Candle Bag

It's so lovely to have all of my toys available to me again! I had fun with the "on the road challenge", but it's also great fun to know you can do whatever it is you think of with out considering which colors/punches/ribbon you have with you. This little bag is part of today's Bag Theme Class. It's both simple and fun. Just take two 5 1/2 squares and adhere them to the sides of a paper lunch sack that you've trimmed to 5 1/2 in length. Such a great size for little gifts and the lovely thing about gift bags is that they are often reused again and again. That way you get much more life out of our creation!

Happy Birthday Matthew!

It's hard to believe that my youngest nephew is a year old already, but, then again, he was operating his own crib music last night while we were babysitting as well as giving the cabinet locks a good test. So, I suppose it is time for a birthday!

I found myself with a little unexpected extra time this morning, so I took advantage of it. I often am just too lazy to do much cutting out, but it makes such a difference, don't you think? I created a stencil for the #1 using clip art I found on-line & added a special touch using the polka dots from Pick a Petal. Always a favorite!

This birthday card will be the first of several kid focused cards I hope to create. In fact, I'm offering Kids' Cards as one of my choices to hostesses for August & September. Stampin' Up is having an excellent deal for hostesses in the month of August where they add $25 to the hostess benefits of any workshop that has more than $350 in sales. That means you would get $65 of free stuff! I'm all about taking advantage of extra free goodies, so contact me today to set up your own stamping adventure for August! Meanwhile, keep an eye out for other kid focused projects from me. My Fox & Friends stamp set is on its way and it has all sorts of possibilities...

Pick a Petal Color Challenge

So sorry for my disappearance last week! I'm back now & I'm loaded up with projects for next week's posts. No more disappearing act for me.

I'm really excited about today's project. Every now and then I make a card that sort of makes me giddy. It starts out pretty much fully formed in my head & then actually works when I start playing with paper. Today was one of those days! The Elegant Eggplant square opens up for writing the message instead of the full card. It's always fun to switch things up just a little bit.

The folks over at PPC picked a batch of colors that I just adore together: Early Espresso, Chery Cobbler, So Saffron, and Elegant Eggplant. Two of the four are brand new colors (available July 1st) and I am having such fun playing with the new color selections. In fact, I'm having such a good time with it that my theme class for July will be Color Creations featuring the new offerings.

Hello Baby Trike/ Mojo Monday 142

It is still Monday for a few more hours, so it's not too late for me to join the folks at Mojo Monday. As always, they provided an excellent sketch to get my stamping week started.

As I have been doing lately, I already had a little bit of an idea about what elements I wanted to work into today's sketch before I saw it. The little trike from Pedaling Past has been on my mind & I really wanted to make it a part of this month's Baby Card theme class. I also thought it would be a great match to pair that trike with some of our retiring (and in the case of Real Red, more enduring) Bold Bright colors. Add these bits to today's sketch and this is what pops out. At least, that's how it worked for me!

Mojo Monday 136/ Daisies Mother's Day

Whew! I struggled with this one. It wasn't because the sketch was hard, but I made things more difficult than they needed to be. It's all because of the watering can. At first, I tried to design the whole card around the color of the watering can and, let me tell you, that didn't work out at all!
Now, if I had time, I would go back & make that silly can a different color. However, I'm already running late thanks to my color redesign. So, it's off to work for me!