Greetings from the Garden

This is one of the shoebox swaps from the get-together at Kristin's last Tuesday. One of Kristin's downlines designed it--such a fresh pretty card! The flowers were a little bit of a pain, though, since we had to use a stamp-a-ma-jig, which is normally a useful tool, but those flowers are tough to get lined up properly! Took me a few tries. Now I know with this set, you can be a little off and it still looks fine, but I was going for perfection, people!

Prairie Home Companion

This year has been so wet in our part of the country that harvest has been the latest its been in years--we were seeing corn standing in the fields still in early November, which is very unusual for us. So I figure I can still get in a harvest-themed card and have it be seasonally appropriate. I'm thinking I'll send it to my friend from college who married a farmer and still lives in Iowa amidst the corn fields (long harvested by now, I'd hope!)

I copied the basic idea from a splitcoast stamper but added a few extra details/upgrades here and there. I wouldn't have thought to use the large tag punch for a tractor body, that's for sure! This was one of the cards that I used Kristin's punches for this week, since I don't have the tag punch, heart punch or the 1 3/4" circle punch (yet).

CASEing Stuart Davis

Now, who is Stuart Davis, you might ask? I'm glad you did! He is considered one of the fathers of the Cubist movement, starting in the 1920s. I copied this card from Butternut Sage Designs, but I think the card has a kind of cubist vibe to it, hence the title. I actually wrote a paper in high school on Stuart Davis (many, many moons ago) and while this card bears little resemblance to the wild paintings he produced over his long career, it does feature bright colors mixed together, as his paintings often did. So there's your bit of new information for the day--you can go back to bed now!

Supplies:
Whisper White, Pumpkin pie, Real Red, Glorious Green, Brilliant Blue cs
Stampin' Write Markers: Real Red, Glorious Green, Brilliant Blue, Real Red ink
Of the Earth and Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set
1 1/4" square punch, 1 3/8" square punch, 1 3/4" circle punch, large oval and scallop oval punch
red polka dot ribbon (non-SU)

Charming

I don't own this set, but I borrowed it from Kristin on Tuesday to make this card, which I copied from a splitcoast stamper. The original used Soft Sky, but lacking that, I subbed in Baja Breeze. I like the clean lines and I'm starting to love this stamp set. It was a set that I blew right by in the mini catalog, but I'm starting to see lots of possibilities! Kristin was kind enough to loan me the set for a few weeks, so I'll hopefully get my mojo on and show you some great creations with it soon!

Supplies:
Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze cs
Charming and Define Your Life stamp sets
Chocolate Chip ink
paper piercing tool/mat pack
chocolate organza ribbon (non-SU)

Gobble, Gobble

I should be baking a pumpkin pie right now for tomorrow's feast, but instead, I'm here, blogging about stamping instead. Priorites, right? I went to a shoebox swap last night at Kristin Kortonick's house out in New Jersey, which was a blast. There were six of us, which was a small crowd, but that left us plenty of time to utilize Kristin's Riverton-esque classroom and her extensive collection of stamps and dies. I brought a ton of cardstock just to use all her punches! I've had a bunch of punch pal ideas I've seen lately that I wanted to copy but lacked the proper punches, so I just went ahead and punched all the pieces last night and assembled most of the cards today.

The project to share today, however, is a small Thanksgiving turkey favor. I don't normally go in for favors and such for myself, but I saw these on Meg Loven's blog yesterday and had to make a few to take to my MIL's house for the feast tomorrow. We will be a small group of 5, so it wasn't a big deal to throw these together. The turkey's insides are a York peppermint patty. Apparently I got the last bag of the type that are packaged in the round--the new packaging is square; what a bummer. Stinkin' cute, huh? Well, I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and good luck on Black Friday.

Supplies:
Close to Cocoa, Ruby Red, Red Riding Hood, Summer Sun, More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Whisper White, basic black cs
Tag corner punch, 3/4" circle punch, 1/4" circle punch, 1/8" hole punch on Crop-a-Dile, scallop circle punch, heart to hearts punch, boho blossoms punch, large oval punch.

S'Mores Gift Kit

I made this yesterday for a friend who is having a birthday next week (I have to get it in the mail this week, I think). I had bought a template from my fellow Philly Inker, Illina Crouse (you can purchase the instructions/template here) for a hot chocolate holder, and I've had in my mind for a few weeks an idea for a S'Mores kit. I thought Illina's template would adapt well to my idea.

I changed up the color scheme, used a different stamp set and voila, a S'Mores kit, ready to go! I made up a little card with instructions for indoor use (did you know you can roast marshmallows over the stove top? Works on gas or electric).

I like the poinsettia that people have been making with their 5 petal punches, and I wanted to give that a try as an embellishment. I thought it was a little plain just with a punch, so I used the Polka Dot Punches star from last year's SAB set to give it a little extra detail and interest.


Last step was to make a small card to go with it. I had a scrap of 6x6 real red left over and just cut it in half and made a mini-card out of it.

Supplies:
Real Red cs, Christmas cocoa dsp
Teeny Tiny Wishes, Hugs and Wishes (retired) Polka Dot Punches (retired) stamp sets
real red ink
Scallop oval, ornament, large oval, ticket corner, 5 petal punches
gold brads, paper piercing tool
real red grosgrain ribbon

Graham crackers
Marshmallows
Hershey bar
Bamboo skewer, cut to size
Indoor use instructions
Clear envelopes

Productive bunny

Today I was a productive (pregnant) bunny. I actually forwent my afternoon nap in the effort to get a bunch of things crossed off my to-do list. My god daughter's namesday is tomorrow and her birthday is next week, so I needed to make something for her, plus I had a custom tea bag order that I needed to finish before the weekend. I had to design a shoebox swap card for tomorrow night and get all the supplies cut, plus one of my regular etsy customers reordered tags, which I printed, but will have to punch tomorrow as my hands are dry and sore tonight.

Oh, and I ran to the grocery store (with my toddler), went to CVS to pick up my developed photos and made a nice vegan dinner for my son's godfather, who came to visit for the evening. And got two loads of laundry done. Whew! I'm tired just reading the list!

I did get the cards from the weekend and so forth photographed today, but will need to edit them tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to start posting photos tomorrow. I will say that my Stampin' Success magazine for December was in my mailbox this afternoon, along with some goodies that I'll be able to talk about in January.

So, with that, I will sign off from my ramblings for tonight and take my tired self off to bed.

Stampin' a storm

Yesterday I was a helper at a local stamping event.  It was a fun day, but wow, busy! I was at the station where people made a card using Serene Snowflakes (gosh, I love that set!) and the ever-popular Dasher stamp (currently the second-best-selling stamp in the catalog!). I have to say this pregnant body didn't appreciate being on its feet for so many hours. I got a break around 3:00 and I sat down and put my swollen feet up for a bit.

I don't have any photos to share today, but will show you some of the projects we made over the next week or so. The event focused on holiday cards/items, so there are some nice things to showcase. I didn't get to make all the 3D items, but that is fine by me--I really just wanted to make the cards! (I'm very close to being done with my own Christmas card list, so adding a stack to the pile never hurts...)

I do, however have a musing about Hershey kisses. I will admit, in recent years, I've become a little bit of a chocolate snob--I mean, I can't admit to being a complete chocolate snob, because I still enjoy Little Debbie snack cakes on occasion and there is nothing real in those!--but I am starting to understand the English uproar over the proposed Kraft-Cadbury merger. Why would you want to mess with perfection? Where am I going with this? Okay, so yesterday at the event, we put piles of Hershey kisses all over the work tables so people would have some little things to nosh on while they worked (there was a fabulous cheese and cracker spread on the side board, in addition...) and I ate a few, thinking, these are okay, but not as good as the Ritter Sport (with cornflakes!) that I ate a few days ago. But then I had a a few more, and suddenly they tasted great! Funny how that works. Some things, I find, lose their flavor after more than a couple (like M&Ms), and some get better with quantity eating. Probably not great for the waistline, but what are you going to do. When one can't drink mocha, one must eat chocolate!

So there's your random thought(s) for the day. I'll post some pictures later this week.

Sesame Street Fish Food Favors

I finally finished the fish food favors I mentioned in the previous post--I was waiting on a roll of real red grosgrain ribbon and the tag corner punch to arrive from Stampin' Up, which they did yesterday. I'm nearly on a first name basis with our UPS guy by this point!

Anyway, here are the jars, partially filled with goldfish food. The customer wanted the tag to read Elmo wants you to take good care of Dorothy. She needs Lots of LOVE, FOOD and CLEAN WATER, which was pretty easy to format and print off. I used the same font that I used for the custom printing on her invitations, so everything matched, which was nice. I think they are pretty cute, although my overly sensitive pregnant nose had a little trouble smelling all that fish food.

Getting the groove on...

I've been a bit out of the loop this last little while and haven't been working on much beyond getting my own Christmas cards made (I have a rather extensive list of people that I send cards to every year), so I don't have anything non-Christmas-y to share today. I'll save you the holiday overload and share those cards with you in December.

I will say I've also been working like a madwoman on Sesame Street Punch Pals invitations, which you may remember from my original post several months ago. I had 4 people order sets in a short period of time, which ended up totaling 65 invitations! That's a lot of little pieces to put together and I had quite an assembly line going there for a few weeks. One of my customers decided she wanted favors to match, and chose glass jars with the same characters on the top with fish food inside (they are giving each guest a "Dorothy" goldfish as a gift), so I've been working on those favors this week; I'll post pictures next week after they are completed.

We went to New York City today for a day trip to meet my niece, for the first time (what a cutie!); here's a photo her mom snapped a week or so ago.


The funny thing is that she looks just like my husband as an infant! (Those Greek genes are very strong, which is interesting, given that her mother is half Japanese!) We had a nice day, despite drizzle and rain and my son behaved himself nicely all day long, which was a blessing. As any parent of a toddler knows, that is a big deal.

Enough prattling for now; apologies for no interesting craft posts. Hopefully I'll get my non-Christmas stamping groove on again this week.

I need more texture!

I was going through cardstock scaps the other day and found a card-front sized piece of chocolate chip card stock that I had dry-embossed using a borrowed Perfect Details Texturz plates and a borrowed Big Shot this summer and never used on anything. I set it aside, thinking I needed to save it for something good.

I ran across this nice layout on Heather Yates' blog (hers uses snowflakes), but I was sick of making Christmas cards, so I decided to make a generic card instead. As I was pondering color schemes, stamps and such, I found that cardstock piece again, and suddenly I realized I had "something good" to use it on! I know this is a muted kind of card with an unusual color combination, but I think it reminds me of early winter, when all the trees are brown, those misty mornings when it is cold and gray.

Supplies:
Kraft, chocolate chip, bordering blue, whisper white cs
pocket silhouettes stamp set
chocolate chip ink
scallop circle, 1 3/8" circle punch
kraft taffeta ribbon
perfect details texturz plate/big shot
dimensionals

Vellum vase

Another CASE from splitcoast using itty bitty buds and the ornament punch to make a vase. I had some vellum paper (not cardstock) from a craft store lying around begging to be used, so I used that and stamped the stem directly on it. This was a card where one might say (if one is being kind) that it was "an opportunity for embellishment." I made a few idiotic stamping mistakes that I covered with gold brads (when there are no layers, it is more difficult to cover your mistakes). I ended up putting a white panel on the back of the front of the card a) to cover the backs of the gold brads and b) to stiffen the front a little since it had gotten heavy with the brads. Still, I like the idea and will probably attempt another version at some point. I especially love using the ornament punch as a vase. I'm always looking for good ideas for punch pals!

Supplies:
Whisper white, cameo coral cs
itty bitty buds, define your life stamps
bravo burgundy, always artichoke, cameo coral, so saffron markers
gold brads
vellum paper
so saffron grosgrain ribbon
generic burgundy ribbon
scallop edge punch

Doodling

This is another CASE from splitcoast using itty bitty buds--I was on a kick to make several cards using this set. I LOVE this card. The doodling took a while, but I really like the result. I also had a hand at dying a ribbon to match using my markers, which I think turned out well--I just used my cameo coral marker on white grosgrain and voila, cameo coral grosgrain! Brilliant.

Supplies:
Basic Black, Cameo Coral, Whisper White cs
Basic Black ink, cameo coral marker
itty bitty buds, hugs and wishes stamp sets (both retired)
Pewter brad
white 5/8" grosgrain ribbon
wide oval punch, oval template
black pilot gel pen for doodles

Thinking of you with Itty Bitty Buds

This is a CASE of a splitcoast card that I liked. All I changed was the sentiment to make it Thinking of You rather than Happy Mother's Day. I know it is a little off-season for such a spring-like card, but here's wishing you May flowers in November.

Supplies:

Kraft, Certainly Celery, Confetti cream, pumpkin pie cs
itty bitty buds, thoughts and prayers stamp set
certainly celery, bashful blue, pumpkin pie markers, chocolate chip ink
dimensionals
certainly celery twill ribbon

Bermuda Bay mini-note

I copied this card from zipperc98 on splitcoast stampers and copied it almost verbatim. I thought it was a cute way to use to the window sheets in the Night and Day DSP bundle. I love that paper--I will be sad when it retires after this mini catalog. It is so elegant and versatile. I'm not sure why the color is off on the photo, possibly because of the window sheet, but the white is white, not vanilla. It's 3x3 and I think would be a great gift tag.

Supplies:
Bermuda Bay, Whisper White, Basic Black
Teeny Tiny Wishes, Pocket Silhouettes stamps
Basic black ink
Modern label punch, slot punch
black grosgrain ribbon

Thanks a Latte Tri-Shutterfold card

I've been wanting to try one of these for a while, and also wanting to use my Sip By Sip stamp, which admittedly hasn't been inked up much. I found a version that used both on splitcoast, by Lisa Bingham. Hers was meant as a gift card holder, which I liked, but forgot to add the crucial flap to the edge to make it work that way. Oh well. I changed a few other things, but kept her basic idea. Now I just need someone special to send it to! Here's my card:

A gasoline can and an antique car

Crystal, of Crystal's Crafty Creations, posted a version of this card over the summer and I saved it in my idea file because my dad loves antique cars, I have an antique car stamp, and I'm always looking for masculine card ideas. I had intended just to use the basic sketch, as I didn't have the specific dsp she used, but then I received a bonanza of retired dsp scraps in September from my fellow Philly Inker, Kristin Kortonick, and realized I could make the card as is! My car stamp is a bit different from Crystal's but it worked nonetheless. I will confess to a moment of ridiculousness--her card had this cute gasoline can charm attached, which I thought made the card. So I did some hunting and found one on ebay--but it cost more than the card! Sometimes you do these things for the sake of the art, right? That's what I tell myself anyway. I think the result is worth it. I'm going to save it for a rainy day when I need to send my dad a card.