More is More

Happy Friday!  It’s time for another fun Taylored Expressions Sketch – TESC132 and this week I’m even more excited than usual because I got to design the sketch.  🙂  I hope you’ll play along with us – I think it’s a pretty easy one.  You can use any shape where you see the circle.

The sketch is based on a card I made a couple of months ago seen here.  Since it’s almost Halloween and I really haven’t stamped anything for Halloween this year I decided I better get at least one card in.  I went with something a little non-traditional, but stick with me and you’ll see why.  *GRIN*

Inside is the sentiment:

Trick or Treat!

Did you know it was me?

With this photo:

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Yep – it’s Tessa in her chicken Halloween costume.  If that doesn’t make you laugh, you are hopeless!  The photo is funny, but I guarantee you that it is much more hysterical in person.  I ended up rolling on the kitchen floor laughing when we took these photos!  I’m not really *into* Halloween, but it’s the one time of year that the Rocket Scientist will tolerate clothes on Tessa so I take advantage.  LOL!!  She doesn’t mind the main part of the outfit too much, but she really does not like the hat as you can probably imagine!  The look on her face here is priceless!

Card info:  Stamps are from Anna Wight’s Whipper Snapper Cling Set Crazy for Chickens.  “BOO” is from Hangin’ Out Halloween (TE). Image colored with Copics and sponged with Bashful Blue.  Designer papers are from Melissa Frances and cardstock is Real Red and Daffodil Delight (SU).  Crochet trim from TE.  Love love love that Lacey Circle nestie.  Fence border punch is Martha Stewart.

Now lets’ go see what the rest of the Sketch Crew has in store!

• Alice Wertz
• Jami Sibley <— you are here
• Lisa Hjulberg
• Lori Craig
• Melissa Sauls
• Monika Davis
• Rachel Sztonyk
• Rosie Hughes
• Sherrie Siemens
• Taylor VanBruggen <—Get all the info to play along here!

So what are your plans for the weekend?  I’m excited because our church is celebrating Reformation Day on Sunday (something new for us) with special teaching and an afternoon Faire that includes the In & Out truck for lunch.  YUM!  Whatever you have going on I hope you have a little time for stamping!  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Wednesday!  It’s happy indeed as I have some stamping time scheduled into my day!  YEA!  Today I wanted to share with you the wedding card that I created for our niece and her new hubby!  It uses TESC131, but I didn’t complete it in time to play with the Sketch Crew that week.

I used the same colors for this card as we used for her wedding invitations (photos of those soon – I promise!) – chocolate, burgundy and ivory.  Stamps,  embossing folder, and fancy brad are SU.  Border punch is EK Success Arbor and the main panel was die cut with Spellbinders Label 5.

The Rocket Scientist helped me figure out how to have the best of both worlds when posting photos to my blog.  Now I can post them the same size I always have, but you ALSO have the option to click on them and see them even larger!  Pretty cool, huh?  Thanks Honey!

ETA:  Hmmmm…maybe not…I’ll need to work on that some more apparantly.

ETA:  FIXED!!!  YEA!  Thanks Honey!

Thanks for stopping by today!  I can’t be gabbing away here when there’s stamping to be done!  😉  Have a great day!

Happy Saturday!  I hope you are having a great weekend!  I haven’t blogged in awhile.  Sometimes I just don’t feel like taking and editing photos (does that ever happen to you?) and I really haven’t been stamping all that much lately.  Been busy busy busy. But  I held my monthly stamp class on Thursday night and I wanted to share the projects we created.  I was super happy with all of them and my fabulous stampers seemed quite happy too!  🙂

All of my cards feature stamp sets from the most recent release at Taylored Expressions – Winter Wonderland, Sparkle & Cheer (those two sets are designed to work together, did you know that?), Penguin Pals and a bonus card using Merry Little Cocktail.  Click on any of the photos to see them larger (this is a new feature on my blog and I’m just trying it out.)

Winter Wonderland

I CASEd this card from Baker’s Dozen team member Karen Giron.  As soon as I saw her card during release week I knew it would be perfect for a class card!  I simply adpated it using designer papers I recently purchased from Stampin’ Up!

I used a SU border punch and the TE Winter Wonderland Snowflakes dies along with a scallop rectangle nestie.

Sparkle  & Cheer

This card is another Baker’s Dozen CASE – this time from Charmaine Ikach.  I loved hers and again adapted using papers I had (retired SU.)

I don’t have the oval nesties (can you believe that?) so I used Labels 5  and I really like the look.  I also love the color combo here of Baja Blue and Real Red.

Penguin Pals

I had promised the girls 2 Christmas cards plus 1 surprise project.  For the surprise I decided to do a corner bookmark (instructions on SCS) and once I created the bookmark sample I thought it needed a card to be presented on.  I was tickled pink with how this turned out!

I picked up that adorable red and pink designer paper from the Stampin’ Up! Clearance Rack last week (thanks to my friend Mary for giving me the heads up on that) and it’s super duper cute and sparkly!  We added some Sugar Sparkly Fluff  to the cute little penguin’s hat. Here’s a close up of the bookmark.

These bookmarks are super simple and really fun to make.  If you haven’t tried them, you really should!  They make great little gifts – especially when you create a card base to give them on like I did here.

Merry Little Cocktail

When I was making the penguin bookmark, I kept thinking that Merry Little Cocktail would be really cute as well.  So yesterday when I was cleaning up from class I took a few minutes and made another version of the bookmark card using the same paper and cardstsock.

I applied some Ranger Glossy Accents to the cocktail, some Smooch to the candy cane and some red stickles to the holly berries at the bottom of the sentiment. Here’s a close up of just the bookmark.

And here’s a photo of the pair.  I stepped up the 2nd card just a bit since I was just playing and didn’t need to worry about having enough supplies to make 10-12 of these. 

You know I thought about splitting this up inbto 3 separate blog posts, but to be honest I just wasn’t sure when I’d get back to do the other 2 posts. LOL!  AND I have yet to photograph the wedding invites etc.  As you can probably tell by the above photos, we haven’t had good photo light lately!

So tell me – which do you prefer – the photos at the size I usually do them (scroll to previous posts to see) or the smaller versions like in this post that you can click on to see much larger?  I’d love to hear your feedback on that!  Thanks.

ETA: When you ladies say you prefer the larger version…do you mean being able to click on the photos to see them FULL SIZED (like in this post) or the medium size that is not clickable at all, but larger than above (as in previous posts)?  Can you tell me – “new way” or “old way” ’cause I’m confused!  LOL! Thanks!

My sweet and wonderful Rocket Scientist had a birthday on Tuesday, but he’s been out of town all week on Rocket Business so we haven’t had a chance to celebrate yet.  He’s on a plane now winging his way home so I thought I’d go ahead and share the birthday card I made for him.

I used Mercy’s Tuesday Sketch Challenge (MTSC95) for the layout.  The image and sentiment are from Whipper Snapper by Anna Wight (I love pretty much everything Anna does!) and the papers and ribbon are all from the TE Make a Wish Project Pantry papercrafting kit.  Image was colored with copics.

I have lots of stuff to share from our niece’s wedding last Friday – photos, the invites we made, the wedding card I made for her and her new hubby  – I just haven’t had a chance to sit down and edit photos and get it all together to post.  It was a truly wonderful wedding and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a more beautiful bride.  Anyway I hope to have all of that for you very soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Thursday!  As of right now everything the Baker’s Dozen has been showing you over the past several days is now available at the Taylored Expressions Store!  This is a HUGE release that includes 9 stamp sets (7 full size and 2 mini), 2 Project Pantry card kits, and 2 new dies!  You can see a summary of everything on Taylor’s blog this morning or if you subscribe to the TE Newsletter that will be coming to you shortly.  You can click here to subscribe if you don’t already. *GRIN*

To celebrate the release the team has spread out to cover everything in the new release!  I have a card featuring Hangin’ Out at the North Pole along with the Snow Day Project Pantry.  This is a very quick card since I spent the day yesterday working on getting this HUGE release all packed into the newsletter for y’all.  But I didn’t want to miss a chance to play with another one of the adorable new stamp sets!  (Especially if there might be a little birdie involved!)

I matched up some Copics from my collection with the purple snowflake paper from the Project Pantry and bulit and colored my scene.  It was die cut with a Curved Rectangle nestie and then I sponged Pale Plum ink inside the die edges.  I added some pearl Smooch to the pole, some liquid applique for snow (if you don’t have any LA you really must add some to your order!!) and some red liquid pearls as a little finishing touch.  I love the fun feel of both this stamp set and this kit!

Here’s a really cool thing about the 2 Project Pantry kits released today – Taylor put them together specifically with Christmas card making in mind.  And knowing that you can stretch that designer paper quite a long way she has added, for optional separate purchase, ribbon bundles and single color packs of the coordinating cardstocks!  Isn’t that awesome?  The first thing I always run out of is ribbon so I’m super excited to have that option.  And I always find that I am more drawn to one or two of the cardstock colors and run out of those first – especially when I use them for cardbases.  So it’s great to be able to just buy the colors I need most! Both kits are an incredible value at $19.95, but even moreso knowing you can continue to stretch them even further by replenishing favorite items.

I’m off to see what the Baker’s Dozen has cooked up for today.  Wanna join me?

Thanks so much for stopping by and happy shopping!  I have a crazy busy day ahead as I take care of tons of little last minute details to get the Rocket Scientist and I ready to get all dressed up for our niece’s wedding tomorrow night!

-Jami

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Day 3 of the Taylored Expressions October Sneak Peeks.  Today we’re previewing 2 full stamp sets and 1 mini set that are all about tags, labels, tabs, journals and notebooks for the holidays.  The sets I’m working with today are Take Note Holidays and Keeping Tabs.  Take Note Holidays is a continuation of the Take Note set and coordinates with the same 3 Taylored Dies.  For both of my projects today I used the Take Note Frame 3 die.

First I have a cute little 4.25″ square card using Karen’s Giron’s Sweet Sunday Sketch (SSSC87).  It was the perfect layout to highlight this little Santa checking his list!

Papers and ribbon are from the Snow Day Project Pantry card kit that will be available Thursday along with the stamps.  The snowflake frame from Take Note Holidays was stamped in SU Kiwi Kiss ink and die cut.  Santa was stamped, colored with copics, cut out and popped up on foam tape.  His suit is embellished with white liquid applique and his beard is covered in Starfire glitter applied with a Quickie Glue pen.

My next project is a Christmas Organizer or what I refer to as my Santa Journal.  These make wonderful gifts – especially if you have friends who really love the Christmas season.  I made one of these from a compostition book a few years ago when I was in the Dirty Dozen at SCS, so I put in a few requests while these sets were in the works.  I just love the options we have here for both labels and for tabs.

I started with the 6×6 Cinch Book Boards and covered them (both sides) with papers from the Project Pantry kit.  The front was decorated simply with a frame and words from Take Note Holidays along with a snowflake die cut (new TE die also) and a border sticker and ribbon from the kit. Corners were rounded with the Corner Chomper.

I cut notebook filler paper to 6 x 5.5 and made 4 dividers for my book from white cardboard (saved from designer paper packs.)

Each divider has a tab made with the Keeping Tabs set and the new Tab die.  My 4 sections are: To do, Gifts, Cards, Menu.  I also stamped the words repeatedly down the side of each divider next to a strip of dp. It’s so awesome to have all the little words right there available and not be scrambling to work with some tiny little alphabet as I have done in the past for projects such as this.

 In the back I added a divider with a square envelope adhered to it to keep Christmas shopping receipts all corraled in one place.

Everything was put together with my Cinch Machine.  Boy oh boy am I ever loving that Cinch!  So fun and easy to use.  This is quite an easy project to put together.  If you don’t have any type of binding machine (and I do receommend you get a Cinch), you could always take these books to an office supply store’s printing counter to have them bound for you.  Or you could use a composition book for a similar effect.

Tip: When putting together a tabbed book like this one, cut your pages 1/2″ smaller in width that your covers. This keeps your tabs inside the covers and saves wear and tear on them.

Now let’s see what the Baker’s Dozen has cooked up today!

On a personal note I just want to say how blessed I am to have so many wonderful friends in my life!  My niece is getting married on Friday and last night we finished her favors and centerpieces (we had 2 previous sessions for invitations, thank you notes, escort cards, etc.).  I put a last minute call out just the night before to see if anyone would be available to come help tie bows and such and I was overwhelmed at the response.  I had 6 friends show up to help.  With the 8 of us we finished in less than an hour and a half what would have taken Kira and I alone late into the night to do.  Many hands make light work.  Thank you ladies from the bottom of my heart!  And I promise to share photos next week of all the projects we’ve done for the wedding.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you enjoy the hop today and remember that everything we’ve been showing you this week will be available at 8am PST on Thursday!

-Jami

Happy Monday and welcome to Day #1 of Sneak Peeks for the Taylored Expressions October Release. Everything will be available for purchase on Thursday morning October 7th.  Until then put on your seat belts as you’re in for quite a ride!  Today I’m thrilled to be joining the Baker’s Dozen in offering up peeks of FOUR upcoming new stamp sets…yes I said FOUR and it’s only day #1!

The set I’m working with today is called Penguin Pals and anyone who knows me, knows this would be the first set I would reach for.  My very first rubber stamp images were of penguins and so may years later I am still drawn to them.  This set is the newest in the Apple Doodle Ink line at Taylored Expressions and I think you’ll find these little flightless fowl to be quite charming!

The layout I used for today’s card is the SCS Sketch Challenge (#300) and the patterned paper is Cosmo Cricket Mitten Weather 6×6 pad.  To coordinate with that paper pad I also purchased the Mitten Weather cardstock pack at TE which takes the guess work out of trying to find good cs matches.  I added a little punch of black which I almost always like to do when using penguin images – seems to help focus attention on the cute little guys! Here’s the funny thing about coloring this image.  I really wanted to watercolor it (haven’t done that in awhile) so I stamped with black craft ink and heat embossed with clear powder on a white shimmer cs.  Then I proceeded to match up copic colors to my patterned paper and started to color.  Ummmm…what?  D’oh!  I totally forgot that I was going to watercolor!  What a dork!    Oh well!  This was a quick, easy image to color and I love how it turned out. (Copics: G82, G94, YG45, R14, R37, Y21, YR23, BG09)

For some added interest, I covered the lights with Ranger Glossy Accents, the star with yellow stickles and the white parts of the hat with white liquid applique and starfire glitter and puffed it up with the heat gun.

For those of you who are new to TE or have never purchased TE stamps, I wanted to mention that these stamps are the highest quality deeply etched rubber around.  Not only that, but they come already trimmed out and on EZ Mount so that when you receive them you can just slap them on an acrylic block and start stamping! They come on a 5.5″ x 8.5″ storage panel (think half sheet of cardstock size) which is larger than the sets that many companies offer and have a full color index on one side.

Penguin Pals has a total of 14 stamps (images and sentiments) and some sets with smaller images have as many as 22 stamps in a set.  At $21.95 per set you really can’t  beat that value!

Oh my goodness – there is going to be so much to see today!  Are you ready to hop?  Let’s go see what the Baker’s Dozen has cooked up today:

• Charmaine Ikach
• Danielle Lounds
• Donna Baker
• Jackie Pedro
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Karen Motz
• Melissa Sauls
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Tori Wild
• Nancy McKinney (Whimsical Wishes Illustrator)

Thanks for stopping by.  I’d love to hear which set is your favorite of the 4 today!  Let me know what you think so far!

-Jami

PS I apologize for the slightly weird layout of this post.  Ever since the big upgrade a couple of weeks ago I have been unable to get the text wrap to work correctly.  Crossing my fingers that this gets fixed soon.