Sunday Sketch Challenge and March Stamp Club Sneak Peek #1

Well, it is Sunday again - time for Stamp With Heather and her Sunday Sketch Challenge!  When I saw the sketch this week I was thrilled.  You see I've been working on one of the March Stamp Club projects the last few days and while I had some elements in place, I wasn't sure how to put them together.  Here's the sketch:

First thing I thought was either I get to play with the Circle Cutter, or my new Scallop Circle die for the Big Shot, or both.  And maybe this is the time to pull out the Jumbo Grommets I've been hoarding!  So I got busy, and here's what I came up with:

This card has two techniques that I've been wanting to demonstrate to my club:  the "marbled" butterflies were made with the baby-wipe technique (LOVE THIS!), and the "lacy" butterfly was made using the KISS technique.  The Occasions Mini has a whole TWO pages of what they call "a la carte" stamps this time - individual stamps that are under $10.  On Page 42, all the stamps are meant to be used for the KISS technique, which is where you ink up the stamp with the design or detailed image, and then use that as your "stamp pad" for the a "solid" stamp.  In this case I used Fine Flourish (115709) and Butterfly Accent (119211).   For the marbled look of the other two butterflies, you take a baby-wipe sheet (don't unfold it) and put it into a pie-tin or other container, and add drops of stamping ink in several colors randomly to make a custom "stamp pad" for your stamp.  Again, this works best with "solid" style stamps.  The best part is, every time you stamp it comes out slightly differently!  I stamped way more butterflies than I needed, so I added one on the inside!

The ink colors I used for the baby-wipe technique were Old Olive, Orchid Opulence, and Rich Razzleberry.  The card base is also Orchid Opulence (love this color, where has it been in my repertoire lately?) and the polka-dot ribbon is 1/2" grosgrain in Rich Razzleberry, as is the ink color on the "happy Easter" message.  The Designer Series Paper is Cottage Wall, which is where I got my color inspiration from.  I've been wanting this paper for a long time, and finally treated myself (and my Stamp club) to it!

So Heather, hope you like this challenge, and everyone else too!  I'm just glad that my butterflies finally have a home to rest upon!

Cheers,
Peg

Last Three Retreat Door Prize Cards

Finished up the last of the three cards today, and as I mentioned before, a couple of them are definitely more "masculine" (i.e., no flowers or bows - strong colors) although they could be used for anyone.  Again, I got all my inspiration from Stampin' Connection.  What a great site to have available as a demonstrator - to borrow whole card ideas, or just design elements to add to something else.  One of the best perks, and it doesn't cost me a thing!  Fortunately, non-demonstrators can see a lot of these ideas on individual blogs, but I like having one place to go to when I'm really just searching for card ideas.  Anyway, I digress...

First up, just to let you know, there is NOTHING WRONG with my camera (LOL!)  This card was meant to be in black & white.  The Designer Paper is from the Holiday Mini, called Night & Day Specialty, and I'm ashamed to say I never used it last fall during the time the Holiday Mini was active, so now I've got a ton of it to use up myself.  The cool thing is this paper pack came with two window sheets with black dots on them.  I'm sure I'll find a good use for those eventually.

The second one uses two of my favorite products: "To The Nines" Specialty DSP (it's cardstock weight, which is what makes it specialty) and the "Autumn Days" stamp set.  I initially got this stamp set with the new 2009-2010 Idea Book & Catalog because of the pheasant.  Being married to a hunter I'm always looking for stamps with an outdoor theme.   You can ask my Stamp Club, I think we used bits and pieces of this stamp set every month from September to December.  It is one of the most versatile sets I've seen!  The person who posted this card idea didn't mention whether or not they made it to be a "pocket" card, but I decided it would be fun, and most of my cards have been pretty standard except for a few fancy embellishments.  Being that this is definitely a "outdoorsy" card probably for a guy, the ribbon serves a utlitarian purpose, to pull the card out of the pocket.  And sponging with Basic Brown (the only ink color used) gives it a weathered look.

Last, another of my favorite sets, and I got it FOR FREE back last year when we had the Catalog Sampler and monthly specials with it.  I spent enough on one order to get any set in the sampler for free, and Flight of the Butterfly was the most expensive one, so of course I chose it!  I had to wait until I was able to place a bigger order though, so I had to be patient!  The DSP is very old, Spring Showers, from three years ago when I first became a demonstrator.  It was the first one they came out with that was double-sided.  I still like it.

So, hopefully tomorrow I will get these all packaged up and ready for the Door Prize basket.  There are a couple of other door prizes I need to package and/or make, so stay tuned!

Even More Retreat Door Prize Cards

I made three more cards today - the theme was "Whisper White base"!  Not intentionally, it just worked out that way.  And all three of these cards were based on ideas I saw on Stampin' Connection.

First, a sympathy card, which is always good to have on hand.  Close As A Memory is where the flower image is from, and the sentiment is Thoughts & Prayers.  Both of these sets are great for making sympathy and thinking of you cards.  The original that I based this from had a lot more white in it, which was an interesting concept - monotone layering, but I felt like the mat around the image at least had to have some color, and I repeated that with the Modern Label punched image on the sentiment.  I used So Saffron, Mellow Moss, Close to Cocoa, and Always Artichoke inks.  The ribbon is from one of last year's Ribbon Originals collections called Dress Up.

Next up, I loved how this card was so simple, but injected a lot of color anyway!  Using the square scallop punch, I took my color scheme from the Flower Fusion (I and II) colors in my flower and brad.  It was not hard to find swatches of patterned paper in my vast paper stash that not only matched but gave me a variety of patterns!  Cool huh!  This is the kind of card that can be whipped out really fast.  The hardest part was finding the right sizes and shapes of felt flowers, as I'm getting pretty low on Flower Fusion (and FF II is retired, so of course I have more of that).  This card could also be used for sympathy, or almost any occasion!

Last, one of my favorite stamp sets "Good Friend".  I LOVE the butterfly in this stamp set, and the font on the "for you" sentiment.  I went totally retired on the colors using Soft Sky and Blue Bayou.  I probably should have warned everyone that since these Card Sets are not for demo-ing, I'm using whatever products that suit my fancy or fit my need, retired or not.  This card could easily be made with any patterned paper, or even solid paper, as the texture from the Perfect Polka dots embossing folder give it plenty of interest on its own.

So, 9 down, 3 to go.  Up tomorrow - more "guy" oriented cards, and another of my favorite sets (OK, I have way too many favorites!)

After this, it will be on to decorating other donated door prizes, and an extra-special door prize (the likes of which you've seen on my blog in the past!)

Thanks,
Peg

More Retreat Door Prize Cards

My goal is to make a dozen unique cards for the Retreat Door Prize Card Packs - I used 2 of the card ideas from my February Stamp Club, then yesterday's Sunday Sketch Challenge with Heather Summers.  Today I made three more cards, and my inspiration came from three very different places.

The first came from my good friend Debbie, who was the person who introduced me to Stampin' Up! in the first place!  About seven years ago I went to a workshop with Debbie, a brand-new demonstrator, and I placed $100 order that first night!  Anyway, I was in Debbie's Stamp club for a couple of years, and now she's in my Stamp club!  Debbie sent me this cute card right after the holidays - I was so happy to see flowers after months of Christmas & Fall themed cards!  She used Kiwi Kiss (such a great color) for the base color, and the retired set Botanical Blooms and the current set Elegant Thank You.  Thanks Debbie - you are still an inspiration to me!

The second card was CASE'd about 95% from Stampin' Success (lots of great ideas in that newsletter this month - I'm not done with it yet!)  I used Naturals Ivory instead of Whisper White and I laced the button with Hemp Twine instead of embroidery thread.  I do have embroidery thread, but the twine was on hand so... this card uses the Hostess Level 2 set Wings of Friendship.  You might notice that the flower is in a different place than what you see on the stamp set.  I used a 1" circle cut from a post-it note to mask the lower flower before inking up the stamp, then pulled it off to stamp the image.  A lot easier than marker-ing up just what I needed!  This is a pretty advanced card - paper piercing, buttons, Pretties Kit pearls, masking - but it's shown as the kind of card you give to a hostess instead of demonstrating at a workshop.

The third card was an idea I saw on Dawn Griffith's website.  She's supposed to have a video on how to make it coming out later this week, but I thought I'd try to guess how she did it.  The reason I liked it is that it is totally a guy's card - and I needed to include a couple of these in the card set.  Besides, I have plenty of flowers everywhere else!  The technique she will be demonstrating is "faux suede" - so we'll see if I got it right!  I still like Dawn's better, but it's a guy's card.  I showed it to my husband and his band-mate, and they humoured me and told me it was nice.  Not sure why I did that!

So now I'm half-way done - and so far I have three Thank You cards, two Birthday cards, and one Friendship card.  Tomorrow I'll be working on a sympathy card, and maybe some all-occasion cards.  I'll take suggestions - especially for ones that are not to "flowery"!

Bye for now!
Peg

Simply Sunday Sketch Challenge

Hi everyone,

I've never participated in a sketch challenge, but I decided to take Heather up on hers since I need to come up with card ideas for the Door Prize I'm making for our church's Women's Retreat (I'm making Assorted Card Packs).  Most everything on this card is current except for the Designer Prints paper, which has designs from a couple of years back.  However, this could easily be swapped out with current designs or even solid paper - hey, I've got a lot of this stuff and it's still beautiful to use!  Anyway, I also wanted to play with a new technique for making paper flowers from the latest issue of Stampin' Success - this is one of the best perks of being a Stampin' Up! demonstrator - getting a magazine once a month full of great ideas for cards, workshops, and more!  Anyway, here was the sketch:

And here was what I did with it:

I didn't alter the design too much except to put the greeting on the horizontal piece instead of the side.  I started with the Prints Sampler and Prints Pack, and I found a color combination in the 2009-2010 Idea Book & Catalog using Pretty In Pink, Rose Red, Barely Banana, and Close to Cocoa.  The brads are also Rose Red except for the center of the flower, which is a Very Vanilla 5/8" Neutrals Brad.  The flower itself is made out of three sizes of circles: 1", 1-3/8" (3) and 1-3/4" - snipped the edges and chalked and curled a bit.  The leaves are also from the Prints Pack in Certainly Celery.

So, along with a couple of the card ideas from the February Stamp Club, I now have 3 designs done for my card pack!  Last year I put in 12 unique cards in each pack, so if I decide to do that again, I only have 9 to go!  I love projects like this!

Hope you enjoyed this!
Peg

Punch-y Leprechaun!

Hi everyone!

I've wasted no time in changing up my blog from Valentine's to St.Paddy's - we only have a month to go as of tomorrow!  If you recall the Easel Cards I posted recently, one of them featured a leprechaun made all of punches - I had a few bravel souls who made them at my Stamp Club this weekend - including one that looked like a "Blues Brothers" version!  Hilarious!  No picture though, sorry... oops... keep forgetting  I have a blog to put them on - or maybe I was just lazy... anyway...

So I thought about using him for my March Blog Header, but scanning him in is difficult since I don't have all those fancy Photoshop tools laying around.  Then I remembered - we have punches in My Digital Studio!  Whoo hoo!  So I built him from the punch elements available in My Digital Studio, and then applied him to one of the new background papers available for downloads - Textured card stock.

Not as fancy on the side-bars this month - I may change that up later, as I'm not sure what I want to do there yet.  I'm still new to this blogging thing!  But I tell you, if I didn't have My Digital Studio, I don't know what I'd do!  It really makes it fun and easy to customize my blog.

That's it for today - hope you like my little guy!
Peg

More Valentine's Day Cards!

Earlier I posted the cards I'm giving to Jeff and the girls - today I'm showing off the creations that the girls have made to give to their grandparents!

First, Nora's pop-up card (her favorite kind of card to make):

Second, and I love this, her "Heart Explosion!" card!  She's so dramatic, she has a simple cover with just a few hearts, you open the card and "Wham!" - lotsa hearts!  Poor thing, her arm was getting sore sticking all those hearts on so I helped her out (sorry for the blurry shot - I'm not a good photographer!)

Next are the cards that Ruth made.  Ruth used to LOVE to stamp when she was little, but now her interests are more "teenage" - computer games, I-Pods/I-Tunes, movies (especially scary ones - ick!) - however, she is STILL very creative, and when I told her I wanted her to make a couple of cards for her grandparents for Valentine's Day (as they are always very generous with her about that) - she came up with some very cute designs and even went a bit "outside the box" on one of them, as you can see, with the non-traditional colors.  I loved them both!

Finally, this is the card that I'm giving to Jeff's folks and mine (same card - I know, I'm boring).  I culled a few elements from card ideas I'd seen online, and using Sending Love DSP and the new stamp set Well Scripted again, oh, and the Polka Dots impressions folder for the Big Shot, came up with what I thought was a pretty nice design.  And I was able to use some of the Red Polka-Dot grosgrain from the Holiday Mini that I still had left over.  I'm really getting into decorating the inside of the card now too - can you tell?

Anyway, that's all for now - sorry for the delay in posting but I wanted to have them all together at one time.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Peg

Jamie's Graduation Card!

Hey everyone!
My cousin-in-law Jamie Kendall just finished her Bachelor's Certificate in (I think?) Fashion Design and today is her graduation bash!  Wish we could be there, but this is a busy weekend for my family and we had to say no to something - sorry Jamie!  However, I did make her this really fun card!  The outside was CASEd 100% from Elaine Schader who also posted it on the Stampin' Up! Connection.  When I looked at her website, she had CASEd it from a similar one that she saw on Splitcoaststampers !!  And so it goes!  Elaine had changed up the colors and flowers a bit, but the only thing I added was the design on the inside of the card.

The only stamping on the whole card is the sentiment on the front "WellScripted" (Occasions Mini 117072 wood-mount, 118601 clear-mount) in Old Olive and I sponged the edges of the inside card liner and the flowers in Ruby Red.  The So Saffron wide ribbon is from last year's Occasion's Mini, so it probably isn't available anymore, but those who were in my stamp club last year should have a piece of it in their stash that I gave them with their End-Of-Year Hostess gifts!  I got the idea to angle-cut the ribbon from Andrea Walford - which is another card I want to CASE sometime soon since it uses those cute Stitched Felt flowers!

Anyway, the flowers were all cut using the Birds & Blooms Sizzlit (113485) and the Little Leaves Sizzlit (114511).  The dotted background is the new Textured Impressions Folder (Occasions Mini 117335) so the Big Shot got quite a workout with this one!  I didn't show the envelope, but I did stamp that with a flower from Vintage Vogue (Occasions Mini 117690 wood, 118598 clear).

So Jamie, I'm banking on the fact that you are too busy cleaning, baking, dressing etc. for your big night to be surfing my blog today (does anyone surf my blog?  If you do, can you let me know?  I may give you some blog candy just for telling me!) and this card will still be a surprise when you get it next week.

Until later - bye for now!

Definitely Decorative Decor Elements: Fleur-de-lis Accent

I have this cute bucket that I bought on a whim from Pottery Barn years ago - I liked it because of the attached bottle opener and imagined carrying the bucket full of my husband's home-brewed beers to the screen porch on warm summer evenings... Can't say we ever did that - it seems we don't sit leisurely in the screen porch very much at all (I mean when the weather is permitting).  So I'm trying to find other uses for this bucket, but in the mean time, I spied it in the closet and thought - ah ha!  Rub-ons!  Well, none of my rub-ons were suitable, so then I thought - ah ha!  Decor Elements!

I chose the Fleur-de-lis Accent (Definitely Decorative Insert 119575 - small white) because it fit pretty well on the side and make it pretty much "non-seasonal".  A word of advice when applying Decor Elements to uneven surfaces like this one, make sure you carefully press the image into each ridge - I did both sides, and although the first side looks OK, the piece "spans" the ridges and probably won't wear as well.  We'll see.

So that's what I have to show you today!  Stay tuned, tomorrow I'll show off my daughter's very creative Valentine card using all Stampin' Up!'s heart punches!

February Club Projects - Part III - St.Paddy's Day Easel Card!

One of my favorite parts of spring is St.Patrick's Day - it means winter truly is on its way out!  My family really gets into this holiday, and when you watch them dye the Chicago River green every year, that's my cousins out there doing it!  They have a huge party and really do it up big!  However, compared to some holidays it is somewhat minor, and I find it hard to find St.Patrick's Day stamp sets that suit me.  So I was thrilled when the Occasions Mini featured a new $10 and under stamp called "Go Green" (117074)!   I was poking around on-line for ideas, and I found two ideas that I decided to combine into my St.Patrick's Day card for the Club this month.

First, I used Dawn Griffith's demonstration on how to make an Easel Card on her blog.  Very easy, and a great way to turn a greeting card into a quick decoration.  Thanks Dawn!
Second, I saw a cute idea submitted by Christi Martin for making a leprechaun out of punches from the Stampin' Connection website (you can also see her card on her blog).  I love the creative projects I've seen with punches, and decided to try this one.  It actually was easier to put together than you would think - you kind of build him from the bottom up.  Thanks Christi!
I also decided to offer a simpler version using the new Small Heart punch (117193) from the Occasions Mini.

So those are my February Club Projects!  Interested in trying these?  Contact me to get a spot in my February Club Workshop or better yet, have a Workshop of your own!  With Sale-A-Bration going on this is the perfect time!

February Club Projects - Part II - Spring Thank You Card

This card was designed the old-fashioned way (i.e., not with My Digital Studio, just playing with packs of paper and colors), and it was actually the first card I made to play with the new Scallop Trim Border punch (SAB 118402) when I pre-ordered it back in December.  At the time, I was still in the last throes of Christmas projects, and it killed me to set everything to the side until I was ready for Christmas!

This card uses the Level 1 Hostess Set "Of The Earth" (115336).  I used markers to color the image - and if you look closely you can see the that flower and the butterfly have two colors each - an effect I especially love!  The "Thanks" image is from the "Thanks" embosslit (115957) and I trimmed off the striped portion for this card.  Topped it off with a Mini Library Clip (109857) (I love these!) and there you go!  I stocked up on both sizes of the Library Clips back in December during Stampin' Up!'s Holiday sales - good deal!  This card also features a stamped "inside" and when you close the card the Very Vanilla "peeks" out through the Scallop Border Trim!  I love that!

So check back tomorrow for the third and final February project - if you like these and want to try making them contact me about reserving a seat in one of my two February Workshop dates (Sat. Feb13th or Sun. Feb14th).

By for now!

Peg