More is More

We’re throwing a virtual birthday party for Taylor Van Bruggen today and everyone is welcome to join us!  You can simply hop on over to Taylor’s blog to wish her well or you can create a birthday card for her and post it on your blog and then hop over to her blog and give her the link to check it out.

Taylor, my friend, this card is in the mail to you across the miles and I’m hoping it arrives in your mail box today!

For Taylor’s birthday I was so excited to create a card using her very own first two sets – designed and illustrated start to finish by Taylor – Garden Party Critters and Garden Party Blooms!  This 5.25″ square card features October Afternoon papers from both Thrift Shop and Farm Fresh along with SU Real Red and Green Galore cardstock.  I paper-pieced the sign and the bee and I added stickles to the little stamped image of the bee’s flight trail.

And now it’s time to party hop and see all the wonderful birthday wishes for Taylor…c’mon along…I’ll be the designated driver!  *snort* 

Alex Maldonado , Alice Wertz, Carolina Buchting ,Charmaine Ikach, Donna Baker, Jackie Pedro, Jenn Balcer,   Jodi Collins, Karen Giron, Karen Motz, Lisa Hjulberg, Lori Craig ,Melissa Sauls, Monika Davis, Nancy McKinney, Rachel Sztonyk, Sandra MacLean, Sankari Wegman, Sharon Harnist, Sherrie Siemens

 Taylor I hope you have an incredible birthday full of love and laughter!  I know the year ahead will be full of wonderful things!  I wish I could be there to celebrate with you in person.  Please eat a cupcake for me this weekend!  HUGS!!!   

Happy Thursday!  Wow – where has the week gone?  I’m excited for today because, as you may know, Taylor is in SoCal and I get to see her today!  I’m guessing there will probably be a cupcake in my future.  Time with Taylor almost always includes cupcakes. LOL!

Tomorrow is my incredible friend Joy’s birthday and I want to share the card I made for her.  It’s going in the mail today and I know I should probably wait a few days to post it, but I just can’t.  (So Joy if you are reading this…look away till you get it in the mail!)  I feel so lucky to call Joy my friend.  She is the type of person that everyone falls in love with…so genuinely sweet, so caring, generous to a fault!  She was the very first person from Splitcoaststampers that I met in real life after knowing her on-line.  That was back in the early days of SCS when it had less than 10,000 members (now it has over 250,000!) and we got together to plan our very first tiny little SoCal StampMania after someone else dropped the ball on an event (I think we had about 12 people come to that one.) I think both of our families were a little nervous about us going off to meet someone from the internet!  LOL!  We hit it off immediately and have been friends ever since.  Love you Girl!  Happy Birthday!

This stamp is Spring Bouquet from Flourishes.  I got it a few weeks ago and stamped several images, but hadn’t colored any of them till yesterday.  I have to admit that I was a little intimidated to get started, but once I did it was coloring heaven!  The way this image has just enough little shading marks makes it a dream to color.  I used Copics here and had a blast playing with blending and shading (which is NOT my forte!)  The Flourishes design team had really inspired me with their samples, so I looked through the Flourishes gallery at SCS to see how several different people had colored this image.  That really helped give me the confidence to get started.  I love the way it turned out!

Card is 5.25 square with a white card base that has the edges sponged with Barely Banana ink.

Recipe:

Stamps – Flourishes Spring Bouquet, SU sentiment from a retired Birthday set

Paper – TE Choice Snow cardstock, SU Orchid Opulence, colored cardstocks and designer paper from TE Card Kit featuring Girls Paperie (currently out of stock – no link available)

Ink – Memento Black

Other – Copics shown above, pink silk ribbon, white crochet trim, Spellbinders Labels 1, SU circle and scallop circle punches, KaiserCraft pearls, foam tape.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a great day!  I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a sketch sample for this week’s TESC.

Happy Tuesday!  Today Taylored Expressions is hosting a customer blog hop to splotlight stamp sets that were released in 2008 and 2009 and we have over 50 people playing!!!  How cool is that?  I jumped at the chance to use 2 of my all-time favorite sets Branching Out and Branching Out Coordinates to make a birthday card for a very special friend.

Today is Lori Craig’s birthday and I’m excited to say that she already received this card in the mail yesterday.  WooHoo!  That never happens!  This is a large 5.5″ square card and I used dp from a DCWV stack I picked up at Joanns.  The tree trunk was stamped with a pearly Brilliance chocolate ink and the tree top was paper pieced and highlighted with copics and stickles.  I was really tickled with how this turned out!

Happy Birthday my sweet friend!!!! 

Here we are during Lori’s recent layover in SoCal on her way to Australia.

And now here’s a list of everyone participating in the TE Blast From the Past Blog Hop today. I’m dying to see what everyone has created and which stamp sets everyone has used, but I have to get to work so I’ll just have to hop as many as I can this morning and check out the rest tonight.  Oh and if you notice some similar layouts – we were given an optional sketch to use.  It’s a good one, but I didn’t end up using it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Monday!  It’s weird – even though I don’t go to an office job 4 or 5 days a week any more, Monday is still my least favorite day of the week.  It seems to be the day I have the hardest time getting things accomplished and thus the day that I tend to feel the most overwhelmed by my to-do list, when I feel that it should be one of my most productive days.  Maybe I was just programmed for too many years to dislike Mondays…I dunno.

I had a wonderful weekend though!  My class on Friday night was so much fun!  I wanted to share another one of the projects we made. Everyone decorated a Tea Tin.  We used TE Miniature Motifs and CreativiTEA along with Spellbinders Labels 9 (which coordinates with the frame image in the stamp set) and everyone chose either Brocade Blue or Pink Pirouette.  These tins were inspired by the beautiful black and white one created by Charmaine Ikach.  As soon as I saw hers I knew I needed to make this a class project.  These tins can hold lots of different things – gift cards, candy, tea bags (duh!), jewelry, ATC cards, etc.

On Saturday I had the pleasure of going to Tea with PACT (Prayer Always Changes Things) – this is the ladies prayer group that I’ve been in for six years. We started out with 8 women and now have 5.  Once a year we go to Tea to celebrate all of our birthdays.  We each draw a name ahead of time and buy one birthday gift for the person we drew.  We try to go to a different tea room each year.  This year we went to the beautiful Paris in a Cup in Old Towne Orange.  Everything was super super yummy and I would highly recommend this tea room.  It is on the higher end price-wise of the places we have been, but I felt it was worth it.  There are lots of menu choices. I had a tea that  included a scrumptious scone, 3 yummy tea sandwiches and 3 delicious petit fours…plus of course the tea of your choice.  It doesn’t sound or look like a lot of food, but I was very very full when we left.

If you live in SoCal or if you come for a visit, Old Town Orange is a wonderful place to spend a morning or afternoon walking around.  There are many antique stores and boutiques as well as lots of restaurants.

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Maggie, Kathy, Nancy, Darla and me.

Thanks for stopping by.  I better get back to the Monday of it all.  I’ll see you tomorrow for the Taylored Expressions Blast From the Past Blog Hop!

Wowzas – what a week it’s been!  Eight straight days of CHA related activities are over and today has been my day to just crash and crash hard!  It all started last Wednesday when TE Baker’s Dozen girls began arriving in  town.  Thursday there were even more arrivals and the booth set up for the Craft SuperShow.  Friday and Saturday I helped in the Taylored Expressions booth at the SuperShow as well as a couple of hours in the SCS booth for the TE Make & Take. 

(Taylor and me at the SCS M&T)

Our booth was constantly buzzing with shoppers and many many friends!  I was so thrilled to hear over and over again that the TE booth was one of the best at the show!  Taylor and her mom Linda did a fabulous job designing the booth.  We had a M&T going at all times (4 different ones throughout the weekend), rotating product demos, a prize drawing sign up and a busy busy cash register manned continually by Taylor’s husband Jon (that guy has incredible stamina – he never left the register either day!)

(Here is the TE Crew except we’re missing Sankari and Jackie. Starting with me in the back…Dawn, Linda, Jodi, Taylor, Jon, Karen M, Karen G.  Front row are Donna and Taylor’s friend Julianne.)

Sunday the CHA trade show opened and I have to say that we started that show a little dazed.  We walked and shopped there for 3 solid days and I can promise that the TE Store will have some awesome new products and incredible Key Ingredients Kits coming out in the next few months!  I didn’t take a lot of product photos this time, but I do have a number of people pics to share.  Honestly my very favorite part of CHA is connecting and reconnecting with people.  A few years ago before I found and became active on SCS I never could have imagined having so many wonderful friends spread all across the country – what a blessing!

The highlight of the week for me was finally meeting my crafting idol, Carol Duvall.  She has a new book out and it was featured at the Juikins booth.  I was beyond excited to have my picture taken with the divine Ms Duvall!

I still miss her show on HGTV, but I understand she may be starting production on a web show.  She was so sweet and gracious!  I told her that I was much more excited to meet her than to see Martha Stewart the year she was at CHA with her entourage!

Here are a couple more photos of the TE Crew.  Taylor had given each of us a custom apron for Christmas and they were fun to wear for the booth.  She picked the fabrics especially for each of our personalities and design styles.  She hit mine right on the head!

(Karen G, me, Jackie, Jodi, Karen M, Taylor

You might notice that we had a pastel day and a bright day.)

(Karen G, Dawn, Donna, Karen M, Jodi and me sitting on the couch in the SCS booth before things got started.  The SCS booth had a super cool conversation pit with chairs and sofa.)

(SCS Staff Jenn, Daven, Lori and Beate

– They had a green day and an orange day.)

(Bev Gerard {Tex} and Broni Holcomb stopped by the TE booth so Sankari and I had to get a photo with them.)

Daven actually did my TE Make & Take at the SCS booth.  🙂

It was so great to run into Julie Ebersole (JulieHRR) on the floor of the trade show.  I think Lori snapped this photo before we got posed and I just love it.  Hugs and smooches to you Jules!

So happy to spend a little time with Cindy Lawrence.  She was working for Our Craft Lounge.  Disappointed that I failed to get a photo of their darling booth.  I’m very excited about their upcoming release – lots of super cute stuff around the corner!

Joy and me.  Joy was the very first SCS friend that I ever met in real life.  I just LOVE that girl!  Joy and Daisy own eclectic Paperie and Joy also owns Our Craft Lounge with Cami and Kimberly.  Busy busy busy!

And here I am with sweet friends Lori and Jenn.  I have to say that this is my favorite photo of the week.  It just seems to ooze friendship. love and happiness!  Not to mention the wonderful bright colors and Lori’s insisted upon optimal high photographer angle!  LOL!

That is just a small sampling of photos for now.  Once I recover from CHA I hope to get back on a more regular blogging schedule.  I actually had a card to share before I left, but my blog was down for a few days and I couldn’t get my post to load.  I’ll try to get that posted in the next couple of days.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately.  December has been such a busy month!  I’ve had some things ready to share, but just no time to sit down and type blog posts.  Plus we’ve been transitioning to a new computer and some of my photos haven’t been moved over from the old one yet.  I just had to get one more post in for 2009.  Overall 2009 has been a really good year for us and I’m very thankful. At the same time it’s always exciting to start a new year and have that fresh blank slate.  🙂

I need to be quick so we can get over to the Game Night at church celebrate with friends!

The project I have to share tonight is the group of gifts I created for the girls in my prayer group (PACT).  Each year we have a Christmas dinner together that we lovingly call *Happy Turkey Night*.  We exchange gifts and mine have almost always been handmade. This year I found myself in a pickle as the day of the dinner arrived and I had nothing prepared.  I went through my stash of alterables and came up with skinny notepads and acrylic frame post-it note holders.  Since I was short on time I worked with a SU Scrappin Kit (I think it was from SAB a couple of years ago.)  It really made things go together quickly.

I had the patterned post-its in my stash and I printed the Bible Verse on my computer and cut it out with nesties.  The felt bags came from the Target Dollar Spot.

I literally snapped these photos on my way out the door that night as I was running a few minutes late for the dinner.  Here are a couple of photos of the group.  My friend Kathy gave us all homemade egg nog.  I’ve never been a fan of egg nog and must admit I tasted it with some trepidation, but OH MY WORD that was some incredibly YUMMY stuff!  I hope she makes it next year too!

Darla, Nancy, me, Kathy

Darla, Nancy, Maggie, Kathy

These ladies have been with me through thick and thin – through years I couldn’t wait see come to an end.  I love them dearly and consider myself incredibly blessed to call them sisters and friends!

I finally did some stamping today, so I’ll be back in the morning with a card for the Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge.  I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve!

Please join me in wishing a Happy Happy Happy Birthday to my sweet friend Joy!  Joy is one of the most generous, kind-hearted, genuine people I have ever known and I am blessed to call her friend!

My birthday card for Joy is also a sneak peek of a new OCL stamp set that will be available exclusively through eclectic Paperie starting tomorrow (ETA: It’s up today!!) – it’s called Kona and I’m told it’s a big favorite of Joy’s.  I loved the little flower with the word “Dude!”…seemed to make it ok to say “Dude!” to a girl.  LOL!

I colored in our cool turtle friend with copic markers (also from eP).  I chose all the colors based on the patterned paper I planned to use.  That always makes coloring an image so much easier for me – to know it will coordinate with something when I’m done with it.  The dotted wave border punch by EK Success just seemed like a natural here.  Be sure to check out my next post a little later today for more details on supplies used on this card

I also decorated the inside of the card.   It was fun to put this computer generated sentiment on a ribbon slide (cut with a Spellbinders die.)

Thanks Cami for asking me to participate in this fun virtual birthday party for our friend Joy.  You can hop over to Cami’s blog to get links to more Kona sneak peeks and more birthday wishes.

I’ll be back at 8:00 am with another post.  Please be sure to check back.  In the meantime – hop over to Joy’s blog and show her some birthday love!