Kissed Flowers

Today’s card is being featured on Stylin’ Stampin’ Inkspiration. The challenge was to create a card using the kissing technique. Have you ever tired the kissing technique before? It's so simple and really makes stamps more versatile. Take a more solid stamp, ink it up,  "kiss" it to a pattern stamp, and stamp your piece of cardstock. The I Think You're Great stamp set has two great patterned stamps to choose from.

I kissed my flower stamps to the flower patterned stamp from I Think You're Great. From there I built an all purple card. Can you tell that purple is my favorite color? I used four of the five purple hues from Stampin' Up. I just didn't get around to incorporating Blackberry Bliss.  After stampin the flowers, I added a die cut and stamped sentiment and my favorite embellishments: candy dots.

• Stamps: Crazy About You; I Think You're Great
• Inks: Wisteria Wonder; Perfect Plum; Rich Razzleberry; Elegant Eggplant
• Cardstock: Wisteria Wonder; Perfect Plum
• Accessories: Candy Dots
• Tools: Flower Medallion Punch; Hello You Thinlits

SSINKCC25: Pool Party, Hello Honey, Chocolate Chip

Today's card is featured over at Stylin' Stampin' Inkspiration and features a fun color challenge: Pool Party, Hello Honey, Chocolate Chip.

I wanted to incorporate Hello Honey, but alas! I was out of Hello Honey cardstock. What is a girl to do? Take a brayer and color some whisper white with Hello Honey ink. For the rest of the card, I wanted to be simplistic yet fill the card with embellishments. My favorite part is the gold sequins. Love them!

• Stamps: Flower Shop; Friendly Wishes; Petite Petals
• Inks: Pool Party, Hello Honey, Chocolate Chip
• Cardstock: Chocolate Chip; Pool Party; Whisper White
• Accessories: Gold Sequin Trim
• Tools: Pansy Punch; Petite Petals Punch; Brayer

Sunday Haul #28

My big Stampin' Up Holiday Catalog order came in this week. I'm super excited to play with these fun products.

• Cup of Cheer Stamp Set
• Thankful Forest Friends Stamp Set
• Six Sayings Stamp Set
• Timeless Elegance DSP
• Into the Woods DSP
• Into the Woods Cardstock
• Into the Woods Elements
• Black Glimmer Paper
• Happy Haunting Washi Tape
• Home for Christmas Enamel Dots
• Winter Wonderland Vellum Stack
• Seasonal Snapshot Project Life Bundle
• Old Olive Ink Pad
• Soft Suede Ink Pad
• Archival Black Ink Pad
• Real Red Marker

Mini Modified Notebooks

Today's project is one of my favorite non-card crafts. I love making modified notebooks! So for August stamp club, I decided to have my ladies make their own mini modified notebooks. For my own, I went with an antique look. A bit of map paper is perfect for that antique look. But the paper by itself looked a bit too plain. I took a brayer and added some blue and yellow ink. Much better! A little washi tape and a nice little sentiment finished off the card. 

• Stamps: Happy Happenings
• Inks: Lost Lagoon; Hello Honey
• Cardstock: Typeset DSP; Very Vanilla
• Accessories: Washi Tape (not SU)
• Tools: Label Punch (retired)

Butterflies Peeking Through

A good friend of mine is a fellow demonstrator. We have the same style in cards, but often buy different stamp sets and products. What if we occasionally borrowed each other's sets? Sounds like a perfect plan!  For August and part of September, I gave her my Homemade for You stamp set and Baker's Box thinlits while she gave me her Crazy About You stamp set and Hello You thinlits. While I had them, I had to make a few cards. The card below was taken from a sketch inspiration. I love how the pattern paper is tempered by the piece of white. But we also get the visual interest of the die cut "hello."  Very cute card!

• Stamps: Crazy About You
• Inks: Pacific Point; Calypso Coral
• Cardstock: Calypso Coral; Pretty Petals DSP; Whisper White
• Accessories: Candy Dots
• Tools: Hello You Thinlits; Medallion Punch

September 2015 Crafting Goals

A recap of last month’s goals:

• Catch up Arthur and twins’ PL albums — Success! Everyone is caught up to August 1st. Woohoo!
• Finish June and July PL pages — Success! I caught back up. On to August's pages.
• Complete a Week in the Life album — Fail. I have all my documentation, but pictures have not been printed and the album hasn't completely been put together.
• Inventory my completed cards — Success! Somehow I am lacking Birthday cards. And of course I need to make Christmas cards.
• Pull, price, and sell craft items for the garage sale —Success! I made a decent amount and got rid of a ton of old stuff. Plus, a preschool teacher took all my random scraps!

This month’s goals:

• Finish August PL pages -- The usual goal.
• Finish my WITL Album -- Since I didn't finish this last month, it's on the to-do for September.
• Reevaluate my SU wish list -- I need to figure out what I really want out of the annual and Holiday catalogs. This goal ties into the next goal.
• Brainstorm/plan craft classes/projects for September, October, November, and December -- Need to get organized now.
• Finish retreat projects -- There are a few things I need to make for retreat.
• Finish Arthur birthday party projects -- And even more things to make for Arthur's birthday. Seeing as these two events happen the first two weeks of October, I need to get these done.

Dino-rrific Birthday!

Today’s card is being featured on Stylin’ Stampin’ Inkspiration. The challenge was to create a a kids' birthday card. I just received the No Bones About It stamp set and couldn't wait to use it! Two of Arthur's toddler friends will be the recipients of these two cards.

For the first card, I decided on a boyish color palette featuring the triceratops stamp. I love the layering effect with the solid dino on bottom and the skeleton on top. Very cool look! Add a sentiment, some dirt, leaves, and party hats to fill out the space. I mounted the stamped piece onto a nice piece of polka dot DSP. Very cute little card!

For the variation, I repeated the layered stamping, but this time the skeleton was heat embossed. Notice that the skeleton isn't complete. I didn't see that the stamp picked up all the versamark until after I embossed it. My mistake! But I still really like the look of the partial skeleton.

• Stamps: No Bones About It
• Inks: Tip Top Taupe; Bermuda Bay; Watermelon Wonder; Cucumber Crush; Wild Wasabi; Island Indigo; Daffodil Delight
• Cardstock: 2015-2017 In Colors DSP; Bermuda Bay; Island Indigo; Whisper White
• Accessories:
• Tools: Versamark; Pearl Embossing Powder; Heat gun

Nutcracker Ornament

Today’s card is being featured on Stylin’ Stampin’ Inkspiration. The challenge was to feature one of the great products from the new Holiday Catalog. Demonstrators were able to preorder from the catalog starting on August 4th. I jumped at the chance to get some new products.

I snapped up the bundle including the Sparkly Seasons stamp set and Seasonal Frame Thinlits. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this stamp set. You'll be seeing a few cards made from this set in the next few months. I had a lot of coloring my nutcracker ornament. I stuck with the traditional red and green color palette, but the varying shades really make this card pop!

• Stamps: Sparkly Seasons
• Inks: Cherry Cobbler; Real Red; Mossy Meadow; Old Olive
• Cardstock: Merry Moments DSP; Old Olive; Whisper White
• Accessories: Seasons of Cheer Washi Tape
• Tools: Seasonal Frame Thinlits