More is More

Oh my goodness – I have been such a BAD blogger lately!  I’m not sure how I went from posting almost every day to not posting for weeks, but I feel like I fell off the merry-go-round and now it’s spinning too fast for me to jump back on.  And I’ve had absolutely no desire to stamp for the past few weeks.  I KNOW!!!  THE HORROR!!!  I know it’s just temporary – I’ve had these phases before, but not in a really really long time.  I’m caught up in such a wide variety of things right now – most of them really good stuff.  Of course there’s Tessa my sweet little wonder dog who has captured much of my attention and has done the impossible by getting me to want to go out in the backyard everyday (I’m NOT an outdoor gal.  LOL!)  There’s church – I’ve taken over coordinating something we call Summer Sundays on the Patio where we serve supper after the evening service for 9 weeks.  If you know me very well, you know that I don’t cook much but I’m a great administrator…so…my job has been to put together teams of volunteers for each of the 9 weeks and work to develop the menu ideas, as well as handle the budgeting.  I’m really enjoying this!  Then of course there’s THE HOUSE.  I’m expecting some level chaos for the next several weeks as we get tons of stuff done that we’ve been needing to do for several years including:

• painting the kitchen walls red – I’ve been wanting to do this for sooo long!  Have you seen Lisa Zappa’s kitchen?  That really pushed me over the edge!  I have a wonderful friend who is a very experienced painter – she even sometimes works for her husband’s business and she is coming over this morning to help me paint.  I say *help me*, but what I really mean is that I plan to do whatever she tells me.  This is not an area I have much experience in.
• getting the rest of the interior painted by professionals.  I’ve had friends insist I could do it myself, but I know better – LOL!  I can hardly wait for them to come in and be done in 3 or 4 days. We bought a bunch of those little sample jars at Home Depot and I now have big paint swatches all over my living room walls.  We’ve decided on a pretty soft gold called Warm Cocoon for the walls, with one accent wall in a darker golf called Sahara Shade.
• getting new carpet in the living room and hallway.  It’s a deep plush in a mossy green.
• re-upholstry – we have 2 antique chairs that are incredibly ratty.  We got them from a friend with the idea that we would have them re-done if we ended up liking them.  That was something like 8 years ago.  *eye roll*
• refinish the dining table and chairs – that’s a long story, but suffice it to say it’s long overdue
• draperies cleaned – When we first moved in our house my aunt and uncle and grandparents gifted us with custom draperies.  They are the kind that are installed and need to be taken down and re-hung by pros.  So looking forward to having that done.

I think I may have left out a couple things, but I’m sure you get the picture. 

In the midst of all that – on July 10th I have my New Catty Kick Off Night.  We’ll make 2 cards and the registration fee is a special promotional price of only $5.  I have just a few spots left, so please let me know right away if you’d like to attend.

I do have a card to share with you.  This is something I made back in May for the SCS challenges Color Challenge 217 and a sketch challenge.

I wasn’t thrilled with this color combo and it made working on the card quite challenging for me.  I do love this image from Inky Antics though.  Design on the side is a Spellbinders pierceabilities and the Coral border is a EK Success border punch.  White background is textured with a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

I’ve got to run.  Painting should commence any minute now.  Thanks for sticking with me through the lean blogging times!

-Jami

Happy Monday – I hope you had a great weekend!  Our weekend was about as full as it gets with a graduation party Friday night, a wedding Saturday morning, Taylor’s Cupcake event Saturday afternoon, church Sunday morning and my family over for a Father’s Day BBQ Sunday afternoon/evening.  Phew!  It was all GOOD though! 

Here’s the Father’s Day card I made my Dad.  The inside is cute too, but I forgot to photograph it until after I had written in it – oh well.  And I just now noticed that the twill is a bit messed up in the photo.  Can you tell I took this in a hurry?  LOL!

Once again I grabbed my Father’s day Key Ingredients and stamp set Boys Will Be Boys from Taylored Expressions to make a simple masculine card.  The Father’s Day KI is sold out unfortunately – you need to pounce on those KI kits when they’re in stock.  Since Taylor usually introduces 2 or 3 KI each month some kits only last for a month or two.  Along with the cardstock, patterned paper and twill from the KI, I used some SU punches and Adorn It Clear Jewel Droplets from eclectic Paperie.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wow – Lately it seems like things have just gotten busier and busier.  Good busy – just haven’t gotten to blog as much lately.  Heck I still have stuff to show from class last week…and I have brand new SU sneak peek stuff I haven’t even played with or talked about yet.  We’ve been enjoying Tessa and continuing on our quest to get lots of things done around the house and yard this year.  I’m so excited because we’ve scheduled painters to do most of our interior in July and that will be followed by the installation of new carpet.  We’ve needed this for a long time – it is going to be sooooo awesome!

I better stop myself from rambling on and get to today’s card.  Of course it’s Friday and I’m here with another one of Taylor’s fab sketches.  This one is especially easy and versatile to work with!

I needed a Father’s Day card for my Father-in-Law and this sketch was perfect.  I decided to keep it super simple with the TE Father’s Day Key Ingredients  (cardstock, patterned paper, ribbon and screw style brads) along with this SU sentiment as the focal point.  I have to admit that I feel a little like I’m cheating when I do something this simple, but honestly I can’t think of anything else I would have done on this masculine card and the KI make it so darned easy to pull the elements together.  I’m not seeing the Father’s Day KI in the store at the moment, so it might be sold out.  I do see, though, that the Cupcake Key Ingredients have been re-stocked.  You are going to want to pick up one of those for sure if you haven’t already!  It’s irresistably adorable!

Let’s see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up this week:

Also when you get to Taylor’s blog be sure to scroll down one post to find out all about the Moving Sale going on now at the TE Store.  There are some amazing deals!  And if you are here in SoCal with us I really hope to see you at Taylor’s Farewell Cupcake Party on Saturday. 

Heading into a very full weekend with a graduation party tonight, a wedding tomorrow morning and then straight to the Cupcake Party, then a family Father’s Day BBQ at our house on Sunday.  Fun fun fun!  Hope you have a great weekend ahead.  Thanks for stopping by!

When Taylor asked me if I wanted to play in a JustRite Blog Hop for Taylored Expressions I jumped at the chance because I always love playing with JustRite products.  With Father’s Day coming up soon I knew exactly what I needed to do.  JustRite products are perfect for those times when the sentiment you need just doesn’t exist.  Growing up, I lived with my Great Aunt and Great Uncle and I’ve always had the hardest time finding the right Father’s Day card for my sweet Uncle Bernie.  Even after I started stamping my own cards, I never had a good sentiment.  I loved the Taylored Expressions set Boys Will Be Boys as soon as I saw it, but here I was again without a good sentiment for my Uncle’s card.  JustRite to the rescue!  I used the 2″ Stamper and the bonus font that came with it to create the sentiment “World’s Greatest Uncle” which I thought was perfect with the sentiment from Boys Will Be Boys “There’s no tie when it comes to you.”  It was stamped on TE Buttercream Choice cardstock and punched out with a Marvy scallop punch.

To get started on this card I pulled out my TE Father’s Day Key Ingredients kit and printed out Karen Giron’s Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #22 – it was serendipity that it had a circle element when I already had this circle sentiment in mind!  All of the cardstock, ribbon and buttons are from the Key Ingredients.  The tie image was stamped on the Buttercream cardstock and die cut with a Spellbinders Labels 2 die.  The ties were then stamped again on patterned papers and paper pieced onto the main image.  I used my new preview Stampin’ Up punch for the “no tie” sentiment and my 1 3/4″ SU circle punch for the dp inside the circle sentiment.  The brads and metal clip are also SU.  The swirl image is from SU Doodle This and it’s stamped in Ruby Red ink. 

This card is 5.25″ square.   Sometimes sentiments can get a little lost inside these larger cards, so I had fun creating this huge sentiment with the JustRite Times New Roman font and the Times New Roman Lowercase font along with the Harmony Rectangular Stamper block.  I used my SU photo corner punch to finish of the inside.

I’m excited about this card for my Uncle.  He’s 88 – but you’d never know it – and he’s always been a snappy dresser!  When I was growing up I used to love to go through his ties and his jewelry box of tie tacks and cuff links and organize them all.  He didn’t dress up for work, but he belonged to the Elks and he and my aunt dressed up to go out pretty regularly.  Sometimes he would ask me to pick out which tie he should wear when they were getting ready to go out dancing.  I loved doing that!  I was a control freak even way back then!  LOL!

Then when I was a teenager – Jr. High age I think – the Annie Hall look came in and I wanted to wear ties sometimes myself.  He taught me how to tie my ties.  LOL!  Man I’m aging myself, huh?  Please tell me someone else remembers doing this…ties and vests on girls!

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the girls in the hop have created.  Let’s go check it out!

Thanks for stopping by!

Not only is it Friday…not only is it Cupcake Friday…it’s Taylor’s birthday AND Cupcake Friday!  WooHoo!!! 

I feel so fortunate to call Taylor my friend!  I have loved seeing her follow her dreams over the past year or so with Taylored Expressions and I’m grateful to be *on the staff*.  Today is such a big day for Taylor as her first day to officially have TE as her one full time job,  as she packs up for the move to Iowa and of course as she celebrates her birthday.  I love you, my friend!  Happy Birthday! Instead of the birthday smilies you might expect I have something I think Taylor will appreciate…

If I could have gotten Gordon Ramsey in the flesh, I would have!  bwahahahhahahaa! 

Here’s my card for today’s TECC sketch challenge and although cupcakes are not required I *had to* use them for Taylor’s birthday!  This was my first chance to play with the new TE set For the Love of Cupcakes and the new Cupcake Key Ingredients (which is sold out at the moment, but it’s worth getting on the notification list for!) and boy did I have fun with them!  Last weekend I also picked up a Bag o’ Buttons – Hall Pass assortment  – at TE.  I was pleasantly surprised to see these three huge buttons that coordinated so well with the KI colors!  I wasn’t even thinking of this KI when I chose them.

Please be sure to hop over to Taylor’s blog to leave her some sweet birthday wishes and to get all the deets to play along with us in this week’s sketch.  And now let’s see what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up –

 You’ll see lots more fantastic samples by clicking on the names entered into Mr Linky at the bottom of Taylor’s blog post today.  Be sure to add your link as soon as you get your card done.  🙂

Quick reminder – if you upload creations to the SCS gallery using any TE (SASI, Whimsical Wishes, Lasting Impressions) images, please remember to use Keyword tayloredexpressions (no space).  This will allow your creation to be seen in the TE company gallery (which is keyword driven) and it also allows you to be considered for Our Friday Friend on the SASI blog.

Looking forward to my SU Class and Club tonight and looking forward to a relaxing weekend.  Hope you have some stampin’ and fun in store for your weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!

I held a small SU class this afternoon and will have a bigger class tomorrow evening.  While I’m waiting for Curt to arrive home from a business trip to Arizona, I thought I’d pop by and share one of the cards I designed for these classes.  When I was ordering supplies last month, I decided it would be fun to work with the 5″ x 3.5″ note cards on page 157 of the catalog.  Something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now is create a card using the Sticky Sheets and clear microbeads.  I was thrilled when SU came out with the Sticky Sheets as I had previously purchased them from different sources to create beaded pens, cards and lots of other projects.

I wanted to use one of the 11 stamp sets I have that will be retiring at the end of the month.  I’ve always loved Wild About You and it seemed the perfect choice for this card.  The alligator (Kiwi) and bird (Tangerine) were stamped on Whisper White cardstock and then covered with a piece of Sticky Sheet that had been cut the same size as the cardstock.  Once the protective layer was removed the stamped piece went sticky side down into a tray of clear microbeads.  It’s hard to get a good photo, but this looks so neat-o in person!  Patterned paper is the Kiwi Kiss Patterns dsp and it’s layered onto Tangerine Tango that was punched with the scallop edge punch.  Super easy card with a WOW result!  I’ll be back in a day or two to share the rest of my class projects.

Please be sure to stop by tomorrow for Cupcake Friday and to play the TECC sketch along with us!

Although I have a couple of cards to share, I haven’t photographed them yet, so I thought I’d just pop by for a quick Tessa post.  Sorry I just can’t help myself.  As she feels more at home here, she does more cute and/or funny little things, like deciding her favorite place to sleep is up on the back of the couch like a cat.  And she discovered that she likes to look out our front window.  Since we live on a pretty busy street I generally always keep the drapes closed, but I put a couple of pillows in the window with the curtians parted just enough for her to look out.  The window is a bowed window and it goes almost all the way to the floor.  So in these pictures she’s just sitting on two throw pillows and of course she has her favorite toy “Smiley Dog”.

It was hard to catch her for these pictures, because as soon as she saw me she’d jump off the pillows and come to me.  LOL!

Last Friday we tried our first *play date*.  A friend from work brought her little dog, Sophie, over.  Even though Sophie is quite small, at 11 pounds she is more than twice as big as my little 4.5 pound Tessa.  They didn’t exactly play, but maybe they will if we try it again.  Here’s a photo of me that day holding Tessa in our backyard.  Um…am I grinning from ear to ear or what?

Looking forward to  teaching my SU class tomorrow afternoon and then again Friday night.  I’ll try to get back here tomorrow with at least one of my class cards.  In the meantime, thanks for indulging the new dog-mom.  *cheesy grin*  I seriously just can’t help it!  I promise to do more stamping soon!  Hang in there with me.  *chuckle*

-Jami