Swapping again?

I joined an ATC swap last month hosted by Michelle Giraud (flaxychick on SCS), in which there was a LO that had to be followed. I used to swap ATCs regularly on a group board with some super-talented folks (Barb, Jessica, Bobbie, Breedeen, Holly, Shelley, Heidi...you know who you are!) but I had never participated in one where you had to follow a set LO. It was more difficult than I like to admit! I have a few Alice In Wonderland stamps that I adore, but don't get frequent use, so I brought out the "Drink Me" Alice stamp from StampFrancisco. I colored her in using a blender pen and an ink pad, sponged the edges, added four eyelets and matted her on a piece of cool caribbean that I cut out with scalloped scissors. The background is done using Basic Grey PP (Stella Ruby, I think), and a small piece of brown grosgrain ribbon.I had to make 10 for the swap and I forgot to make one for myself! Arg. Now I don't have one for my collection. Does that ever happen to any of you?
I think the last time I dug out my Alice stamps, I made a cute BD card for my sister, here. that was LAST April! Poor Alice, she needs more love than that!

And now, for something...

...completely different!
I'm a huge Easter fan. The eggs, the bunnies, the baby chicks, the black jelly beans (YUM!), well just about everything! Although we don't focus on the religious side a lot in our home, we have family members who do, so Easter Elegance by Verve is the PERFECT stamp set for me. The fun, frolic-filled side of Easter, and the more subdued, thoughtful side all wrapped up in a single set that works both ways. Using the egg stamps, I created this simple card to emphasize the fun in celebrating the Easter holiday.The black card base really sets off the bright colors of the eggs, and the pink ribbon seemed just the right touch. I stamped the eggs numerous times with many inks, cut them out and pop dotted them up on small white scalloped ovals that I cut with my Nestabilities. I stamped the sentiment on a larger scalloped oval, used a marker to add some pink details, punched out two slots for my ribbon and it was done! This card was made with my MIL in mind because she is a pastor. I knew I wanted to focus on purple (being the eminent color of Easter due to it's symbolism of royalty, penitence and sorrow), and soft yellow seemed to be a good highlight color. I stamped the beautiful, swirly cross on an oval and added some sparkly touches with a glitter gel pen and a mini white button brad. Then I matted it with many more ovals and adhered it on top of the patterned paper I made with the sentiment stamps. The main sentiment is embossed with white EP, and the background is stamped with purple chalk ink. I added some faux stitching using a white gel pen and a thin yellow ribbon.
If I get this card in the mail today it should just about make it to her by Easter!

My Birthday.

I had a great birthday this year! My husband woke me up at midnight singing "Happy Birthday" to me and holding a cupcake with a candle in it. I was slightly dazed and he said at first I kept trying to "put the light out" with my hand! LOL! What can I say, I was sleepy. He made me open my gifts right then and there in the middle of bed too! He searched out and purchased an amazing, high-quality rolling tote for craft supplies and filled it to the brim with some awesome crafting stuff. Brads, buttons, punches, magnetic storage, Prismacolor MARKERS, embellishments, etc. I was in awe. And he also gave me a super nice, long sleeved tie-dye T-shirt.
In the morning we drove to my mom's and she made me a BD lunch that was super yummy. And that evening she and my sister watched the kids while my best friend and my husband and I went out and had a ball! We ate an incredible meal at this fun restaurant that brews it's own beers, and then we bought the ingredients for Dessert Nachos and went back to my mom's and opened presents and chowed down on dessert. My BF got me a new pair of Chucks (Converse) that I just adore! And also Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium. I love, love, LOVE that movie. And also the soundtrack to the musical Once! I've been listening to it non-stop! So it wasn't so bad to turn 31.
ETA: Recipe for Dessert Nachos: Take flour tortillas, spray or brush with melted butter, sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and sugar, cut into wedges, bake in oven until crisp (350 10-15 minutes, turning over once). Arrange them on platter, top with vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, fresh chopped fruit (kiwi, bananas, pineapple, cherries), some whipped cream, and more cinnamon sugar. Gorge yourself.

Crazy Hectic!

OK, it's not that I haven't been feeling creative. I've just been so incredibly busy that I don't have time to sit down at the computer and edit photos and type-up blog posts! Has it really been a week since I posted?
Here are the cards I had my stamping/card class make last Tuesday night. And to prove that I'm truly busy, I had to take pictures of them in the early hours of the morning, on top of my car, after I got to work! (see all the snow in the BG?)

I love this PP (DCWV). I like any striped paper actually, but the fun colors in this inspired me to design a fun kid-friendly card. Marigold, Caribbean and a few other colors make it nice and bright! Stamps by SU.

The idea for this card was totally inspired by Alli Miles. She made this adorable owl card awhile ago that just stuck in my head! Now, that black ribbon that you see on my card is NOT the actual ribbon I gave my students. they got the nice, quality, black stitched ribbon! LOL. Bird stamp by Autumn Leaves, large polka dot BG by CHF, sentiment by Verve Visual. This card was inspired by one I saw on a blog last week also. I hadn't ever inked up my strawberry stamps from PTI's Green Thumb set, so I dug 'em out and put them to use! The red on the bottom is CHF's Burlap Backgrounder, and the rest of the stamps are PTI.
Another card inspired by my blog hopping last week, but I don't know who. Any ideas? Bazzill card base, CHF stamps, Zig markers for ink, SU cardstock.

Thanks with bearing with me while I deal with being sick, taking care of two sick kids & a sick husband, doctor visits, parent-teacher conferences, teaching my friend Meagan how to budget grocery shop and meal plan on a weekly basis, work a regular 40 hour week at my job, clean my house, make three meals a day for 4 people, pay bills, feed pets, teach a class, fend off inquiries from family and friends about when I'm coming to visit, and..oh, yeah..I turn 31 tomorrow. YIKES! Beware the Ides of March....

Butterflies galore!

So when dropping off my littlest munchkin at daycare early this past week, one of the teaches asked me if I was the one "who did scrapbooking and stuff". Turns out she wanted a set of invitations made for her cousin's Bachelorette party. She said her cousin liked butterflies, and when I pressed her for some colors, she said the bridesmaids would be wearing black. So without much to go on, I created four samples for her to choose from. This one is covered with glitter, but it just doesn't show up in the photo. Wing stamps from Sunday International, vines from Rhonna Farrar (Autumn Leaves), and sentiment from PTI.
This was my favorite sample! I loved the celery DP and the wing stamps used on this one. The wings are from SundayInt. again, and the sentiment is based on a SU stamp that I have ordered but hasn't arrived yet. (I just created a look-alike in Word and printed it out.)

The layout for this design was CASEd from this card, and I used SU's desiger prints PP and CS, Rhonna Farrar butterfly stamp and PTI sentiment again.The colors and LO for this sample were also cased from here. I used the same SU look-alike (printed in Word) sentiment just to give her the idea. The butterfly stamp here is Verve Visual.

So I dropped them off to her and let her stew on which one she liked and wanted reproduced. I will find out on Monday!

Butterfly in the sky...

...I can go twice as high. Take a look, it's in a book, a Reading Rainbow!Surely some of you will remember that show from when you were a kid? I used to LOVE Reading Rainbow, and whenever we went to my older sister's house or my grandparents I would immediately ask to watch it (because as a kid I had no idea of timeframes that tv shows ran in!). I think I had a small crush on LeVar Burton.

Ok, here's where I admit something. *deep breath* I've never liked butterfly stamps. Too froofy, silly, typical, whatever...I didn't like them. Only used them when I absolutely HAD to. Well, here's my confession: I like them now! Shhhhhh. Don't tell, ok? I have a reputation to uphold here!

I created this card for my stamping class ladies too. You should hear how they all groan when they see designs like this! They HATE cutting out ANYTHING! But when they were all done with this one, they loved it, so I rest my case. *wink*
It was fun stamping the butterfly in black on the red nestabilitie rectangle, and then cutting out 4 pairs of wings to adhere on top. I then cut off all the overhanging wings except for one. I used SU's red and sage CS and PTI's white. The wings were stamped and cut out from a piece of Cosmo Cricket PP, from the Dutch Girl collection. The ribbon came from Big Lots! All stamps are Verve Visual, and the PP can be found there too! I would normally have added a bit more to this card, were I sending it out, but it was just right for my class. It was SO hard not to add some sparkle or glitter to those butterflies!
Wait till you see all the butterflies I have to show you tomorrow! Good thing I like them now!

Bring out yer dead

I dug out some of my very first wood mounted rubber stamps the other day. Real pressed flowers from Hero Arts. Although I've been making cards since I was small, I only got into using stamps on them about 5 years ago. And these were some of the first one's I ever bought. I used them almost exclusively for many months!This is the simple card I designed for my stamping/cardmaking class on Tuesday. I think the ladies had a lot of fun using these stamps and all the different versacolor ink cubes I had out for them to try (15 colors!). The polka dot background is from CHF, and the sentiment stamp is from Verve. I used SU's Marigold and Bayou cardstock, and PTI's stamper select white.

I also showed the class the first card I ever made using rubber stamps, but I'm NOT showing it here, so don't even ask! *blushing*

Easter Eggs

I set this up to post automatically this morning, but it didn't work...*pout* I thought Blogger finally got around to enabling us to schedule posts!? Oh well...

I played so much with my new Verve Visual set, Easter Elegance, that I think I've made too many Easter cards! I love 2-step stamping, and this set is perfect for it. I stamped the egg outlines first with brown Staz-on and then inked up the individual egg centers and stamped them on top. Because these are clear photopolymer, it's so easy to see where your outlines are and make them line up perfectly.
The PP is from a new company called Scribble Scrabble, and Verve sells it! I like the colors in this collection (called Felicity), they match SU's sage and chocolate spot on!

I made the first card and then decided to give it some more "umpfff", so I made a small panel with more PP and some gold eyelets to place underneath the egg oval. Everything else stayed the way it was.

Staple it together and call it fair-weather...

...um um. "Jack Johnson"

So it's been a while since my last post, but that's not because I wasn't creating or stamping...I've been out of town for work and haven't had access to my personal PC. Did ya miss me?

I created this card for the release of the newest Verve Visual stamps. The set I used here is called Thankful Blossoms and it has so many possibilities! I really like this set a lot. For some reason, the leaves and stems on this card are not showing up as the correct color, but I promise IRL they match the ribbon!
This was a really simple card to make, but it packs a punch too! Go check out the other samples in the Verve Visual gallery, you may just be inspired to create something AMAZING!