This week in cards with my little stamping buddy Rylee.

I've had such a busy week with my card making.  I started out on Sunday, stamping with my buddy, my niece Rylee.  

She's such a joy to have in my craftroom.  We decided that she needed her own space so we spent Saturday finding her a folding table and chair that she could set up every time she comes over.  That way she can spread out all of her stuff and just leave it up for her entire visit so she can get creative any time the mood strikes.  This also fits her so much better.  No more balancing precariously from a stool at my counter high table.  And she can now stand to do her stamping so she can line things up so much easier.  This table and chair tuck away nicely behind the door also.  Perfect fit!

  So...I guess you'd say my craftroom has officially become "our" craft room.  

I also taught her how to use my best friend MISTI.  She was over the moon happy about that!  She made a one layer card that turned out awesome and it was so much easier with the MISTI.

I've been working on so many card projects myself this week that my head is spinning.  It's Christmas card time again so I have made up about a dozen different designs that I'll be posting here sometime soon.  I've also found some time just for some fun cards.  Birthday cards are always a favorite of mine, especially when they involve cake and balloons.  I used MFT's sketch #182 for this cute lil' shaker card along with their awesome Piece of Cake stamp set (notice the cute little candles stamped in the background?).   LOVE!

I came across this awesome Birthday Centerpiece die from My Favorite Things and absolutely love it!!  Clean and simple all the way!

I did a fun resist watercolor technique for this card mixing some of my older Martha Stewart stamp sets along with some Technique Tuesdays word dies and a cute friend stamp from Catherine Pooler's Stamp of Approval Friendship box.

A couple different stamp sets from Technique Tuesday caught my eye this week.  Actually I've been eyeing them for a couple months but finally broke down and ordered them on Monday because they're just so darn cute!  First the Chickadees.  Love, love, love these little whimsical birds!  

Then, look at this adorable little fan!  It has the cutest sentiments with it that make me excited to make more cards.  I'm also loving that wave background stamp from My Favorite Things.

Well, that's my week in cards.  Keep your eyes peeled for some awesome Christmas cards, coming soon.  I'm excited to be trying out some fun, new stamps and dies this year and can't wait to show you!

Have a great weekend!

Christmas in September?

Cardmakers around the world are gearing up for their biggest card giving season.....Christmas!  I usually start dabbling in designs by September.   With around 50 cards to make and send by December, a three month jump on the holiday relieves a lot of pressure which makes it a much more enjoyable experience for me. Sometimes I try to come up with simple designs that I can reproduce and will go through the mail easily.  Other times I just throw caution to the wind start piling stuff on for the fun of it.   If I really like a card I will make up to five in a similar design but most of the time my cards are original.

Today I'd like to share my first two Christmas cards for 2015.  First, a more traditional style card that doesn't have a lot of layers or a lot of bulk.  This is a card that I will definitely revisit when it comes time to really produce the masses.  I think I'd like to change up the colors a bit though and make them each a little different.  

 I started this card by stamping the first layer with the Diagonal Stripes Background stamp from My Favorite Things.   I used WPlus9's  awesome Woodland Wreaths stamp set to layer this wreath on a white background and then used a Lil' Inker Designs Stitched Mats Rectangles die to cut it to size.   The sentiment is from LID's Instant Camera: Christmas stamp set.  I raised the white stamped panel with some dimensional tape and then sprinkled the wreath with some diecut sequins using Mama Elephants Confetti dies and some gold foil cardstock.

This card has a few more details with less stamping and more diecuts.  I used LID's Long and Skinny Rectangles to add the stitched border on the red piece.  By the way, isn't that red fabulous?  It's Simon Says Stamp's Lipstick Red.  I love it!  Anyway, I cut the white piece with LID's Anytime Tags die and stamped it using WPlus9's Just Geometric Triangles.  I encircled one of  WPlus9's Stag Trio diecuts with a Tim Holtz's Scribbles and Splats Thinlets die cut out of gold foil cardstock.  Once again I used Mama Elephant's Confetti die for the sequins.  That awesome wide black and white striped paper on the side is from last years Heidi Swapp Believe Collection.

Well, I'm off to make some more Christmas cards.  Thank you for stopping by today.  Have a great day!

September Mix

I started out this month of September with a whole mix of cards.  Take a look!

First I used a new adorable stamp I ordered from Art Impressions.  I really love their stamps because they're so easy to color with my Kuretake Zig markers.  This little owl is the perfect size!  I plan to make a few of these to keep in my stash.  They are easy to personalize by adding the number later.

This little Thank You card I'll call my cheater card.  I picked up a stack of Me & My Big Ideas card fronts at Michael's a few months ago because they just looked like something great to have on hand for a quick thank you card.  They come in a pack of 36 assorted designs and colors. All I added was some dimensional tape, My Favorite Things Hip Clip die cut and some adorable flowers using Casual Friday's Friendly Flowers dies that I received in Catherine Pooler's Stamp of Approval Box.   I thought these card fronts would be a great tool for my niece Rylee when she makes her next batch of thank you cards. 

For this note card I was inspired by a card that Catherine Pooler did using this great faded stencil background technique.  It's a great way to add depth to a one layer card.  I stamped and embossed some sequins in silver to sparkle it up a bit but still keeping it one layer.

This was definitely my week for clean and simple cards.  I did a little chevron stenciling to add pattern to these accents and then added them to a crisp white background.  The layered Paper Smooches rose was sparkled up a bit with a clear Wink of Stella glitter pen.  To finish it up, a simple hello sentiment from Technique Tuesday. 

Playing with these little puffy dimensional fish stickers that I've had in my stash forever I went for an under the sea/aquarium look for this shaker card.  I don't usually use stickers  but I had these left over from a project I did a couple years ago.  I'm proud to say none of them went to waste.  Not even the poor little guy who's swimming in the wrong direction.  ;) 

That's my week in cards.  Thanks for stopping by.  See you next week!

Keeping it fun!

With all of the beautiful techniques out there and gorgeous, frilly stamps with flowers and lace, sometimes I can get a little too focused on making girly cards.  But when I look at the whole picture of cardmaking I can see that there is an area where I need to focus on sometimes, just to keep it light and fun.   Back in the "old days", when I use to buy my cards in the store, I always went for the humorous cards.  Cards that would make the recipient chuckle a little.  Make them smile.

These days, I find myself searching through the stores for humor again.  This time, instead of cards I'm searching for stamps.   The snarky sayings and the comical scenes are what I'm lacking in my card supplies and they don't seem to be in abundant supply in the card world either.  Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places?

Well anyway, I thought I'd share a couple light cards with you.  Art Impressions have an awesome line of stamps that have a humorous side.  These little Fainting Chickens caught my eye not only for the cute factor but also because they looked super easy to color with my Kuretake Zig Real Brush markers.

Have an awesome weekend and don't forget to SMILE!

Friendship

This week I'm celebrating friendship with a whole bunch of new coordinating stamps and dies that came in a pretty little box marked Stamp of Approval.  It's a whole box of goodies that Catherine Pooler put together over at Stamp Nation and her website CatherinePooler.com.

Just look at all of this fun!!

I actually received this box over a week ago and just got the opportunity to really dig in and play with it on Sunday.  I whipped up a few different cards and boy do I mean different!  Take a look.

I did a masking technique for this card using a die cut tag image.  I then used Eva's Favorite Flowers to stamp the masked off area.  To accentuate the tag shape I blended a  light blue haze around the edge.

I blended some pretty blue distress inks together on this tag and used Casual Fridays Love Ya die for the sentiment.  Isn't that Curtis background stamp so cool, adding a little touch of bubblegum pink?

I used the Friend stamp set to make the floral background for this card.  Using the stitched diagonal die from Lil' Inker Designs I was able to create a focal point with some of the same flowers in bright blues.

Another use for that awesome tag die set is to make it into a shaker card.

And I saved this sweet little Love Ya  Sistah for last.  I am really loving those flower dies.  There are so many great ways you can layer them.

  I think Catherine did an awesome job putting this box together.  Everything coordinates so beautifully.  The possibilities are endless.

Thanks for stopping by!