Mojo Sketch 56

I was on Susan's blog and she had completed a challenge based on a sketch on the Poetic Artistry blog. Her card is awesome, and I decided to go take a look at the sketch. It looked fun to do, and I needed a card for my niece's birthday. So this is what I came up with. I cut a circle and used my happy birthday embossing folder. For the large base I used my spots and dots embossing folder. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up Heard from the Heart. The cupcakes are from Stampin' Up Oh, So Sweet.

Cuttlebug Challenge #3

This is the card I made for today's challenge over at The Cuttlebug Spot (http://thecuttlebugspot.blogspot.com/). Today's challenge was to add some color to your cuttlebug folder. I used my stylized flowers folder. This folder is so pretty! When I first started seeing this folder on cards people made on Split Coast Stampers, I knew I would have to have a cuttlebug. I colored the flowers and stems with my Derwent Aquatone colored pencils. The flowers used burnt carmine and the stems used sap green. Then I colored them with my blender pen. I colored the sentiment from IBrakeForStamps.com with my plum Marvy Marker. I added some ribbon behind the sentiment, and some glitter glue to the middle of the flowers.

My Shopping Spree

Happiness is being married to someone who knows me really well, and loves me anyway! We've been having issues with our dryer. It was making the most awful, mind-numbing, metallic, squeaking sound. The clothes still dried, thank goodness, but the sound was horrible! Well, Friday I called my husband at work to say hello, and to ask him to bring home some milk. He said I was lucky he had his car at work and not my Jeep or he would stop on his way home and buy a new dryer. I told him that he was lucky he had his car and not my Jeep. So Saturday he took the dryer apart, and started banging on things and adding duct tape to the dryer. Just kidding, he was banging but I don't think he added any duct tape! Well, when he put everything back together, it was fixed and now there is no squeaking. Hallelujah! So Sunday I said, "Now aren't you glad you didn't buy a new dryer!" And he, knowing me so well, said, "Yes, and don't think that means you get to spend that money on scrapbooking stuff." See, he knows me! So I went on a little shopping spree in the kitchen, took an old orange juice box that I had washed out just the day before, and wrapped it with paper, punched some eyelets in it, and filled it with ribbon. See, I don't always have to buy new stuff!

Happy Meal!

This is for a recipe swap on Split Coast Stampers. My friend is hostessing, and she wanted people's favorite meal, or the meal that makes them happy! I love chicken enchiladas, and they are one of my favorite dishes. When I was pregnant with our daughter, our oven decided not to work. So for a few months I wasn't able to make my favorite dish. When our daughter was finally born, my family was coming out to celebrate, and my husband bought a little roaster oven that I was finally able to cook chicken enchiladas in. The enchiladas had never tasted so good. When I signed up for this swap, I knew this would be the recipe I would submit. When I found this paper shopping one day, I loved the look of it. I loved the colors and the shimmery sparkle. I used the circle stamps from my Stampin' Up Riveting set, and clear embossed them to give them some sparkle like the paper.

Sketches! {by tamara}

I love technology! I love how many great sites there are available with creative ideas. I found this blog: http://sketchesbytamara.blogspot.com/ yesterday, and was excited to see how many fun sketches she has on her blog. So I followed her sketch idea, and came up with this fun card. I loved this ribbon when I found it at Joann's! I used it on one birthday card, but since then it has been in my ribbon can waiting for another day to see sun! Well, this card called out for the ribbon. One of my favorite stamp sets is Stampin' Up Pick A Petal, and embossing it was even funner! The ink is all from Colorbox: Sunflower, Old Rose, Orange, and Midnight. The sentiment is from Cloud 9 "Memories."

Birthday Celebrations

Well, my little girl is not feeling very well today, and now I'm afraid that neither am I. So I'm not going to be making any new card today. Luckily I have a card I hadn't posted yet, since I was making sure the card got to the recipient in the mail first. I made this card for my sister-in-law. She is wonderful. The kind of sister-in-law everyone wants to have. She's caring and thoughtful and sweet, and a great friend. So I wanted to make her a card that I really thought was pretty. I love this new set from Stampin' Up called Upsy Daisy. When I first saw it in their new catalog, I really didn't like it all. But everytime I'd flip by it, the idea of it just grew on me a little more. Until I finally bought it. And I love it! I've wanted to do a red, black and white card for a while, and this was my perfect chance. After I made it, though, I had to laugh. Our town's high school colors were red and black. And the school colors of the town she grew up in were green and yellow. And my brother does tease her some about her "ugly school colors". So when I got done with this card, I hoped she wouldn't think I was trying to send some kind of hidden message about our school colors. It's funny the things I think about sometimes! Well, I'm off to rest. Maybe I can make something new tomorrow!

Teapots

I finally had a moment to get a card done today. This is for the weekly sketch challenge on Split Coast Stampers. I really liked the sketch, and had all sorts of ideas in my head. None of them were coming out how I pictured them, but I decided to finish one, instead of having 4 or 5 unfinished "could have been" cards. I really like the colors in this, but I wish I would have done the tea-pots different colors instead of all one color. But, maybe I will try that another day.

Combining two loves!

Today is my first attempt at combining two loves...scrapbooking and stamping! I am getting together with some other women to do a scrapbook exchange. And I decided it was time to get a scrapbook page done that had some stamping on it. I feel like stamping can be such a fun way to embellish a page, but I still feel a little intimidated by it. I think because if I mess up a card it's just a card, but I don't want to mess up a big 12x12 scrapbook page. But today I went for it! The layout I used is from Page Maps (http://pagemaps.com/). I love to go there for sketches. They have great layout ideas, and I like that they have both 1- and 2-page layouts. I used my Stampin' Up Friendship Blooms set and also the Just Journaling II set. The paper is all from Bazzill, and I used Colorbox Merlot ink and Ranger clear embossing powder. The embossing looks much more vibrant in real life. I took several pictures; some with the flash, some with the flash off, and no matter what I did, the embossing seemed to look the same. I am excited to see in the future how I will be able to incorporate my stamping into my scrapbooking!
(I had to add a new picture. The layouts were looking a little empty, so I got out my cricut and added a title to each page, using my jasmine cartridge.)

Cuttlebug Challenge #2

This is the card I came up with for my second week playing along over at The Cuttlebug Spot (http://thecuttlebugspot.blogspot.com/). The challenge this week was to sand your paper after embossing it. This technique works the best with paper that has a white core. So I took my d'vine swirl embossing folder and ran some white core Die Cuts With a View cardstock through my cuttlebug. For the main image, I used the scarecrow from Stampin' Up's Happy Blessings. The sentiment is from a new Hero Arts Thanksgiving set. I tried to distress the edges of my main image and the sentiment. For the finishing touch I added some ribbon with a mini spiral clip from www.creativeimpressions.com. This was a fun challenge to start off my week with!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

This was the last card I completed yesterday for World Card Making Day. It was also a challenge on Split Coast Stampers. This challenge was to case a card from a member's gallery. Here is the card that caught my eye: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/730196?cat=500&ppuser=77415&perpage=96. It was raining all day long yesterday, and when I saw that cool card, I decided to case it! The changes I made were to switch stamp sets, not add brads in the corner of the main stamped image, and on the bottom of the card, instead of using designer paper, I used solid cardstock. Like I said, it was really rainy and gloomy here all day. I love fall, but when it's rainy fall weather, I just want to eat warm soup with homemade bread, and stay under a blanket on the couch all day. That wasn't an option, obviously, since I had cards to make! So I did the next best thing, and on my card included the sentiment: "Rain, rain, go away...." I absolutely love this new stamp I got from Paper Pretties. It was a fun day stamping!

World Card Making Day

What could be better than a day called World Card Making Day? Getting a present for it!!! Okay, so my husband doesn't know today is World Card Making Day (well, maybe he does now) and he doesn't know that when he brought me home something yesterday I was viewing it as my gift for World Card Making Day. But that's exactly what happened. When my mom was here visiting last week, I had a lot of fun using her embossing tools. I'd never experimented with embossing before, and it was a lot of fun! I'd been joking about wanting an embossing gun ever since she left. Well, for a little background information, we've been telling the kids that for the next few months when we go to the store, don't ask us for toys, but write a letter to Santa. Yes, I know it's a little early. But it happens. So I told my husband the other day that I guessed I'd have to wait until Christmas to be able to emboss. Poor me. I don't know if he couldn't handle the chatter for 3 more months, or just decided to be really kind and sweet. But either way, yesterday he came home with an embossing gun, and I was really excited to use it today for World Card Making Day.

Friday has been good to me!

It's Friday! My daughter was awesome for me today when we were running errands. And my son got to go play at a friend's house. So that bought me a little extra free time. And as I was checking out some of the blogs I like, I noticed that at Susan's Day Off Creations, she issued a combined sketch and color challenge! Oooh, my free time just turned into stamping time! Here is a link to her challenge:
http://susansdayoffcreations.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-month-blog-iversary-blog-candy.html
I was really excited to play along, and was glad for some extra inspiration. The main image stamp is from IBrakeForStamps.com. http://www.ibrakeforstamps.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=1906&Category_Code=SCEN. I really think it's a beautiful stamp, and there are a lot of versatile uses for it. The quote is from Cloud 9. The solid brown and blue paper are from Die Cuts With A View, and the patterned green paper is from scrapbooks.com, called Cutie Pie Flip-Flop Papers. On her sketch, she free-handed the line. But I used my BoBunny Flex Ruler I bought a long time ago, because it was on sale. The blue brads I had stored with my embellishments, and so I'm not sure of the brand. I colored the image with various Derwent Aquatone colored pencils I have. I hope you like what I've created.

A Limiting Challenge!

I am not a person who does a lot of embellishments on my cards. Generally, I just like a little ribbon here, or a tiny brad there. But the challenge today on Split Coast Stampers was to do a card with only paper items. No embellishing. No brads, eyelets, ribbon, or sparkle. Nothing extra unless it was made out of paper! The challenge did allow use of the cuttlebug, which now I wish I would have taken advantage of! I love the colors I used, but I wish the challenge would have allowed for a little something extra. I can see this card with some glitter, or at least a pretty pink ribbon added somewhere. I think it might perk it up a little. Also, I'm not sure if I'm loving just pink and white. But I've been wanting to participate in some challenges, and just went for it! Let me know what you think. To see the gallery for this challenge click here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/showgallery.php?thumbsonly=0&perpage=96&cat=&ppuser=&si=lsc188&thumbcheck=0&page=1&sortby=&sorttime=&limit=&way=. And don't worry, not everyone used just two colors like I did!!!

My First Challenge!

This is my first time ever to play along with a challenge over at Split Coast Stampers. The challenge for today was to use a quote or a poem. Sounded like a fun challenge to me! I love to make cards, but I don't send out a lot of them. My mom loves to send cards, though, so a lot of the ones I make I give to her. She also loves quotes. So one day I was at Joann's and all of their clear stamp sets were 40% off, and this included a lot of sets with quotes and poems. So I knew I should buy a few of the sets for cards to make for my mom. This stamp set is from Heidi Grace, and today is my first time to use this particular stamp from the set. I love the girl in Stampin' Up's Summer by the Sea. I can just picture her looking happily in love out over the hills. I don't have a scallop punch, but my friend punched me out a bunch of scallops one day, and I was happy to see that the quote fit inside the scallop quite well.
It was a lot of fun to play along with this challenge, and I think I'll be playing along more often in the future. To see the gallery of everyone's submissions for this challenge go to: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/showgallery.php?si=WT186&x=0&y=0

New Baby

A lady in our neighborhood had her first baby. This is the card I made to take when some other ladies and I take her dinner tonight. I just have to say that I really like how this card turned out! I love the Wash Day roller from Stampin' Up. I think that it makes such a cute baby card. Since she had a girl, I decided to use a pink and purple color scheme. I found this paper I've had in my stash for a while, and loved the colors on it. The card went together exactly as I wanted it to. I'm excited, because sometimes I have a card all planned out in my head, and it doesn't turn out the way that I think that it will. But this card did! In addition to the Wash Day roller, I used one of the sentiments from Stampin' Up's Happy Harmony. The cardstock is Die Cuts With A View and Bazzill Juneberry. The designer paper is from My Mind's Eye, and is called "Her Sweetheart." I only had white ribbon, so I used my Marvy marker in plum to get the ribbon to match. The sentiment also used the plum marker. The main wash day image is rolled on with Adirondack Cranberry ink. The clothes are colored in with various Derwent Aquatone colored pencils. I haven't added buttons on a card in a long time, so I really wanted to for this one. I love the way it all pulled together, and it's a great day to be a card maker!