With Sympathy

I don't know if most of you know it but like so many stampers, I began my stamping passion with SU. Tonight I found out that my sister stamper and SU up-line, Beckie and her six children, lost their husband and father to a sudden illness. If you would like, I would welcome you in joining me to send thoughts and prayers to Beckie and her family during this difficult time.

Ladies of Leisure Card Challenge

Initially, I began surfing the paper craft blogs to find inspiration for my own creativity. What came as a wonderful surprise was the inspiration I found for my soul in the wonderful assortment of friends I have met through these blogs. To me, it is totally refreshing how you can take so many different people with diverse personalities and stages of crafting expertise yet communicate and share on a level playing field. We all know the BIG names- those gals on numerous design teams with many publications to their resume. The wonderful part is I feel I can e-mail them for crafting advice or just to share a similar life experience and they are so pleased to hear from me. No prima donnas here!

This brings me to today's post. I have 2 friends that have blogs. The first one, Chris of For Love of Paper, is the gal that got me to start a blog. I met her at my lss 3 years ago and she has been one of my best friends since. While her move to Texas a year and half ago (is that right, Chris?) doesn't let us get together and craft, we communicate via phone and e-mail often and those are treasured times for me. My other friend , Jill of Inkgenious Inklings, is a gal that I met from her blog. She actually lives in Alabama and although we have never met in person, yet (can you say road trip, Jill?), I feel that our personalities would click very well and great fun would be had by all!

Besides paper crafting and blogging, we share another thing in common- we are all essentially SAHM raising small children. How any of us (like so many of you) find time to enjoy our crafting boggles my mind. I like to say my hobby/passion/obsession helps me to hang on to what remains of my sanity and hopefully, makes me a better mom!

Since I cannot get together with these 2 super ladies, I decided the next best thing would be to offer a monthly challenge between the 3 of us (yes, we really needed something else on our plates- teeheehee.) It is our hectic, busy lives that inspired the name for our challenges The Ladies of Leisure Card Challenge- it's so absurd it made me giggle! We are going to try to post these once a month, rotating the hostess each month. Right now anything goes, as far as the challenge. One thing we all agreed on- this was to by low key, low stress! I am the hostess for the month of March, and I challenged Jill and Chris to make an Easter card which included glitter. This sweet little card will go to one of my great-nieces for Easter. I will post a mini-tutorial on the transparency glitter card technique that I used in the next day or two

I would love to invite anyone that would like to participate with the challenge this month to do so. In fact, in celebration of our kick-off month, anyone that leaves a link to their card in my comments (either SCS or their own blog) will be entered in a random drawing for some goodies (just thought of this as I am typing so I will post the candy tomorrow.) Now I must get to bed. I'm taking 23 Girl Scouts to Club Libby Lu tomorrow (please have a good thought for me and my assistant leader, Laura and probably the staff at Libby Lu, as well)! It's ALWAYS a Stampin' Good Time! Take care!

Happy Easter card recipe:

Stamps: Stampendous

Paper: Stamper's Select white CS, transparency, PP- K&Co. Wedding Multi Mat Pad

Ink: Staz-on Black

Accessories: Art Institute Glitter & Glue, May Arts ribbon, Cuttlebug, Nestabilities

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

Here is a super quick look at the Valentine's Day cards that I made for my family. The first one with the Stampendous Changito Monkeys Love Balloon is for our "little monkey," Rachel! None of my photos turned out very well today (go figure) so you cannot see how sparkly the red heart balloon is but after coloring the image with Copic markers, I painted the balloon with red Stickles. The background is stamped in Bashful Blue with one of my favorite CHF backgrounders- Gingham. The sentiment (C.C. Design Love Ya Much) is followed by 3 Hero Arts rhinestones. Rachel loved all the bling!
This second card is for Mary Elizabeth. I used a combo of 2 products that I LOVE- Happy Heart Day and Ginger Blossom PP. The cute little mouse is stamped on watercolor paper and then colored with a water pen and inkpads in Regal Rose, Groovy Guava, Ruby Red, and Going Gray. Since I couldn't let a 10-year-old girls Valentine be sans sparkle, I added Stardust Stickles to the little flower on this great big heart. The scallop on the PP was made with my corner rounder minus the guide and both the circle and scalloped circle were made with Marvy punches. Notice the cute background of River Rock. I broke in my brand new Swiss Dot embossing folder with my Cuttlebug. This is the only folder I have of the new releases- so far- teeheehee! The inside sentiment is from the set "To someone with a big heart!"- absolutely perfect for my sweet little girl!
Finally, a card for my best friend, my soulmate, my love. Dan is a engineer for NASA so I when I saw this little rocket image and sentiment from The Cat's Pajamas months ago, I knew this was what I wanted for his Valentine! After stamping the image in Andirondack Pitch Black, I colored it with Copics and yes, added some red Stickles to the little hearts tailing the rocket (what can I say, I was on a roll.) The little buckle on the May Arts ribbon was made by a Cuttlebug die and 1 1/4 inch circle punch. The Ballet Blue layer was embossed with a Cuttlebug heart folder and the base of the card is Summer Sun. A Fastenator was used to attach the ribbon flag with a "LOVE" staple. A simple, straightforward card for my favorite rocket scientist! Hope everyone else had a special day with their loved ones. It's ALWAYS a Stampin' Good Time! Take care!

Merry, Merry Penguins

Took a quick moment to post yet another Christmas card. I'm not particularly in the Christmas mood (don't want to rush glorious Autumn along) but I am playing to see what design I would like to use for mass production for my Christmas card list- you can't start too soon! I made this card the other day but forgot about it with all the chaos of last week and this past weekend. Anyway, these little penguins are called Penguin Games and they are from the Penguin Pals line by Stampendous. I colored the image with Copic Sketch markers then added Fun Flock, pompoms and Dazzling Diamonds to the image. My PP are Paper Salon that I won at the auction held by The Rubber Stamp Lady (lss) a few weeks ago. The bottom light blue paper is the reverse side of the plaid run through my Cuttlebug in the snowflake embossing folder then I added some Dazzling Diamond to some of the snowflakes with a Sakura Quickie Glue pen. The trim is by MM and the little gem brad is SU Ice brads. A pretty quick and straight forward card! A Stampin' Good Time to All!

Merry Merry Penguin Games card recipe:

Stamps: Merry, Merry, Stampendous- Penguin Games
Paper: Barely Banana, Shimmer White, PP- Paper Salon
Ink: Night of Navy, Adirondack- Pitch Black
Accessories: Copic markers, Cuttlebug, ribbon-MM, Ice round brads, Circle punches, Dazzling Diamonds, Sakura Quickie glue pen, Fun Flock, white pompoms from HL, red line sticky tape

Here is my answer to the Ways to Use It challenge on SCS Thursday. Julia chose Ribbon Revisited as the theme for this weeks challenge. Now I am a ribbon fanatic. Love it, love it, love it. So I had to play. I wanted to do something a little different and I remembered the little ribbon flowers that I had made and used earlier on my blog. My Bee trio had been sitting idle for a while so I wanted to use it. I keep thinking about bees and flowers and then I thought that the ribbon flowers were so light and airy which somehow turned into bees in tutus. I need a card for a little girl's birthday so this worked perfect for me. The bees are stamped with Palette's Black Noir then colored in with Stampin' Write markers. The wings are outlined with a Sakura clear Stardust pen and the whole image is punched out with my oval scalloped punch. The PP (DCWV's Pocket Full of Posies- thanks, Dianne) was attached to the Almost Amethyst panel and both were run through my Cuttlebug. Afterwards, I painted the swirls on the AA side with Frosted Lace stickles- the PP side comes with sparkle already on the page. For the tutus I simply sewed the top portion of the ribbon right below the selvage (is that the right word) then drew the string to bunch of the ribbon. This card is truly much cuter in person. Between my below par camera and my not so sharp camera skills, I couldn't do these little gals justice. Wishing everyone a happy, safe weekend. Take care!

TuTu Cute card recipe:
Stamps: Bee Trio- Stampendous, TT- Girls We Love
Paper: Soft Sky, Almost Amethyst, Whisper White, Regal Rose, PP- Pocket Full of Posies by DCWV
Ink: Noir Black- Palette, Stampin' Write Markers in Regal Rose, Almost Amethyst, Barely Banana
Accessories: Cuttlebug, Stickles, tag punch, 3/4 in circle punch, oval scalloped punch, ribbon, Stampin' Dimensionals, Quickutz

Beate's Sketch Challenge #6

Here is my interpretation from Beate's sketch challenge this past weekend. It did not picture very well but I actually liked the way it turned out in person. The ribbon is a rust color, not the funky orangey color that the pic shows. Having a great visit with family. I've been to several scrapbook and stamping stores and can't wait to get home and share with you all my finds!

Card recipe:

Stamps: Tres Jolie by Lizzi Anne, TT- stitches (can't remember name right now), EFF

Paper: Barely Banana, Naturals White, PP- Crate Paper

Ink: Barely Banana, Chocolate Chip

Supplies: scalloped circle punch, coluzzle, colored pencils w/ gamsol, ribbon, quickutz

To Bee or not to Bee- TeeHeeHee

That was my question. When you get too many wonderful supplies, treasures if you will, the down side is what to play with first?!? My good friend, Dianne, and I went runnin' around today and stopped at both the lss and then Hobby Lobby. There was so.... much to choose from. At The Rubber Stamp Lady my Stampendous Bees had finally arrived! Other folks were enviously eyeballing those, I'll tell ya! They had, also, received several stamps from the Changito collection (cute little monkey that has been showing up on Beate's blog lately) and since I have my own little monkey, aka Rachel, at home, one of those little guys had to come home with me, too! Once Upon a Scrapbook had just received the new Funky Vintage lines Lizzie and Ruby from MM and, boy, are the colors yummy. I had to have some of the papers and the ribbons from the Lizzie line, along with the paints that go with them. Oddly enough the paint colors remind me very much of the new In Colors that SU will be releasing the first of July- hummm, pretty neat. My pics not the best but if you get a chance to see them up close and personal just see what you think.

So picture this, Hubby and oldest daughter are at the driving range, youngest daughter is off to bed and here I am with time for myself- YAHOO! I have one thing on my agenda- make a card for Beate's weekend sketch challenge using my new goods. I'm sitting there looking at everything. Oh, I forgot to mention, when I got home a box was waiting for me from Papertrey Ink with my new Green Thumb set, a Noir Palette ink pad, and some of their white CS that I've been hearing so much about! Can you see my dilemma? Any empathy out there- probably not!*wink* For some reason, my little Bee Daisy was calling me so I gave it a go. I had so... much fun making this card. I used my new MM papers & ribbons and even attempted to shadow my image for the first time. This is definitely going to take some practice. I used my Going Gray marker and a blender pen which I think I can eventually get the hang of (I want to be like Julee Tillman when I grow up, her shadows are super.) I really played around with the 3 images down the left hand side of the card. I tried different buttons, and button with ribbons . I finally remembered that I had a Quickutz die that resembled the daisy the bee is carrying so I cut them out using Regal Rose and So Saffron, gave them a coat of a Sakura Glaze pen and this is the results. What a fun sketch to play with. Well, it's getting late so I'd better say Take care!

Recipe for Bee Daisy card

Stamps: Stampendous- Bee Daisy, Papertrey Ink- Little Lady

Paper: Cool Caribbean, Really Rusy, Regal Rose, So Saffron, Chocolate Chip, White from Papertrey Ink, PP-MM Funky Vintage Lizzie

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Stampin' Write markers in Chocolate Chip, So Saffron, Rose Red, Going Gray

Supplies- scalloped punches, ribbon- MM Funky Vintage Lizzie, Quickutz, Sakura pens- clear Glaze and clear Stardust, blender pen, Stampin' Dimensionals