Fleece Navibaa

When I pulled out the Stamp TV kit for the Christmas cards from the previous post I found this Gina K set Fleece Navibaa ( another set I've had and not used yet) so I decided to get ahead of Christmas (that's a laugh) and make a few cards.  I had 7 red card bases sitting on my desk (remember the pledge to use up what I have sitting around) and decided to see if the white wash technique would work.  I'll let you be the judge.  I embossed the sheep, sentiment and lights in white (well except for the first one I did in clear, not sure how I'm going to handle that one, will do another post for it).  Then I white washed the bodies and colored in the lights with Martha Stewart glitter pens.  Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by.

Mr. & Mrs.

I needed to make some wedding cards for a card basket for a fund raiser this summer. 
When I saw this Mr. & Mrs. Diva  set from Gina K I knew it would be a fun set to work with.  I've also wanted to work with the design element of glitter so I decided to combine the two.  I chose to keep the colors very light and soft on the image so I used a pale cool grey Copic for the groom and several pale shades of violet for the bride.
The matting is Papertrey Ink.  Then came the fun part.  I ran two different widths of Score-Tape down the side and sprinkled Martha Stewart glitter on it (my how glitter goes everywhere).  After shaking off the excess I took some tissue paper and ran my finger over the glitter to tamp it down.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Thank You to the Troops

I recently had the opportunity to help my cousin Mary with a wonderful project she started last year.  Mary puts together some care packages to send with troops being deployed.  Mostly it's coffee, but she includes tea and I think hot chocolate and some goodies for them to have on those infrequent down times when they can relax.  There were three sets of packages going over and everyone who contributed (I was only able to send money to cover some expenses since I'm out of town) had to give her three thank you cards to be enclosed with the goodies.  I wanted to keep it to a patriotic theme so of course I went with red, white and blue.  The flags are from Papertrey Ink's Friendship Jar Summer
Fillers set.  I embossed them with Martha Stewart Dove powder.  The sentiment is also Papertrey and was a freebie.  I rarely make any two cards alike and even though I used the same focal point I tried to vary the layout and how the sentiment was done.  It's hard to see the one on the left but I clear embossed it and rubbed Papertrey Fresh Snow around it to make it show up.  I was so happy to participate in this project and am so grateful to our troops and their families for all that they do.
Hope you like the cards and thanks for stopping by.
P.S.  I'm posting this from sunny Florida where I've been crafting away and enjoying wonderful weather.

Happy Chanukah

These cards are for my sisters.  Each of them needed some Chanukah/Hanukkah cards to send out to friends.  I had ordered the Mazel Tov set from Papertrey Ink in anticipation of this need.
I had some dark blue card stock so I used silver and blue embossing powders for the sentiment and the Menorah.  The card to the right is from The Paper Cut, one of the oval window cut outs.  The card to the left is Gina K.  The embossing powders are Martha Stewart's. 
Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by.

Christmas for Erin

My nephew Greg is getting married next summer and his fiance, Erin, chose a deep purple as one of her wedding colors.  I've been on the hunt for some card stock that I can use for something for the wedding and or shower.  Well CutCardstock.com has some gorgeous colors and this Deep Purple looks like it's a good match.
So I thought it would be fun to make Erin's Christmas card with some of this paper.  I chose to use Papertrey Ink's In The Meadow Christmas Tree for the focal point.  I decided to use embossing powder, Martha Stewart's Dove, to emboss the tree and the sentiment (from the same set).  That white against the dark purple is really striking don't you think?
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by. 

For Ann

A few months ago I made these cards as a thank you to my family for an anniversary gift.  My sister Ann called me a few weeks ago and asked me to make some cards for her.  She so liked the thank you card that she wanted something similar.  She wanted cards that could be for a variety of occasions.  The Thinking of You sentiment works wonderfully well for these cards. 
I used a dozen different colors of Memory Box card stock for the card bases and for the focal point.  Papertrey's Year of Flowers set worked perfectly for this whole set of cards.  I ended up making 24 cards, two of each flower, one vertical and one horizontal.  I stamped each flower and sentiment in Versamark and then used Martha Stewart Dove embossing powder.  After heat embossing I mounted the focal point onto a white mat and then to the card base.
Ann only took some of the cards so the rest will go into the raffle card baskets at our Church fund raiser in a couple of weeks.
These cards are really easy to make just a little messy (I tend to get embossing powder all over) and time consuming, of course when I'm doing cards like these I end up making a lot of them.  If I'm going to make a mess why not make a real mess. lol
Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by. 

Thank You Notes

One of the fun things we did on our vacation was to go out to dinner at a 'Fine Dining' restaurant courtesy of my family. We were celebrating our 25th anniversary and my sisters, bro-in-laws nieces and nephews all chipped in to give us a gift certificate for a fun night out. Dinner was great.

When we returned I set about making these thank you cards. All of the card stock is from Memory Box and the images are PaperTrey Ink Year of Flowers. I saw this idea on a blog somewhere and I didn't write it down, my bad, but just loved the cards so I copied. I embossed the flowers and sentiment in Martha Stewart's white (I think it's Dove) and it makes a elegantly simple card. (My sister said at first she wondered why I went out and bought cards, then notice my stamp on the back, compliment???)

Anyway I love how they truned out, what do you think? Thanks for stopping by.

Double Embossing

The other day Gina K did a video on Stamp TV for double embossing that I thought was so neat I had to try it. I didn't make my card as layered as hers but I really like the look.

I used one of the images from the Gina K set Buds & Vases illustrated by Melanie Muenchinger. First I embossed the images with Martha Stewart Dove embossing powder then I went back and on the main image and using a Versamark pen I embossed the flowers with Crystal embossing powder. For the smaller blooms I just colored with my Versamark pen and let it dry naturally. What a fun technique and you can find the video here.

The Pretty Little Room

I finally had some time to play and oh did I have fun. I had some extra cash in the budget this past month and ordered stuff from both Papertrey and Gina K.
After I unloaded everything and got organized I started to play.

Unfortunately on this card I used nothing of my new toys. I'm making some cards for a friend and I thought the On My Couch set would make a fun card. I used the chair die to cut out the shape then stamped it with Memento Bamboo. I had this striped scrap and some green so I put them together and added the chair. It looked very lonely so I stamped the table, lamp and picture to create a nice little vignette. I mounted it onto the card base and stamped the sentiment. Now for the bad part, I was picking the card up and smudged some black ink onto the top edge. So I took a scrap of green card stock and used a Martha Stewart edge punch to create a valance and covered up my mistake.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

For Lucy

This was a little easier sympathy card to make. Lucy was the mother of a neighbor and friend of our family. She passed away at home surrounded by family at the age of 97. I didn't know her that well but everything I've heard tells me she lived a pretty terrific life and will be sorely missed.

For this card I used one of the bird images from a Martha Stewart set, colored with Copics and again all card stock is Cryogen white. I used the Swiss Dots folder for this card. I also went back to an old corner punch and added the copper metallic thread for some embellishment.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to get back to card making soon.

A Bronze and Copper Wreath

My friend Sandy turned me on to this gorgeous card stock from Cutcardstock.com. It's Stardreams Metallic and it comes in a terrific variety of colors.

I chose bronze for the base and copper for the mat. I stamped the wreath in Memento Rich Cocoa and the berries are done with Martha Stewart extra fine glitter in Fire Opal, Carnelian, Brownstone and Copper. Don't you just love glitter and shine.

Back tomorrow with a spring wreath.

A Felt Christmas Tree

When I saw the info about the Papertrey blog hop I was so glad that I had just received my latest Papertrey order. I so wanted to use the Tree die and this was a perfect opportunity. Among the items I ordered was the Chartreuse felt so I ran it through my Cuttlebug with the die and found out that I also needed to trim around the edges (my Cuttlebug must not be as tight as it could be).

I made my card base from a piece of dark green shimmery card stock and the DP is from Me & My Big Ideas Holiday paper pad. I had these little jingle bells in my stash so I hauled out my sewing box (something I very rarely do) and sewed them on, it still looked bare so I found this gold cord and threaded it through the bells and then I added some Martha Stewart Lily White glitter along the edges and sort of drifting down under the bells.

The sentiment is also Papertrey Inside & Out Holiday, I stamped the first two lines for the front and the rest inside. I had fun making this card even though sewing is not my thing I see it on so many cards these days I knew I had to try it. I must admit that I find a lot of inspiration from the different DT members at Papertrey, but I also love the attention to detail I see on so many blogs. My preferred style of card is clean and simple. I like the focal point not to be hidden by too many layers. Then I come across cards that have several layers and they only highlight the focal point, go figure. Well this card was fun to make and I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by.

A Tree of Circles

Several weeks (or is it months) ago I had all my circle punches and DP scraps out and just started punching circles of all sizes out. I know that I have posted cards using them before but I still had a baggie full of them. In my pursuit of using up what I have I pulled them out and got busy.

I had some card bases sitting on my desk and so I pulled them out also and started combining the two.

This is one of the five cards I made with the circles. I wanted to make a tree with the circles but didn't have a stamp so I made my own tree. We've probably all done this in kindergarten just draw two line and colored them in, easy peasy. Then I started layering on the circles. I had this strip of paper that I had used the Martha Stewart fringe scissors on and it wasn't quite long enough so I cut it in half and layered circles over the split. Kind of like leaves falling from the tree. There are so many colors on the DP that it really didn't matter what color the circles were, I just had to make sure they looked okay together. I'll be posting the other cards I made over the next week or so, but I am so done with circles for now. It is a great way to use up scraps though.

Hope you like it 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.

Circle Flowers

This was a really fun card to make. I had punched out all these circles from the DCWV Prints Mat Stack a week or so ago and when I straightened my desk up the other day I found them. I had used some of them on a previous card then set the rest of them aside. Last night while I was trying to go to sleep I started thinking about them and came up with this idea.

Luckily I was tired enough to go ahead and go to sleep rather than get up and make this card.

I gathered the circles together and got out my Papertrey Ink Basic Buttons set and got to work. I started to stamp out the flower stems and then realized that I wanted them to go completely across the page, what to do, I had already started in the center of the card stock so I took another piece and butted it up to this one and stamped part of the flower stems on each piece. I ended up with two sets of flower stems to add circles to and thus two cards. I took some green card stock and used my new Martha Stewart Fringe scissors to make the grass. Across the top I used the EK Success Bumpy Road punch ( to me it kind of looks like clouds).

I really like how this card turned out, it seems to be such a happy card. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A Punchy Wedding Card

I was cruising through some blogs the other day and came across a card that was just so beautiful. It was layers of card stock that had been punched with different border punches. It was all white and looked fabulous.

Last night I was still awake at 1:15 AM and got to thinking about that card. I got up and decided to try and recreate that card. Boy howdy was that a mistake. I finally finished this card but it was a real struggle. My first mistake was using a white card base and then using Cryogen white for my layers. Not such a good look. I ended up putting a strip of Cryogen white at the bottom so the hearts didn't show the white. I finagled with these strips for quite awhile until I got the look I wanted. The top strip is and EK Success punch the rest are Martha Stewart's. The card that was my inspiration (I went back through a whole bunch of web sites looking for it and couldn't find it any where) had no stamping on it but mine needed something so I used this Congrats Rose stamp from Stampendous at the top. I used the palest pink and green Copics to give it just a touch of color. I think it will make a perfect wedding card don't you? Thanks for stopping by.

Christmas Redo

I tried this same design again, but with slight differences. Using the same punches from EK Success (trees) and Martha Stewart (village) but with different color paper for the trees. With the CuttleBug embossed layers I simply cut them at an angle (these were the leftovers from the previous card--waste not want not) and added the snowflake brad with the blue flat back pearl from the Recollection Autumn collection I picked up at Michael's. The Merry Christmas is from a Christmas set by Fiskars. I think I like this layout a bit better but that's just me. I may play with this some more and see what I come up with. I still need to finish my Thanksgiving cards for my church group and design more Christmas cards for next months card gathering at my cousins. Lots of fun coming up. Hope you like it.

Christmas

I am going to my cousins in a couple of weeks to work with some friends to start the Christmas card making. Whoowee it's coming too soon (Christmas I mean).

Anyway I saw a similar card to this at Stamp On It in Grand Rapids. It uses the tree border punch from EK Success and the village punch from Martha Stewart. It's a really cute design. I changed it up a bit by adding the two layers of CuttleBug embossed (Divine Swirls and Swiss Dots) to it. It's hard to see from my poor photography but there is allot of stickles on there also. The blue metallic paper gives a little shine. I did use my Prismas to add a little color the trees. An easy card to make once I had the layout set. Hope you like it.

Pink Tilda

Magnolia Stamps are so cute! I just love this one for a little girl. I've done this one as a birthday card but wouldn't it be cute for a little girl to give her Mom for Mother's Day ? The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Birthday Basics ( A great Set). I colored her with Copivs and layered her over several shades of pink. The bottom layer was punched with a Martha Stewart Punch. Hope you like it.

Penny Black

As I've been posting cards I've come to realize that I have allot of Penny Black stamps. This is "Slender". I've had it for quite some time and it's a stamp that is so versatile. I've direct colored it with markers, stamped it several times in different colors or as in this case gone with the black & white theme. I used a Martha Stewart punch on 4 sides to create a frame and added a few rhinestones for some sparkle. I think I'll use this for my sisters birthday. Hope you have a great day tomorrow.