More is More

YEA!  I stamped tonight!  I actually finished FOUR cards!  And of course I remember why I love stamping so much!

I had planned all week to take today out for some fun stamping, but by the time I got to my stamp room around noon it was just too hot to stamp in there.  It was somewhere between 95 and 100 degrees today and our window A/C just couldn’t reach to the farthest room which is my stamp room.  I was so disappointed and grumpy!  But then I decided I would get a few things done and try again this evening.  So of course when Curt asked if I minded if he go out to the garage to work on his Tesla coil I said I didn’t mind at all!!!  🙂

I received a good sized SU order the other day and I had ideas bubbling out of me.  I had been wanting to do the SCS Color Challenge of Pretty in Pink, Purely Pomegranate and Old Olive ever since I saw it on Tuesday and I thought it would be fun with my new True Friend set.  Here’s what I came up with:

The flower was stamped on Shimmer White cardstock and the brad in the corner is a square pink rhinestone brad.  For even more sparkle the sentiment was stamped in Old Olive craft ink and heat embossed with Irridescent ice embossing powder.  The slot punch was used to create a spot to slide the pomegranate stitched ribbon through and then the main image was adhered with foam tape for dimension.

I have seen several cards with the flower image in a two-tone look so I knew I wanted  it to be pink and pomegrante.  Normally I would do this with markers, but of course I don’t have a pomegranate marker so I whipped out these little cotton make-up applicators I bought awhile back to use with pastels.

I like them because they have a sharp end unlike q-tips.  I don’t remember where I bought them, but I think it was just a drug store like Rite Aid or something.  I inked up the entire flower with Pretty in Pink classic ink and then inked my applicator with Pomegranate ink and simply pounced it all along the edge.  The stem was inked with an Old Olive marker and then the whole stamp was given a few good huffs.

I am loving this color combo!  Of course I am completely smitten with Pomegranate right now anyway and would be perfectly happy to use it on just about every card!

I have to apologize to those of you who have tagged me and such.  I have been tagged by several people for Rockin’ Girl Blogger and a couple of the *answer these questions* games.  I truly appreciate being tagged and normally would love to play, but the past couple of months I’ve just had a little trouble keeping up with blogging in general.  I hope no one takes offense.  I’ll really try to be better about that stuff in the future!

So what do you have planned for Labor Day weekend?  At the moment the only thing we have scheduled is a BBQ with some old friends on Sunday (not here this time!).  I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend and hopefully some more stamping.  Thanks for stopping by and Happy Labor Day weekend!  🙂

I haven’t stamped much in the last 2 or 3 weeks – haven’t really wanted to.  Weird!  I seem to be experiencing Stamper’s Guilt and I hate it as it squelches my creativity.  I actually feel guilty (non-deserving) to take time out to stamp.  Is that crazy or what?  Do any of you ever feel that way?  I need to snap out of it – especially since I have a big SU order arriving tomorrow!

Last night at 9:03 I said to Curt “Do you think I can make a card in 20 minutes?”  Knowing full well that he and the birds were going to bed at 9:30 (and as you know I share my stamp room with the birds’ cages so I can’t stamp after they go night-night.)  He said “You actually have 27 minutes – GO!”

Here is the result of my hurried attempt.  I’m not really sure if I like it, but I’m glad I got in there and made something!  Oh and the answer is emphatically “NO!”  I cannot make a card in 20 minutes or 27 minutes.  Even with totally rushing on this I worked on it for a little over 45 minutes.

Colors used: Sage Shadow, Close to Cocoa, Blush Blossom, Purely Pomegranate. This color combo is actually pretty IRL, but I’m finding Pomegranate almost impossibe to photograh and show it’s true beauty.

Floral Image from Abundant Joy was stamped with Palette Hybrid Black Noir ink on Naturals Ivory cardstock and watercolored with ink.  The background around it was watercolored and sponged.  Flowers were then painted with Crystal Effects for a slightly raised shiny look. Sentiment is from the SU set Absolutley Fabulous which I just love.  It was punched using the Designer Label punch, but the strip of cardstock I used wasn’t quite wide enough so the edges are straight rather than rounded and I actually liked the way that looked.  Background stamps used are Fine Lace and Houndstooth.  Some thin cocoa velvet ribbon from my stash is run through tabs made with the Word Window Punch.  Finishing touch is the K&Co adhesive pearls from eclectic Paperie.

I’m off to work.  Thanks for stopping by.  🙂

My stampin’ mojo has been MIA for about a week or so – I’m sure some of it was all that party prep.  I got Big Flowers and Little Flowers last week and I just mounted them last night.  I was determined to stamp a card while I was locked in my stamp room for my bi-weekly exile this morning.

I was inspired by this fabulous card by the famous JanTink!  I love what she did with those Little Flowers and I wanted a similar effect, but with one of the Big Flowers.  My other inspiration was the color combo which came from sorting my Club order last week.  A pack of Pomegranate cardstock ended up next to a pack of Pink Passion cardstock and made me think “hey I need to try a card with that combo!”  And here’s the result.

I started with a piece of Pink Passion cardstock that was 5.5″ wide and stamped the Big Flower in Purely Pomegrante ink.  I then cut two masks of the flower using Eclipse Tape from eclectic Paperie.  I only needed two because as I stamped the flowers in white craft ink one at a time I would just hopscotch the mask over to the next flower.  I then cut around the bottom of the flowers and added K&Co. Adhesive Pearls to the flower centers.  This piece was then set aside while I wheeled Little Bits on the Pomegranate panel in white craft ink and then filled in the circles with two of the images from Little Flowers.  When I read in the SU catty that this little wheel coordinated with the Little Flowers I just had to add to to my order!  It’s going to make lots of fun backgrounds!

This is a fairly dark color combo so I decided to add some more white to make it pop.  I layered the Pomegranate onto a white panel.  I was ready to trim down the Big Flower panel but in playing with the layout I realized that I really liked the look of it overlapping the other panels on each side so I left the width at 5.5″ and just trimmed the height to about 2.5″.

I then added the white grosgrain and stamped the sentiment from Hugs & Wishes in white craft ink and embossed it with white embossing powder and punched it out with the SU Key Tag punch.  It was adhered with foam tape.  At first I had just one knot of the white grosgrain and I just wasn’t happy with the card.  So I went back to one of my standard design tricks – when in doubt use three knots!  LOL!  I think this turned out kind of fun.  Hope you like it.  🙂

This week has been crazy as I have been in a Portland Frenzy.  Stampin’ Up is having a regional seminar in Portland in mid-October.  They held this same event there two years ago and that trip is honestly one of the most fun times I have ever had, so when I heard about it this year I started immediately campaigning for friends to attend.  I booked my flight on Monday afternoon, hotel yesterday and dragged myself out of bed at 5:45 this morning to call to register for the seminar itself.  The seminar is great, but the best part is getting to see -in person- people from all over the country that have become my friends through Splitcoaststampers.  It’s truly amazing!  Last time I was so nervous about going.  Most of the people I planned to hang out with were people I had only talked to on-line.  Would I have people to hang out with?  Would I end up alone?  It was a blast – truly a blast!  This time will be even more fun as, for the most part, I feel now like I am re-uniting with old friends.

And to make the trip even more AWESOME – this will serve as a double vacation.  First I get to go up and spend a few days with my stampin’ buddies and then Curt flies up to join me.  Our friends (my very best friend since high school – *Hi Ruth!*) moved up to Vancouver WA a few years ago, so the second part of the trip will be spent hanging out with them.  How freakin’ lucky am I???

Between all the excitiment this week and getting up at O-Dark-Thirty this morning I am fading fast.  Good night and thanks for stopping by.

What a week!  Yesterday we hosted a BBQ in our backyard to celebrate 10 years of living in our Dairy House.  We had about 45 people here and I’m not kidding when I say we started preparations back in May.  Nonetheless, Friday and Saturday were full-throttle days doing party prep and set up…and it was HOT!  People began arriving a little after 4:00.  It was just a relaxing and fun evening of good food and friends new and old…at least I hope it was for the guests – I seemed to be running around the whole time (but that’s fine ’cause I love playing hostess!)  Then as soon as it got dark, Curt put on a little show in the driveway with his Tesla Coil (click here if you want to know what that is.).

 Click on photo for a larger view.  Notice that the fluoresent bulbs being lit are not in any way connected to an electrical source – pretty cool.  This photo was taken by our friend Rich.  Can you believe I didn’t take one picture all day?  I love having pictures, but when I’m hosting a party I just can’t seem to get to taking them.  I never even got the camera out yesterday.

The last of the guests left around 10:30.  Despite having lots of clean up help last night, Curt and I still spent about two hours out back this morning putting away furniture, etc. etc.  We’ve both felt like we were run over by a truck all day today – LOL!  We are blessed to have 1/3 of an acre (property that was originally part of a large dairy farm) – a lot size that is almost unheard of in our area of suburbia where the average lots size is around 5000 square feet.  Over the last 3-4 years we hadn’t really been able to keep up with the backyard due to some family illnesses and other issues and it just got overwhelming.  Curt has worked really hard on it the last few months.  It’s so nice to have it pretty and usable again and I hope we’ll host a lot of smaller scale backyard dinners in the near future.

Here’s the invitation to the party.  I stamped and watercolored the original header and border and scanned them into Publisher for the text.  The border was used full size and the Farmyard scene was reduced to fit.  Then I was able to e-mail it out as a pdf.  I felt this was a great compromise since I really wanted to handmake invitations, but there was no way I had time (or patience) to make over 75.  I was actually super happy with the how these turned out.  Curt said people would think we just bought that border paper so I added my little watermark in red in the bottom corner.  *wink*

The chick is Stampendous and available at eclectic Paperie.  The rest of the images are retired Stampin’ Up! (Backyard BBQ and Farmyard Jumbo Wheel).

The week also included a wonderful meeting with my women’s prayer group, getting to have dinner with some of my SCS stampin’ buddies including Karen who was visiting from Kentucky, as well as spending all of Thursday on the couch after waking up in the wee hours very sick (I’ll spare you the gory details).  So you see, when I say “what a week”  I really mean it!  The one thing I didn’t get to do this week was stamp and I think I’m having withdrawals.  I thought I would want to stamp today, but I was too tired.  Hopefully in the next few days I’ll get the mojo flowing again.

Thanks for stopping by.  It’s almost bedtime for me, so I’ll say good night and sleep tight.

I promised to share the rest of my swap cards, but I’ll do that tomorrow – hope you don’t mind.  I wanted to share a couple of cards I made first.  Both cards are pocket cards using Cutie Pie  paper and designed to fit into envelopes made with the SU 5-in-1 template.  I actually started by making an envelope and then a pocket card base from Bashful Blue cardstock.

To be honest, the card pictured above was the second one I made.  I started by stamping this cute little birdie image (a new Michael’s Dollar stamp) and then found it wouldn’t really fit onthe card I had started (see below) so I made this side fold pocket instead.  I love pocket cards and the side pull out is a really fun variation.  On the front of the card it says “A little bird told me” and when you pull out the tag it says “Congratulations are in order”.

The second card is what I did to *save* the horizontal pocket I had already started.

The little butterfly from Garden Whimsy is cut out and popped up with foam tape.  Hmmm…I don’t have an envie made for this one.  Back to the stamp table.  Darn.  *wink*

Tonight is an exciting night.  At midnight EST (9:00 Pacific) Paper Trey releases 2 new sets.  From the previews on Nicole’s blog I’m already drooling!  Oh man – I just realized that my prayer group will still be going at that time.  I hope they don’t sell out before I get there.  The second big event – at Midnight Pacific the Fan Club Gallery (Dirty Dozen) opens with a new monthly theme and revealing two new Dirty Girls.

Prayer group meets at my house in 15 minutes so I need to keep this short.  More swap pics tomorrow.  Thanks for stopping by.

As you know I mysteriously lost my account with Stamping Top 50 after my blog had climbed up to #72.  They never had the courtesy to reply to my e-mail for help, but several other friends were having problems and one of them finally got someone to look into the problem.  The really frustrating thing is that the answer she ended up getting was basically nonsensical and the only *fix* was to start from scratch with a new account.  So here I am at #402.  Woohoo (dripping with sarcasm).  I’m not even sure why I re-installed it, but Curt offered to do it for me, so I figured I would try it one more time.  I hate to be negative and I know it’s just the stupidest little thing to even let bother me….so…..letting it go…deep breath….moving on…

ETA:  since I started typing up this post last night I jumped all the way up to #334!!!!!!!  🙂  I have no idea how that happened, but I guess I need to stop whining for now.  *wink*

I promised to share the awesome New Catty Swap I hosted.   Here’s Round 1 with cards made by:

• Boatloads of Love – Jessica Newton
• Wanted – Sue Berker
• Fabulous Flowers – Tandra Boyer
• Illuminations – Debra Daam
• ABC Images – Sarah Moore
• Haunted Halloween – Linda Nicholson
• Snowfall – Britta Ward
• Stem Sayings – Alora Sweetster
• Priceless – Shelley Cantrell

I started hosting swaps on SCS a long time ago.  Since I really hate mass production stamping I keep my swap groups small – usually 8, but never more than 10.  I hope this cuts down on stress for my swappers and I know it boosts the overall quality.  After my first couple of swaps I started giving a heads up to all my previous swappers when I posted (or was about to post) a swap.  Over time this developed into doing most of my swaps via e-mail invitation.  I send out an invite to all my former swappers with a deadline when I will post the swap on SCS to fill any open spots. This method has worked out great for me and I am so happy with the number of return swappers I always have.  I am a stickler for communication with swappers and am known to be more than a bit anal about my very explicit rules.  I’ve earned the loving nickname “Swap Nazi” – LOL!!!!!  (at least I hope it’s loving!)

Here are the Round 2 swaps made by:

• Zoofari – Jessica Newton
• Elegant Notes – Sharlene Wale
• Punch Pals – Sharon Maranich
• Bronc Buster – Bev Gerard
• Garden Whimsy – Taylor VanBruggen
• Little Flowers – Janine Tinklenberg
• Batty For You – Sam Carnathan
• Happiness – Lori Craig

I ask all my swappers to upload their cards after the swap has been returned and to use a keyword so it’s easy to find them.  You can search the SCS gallery for keyword JSWAP707 or you can click here to see almost all the cards indvidually from this swap.  Please go take a look and leave some comments for my girls.  They all worked really hard on these.  My swappers ROCK!!!

I’ll be back tomorrow with more swap rounds.  Thanks for stopping by.

Tonight was my monthly Stampin’ Technique Class and the beginning of a new round of Hostess Club.  It was such a fun evening (albeit completely exhausting!)  I decided to teach Paper Tole as the main technique and we did do the boat card in the post just below this one.  It was an ambitious project for a group of 11, but my ladies rose to the challenge!  I was really proud of them.

 My other two projects were a Jenn-box (2-5-7-10 box) and a card.

The box is from Jenn’s tutorial last week on SCS (so I’m calling it a Jenn-box).  It’s made from a full sheet of Wild Wasabi cardstock, with some Groovy Guava as the accent color and the You’re Neat stamp set.  I thought it was a pretty simple project, not sure if everyone agreed but then they may have been a little shell shocked from coloring and cutting boats!  LOL!

The third project was this Garden Whimsy card which was inspired by a card on SCS by hlr976 (click here to see it.)

The Celery, Bashful, Pomegranate color scheme came from my favorite Cutie Pie designer papers again!  A pretty simple cute card – I really like it.

I was excited for my customers to see my display board full of new samples from the New Catty Swap I hosted.  What an awesome swap that was!  I will be sharing some pictures of that in the next few days so be sure to check back.  I’m toasted and need to get to bed!  Hope you have a fantastic weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!