Better Beary Soon

I made this little card for the Cards for Kate drive that Jennifer McGuire is organizing for a little girl in Arizona who was just diagnosed a couple of months ago with brain cancer. It was the first time I inked up the Stampin' Up! Build-A-Bear sets in the Holiday Mini catalog (the bear set is called Beary Best Friends and the sentiment set is called Beary Nice Wishes). I think they are just adorable! I used my SAMJ to line the sentiment up in a square formation and then stamped the bear in the center and colored her in. A simple mat, brad, embossed heart, and button with linen thread finished off the look simply.

Supplies: (all SU!) Beary Best Friends, Beary Nice Wishes, and Canvas BG (retired) stamps; Ballet Blue, Old Olive, Rose Red, and Whisper White cardstock; Chocolate Chip, Ballet Blue, Bashful Blue, Close to Cocoa, Rose Red, and Versamark ink; Cutter Kit, Playground Button, More Mustard Brad, Heart to Heart punch, 3/16" Corner Rounder punch, Crystal Clear Embossing Powder, Linen Thread.

One Little Baby

I made this quick, cute card today for our friends, who just had their second baby girl. :) It went together pretty quickly because I had the flowers made already and the leaves were already punched. The white card base was even cut to size and folded. I just cut a length of the dotted Swiss Bazzill, adhered everything on the card, and stamped the SU! Curvy Verses sentiment in Basic Gray SU! ink. The SU! Sizzix flowers have some added texture from tone-on-tone ink in Pink Pirhouette and Pretty in Pink that I dabbed on with the sponge daubers. The yellow center is Barely Banana stamped with a texture stamp that has been long retired from SU! (The Art of Life). The green rick-rack is a spool that I got from Michaels a long time ago. Thanks so much for looking and for any comments! :)

Look What I Made!

For Gracie's room--a mobile! :) I started on it last night and didn't have an embroidery hoop, which is what I was originally intending to use for the round apparatus to hang the fishing line from for the embellishments to dangle. I was walking around in the basement and came across this tiara and figured that would be PERFECT and it WAS! :) I used a bunch of different things for this mobile: Quickutz Revolution Monarch butterfly die for the butterflies (cut out of pink SU! patterned paper that is retired and Certainly Celery cardstock that I inked with some Technique Tuesday pigment ink for a brighter color), Sizzix die from SU! for the flowers (Pretty in Pink and Pink Pirhouette with Barely Banana centers stamped in So Saffron), Sizzix die for the hearts that I stamped with the big heart from the SU! Always set (cut out of Kiwi Kiss and inked in the same color), Prima tiny flowers and Darice rhinestones, and the SU! Small star punch (used Barely Banana for the cardstock). I love the way it turned out and Gracie does too, so that's all that matters. :)

Bundle of Joy

I had some leftovers from my stamp camp and decided to whip up a baby boy card in the event that I might need it someday. :) I embossed the Kraft cardstock with my Cuttlebug embossing folder that I have had forever and never used because I didn't have a Cuttlebug. I watched a video on YouTube of someone using the embossing folders in their regular Sizzix machine (with converter) that I have had forever, so I was pretty excited to finally be able to use this. The blue dotted cardstock is Bazzill Swiss Dot and was in my scrap baggie. I used the retired Punches Three set for the "bundle" image and the wide oval punch to punch it out. The green ink I believe is a VersaColor pigment ink. The light blue base is Bashful Blue by SU! and I used dimensionals (also by SU!) to pop up the focal point. The dark brown inking on the Kraft piece and the tiny border on the Bazzill is SU! Chocolate Chip. Thanks so much for looking and for any comments! :)

Okay, one more....

This was the best attempt at the kids together...Gracie's fake smile. :)

TONS of pictures

There was good light in my bedroom yesterday and I had Gracie come in my room to try to snap some pictures. I had her lying on my bed and as soon as I snapped the shot above and the picture showed up in the window, the baby shot of Gracie at almost 6 months old immediately came to mind (please don't mind my early scrapbooking attempts--it was a little mini book I made and this was one of the BEST pages. LOL!) Does anyone else get chills by the similarity in the pictures, or is it just me? They were taken in the same spot, albeit now with better lighting and a better camera. I think I am going to make an updated mini book of all of the new Gracie pictures and store the two albums together. This is why I love to scrapbook! :)

The attempts at adding Ava were not so hot. Can't you just hear the loud CHEESE! that Ava is screetching? LOL!

Pretty girlie.

Yep, I am going to have fun making a new mini album with these pictures.

A funny one---I am pretty sure this look was accompanied with an exasperated, "Moooom!"

I am going to go kiss her cheeks now. :)

I will post a card later...I made one last night and I have to make another one today.

More Options

We also made this card at the Stamp Camp and I had the entire Teeny Tiny Wishes set out so that people could choose their own greeting. It's a pretty simple card, but striking I think. The colors really make it pop. :) We used Gable Green for the base, Tempting Turquoise for the bottom mat and the ink for the sentiment, Apricot Appeal ink for the flowers and ribbon (we used Pumpkin Pie marker to illustrate the details in the flowers), and Green Galore for the scallop oval piece that the sentiment is matted on. I had them tear the edges of both the turquoise piece and the white piece for some extra detail. The final project we made was this card: http://embellishedsimplicity.blogspot.com/2009/07/shoebox-swap-card.html

Again, thanks so much for looking and for any comments! :)

Another Stamp Camp Project

The Bashful Blue base doesn't open, it's just a piece of 5.5 x 4.25 cardstock that I adhered a 4 x 5.25 piece of white cardstock to after I stamped the images and attached the navy piece on with a silver brad (that way the brad back doesn't show and the back of the card is just a nice, smooth blue piece. I used two stamp sets: Razzle Dazzle (flowers, stripes) and Thoughts and Prayers (sentiment). The large flower image was stamped in the fifth generation and then the greeting was stamped over it with full-strength ink. I spritzed water on the yellow flower (cut with my Flower Layers #3 Sizzix die), crumpled it up, then unfolded it and rubbed it on the So Saffron ink pad to bring out the texture. It makes it look a little leather-like, I think. The darker blue is Not Quite Navy and the yellow flower is So Saffron. The pink ink is Pink Passion.

Thanks so much for looking and for any comments. :)

Whoo is One? Stamp Camp Options....

I had a request from one of my regular stamp camp attendees to start offering more scrapbooking options at my camps. To accommodate those who don't scrapbook, I designed a 6x6 scrapbook page that could be turned into a 3x6 card using the same supplies and the participants could do either project that best suited their needs. You could also make the 3x6 card a birthday card for a little kid by using the circle/number treatment that I used on the scrapbook page, but I used the Thinking of You stamp in my card example to illustrate how versatile stamps can be. :) All supplies SU! I used the Thoughts and Prayers set for the branch that the owl is sitting on and for the flower pattern on the Old Olive strip. That also showed the verstatility of stamps, because the Thoughts and Prayers stamp set is actually a sympathy set.

The owl was made with the wide oval punch, out of which I cut a tiny piece for the head using my 1 1/4" circle punch. One of the participants pointed out that if you had more of the resulting punched out shapes, they could look like leaves and I had a lightbulb moment and realized it could have been used as owl wings as well. If I did this project again, I would cut another one out just to use the pieces to make wings on the owl and that would make it even more adorable. :) I used the Boho Blossoms punch for the owl's feet. The design on the owl's belly was made with the new set Circle Circus and I used a retired alphabet for the red WHOO/IS/? The "Thinking of you" is also in the Thoughts and Prayers set. Bashful Blue/Old Olive/Kraft, and Chocolate Chip are the colors used for cardstock and Real Red is the red ink. Any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks so much for looking! I will post the remaining projects as the week progresses.

Ava's Pigtails

Her bangs are finally long enough to put her hair in pigtails and not have the rest of her hair look like a disaster! So cute. I took these really quick on our porch (which totally needs to be pressure washed, I am noticing in these pictures) before my Stamp Camp started yesterday afternoon. What cute girls I have. :)

Finally a card

I made this a while back at a meeting that my Stampin' Up! upline held. Everything came out of my scrap baggie. The base is Bazzill cardstock, the flower is I believe My Mind's Eye, the green CS is SU! Kiwi Kiss, and the rainbow is patterned paper that I cut out during that class that I took back in CKU (which I couldn't get to work on my layout, so it went in my scrap baggie). I have had the button for forever and I just cut a thin piece of blue cardstock to "thread" the button with and then adhered it with mini glue dots. The stamp is SU!, though I don't know the set name since it was my upline's. Thanks for looking and for any comments! :)

PS..I should have a bunch more projects to post next week...I am having a stamp camp on Saturday! :)

Gracie's in School!

First day of kindergarten! How do I have a kindergartner?! She loved it, although she said that she already knew how to do everything she "learned" today (making a bee, cutting). LOL!