Baby-Name Picture

I wanted to share this baby-name picture I made for a friend recently. The frames can be bought at Walmart and are CHEAP ~ $3.00! I started with a background piece of c/stock in certainly celery. Then I layered bashful blue behind whisper white and sewed them together using a zig-zag stitch on my machine. I stamped out each letter of the baby's name and matted them with bashful blue again. Once they were adhered to the white panel, I embellished it a little with some ducks from Papertrey Ink's set "Limitless Labels" and with a few buttons I've saved over the years glued around the place, I thought this made a cute little gift.

SCS Colour Challenge

Yesterday's Colour Challenge over on SCS was to use SU's certainly celery, pretty in pink and chocolate chip ... three of my favourites! I wanted to keep it simple so I decided to make the focal point a plastic die-cut flower. These flowers are from a company called Maya Road and they're lovely to work with. I used a sponge dauber to colour it with the P-in-Pink. I then layered up my card making the white layer the hand-made designer paper! I used the spots from PTI's Polka Dot Basics and used the 3 challenge colours. I scalloped the bottom of that layer and used celery to stamp the sentiment along the bottom. The fabric brad is from Making Memories and just happened to be the perfect shade of pink!

SCS Technique Lover's Challenge

Today's TLC over on SCS was to make a gift card holder. The original idea came from Pinefeather, her post is here http://pinefeather.typepad.com/pine_is_here/2008/03/baby-gift-card.html
I used her directions exactly. I stuck the front and back together with a thin piece of sticky strip to make sure it would hold firmly in place! I also used the word window punch and the oval punch (both SU) to make the slot for the gift card.
My front white sheet was embossed with SU's Pick a Petal Classy Brass Template. Then I embossed a scalloped circle and punched it out with SU's Scallop Punch (I love how all SU's shapes and sizes interchange perfectly). I then stamped the sentiment with a stamp from the set 'Circle of Friendship' in soft sky and punched it out with the 1.25" SU circle punch. Both the inner circle and the scallop circle were popped up onto dimensionals (you can see them on the 2nd photo). I pierced the inner circle edge to add a little more interest and finished the whole thing off with a bow.
The inside was stamped with the same flower from the brass stencil, it's the flower in the stamp set Pick a Petal so it's identical to the embossed one. This really is a very easy and quick gift card holder .... I'm thinking at Christmas that the possibilities will be endless.

An Unfrogettable Card

Last week was a stamping disaster!!! Every day I vowed to get into my stamping room and something or other cropped up and stopped me ... aaarghhh! So this week-end I indulged myself! LOL. I got a new stamp set, well, it's hardly 'new' to SU but it's new to me! I've often admired what people have created with this sweet little set ... and I qualified for a free set from SU during February/March ... so I chose this one! My dearest friend Lisa has a little one (well, hardly that little now!) whose birthday was yesterday .... and they live back home in England so it'll take a week for the airmail to reach there. I used the sentiment inside 'sorry I frogot your birthday' ... I think he'll get a kick out of it. I think I'll sweeten the 'lateness' by putting some English money inside, although with the horrendous exchange rates, it won't be much! Sorry Theo!

I'm challenging myself this week to do the SCS challenges EVERY day ... so I'm off to my stamping table now for today's gift card holder! Let's hope the 'phone doesn't ring!

Recipe

Stamps : Unfrogettable

Ink: Brilliance Graphite, Close to Cocoa

C/Stock : PTI Stamper's Select White, Real Red, Glorious Green

Accessories : SU Scallop Punch, Grosgrain Ribbon, Copic Sketch Markers

First Workshop

Last night was my first workshop as a SU! Demonstrator. How exciting! Thanks Mel for letting me come over and share my love of stamping with you and your friends! Down to the nitty gritty. I made my hostess the tin as a thank you gift. The little tin was from Target and I covered it with Cutie Pie DSP and Die Cut Blooms. I put a pack of SU! Ribbons inside and tied it all up with a ribbon. My 2 projects were super-easy and I wanted to thank Robin (MzRobin on SCS) for her fabulous project using 'Tart and Tangy' and SU's Summer Picnic DSP. She'd put together a gorgeous little 'origami pouch' ... take a look at her blog (www.robinlea.blogspot.com) for the details under the heading 'March Hostess Club Project' ... simply too cute for words! The 2nd project was a fun and easy thank you card made using Summer Picnic DSP and Die Cut Blooms.

Sympathy Card

Nichole Heady of Papertrey Ink came up with this fantastic 'mosaic' effect on her blog 'capture the moment'. She's so clever and innovative. Anyway, I loved her sample card so much that I wanted to make it for a friend of my parents. Unfortunately my dad's good friend died suddenly earlier this week. He went to bed not feeling too good and died during the night. Such a tragedy for the small village in England in which my parents live. I decided to make a card for Liz and wanted to make it pretty instead of sombre .... so here it is.

Recipe

Cardstock: PTI Stamper's Select White, SU Mellow Moss

Ink: Mellow Moss, Regal Rose

Stamps: PTI's out on a limb

Playing with my New Brass Template

I treated myself to one of SU's classy brass templates, this one's 'Pick a Petal'. I wanted to put something together that's quick and easy so I used Whisper White and Regal Rose and played around for a while. The dry embossing is easy to do ... and quite addicting! I love the scallop circle which had piercing holes around it too ... and of course fits perfectly with the scallop punch! I just trimmed the narrow strip with my Fiskars scallop blade and hey presto!

Recipe

Cardstock: Whisper White

Stamps: Every Day Flexible Phrases

Ink: Close to Cocoa

Accessories: SU Pick a Petal Classy Brass Template, Empress Stylus, Scallop Punch, Fiskars Scallop Blade

Bar Mitzvah

This past weekend was very moving for my family and for me. We attended a service at a Temple in West Bloomfield for a dear friend's son's Bar Mitzvah. I cajoled my husband into his suit and tie and off we went with our 12 year old daughter. Well, I have to tell you that this service moved both my husband I to tears. It was the most beautiful, emotional, love-filled service I have ever been part of (including many weddings, christenings etc.). I wanted to make a card to say how much we enjoyed being part of this service ... and here it is.

The card is an image from SU's 'Blooming with Love' which I coloured with SU markers and mounted onto Cranberry Crisp cardstock. Added a double-bow (which happens to be the TLC over on splitcoast today!). A simple card for a dear friend.

Binder Clips

Last month I went to the SCS 'Michigan Mingle' where lots of wonderful Michigan splitcoasters met for a weekend of fun and frolics. Gosh, we had fun and I met some wonderful people! My shoebox swap was this binder clip which I thought I'd share with you today. I bought a 6-pack of large binder clips from Staples. They worked really well because the little handles are rubber-coated which means the grip a photo, or whatever you want to display, really well. Firstly I measured across the clip and around the clip and cut my DSP accordingly. Here it's Ginger Blossom by SU. I stuck 3 pieces of sticky strip onto the clip, one across the top front, one across the top back and one strip across the centre of the bottom. Then it's just a question of lining up the paper and sticking it down. The embellishments are just so easy ... really anything goes! I used 2 primas, a brad and some retired Cranberry Crisp stitched ribbon. So quick, so easy and really ... so cute!