Baby Shower goodies

Hello! Is anyone out there?!? As usual, it's been a while since I could get here to blog. I've had a good reason, I've been up to my ears in crafting. So for you that means I have lots of stuff to share. This month I had 2 baby showers to go to where I made some decorations and invitations. To make up for my absence here, today's post will have lots of eye candy for you. My sister-in-law is having a baby at the end of March so I was asked to help with some of the decorations for her shower. I am so excited to have a new little nephew soon!!! Anyway, for her shower I made the invitations, a banner and diaper bouquets. Her shower theme was rustic winter wonderland and everything at her shower turned out great.

First I'll start out with her invitation. I ordered some digital files from Etsy and used My Digital Studio to design the invite. I still miss my digital studio. :( I would love if I could get some of the new things from the catalog in digital format. But it's not meant to be...so moving on! Once I designed it, I printed it out and then printed out extra penguins to cut out for some extra dimension. The invite was mounted on Island Indigo cardstock.

Next is the banner. I used a onesie die from Papertrey Ink to cut out the Island Indigo cardstock. Then I embossed some of the onesies with the Decorative dots embossing folder. I also cut out snowflakes with the Festive Flurry framelits. The onesies were hung up with mini clothespins on Smokey Slate chevron ribbon. (Miss this ribbon too!)

Then I made diaper bouquets as the centerpieces for the table. I had so much fun making these. Her colors were teal and gray so I wanted to have gray vases. I couldn't find anything that I liked so I decided to paint mason jars. I'm not sure if you can see in the group photo but I painted the jars in an ombre effect from a light gray to a dark gray. I sanded them to give them a rustic vibe. They came out way cuter than I was expecting! The jars were embellished with Island Indigo chevron ribbon and a sparkly snowflake. To make the bouquet, I rolled up diapers, inserted skewers into them and then added some green tissue paper at the bottom to make leaves. I also added crumbled green tissue paper in between the diapers to give the bouquet a little more color.

My final craft project was the card for the shower. Of course I had to incorporate the cute penguin in the card. I used the Made With Love set for the onesie and saying. The striped DSP is from the retired Birthday Bash (I think!?). Then I finished the card off with some white sequins. I LOVE putting sequins on all of my cards now!! :)

I hope you enjoyed today's post and all of my baby shower goodies! I just love making all of these things and I'm so glad when people think of me to help them with their party decorations.

I promise to be back soon with more cards to share. I've made quite a few in the past couple of weeks so now I just need to get my butt in gear and get them posted!

Thanks for stopping by!

Baby Shower Card - Twins

Hello everyone! Today I am sharing the baby shower card I made for my friend's shower a couple of weeks ago. She is expecting twins (a boy and girl) so I had to make sure I included that on the card. This card is a hybrid card which uses some elements from My Digital Studio. Side note: I was just informed that MDS will be discontinued after May 31, 2015. While I understand that this was not as profitable, I am sad about it. I used MDS quite a bit to print out images that I didn't have stamps for. Plus I was able to make them any size that I wanted. The little shoes were printed from MDS as well as the sentiment. The Congratulations is from the "And Many More" set. I colored the shoes in with Blendabilities. Sigh, Another side note: These are discontinued as well. There were some manufacturing and quality issues that Stampin' Up! was not able to resolve so they have discontinued this line. I think this one hurts the most. I JUST bought a bunch of these markers and I love the way they color images. I guess I will just have to go back to the old markers or start using my colored pencils again. Anyway, after I colored the shoes I cut them out and added dazzling diamonds to the girl shoes (so cute!). I used the Birthday Bash DSP along with Bermuda Bay cardstock. I wanted to make sure it wasn't too girly or too boyish. And the finishing touches were Calypso Coral chevron ribbon and Bermuda Bay sequin trim. I told you I was going to use these sequins on everything!!! :) I think this card is super cute and I hope my friend liked it!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope to be back later this week with my projects and hostess gift for a workshop this week.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Baby Announcement and poster - MDS

Hello! Well it's been quite a while since I've posted. Unfortunately that's because I haven't been able to get too much craft time in lately. I have no idea where the times goes. We were preparing for a garage sale at the beginning of October so that took up a bit of time. But now here we are in the middle of October and I have no idea what I've done! Haha!! Since I haven't really done anything crafty lately, I will share the baby announcement I did along with a poster I did for her room. Both were done in My Digital Studio. The poster was something I wanted done since I had something similar for my son. The one for my son was a gift and I wanted my daughters to be fairly similar. I looked all over etsy for something but just wasn't finding what I wanted and then I realized that I could just do it myself in MDS. So now I was able to get exactly what I wanted. I plan to frame this and hang it shortly but for now, I will show you the digital version of it. I just designed this in MDS, exported it as a jpeg and then made a word document in the size poster I wanted (8 x 10), copied the jpeg and then printed it out. Cute right!

For the baby announcement, I found inspiration from Etsy but designed it in the colors I wanted. I love how it came out! I used various punches and stamps and then added my photos. I also exported this to a jpeg and just printed them out as 5 x 7 photos. I had a fun little photo shoot to get these pictures. Luckily she cooperated pretty well. I would have liked one more picture with her eyes open but I will take what I can get!

I hope you enjoyed today's post. I have some Christmas stamps on their way and I can't wait to get some craft time in with them. I have ideas floating around in my head so hopefully my stamps arrive today and the baby cooperates tomorrow for some crafty time!

Baby Thank yous

Happy Friday! I have one last quick post for you before I get induced tomorrow. Please pray for a quick and easy delivery!! I'm just worried that it's going to be a long drawn out day. I just want this to go by as quick as possible. Anyway, while I had time the other day I decided to get a head start on some thank you cards. I figured that we will probably get some gifts once the baby is born so it will be nice to have thank you cards ready to go since I probably won't be crafting the next few days. I printed out a bunch of the bunny images from My Digital Studio. I don't have this stamp set but I love that I can use MDS for stamps that I don't have. Plus I enlarged it so it could be a bigger focal point. I love having the option to make it any size I want. I colored the bunnies with some copic markers and Stampin' Up! markers. Then I used some designer paper I had leftover from Sale-a-bration (Sweet Sorbet) and cut it out using the Labels Collection framelits dies. The thank you sentiment is from Regarding Dahlias. I stamped it in Baked Brown Sugar on Pistachio Pudding and punched it out with the modern label punch. Overall these were pretty quick and simple thank you cards. The coloring took a bit of time but since I like coloring, I just watched some tv and went to town. I find coloring very relaxing and when you have great markers to work with (such as Blendabilities or Copics), it makes it so much more fun.

I hope you like today's cards and thanks for stopping by. Next time I post I should have a new baby to talk about!! :)

Stamps: Regarding Dahlias, Baby We've Grown (My Digital Studio)
Ink: Baked Brown Sugar
Paper: Sweet Sorbet DSP, Crisp Cantaloupe, Pistachio Pudding
Accessories: Labels Collection Framelit dies, Oval Framelit dies Modern Label Punch, My Digital Studio, markers

Baby Shower Decorations - part 2

Hello, I'm back!! Today I am going to share the card, diaper bouquets and banners that I did. I really had so much fun designing and doing all of these things for my sister-in-law's baby shower. I had so many ideas going through my head but ultimately we landed on a coral, turquoise and pink color scheme with hot air balloons and bunnies. I wanted to do something that wasn't the traditional pink for a baby girl shower. And I was just in love with the hot air balloon diaper cake that I had to have that in there somewhere. So imagine my surprise when I go into Carter's a few weeks before the shower and they have a whole section of baby girl's clothes in peach and turquoise with hot air balloons on it. What are the chances of that. It was perfect! We were doing a clothesline banner so the 5 onesie set that they had was a perfect fit for this. (The set included gray which was a color we also used). I love how everything just coordinated so well.

So I will start with the clothesline banner. I couldn't get a great picture of this so this is the best I have right now (I will update this if her friend got a better picture of it).

All of the clothes were hung with clothespins on Smokey Slate Chevron ribbon (which is hard to see in the photo). In between each onesie, I die cut a onesie from the Papertrey Ink die in Crisp Cantaloupe, Coastal Cabana and Pink Pirouette. The heart is from the Hearts a Flutter framelits.

Next up is the "It's a Girl" banner. (Again, sorry for the bad/blurry photos). I wasn't able to take any at home so the best I could do was while it was hung up at the restaurant.

I printed out all of the letters from MDS in Crisp Cantaloupe, which were then punched with the 1 3/8 inch circle punch. I then punched scallop circles from Pink Pirouette cardstock. The Coastal Cabana flowers were from the Floral Framelit dies. And all of these items were then glued to paper doilies and attached to Calypso Coral chevron ribbon with clothespins. Next to the "A" letter I added 2 Coastal Cabana roses from the Flower Spiral die.

We will now move on to the diaper bouquets. This was an idea that I had seen at another baby shower that I really liked. I liked it instead of the traditional diaper cake. I made 4 of these for the tables. I searched pinterest for how to make the diaper flowers. Then I used the Flower Spiral die to add roses to each bouquet. I added 5 roses to each bouquet in Pink Pirouette and Crisp Cantaloupe. I added Smokey Slate and Calypso Coral chevron ribbon to each of the mason jars.

And last but not least is my card for the baby gift.

I cased the 3rd card on this site. I just changed a few things to the colors and theme of the shower. Since I actually don't have the Baby We've Grown stamp set, I just printed out the images I wanted from My Digital Studio. Looking back, I should have printed the bunny bigger but oh well. I used the Fresh Prints DSP stack for the background. I colored and cut out the bunny and used the Starburst framelits for the "Brand New" image. To finish it off I added Crisp Cantaloupe ruffled ribbon and 2 pink buttons from my button stack.

Now that this is done, I hope to have a little more time to get back to crafting. I do have my son's second birthday invite to share as soon as I get that finished. Then I hope to play with some new catalog goodies soon! Thanks for stopping by!

Card details:
Stamps: None (Baby We've Grown - digital download for the images)
Ink: Smokey Slate, Pink Pirouette, Crisp Cantaloupe
Paper: Smokey Slate, Fresh Prints DSP, Vellum
Accessories: My Digital Studio, Circle Framelits, Scallop Circle bigz die, Starburst Framelits, markers, blender pens, Crisp Cantaloupe ruffled ribbon, buttons

Baby Shower Decorations

Hello, long time no see! Again, I have fallen off the blog world for a while. But I finally have some things I can share. For the past 2 months I have been working on invites and decorations for my sister-in-law's baby shower. Now it didn't take me 2 full months to do these baby shower things. It was more like, I had to finish everything at the last minute, haha!! I have just been so tired when I get home from work that I was putting things off and off until I could no longer do that. But now that the shower has passed, I can finally share what I've been working on. Even though, it took me while to get my act together and get these things done, I really enjoyed making everything and I'm glad that everything turned out well. The theme of the shower was a bunny/hot air balloon theme. It actually all started with a hot air balloon diaper cake that I saw that I really wanted to do for the shower. Then we added bunnies since the mother-to-be really liked the velveteen rabbit. So we will start off with the invitations.

I used MDS for the invitations. I LOVE using MDS for invitations! I used the Up, Up and Away digital download for the balloon as well as the Baby We've Grown download for the bunny. Colors used were Crisp Cantaloupe and Coastal Cabana. Once I printed out the invites, I colored the bunny in with blender pens and Smokey Slate ink. I then mounted it to Coastal Cabana paper and added Calypso Coral baker's twine.

Next up is the hot air balloon diaper cake. There aren't too many Stampin Up products on this but where I could use them I did.

I followed the instructions from here on how to put this together.
For the balloon, I added Coastal Cabana ruffled ribbon with Calypso Coral twine and a couple of hearts punched out of the vanilla coaster board. You can see a close up of the balloon in the last picture. For the basket part I tied Calypso Coral Chevron ribbon. I think this ribbon is my favorite of all time! I love this stuff! I think I should have added some more ruffled ribbon to the balloon but over all, I love how cute this turned out!

I will come back tomorrow with the card, diaper bouquets and banners that I did.
Thanks for stopping by!

Thomas the Train

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Sometimes I get on a roll where I can post a lot and then there are times when life gets in the way and I don't have time to make cards. :( My husband is installing new windows in our house so he's been busy doing that while I try to take care of the little one, so that doesn't leave me as much free time for making cards. I was able to make a card this weekend for a birthday party we went to. It was Justin's first little friend birthday party. The theme of the party was Thomas the Train so I wanted to make a card with that theme. I was originally going to make Thomas out of punches but I thought that would be more time consuming. So I still did make him out of punches but I did it in My Digital Studio instead. It was easier for me to spend some time here and there on the computer to make Thomas. I think he came out really cute. As you can see in the second picture, I cut out some of the pieces so he had a little more dimension to him. I just printed out a couple of copies of my final Thomas picture so that I could cut out some of the pieces. For the rest of my card I embossed the Real Red cardstock with the Alphabet embossing folder and then embossed the Smokey Slate piece with the stripes folder. I added Smokey Slate chevron ribbon (LOVE!) and Pool Party baker's twine. This card is for a boy but I still added some ribbon without making it look too girly (hopefully). And the final touch was some black rhinestones. The ones in the corner are black ones that I got from somewhere but the 2 large ones on the train are Stampin' Up! ones that I colored with a black sharpie marker.
I really like being able to do these hybrid MDS cards. Sometimes you just don't have the right stamps on hand or the time to get the stamps so My Digital Studio is great for that. You can also make a full card in My Digital Studio but I don't really do that as often because I like having the other elements of a card, like the ribbon, embossing, etc. So I really hope this inspires you to try out My Digital Studio for things like this. I am loving this software more than I ever thought I would. There are so many options of things you can do with it. If any of you ever have any questions on it, please feel free to contact me. Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps: Party This Way (retired)
Paper: Real Red, Smokey Slate
Ink: Pacific Point
Accessories: My Digital Studio, Smokey Slate chevron ribbon, Pool Party baker's twine, Deco Labels Dies, Alphabet Press embossing folder, Stripes embossing folder, Modern Label punch, Rhinestones

Happy Halloween Skulls - MDS

Hi! I have another My Digital Studio (MDS) hybrid card for you today. This one does have a little bit of stamping on it but most of it is from MDS. I love how this one came out. I think it's cute! Can skulls be cute?? :) The skulls are again from MDS. I cut out 3 of them in 2 different sizes. In MDS I put the white skulls on top of a black circle so I was able to see them once I printed them out. (Obviously I can't see white skulls on white paper). Plus I like the black portion that shows through. The background chevron paper is also from MDS (which almost looks blue in the picture but is actually black). I layered this paper on top of Midnight Muse and Lucky Limeade. The black cardstock behind the skulls is cut with the Deco Label Framelits dies and then I stamped the spider web from Wicked Cool (retired) in versamark and embossed it with Iridescent Ice embossing powder. I added a paper doily behind the skulls and my all time favorite Crushed Curry chevron ribbon. I told you, you were going to see it again! I stamped the Happy Halloween from Teeny Tiny Wishes in Midnight Muse on Lucky Limeade and added a few black rhinestones to the card. Then the final touch was googly eyes to the large skull. I had so much fun making this card. I hope this inspires you to make some fun Halloween cards!! Thanks for stopping by!!

Stamps: Wicked Cool (retired), Teeny Tiny Wishes, Halloween Hello (MDS)
Paper: Lucky Limeade, Midnight Muse, Black, Witches Brew DSP (MDS)
Ink: Midnight Muse, Versamark
Accessories: My Digital Studio, Iridescent Ice embossing powder, Modern Label punch, Deco Label Framelits dies, Crushed Curry chevron ribbon, Paper doilies, Rhinestones, googly eyes

Halloween Hello Skulls!

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Our weekend was good. We just kind of laid low this weekend and didn't do too much. I actually had time to get a couple of cards done this week so that was good. I have 2 really fun Halloween cards to share this week. This card has NO stamping on it! And isn't it super cute!! I used My Digital Studio to create this card. I haven't used MDS in a while so I figured I would play with it for a bit and make a Halloween card. I didn't have any of the new Halloween stamps or paper from the Holiday catalog and since I was too impatient to wait for them, I download them instead! Cool right! I downloaded the Witches Brew DSP and the Halloween Hello Stamp set. So I just opened up an 8.5 x 11 document in MDS and added some large squares of the DSP I wanted to use, which was the chevron one and the pumpkin pie skulls. Then on another page, I added the skull in Gumball Green (the color printed a little darker)and enlarged it. Then I added the sentiment in Rich Razzleberry. I enlarged this too. Then I printed everything out. I cut out the skull. I used the Labels Collection Framelit dies for the sentiment. I used one of the Chalk Talk Framelit dies for the Pumpkin Pie skull tag. I put all of this on Black and Smokey Slate cardstock. Then I added a Crushed Curry chevron bow and some black rhinestones. I hope you don't get sick of this ribbon because I used it again on my other Halloween card this week. I can't help it, I love this ribbon and this color seems to work with EVERYTHING! I have this ribbon in Smokey Slate and don't use it nearly as much. Anyway, I hope this gets you to use My Digital Studio for your hybrid cards as well. Even though I didn't do any stamping, I still had so much fun making a card this way. Thanks for stopping by and I would love to see your creations with My Digital Studio. Stop back this week for my other MDS hybrid card!!

Stamps: Halloween Hello (MDS)
Paper: Black, Smokey Slate, Witches Brew DSP (MDS)
Ink: NONE
Accessories: My Digital Studio (MDS), Labels Collection Framelits dies, Chalk Talk Framelit Dies, Crushed Curry Chevron ribbon, Rhinestones

Birthday Party Details

Hello all! To make up for my absence here, I will post lots of pictures today! I am recapping my son's first birthday party. Some of it is paper crafty and some of it is just plain old crafty. I have been waiting for the day to plan his first birthday and put to use some of those "pins" on my pinterest board! But first things first, I cannot believe a year has gone by. He is quite the little dare devil these days but he is just oh so cute! Here is a shot of Mommy and the birthday boy at his party. (He just woke up from his nap so he wasn't all together just yet, haha!) And unfortunately that was the only picture I got of us from his party.

The birthday boy's shirt has one of the monsters (click on the picture for a better view) from his invitation on it. I printed out a monster onto iron on transfer paper and ironed it on his shirt. On the back I added a 1 (you can't see that in the picture).

So let's get started on the details.

First up: The invitation.

I designed the invitation in My Digital Studio, printed it out and then used dimensionals to add it to colored cardstock. I did an invite with Lucky Limeade chevron striped and then one with Tempting Turquoise chevron stripes. {Note, all of the elements on the invitation are from Stampin' Up! with the exception of the monster clip art (which is from Etsy) and various fonts from dafont.com}.

Next up: Happy Birthday banner.

I used the Perfect Pennants die to cut out Lucky Limeade, Tempting Turquoise and Pumpkin Pie cardstock. I printed the letters from Word and then punched them out with the 1 3/4 inch scallop punch. The monsters were punched with the 2 3/8 inch scallop punch. I then used mini clothes pins to attach them to Soft Suede polka dot ribbon.

Goodie bag tags.

I designed these in MDS and then cut them out using one of the Chalk Talk framelits dies. Again, I used mini clothes pins to attach them to the bags.

Monthly photo board.

Every month I took a picture of J on a different fabric background and I would add the month in MDS. I had planned on doing something crafty with the fabric from each month, but I had too many crafty things to do and in the end that project got cut! But I knew that I wanted to display all of the photos from the first year. And the green and black board was the perfect spot for them. This was actually a door to a piece of old furniture in our basement that I spray painted green and then with chalkboard paint in the middle. I had planned on using this as a chalkboard in our kitchen but never got around to hanging it so it became the perfect backdrop for all of his photos. Again, I just hung them up with mini clothes pins on some Soft Suede polka dot ribbon.

Balloon Wreath

I think this was one of my favorite projects. I had seen this on Pinterest and knew that I HAD to do this. Most of the tutorials I saw used the variety pack of balloon colors but I knew that wouldn't go with my "color theme". So I went to Party City and got green, turquoise and orange balloons that went better with my theme. Of course that makes it a little difficult to reuse every year but oh well. I plan on putting it out every year for birthdays! I love how it came out. I also added a cut out of the monster and a number 1. Those are just pinned into the wreath so they can be removed. This project was a little costly but I had so much fun making it.

Final Pictures of the table.

This is certainly my longest post to date! Sorry for the not so great photo quality but I had limited time to get these pictures taken before the party started!! But I hope you enjoyed all the crafty details from my son's party!!