A Peek Into Winter

You are probably saying "What!  Summer just ended!"  While this is definitely true, it is never too early to start thinking about holiday cards.  I got this set over the summer and have just started playing with it.  I am getting into the Holiday mood as I prepare for my Christmas Stamp-A-Stack this coming Friday, September 27 at 7pm.  While this card will not be featured, it was fun and supper easy to make.  That is my Golden Rule for Christmas cards, keep it simple!  When you are mass producing anything, you want to go simple.

For this card, I used last week's Fab Friday sketch, always a great place to go for inspiration!

Here are the ingredients for today's card:
Stamps: Snow Day
Paper: Whisper White, Island Indigo, Crumb Cake, Winter Frost DSP Stack
Ink: Island Indigo, Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie, Pool Party
Accessories: 1-1/4" Square Punch, 1-3/8" Square Punch

Don't forget to join me on the Late Night Stamper Fall Treasure Hunt!  See my two posts from 8/24 for details how you can win a Stampin' Up! shopping spree.  New blogs to visit are being added weekly!

Experimenting With Starburst

So, I am doing a little better this week!  I never posted it here (maybe I did not want you to hold me accountable :) ), but after Convention, I set a goal for myself to post three times a week.  I knew once the school year started, this would become more of a challenge since I am a major overcommitter!  Between kids activities, my role as a Cub Scout Den Leader and PTO secretary, life gets a little hairy!  Yesterday, my hubby and I took a little break to go up to Newport for the day which was nice with all the crazy September stuff going on.  So this week, I am a little later than planned, but getting my second post in for the week.

Today's card uses the Starburst technique.  I have been playing with this for my stamp club next week.  While this is not one of the cards we will be making, it is a great example of the technique.  I also got a chance to use another set I won at Convention!

Here are the ingredients of this card:
Stamps: Oh Goodie!
Paper: Whisper White, Crumb Cake, Season of Style DSP Pack
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Cherry Cobbler 1/2" Seam Binding

Don't forget to join me on the Late Night Stamper Fall Treasure Hunt!  See my two posts from 8/24 for details how you can win a Stampin' Up! shopping spree.  New blogs to visit are being added weekly!

A Little Clean Out for the Fab Friday 26 Challenge

I must first apologize for my absence at the latter part of last week.  I was under the delusion, with my kids back in school, I would have all this free time that I would not know what to do.  Boy have I been wrong!  I found myself volunteering at their school, cleaning up the house, running errands and finally getting to work on cleaning my bonus room.  I kept waiting for free time to stamp and it never came.

In my bonus room clean up, I decided to reorganize my color family scraps that I had been putting off since this summer's color renovation.  You don't want to know how much scrap paper I have!  Let's just say it took several hours to reorganize colors (due to some color family changes) and pull out all the retired colors.   I will say that today's card is a result of this paper clean out.  I found I have so many thin strips of paper that end up at the bottom of my scrap bins and never used.  I decided to pull out all these small strips for easier access.  A great way to use these is as I did in this card as banners.

Today's card is another Fab Friday challenge.  This week's challenge was to use the following color combination:

I swapped out Early Espresso for the Chocolate Chip, only because I was going from memory when I created the card.  Never trust my memory in September!  I seem to have large memory lapses in June and September.  I think it is due to severe schedule changes during those months that throw me all off!

So without further adieu, here are the card details:
Stamps: Hello Lovely, Happy Day
Ink: Early Espresso, Tangerine Tango
Paper: Sweater Weather DSP, Soft Sky, Sahara Sand, Tangerine Tango, Crushed Curry, Early Espresso
Accessories: Stampin' Dimensionals

Don't forget to join me on the Late Night Stamper Fall Treasure Hunt!  See my two posts from 8/24 for details how you can win a Stampin' Up! shopping spree.  New blogs to visit are being added weekly!

Clean and Simple FTL256 Birthday Card

Last week, we worked with our Simply Pressed Clay during stamp club.  We had extra colored clay so I made a bunch of extra flowers.  I used them on the card my kids gave to their great-grandmother this weekend for her birthday.  This card was inspired by the sketch on Clean and Simple Stamping.

When I saw this sketch, I knew immediately that I needed to take out my bubble wrap for a "bubbly" background.  If you have never tried it, all you need is a piece of bubble wrap and a stamp pad.  Use your bubble wrap as a stamp for an interesting background.  To create the sparkly strip on the side, I covered a piece of Cool Caribbean cardstock with Versamark ink and Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder and heated it to create my own shimmery specialty paper!  In the end, I had a super fun birthday card!

Here are all the ingredients:
Stamps: Bring on the Cake
Paper: Cool Caribbean, Whisper White
Ink: Cool Caribbean, Daffodil Delight, Versamark
Accessories: Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder, Simply Pressed Clay, Buttons and Blossoms Clay Molds, Melon Mambo Reinker, Bubble Wrap

New Envelope Punch Board is Finally Here!!

 Envelope Punch Board (#133774) $19.95

I am so excited to announce the arrival of our new Envelope Punch Board!  We got to see this item in action at Convention and everyone went crazy!  Now you can make your own envelopes in 66 different sizes!

Check out this video to see it in action!