Have a go at this colour challenge ... CC181 on SCS ... Rose Red, Basic Black and Kraft. It's a great combo and I really like how it turned out on this christmas card. The stamp set, Snow Swirled, is just lovely and I'm looking forward to using it more ... it's so versatile and is brand new in the 2008 Fall Winter Catalogue.
There's a great challenge today over on SCS here. It shows you how to do a 'faux' dry embossed look on a card. Basically, you stamp your image in white craft ink. Once it's dry, you stamp the same image again but just a smidge to the right in the same colour ink as the cardstock. You get this clever 'shadow' effect around the image and it looks embossed. Give it a go, it's fun! 
My Boxes, Bags & Tags Class is being held this Friday, August 29th at 7pm ~ there's still time to sign up! The class is $12 and we'll be making all of the above containers using all new product from the Fall Winter 2008 Catalogue! Don't miss it!
One of my best friends (hi Hilary!) has a sister (who's also a friend of course!) who's getting married on Saturday. I haven't seen her for the longest time, not since we moved over to America in 2001, so I haven't met her fiance ... but I wanted to make them a card for their special day. I found inspiration whilst browsing Angie Kennedy Juda's blog. She'd made a cute gate-fold card so I decided to give it a whirl myself. 
Jessie (Knightrone over on SCS) is a super-talented card maker and artist. I love her beautiful cards and have been a fan of hers for a long time! Today on SCS the Featured Stamper is Jessie. I was so exctied to see her included today! I decided to CASE her card seen here. I used both the 1 1/4" and 1 3/8" circle punches to make a flower template (sounds easy if you say it fast! LOL) and then cut out the shapes and layered them up to make the flower. Sooooo hard to make it look good! I did change the main card, colours from blue to pink and the central image is smaller and simpler. If you get a chance, you should check out Jessie's blog too, it's jam-packed full of lovely offerings!
I've had an acrylic key-ring sitting on my desk for AGES so today I decided to use it! I stamped and punched some of the quilt blocks from PTI's Quilter's Sampler and assembled them on the 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" card insert from the key-ring. I've posted 2 pictures because the reverse side needed something too! I also put together a very simple card to go with the key-ring. My mum and dad have been treating Sarah while she's been staying with them in England so this is going over to mum to say how much I appreciate everything she does for us. Unfortunately you'll be reading this before the post manages to reach Suffolk {right mum?!} ... so it won't be a surprise but it's really nice in real life! Apologies to dad ~ I didn't think he'd really want a quilt key-ring!!
We're going over to Mandy's house, my old school friend, later today for supper and I wanted to take something for her 2 girls ~ so I decided to make them a treat bag each. I'm going to fill them with sweets! The girls both have the initial S so I made them a monogram each using Papertrey's Trajan font and a circle from Boxes, Bags and Tags. The paper is from SU and is called Spring Fling (retired). I found the cute treat bags on Cambria's blog here.
I never used to heat emboss on vellum because the heat tool would make the delicate paper 'warp' and then it'd never lay flat. There is of course a trick to this technique! Once you've sprinkled your embossing powder over the damp ink, lay your vellum (this works for cardstock too) over a piece of foil-covered cardboard and clamp the edges down with clothes pegs. This holds everything flat while you gently heat the powder until it melts. Of course, you do have to go easy with the heat but by using this inexpensive home-made tool you can heat emboss without warping!
If you ask anyone to describe my uncle Robin's wife, Amanda, they immediately smile and say 'fabulous' ... she just IS! So I'm horribly late for her birthday ... August 6th, which is in 2 days ... and of course she lives in England so it takes a week for the post to get there. But I suppose at the time of writing the card, it was on time, right?!
