Little Sweet Pea

This is the card I made to go with the gift my sisters and I are giving my niece at the baby shower this weekend. When I first heard that Steve and Michelle were expecting I immediately went to PaperTrey and got this set, Baby Button Bits. It is the most adorable set. The only problem is that when you add buttons it does make the card bulky so mailing is a problem. But that isn't going to stop me from using it. There are a couple of other sets that I may have to invest in though.

Now to this card, I stamped the image with Memento Bamboo and added some PaperTrey buttons. I didn't want to use fiber or thread on the buttons since I wanted a 'pretty' look so I added pearls. The card base is the same DP Bazzil Basic Swiss Dots that I used to make the shower invitations. The plaid is from Basic Grey Kioshi. I wanted to keep in theme with the shower colors (the colors of the baby's room) so I added a green ribbon and stamped the sentiment on green paper with Memento Bamboo. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Tea for Two Birthday

The greatest thing about PaperTrey's Tea for Two and Tea for Two Additions is the ability to use up scraps. It hardly takes any paper to make a pot and cup and they make the cutest cards.

In my quest to use up existing supplies I find this a great advantage.

The dies make it so easy to create these images. Simply cut out your shape then stamp on it. Since the stamps are clear it's easy to position them. It's hard to see but the tea bag says enjoy. I enjoyed making this card, hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

An Exercise in Creation

The other day I was fooling around with this set. It is such a cool set but I have trouble thinking of ways to use it. It really should belong to my cousin Mary who loves all things tea.

However I just started cutting out the shapes using the PaperTrey dies to match the Tea for Two. Whoever thought of the dies to match the PaperTrey sets is brilliant. They are so easy to use.

Anyway I was going through my scraps and papers and came up with this combo. I used PaperTrey for the base and the yellow is a scrap from my leftovers drawer. The DP is a scrap from DCWV Nana's Kitchen, lots of sparkle on this piece. I had some of the label dies cut out in white and the sentiment fit nicely in there. I used some narrow pink ribbon from my stash and I wound it around several times and tied a knot. I was having trouble thinking of how I was going to attach the label until I thought of using the ribbon to hold it on (of course there are glue dots on the back). So it was done and I like how it turned out. What do you think. Thanks for stopping by.

Bovine Beauty

I wanted to join in on Karen's Doodles Challenge this week. It's White on White and I like that idea. When I went to pick an image to use I just had to pick this one, Bovine Beauty. The only place you can use color is on the image itself.

When I first saw this image on Karen's site all I could think of was Mae West's ' Come up and see me sometime' quote (not sure that's an accurate quote but you get my drift). I just couldn't think of something for the inside except 'Miss you', but I didn't want to do that this time around. I batted around several ideas and came up with this one. Inside it says " Why milk twice a day, what else?'

I think it could be a cute birthday card.

I used Michael's wedding flowers with pearls, some ribbon and CuttleBug embossed pieces.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Sympathy Cards

I'm faced with my annual project of making sets of cards for Christmas gifts. I started years ago giving a set of six cards as a gift to family and friends. Over the year my family and friends list has grown to about 20. Now what is happening is that some have told me that they love the cards but they especially love the sympathy cards and then they gently tell me which ones they like the best. Hint, hint. My sisters are a little more direct and just place their orders ahead of time.

This of course saves me a lot of work designing cards, but the cards they all want the most are sympathy cards. What does that say about us??? Well I love making cards but it does get a bit depressing to make sad cards all the time. I have one friend who asks for very simple cards like this one with just the sail boat from PaperTrey's Masculine Motifs with the sentiment from Communique Sentiments.

Then there are those who like something a little bit more. Like this one. I have to say that I like both of them but this one is a little more fun to make. I used the cross and sentiment from PapeTrey's Everyday Blessings. This is a gorgeous set that I haven't used very much but I can see it coming really handy now.

Hope you like my cards and thanks for stopping by.

Vintage Chair Tent Topper

When I was making these cards I did find myself amused by the name of this style of card. I expect to see a more rustic card with the tent name but I guess I understand the evolution of the name.

When I went looking for images to use I found this Lockhart chair. I love this image, I have white chairs like this in my front yard under the tree. It's been so hot this summer that we haven't had much chance to use them but I like the friendliness of having them out there.

This is one of the images stamped on vellum and colored on the back side. I cut it out with Nesties and when I went to put the card together I somehow made a smudge on the upper left corner. Flower to the rescue. Isn't it lucky that we can always find and embellishment to hide our goofs???

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Tent Topper # 2

This is another of the tent topper cards I made. For this one I used a Lockhart image that I had colored up on vellum. I cut it and the mats out with Nestabilities and again all the papers and embellishments are things I had in my stash.

I'm really digging this style of card, it's great for using up the scraps of paper and ribbons. Speaking of ribbons, why is it that with all that I have I almost never have the color I want. Yes I know I can always color a white ribbon with my Copics, but there's just something about a color matching ribbon. Okay on with this card. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A Card to Myself

When I was wandering through blogs today I stopped off at Nichole Heady's Papertrey Ink Blog. They are having a blog hop tonight with a challenge included. You can check it out here.

The challenge is to make a card using office supplies you have in your desk. Well I was really stumped on this one, yes as everyone does I have all those bits and pieces but I sure wasn't seeing a card out of it. Then it hit me, I'd been making cards for the last few days and I could use some organization and reminders. So I decided to make a card to myself, with ideas and reminders. While making cards today I had made several sets of tea pots and cups from the Tea for Two and Tea for Two Additions (love these sets) for use on cards so that was my start. First I took a sheet of my yellow legal pad and cut it down for my main DP, then I took an orange Post-It note and cut it down with a note of items to use. I attached my tea pot and cups to a scrap of orange card stock and used a cute paper clip to hold it on. Then I took a flower with a rhinestone and ribbon a layered that over another paper scrap. Finally I listed some Copics to use an attached it with another paper clip. The best thing about this card is I can hand it to myself and save a stamp (I can even save the envelope too, lol). Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

The Wisemen

This is the fourth and last image from this Christmas Treasures set from Just-Rite. When I first saw this set I knew exactly how I was going to do these cards. I pulled out all the embossing powders I have after making my card bases and chose colors to co-ordinate. I knew that silver would look best on the dark blue of the bottom left card and that the top one done in kraft needed the Tim Holtz Distressed Powder. That left the bottom right and when I looked at some of my older embossing powders I found this dark blue and it was perfect. On these cards there are no embellishments. I love the sentiment of this card, I so wish that there could be Peace on earth, but I guess as long as there are differences between cultures we'll always have conflict. Enough of that.

I love this set and I hope you like the cards I've made. Thanks for stopping by.

Tent Topper Card

The other day on Stamp TV Gina K made a tent topper card. I've always been intrigued by these cards but was intimidated by the mechanics of making these cards. I've seen the instructions and didn't have enough confidence to make one. However after watching the video I realized that it's all about proportions and layout.

So I got busy and started looking through my stuff and made three of them.

I'm really proud of these cards since the only new thing used on these cards is the technique.

I first went through the images that were already colored and found three that would work. The image I used for this card is from a stamp I've had forever. It is stamped on vellum and then trimmed around the edges, I layered it onto a scrap of pale blue DP that has lighter blue dots that I had cut out with a Nestie. Then I cut out the green mat with a larger Nestie. The base is 4.25" by 4.25" that I layered with blue, then the stripe at 4 by 4, then the lighter blue at 3 7/8 by 3 7/8. I took a strip of tan DP and layered the sentiment stamped onto the blue DP on top. Well then I started to assemble the card and realized that my focal point is too small. Bummer. So I sat and thought about what to do, the next size Nestie is too wide for the card base so I turned a quarter turn so it would finish the card at 5.5" and thought, 'hmm, that's different, lets go with it'. Sometimes it pays to talk to yourself ( just don't do it in public).

I'm really pleased with how this turned out, hope you like it. I'll post the other two over the next few days. Thanks for stopping by.

A Christmas Bird

This is the third image from the JustRite Christmas Treasures set. I think this one is my favorite of the four, although maybe the Silent Night is or even the next one coming up. Oh all right I love them all and can see me making many more of these (my sister has put in her order for two dozen of these, hmmm, better get busy).

When I stamped these out (along with some of the others) I learned that you have to be very careful when mounting these onto the stamper.

After I had these all stamped out I realized that the borders were all off center. Made me dizzy to look at them. I was so discouraged thinking I would have to restamp them all when the light bulb went off and I pulled out my Nestabilities and cut out each of the centers. Now when I attached them to the scalloped matting I could center them properly. Worked great. I colored with Copics and on two of them I used Fun Flock on the roof and on one I used Stickles. On the lower left card I used some tiny red rhinestones on the holly berries on the bird house, unfortunately I didn't have enough to do all of the cards, boo hoo. Yikes, I just noticed that on two of these I still didn't get the borders right, that's what I get for working when tired. So now I'm off to fix them. See you tomorrow (I hope).

Hope you like them anyway and thanks for stopping by.

Sneaking a Peek

This card was a personal challenge for me. My friend Sandy does wonderful cards merging digi's together and they are always so terrific. Well Sandy finally posted a tutorial on how to do this using Photoshop Elements 6. I have Photoshop Elements 2 but I was able to use her tutorial and merge three of the Bugaboo Peekers for this card.(Bugaboo offers a freebie every Friday so you can try them out). You can find Sandy's tutorial here.

Following instructions I merged the three Peekers and printed them out (one warning-do a test run when coloring to see if your printer ink will run when you color, mine has to dry a bit before coloring or I just use my heat gun to hurry it along). I colored the image using so many different Copics that I can't list them all or we'd be here til the day after tomorrow. I had designed the card to use Nestabilities to cut out my image and air brush around the edge but my ham handed coloring got me out side the lines and when I tried to correct it it just got worse, so using another of Sandy's tips I cut it out free hand and then mounted it onto the orange dotted paper that I used a corner punch on.

In honor of Sandy I then went on to add another layer, then I added the sentiment that is computer generated and corner punched that and it's mat. I added the flower and found an orange flat sided pearl and called it done. Do yourself a favor and go look at Sandy's blog for some great inspiration.

Silent Night Holy Night

This is the second image in the Christmas Treasures set from JustRite, there are four all together, which makes it perfect to do three of each for a set of a dozen cards.

For this image I chose to stamp the top one in black, the bottom left is embossed with the Tim Holtz Distressed Embossing and the bottom right is stamped in brown. Each is colored with Copics slightly differently and two of them have gold rhinestones on the star. On these three I again went for a non-traditional look with the colors but I think they are successful in that I used paper and embellishments I already had on hand.

Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by.

More Christmas tomorrow.

Christmas Treasures

This is an example of failure and success. Failure is the inability to NOT buy terrific stamp sets when I have vowed to cut back on purchases, success is using existing supplies when using new stamps to make cards.

I bought JustRite's Christmas Treasures set because I just had to have it, when making the cards I pulled out embossing powders I forgot I even had and Christmas paper from last year that I haven't used up. This set uses the 3 1/4" stamper and is enough to be the only thing I need for the front of my card. I stamped it out 3 times using Versamark and then embossed with gold for the top card, black for the middle and the bottom one I used Tim Holtz Distress Powder. I wanted to make a set of Christmas cards as a prize for my nieces baby shower later this month. I also wanted to make some somewhat non-traditional cards. Since the stamp set has four images it gave many chances to use existing supplies (salves my conscience a bit) and have fun designing cards. There is just a little bit of bling on each of these cards, the image was cut out with a circle Nestabilities and then I trimmed it closer. The mats were also cut with Nesties. No coloring on these cards but more on the next three sets.

Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by.

A Little Bird Told Me.....

I saw this card in the July/August issue of Paper Crafts magazine and just was wowed by the simplicity of it. Do you remember that old party game we played as kids? The one where there is a line of kids and the first one whispers something in the ear of the next person and then they repeat it to the next and to the next and at the end you see how different it is from the first. This image makes me think of that game. Or the Bye Bye Birdie show where all the kids are talking on the phone setting up dates and or gossiping about everyone else. Oh what memories this card invokes. Okay picture me shaking my head and saying get back to business.

I grabbed my coupon for Michael's and went out bought this Martha Stewart punch right away. I computer generated the sentiment onto my card base then went to my scrap drawer and pulled out three pieces and punched away. A little Quickie glue pen to the back of each bird and I was done.

Mission Accomplished

With this card I truly reached Mission Accomplished. I decided awhile back that I needed to use up some of my supplies before I bought anything new. Well that didn't last at all. I have tried to use existing supplies in making cards, but I have failed miserably when it comes to not buying anything new. You'll seem some posts that show new stamps soon.

I started to clean off my craft desk (yes, again) and found this Penny Black image of Ginger all colored up and everything. Right next to it was the flower and the embossed swirl layer. I thought it would all look cool on a black card base, so I gathered everything together and started to assemble but soon realized I needed a black mat for the image. I had already cut out the focal image with a scalloped Nestabilities so I just matted it with a plain piece of black card stock.

So there are four more things off my desk. Yeah!!!!

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A Thank You Cabin

I've had a very busy two weeks. First I went to Fla. for my nephews high school graduation. Had a great time even though it rained for almost the entire time we were there. It stopped raining for the 4 to 5 hours of the party. The trip home was all those horror stories you here about air travel. That is a story for another time.

The second part of these last 10 days was very sad. My brother-in-law (Bruce's younger brother) died very suddenly. A total shock for all of us. Brian and Jane (his wife) were up north at their cabin when Brian suffered a massive heart attack. Stunning everyone. Brian was a wonderful person, kind and generous with his time and sharing his knowledge. (He was stage manager at the Wharton Center for the performing arts on MSU's campus). So many people came to pay their respects and share stories of Brian's helpfulness. Jane had so many thank you notes to write for all the flowers and charity donations and just the help given to her at this sad time, she asked me to write a few notes to the people that Bruce knew best. Rather than use the notes that were supplied by the funeral home I chose to make my own in honor of Brian. Jane had chosen a cabin theme for her notes so I pulled out a Northwood Rubber Stamps, a favorite of mine, this cabin scene. I stamped it in Memento Rich Cocoa and decided to leave it plain, no coloring. I used sketch 99 from Clean & Simple, it really suited the mood of my card.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Happy 4th of July

Okay, this is really the last of the July 4th cards.
On this one I used the sail boat image from JustRite's By the Sea Borders and Centers.
I colored with Copics and cut it and the mat out with oval Nestabilities. Mounted onto DCWV Prints DP that I wrapped with Gina K ribbon. That is all mounted onto a Gina K Pure Luxury Rocket Red card base.
All of the 4th of July cards were so fun to make and I really enjoyed the red, white and blue color combo.
Hope you are having a great holiday, I know I am (well I predict that I am since I'm writing this post in advance).
I'm in Tampa as you read this celebrating my nephew's graduation, my sister's retirement and my other sisters birthday and a mini family reunion. I know that it's hot and there are storms but we can party any way.
See you when I get back.

Sympathy On the Dock

When I was looking for images to use with this poem I kept turning to the water. I don't know why, maybe because it is so elemental and of course we are mostly water anyway. This is one of my favorite nature stamps, it is from Great Impressions and is beautiful when colored. In this case I kept it in black and white and it works very well, at least I think so. I used Bazzil Basic Swiss Dots for my DP and then just placed the vellum overlay with the poem on top of the image.

Quite and easy card to make.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A July 4th Sail

This is another of my July 4th cards that I made for our Card Ministry group. There were 2 cards made using sail boats from different stamp sets. This one is from the PaperTrey Ink Masculine Motifs set. I used Memento Tear Drop pads to color the stamp directly then air brushed around the edge for sky and water. I used some of the DCWV Prints mat stack for my DP and Gina K Pure Luxury for the base and the mat. The ribbon is also Gina K.

My last July 4th card will be posted on, you guessed it, July 4th.

I'm off to Tampa for the weekend so I'll be setting up some short posts for some of the days I'm gone.

Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday.

Thanks for stopping by.