ornament. I plan to make a few more of these for other gifts. I printed the template on Soft Suede cardstock, then I sponged the edges to give it a little dimension. For the roof I used the Top Note Die and then ran it through with the lattice texture plate. The little bird is again sprayed with smootch spritz. I used the champagne glass glitter for around the hole. I also added a real twig for him to stand on :) and a little vanilla seam binding bow.




Thanks for checking out my projects. I hope you are enjoying the tour. Next up is Lee Ann Greff, with more fabulous projects!

Wedding Pictures

Hello. I do not have anything crafty to share with you today. I am working on some things, that I will get to show you in a few days. The next Control Freaks Blog Tour is coming on November 20th, so I've been working on a couple of things for that. Be sure to stop back here on the 20th to check out everyone's fabulous projects. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of my favorite pictures from our wedding day. We just got our dvd of images so we've been going through them to figure out what picture we want to use for our thank you card. But I just wanted to share a couple of my favorite ones. There are so many great ones that our photographer took. He did such a wonderful job. Anyway, enjoy some pictures and come back on the 20th!

Ski Slope Bunny

Happy Tuesday! Today is our one month anniversary since we’ve been married. I can’t believe a month has gone by already. Time is sure flying by quicker and quicker as I get older. :) Today’s card uses some retired paper that I have. It’s the Ski Slope DSP. I have soo much paper lying around that I really need to start using up the older/retired stuff I have. I used the bunny image from Merry Crittermas. He was colored with blender pens on watercolor paper and then cut out. The sentiment is also from Merry Crittermas. Everything else is pretty self explanatory on this card. Have a nice day!

Cute Critters

Happy Friday! I have a super cute card for you today. I just got Merry Crittermas yesterday and the images are just adorable. I had to use this set first and do some coloring. This card is a little more tedious with all of the images cut out. But you could easily make this same scene with the images all stamped on one sheet. I stamped all the images on watercolor paper and colored them in with various inks using my blender pen. It took a little while to color them but since I love coloring I didn’t mind. Then I cut them all out and added them onto the winter scene. I used Soft Sky with some snowflakes stamped on it. The bottom “snow” is vellum with dazzling diamonds on the top. This was then glued onto Soft Suede cardstock which also has snowflakes stamped on it. The sentiment is punched out with the modern label punch and I added a little birdy to the corner. I hope you like today’s card. I’m sure you’re probably going to see a few more cards over the next couple of days with this set. Have a great weekend!

Jolly Santa

Hi! Today's card is for yesterday's sketch challenge on Splitcoast. I decided to do some coloring on kraft (crumb cake) like I did for the snowman card the other day. This time I used the Santa from Jolliest Time of the Year. I colored him in and I popped his head up on dimensionals (I don't know if you can see that in the photo). I also spritzed on some vanilla smooch spritz to make him shimmery too. I really like that look and I don't know why I haven't used that stuff sooner. I think I'm going to have to get some of the other colors too. I used some more Jolly Holiday DSP and I used the lattice texture plate on the strip of Cherry Cobbler. Sentiment is from Berry Christmas (again!). Today I should be getting some new Christmas goodies and I can't wait to play with them! I don't know if i'll have time tonight to get anything done but I'm hoping I can sneak in a few minutes to get a quick card done. Have a nice day!

Jolly Ornaments

Hello! I really like how today’s card turned out. Again, its another one that is probably too bulky for the mail. This will be another hand delivered card. The paper is from the Jolly Holiday collection, which is layered with a piece of vellum die cut using the top note die. I like this look but I’m not really sure how to glue it without having the glue show through all over. I used a glue stick which worked for the most part except in the top corners where you can see the glue a bit. Oh well! I then stamped 3 ornaments from Delightful Decorations in Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive and Soft Suede. Punched them out with the ornament punch (super easy), added them to the cream cardstock with dimensionals and then added an Old Olive bow. I hope you enjoyed today’s card!

Marina Mist Holidays

Good morning! I have another holiday card to share. This is also a fairly easy card to do. I used a piece of DSP from the retired Christmas Cocoa (I think that’s the name of it) and layered it onto a piece of Crumb Cake. I added a Marina Mist bow (I really like how this color combo turned out). Then I stamped a snowflake from Berry Christmas in Marina Mist and added some dazzling diamonds. The sentiment is from Many Merry Messages. The card was pretty easy to make but it will probably be a little thick for the mail and will need extra postage. The card I have for tomorrow is also a little thick as well. I’m going to try to make a few other cards this week that are flatter and will be more mailable. My goal is to have most of my Christmas cards made by the beginning of December. If I can keep on the track that I’m going, I should hopefully be able to get it done. I’ll keep you up to date on how close I get to getting them done. So far I have 4 done and I need about 15 – 20 more. I hope my list doesn’t get any bigger than that! Enjoy your day!

Jolly Holiday

Hi there! I have another Christmas card to share. I've been on a roll with cards in the past 2 days. So i'll have a couple of other holiday cards to share and I'm hoping to do some non holiday cards as well. Today's card uses the Jolly Holiday DSP. There isn't too much stamping with this card. The only thing I stamped was the sentiment which is from Berry Christmas. I used the ornament punch in the corner and added some more of the DSP behind it. A couple of buttons in the corner and some vanilla seam binding on top and the card is done. Once I figured out my colors and DSP, the card was pretty quick to put together. I hope this inspires you to get a start on your holiday cards. Have a nice weekend.

Shimmery Snowman

Hello! Well it's been a little bit longer than I had expected since my last post. My first week back to work I had no motivation to get any cards done. Then this pas week, we just had a lot of unexpected things go on, so again no time for cards. Today I have off from work so I decided to get a jump start on my holiday cards. I've been seeing so many cute Christmas cards lately, that I had to do some too. I don't have my new order of Christmas stamps yet so I used some of the older sets I have. These are just as fun too. Today's card is a case of this card. I just loved the look of it. But I changed the color to Marina Mist and the stamp set to Jolliest Time of the Year. The snowman was colored using a blender pen and white craft ink. Then I used various other colors for the rest of him. The background on the marina mist is a sentiment from Many Merry Messages. The snowflake on the crumb cake piece is from Snow Burst. All of the edges are sponged with Chocolate Chip.

I have a close up of the snowman piece because I sprayed it with some Vanilla Smooch Spritz. It looks very shimmery in real life. I think I need to start using that more because it gives a fun effect to the card. I hope you enjoyed todays card. I'll be back in the next couple of days with some more holiday cards for you.

Married!

Hi! So it's been a couple of weeks since I've last posted. I was getting all of my projects done before our wedding on the 16th. I got everything done in plenty of time and we had a wonderful day. It was a little chilly and windy but no rain and plenty of sun. Everything came out just as we hoped it would. Here is a link to a couple of pictures that our photographer posted on his blog.

I've also posted some pictures of some of the things that I made for the wedding: centerpieces, programs and the birdcage for the cards.









Now that all the wedding things are done, I have plenty of time now for cards! I just need to get back into it after not doing anything for the past few weeks. So hopefully i'll have some cards to share with you this week. I'm not promising too much since it is my first week back at work after being off for about 10 days so I will probably be pretty tired this week. Have a nice day!

Awash with Flowers Color Challenge

Hello. Today's card is for the color challenge on splitcoast - Rich Razzleberry, So Saffron and Tangerine Tango. I CASED this card from Renee Van Stralen. I just loved the layout and coloring that was done. Everything is the same except for the colors and the main flower used. I used my blender pen and the inks to color in the images. I sponged around the edge of the main image in Rich Razzleberry. On the Tangerine Tango piece I used the Friendly Words wheel (which you can't really see too much in the photo). I also rolled the wheel over the vanilla piece very lightly. Then I ruffled some Rich Razzleberry ribbon and added the sentiment from Just Believe.
Well now it's off to do some wedding things. I had to take a little break and do a card. Soon though, in about 11 days, I will have plenty of time for cards! I'm looking forward to that. Have a good day.

Concord Crush Elements of Style

Hi. Here is a quick card for the clean and simple challenge on Monday. I colored the flowers from Elements of Style in Concord Crush and Pear Pizazz. I know I’ve said it before but I just love this purple color. I cut out the sentiment and layered it on the circle. I ruffled some ribbon and added a strip of Concord Crush. A pretty quick and simple card. Have a nice day.

Sherbert Birthday Birds

Hi! The challenge on spiltcoast today was to use scallops. I was really in the mood to do something crafty that wasn't wedding related (even though I should be doing something like that instead!). I felt like using some fun colors and these feel very sherbert like to me but I think they all look nice together. The colors are Blushing Bride, Peach Parfait, and Pear Pizazz. I used the lattice texture plate on the Pear Pizazz cardstock. I then stamped the pennant from Party This Way in those 3 colors. Then added 2 birds and an owl from Aviary. I just love that little owl! He was stamped in Crumb Cake. I added some lace ribbon, some rhinestones on the ends of the pennants and the happy birthday sentiment from Party This way in Early Espresso. I think it came out pretty cute. I'm about to do a few minutes of relaxing before dinner. I hope you enjoy your weekend.