More is More

Happy Leap Year Day!  🙂

I’m very excited for my wonderful friend Taylor VanBruggen as she launches her new website today – www.tayloredexpressions.com – a whole new shopping opportunity for paper crafters and those looking to purchase unique handmade cards and gifts.  Taylor has been running ribbon and tape shares on her blog for quite some time and now she is expanding to  a shopping website to offer ribbons, adhesives, cardstocks, handmade cards, custom invitations, gift and favor boxes, project kits, and more.  All top quality at great prices!  Be sure to check out Taylor’s blog today for some very special offerings for her Launch Weekend.

I also need to give a special birthday shout out to my friend Emily – a Leap Year Day baby who celebrates her 8th birthday today.  😉  Enjoy Pixie!!!  Click on her name and hop on over to her blog to wish her a Happy Birthday!

I’ve actually prepped this post on Thursday night and have it set to post Friday morning.  So who thinks I’ll actually turn off the computer for Leap Year Day?  Anybody?  Well either way I have lots to do and I hope I’m able to carve out a little time to stamp something.  Thanks for stopping by!

The Sketch Challenge on SCS today seemed perfect for this notebook I had been wanting to alter for awhile now.  And Embrace Life just seemed to fit the sketch pefectly.

This was a little Mary Englebreit notebook from the Dollar Bin at Michael’s.  I picked up 3 or 4 of them and now wish I had gotten a lot more.  Notebooks are one of my favorite things to alter.  Since this is going to be a little birthday gift for a friend I made a little 3×3 card to match. The images are watercolored with ink from markers and an aquapainter – my quick easy way to watercolor.  The large flower was covered with Crystal Effects and allowed to dry before cutting it out.  Fruit Punch Stickles were applied to the stamens.  Sentiment on the little card is from Paper Trey.

It was so interesting reading everyone’s comments on my Blog Give-Away post about whether you stamp more or blog surf (blurf as some of you called it – LOL!) and SCS lurk more.  The vast majority of you said you spend way more time on the computer than stamping.  And most of you were somewhat apologetic about it.  I have to admit that I too spend more time on the computer than I do stamping.  I’ve been addicted to SCS for – I can hardly believe it – almost 4 years now.  And I have a really hard time keeping up with all the blogs I’d like to read. I love SCS, but honestly there are times I feel a little like I’m shackled to the computer – between being a Moderator, hosting a swap, planning and communicating StampMania, answering PM’s, being involved in a long running chat thread, and posting to my own blog – I could easily sit at the computer all day just to feel like I’m *keeping up*.  The really great thing about having a blog is that it does motivate me to stamp so I’ll have stuff to post here.  That’s kind of backwards thinking I guess, but it works.

I read in a magazine somewhere (I was going to save the article, but heaven only knows where I put it!) the editor talking about February 29th as an *extra* day.  She said in leap years she does something special on February 29th – something she usually might feel she doesn’t have time for.  I thought that was an interesting concept.  I’m toying with the idea of turning off my computer this Friday 2/29.  I’m still trying to decide if my head will explode if I do that.  LOL!  I still have a little over 24 hours to decide.

For all of you who said you spend more time on the computer than you do stamping – first I want to say that I LOVE that you read my blog.  I feel honored and humbled that people would spend time to read what I have to say and to look at my creations – so thank you!  Second – I want to challenge you to step away from the computer for one hour that you would normally  spend blurfing (LOL!) to stamp something.  Go to the SCS Challenge Forum – pick a challenge and stamp something!  Then come back here and post a link to your gallery upload.

And now it’s time to announce the winner of my Final Blogiversary Give-Away….drumroll…..

#12 Janet said:

#12 Janet P. Hi Jami! I spend way more time blog hopping than stamping. With two little ones at home and no stamp room with a door, its hard to find a time to get all my stuff out and not have little fingers into it. I stamp about once a week during naptime. Thanks for the great blog candy offer and happy blogaversary!

Congratulations Janet – I’ve e-mailed you for your snail mail address.

Thanks to everyone who entered.  So many of your comments gave me such sweet warm fuzzies!

Did you notice my NEW banner?  Isn’t it pretty?  I still love the one Emily made me and plan to rotate it back in at some point, but I’m starting off my second year of  blogging with this new banner made by Michelle Laycock.  Michelle is a fellow DDA and often participates in my swaps.  Along with being a talented stamper she has a business making blog banners and watermarks – you can check it out here.

Today was a busy day with a dentist appointment and a hair appointment (ahhhh fresh color!), but I was determined to take a little time tonight to stamp a card.  I was thrilled when I checked the SCS Color Challenge Forum earlier than the new challenge should have been there and found it had been posted just minutes earlier!  WooHoo!  I had to look no further for inspiration.  The color challenge is always fun because the color combo always seems to dictate certain stamp sets to me.  This week’s combo is Basic Black, River Rock and Whisper White (I chose to use Shimmer White – hope that’s not cheating *wink*).  The sample was oh so elegant so I went looking through my stamp sets to see what would speak to me.  The yet uninked Hostess Set Infinite Goodness spoke loudly and here’s what I came up with.

Darn it – it’s so much prettier in person that I could capture in a photo taken at night.  All the white cardstock is shimmery and for the background I stamped the leaf image repeatedly and added just a touch of color with the Putty Copic (matches River Rock nicely) before running the cardstock through my Cuttlebug with an embossing folder – can you see the texture?  The pear was colored with the Copics in the picture.  The little dots you see (3 in the corner above the pear and 1 in the corner of the sentiment) are Swarovski crystals and they are just gorgeous IRL (thanks Debra!).  I cut a diaganol slit with a craft knife in the corner of the pear panel and slipped the sentiment panel in, then did a little doodling around the pear.  The finishing touch is black velvet ribbon with a rhinestone ribbon slide and a velvet bow.  The bow is a separate piece and attached with a glue dot.  I’m still trying to decide if the bow is too much, but either way it’s there to stay.  LOL!

You have until 6am Tuesday (tomorrow) morning to enter a comment on the post below for my final Blogiversary Give-Away.  I have my prayer group tomorrow night, so I’ll announce the winner on Wednesday.  Thanks for stopping by.

Are you having a good weekend?  Curt is gone on a camping trip with the guys.  I miss him, but I took a friend to lunch today for her birthday and enjoyed just lingering and chatting for a few hours.  Yesterday when I was out running errands I remembered that I had been wanting to stop by Michael’s to try and find the *generic dew drops* that Lauren mentioned on her blog awhile back.  I was glad she specified to look on an end cap in the silk floral department or I never would have found them.  I got two packages – one blue (caribbean and sky) and one pink (pretty in pink and pomegranate).  I just had to make a card with them last night and chose a color combo of Soft Sky (textured cardstock base) with Gable Green and Cool Caribbean.

I’ve had this retired hostess SU set (Sidekick Sayings) since the end of the last catty and hadn’t inked it yet.  I love all three of the sentiments in the set and this one just seemed suited to the color combo I had already chosen.  I decided to go with a 3″ x 6″ card size and stamped the base with an image from Embrace Life in Cool Caribbean.  The main image was stamped in black on whsiper white and then watercolored with *highlights*.  Some polka dot grosgrain ribbon and stickles finished off the main image which was mounted on foam tape.  The dew drops and some piercing were the final touches to this simple card.  I like it so much that I’m thinking I might use the Christmas sentiment from this set to make a set of 10 or 20 Christmas cards similar to this.

Today caps off my week long One Year Blogiversary Celebration and I have one last Give-Away for you as a thank you for visiting my blog and sharing my journey.

This prize package includes:

• Pink Glitter Alphabet Stickers (like the ones I used on the baby package in the post below)
• Me & My Big Ideas embellishment kit including some awesome bling flowers
• EK Success Vellum Stickers – Pretty Floral
• Mini Flower Punch (one of my personal favorites)
• Two sample packs of *generic dew drops* in blues and pinks
• Stampin’ Up! Build-a-Brad set in pewter (if you don’t have this you NEED it!)
• Card – as described above

To be entered into this drawing please follow these directions carefully:

**Tell me your post # – if the person before you did not indicate a post number then simply look back to the last person to give a post number and take the next number after that.  Anyone not indicating a post number will not be in the drawing

**Tell me your name in your post

**Post a comment and tell me honestly – do you spend more time stamping or blog hopping and SCS lurking?  How much time do you think your generally spend stamping each week?

One post per person for this drawing – you are welcome to enter this drawing even if you entered the ones earlier this week.  Posts for this drawing will close Tuesday 2/26 at 6:00am Pacific time and the winner will be announced sometime Wednesday.  Good luck!

Thanks for celebrating with me!

You all know how much I love penguins!  After hearing all about the Imaginesce booth at CHA themed around tropical penguins I was so bummed I had somehow missed it.  Then my friend and club member Debra (dashpaugh on SCS) brought me a sweet little birthday gift of two of their clear penguin images – a girl and a boy!  I was so excited!

I decided to do a little More is More pair of cards with the boy pengiun and some AMuse notecards.

Isn’t he just the cutest little roly poly penguin?  On both cards I paper pieced his swim trunks.  The notecards come printed with the green designs you see.  On the *more* version I added some Orange with an image from the Sprinkles set plus I stamped him on an oval and matted with two scallop ovals.  I also added some extra ribbon. Ribbon is also from AMuse. The sentiment is from One of a Kind.

Then I needed a super quick thank you card so I made this one with Pun Fun while I had my AMuse notecards and ribbon out on my table.

I colored the sheep with Copics and used the colorless blender pen (or cordless blender if you remember my Christmas story *wink*) to pull off some of the color and give the wooly effect.  When I mounted Pun Fun I cut all the sentiments away from the images and mounted them on the ends of the blocks.  This makes them very easy to stamp anywhere on a card, rather than just right under the image – also makes it easy to mix up the sentiments.  I realize this card is completely opposite of my normal style, but I’m thinking about making up a matching notecard set as a gift following this idea.  I do like simple cards as sets.

I have another give-away coming up, but no time to post now…I’m off to work.  Thanks for stopping by.

And the winner of the 2nd Give-away celebrating my Blogiversary…according to the Random Number Generator is….

#3!!!

Linda SS said:

#3 – Sure looks like a fun time was had by all at CHA. The papers are scrumptious! I’m Linda and I love creating cards. I also enjoy dabbling in scrapbooking and am hoping to expand more into that also. Thanks for the chance at some more fabulous blog candy:)

Congratulations Linda – I’ve e-mailed you for your snail mail address.

I have another Give-away still coming this week – so check back!  🙂

It’s the 20th so you know what that means…time for another DD/DDA Gallery Reunion.  This month we’re giving a shout out to our fellow Dirty Girls. 

 Focus: Stamps Designed by Fellow Dirty Girls. –OR– alternate option – use any fellow Dirty Girl’s galllery creation as an inspiration to semi-CASE something of your own
Required Element: Spring Color Combo – whatever feels like Spring to you!

Restricted Element: NO CuttleBug/Big Shot/Wizard or similar diecut/embossing machines.

To see all the cards uploaded to the SCS gallery for this challenge click here.  Be sure to check it again later today or tomorrow as the girls will be uploading throughout the day today.

This month I made 2 cards.  The first is a baby card I needed for a baby shower this weekend.  Baby cards are not one of my forte and fellow Dirty Girl Alum Lauren Meader came to my rescue with her adorable Onesie card and tutorial found on her blog here.  I have to say I LOVE how this card turned out!
 

I used pink and white shimmer cardstocks (wish you could see the pearly shimmer in the photo) along with just a bit of pink designer paper from the SU Hostess 6×6 pad.  The stamp is from the Sale-a-bration set (you can get it for FREE!).  The little buttons are brads and the bow is pink tafetta ribbon.  I was positively bouncin’ when I finished this the other night.  Oh and it matched the 2 little outfits I was giving for the gift.  Next I decided to decorate packaging to match.  Now I know I CASEd this idea either from a blog or magazine, but I’m not remembering where I saw it.  If you recognize it please let me know.  I had a white gable box in my stash and it had been there for years!  Finally came in handy.

I painted the top portion of the box with acrylic paint and covered the bottom portion with SU designer paper.  The designer paper strip folds over on each side of the top and is glued to the inside so it doesn’t have to be ripped off when the box is opened.  The pink satin ribbon from Fabric Barn is wrapped around and tied in a bow – it matches better IRL than in this photo.  Pink glitter letters are from the Target Dollar spot (and if you keep coming back this week you just might get to win some *wink*).

My next card was just created this morning and it’s a quadruple challenge of sorts:

1. Used Whipper Snapper Spring Bird by Anna Wight (shout out to Anna)

2. Used Cornish Heritage Farms Geometric Flowers II by Lisa Strahl (shout out to Lisa)

3. CASEd a card by Leslierich (shout out to Leslie)

4. Today’s SCS SKetch Challenge (which happened to use Leslie’s card as the sample)

Is that serendipity or what?

It’s dark and rainy here so it was a little hard to get a decent photo, but it was the perfect day to work with a Spring color scheme.  My very first thought when thinking of Spring colors was Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery and Barely Banana – it just feels so fresh and happy to me.

Spring Bird was stamped on SU watercolor paper with Brilliance Graphite Black ink and heat embossed with Irridescent Ice ep.  This is a trick I learned a long time ago at a booth at a rubber stamp convention that had gorgeous watercolored samples.  The owner told me that they stamped all images in black and embossed them with Hologram or Irridescent ep to give a softer, sparkly effect.  I watercolored with Watercolor Wonder Crayons.  Lisa’s awesome background stamp was inked with Craft White for a subtle effect on the pink cardstock.  Edges were distressed and the main image was mounted on foam tape.  This is one of those cards that just made me smile big when I was finished.  Hope you like it too.

I can hardly wait to see what all the Dirty Girls have done with this challenge.  Thanks for stopping by.