More is More

Happy Friday!  Do you have special plans for the Holiday weekend?  I can’t believe it’s almost September!  I decided to go simple for the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge (cupcakes NOT required) today.

The main image panel is actually one I made a long time ago, but never made into a card.  It couldn’t be simpler.  I brayered ink from a Caribbean Sea Kaleidacolor Pad (I had a serious K-pad addiction as evidenced by my extensive collection) onto white cardstock and then stamped the Stampendous Parkscape image in black.  That’s it.  I layered it onto a black mat panel.  The sentiment from Stampendous Friendship Chain was stamped on Gable Green cardstock, punched with the SU small oval and then covered with Versamark and embossed with clear ep.  The Taken with Teal panel was stamped with SU Paisley BG in Versamark and clear embossed (got this idea from a swap card made by Crystal) and it looks way cool IRL.  There are 3 black Kaiser Crafts rhinestones in the top left corner.  The *ribbon* is actually some cool black fuzzy trim, but I just couldn’t get it to really show up in a photo.

Get all the info on the Challenge over at Taylor’s blog and please come play along!  And let’s go see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up:

Ana Wohlfahrt: Ink A Stamp

Stephanie Hargis: Steph’s Stampin’ Stuff

Vicki Chrisman: This Art that makes me Happy

Monika Davis: M.A.D. Stamper

Lynn Mercurio: Stamperosity

Mary Jo Albright: Beauty Lies Within

Sherrie Siemens: Card Creme

and this week’s Featured Stamper – Nancy Morgan at Paper Smiles.

Nothing special planned here for the weekend, but looking forward to some very cool happenings next week.  I’ll be sure to share here as things unfold *wink*.  Oh and hey – just a reminder – I still have some retired SU for sale – click here to see the list.  And I’d still love to trade Heartfelt Thanks to someone who would really enjoy it – FOR TRADE – Heartfelt Thanks (mounted barely ever used)- will trade for used Fun & Fast Notes or All Scallops or new Only Ovals (Customer Direct) – each pays own shipping.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have some time to stamp this weekend.

Wow – check it out!  I got my Stampin’ Up! 5 Year pin in the mail today!  (ummm…it’s no where near this big in real life!  LOL!)  I can hardly believe I’ve been a Demonstrator for five years.  I originally just signed up to be a hobby Demo and get the discount, but immediately found the joy of teaching classes and very soon got a Club going.  I quickly discovered that while being a Stampin’ Up! Demo was never going to provide an *income* it could definitley pay for my obsession hobby of stamping.  I want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of my customers for your business and support over the last five years!

Besides my pin, I also receieved a UPS delivery of a big Stampin’ box which included my new catty order.  I couldn’t wait to bust out Humor in High Heels because I’ve had an idea floating around in my head using Anna Wight’s Whipper Snapper set Hocus Pocus.  AND as it turned out my idea worked with today’s Sketch Challenge on SCS!  Cool!

Whether you’re a good witch

or a bad witch,

it’s all about the shoes!

*snort*  My original idea was to just stamp the legs/shoes once, but when I saw the sketch a lightbulb went on to have two sets of legs.  I colored them with Copic markers and then used a clear glaze pen on the shoes.  There’s orange stickles around the eggplant frame.  The dp also came in my SU order today – Ghostly Greetings – it has a lot of fun patterns.  Oh and one more new thing – the black hemp twine.  I love the rough texture and I think it will be great with lots of Halloween projects.  The card turned out a little *busy* I think and if I had it to do over I might try using Kiwi cardstock on the right half rather than the 2nd patterned paper…but we’ll never know. LOL!

Recipe:

stamps: Humor in High Heels, Whipper Snapper Hocus Pocus

paper: Elegant Eggplant, basic Black, white, Ghostly Greetings dp

ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black

other:  orange stickles, decorative scissors, ornage eyelets, black hemp twine, copic markers, clear glaze pen

Thanks for stopping by.  Be sure to join me Friday morning for another one of Taylor’s challenges. Oh and I’ve been asked if I have a complete list of Copic matches to SU colors.  In fact, I do but at the moment it’s just a hand-written list.  I’ll try to work on getting it typed into a chart sometime soon.  I’ll be sure to share here as soon as I do.

I have some good news to share!  Today was my 7 week weigh-in.  I’m only weighing in every 2 or 3 weeks and in the past 2 weeks I lost 5.4 pounds!  That’s a total of 13.4 pounds off (41.6 still to go)!  I am beyond excited.  And Curt (who started 2 weeks after me) has lost 11 pounds.  Can I hear a WooHoo???!!  Our initial plan was to stick with Nutrisystem for 2-3 months and then switch back to Weight Watchers.  For now we’re going to play it by ear and see how long we can tolerate the packaged food with Nustrisystem. The dinners are actually pretty good and it’s nice to be able to go in and customize our menus. It’s been great not to have a lot of decisions to make and not worry about proper portion control.  I know that WW is a better long term solution, but it also takes more focused effort the first couple of months.  We do allow ourselves two meals out per week and boy do we ever look forward to those!  Picking a restaurant for dinner never had so much meaning for us.  LOL!

Now on to something stamping related.  As soon as I got samples of the new SU In-Colors I sat down to determine the best Copic marker matches.  I’m sure lots of people have posted their opinions on this (although I haven’t read any), but I thought I’d share mine.  Hopefully some of you will find it helpful.

Pacific Point – B06 Peacock Blue

Baja Breeze – BG72 – Ice Ocean

Pink Pirouette – RV00 Water Lily

Kiwi Kiss – YG03 – Yellow Green

Tangerine Tango – YR09 Chinese Orange

Riding Hood Red – R37 Carmine

The only one that’s not a really great match is the Kiwi – Yellow Green.  The rest are super close.  Click on the chart below to view it full size.  You’ll see a scallop circle swatch of the cardstock next to a large swath of marker color and below that you’ll see SU white taffeta ribbon that has been dyed with the marker.

I absolutely LOVE this trick.  The taffeta takes the dye amazingly well, dries very quickly,  and you can have ribbon in any color.  Simply run the ribbon under the broad tip end of the marker held down on some scratch paper.  Couldn’t be easier.  All of the color matches are actually closer in real life than the scan shows.  It’s so hard to get true color on a scan like this.  Scroll down to my previous post and see a card with taffeta ribbon dyed orange – it’s a fabulous match to the Tangerine cardstock.

Of course if you’re *serious* about coloring, you’ll also want additional colors for shading, but hopefully this will give you a good starting point.  There are lots of sources for Copic markers – I get mine at eclectic Paperie.  I prefer the Originals with the fine tip, but not all colors are availabe in Original so I buy Sketch when neccessary – as with the Ice Ocean and Water Lily above.

Thanks for stopping by and happy coloring!

Happy Friday!  This week’s sketch for the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge (cupcakes NOT required!) is a fun, easy and super versatile one!  You just have to come play with us!

And to make it super simple here are the measurements for a 4 1/4″ square card.  The main image panel is 2 1/2″ square layered onto a 2 5/8″ square.  The diamond panel behind the main image is the same size.  Easy Peasy!

This is a great layout to really showcase a larger single stamp image.  I chose to use Spring Sprigs by Stampendous – available as part of a card kit at TE.

This was such a quick card to put together.  Spring Sprigs was stamped on Neenah Classic White cardstock and colored with Copic markers (click the thumbnail above for a full size photo of the markers used) and highlighted with Diamond Stickles.  The card base is Tangerine Tango and the dp is from the Bella Rose pack.  Old Olive was used for matting.  I applied Diamond Stickles all around the Olive mat on the diamond piece and clear Adorn It Jewels Droplets were used in the corners.  Once the card was put together I felt like it just needed something more (big surprise, huh?), but I didn’t have any ribbon that looked right.  Copic marker to the rescue.  YR09 Chinese Orange is a really great match to Tangerine Tango cardstock, so I dyed some ivory taffeta ribbon and it’s perfect! I’m not an orange person at all, but I really like this card!

To get all the details on the challenge visit Taylor’s blog by clicking here.

And now it’s time to see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up:

Ana Wohlfahrt: Ink A Stamp

Stephanie Hargis: Steph’s Stampin’ Stuff

Vicki Chrisman: This Art that makes me Happy

Monika Davis: M.A.D. Stamper

Lynn Mercurio: Stamperosity

Mary Jo Albright: Beauty Lies Within

Sherrie Siemens: Card Creme

and this week’s Featured Stamper Lynn Put at The Queen’s Scene.

I’m hoping to get some serious stampin’ time today.  I have some fun new toys to play with – you’ll hear all about those later.  I want to play with them before my Stampin’ Up! New Catty order arrives.  I’m so spoiled to usually get orders within just s few days – this new catty time is always hard as the pick line gets so backed up.  I hope the order ships soon!

Thanks for stopping by!     

No stamping  today, just a quick post to share a couple of photos from Tea yesterday.  I was back at the beloved Vintage Tea Leaf with a different group of friends.

Denise, Luann, me and Lisa.  These are all women from my church and I’m so enjoying building friendships with them.  We’ve only been at this church for a little over a year and I’ve been so blessed to meet these gals along with several others.  Sometimes it’s hard to take time out to do things like spend an entire afternoon at Tea, but friendships are really so important and the only way to build them and/or maintain them is to spend time developing them.  We had such a wonderful afternoon and I look forward to spending lots more time with these gals in the future – even if it’s just a sandwich at Subway!

Luann brought boas for everyone – how fun is that?

I just want to encourage each of you to call or e-mail a friend or a group of friends and schedule some time together – at tea, or stamping, or out for coffee or whatever.  If you don’t initiate it, who will?

My day yesterday made me think of the old Girl Scout song…I know it’s corny, but at the same time I’m seeing how true it is…

Make new friends

But keep the old

One is silver

And the other’s gold!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.  Join me tomorrow for the Friday TECC!

Time for another Dirty Dozen Alumni Gallery Reunion.  This month’s party is hosted by Jen del Muro (genie1314) who I always refer to as genie/Jen to keep my Jen’s straight!

Focus:  Birthdays

Required: Numbers

Restricted:  No use of the word “birthday” on the front of the card

Well I was in some weird funk last night and couldn’t think of anything and didn’t feel like stamping so I was going to skip out on this month….but this morning I got up in a better frame of mind and got right to it!

As you might guess, this is for a little girl’s 10th birthday.  The Elzybells image was stamped on Neenah Select white cardstock with memento Tuxedo black ink and colored with Copics.  I added polka dots to her dress with a white gel pen.  She was cut out with rectangle nesties.  The big “10” is done with my JustRite stamper (avaialable at Taylored Expressions) in Pink Passion ink and cut out with a Coluzzle.  The Gable Green panel was stamped with the Dots & Daisies BG in white craft and heat embossed with white embossing powder. That was layered onto a pink passion panel and then I trimmed the pink panel with scallop scissors – not perfect, but close enough.   The ribbon is something I had in my stash (from Costco I think). The final sparkly finishing touch is the group of 3 Kaiser Craft hot pink flower rhinestones from eclectic Paperie.

JustRite is having a contest for some cool prizes and you can enter as many times as you like.  Find all the details by clicking here.

To view what all the Dirty Girls came up with for this challenge click here.

My recipe:

stamps: Dots & Daisies, JustRite Stamper, Elzybells

paper:  Pink passion, Gable Green, Nennah Classic White

ink:  Pink Passion, Craft White, Memento Tuxedo Black

other:  white ep, Copic markers, Coluzzle, ribbon, nestabilities, Kaiser Craft rhinestones, scallop scissors.

Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll be back later or perhaps tomorrow to share some tea photos.  🙂

I promised to share my Ghostie and here he is.  Isn’t he cute???

 This was a pure just for the fun of it More is More card.     I think my favorite images from both Spooky Expressions and Hocus Pocus (by Anna Wight for Whipper Snapper) are the two tiny ghosts in the Expressions set.  I’m not sure why, but they are just so little and cute!

I started this card off my placing the two little individual ghosts on the same acrylic block and stamping them repeatedly on the eggplant panel with white craft ink.  Then I heat embossed them with white embossing powder.  Next came the really fun part.  I painted each little ghost with a 50/50 solution of bleach and water using a small fine tip watercolor brush.  It was so fun to watch them change color!  Once the panel was completely dry I added “BOO!” all over in black craft ink and heat embossed with irridescent ice ep.  It’s hard to see the black against the eggplant in the photo.

Next I stamped the big ghostie in black ink on shimmery white cardstock and watercolored around him – first with Barely Banana ink to give him a glow and then with Eggplant ink to coordinate with the background panel.  He was then cut into an oval shape using my Coluzzle – being careful not to cut off his hands or tail (do ghosts have tails?).  I layered him onto a black oval and distressed the edges then onto an eggplant oval that had been brushed with the bleach solution to match the little ghosts.  I did a little doodling on that last oval and added some Dazzling Diamonds glitter.

I wanted to layer the eggplant panel on a white panel, but before I did I decided to add a glitter border. This was done by wrapping Scotch double stick tape around all the edges of the white panel and then covering it with Dazzling Diamonds.  This looks very cool in person!  I snipped the corners of the eggplant panel with the ticket corner punch and added some balck faux button brads.  A wide black gingham ribbon was wrapped around for some whimsy and then white taffeta ribbon was wrapped over that.  Before adding the taffeta I stamped the sentiment on it using classic eggplant ink.  It ran just a bit and I liked that look for Halloween.  The big ghost oval was adhered with foam tape and the whole layered panel was then attached to the black card base.  The final finishing touch was the “be scary” sentiment punched with the Word Window Punch and the addition of a little purple Adorn It jewel.

Recipe:

stamps:  Anna Wight for Whipper Snapper – Spooky Expressions and Hocus Pocus

cardstock:  Basic Black, White, Shimmery White, Eggplant

ink:  white craft, black craft, black Memento, Classic Eggplant

other:  coluzzle, word window punch, small circle punch, Adorn It jewels, Making memories balck button brads, ticket corner punch, white ep, irridescent ice ep, wide black gingham ribbon, white taffeta ribbon, bleach, dazzling diamonds glitter

Yep – More is More – especially when it comes to stampin’ FUN!  Thanks for stopping by.  I’m off to work.  Hope you have a great day!