birthday cards a plenty

During the year I had discovered that I did not have a deep enough stash of birthday cards to get me through the year. Or even a last minute party! What is up with that? So this summer I plopped some DVD's of my favorite shows that I had gotten behind on into the computer and went a crafting. I worked on coloring with pencils and all kinds of different stamp companies. Found some fun techniques to try and just had a really good creative time. Oh yeah... and caught up on some of my shows!

The first three cards are stamped using The Alley Way Stamps set Cake Day. They have some really cute stamps. Papers are all from my stash. Most of them from DCWV paper stacks and are at least two years old (and some older than that!) Added some Stickles and used the Lawn Fawn Stitched hillside borders dies as well as Simon Says Stamps Stitched Rectangles dies.

A little bit of fussy cutting, heat embossing and 3D tape and this one is done.

Lots more fussy cutting but so worth it in the end. Gold thread to tie the balloons together.

The little bear is from Simon Says Stamp Circle Friends set. The frame he is sitting in is from Lawn Fawn Flirty Frames. The sentiment and the tags are from Paper Smooches.

This next one is made from the same set of stamps as the bear above and includes the bee hive stamp. I have been having fun making shaker cards lately. Glad to see this trend return and with such creative ways of making them!

Of course creating shaker cards sometimes results in the shaker ingredients not staying where they are placed. This is especially true if you somehow manage to spill the contents while trying to remove the backing tape from the foam tape. augh!! Such a mess and nightmare. I will also mention that in this pile of stuff all over my desk included some glitter and we all know what happens once glitter is on the loose-- there is no stopping it. I am still finding it on current projects!!

Made this cute little penny glide/ roller card. The images are from Paper Smooches Party Posse stamp set. Love this little hamster dude. He looked pretty cute in his ball and even cuter once he was spinning around across the card!!

Don't fear, there are more cards coming. I am currently spending a few days actually cleaning and organizing and getting ready for back to school. Even though the kids are in denial that it is going to happen next Monday, I am ready. I miss hanging with the kids and watching them learn. Gonna be a good year. Hoping to keep a better work/ life balance this school year. Which means more time for crafting and blogging.... and oh yeah... the whole family time thing.

disney layouts recently done

These layouts I have been working on during the month of August. I would love to say I am making headway with this trip, but alas- I am a picture taker and then cannot decide which ones to use as they are all so amazing. So I will keep on trucking along and getting these pictures into a few albums and remember all the fun we had on our Walt Disney World 2008 trip.

We met Goofy, Daisy and Donald at Camp Mickey Minnie. I am pretty sure I have already scrapped the pictures of us with Mickey and Minnie. If not they will be coming! I have used PageMaps for each of these layouts. At least all of these pages started as a PageMap. Sometimes they don't end up looking like they started but that is my jumping off point.

Kira and her Mickey head ice cream. He was wonderful until he fell on the ground. It was very hot and we kept encouraging Kira to eat a bit faster or it would fall. She was a little upset but not too bad. She enjoyed herself.

Donald did not want to let go of my girl. So cute.

Hanging around Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Gorillas at the Animal Kingdom.

Off to see what other pictures need to find their way to paper at this moment.

happy happy birthday!

Back again with the rest of the birthday card creation craziness! You may notice that there are not twenty-five different cards posted on these two posts. That is because a couple of these I ended up doing doubles of since I liked them so much. But yes I did do all twenty-five cards!!

Added some stitching and ribbon to this card.

Cut my DCWV stripe paper at an angle to change things up a bit.

This one is created with washi tape. I loved the dots and the rainbow colors at the store so they had to come home with me. I heat embossed the sentiment in gold and added gold thread to create a rainbow with a pot of gold feel.

Pretty straight forward celebrate card.

Love my Fiskars hexagon punch!!

Letting the pattern paper do the work on this card. Also added three Fastenater birthday themed staples to the card.

These staples are holding down a piece of baker's twine.

Cutting out candles from the pattern paper. Silver heat embossing. Sewing and pop dots.

Again making the pattern paper do the work as the sentiment! Added a bit of white twine under a Fastenater staple. Foam dots under the candles. Sewing.

Now I have birthday cards for a bit which is good since my Disney pictures are screaming at me to play with them!! I have been totally ignoring them for a few weeks here. oh the shame!!

you say it's your birthday

I have been severely lacking in the making of birthday cards. I don't know why, but I have. Then comes a request to see my birthday cards and I have none to show. I mean... major eeek!!

I grabbed a package of prefolds with envies and went to work. I would like to say I whipped out the following twenty-five cards in a few days but it took more like weeks to get them all done. I did manage to get about twelve done to show and sell. The rest I finally completed last night. Next time don't try to create so many cards all at once!

New stamp set in action here (new as in sitting around forever and finally managed to drag it into the light of day) I stamped the honeycomb on the yellow hexagons with versamark ink to give the tone on tone look. The bee and the sentiment are both heat embossed with detail embossing powder. I added some glossy accents to the bees wings. The sentiment is raised with some foam squares.

Used one of my Spellbinder dies for the label to house the sentiment. Paper from a DCWV summer pack and a few blings for good measure.

Heat embossed sentiment. Fiskars border punch. Celebrate ribbon and foam squares.

Embossing folder (swiss dots) Spellbinders scallop circles, Studio G $1 stamps from Michaels, paper from DCWV and bling.

Pretty simple one here. I let the pattern paper be my sentiment.

Used a fiskars border punch to create this notebook look. White twine, bling and DCWV paper stack.

Stamp from a set I have had forever and have no clue who the manufacturer is. I didn't keep the backing paper.

Used silver detail embossing powder on this one.

This sketch/ layout was on the Operation Write Home FB page. I left off one of the elements as I didn't need a sentiment spot with this pattern paper. But I loved the look of the black matting on the next two cards.

Off to get the next group photographed for your viewing pleasure.

smooches = thank you

At least it does to me and this great cow stamp!! The stamp set is from Paper Smooches. Love their adorable characters and the phrases. The stamps work amazingly well. Even for someone like me who is not that great when it comes to stamping. Good thing I have lots of paper to practice on!! :)

Yesterday on the Paper Smooches blog a lovely prize package was being offered up to a randomly drawn winner for posting a Thank You card. I do believe that smooches does equal saying thank you!

I made this card for a sample for my card party last month. I LOVE the cow. I mean seriously- how cute. And pink. Well what fun is it to color in a white cow?? Absolutely none. I used my EK Success colored pencils that I have had forever to color the image. I don't think I am ready for Copics. I certainly know my hubby is not ready for me to be into Copics. And neither is the bank account. I can see that becoming a costly addiction/ necessity.

I used paper from DCWV summer stack from eons ago. I like how the pink pops out from the other colors. I used my nesties to cut the cow out, popped with pop dots and a paper punch for the sentiment. A little bit of rick rack I had in my stash and there you go... a heartfelt thank you card.

I would love to win the drawing. Really I would. I have one package of their stamps. I NEED more. :) I have a rather large list of Paper Smooches stamps that I would give my firstborn to own. Seriously... they are that amazing. Check them out.

May your day be full of smooches!!

do you like mice?

And I mean the cute ones. The ones NOT in your house or garage. The ones from House-Mouse are some of my favorites (besides the obvious love of Mickey). The images I used were from their e-card section. So darn cute!! I could NEVER and I really mean NEVER ever hope to color these images in from a stamp. I have my limits and know what I can and cannot do. Coloring in these adorable mice is nothing I could achieve. All the paper used on these cards is DCWV Nana's Kids stack. I love the colors and the images went along so well. 

The card box below is what houses these adorable mouse cards. I really hope the lady who receives this box of goodies enjoys them as much as I have.

May there never be mouse droppings in your house!

for an eight year old girl

I made the following cards for an eight year old girl. Her mom made the request at my card party and I had a total blast making these cards for her. The little girl's favorite colors are green, orange and purple. I mean could I possibly choose a better color palette?? So much fun and the DCWV Nana's Kids stack was full of that deliciousness. Plus glitter which all girls simply L O V E!!

I colored the owls with her favorite colors since they are such cute owls!! They are from Paper Smooches and are so much fun!! They have a ton more sets of stamps that I would kill to have. Of course I would have to win the lottery or suddenly fall into money excess but they are fun to drool over and dream about.

I used my Spellbinders Nesties to cut out the images that I stamped. And did some embossing with my Cuttlebug. Totally fun cards to work on!

Here is another of the Paper Smooches critters that I have. So darn cute!! I used the scraps from creating the other cards to do the background on the chickie cards. Plus using my border punch and sewing machine. And no card is complete without some bling!!

This is the card box that all eight cards are stored in. I am very happy with how this set turned out.

May your day be full of bling and happy colors!!