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.

party for a thirteen year old

Yup. Somehow I have managed to raise myself a female human being to the ripe old age of thirteen!! Amazing!

We are having a sleepover this Friday to celebrate this achievement. I dug out some new stamps and went to work.

The top and bottom purple swirl is from a Studio G $1 stamp set in my stash, and the party information is a stamp I picked up at Michaels by Delta/ Rubber Stampede. Perfection!

I used my new Paper Smooches Spectrum stamps and dies for the unicorn and cloud as well as the small hearts I stamped. The shadow under the unicorn is from the Paper Smooches Shadows stamp set. I didn't have any gray ink so I stamped off the image once and then stamped it on the front of the card. The party! sentiment is from a Studio G $1 stamp set from my stash.

Kira colored in each unicorn in different colors using her colored pencils. Sorry for the blurry images I have no idea what happened! They all looked so crisp when I was taking the pictures!!

I added two different clear glitters from my Stickles collection. I have thought about getting a Wink of Stella glitter pen but with my LARGE Stickles collection I have a hard time justifying that purchase at this time. I placed some Stickles on one of my acrylic blocks and used a paint brush to apply the Stickles. Tried to keep the glitter from being too thick and lumpy that way.

The cute smile face comes in the Spectrum stamp set and I love how it looks on the cloud!! I popped the cloud up with some foam tape. I used some purple spray ink from Recollections- purple shimmer on the background which came out so cool!!

All of these invitations were handed out and we are going to a FULL house of teenagers this Friday. Hoping Kira's room can handle that much estrogen for the night. Gonna be a great night.

valentine's day cards

I had a fun time creating some Valentine's cards this year. I usually forget to make them but this year I was ahead of the game. So far ahead in fact, I was even able to mail some out to family and friends!! I know amazing!!

These ones below I used my Sybill (Silhouette) to cut out the circle accents. There were three of them which is where I got the hearts that are on the front of the cards. But I liked these two styles better so they made it onto the cards. I added some stickles to the red hearts. The sentiment is heat embossed with white powder. I was happy with myself for getting these to turn out pretty close to what I had in my minds eye.

These next ones were so much fun to make. I created the background myself using one wooden stamp for the large red hearts ($1 bin at Michaels), the pink hearts are from a $1 acrylic set from Studio G and then inside the red hearts there are clear embossed hearts that I had from one of my Paper Smooches stamps sets. Pretty sure it was the sewing themed set.

I then used another wooden block $1 stamp for the 'with love' circle. I heat embossed that as well. Added a bit of twine and called it done. 

I shall post more tomorrow. Lots of stuff going on around here. Have you heard there is a HUGE vote coming on March 11th?? Make sure you vote yes for the new school. Thanks!!

Even the minions know we need a new school!!

happy 3rd anniversary paper smooches

If you have seen lately, I have been having a massive love affair with Paper Smooches stamps. I had one set that I bought eons ago at my LSS and was so sad that I couldn't find them anywhere else. 

And then I found them online!! oh what a happy happy day  for me!! But not my wallet. Since then I have slowly started collecting them. It is really really hard to collect them slowly as they are constantly releasing new images that I feel I MUST own..... NOW!!

While their stamps are dreamy and wonderful, they have dies that coordinate with their stamps!! I kid you not! And those dies are equally amazing to own. To be honest, I have one set and I adore using them and cannot wait to own more (but I have to wait since that money tree in the backyard is not producing at the moment)

Anywho.... join in on the anniversary celebration going on this month with Paper Smooches. You will not be sorry. Trust me!!

Paper Smooches blog

Paper Smooches store

Paper Smooches videos

snowman thank you's

Playing around on Pinterest to find projects for Alex to do had me coming across some fun thumb print stamping ideas. One of which was 'stamping' a snowman. Alex then decided he didn't want to "Build a Snowman" (have you seen Disney's Frozen?? We love Olaf around here). I didn't let that stop me!! Then I was thinking I had some foam circle stamps that would probably work for snowmen and what do you know... they did!!

Here are the six guys waiting for me to finish them up. I stamped the two circles with white paint and let them dry. Used one end of my dry embossing tool to create their eyes and smiles and an eraser on a pencil for the buttons in black paint. I grabbed some scrap orange cardstock and cut the carrots. Nothing precise about them, just eyeballed them to fit on their faces.

Here are the cards completed. I should mention I created the snowmen on a smaller piece of Kraft cardstock and then attached that to the card front. Worked out much better for me since I don't like the look of ribbons and such poking on the inside of the cards I create. One of my pet peeves.

Close up/ side view. The one banner on the card in front was the first one and didn't work out exactly as I had wanted it but you can see I improved the placing of the banner on the others. I punched holes on the sides of the snowmen's neck to give me a place to string the bakers twine through for their scarves. I also added 'stick' arms by using a heavier jute I had laying around.

I used Versamark ink to stamp the snowflakes which are from Paper Smooches (thanks mom) If I make these cards again, I may do the stamping first along with some embossing. I have a lovely sparkle powder that I think would rock the front of these cards.

The banner was heat embossed and hand cut. Used a bit of foam tape to give the banner dimension and curled up the edges.

Two of these sweet guys were sent out by the kiddos and four are still living here. If you want them, drop me a line!!

ice cream flavored cows

Here are my ice cream flavored inspired cow cards. I really need to make up another couple sets of these. I love them!! Anywho, the stamp is from Paper Smooches my very most favorite stamp company at the moment (and probably for awhile) Their images are so clear and fun to color and plain old silly at times. The stamps themselves work like a dream right out of the package. LOVE THEM!! This stamp comes from the set Chubby Chums.(in case you were wondering)

Here are chocolate, blueberry, mint chocolate chip (I think he is my favorite) and bubble gum. Along with a side view of each.

Here are the last four in the set. Strawberry, creamsicle, Neapolitan, and spumoni. I had to add pistachio to the cow print since there needed to be nine cows for it to work out correctly.  

Now if it wasn't so darn cold, I would think that some ice cream would be in order. But being as it is not above 20 degrees F at the moment, I'm thinking some hot chocolate would be a better bet!!

what flavor would you like?

One day I was coloring in some of the Paper Smooches animals and my wonderful daughter had this idea that I should color them like ice cream flavors. hmmmm... sounded like a fun thing to do so I tried it. They came out so darn cute! I then put each cow on its own card. Very cute.

My best friend has a niece who loves cows but probably wouldn't be interested in the cards so I came up with a way for her to give these adorable little creations to her niece.

I used papers that accented each cows flavor. I used my Spellbinders dies to cut out the scallop circles. I found the burlap material/ paper at Michaels and it worked out perfectly!! I also picked up a 12X12 frame which just so happened to be on sale at the time!! 

I am now awaiting to hear how she liked the cows. They did receive my friends husband stamp of approval. That is a step in the right direction!! And yes I will post the cow ice cream cards soon. They are adorable as well!!

Merry Christmas Eve!!

watch the seasons pass

Have you checked out stamps from Paper Smooches?? OMG! I totally love their images and their blog is so inspiring. And yes they have an educational blog with videos and more inspiration there. I have a few sets of their stamps and if I won the lottery I would own each and every one of them- dies too!!

I came across this amazing image on their blog created by Lynn Mangan and HAD to create the precious tree for each season. Seriously, how perfect is that tree???

The fun part was finding the perfect green shades for spring. 

Sorry for the blurry picture. Guess I was very excited about these cards.

It is a bit hard to see in the picture, but the leaves have been stamped at the base of the tree in white.

The stamp sets I used for these cards are all Paper Smooches. the Gently Seasoned stamps for the tree, Bold Blooms for the leaves, and the words are created with the Alphadot set.

I made this set for a special friend of mine who loves trees (and decided she HAD to move back to Canada). I will be making more of these as I simply love them.

faux cross stitch cards

I was totally inspired by Savannah O'Gwynn at the Virtual Smooches blog for this technique.Let me tell you it is totally addicting and so much fun to do. I tried a few times and somehow was having issues lining up the X's to create a chevron strip. So I divided up the cardstock using my ruler and a pencil which helped keep my lines and X's straight.

Here is the stripes without the pencil lines. Still a bit wavy but better than they were (trust me).

Here is what I did once I finished.

I then tried it with only two colors of stripes. 

Then I tried it with green and red for the holiday season. Lots of bling on this one!!

These were more simple stripes.

And then a cute rainbow thank you card.

Let me tell you Savannah does a great job of describing how to do this and makes it look very simple (which it kinda is) Check it out!!

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!!

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!!