More is More

Happy Thursday!  I’m excited to be playing in the Taylored Expressions Blast From the Past Customer Blog Hop.  This is a chance to feature some of the TE stamps that have been around for awhile (more than 3 months.)  I love to play in this hop because it’s so easy to caught up in the newest stuff – it’s great to have a reason to get out some of my favorites.  Today’s theme is Old Glory – the color combo of red, white and blue in any shade.  I’m also entering this card in the Paper Crafts Color Inspiration Challenge #6.  How fun that the 2 challenges worked together!

I used the optional sketch provided bythe incredible Sankari Wegman and my card features the TE stamp set What’s Cookin’? along with the coordinating Apron Taylored Die.  Designer paper is Webster’s Pages with SU cardstock Real Red, Basic Black and Cool Caribbean (I still have a stash of that color and sometimes just nothing else will do!).  White cardstock is TE Choice Snow White.  This color combo of caribbean blue and red always makes me think retro…and especially retro kitchen. 🙂

Let’s see what everyone else has done with red,white and blue…

ETA: I’ve been hopping around this morning and am finding that I’m having toruble commenting on several Blogger blogs.  They just keep looping me back through to sign in again and again!  So players today – if you have a Blogger blog and seem a little short on comments, maybe more pople besides me are having problems.  Sorry!  There’s such great stuff in the hop today!!!

If you didn’t play today, you might want to sign up for next month’s hop before you forget (like almost did this month – LOL!)  The theme for July is Sending Sunshine!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new TE Sketch Challenge.  I also have cards to share soon from my last class.  I’m still catching up after being sick all last week with a really bad cold.  Super happy to be back in the swing of things!  Thnaks for stopping by!

It’s time for the monthly TE customer blog hop – Blast From the Past where we get a chance to showcase much loved older TE stamp sets.  The theme for this month’s hop is Clean and Simple.  Now, you know that theme skeered me a bit…I mean look at the title of my blog.  I’m just not a CAS girl.  I appreciate it for sure, but do it?  Not so much!  That being said, I’m pretty happy with how my card turned out.

My card features Easter Blessings – a beautiful set that was released last Spring.  What you can’t fully appreciate in the photo is the fact that the white cardstock is Shimmer White – which is my all-time favorite.  It’s so pretty, such a soft subtle sparkle!  The cross was heat embossed with a caribbean chalk ink and clear embossing powder before being die cut with Spellbinders Labels 18 (my new fave) and sponged with Banana ink.  The image panel is popped up on foam squares.   I scored the cardbase with my Scor-pal for a little extra added interest.

I’m so looking forward to walking into church Sunday morning and joining in the cry of “He is risen indeed!”

Now it’s time to check out the rest of the hoppers and see what they’ve done with this CAS theme!

Wanna join the hop next month?  We’d love to have you play along as the theme for May will be Make it Masculine!  Click here for details.

Thanks for stopping by!

**Please press Ctrl-F5 to “hard” refresh if you’d like to make sure you are seeing my latest post. Thanks!**

It’s time for the monthly Taylored Expressions Blast From the Past Blog Hop!  All TE customers are invited to join in as we play with some of our favorite (but not newest) sets.  The theme for this month is Going Green. I used the optional sketch (created by Sankari Wegman) and turned to my all time favorite TE set, Branching Out with a little help from Garden Party Blooms and the coordinating die (for the sunshine.)

Papers and ribbon are from a TE Key Ingredients kit from last year that featured October Afternoon Modern Homemaker.  All of the colors I used on the card were pulled from the striped piece of patterned paper.  I added some SU Daffodil Delight cardstock.  I inked up the sun image with Daffodil ink and then used the rock’n’roll technique to ink the edges with Peach Parfait before stamping onto Daffodil cardstock and die cutting with the Taylored Die.  The sun was overpowering the card by covering up a portion of the branch and leaves, so I used a craft knife to cut around a couple of the leaves and tuck the sun in behind them.  It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the little flowers are KaiserCraft pink rhinestone flowers – just the special little touch I needed!

There are a ton of people playing in the hop today and I can hardly wait to see what everyone created.  I always love to see which sets people chose to use for these hops. Be sure to stop by Taylor’s blog to see her sample and to get the info to sign up to play with us next month.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Thursday!  Not only is it time for the monthly Taylored Expressions Blast from the Past Blog Hop, but I’m also teaching my monthly stamp class tonight!  And as things worked out  one of my class projects for tonight fits perfectly into the theme of the hop “THANKFUL”.   I am super excited about this project  and I hope you like it too!  Click on any of the photos to see them larger.

We will be decorating an acrylic mini accordion album from the TE Store using the TE stamp set Celebrate Life (that’s the Blast from the Past part) as a special home decor project.  We’ll stamp a half sheet one sheet wonder and cut it into the panels and then embellish with photos and sentiments.  Here are some closer looks at the panels.

I stamped the pumpkin with brown Stazon and watercolored it with Mustard and Pumpkin SU dye ink.  It was cut out with the Blossom Nestabilities.

I used photos from our niece’s gorgeous Fall themed wedding.  These pictures were just printed out on regular copy paper on my home computer.  I can always replace them later with better quality photos, but I was actually surprised at how good these look.

Isn’t this such a FUN project?  I needed to keep it simple enough to work in a class setting, but I would like to do another now where I could go crazy using anything I want.  By the way – I tried two types of adhesives to attach the cardstock panels to the acrylic – Scotch Quick Dry and Tombow Multi – and both worked great!  I was worried that might be a bit of a problem, but not at all.

Here ‘s the full list of players in today’s TE Blast From the Past Blog Hop –

I bet you thought I was finished, huh?  Nope!  Not only are we decorating one side of the acrylic mini accordion album for Autumn…we are also decorating the other side for Christmas!!!  Wanna see? Click on the photo to see it larger.

For this side we’re using TE Winter Wonderland and Sparkle & Cheer in Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red and Not Quite Navy.  I got the felt snowflakes from the SU Clearance Rack recently (but you could certainly die cut your own) and the large alpha stamps are retired SU.  Notice how I used the blossom die back to back for the pumpkin on one side and the snowflke on the other?

Let me know if you’d like to see more detail on how this project is done.  I might even try to make a little video over the weekend.  These would make great gifts for teachers, co-workers, and friends.  I can hardly wait to help my class create these tonight!  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Tuesday!  I’m excited to be participating in a fun Taylored Expressions Blog Hop today – Blast From the Past.  It’s so great to get to focus on some favorite sets even if they aren’t the very newest.  My card features Sprinkled with Love along with a sentiment from Sweet Occasions and it showcases the masking technique. I built the scene from front to back, masking with Eclipse tape as I went. Images were colored with Copics and I added accents of Ranger Glossy Accents, Espresso Dimensional Pearls, Red Stickles, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, and even some little seed beads on the donut.  Just about all of the supplies are from the  Taylored Expressions Store.  The dp is Echo Park and it is oh so yummy on the Bazzill Chocolate Creme card base!

Recipe –

Stamps: Sprinkled with Love, Sweet Occasions

Paper: Echo Park, TE White, Bazzill Chocolate Creme

Ink: Memento Black, SU Crumbcake

Copics: E34, RV32, YG41, Y21, YG17, R14, R37, B52, BG72, C1

Other: Spellbinders Blossom and large Circles, Pom Pom trim, American Crafts ribbon, Red Stickles, Glossy Accents, espresso dimensional pearls, Kaisercraft chocolate pearls, seed beads, dazzling diamonds glitter.

Time to get hopping and see what everyone has created today!

Whether you are playing today or not we would love to have you join us for the October Hop which will focus on Christmas and Winter!  You can find all the details about how to sign up and how to play by clicking here.  AND in case you don’t already have a stamp set to use or if you’ve had your eye on a previous TE Christmas/Winter set You’re in luck!  From today through Sunday 9/26 TE is running a  special SALE  – the following select Christmas sets are 20% off!!!

Christmas Blessings
Season’s Sweetings
Home Sweet Home
Holiday Wonder
Wings of Joy
Tag Treats

I have to say that Christmas Blessings and Wings of Joy are two of my all-time favorite TE stamp sets! What a super sweet deal!  Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Hopping and Happy Shopping!!

Happy Tuesday!  So where in the heck have I been for a week and a half???!!??  Well, we took a wonderful little vacation last week and the TESC crew also took a break last Friday.  I’ll share some vacation pics later in the week, but I got back to blogging just in time for the June edition of the Taylored Expressions Blast From the Past Blog Hop!  This is a time for all TE Lovers to play by creating a card with a much loved TE set that may not be getting it’s due because it’s not the very newest stamp set on the block.  There are over 50 people playing today!  How cool is that?!  Inspiration abounds and if you hop around, you might see a TE set you didn’t know about or haven’t seen for awhile.  And if you’re not playing today, then you need to make plans to play with us next month! Everyone is welcome.  🙂

The set I chose to showcase today is one of my favorites (*ahem* I admit I might be slightly biased on this one *wink*), but I hadn’t had it out in a little while – Sweet Ocassions.  If you’re like me, when you think about buying a stamp set you wonder what you might actually use it for and this is one of those sets that is truly versatile and easy to use – birthday, congrats, new home, friendship, thanks ALL IN ONE CUTE STAMP SET!  I was having so much fun that I actually made two cards!  (Of course not stamping for a week may have had something to do with it too! *grin*)

For today’s hop we were given an optional inspiration photo/color challenge.  I interpreted the color challenge as Real Red, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi and Baja Breeze and found that several sheets of patterned paper from October Afternoon (Cherry Hill, Farm Fresh and Thrift Shop) would work perfectly with this color combo. I LOVED this combo so much (it’s pretty much my kitchen colors) that I used it for both cards.  My images are colored with copic markers. 

On my first card (above) I colored over the word “friend” and the the little flower on the sugar cookie with a clear glaze pen.  The three little flower embellishments were created by first punching a 1/4″ circle from Baja carstock and then using the tiny flower punch over that circle.  That was applied with a Quickie Glue pen and then a green KaiserCraft rhinestone was adhered to the open center of each flower.

My 2nd card (below) is 5.25″ square – I have been loving that size lately!  I employed several nesties – rectangle, scallop rectangle, big scallop rectangle.  The image was stamped directly onto Baja cardstock and colored with copics.  The cupcake was paper-pieced.  Fire Engine Red loose glitter was applied to the border with a Quickie Glue pen.  Lime stickles were applied over the letters.  Glossy Accents was used to give dimension and shine to the cherry.  The Corner Chomper was used on the bottom corners of the card.

Here are the entries from the Taylored Expressions Blast from the Past blog hop! Stay tuned for details on how you can sign up for the customer blog hop next month!

Thanks for stopping by and happy hopping!  I’m off to work so I’ll have to do most of my hopping later.  If you see something you like please leave some love along the way!!!!