As promised...a project to share!

As promised yesterday I am finally able to share a project! I made this card a week or so ago, before the 'puter went on the fritz. I ordered a couple of Bella's a LONG time ago and shame on me, I've never used them. As I've mentioned several times so far this year, I'm trying to expand and create my own cards and I'm trying to USE the supplies I purchase rather than just keep collecting them.

This card used Stampin' Up! Barely Banana, Wild Wasabi, and Groovy Guava cardstock. The patterned paper is Two Scoops by Basic Grey, I love this pack of paper! I used my SU! WaterColor Wonder Crayons to color her in. I'm very happy with my first Bella! Now to use the Golfer Fella I bought too!

Stay warm if you are in the soon to be frozen north like I am. We had temps near 40 yesterday and today the temp is dropping like a rock and we are supposed to have wind chills of -40 later today! I love MN! Only here can you swing a 40+ degree spectrum in 24 hours!

Up and Running Again!

My apologies for the long lapse in posts! One of our computers would no longer connect to the internet and of course that is the one connect to the printer and scanner so I wasn't able to upload anything I've been making.

Well, my BIL reformatted everything this weekend and we are now back up and running. I will hopefully have some time this evening to upload stuff.

So for now I will leave with the latest Brittanyism. For those of you that have children I'm sure you can relate. Occasionally the funniest things pop out of their mouths! Last Friday Brittany was getting up and said she was hungry. She's been eating toast with jelly in the morning lately, so I offered that. She said "No, I want one of those Poppy Lemon Seed Muffins Dad was eating." I laughed so hard, she was so cute, still all sleepy, etc.

Anyway, have a poppy lemon seed muffin and cuppa Joe and check back with me tomorrow!

Updated Listing - Lower Prices

Still some great sets left if you are interested! Here is an updated listing and I've lowered some of the prices. Making room for new stuff! Email me if you are interested.

A Little Love - $10 - SOLD
All About U - $18
All Natural - $7
Alphabet Soup - $4
Best Blossoms - $4
Big Blossom - $5 - SOLD
Birthday Best - $7
Brushstroke Alphabet - $18 - SOLD
Brushstroke Numbers - $7
Doodle Alphabet - $25
Doodle That - $7 - PENDING
Dots & Daisies - $8
Dotted Autumn - $9
Double Line Doodle - $15 - PENDING
Event Full - $5 - NUM - SOLD
Fishy Friends - $11
Fresh Flowers - $7
Friend to Friend - $12
Fun Filled - $8
Furnished with Love - $8
Hand Stitched Holiday - $10 - missing saying stamp
Lexicon of Love - $5 - Pending
Linen - $12 - SOLD
Looks like Spring & matching punch - $25 - Pending
Love Without End - $8 - SOLD
Mini Messages - $6
Nice & Easy Notes - $9
Oh So Lovely - $7 NUM - SOLD
Polka-Dot Posies - $15
Riveting - $9
Send A Celebration - $6
Sidekick Sayings - $6
Simple Stripes - $6 - Pending
Simple Sayings II - $10 - SOLD
So Many Sayings - $10 NUM - SOLD
So Very - $5 - Pending
Sweet of You - $9
Too Terrific Tags - $5 - SOLD
Trim the Tree - $15 - SOLD
Warmest Regards - $9
Watercolor Minis - $7

Brrr....

It's a cold day here in Minnesota, so what better to do than clean out my stamps! I have the following sets for sale. Buyer pays shipping, payment must be made via PayPal. Make me an offer...All are Retired Stampin' Up! stamps. All are mounted and slightly used, some only once, unless noted. Email me if you have any questions.

A Little Love - $10 - PENDING
All About U - $20
All Natural - $8
Alphabet Soup - $4
Best Blossoms - $4
Big Blossom - $5
Birthday Best - $7
Brushstroke Alphabet - $18 - PENDING
Brushstroke Numbers - $7
Doodle Alphabet - $25
Doodle That - $7 - PENDING
Dots & Daisies - $10
Dotted Autumn - $10
Double Line Doodle - $15 - PENDING
Event Full - $5 - NUM - SOLD
Fishy Friends - $12
Fresh Flowers - $7
Friend to Friend - $15
Fun Filled - $8
Furnished with Love - $8
Hand Stitched Holiday - $15
Lexicon of Love - $5
Linen - $12 -PENDING
Looks like Spring & matching punch - $25 - PENDING
Love Without End - $10
Mini Messages - $7
Nice & Easy Notes - $10 - PENDING
Oh So Lovely - $7 NUM
Polka-Dot Posies - $18
Riveting - $10
Send A Celebration - $8
Sidekick Sayings - $8
Simple Stripes - $8
Simple Sayings II - $10
So Many Sayings - $10 NUM
So Very - $7
Sweet of You - $10
Too Terrific Tags - $5
Trim the Tree - $18
Warmest Regards - $10
Watercolor Minis - $8

Wool you be Mine?

I love the My Punny Valentine set from PaperTreyInk! This little sheep is the cutest thing. I made this card for my two little nephews for valentines day. I know it's not red or pink, but red or pink just didn't work for a sheep card for two little boys for me. Card stock and inks are all Stampin' Up! in Barely Banana, Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery and Whisper White.

Just a quick post tonight as we are off to dance class for my daughter Brittany. Tomorrow night I hope to finish a little project I've been making using my Target Mailbox from the $1 section. May your fingers always be inky!

Anxiously Waiting!

I am patiently waiting (OK, not so patiently!) for some fun stamps to arrive! I won some blog candy from Lizze at Lizze Anne Designs! I'm so very excited as I never win ANYTHING! I was eyeing up the cupcake stamp trying to have some willpower and not purchase it, when I went blog surfing. I noticed the announcement of the winner and I saw Stamping with Jen. I thought no way, not me, I actually clicked on the link to my own blog to make sure it was me! I won their cupcake stamp and the It's a Party Set! I don't own any Lizze Ann stamps yet so I can't wait to try them out.

While I'm not so patiently waiting I took out another My Favorite Things set, Hot Stuff. I love so many of the coffee themed sets that are out there and I couldn't pass this set up. The base of the card is Kraft cardstock from SU!, the layers are Perfect Plum and Pale Plumb, also SU! The white base for the lady is water color paper that I picked up at Archiver's. This is the first time I tried it while watercoloring and I really liked how different is was from regular cardstock. I used SU!'s Watercolor Wonder Crayons and Aqua Painter to color.

Another fun this week is Stampin' Up! unveiled new websites for their demonstrators. You can visit mine here. The projects are not mine yet and I'm still working on customizing the site. I'm not sure if I will keep the site or not. It's not quite as robust as I had hoped it would be, but we will see how business goes. I may end up just keeping the blog.

Off to do some more stamping...until next time!

More Challenges...

As I mentioned in my last post I want to challenge myself to design and create my own cards this year. I also want to use the supplies I buy! I seem to have an issues, as do many stampers I talk to, purchasing patterned paper and then not wanting to use it because it's so pretty!! Today I wanted to use my new PaperTreyInk Punny Valentine set. This set is just so cute and I thought it would make some cute cards for my nephews. My inspiration for this card started out with two things, the piece of patterned paper you see, which is a retired Stampin' Up! paper and My Punny Valentine set. The card also uses Stampin' Up!'s Close to Cocoa paper and ink, Sahara Sand paper and ink, Cameo Coral paper, and Old Olive ink.

I wasn't quite ready to design the layout myself yet, so I went to my favorite website (Splitcoaststampers) and to the Sketch Challenges. I looked around until I found one that seemed to fit the size of the stamps and could work the paper in. I decided I liked #154. When I got the squirrel stamped, I didn't like how it looked, to plain, it was just sitting there in space on this piece of white paper that was too large. It needed something underneath it to make it look like it was sitting on something. The Punny Valentine set comes with some grass. I used a masking technique, which involves stamping the squirrel image on some scratch paper, cutting him out and then laying him over your stamped piece. Then come in with the grass and stamp. It makes it look like the squirrel is sitting in the middle of the grass, rather that on top of it, if you were to just stamp the grass underneath. It still seemed to be missing something, so I started sponging around the edges. I'm very happy with the way this one turned out!

Challenge yourself today to use some of those horded supplies!

Inspiration

One of the hardest things for me about creating is believing enough in myself. I'm always afraid that my creations are not good enough, too simple, or boring. So, I've had a tendency to CASE (copy and share everything) cards. I don't always CASE them completely, I will often times change the colors or the stamp set. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't CASE. I've been really happy with many of the cards I've done this way. They often end up taking on a life of their own and end up looking nothing like the card I was attempting to CASE.

However, I was often left feeling that maybe I'm not good enough to do this on my own. Part of the reason I started this blog was to challenge myself to create and not CASE. So, how do you go about doing that? I've decided to start out using the challenges posted on many different websites and use those sketches and create from there. My FAVORITE website (Splitcoaststampers) posts weekly challenges, both sketches and color combo's. Today I was playing with Color Challenge #147, Taken with Teal, Real Red, & Certainly Celery, these are all Stampin' Up Colors. I then went to the sketch challenges and found #155. I really wanted to use my brand new A Beautiful Thing stamp set from Stampin' Up!'s new Spring/Summer 2008 catalog. I purchased this set last month are part of my demo benefits of getting to order things in advance! Sketch 155 just seemed perfect. I really like how this turned out! The scan doesn't show that I stamped some swirls from the set in Taken with Teal, but I'm happy with my first attempt.


My second attempt uses the same color challenge, but sketch challenge #157. I like my first attempt better, but one isn't too bad either if I do say so myself! I'm playing around with some other challenges today too and I will share those over the course of the week.

Have fun and get your fingers inky this weekend!

Jewlery Box

In a previous post I mentioned I had been busy with my new jewelry box. My DH got me this jewelry box (OK, I took him to the store to make sure he got the correct one!) for Christmas. I liked it for 2 reasons. 1. It hangs on the wall, so doesn't take up any space and 2. The front is a photo collage.





I decided to go with an all black and white look since the frame is black. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I'm also glad it didn't take us forever to fill it and hang it. My DH & I are sometime really bad about that kind of thing. I figured he wouldn't hang it until I put the pictures in it and I couldn't figure out when I was going to have time to do that. With the holidays and Brittany not having any of her activities I ended up having plenty of time and had a blast looking at pictures from the last year.

It really amazes me now with digital cameras how I take lots of pictures, load them on the computer and then hardly look at them. I REALLY need to catch up on my scrap booking. I'm two years behind! That is one of my goals this winter. If I wait too long the weather will get nice and I will be outside. For those of you that don't know me, I love to garden and we have a pool so I spend most of my time outside during the summer. So, here's hoping for a long winter in this great state of Minnesota, then I can get some scrap booking done.

Until next time my fellow crafters...

What's better than Chocolate??

Nothing in my book! This card is made with a stamp set from a company called My Favorite Things. I love many of their stamps set but had not purchased any until recently. I finally got a chance to play with this set (How Sweet It Is). I have to say I love it! Valentines Day immediately came to mind. The card uses Stampin' Up! cardstock in Regal Rose, Tempting Turquoise, Chocolate Chip, and Whisper White. The patterned paper is also from SU!, however I don't recall the name of it, but it is no longer available.

Until tomorrow...Happy Stamping!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year my Stamping Friends!

Apologies for my long absence. I discovered starting a blog in late November was not a good time of the year! Too busy with holiday preparations. Now that the holidays are over I will be trying to get back to creating and posting!

This card is my holiday gift Thank you card. It uses my Cuttlebug Snowflake embossing folder along with stamps from PaperTrey Ink (center snowflake) and Hero Arts. Ink and paper are Bashful Blue and Whisper White from Stampin' Up along with the punches. Stickles add a little sparkle to the snowflakes.

For those of you that haven't heard, the brand new Stampin' Up! Spring/Summer 2008 catalog starts tomorrow! Yeah! It's a beautiful book. I can not wait to make some cards with one of the new sets I ordered!

Off to print some pictures for my new jewelry box! That doesn't make sense does it! Well, my husband bought me a jewelry box that hangs on the wall. It's a cabinet and the front of it is a picture collage! I will take a picture and post it once I have it put together. Might take me a while!