Prettie Wednesday with Lexi

I have my Paper Pretties post for you today. I made two cards using one of the newest releases, Made With Love. The main image in the set is of Lexi holding a tray of cookies. It has so many possibilities...especially with Mother's Day just around the corner!

For my card base I used a shimmery pink cardstock. I then took a piece of brown cardstock and cut an oval from it using my Coluzzle oval template. With the idea of wallpaper in mind, I added floral patterned paper from Chatter Box behind the cut out oval, and then added Lexi on top of it. Lexi was stamped with brown StazOn, water coloured with SU! crayons, cut out (that took a while!) and then added with dimensionals. Phew.....

I used another piece of my pink shimmery cardstock on the top layer, also with an oval cut out. Four mini buttons were glued onto the corners. I used decorative edge scissors to add a bit of white cardstock to the top and bottom of my main image.

The sentiment was a combination of an SU! punches and hand cutting. The ribbons are from CTMH. I really love their ribbons. The colours always seem to work for me.

My second card is a real mix! I used Lexi from Made with Love again, but then I added the sentiment from Looks Who's Perky. The tea cup and tea bag are actually from an MFT set called Hot Stuff. The swirly border around the sentiment is also from Look Who's Perky. I then coloured in the swirls with a Le Plume brown marker. The tea bag and tea cup were paper pieced using water colour paper and then they were coloured with SU! crayons. The brads are from a Making Memories mini brad assortment. The papers are all the same as my first card.

BTW....these cards both measure 7 x 3 1/2....I decided that long cards were the way to go this week!

Have a great day!

She Loves Lavendar

I recently had to make a card for a customer, and the info I was given about the recipient was, 'she loves lavender'. So, that was where I started! I pulled out all the purple papers I could find, and picked the ones that I thought worked the best together.

I saw a card using this sketch over on Andrea Walford's blog...and I have really been wanting to use it. It seemed to work in this case, so with my sketch and papers selected, I just had to choose my stamp.

I decided on Sending You Sunshine from MFT. I really like this stamp, and since I haven't had much chance to use it, I thought I would give it a shot. The recipient is actually very musical, I was told, but unfortunately, I don't have any music themed stamps! Gasp! I guess I will have to buy some! *wink* If anyone out there has any favs, leave me a comment and let me know! I don't have any in mind at the moment....

The ribbon is from CTMH. The patterned paper is from Anna Griffin (I actually know the manufactuer this time!).

I don't know what was going on when I took this photo...but nothing seems centered in it.....hmmmm.....I must have had two kids hanging off me and screaming......

Mother in Law.....

This card was made for one of my card club customers. She needed it for her MIL, who loves blue flowers. I decided to use my Gina K Spring Blooms stamp set...I had just trimmed it up, and was waiting for the chance to use it!

I actually stamped some extra blooms and added them using dimensionals to give the card a bit more depth. I used my Coluzzle oval template to cut out my ovals. I then stitched them together on my good old Kenmore sewing machine.

I coloured the blooms with my SU! water colour crayons. The ribbon is from CTMH. I used scissors to get the decorative edges on the navy cardstock. The papers are from.....you got it....my scrap bin! One of them might be from Anna Griffin, but I can't even be sure about that. Some of the scraps in my bins are older than my children (6 yrs. and 3 yrs), so I can't always be precise about where they came from! Add to that the fact that in the fairly recent past we have lived in three countries, and I really can't hazard a guess! LOL.

Oh, and I almost forgot....this sketch was from over at iheart2stamp on March 29th!

Have a great week!

This Is How I Feel!

The sentiment on this card expresses how I feel in my life lately! I feel like I am two steps behind where I should be! This week I feel like I made a bit of headway...so maybe there is some hope....sigh.

I made this card for my friend's daughter....whose birthday happened to be three weeks ago. Hence, the sentiment on the card. I LOVE this stamp....and I am sure that I will be getting a lot of use out of it!

The stamp is from Just So Hippy from over at Gina K. The papers are from a Super Slab by Provo Craft. I used watercolour crayons from SU! and an aqua painter to fill in the image.

The sketch was mojo #30 over at Poetic Artistry.

Have a great weekend!

It's Wednesday Again!

It's Wednesday again.....where does the time go?! I haven't even posted since Friday, and now it is Wednesday and time for another Paper Pretties post!

I have so many things to post...on this blog and my other blog, but I just have to find the time!!

I have a fun card for you today! I hope you like it!

These stamps are from Sealed With A Kiss over at Paper Pretties. I came up with the idea that I wanted Luke and Lexi to be kissing through a window....and I needed an anniversary card, so the two came together. Why would married folks be sharing a kiss through a window, you may ask? I like to think that Luke was rushing out to work (I wish I had a briefcase to put in his hand!) and couldn't resist coming back to steal just one more kiss. LOL! Isn't that what your life is like?! :)

In this close up shot, you can see the scoring at the corners of the window frame. There is actually quite a lot of scoring on this card, but much of it can't be seen in the photo. The whole side of the building has scored bricks on it, and the sidewalk segments have been scored also. In other words...it doesn't look quite as plain in real life! :) The scoring gives it a lot of texture and many of the elements are popped up with dimensionals to give it depth.

The papers are from Cloud 9 Design...The Wood Stone Collection. The paper on the wall is called Naples and the paper that is on the sidewalk is called Florence. Luke and Lexi were stamped on watercolour paper and then were coloured with SU! watercolour crayons and an aqua painter. The mini blossoms are from making memories. The wallpaper behind Lexi is from my scrap bin.

That sums it up! Have a great Wednesday!

Mini Note Cards

The first time I ever made one of these little tins, it was with my stamp club girlfriends.....led by friend and SU! demonstrator, Joanne. Basically, Joanne stands over us with a whip and says things like 'no talking' and 'stamp!!'. It is more or less just a sweat shop. *wink*


Seriously though, we all have great fun and always get to make a new project to take home. One of those such projects was a 3 x 3 mini tin with four note cards and envelopes inside. I scooped up one of the extra tins, and this is what I came up with.

It definitely makes a really cute little gift. I will likely make more in the future!

The flower on the lid is a chipboard flower covered in cardstock and then distressed a bit around the edges. I used a sanding block and a bit of ink on the edges to get the look that you see in the pic.

Just for the record....the swirl on the lid of the tin is a rub-on. It was a NIGHTMARE to get it on there. I don't know if the surface of the tin was too shiny, or the rub-on I had was just crappy. Either way, it wasn't easy! I ended up doing two coats of mod podge over the lid in order to make sure it would stay. I had little faith that it would have stayed put otherwise!

In the end it turned out OK, and into the mail it went...to my friend in Switzerland. I am actually so behind on posting, that she already received it! LOL! She loved it. :)

She's a Girly Girl

One of my recent projects was one of these cute little card totes....requested by my friend, Stefanie. She needed it for a b-day gift for another friend and I was thrilled to help out!



I was told the following....the gift is for a woman who is a 'girly girl'. She has three sons, and rarely gets to enjoy the 'girly' things in life as a result.



I went straight to my Chatter Box papers from the 'Cottage' line. I have several different sets of this paper, and love them all. They are some of those papers that have been in my 'stash' for a very long time simply because I couldn't bear to cut them! This selection is really feminine without being too over the top and flowery.



I chose some fun shoe stamps from one of my Close to My Heart acrylic sets as a starting point. I had a hard time finding an ink to match my papers....I guess that is what you get when you aren't loyal to any one line of products! I found a chalk ink in my stash that matched surprisingly well, after a bit of searching and testing. I stamped the shoes onto white cardstock (four different styles.....of shoes, not cardstock!) and then punched them out with my Fiskars oval punch...which broke in the process! No worries though....a call to Fiskars, and they are going to replace it for me!


Here are two of the four cards....




I felt the cards still needed a bit of 'something', even after adding rhinestone brads. So, I sprinkled some dazzling diamonds onto each of the shoes for just an added bit of shimmer. A bit of stitching with my sewing machine would have been nice too.....maybe next time.


For the front of the tote, I used a chipboard flower which I covered with a complimentary pattern of paper. The center of the flower is actually a button coated in Crystal Effects Lacquer, which was then sprinkled with dazzling diamonds while it was still wet. The whole thing was then set aside to dry.





Have a great weekend!

Simply Special

The cards I have to post today all use Simply Special.....one of the new stamps released last Friday over at Paper Pretties.

My first card has two versions...the only difference is how I attached the sentiment. The image was stamped with StazOn onto water colour paper. I then used water colour crayons and an aqua painter to colour in the image. It was double matted and the largest mat was sewn using my grandma's old sewing machine. I am so glad to have it back! It was in storage for the two years that we lived in Switzerland, and then when I got it back it didn't work properly. After a (expensive) tune-up, I finally have it back! .....Now I just need another table in my scrap room so I can leave it out all the time.... *wink*

Back to the project! So, after sewing the mat, I attached flower punche outs with mini buttons for centers. The sentiment is from MFT Simply Said....I used two sentiments together to create the one I wanted. The sentiment was attached using white gross grain ribbon and one of my SU! punches (slot punch, maybe???) Once I completed this card, I opted to make another and change up how I attached the sentiment.

Everything about this card is the same as the one above with the exception of the sentiment. This time I opted to attach it using the same punch and gross grain ribbon, but with the ribbon attached at the sides instead of at the top of the sentiment.

My third sample was a bit trickier. I decided that I wanted to use the watering can and the flower pot separately. So, out came the tape! I masked off the pot in order to stamp the can and then did the reverse in order to stamp the pot. I used several different stamp sets on this card....one for the leaves, another for the stems, another for the butterfly, and another for the streams of water coming from the can. It was a bit finicky, but I was happy in the end.

The stamps were Paper Pretties Simply Said (of course!), and CTMH Little Treasures (butterfly), Life is so Good (sentiment), and Solo "A" (stems). I used Making Memories mini blossoms to make the flowers that are growing in the flower pot, with Craft Essentials (from Joann Fabrics and Crafts) rhinestone brads for the centers. The images were water coloured with SU! crayons and the background was chalked with a sponge dauber (CTMH).

Off to make lunch! Have a great day. :)

Old Stuff....

I was just checking out what I had on my memory card, and I found a few images that I have never posted. I tend to do that a lot.....

I don't have many details about these cards, because they are old...but I will do my best!

The first image is a birthday cake that I found in the Michaels dollar bin. It is an acrylic stamp that actually has flowers on the cake. Because I was making this card to be a bit more masculine, I masked over the flowers when I stamped the image. I water coloured the cake with SU! watercolour crayons. I used my SU! word window punch to make the tabs along the right hand side. First with white cardstock and then I added another layer of blue 'denim-ish' looking paper. How's that for a technical term?! Some layered mats for the cake, a bit of ribbon, a few buttons and some dazzling diamonds on the candle flames, and voila. C'est tout!


My second card is (obviously) a feminine card. The image of the flower cart is from a CTMH acrylic set of stamps. The image was coloured with watercolour crayons. The circular sentiment is from SU! I used my scallop punch and circle punches to mat the sentiment. I used decorative edged scissors on the purple cardstock on the right side to give it a bit of a feminine finish. The mat for the main image was punched with an edge punch which then allowed me to weave the purple ribbon through and tie it at the left side. I then added two paper flowers with rhinestone brads for the centers.

These cards may or may not have originated from sketches...I honestly can't remember. I really need to start writing this stuff down!

Have a great Tuesday! :)

Paper Pretties Pajama Party

Friday was my very first Paper Pretties Pajama Party. There were three new stamp sets released during the party....Made With Love, Rainy Day Friends and Simply Special. At the top of each hour a challenge was issued, and we all had to complete the challenge and upload it to the gallery within that hour.

The first challenge was to create a summer card.....no pastels and no earth tones....just bright, bold colours. This is what I came up with......

The stamp is Flutter By and it was stamped with StazOn. The colouring was done with watercolour pencils from CTMH and they were then blended with OMS and a blending stump. Ribbons are all from Michaels. The flower brad is from Memory Makers (I think....).

The second challenge was to create a card using glossy cardstock. I didn't have any on hand...so I used metallic cardstock instead. During the PJ party, one of the girls said that glossy cardstock is really just photo paper! I have a ton of that...I just didn't know that they were the same thing! LOL. Anywho, this is what I came up with.....

The stamp is from Rubber Romance...I think her name is Jane. I stamped her with....what else....StazOn. She was coloured with watercolour pencils and crayons. I used a blending stump and OMS to blend the colours. The ribbon is from Michaels. The patterned paper is Sanylion Designs and the background paper is a bronze metallic from Micheals. I stamped the swirls onto the background with clear pigment ink and then embossed them with clear embossing powder.

The third challenge was to create a long card. Anything longer than the traditional 4 1/4 x 5 1/2. I decided to go really long and created a card the size of a business sized envelope. It measured 9 1/4 x 3 3/4. Here it is......

This card was made with a whole lotta layers of cardstock. It is a colour palette that I love. It was actually inspired by a pottery barn catalogue! That is where I get some of my best inspiration! Junk mail and catalogues.... I have a couple of binders and notebooks where I store pages torn out of catalogues, sketches that I have jotted down, tutorial printouts, etc. That is where I go when I am seeking inspiration.

So, the stamp set is Look Who's Perky, the brads are from Joann Essentials line, the ribbon is from Joann also, the images were stamped with StazOn and then paper pieced with paper from my scrap bin. Save those scraps, girls! You never know when you will need just the littlest bit of this or that. I used the tiniest scraps for this project!

Overall, the pajama party was a success....once I got over the stress of the timeline, LOL. It was a quick pace and I had fun rising to the challenge and doing something new.

I hope some of you will join in next time!

Sweet One

Recently, one of my very good friends contacted me wanting me to make some note card 'thank yous' as part of a gift she is giving to a family with a new baby girl. I was happy to do it.....I always have fun making things that are themed for little girls....I guess it is my inner girl coming out!

Quite some time ago, I saw a great little tutorial on my friend Joanne's blog. It was for a little box filled with four note cards and envelopes. If I remember correctly, I think Joanne said that she had gotten this template from her upline at SU!.

I made the outside of my box pretty much exactly as Joanne made hers, with the exception being that I used cardstock and then added patterned paper to the front and back of the box only. The papers are by Me & My Big Ideas -Vintage Scrappy Chic - Baby line. The cardstock is from DCWV. The image on the front of the box is from the SU! So Many Scallops set. I stamped it in brown StazOn and then punched it out with my scallop punch. I then punched a second scallop from brown cardstock and rotated it just enough that it shows behind the scallop with the image on it. Then a slightly larger circle was punched, the edges were inked and it was added as the bottom layer. The image was then fastened to the box using dimensionals on the bottom half, with the top being left loose so that the flap of the box can be tucked behind it.

As Joanne did in her example, I fastened the corners with brad. These are jumbo pink brads from.....I can't remember where.

The note cards are beige cardstock mounted onto the same line of patterned paper used for the exterior of the box. The ribbon is from Michaels. The brads used on the top left corner of each note card are mini brads from Colorbok. The sentiment is from the SU! Lots of Thoughts set, with the 'many thanks' cropped from the rest of the stamped image. The edges of the sentiment were then inked to make it pop a bit more and it was fastened with dimensionals.

Have a great Friday!

Scrapbooking Prettie Style

For my post this week, I decided to do a two page scrapbook layout. These pages are 8 x 8 and were created as part of a 40th anniversary album.


The patterned paper is from the Autumn Leaves Foof-a-la Thrift Store line. The papers in this line are all really pretty and they have a really 'vintage' feel to them....making them appropriate for a 40th wedding anniversary album! The main cardstock is from Bazzill Basics and the accent colour is from a scrapstack.

The 'now & forever' was made using a stamp from the Michaels dollar bin. The '&' symbol was then coloured using Stampin' Up! water colour crayons and a water brush / aqua painter. It was adhered to the page with dimensionals. The 'truly blessed' sentiment is a rub-on that comes from the Colorbok Life's Blessings line. The wide gross grain ribbon is from Michael's also.

The image of the lovebirds is from Paper Pretties (of course!). It was first stamped with Stone Gray StazOn and then Luke was coloured using CTMH water colour pencils, with the exception of his skin, which was coloured with SU! water colour crayon. The pencil was then blended using odourless mineral spirits (OMS) and a blending stump. Lexi's shoes were coloured with a silver gel pen. Her dress was coloured with an Atyou Spica Clear pen, giving it a sparkle that can't be seen in the photo. Her hair was done with water colour pencil and OMS and her skin was done with SU! crayons.

The date between Luke and Lexi are Generations alphabet stickers. Luke and Lexi were cut out using my Coluzzle circle template. I used my corner rounder punch in order to round off the edges of the text box and mat as well as the mats for the black and white photo on the opposite page.

Don't forget to join us for Stamping in your Jammies over at Paper Pretties on Friday night beginning at 8:00 pm EST. There will be challenges, prizes and the release of 3 new stamps!

See you there!

Losing Track.....

I received two new stamps from Paper Pretties last week, and eagerly went to work using them on the weekend. For some reason, it didn't register that they were yet unreleased stamps, which means that I can't yet post what I made with them! Ooopsie!

So, I went into my photo files to find a card that I could post for you today, and this is what I came up with.

I have to say, I love this stamp set from My Favorite Things. It is called Time for the Bubbly, and you have seen me use it here before. As a matter of fact, I think I even used the same colour scheme too!

This sketch was from Poetic Artistry....it was the Mojo Monday #27 sketch.

I really wanted to give this sketch a try....but I quickly realized that if I did, I was going to end up covering up part of the image that I didn't want to cover. To solve that problem, I opted to use vellum for the strip at across the bottom. I then used four rhinestone brads that complimented the colours in the patterned papers.

The sentiment was embossed with silver embossing powder and then zapped with my heat gun. The wallpaper was paper pieced and the rest of the image was coloured using a combination of Stampin' Up water colour crayons and Close To My Heart water colour pencils. The bubbles were given a dash of SU Dazzling Diamonds, although you can't tell from the photo. The papers were all from my scrap bin...but originally came from scrap stacks.
Join us over at Paper Pretties for our Prettie Pajama Party on April 11th starting at 8:00 pm EST. Stay tuned for some sneak peaks of the new releases later in the week!

Other Creative Endeavors

My son had a birthday earlier in the week and hit the big number six! He is completely enamoured with Scooby Doo at the moment, so it was no mystery as to what kind of cake I would be making (no pun intended)!

I bought the Scooby Doo cake pan weeks ago because he was so worried that they might run out of them at the store. I baked the cake the night before, and then spent the entire afternoon mixing eight different colours of icing (from scratch!) and decorating the prized pup.

SIX hours later, and this was the result......

I had a very happy little boy on my hands.....and it was all worth it! :)

Hoppy Birthday

I needed to make a couple of children's birthday cards recently, and while flipping through the stack of miscellaneous papers on my desk, I found a Stampin' Up! inspiration sheet that gave me the idea for this card.

Even though I don't own All Wrapped Up by Stampin' Up, I have stamps that are almost identical from one of their competitors (shhhhh!), Close To My Heart. The CTMH sets are called Little Treasures (the jar) and Frogs (you guessed it....the frog!).

Papers are Bazzills cardstock and the bubble paper is from my scrap bin. The jar was stamped in black StazOn....my 'go to' ink for just about everything lately. The frog was stamped in New England Ivy from CTMH. I cut out the jar and the frog by hand and I then added some Crystal Effects from Stampin' Up! to the spots on the frog's back, as well as to his eyes to give him that 'bulgy eyed' look. The frog was popped up on some dimensionals and three little brads were added to the bottom right corner.

The first part of the sentiment was made using alphabet stickers and the second part was a 'happy birthday' stamp with the 'happy' masked off.

Have a great weekend!

My First Prettie Post

This is a big day for me! It is my very first Prettie post as a guest design team member over at Paper Pretties!

I used the image of Luke and Lexi from Sealed With A Kiss. They were stamped in Stone Grey StazOn onto watercolour paper. The image was then coloured using a combination of Stampin' Up! watercolour crayons and Close To My Heart watercolour pencils. I used some odorless mineral spirits (by Gina K. Designs) to blend the pencil in Luke's hair. I bought this over at All That Scraps (thanks for the tip, Joanne!).


The base of the card is from Bazzill Basics and the patterned papers that make up the quilted background were all from my scrap bin. I keep, and try to use, as many scraps as possible. It is one of the ways that I make myself feel better about participating in a hobby that is such a heavyweight in the consumerism category!

The idea from this card came because I remembered Joanne commenting that she often tends to make Luke into a grey haired man. When I started thinking along those lines....I came up with old folks, quilts and granny squares! LOL!

So, the inspiration for this card became a quilt. I wanted my 'quilt' to looked stitched, so I got out my sewing machine and began sewing away. Now, I realize that quilts aren't top stitched in a zig zag, but I wanted the stitching to be prominent enough to see. Each of the squares were stitched onto the cardstock, but before I got to that step, I used my Coluzzle circle template to cut out the circle for Luke and Lexi.


This photo shows the stitching up close....

The circular border for the image was made using my Coluzzle circle template also. I then used shaped scissors to give the outside edge its 'wave'. I used a paper piercer to pierce the holes in each of the 'bumps' and then I tied fibers from EK Success through every other hole. I remember my mom and dad having a bedspread from their wedding (40+ years ago!) and it had this blue fringe along the edge of it. My sister now has this ratty old bedspread at her house, and that was where the fringe idea came from. LOL!

Have a happy Wednesday!