Co-worker candy and candy alternative

Happy Halloween! Last night I made some treats for my co-workers that I handed out this morning. Most of my co-workers got a 2-pack of Reese's treats wrapped in Stampin' Up designer paper (4"x6" was a perfect size to cover each). I wrapped them in some of the now retired copper cording and tied on a tag with a Booglie Eyes character or saying on it. Other than the tags that had marker-colored characters, this was a quick project and I got a lot of happy reactions to them! I wrote on the back of the tag that they were from me.

Then, for my department co-worker who is a die-hard chocolate lover, I gave her

cheddar cheese! These were individually wrapped cheese packages that were at Target (why doesn't the cheese sound good when I add in the Target part??). Anyway, in spite of her affinity for chocolate, she is on a low-carb diet, and I didn't want to thwart her plans. I do know though that she loves cheese, and knew she'd understand how happy I was that the cheese's orange color fit in with the theme. These packages were each stamped with Autumn Apparitions characters, popped in the refrigerator until they dried, and then tucked in a cellophane bag that I topped with more designer paper and some eyelets and ribbon. This package was extremely well received. :) Makes it always fun to give things to her!

I hope you and all your friendly ghosts and goblins are having a hauntingly good day! Thanks for stopping by.

Ho ho ho - gifts to go

This card was based on this card made by Laurie Schmidlin. I loved the non-traditional, bright colors. :) This card uses sets Punch Pals and Naughty or Nice. These sets go really well together because they're both done in line-drawing style. They're also great for coloring in, but I think the open expanse that is Santa's body is also really wonderful for paper piecing.

I also go to use my snowflake embossing envelope with my Cuttlebug. His beard is covered in Liquid Applique and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I've used Liquid Applique before, but WOW, did it ever puff up this time! This photo below is a side view of his beard and hat after I heated the applique up.

Then there's a closeup of the beard and dry embossed piece behind the main image.

Paper Pumpkins - They're everywhere!

I have seen these paper pumpkins on SO many blogs in the last few days that I KNOW I'm not the first to come up with the idea of turning paper lanterns into pumpkins, but in case you haven't been cruising the blogs like I do, I thought I'd show my version using the current Stampin' Up Halloween paper. These are so easy to do, and if you don't have enough patterned paper for your strips, don't be afraid to supplement with solid cardstock strips - take advantage of the fact that Stampin' Up designer paper features the EXACT same colors as the solid cardstocks. I did this on the largest pumpkin shown above as well as the pumpkin in the back.


You can also make different sizes of pumpkins, based on the length of your paper strips, but keep in mind, as you increase the length of the strips, you'll need increase the quantity of strips to have enough volume to fill out the circle. And while I like the look of the "solid" pumpkin, I also like the one on the right NOT being solid so that you can see the pretty paper on the INSIDE as well.

It sure is snow-bling today!

For this card, I used a technique described on Nicole Heady's blog as Faux Silk. I won't go into the steps of the card too deeply, but basically, you stamp your main image, crumple a piece of tissue paper and then glue it on over your main image. This gives a really soft, textured look that's pretty cool!



I liked the textured effect, but it was still too flat for me. I got out some of my new taffeta blue ribbon and some of the new rhinestone circle brads from Stampin' Up. Now I was already feeling pretty proud of myself for using up some of the accessories that I've been hoarding, but I didn't want to overwhelm to card either. So instead of using all rhinestone brads, I also glued on some tiny diamond-like glass pieces. I love the color contrast between the blue rhinestones and the white shimmer of the "diamonds" as they're sprinkled over the card. You can click on either of the images to get a closer look at the texture on this card.

The sentiment was stamped with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig and is from the set, Many Merry Messages.

Another Halloween cat card

The main image on this card was a leftover of the Boo Kitty card immediately below this one. Once it didn't make it into the lineup for this weekend, I was able to put on some retired Stampin' Up black organdy and some More Mustard-ish Joann organdy. The words are from Everyday Flexible Phrases, and I changed the lower case 'h' into a capital 'H' when I saw that it looked a little lopsided as the first word with a lower case letter. While I was able to make the words line up using my Stamp-a-ma-jig (even WITH the ribbon already ON), I wasn't able to make it centered on the piece from side to side - so I doodled a bit to help trick or distract the eye into thinking it was more centered than it is. :)

Kitty boo!

I believe this is the third card in this month's stamp camp lineup...but don't hold me to it. :) I have been so indecisive on projects for this month, and I've left planning off to the end (even more than usual).

It doesn't help that I've been having issues with making a card, not liking it, showing it to others, and they like it. Or, I make it and don't like it, look at it the next morning, and suddenly it's an ok design. Luckily, I'm not someone to rip up elements just because I don't like them, so usually, they get a new life in the new perspective; whether it's mine or someone else's varies. :)

This set uses the sets Autumn Apparitions and Dots are Hot with my Coluzzle and circle cutting templates. I carried the circle/dots theme throughout the card, with my black rectangle to balance it out and also to weight the main image visually.

What do you think? Do you like the card? Would you make changes? If you'd change something, what would it be? When you get stuck creatively, how do you get un-stuck?!

Happy Friday to everyone! Thanks for stopping by.

Boat Catalog Case

I was looking for some inspiration last night for stamp camp, and I knew that I wanted to use the Boatloads of Love set because I wanted to use the Crop-a-dile to put ADORABLE (can you tell I'm really proud of this look) eyelet "tire" bumpers on the side of the boat like I'd done in an earlier card.

I don't think you can see their impact on this shot, but man, oh man, do the little puffs of steam really "make" the card. I also liked the added ribbon with the eyelets run through along the bottom. I hope my stampers like this!

Side note - I am so mad at myself. I went back to link to a photo of the previous card - AND I DON'T HAVE A PHOTO of it! It was adorable, too! (if I do say so myself). Humph! Moving right along...

For my card I used the Fall Flowers designer Stampin' Up paper, because I didn't want to use the red/green combo shown in the sample on p. 53 in the Idea Book & Catalog (and shown below). I will have other sentiments that they can put in their "word window", but I used "friend-ship" which is available in the set. I was trying to move away from watercoloring because I wanted to showcase other techniques at stamp camp - which is what I was hoping to be inspired to create samples for - but markers just don't do coloring in like watercoloring does.

Thankful Watercoloring

This Friday and Saturday I'm holding my monthly stamp camp. This is one of the cards that we'll be making. Watercoloring is always a hit!

When I saw this set in the current holiday mini catalog, I knew I wanted to watercolor it. They highlighted watercoloring techniques at this past summer's Stampin' Up convention, and what I really brought away from it was the need for white space within the watercoloring. I also realized the importance of actual watercolor paper, and using enough water to move the color around. I hope that I can help pass along some of my insights onto my stampers/painters.

I stamped the sentiment with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig and even with that, I held my breath while I pushed the inky stamp down on top of my newly painted image. :)

I am very pleased with the softness of the Groovy Guava paper behind the striped paper and liked that it was an unusual color choice that tied right in.

Sympathy CASEs

Ky's bosses' (two brothers) mother passed away this week and I needed to make a card for each of them from us. Thankfully it's so rare that I have to make a sympathy card that I needed some inspiration. So I turned to Splitcoast and searched the gallery for "sympathy" - and what a wealth of cards came up as a result! I based my cards on shelart's beautiful card and I'm so pleased with how they turned out.

Both cards are watercolored and use the Define Your Life set as well as flowers from the hostess set, Oh, So Lovely, and with visual texture provided by the Sanded background stamp on both the main image and the card base.

For watercolor choices I used ink from Purely Pomegranate + Ruby Red (yes, really!) for the berries and blooms, Wild Wasabi + Always Artichoke for the stems, and did a background/surrounding wash of River Rock. The little tags on the side are Close to Cocoa on River Rock cardstock.

A sweet treat for Halloween

September's stamp club host wanted to focus on Halloween. We're making 2 projects at each club, and these cute little bag toppers are going to be one of them! I don't know what candy she's supplying to fill them up, but I think I'm going to have to check out which candies either coordinate as they are, or have coordinating wrappers to go with the topper. :)

Because these were my samples, the Frankenstein piece and the Boo piece were both watercolored to show different versions of Booglie Eye sets, but the Boo sample was done on Whisper White cardstock, while Frank up there was watercolored on watercolor paper.

I created the Boo topper first, and I should have started with the watercolor paper because I KNOW that it is so much better to watercolor with. However, for some reason I did not do that, and then I was going to create a new image piece on watercolor paper and switch it out with the original, but I think I'll leave it so the stampers can see why they would want the watercolor paper instead. That's what they'll be supplied with, but I feel like it might help them see why there's a difference.

ETA: This project never got to make its debut to the stampers because the September hostess had her baby! Does this mean I can eat the candy now? ;)

Stamp-a-Stack card 2

This is the first time I've gotten to emboss with a mixture of clear embossing powder and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I discovered it's almost irridescent on a dark background, but sort of rainbow/holographic-y on a light background. I do love that the glitter doesn't fall off when done this way, but it's also not at all the same as using 2-way glue with the DD glitter.


My stampers will make 10 of these on Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. I'm excited and I know my stampers are looking forward to it, too!


The following photo is a close-up of the main image piece on this card so you can see the glitter effects a little better. :)

Stamp-a-Stack card 1

This is card #1 for Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. We will make 10 of these in addition to 10 of a second design. There was no way for me to photograph the main image piece of this card to show it off, but it's so pretty in person! It's stamped on Shimmery White card stock. This paper is so pretty! I don't think we've ever used it for a stamp camp project, and I'm excited to show it to my stampers.


The main image is stamped in Blue Bayou and is from the set Season of Joy except for the snowflake which is from Punch Pals, and is stamped in Soft Sky and punched out with a 3/4" circle punch. That piece was then mounted on a dimensional. The Wild Wasabi strip was inked up in same-color ink and wheeled with the Whimsy wheel which reminded me of swirling snow.


I absolutely love the untraditional colors and clean lines of this card. I hope my stampers do too!