More is More

Wowzas!  What an incredible response to my sketch for Taylor’s huge Cupcake Celebration last week.  Want to know who won the drawing for my sketch?  Scroll to the bottom of this post.  But surely you want to check out this week’s TECC before you do that!  I promise to keep it short!  *wink*

I came home from CHA to find a box full of brand new SU goodies on my door step, so I had to use some of them for this week’s sketch.  I’ve been wanting to do something a little more shabby or vinatge lately so I was excited to get Friends 24-7 and the coordinating Friends jumbo wheel.  The Parisian Breeze dp used here is beautifully thick and textured.  It reminds me of Crate which is one of my favorite paper companies.  And of course I had to find a way to incorporate the new Eyelet Border punch.

The bird was overstamped with the Linen BG stamp (can’t beleive they retired that!) in Caramel ink.  Lots of shabby sponging with the caramel as well, plus some sponging with Baja around the edges of the Kraft base.  This card is SUO with the exception of the chocolate Kaiser Craft pearls…I just couldn’t resist.

Let’s see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up…

And now for the winner of the Gift Certificate to Taylored Expressions for entering a card for my sketch…I went to Random.org and drew number 31….and that is Heather/inglishrea!  You can see her card here and her blog here.  Heather please e-mail Taylor to collect your prize!  Congrats!  And thanks to everyone who played.  I hope you had fun! I’m still looking forward to viewing all of your creations!  For all the deets to play this week’s challenge as well as to find out the winners of all the drawings AND the Grand Prize be sure to head over to Taylor’s blog.  To view all the cards uploaded for my sketch click here.

I’m still recovering from CHA and I have some chores to catch up on, but I sure hope to have some time to play with the rest of the new toys from my SU order.  Trendy Trees and Cheep Talk here I come!

I’m home from CHA!  Wow – talk about tired!!!  I didn’t drink at all, but I still have a hangover!  CHA is the Craft and Hobby Association trade show where crafting manufacturers of all kinds display their products for retailers to order.  There is nothing available for immediate consumer purchase, but some booths do offer make & takes and/or give-aways.  Probably 75% of the show is made up of papercrafting/scrapbooking booths.  It’s hard to describe just how huge the show is, but I’ll just say that it took us almost 2 full days (9:00am – 5:30pm) to cover the entire show.  We actually spent 3 full days at the show and I spent most of my time with Taylor.  Be on the lookout at the Taylored Expressions store….she has some really fun new products coming soon.  *wink*

For 4 nights (starting on Saturday) we had a dinner or party to attend.  The very best thing about the show is getting to see (and meet IRL for the first time) friends who come in from around the country.  Unfortunately my camera did not work for the entire show.  I do have a few pics to share today that were graciously sent to me by awesome friends Lori and Jenn.

Here I am with Taylor – we had soooo much FUN!

and here I am with Debbie Olson, Jenn, Taylor, Lori and Sharon Harnist.  Jenn and Lori and I were all in bright pink ’cause GMTA!!  LOL!

I am so proud of my wonderful friends Joy and Cami along with their partner Kimberly who I finally got to meet.  Their new company Our Craft Lounge had a fabulous booth in the new exhibitors section.  It was by far the best looking booth in that area!  Congrats girls!

I’ve got to get back to my regular *day job* today.  Just wanted to remind you that you have until 6 pm Pacific tonight to play my sketch from Taylor’s big celebration last Friday.  You MUST upload to the SCS gallery with keyword TECC52JS to be entered into my drawing.  Be sure to check your keyword! Scroll down for all the details.  I haven’t had a chance to view all the entries yet, but I look forward to doing that over the next couple of days.  The drawing winner will be announced tomorrow so please be sure to check back.

Happy Friday!  Today is a fun and special day as Taylor is celebrating the one year anniversary of the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge!  So, not only does Taylor have a fab sketch for you to play with, but she also asked each of the ladies on the Weekly Cupcake Crew to create sketches of our own for you to try  So you have not one, but nine sketches to inspire you!

Not only that, but there are PRIZES!  I will be selecting one random winner from all the participants in my challenge to win a $10 gift certificate from the Taylored Expressions Store.  How cool is that?  All you have to do is create a card or scrapbook page using my sketch and upload your creation to the Splitcoast gallery using keyword TECC52JS (no spaces) anytime before 6pm Pacific on Thursday January 29th.  Cupcakes are NOT required to play this challenge, but like Taylor always says “if you’ve got ’em, why not use ’em?”  The winner will be announced right here on my blog on Friday January 30th.

Here’s my sketch.

And how exciting is this?  Taylor gave me my very own Mini Cupcake Crew from among her Featured Samplers over this past year.  And what a talented group of ladies!  I’m so thrilled and honored to have them sample my sketch.  I can’t wait to see what they’ve done.  Let’s hop over to see – 

Charmaine Ikach:

https://www.oodabugalley.blogspot.com/

Steph Kraft:

https://handkraftedbystephanie.blogspot.com/

Karen Giron:

https://www.kgiron.blogspot.com/

Renee VanStralen:

https://reneevs.blogspot.com/

And here’s my sample –

I had colored this adorable little cupcake image well over a year ago when several freinds got together and Joy shared her Copic markers with all of us.  I honestly have no idea now who makes this image (sorry!) but I’ve been wanting to make a card with it forever!!!  I added the TE/SASI *sweet* sentiment and punched out the image with a Marvy scallop rectangle punch.  The image was originally colored to coordinate with SU Dashing dp so of course I used that dp (now retired) as the basis of my card.  I had a ton of fun using clear and red Taylor’s Tiny Twinkles all around the scallops.  They are just the perfect size to be able to use lots of them on one card.  More is More ya’ know *wink* !!!  And she just got them back in stock!  In fact TE is running an awesome special on them – buy 2 packages, get 1 FREE!  Very cool – that works out to over 1200 rhinestones for only $7.98.  I also pulled out a couple of background stamps for a little extra interest.  The heart charm was in my stash and it’s actually a light green.  Cardstock colors are real Red, Old Olive and River Rock. Both sentiments are from SASI stamp sets – Love is Sweet and Sweet Celebration.

I hope you’ll play along with my sketch!  I just can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!  If you upload your creation to your blog I’d really appreciate it if you’d post a link back here rather than take the sketch itself to show in your post. Remember to be eligible for the prize you must upolad to SCS with the keyword above – it’s right on the sketch in case you forget. 🙂

Besides being able to win a prize playing my challenge Taylor has a Grand Prize you can be eligible to win if you play ALL 9 sketch challenges this week.  You’ll want to run over to celebration headquarters at Taylor’s blog for all the deets!  And be sure to check out the sketches created for your stamping pleasure by my the rest of the Weekly Cupcake Crew:

• Taylor Van Bruggen

As if all this excitement weren’t enough, Curt and I are off to Disneyland to spend the day with friends.  It’s been a really rough week around here, so it’s really nice to have something special planned.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend.  I’m CHA bound Sunday and hope to have a chance to share some pics with you while I’m there.

I have a project posted over on the SASI Blog today – click here to hop over and see it.  If you like it please leave me a comment over there so I know you visited.  I can’t tell you how good it was to just sit and color for awhile yesterday.

A big thank you to everyone who offered condolence messages.  They were appreciated more than you could know!

-Jami

It’s such a sad day at our house.  Last night our little Love Bird, Parsley, passed away.  She was over 15 years old (well over the life expectancy of a Love Bird).  It’s hit us both pretty hard – harder than we thought it would actually.  We could see this coming yesterday and we held her most of the afternoon and evening.

Here is a photo taken Easter ’08 – she’s sitting in Curt’s shirt pocket.

We got her back in ’93 from a neighbor who was a kindergarten teacher.  She had been given a pair of love birds for her classroom and they had a clutch of chicks.  We had only had Beaker (our Red Fronted Macaw) for about 6 months at that point and weren’t in the market for another bird, but we thought she would be good companionship for my great-aunt who lived alone.  Our plan was to keep Parsley for 3 months till Christmas and during that time Curt would work on getting her hand-tamed since she was a parent raised bird.  Well, Curt has an incredible way with birds – they pretty much all love him and Parsley was no exception.  She fell in love with Curt immediately and really wanted no one else.  We did give her to my aunt that Christmas, but Parsley bit her on about the 3rd or 4th day and my aunt who was in her 70’s was done with her.  She then went to live with my parents where she unfortunately continued to enforce her reputation as a biter.  She needed someone to work with her.  So she made her way back to our house.  And she really was a very good little girl.

She always loved Curt and was happy to be back with him and over time she came to love me too.  She loved to sit on the couch with either of us and although she would not allow us to pet her, she did like for Curt to cover her with his whole hand.  She was also very much in love with R.B. our HUGE Green Wing Macaw.  His play tree is just behind the couch and she would often want to climb to the back of the couch to get to him. In fact last night when she was so weak she could barely stand at one point she got really squirmy and started to try to climb from Curt’s chest to the back of the couch.  At first we could figure out what she was doing and then we realized she wanted to be closer to R.B. – so Curt took her over and held her next to him.  R.B. never quite understood how a bird could be so small and we were always careful not to let Parsley too close to him.  

She didn’t talk like our big birds, but she always whistled at bedtime (something my Dad taught her when she lived with them) and she had the sweetest little chirp.

Here are a couple of photos of her Christmas ’07 when she was *helping me* wrap gifts.

She was a good little bird and we will miss her a lot!

  I had planned to stamp the monthly DDA Challenge last night to post this morning, but I just had no heart for stamping yesterday.  I’m sure you understand.

-Jami

I had planned to share my three class projects over three posts Saturday, Sunday, Monday…but my weekend didn’t go quite as I had envisioned.  Class Friday night was a blast and I had a full house!  Then Friday night I woke up sick in the middle of the night – ugh.  Saturday morning still not feeling quite right got off to a very slow start.  Finally got showered a dressed and decided to have a little lunch before I started tackling my weekend *to do* list (including photographing projects) when I got a call from my Uncle’s next door neighbor.  My uncle had tripped on his back porch and fallen pretty hard and he was bleeding.  The neighbor assured me there was no need for panic, but that he would need stitches.  So Curt and I took him to urgent care – fortunately we only live a couple of miles away.  Poor guy  – he had a broken nose and needed stitches on his hand and nose.  He’s 88 years old (but very spry and independent) – we are just sooooo thankful that it wasn’t worse!!!

So anyway – here I am late Sunday evening – so I’ll just go ahead and show you all three of my class projects in this post.  This promises to be a crazy week, so not sure how much chance I’ll get to blog.

Our first project was a hinged card using Sweet Stems and Raspberry Tart dp – it was inspired by a card I made for TECC49 a couple of weeks ago.

We stamped the flowers on Shimmer White cardstock, watercolored them and punched with the scallop square punch.  We also created a matching Build-a-Brad.  Ribbon is Kiwi/Vanilla Satin.  Cardstock colors are Regal Rose and Rose Red.  Here’s a view of the finished inside.

Our second project utilized the Love You Much Bundle available at 20% off through the end of January.  We used the Faux Embossing Folder Technique of punching shapes out and adhering them to matching cardstock to create a background with a dry embossed look. – it may be a little hard to see int he photo, but it’s pretty cool IRL.

This card was inspired by one Britta (camsmom) made for my most recent swap (view it here).  I loved how she used a heart punch to cover the flower and also how she used DD Glitter over the letters.  Cardstock colors are Pink Pirouette, Rding Hood Red and Very Vanilla along with the Candy Lane dp.

Our final project was a little See’s sucker with a coordinating 3×3 love note.  If you’ve never had a See’s sucker, they are square and super yummy!

The sucker idea came from one of my swappers who sent me a similar one when I hosted a swap last Fall.  I loved this simple idea!  For this project we used Love You Much and Loads of Love with real Red and Pretty in Pink cardstock.

I was REALLY on a pink roll with these projects.  But in my defense I was thinking Valentines!  I promised everyone I’d use some other colors next month!  LOL!

As CHA quickly approaches, this promises to be a busy busy week.  Tomorrow I’m supposed to finally get the permanent crown put in for the tooth I broke over a month ago.  Not looking forward to that time in the chair, but I’m so ready to be rid of this temporary crown!  And then of course I’m hoping the Dr. can squeeze my Uncle into his schedule.  And so the week begins.  I hope you have a fabulous week and thanks for stopping by!

I’ve had some camera issues this week so I’ve had to go *old school* again and scan my card rather than photograph it.  My New Catty Kick Off Class is tonight and I was excited to share my projects but that will have to wait till the weekend when I will be able to use the camera again.  So – sorry for my lack of posts this week and for the less than fabulous pic of today’s card.

It’s Friday and besides being SU Class day for me, of course it’s Cupcake Friday and time for TECC51.  Wow – can you believe Taylor has been coming up with these fun sketches for almost a whole year now?  I hope you’ll play along with us.  You can view the sketch and get all the details on Taylor’s blog.

You might remember when I posted my Z-fold candy box card last week that I said I had started with a different background, but decided to abandon it…well this sketch was perfect for it.

This is the same wild and fun wrapping paper that I used on my Mom’s birthday card a couple of weeks ago.  I just love it.  It’s brighter and prettier IRL!  The wrapping paper is layered onto Basic Black cs and then onto a Real Red card base.  The little bird from SU Fast & Fun Notes is stamped on Shimmer White cardstock and colored with Copics.  The flower image is replaced by this super duper cute self adhesive felt flower from the TE Store.  It’s a pretty red IRL, but scanned kind of dark.  There is a row of Zva Creative black crystals at the bottom of the card.  I added some green buttons from my stash and since I didn’t have any black embroidery thread and I hate nekkid buttons I used a black glaze pen for a faux thread effect.  Some retired Cool Caribbean and Marigold Morning cas were just right with the wrapping paper…sometimes hoarding can be a good thing I guess.  LOL!

Let’s see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up!

Plus this week’s Featured Sampler is Jenn Diercks at Stamp Your Heart Out.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend!