More is More

Happy Wednesday!  I’m thrilled to be back for Day 3 of the TE peeks!  There’s so much to see!  I hope you’ll hop around and leave comments along the way so you can be entered to win a Taylored Expressions gift certificate!

November Release At a Glance

• We have sneak peeks to share Monday through Wednesday.  All of the new products will be available for purchase on Thursday, November 3rd at 8 am PST. You’ll find it all in the Fresh out of the Oven Department at the Taylored Expressions Store.
• Join us as a fan on Facebook for an early peek at the stamp sets, as well as a SPECIAL Facebook GIVEAWAY, on Wednesday night beginning at approximately 6 pm PST.
• Mystery Baker’s Dozen Blog Giveaway: Each day, one lucky blog commenter will be chosen by random draw to win a $10 TE Gift Certificate.  Winners will be chosen from a different Baker’s Dozen blog each day and will be announced on Taylor’s blog on Release Day!  Be sure to hop around to see all the sneak peeks and leave comments on each and every blog for more chances to win. Limit one comment per blog per day, please.  Comments close Wednesday 11/2 at 7pm PST for the drawings.

Today we are showcasing one full-sized set Thankful, one Petite set Sunflower Wreath and one Word A la Carte Thanks.  Even though these new stamps are from different illustrators and collections, they all coordinate beautifully together.  I am especially excited to be showing you the samples I created with Thankful because this set is one of my concepts wonderfully illustrated by Doug as the newest set in the TE Lasting Impressions line.  In fact, I got so excited that I created not one, but two cards!  Thankful is a full sized set (on a 5.75″ x 8.5″ full-color sturdy storage panel)  featuring 15 images in deeply etched rubber for $21.95.

Both cards are 5.25″ square and use Jen’s Deconstructed Sketch – DS25 – as well as paper from the MME Stella & Rose – Mabel 6×6 pad.  My first card features the pumpkin trio image that I am in love with!

The pumpkins were colored with Copics and I sponged ink while the image was still in the Spellbinder Scallop Oval die.  Here’s the inside:

The sentiments in this set are all about our blessings and being thankful.  Aren’t the fonts beautiful?  My second card features sunflowers in a pitcher.  After coloring the pitcher I covered it with Crackle Accents.  You’ll see that I turned the sketch on it’s side this time.  The flower centers were covered with Stardust Stickles.

The sentiment “You’ve blessed my life in so many ways” was stamped onto patterned paper and die cut with a Spellbinders Fancy Tag.  Here’s the inside:

Recipes:

Both cards – TE Thankful Stamp Set, MME Stella & Rose-Mabel 6×6 pad, Copic markers

Pumpkin card: cardstock – Always Artichoke, Pumpkin Pie, ribbon – SU Artichoke Seam Binding, KaiserCraft Pearls, Sponged ink – Sage Shadow, Pumpkin Pie, So Saffron, Spellbinders – Standard Circles Small, Big Scallop Oval, Lacey Circles, Corner Chomper

Sunflower card: cs – SU Bermuda Bay, Cajun Craze, ribbon – SU Choc Chip polka dot, KaiserCraft rhinestones, Crackle Accents, Stardust Stickles, Spellbinders – Circles Small, Scallop Cirlces, Fancy Tags

Now it’s time to see what the Baker’s Dozen has cooked up!

• Charmaine Ikach
• Danielle Lounds
• Jen Shults
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Melissa Sauls
• Melody Rupple
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Tori Wild
• Wanda Guess

Thanks for stopping by.  Tomorrow is Release Day and I’ll be back with one more sample.  In the meantime, it’s off to the dentist for me for a crown prep (not the fun,sparkly kind either) so…yippee.  Hope you, on the other hand, have a GREAT day!

Happy Friday!  It’s vacation week for us and we just returned home from Santa Barbara last night.  We stayed 3 nights in a wonderful Bed & Breakfast just a block from the beach.   Since I was gone this week, I didn’t get a card made for the new Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge, but I do have something to share with you today.

My August Stamp Class is scheduled for next Friday, August 19th, and the focus will be the new Stampin’ Up! catalog.  We’ll be creating 3 projects featuring new stamp sets and papers from SU and I’ll be the hostess for a Stampin’ Up! order.  Class is $15 and I have just a few spots open at the moment. I’d love to have you join me!  Or if you can’t make it, but would like to place an order, let me know.

Here’s one of the cards we’ll be making in class.

This card features two new sets: Button Buddies and Pursuit of Happiness.  I think they pair up perfectly!  You can scroll down to see another card I made with them last week.  If you’d like to come to class, click the contact me button in my sidebar and shoot me an e-mail.  I’ll sent you instructions on how to enroll.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend.

Happy Monday!  I have a special project to share with you today.  This was a gift that, although I put together fairly quickly, it was created with a lot of love.  Unfortunately my photos aren’t the best because I had to snap them somewhat last minute before I gave this gift to a friend, but hopefully you’ll get the idea.  🙂

First I’ll show you the gift bag that features Embrace Beauty from Taylored Expressions.

When I created this bag I dug through a drawer full of older 6×6 designer paper pads.  I came across Basic Grey Stella Ruby and knew it would be perfect with this stamp set.  I used the Spellbinders Fleur de Lis die set and a Martha Stewart wide border punch to embellish the design of the bag.  Here’s a close up of the tag.

The silhouette image was stamped in River Rock ink and the sentiment was overstamped in Espresso. I love the soft look of these images in lighter inks like River Rock and Crumb Cake.  I used linen thread to hang the tag from two points.

The main gift inside the bag was a set of encouraging Bible verses in vertical badge holders.  I’ve wanted to do this for a really long time and I think I got the original idea from Becca Feeekan’s blog.

I used verses from Verve,  Stampin’ Up and Taylored Expressions along with Spellbinder dies and dies from TE.  I kep each tag pretty simple to showcase the verse.  I didn’t get a photo of each individual tag, but here are a couple of them:

 I love how this turned out and this is a project I’d like to do again.  I love the idea of having verses at your fingertips!

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh my goodness!  I cannot believe it’s August already!!!

Let’s see if I can get this post up while it’s still Monday.  I’m not sure why I always end up typing blog posts at midnight!  I just thought I’d take a minute to share an old old card from my stash that I actually sent out in the mail recently.  Do you have a stash of cards you’ve made over the years?  I’ve found it’s really best not to hoard them too much, because as time goes on I tend to not like cards as much years later.  Styles change and so on.  And yet I do have boxes and boxes of cards I’ve created.  I’m sure this card must be in my SCS gallery lately, but i thought it was easier to snap a new photo than try to find it there.

I really have no idea when I made this card, but it was before I owned any Spellbinders, back in the day of Marvy punches (I still have them!) Also before Copics – I watercolored this (I miss watercoloring – really enjoy it more than Copics if I’m honest.) And pretty much everything on this card is from SU (I still kind of miss being a Demo for them.)  Although this is not a card I would make today (not quite like this anyway), I actually still like it.  In fact I’m wanting to dig out that adorable image and play with it (if I could find it.)  And this was sent out in the mail with much love – and really that’s what card making is all about (or should be anyway!)

There is so much going on this week in stamping land!  Dare to Get Dirty is on over at Splitcoaststampers.  I’m hosting one of the challenges later in the week.  If you’re a Fan Club Member, you should definitely play along!  Lots of fun!  If you’re not a Fan Club Member, it’s not too late to join!

Also this week is the August release at Taylored Expressions (Thursday 8 am PST) and sneak peeks started this morning.  I didn’t get anything done to play along today, but I’ll have samples for the rest of the week.  Tomorrow morning a set I concepted is being showcased, so I’m especially excited!  I hope you’ll join us in the morning!

Thanks for stopping by!  Sweet dreams!

Happy Wednesday!  Do you remember being at the park as a little kid and trying to jump onto a merry-go-round that was already spinning?  Do you ever feel that way about aspects of life as a grown up?  I know this sounds weird, but that’s how I’ve felt about stamping and blogging lately.  I have tons of “toys” to play with and there are challenges all over the place I want to play.  I look at the blogs of so many talented women in my Google Reader and I think “hey, I wanna play”, but for some reason lately I just haven’t been able to jump on the merry-go-round.  I know that a lot of it has been the overwhelming mess that has been my stamp room lately and another big factor has been all the holiday craziness and just trying to catch up afterwards.  So I have to admit that I was just a little hesitant to sign up for the Taylored Expressions Blast from the Past Blog Hop this month.  I kind of waited till the last minute and decided to take the plunge.  I’m so glad I did!

I got my stamp room partially cleaned up and spent several hours yesterday working on samples for my class coming up Friday night (still ONE spot open if you want to come) as well as my card for this hop.  And IT FELT GOOD!!!!  The theme for this month’s hop is LOVE and we’re featuring TE stamps sets that have been available for 3 months or longer.  I knew i wanted  to play with one of the Animals in Love A la Carte images and ended up choosing the Scotties in Love.  Patterned paper is Cosmo Cricket Mini Deck Circa 1934 (TE seems to be out of stock at the moment).  I love the vinatge feel of this paper! 

I mentioned earlier all of the challenges swirling around in cyber-land and I have several I really want to play.  One of them was Karen Giron’s 100th Sweet Sunday Sketch and I found that it worked wonderfully with the image I chose.  My card is 5.25″ square.  I added a little interest with some zig-zag stitching, bisque liquid pearls, and the TE Heart Border die (seriously love that thing!)  My bow turned out a little skimpy because I was on my last pice of the polka ribon and it barely fit.  I probably should have settled for a knot.  Oh well.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today.  I have some class samples to share over the next couple of days and now that I’ve hopped on the merry-go-round, let’s hope I can keep the momentum (and the mojo) going! 

Time to check out the rest of the hoppers today.  If you’re not playing with us today, I hope you’ll sign up to play next month.  One lucky winner will be drawn for the TE stamp set of your choice!

Happy Thursday!  It feels weird that I haven’t blogged all week, but every time I’ve had a chance to stamp, it’s been for something that will be shared later – for example I made a sample for one of the Dare to Get Dirty Challenges on SCS and I’ll be able to show you that on Sunday.  DTGD is a week of challenges hosted by Dirty Dozen and Dirty Dozen Alumni just for Fan Club Members.  There are multiple challenges every day starting Saturday the 17th and you can choose to play as many as you’d like.  If you’re not already a Fan Club Member you can click here to find out about becoming one.  It’s a really fun week with every type of challenge imagineable!  We’d love to have you join us.

Since I don’t have a card to share today, how about an adorable picture of sweet Tessa?

She was sitting up on the back of the couch last night after we took her for a walk and I took this photo with Curt’s iPhone.  She was a tired, but very happy pup!

Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll be back tomorrow morning with the Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge. 🙂

Happy Friday!  It’s time for another Sketch Challenge from Taylor – TESC113 – and boy did I ever have FUN with this one!  You know how sometimes you just get lost in the pure joy of stamping?  That’s how creating this card was! This was the perfect opportunity to ink up some Denami stamps I purchased way back in January at the CHA SuperShow.  I have always loved DeNami and just had to buy a few when I saw their booth at the show.  I have no idea why I am so drawn to farm related images…maybe it’s because our house used to be part of a dairy farm…I don’t know, but I love farm stamps!  Pretty funny considering what a total city girl I am!

I actually followed the sketch quite literally with just some added layering.  I used papers from both the Farm Fresh and Thrift Shop 8×8 pads (October Afternoon) along with SU cardstock in Summer Sun, Real Red, and Chocolate Chip.  Ribbon is left over from my kitchen curtains and buttons are from my stash.  The little scallop squares were punched with a Marvy punch and the circles and label are Spellbinders dies. Border is a SU punch.  Images are colored with Copics.

My friend Kathy’s birthday was yesterday.  I realize that nothing about this card screams *birthday*, but I just thought it was so FUN that I wanted to send it to her.  Trouble was I just didn’t have the right sentiment.  I finally decided to just create one on my computer.  Problem solved! *grin*  The little fame animals came in a set if four, so the inside of the card was the perfect place for the 4th image.

This card just makes me happy!  I hope it gives you a little grin too!  Now let’s see what inspiration the rest of the Sketch Crew has in store this week:

I’m looking forward to my stamp class tonight and going out for tea with my prayer group tomorrow afternoon.  I hope you have a fantastic weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!