More is More

Happy Friday! I’ve spent most of the day sorting out medical and dental bills. You’d think after 19 years of working in medical collections that I find that stuff a breeze, but when it comes to doing my own I get really twitchy and procrastinate as much as possible.  It’s a good thing I finally made myself do it today.  I found a large posting error in our favor in the dentist’s bill and I discovered that the facility never submitted their claim from when Curt had his procedure done back in Februrary.  They did manage to collect money for our deductible (which we don’t owe) and hold it hostage, however.  So 2 1/2 hours, a letter, and several phone calles later I might be on the road to having it all straightened out.  Just in time to start over again with Curt’s next lithotripsy next week!  All this has made me ready for the weekend! I need some stampy time for sure!

Here’s a card I created for a close friend’s 50th birthday.  I hadn’t had a chance to ink up Adventure Land from the TE July release yet and all the samples from the Baker’s Dozen made me itchy to play with it.  I think it’s great for a guy’s birthday, don’t you?

This is Karen’s Sweet Sunday Sketch 162 which is a really fun one!  The paper is Simple Stories Summer Fresh 6×6.  I used lots of dies including Spellbinders Circles and Lacey Circles and TE Medium Scallop Border, Majestic Border and Seeing Stars.  Little finishing touches that might be hard to see in the photo include clear glaze pen, stickles, Taylors Tiny Twinkles, and KasierCraft rhinestones.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a fun and relaxing weekend ahead!

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It’s almost Tuesday!  How on earth did that happen?  LOL!  I have one more project from my class Friday night that I wanted to share.  It’s a super simple 2-4-6-8 box held closed with a mini clothespin clip (thanks to the inspiration of the talented Danielle Lounds!)

My class featured the TE stamp set Hello Spring for all 4 projects and this little treat box also used  Spring Wreath to stamp tone-on-tone onto the box itself.  We filled these little boxes with Hershey foil wrapped chocolate eggs.  If you need a last minute Ester treat, these are super quick and easy to make!  Take a 1/2 sheet of cardstock and score at 2″”, at 4″”, at 6″, and 8″.  Then turn a quarter turn and score (what will be the bottom of the box) at 1″.  Make some little 1″ slits at the bottom and fold up and adhere with sticky strip.  Easy-peasy!

I’ll be back in the morning with a very Special Taylored Expressions mid-month release…something we’ve never done before.  You won’t want to miss it! 

No, really…does running late count as exercise?  LOL!  Today is my birthday and my wonderful cherished friend Darla took me out for dinner last night while Curt was away on a buisness trip.  When I opened her package and saw this mug I was seriously just about ROTFLMBO!!!!  It couldn’t be more perfect for me.  I read it out loud and then Darla said….”you should be in really good shape then!”  Bwahahahahahahhahaha!!!!

Just for the record, I’m mostly late in the mornings.  I do tend to run 5-10 minutes late at other times, but I’m not a 30 minutes late person…well, almost never.  *eye roll*

Since it’s my birthday I thought it would be fun to share the love and give away a birthday gift to one of my readers.  I have a shiny new $10 Gift Certificate to Taylored Expressions up for grabs.  *grin*  To be entered into the drawing simply leave a comment on this post telling me whether you are chronically late or always early…or if you’d rather not reveal that about yourself you can tell me what your favorite form of excercise is.  One comment per person please.  You have until Friday night 2/6 at 11pm Pacific to enter.  I’ll announce the winner sometime over the weekend.  (Please note: this particular gift certificate is for PRODUCT ONLY at TE and cannot be applied to shipping.)

As I had planned, I did some stamping in my PJs today.  The first thing I wanted to do was the SCS Sketch Challenge.

Stamps are TE Stamp a Sweet Impression – Love is Sweet and all paper/cardstock/ribbon is from the TE Valentine Key Ingredients pack (it’s sold out, but most of the pieces are available for individual purchase.) I used some punches and added some Kaiser Craft pearls.  The love Muffin’s liner is paper-pieced with coordinating dp.  Starting with a sketch is one of my favorite ways to stamp.

It’s been a really nice birthday so far.  Although Curt was out of town, he recorded himself singing Happy Birthday and playing guitar and it was in my e-mail in-box when I woke up this morning.  What a sweetheart!  I’ve had lots of fun birthday wishes from friends all day, our housekeepers came so I have a nice clean house, and I got some stamping done.  Curt is home now and I’ve got to run and get dressed now for a yummy seafood dinner out with my family.  I’m starving!  Thanks for stopping by!

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

  As a card-maker I love Valentine’s Day and stamping for it, but coming so close on the heels of Christmas it seems I rarely get nearly as many Valentines done as I’d like.  This candy box is one of my favorite images from the new SASI set Love is Sweet.  I stamped the image on TE Choice Snow White cardstock, colored with Copic markers and  die-cut it with Nestabilities Labels 2 die and my Cuttlebug.  The edging is done with the gold end of a Ziggy Paint Pen and the top of the box was stamped and colored twice – the 2nd image being cut out and popped up on foam tape.

I had the image colored and layered onto black with a completely different card base and background for several days and just couldn’t seem to finish it.  I finally decided to set aside that other base and background and go for a completely simple and elegant look.

The dp is Stampin’ Up! from the hostess Patterns pack.  The black crystals at the bottom are Zva Creative from TE.  This is a Z-fold card and one of my favorite folds to work with.  It’s so easy, but looks very impressive.

It’s just a standard card fold with the front of the card folded back in half on itself.  Then the focal image is centered, but only attached on the left side.  The trick is to layer the dp or stamped background so that when the card is closed it almost looks like a solid piece and the special fold is not obvious.  It’s a little hard to photograph…looks much better IRL I think.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Hope you are having a sweet weekend!

Super quick post because I’m experiencing blogging withdrawals but I need to get out the door to work.  I haven’t been stamping much because I’ve been focusing on organizing my stamp room for the past couple of weeks and I’m about 95% there!  More on that later.

Yesterday I had 3 friends come over to stamp.  These are girls I’m in a Bible Study with and they are all interested in getting started in stamping.  One asked for and got a bunch of papercrafting supplies for Christmas (including a Cuttlebug and SASI stamps), one stamped for a little while over 10 years ago and has some SU supplies from that time period, and one has never stamped but wants to make gifts for people at her husband’s work.

I was so excited to have them come over that I got a little carried away and planned 3 projects for them as though it were going to be a class.  Thought I’d take just a minute to share 2 of the simple cards we made.  First this Stampin’ Up! card was made with some supplies from my Demo pre-order and it was inspired by this card I saw on SCS by debils.

And second is this SASI card.  I had them each choose an image from the new sets just released last week and a CB embossing folder from my basket and we colored with chalks which I hadn’t done in quite awhile.  I forgot how quick and easy they can be.   It is soooo much fun to see someone brand new to stamping create a cute card!  I just love the joy on their faces!!!

I apologize for the quality of the photos – still using my back up camera.  I’m off to work – thanks so much for stopping by.  I’ll be back tomorrow for the TECC.

-Jami

It’s time!  It’s time!!!  The new Stamp a Sweet Impression release is now available for your shopping and stamping pleasure!  You need to go to Taylor’s blog first to get all the detailed info and then you can head over to Taylored Expressions The Store to shop your little heart out!  Taylor has put together some awesome Bundle deals that are available through this weekend only. 

Tonight the entire Bakers Dozen has more samples to share.  The one stamp set we have not yet really talked about is A Year of Sweet Sentiments.  I LOVE sentiments and I LOVE this set.  This is by far THE most versatile sentiment set I have ever seen and what an incredible value.  With 30 year-round sentiments you pay less than .75 per stamp.  And remember that’s deeply etched pink RUBBER already on EZ-Mount coming to you on a sturdy 3-ring panel with a full index on one side.  You simply choose a sentiment, slap it on an acrylic block and it will stamp like a dream!

The sentiments in this set were specially chosen to coordinate with all of the images in A Year of Sweets 1, 2, and 3 to make adorable cards and scrapbook pages for occassions year-round, but these sentiments will also work fantastically with lots of images you already own.  And check out the cute fonts!  Oh and many of them work well with punches like Word Window and SU ovals!  Ok so is it weird that I sometimes get more excited about sentiments than image sets?  I just love having the perfect saying to really *make* a card!

For my sample today I chose one of several sentiments that works well with the June image from A Year of Sweets 2 (the June picnic is my very favorite image of all 12 – what’s yours?)

This card is 6-1/2 x 3-3/8 to fit inside an SU small open ended envelope.  This is a fun size card to work with and if you ever have to mail a check to a friend this is just right.  All the cardstock and patterned paper, as well as the heart brad and Starfire glitter used here are from the Valentine Key Ingredients.  The image was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto TE’s new Choice Snow White cardstock and colored with the Copics in this photo.

I didn’t check my full Copic chart for all the best matches to Key Ingredients, but I did check the chart for the approximately 60 Copics I own and these worked well for my scene.

The flower embellishment to the right side of the card (close-up seen at the top of this post) was created by punching the flower out of one of the KI dp sheets with a circle punch and putting it on the back of an Amuse scallop circle clear sticker.  Then Starfire glitter was adhered to the sticky scallops not covered by the paper (I learned this trick from stampin royalty JulieHRR).  That piece was then glued to a square of the dp layered over a square of red cardstock.  Some Zva pink crystals finished it off.  The main image was cut and embossed with a Nesties rectangle and layered onto a scalloped rectangle where I added more Starfire glitter with a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen.

Tonight’s samples are somewhat of a free-for-all so there’s just no telling what the rest of the Bakers Dozen has in store for us…I’m off to see for myself…wanna come?

I’ll be back by 8:00 am tomorrow morning (or maybe even sooner) with a card for the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge.  I hope you’ll check bak and play along.  Thanks so much for stopping by!