lookie here....

This time when I blinked it has been less than a week.... makes me actually believe things will get better. I am so far behind posting its not even funny. This is from last months (I think) monthly stamp club. I love making clean and simple cards and then finding ways to add a little touch to them to make them pop. In this case it is the sanded background stamp in the same color as the cardstock. I love that stamp and I swear it adds the perfect touch every time. If you don't own any background stamps you are missing out!! If I'm having a hard time figuring out what I want to do I'll grab a background stamp that piques my interest and go from there.




Stamps: Perfect Punches, Sanded
Inks: Marina Mist
Papers: Old Olive, Marina Mist, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White
Misc: Wide Oval Punch, Decorative Label Punch, Lattice Embossing Folder, Brights Button, Basic Black 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon, Dimensionals, Mini Library Clip

Today seems to be a good stamping day. I made several cards today, got ready for a class, managed to get my fingers completely covered with reinkers, and now I'm posting on here..... lets hope tomorrow is as good to me as today was. Now I'm going to try and get some digital scrapbooking done.

loads of love

First off I want to thank all of you who have checked in on me and emailed me to make sure I'm still here and doing ok. I blinked and a month has passed. I think things are less hectic now. My Grams has been moved at least temporarily into a full care nursing home. There are good and bad aspects to this, the worst being that she is farther away than she was which means it takes FOR-EVER to drive down for a visit. I'm glad she seems to like it there and the staff is wonderful, which makes it easier knowing I can't visit everyday. I've had to place this creative outlet on the back burner since pretty much the first of the year, but I've become so stressed that I've decided I need to make the time to de-stress and get my creative juices flowing. This should translate into more blogging.

Ok, now onto what you all came here for. This card could be a valentines type card or just a just because I love you card, or even an anniversary card.



Stamps: Loads of Love
Inks: Blushing Bride, Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose
Papers: Pear Pizazz DSP, Sweet Pea DSP (retired), Pear Pizazz Cardstock, Old Olive Cardstock, Blushing Bride Cardstock, Whisper White Cardstock, Watercolor paper
Misc: Pretty in Pink 5/8" Satin Ribbon, Crystal Effects, Mini Library Clip, Aqua Painters, Pinking Hearts Edge Punch,

I love the extra little detail that is added by the Crystal Effects onto the watercolored hearts. It really makes them stand out in real life.

I hope you will all be back later in the week to see some more posts.

desktop calendar

Every year I make my hubby a desktop calendar to put on his desk at work, and every year I wish I had one. So this year I decided to make a smaller one for me. I chose not to make is a scrapbook style one, and instead did a easel card style. I saw one very similar to this one on Sandi MacIvers blog a million years ago and figured it would work perfectly for me.

Those of you that know me know I don't like pink, but The new In Color Blushing Bride is growing on me, and I figured if I had pink on the calendar it definitely would not blend into the background mess on my desk.






Stamps: Vintage Vogue
Inks: Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive
Papers: Whisper White, Old Olive, Blushing Bride DSP
Misc: Old Olive Brads, Rhinestone Brads, Scallop Trim Border Punch, Mini Library Clip, 1/4" Old Olive Ribbon, 5/8" Old Olive Satin Ribbon, Modern Label Punch, Modern Label Movers & Shapers Die, Stampin' Dimensionals, Paper Snips

sweet candy treat

I made several Valentines Day cards this year, but never got around to posting them before the 14th, but I figured I'd still share them with you. I love the sweet treat cups, they are so much fun!

I tried the rock n roll technique to add a little bit of detail to the bird and the flower stem. I really love the end result.



Stamps: Sweetheart
Inks: Certainly Celery, Old Olive, Marina Mist, Pacific Point, Real Red
Papers: Whisper White, Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, Blushing Bride
Misc: Pinking Hearts Border Punch, Decorative Label Punch, Full Heart Punch, Heart Treat Cups, Exacto Knife, Stampin' Dimensioinals, Cinnamon Hearts Candy

Birthday Beware!!

Did you miss me?? I'm hoping that some of you are still out there. I did not mean to take that long of a break from my blog, but life just got in the way. I've still been creating as much as I can, but I never seemed to get a chance to photograph it, let alone get it up here.
I had to create a ton of these for my baby's birthday, I can't believe he's 5 already!! Where has the time gone? He really wanted a pirate themed party, so I ordered the set Beware Pirates for the invites and then asked him what colors he wanted to use. I had a lot of fun creating the first one, but by the time I had done about 15 of them I'd had enough. Doing that much distressing and tearing and sponging takes a lot of time.




Stamps: Beware Pirates
Inks: Chocolate Chip, Basic Black, Real Red
Papers: Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla
Misc: 1/4" Real Red Grosgrain Ribbon, Cutter Kit, Sponges, Stampin' Dimensionals

I think I scored a 10 on this one, not only did I use the entire stamp set on one card, my son said it was the best card I've ever made. He sleeps with one on his headboard every night, it's been almost a month now and he still has it up there. Is there anything better in the world than your child telling you how much he loves something you make?

Thanks for sticking with me over the past 2 months, I promise to get back to posting more often. Hopefully I'll be back to every couple days in no time.

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

First off I want to apologize for not posting anything the last while. We were insane trying to get everything ready for our Christmas Vacation, and then we were on the road for 2 days, then spent 5 days and we were on the road again for 18 hours. We finally arrived in Logan Utah this morning and have had a great day with family here. We will be leaving again tomorrow around noon for another 14 hours of driving before we end up in Mesa.

Before we left I made a card (a huge card) for Sevastian's Kindergarten class to sign. It ended up being 6x9, and the focal point on the card was 4x5.5. I took it into class for the class party and had all the kids sign it before we tucked the gift card for the teacher and gave it to her at the end of the party.

I love this set, and think it is a great kids set. I also decided to go a little over the top with it, and put shimmer everywhere. There is Dazzlin' Diamonds Glitter pretty much everywhere on the card. I also used Vanilla Smooch Spray to spray the background Bashful Blue piece after I embossed it with the Petals a Plenty embossing folder, and then I used Frost White Shimmer Paint to emboss the top of the petals and topped it off with 3 small Basic Pearls. I also added Rhinestones to the top of several trees.





It's late here, and I am working on almost no sleep, so I'll come back and post the recipes later.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and an even better time with family.

Oh Christmas Tree....

I love Christmas trees, they look so pretty, and the real ones smell so nice too. I have tons of Christmas stamps that have trees in them too. I actually cased myself with this card. Last year I stamped Dasher where I stamped this tree. I think the Snow Swirled Tree looks amazing with the retired Bride Specialty paper. I used my brayer to ink over the paper with Elegant Eggplant ink, and then took a tissue and wiped the ink off to reveal the white swirls. The rhinestones are the perfect touch to finish this card off.



Stamps: Many Merry Messages, Snow Swirled
Inks: Elegant Eggplant
Papers: Brushed Silver, Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White, Bride DSP (retired)
Misc: Large Oval Punch, Scallop Oval Punch, Elegant Eggplant Rick Rack (retired), Brayer, Rhinestones

Scenic Season

Every time I look at this stamp I think how beautiful it is, and think winter is just magical.... then I look outside and see real winter and the moment passes. I am definitely needing a break from old man winter, thankfully we leave for Az in less than a week. I got the idea for this card from the fabulous Jan Tink. If you've never been to her blog you need to check her out, she is amazing. I love the colors here, again they are not your traditional Christmas colors, but they look amazing on this card.


Stamps: Scenic Season, Many Merry Messages
Inks: Night of Navy, Whisper White, Pacific Point
Papers: Rich Razzleberry, Night of Navy, Old Olive, Whisper White
Misc: 1/4" Old Olive Grosgrain Ribbon, 1 3/4" Circle Punch, Sponges, Jumbo Eyelets, Brads,

I've been making Christmas cards, cookies, and cupcakes this week and listening to Christmas music the whole time and finally getting more into the Christmas spirit. Our tree has been up for a while now, and the lights were up on the house forever ago, but it still hasn't felt like Christmas around here. I think part of it is going back and forth to the hospital daily and not visiting with Grams at her place. Her place is always decorated so well, and we usually go over in mid to late November and add a few more to the walls outside her door, and several window clings inside too. Grams and Sevastian usually take walks around the whole place to see who else has their doors decorated and then they vote on who has the best door. Sevastian always votes for Grams door since he helped decorate it. I'm hoping it will feel a lot more like Christmas after we watch the school play on Tuesday. There really isn't anything cuter than young kids singing and dancing for their parents.

Holiday Greetings

This is another card we did at one of the Stamp-A-Stack events this year. I really like using non traditional colors for Christmas cards. I will always do at least one set of cards in traditional red and green, but then I like to pick a wide variety of colors and see what I can come up with. This one uses Baja Breeze and Basic Gray.

Stamps: Season of Joy, Sincere Salutations, Snow Swirled
Inks: Basic Gray, Whisper White
Papers: Basic Gray, Baja Breeze, Whisper White
Misc: 1" Circle Punch, 1 1/4" Circle Punch, 5/8" Basic Gray Satin Ribbon, Dimensionals

Vintage Snowflake take 2

I told you the other day that I'd post the other version of the snowflake card I did, so here it is. I wanted to see what it would look like with less white and more blue. What do you guys think of it? Which is your favorite and why?


Stamps: Christmas Punch
Inks: Sahara Sand
Papers: Whisper White, Sahara Sand, Bashful Blue
Misc: Snowflake #2 Die, Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder, Dazzlin Diamonds Glitter, Sponges, Wide Oval Punch, Antique Brads, Snowflake Punch, Dimensionals

Again I used a slightly different Antique Brad for the middle and for this one I put some Dazzlin' Diamonds glitter in the middle of it too. To get the depth between the two snowflakes I placed a dimensional between them and another under the last one so the whole thing would pop up from the card base.

Vintage Snowflake

I'm not the biggest fan of Vintage Style, but it's growing on me. I was over at my Grams place a while back and saw one of her doilies, and it totally reminded me of a snowflake. I wanted to do something with a very vintage feel to it that looked like a snowflake, so I started with the Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder from Stampin' Up! I went to SCS and I searched for it, and found a beautiful card by Lee Conroy that used it and the Snowflake #2 die. I fell in love with it and had to CASE it. I changed very little, only the sentiment and the blue snowflake shape. I did a few of these up for my SAS in October, and used several different Antique Brads. Depending on the brad you pick, it totally changes the mood of the card which is wonderful.





Stamps: Christmas Punch
Inks: Sahara Sand
Papers: Whisper White, Sahara Sand, Bashful Blue
Misc: Snowflake #2 Die, Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder, Dazzlin Diamonds Glitter, Sponges, Wide Oval Punch, Antique Brads, Snowflake Punch, Dimensionals

I also did another slightly different version of this card which I'll show you next time. And a quick tip for you, when you care deciding which way to cut your cardstock for a particular card keep in mind what you will be making. This card is quite front and top heavy, so it would have a tendency to fall over if I cut it to 8.5x5.5 and scored it at 4.25, so I cut it to 4.25x11 and scored it at 5.5, that way it folds at the top of the card and is less likely to fall over.