Elegance Bird

It's time for more leftovers turned into a card! I know that you'll miss Mojo Monday as much as I do, but it can't be helped. I promise a return to "normal" as soon as I'm back in the states. This little black & white card was ever so simple to make. I reached into the jar of goodies again (it kind of reminds me of the island of misfit toys from Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer) & pulled out the embossed bird as well as the Tempting Turquoise circle. One of my stamping buddies had just used the Elegant Lines folder on Basic Gray with terrific results, so I thought I would try the same on Basic Black. That's one of the best parts of the Quarterly Quarter party: we all get to learn from each other. It's not like grade school when folks put up folders to keep others from copying! Instead, we get to use each other as spring boards in the creative process. It's great fun!

Look What a Sharpie Can Do!

Well, who knew? My friend, Marge, did for one. :) The other day she showed me the best trick with a Sharpie. Just color on top of Stampin' Up Basic Rhinestones and you can make jewels in whatever color you need! That's how I made the little red ones on this card. Isn't it fun? I've been waiting for them to come out with different color jewels but I guess I just wasn't being creative enough. Now I don't have to wait at all! Today is the very last day of Sale-a-Bration, so I wanted to use a SAB exclusive set for my Color Throwdown. I love these colors and will have to make another card with them soon. This one won't even make my display board since the set will be gone for good after today. That's the hard part of SAB. Thanks to all of you for making my Sale-a-Bration wonderful this year! I couldn't keep my stamping business alive without all of your support. Never fear, I have all sorts of fun planned for us to keep the stamping excitement alive through the whole year. Sale-a-Braion may be over, but the fun is just getting started!

Rejoycing in Christmas

I have several Christmas events coming up and I want to make sure that I have enough variety in projects so that folks can attend multiple events without repeats of ideas. That's one of the reasons I'm on such a Christmas kick as of late. I'm also just plain excited about all my new Christmas toys! For this one, I wanted to add a little shine without taking away from the image of the Holy Family. So, I added a touch of gold embossing to their halos and just a bit of our gold cardstock to back the sentiment. I also didn't color in the image fully in order to keep that simplicity. The image speaks for itself & I wanted to let it do just that. I was also on the lookout for cards that have a very complete feel to them, but that a new stamper could complete with little trouble. Sometimes it's hard for me to follow the simple rule of Keep It Simple Stamper!

Guest Book

Yikes, sorry about the glare on this one. I never claimed to have any skill at photography, but I've already given this to its proper owner so there isn't a chance for a retake.

One of my dear friends is hosting a reception for her stepson this weekend and asked if I would put together a guest book for them. It was a new challenge for me because I really didn't know what colors to use & because it's a larger format than I'm used to working with.

I wanted to do something elegant so I stuck with black & white at first. Then I tried adding red, but it looked like some sort of bad Valentine at that point. The solution came along with the UPS man. I ordered some of our brushed gold cardstock for Xmas cards and found it provided just the touch of elegance I was after. It also embossed in the Big Shot beautifully. There's a lot of embossing going on here between Big Shot use and heat embossing on the sentiment & the birds themselves. Sorry the photo didn't turn out better, but the end result worked well for the happy occasion. Whew! I had my fingers crossed on this one.

Thanksgiving in August

My husband named this one, can you tell? Today begins the great drive home. I think we're looking at about 13 hours total drive time for this round. A brief stop in Lexington on our way and then we'll be in Southern Illinois for our first parent visit. This card is one I definitely wouldn't have made without the "on the road challenge". This little leaf is one of the minor stamps from the Awash with Flowers set and I just picked it out because I wanted to make something different than the last two posts. That, and it's almost time for fall cards anyway. So, I started out knowing I wanted to use this image. Then i looked at the punches I have along and discovered that the leaf fits nicely in the new little oval punch from the Holiday Mini Catalog. Low and behold, that punch fits inside the 1" Circle Punch. It was meant to be! Lucky for me I had a few buttons in that odds & ends container that matched my impromptu color scheme. It all just fell into place. Versamark let me have whatever color ink I needed and the Elegance Wheel gave me a little something different for the top and bottom boarder. I'm excited to see just how much I'm able to do with so little. While I may get frustrated from time to time, it's just too much fun to see what I can come up with . I 've used Awash with Flowers so little before this challenge. Now I can use it all the time! To think I only have half of the set with me. Who knows what I could do with both?

Color Challenge Fresh Cut Note

Time to play with new toys! My first order from the new catalog has just arrived and in it were several new toys as well as LOTS of new colors. I recently came across a stack of Fresh Cut Notes that I had forgotten about and realized I haven't done anything with these little gems in a long while. They are a bit smaller than regular cards so the post office won't process them unless they are in a larger envelope, but they have this great flower pre-cut in them. It layers so nicely with the 5 Petal Punch. I think they would make great gift toppers.

Today's note uses the PPC Color Challenge of the week: Chocolate Chip, Rose Red, and Cherry Cobbler. I used my new Elegant Lines embossing folder & Elegance wheel to finish things off along with the sentiment from one of the It's the Thought hostess set. OH! And I finally got to play with my circle cutter as well to make the 3" circle in the Chocolate Chip. Easy as pie. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.