Vacation Special for August

Well I'm just seeing I didn't publish this Post!!! LOL! I guess I'm really on vacation! This special is until September 6, so don't worry! If you placed an order from August 22 until September 6, you're still in! The special is, for ANY orders placed, you'll receive a sampling of Year of Cheer Embellishments! How great is that! When your order reaches $50 you'll also receive my monthly card kit along with a PDF on how to assemble. Make sure you use this month's VIP Host Code 3DSR7NFJ. To get this month's VIP Host Special you'll need to place a $60 order.

These are just a few thank you's for shopping with me. I appreciate all of your support!

Final Group 4 of Monthly Swap

Here's the last group of swaps from July. With all these, you'll have plenty ideas to get your cards started for the holidays. If you'd like me to do the cards for you, I have a class already planned out, just contact me to set a date!

So for this first card Mena used pieces of the Be Merry Designer Series Paper for her background and the sentiment is from Christmas Pines and used Cherry Cobbler ink then die cut it with the Stitched Shapes framelits. The pieces of DSP were layered on Whisper White and the base card is Garden Green. This a great card to replicate easily.

This next card was done by Lilly. Again it's amazing how different these cards look and the same Designer Series paper was used! Now I know Mena and Lilly live near each other. I wonder if they were stamping together when they both came up with their cards! Lilly used just strips of the Be Merry. What a great way to use up your scraps! The sentiment is from Teeny Tiny Wishes and is stamped in Garden Green and punched out with Classic Label punch. The strips of DSP were layered on Whisper White, then Cherry Cobbler, then onto the base of Whisper White. She also added 1/8" Silver ribbon.

A couple of very simple cards to make for your holiday cards. If you don't have the stamp set, you can certainly use whatever sentiment you do have on hand and you can change both of these cards into any occasion by just using different papers, stamps, and inks!

Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear from you and see what you're working on!

To purchase any of the items used, click HERE.

Camp Gift

I was going to post this last week, but wanted to make sure this wasn't seen by the recipient. In case you don't know, I'm a Girl Scout and have been for most of my life! The Girl Scouts has done so much for me and have enjoyed traveling with them. I guess I wasn't your typical Girl Scout. I didn't go to summer camp. I went to camp at different times of the year. There was just too many bugs during the summer! Then it turned out when we (husband & kids) moved to the northwest part of New Jersey I wasn't that far from my childhood camp! Yay! I now go there for an annual Octoberfest for adults and I teach all kinds of stamping home decor. I love it and have a great time! As with stamping when we have gatherings it's so nice to see our old friends and make new ones, so is with Girl Scouts. Well anyway, the woman who runs the camp (Camp Director) has been doing so for 30 years! Some of the old timers had a surprise luncheon for her and I offered to make a few things for her to give as a gift from everyone.

So here is the card I made. I didn't do this in the "A4" size. Not sure what size they call this but it's a sheet of card stock (8.5 x 11) folded in half. I wanted it bigger so everyone attending could sign it. I used Number of Years and the coordinating framelit call Large Numbers. The image behind the "30" is the punch Best Badge. If you don't recognize the other stamps, that's because the are retired. I purchased these my first year as a demonstrator and retired that year. I love these and don't think I'll ever get rid of them! I think they're called Girl Power and Camp Out. The Girl Power was made to imitate the Girl Scouts. They also had one that imitated the Boy Scouts.

So initially I was just going to make the card and thought why not make this piece of home decor! It's basically a scrapbook page on a clipboard. I bought some paper that had the Girl Scout theme and thought that would be perfect for this! Everything I used here was retired! As you can see I still have them because they were favorites of mine and worked great! There are no pictures because I was sending this to the coordinator of the luncheon and she was to put the pictures in. My thought was to put  now and then pictures. In case you don't know what that "thing" is next to the lined card, it's a friendship knot. When you're a counselor at camp they give out a strip of fabric and you have a "friend" tie the knot for you! A very nice tradition!

So I was having so much fun making everything and as I was scanning the internet for some inspiration I came across this saying "I'm _________ what's your super power? and thought this would be perfect for a "badge" so I had to make one! I had made a sleeping bag button (out of shrinky dinks we used to sell) and it wasn't working for the clipboard and thought it would fit perfect on the badge! Then, still having so much fun, I thought I'd make a backpack! I've been wanting to make one of those for years! I love the way this turned out! I made another button to match the rope hearts that I stamped all over as a faux closure. This also gave me another idea to have a class using the Gift Bag Punch Board! So stayed tuned for that! It'll probably be next year at this rate, but you never know!

I hope you liked these gifts. I really had such a great time creating them! It was great to be able to just create!

If you didn't get my weekly newsletter, I'm running a special while I'm on vacation. The special is to just place ANY order and I'll send you a sampling of the Year of Cheer Embellishments. Now if your order reaches $50, not only do you earn a Butterfly, you'll also receive this month's card kit with a PDF and when your order reaches $60, you'll get all that I mentioned but you'll also receive the 1/4" Copper Trim! To receive all these things, you need to use HOST CODE 3DSR7NFJ to make it easy for you, you can Click HERE to Shop! My little way of saying Thank You for your support! I always appreciate it!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Group 3 of Monthly Swaps

Here are the next group of swaps. Hope this gives you some ideas to do for your own cards!

This first card was made by Gayle. She used a bundle that was available in last year's Holiday Mini and carried over into the new annual catalog. I really liked this bundle but unfortunately didn't get it. I've seen so many great Christmas cards along with other none seasonal cards as well. So this stamp set is Star of Light and the coordinating dies. She used
Real Red card stock for the base and stamped the images on Whisper White. This was layered on Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper. She used Smoky Slate & Real Red ink and added a rhinestone to the snowflake.

This next card was made by Debbie, she also used the Star of Light.  Amazing how different cards can be just by changing the colors. Here Debbie used Fresh Fig, Tranquil Tide, ink and card stock.  She also used rhinestones as an embellishment and added the gold faceted gems as well.

This card really wowed me! Carol made this card using At Home with You  & Christmas Pines. The images are stamped on watercolor paper and colored in with Real Red, Soft Sky, Garden Green, Crushed Curry, Crumb Cake using and aqua painter. This was then layered on Red Glimmer paper then put on the base of Garden Green. The sentiment was punched out using the Duet Banner Punch along with a piece of the Red Glimmer paper again.

Love this card! She really put a lot of work into this one!

I hope you're enjoying these swap cards, I know I have! Thanks for stopping by today and if you want to get any of these items, hop on over to my STORE!

Product of the Month late Post!

It's been a busy day and weekend! I feel like all I've been doing lately is play catch up! Today my husband and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary! Can you believe it? If I was 30, I'd say that's a long time! Well I'm not 30 but it's still a long time, but it just doesn't feel like it. That's partly why I'm so far behind. The other is we are taking more of a real vacation. That means not work the whole time we're down in VA!

So anyway. I've been working on samples for today and next week. I hope you enjoy them. Just to review what the product of the month is, it's the Carols of Christmas Bundle. It's in the new Holiday Mini Catalog and available to customers for purchase so they can get a jump start on their holiday cards! If you'd like to look at the other posts click HERE, and HERE.

After I did all these cards, I realized 3 of them have pretty much the same layout! I guess I liked it!

This first card uses Chocolate Chip for the base and is a top fold. The next layer is Whisper White and I used the outline die cut to frame everything. The trees are cut from the Daisy Designer Series Paper. I had seen a few other people do this and thought it was a great idea! So since I was using that paper, I looked to see what colors were in that pack and it was Tranquil Tide, so I used that to stamp the sentiment and also layer it. The sentiment was die cut using the Stitched Framelits.

This next card look familar? Yup! I used the same outline framelit. The base for this card is Night of Navy. I stamped the snow image in Soft Sky and also the scallop layer is Soft Sky. Here I stamped the sentiment in Cherry Cobbler and used the Stitched framelits again. The trees are die cut from Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper. I really like the Stitched Framelits. If you're looking to build your die cuts, I would certainly recommend them. I use them on many projects.

Well it's late and I still have lots to do! I'll have more next week and will also have a vacation special again but won't be able to get that up and running until later in the week. So make sure you stop by and see what else is happening.

To purchase any of these products HERE is the link. Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment!

Group 2 of July Swaps

For these next two cards, they tie very nicely in with this month's Product of the Month! So besides all the samples I'll be sharing with you, here are a couple more! I can't say enough how lucky I feel to be in this group of such talented women!

 This first card was made by Jen. I feel extra special to be in this group because Jen is one of the Artisan's for Stampin' Up! I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but now you know! This is such a great card and so easy to reproduce! She started with Whisper White for the base and has a layer of Real Red. The floral image from Wood Words (another non traditional holiday image!) was stamped in Real Red ink. She then stamped from the Carols of Christmas, the "Peace on Earth" in Archival Black on Crumb Cake and die cut with the Stitched Edge framelits. Jen added the new 3/8" Mini Chevron ribbon in Old Olive and for some sparkle she added the Iridescent sequins! I love it! Thanks Jen.

For this next card, using the same stamp set, Carols of Christmas, Pat used Dapper Denim and Tranquil Tide. Pat also used the border framelit as I did in my initial post but then embossed the layer with the Softly Falling embossing folder. The "Peace on Earth" was inked with both blue and green inks and also die cut with the Stitched Framelits, but used one of the circles instead of the square. To break up and add some interest, she used a piece of the 3/8" Striped Grosgrain ribbon in Dapper Denim. I liked the way she die cut the trees, once in the Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper and then in the Tranquil Tide card stock to give it a shadow. Pat also stamped the deer in Chocolate Chip ink and then die cut it. It's so nice to have the dies so you don't have to fussy cut everything! Lastly she added touches of the Clear Wink of Stella to the phrase and the deer. Not sure if you can tell in the picture, but it's there! It gives it just a bit of shimmer! Love this too!

I hope you've enjoyed these next cards and it's giving you more inspiration on using this fabulous bundle! To purchase any of these products, you can find them in my STORE. While shopping, don't forget to to the Host Code in to earn FREE stuff from ME! I so appreciate you taking the time to stop by my blog. I look forward to reading your comments and sharing any of what you're making!

More Product of the Month!

I'm a little late today. I needed the weekend off and some down time so I played catch up today!

So here are some more things to make using the Carols of Christmas Bundle. Just as a refresher, here is the Bundle, you can get it in Wood Mount or Clear Mount.

My thought process to create is usually to hop on Pinterest and get some ideas. Sometimes I see a card I like and make that just change up the colors, sometimes I look for a color combo to use. For this card it's a little of both. I saw a card I had saved using buttons as the ornaments so I thought I'd go with that theme. Wasn't sure what colors I wanted to use so went looking for some color combos. I also wanted to keep it simple. I hope you like it. I used Old Olive and Real Red. On the red ornaments I popped them up and colored them with Clear Wink of Stella. I also did "Peace" in Wink of Stella too.

This next card I saw a card similar in white and blues with gold. They also used one of the edgelits on the top. Again I wanted to keep it simple so I used gold embossing powder on Basic Black card stock for the sentiment and used the Stitched Framelits to cut it out. I also die cut the deer in gold foil paper. I die cut a post it using the same circle for a guide to stamp the holly around in Always Artichoke on Crumb Cake card stock. I was going for an "earthy" look and thought the new Jute twine in the Holiday Mini worked great on this card. This was layered on Basic Black and then used Crumb Cake for the base.

Remember this bundle is available to customers this month! If you'd like to get this bundle or any of the other products used, you can shop my store HERE!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope this has sparked your creative juices and get you going on your holiday cards.