More is More

I finally got some Elzybells from the Spring release.  I wanted them all and it was hard to narrow them down, but I finally settled on a couple of chicks, 3 girls and some sentiments.  Now I just need some time to sit and PLAY! 

My first card had to be with the Easter Chick since Easter is almost here.  I’ve never been a big fan of Orchid Opulence, but I had it out on my table from my class prep and it does remind me of Easter so I grabbed some other *Easter* colors (Barely Banana, Bashful Blue, Gable Green) and went to work.

I pulled out my Prisma pencils and gamsol -something I don’t do very often – to color this adorable little image.  I think I’ll be using them more with the the Elzys since the images are so small – the pencils just seem the easiest to me.  Stitched Background was stamped in Brocade Blue on the Bashful Blue panel.  I’m really glad I got this background stamp – it is much more versatile than I originally thought.  Jenn Balcer pushed me over the edge on that one – thanks Jenn!  Daisy Field was wheeled in Green Galore on a Gable Green strip and then scallops were created with a slit punch.

The little white flower at the bottom is a rub-on from the SAB rub-on set and then I added some doodles with my white gel pen.  Can you see the tiny rhinestones on the Easter egg and the little flowers next to it?  You know I love rhinestones and I’m so excited about this latest find.

I went to the rubber stamp convention in Carson this last weekend with my friends Joy and Leann and we spied these wonderful packages of tiny rhinestones – round, square, teardrop, hearts – and get this – they were only $2.50 a package.  I’m guessing there must be at least 300 stones in a package and check out the cool carousel holder!   I scooped up the round and square, plus a mini package of pink hearts.  When I flipped over the package to the back I saw that the instructions involved nail polish.  LOL!  They are made by Adoro Cosmetics, INC for fingernail embellishment!  Maybe I’ll take them along to my next nail appointment for a little special bling!

Lots to do today to prep for my luncheon on Friday since I work tomorrow.  I have another Elzys card started and sitting on my table – hope I can squeeze in the time to finish it.  Oh and just this morning I discovered the Mini VSN Challenge Week going on at SCS.  Not sure how I had missed that, but there sure are some fun challenges posted.  Check it out if you can.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Leap Year Day!  🙂

I’m very excited for my wonderful friend Taylor VanBruggen as she launches her new website today – www.tayloredexpressions.com – a whole new shopping opportunity for paper crafters and those looking to purchase unique handmade cards and gifts.  Taylor has been running ribbon and tape shares on her blog for quite some time and now she is expanding to  a shopping website to offer ribbons, adhesives, cardstocks, handmade cards, custom invitations, gift and favor boxes, project kits, and more.  All top quality at great prices!  Be sure to check out Taylor’s blog today for some very special offerings for her Launch Weekend.

I also need to give a special birthday shout out to my friend Emily – a Leap Year Day baby who celebrates her 8th birthday today.  😉  Enjoy Pixie!!!  Click on her name and hop on over to her blog to wish her a Happy Birthday!

I’ve actually prepped this post on Thursday night and have it set to post Friday morning.  So who thinks I’ll actually turn off the computer for Leap Year Day?  Anybody?  Well either way I have lots to do and I hope I’m able to carve out a little time to stamp something.  Thanks for stopping by!

It’s back to work for me today, but before I go I thought I’d share one of my CHA show favorites with you Kaiser Craft Designs.  This is an Australian company I was unfamilar with.  They have tons of different products, but what caught my eye in the booth was there rhinestones and pearls.

The rhinestones are a beautiful sparkly quality – self adhesive and not connected to one another.  Also you will notice that there are plenty of each size to make several cards or projects with one package.  And they have a very reasonable price point. They come in a whole bunch of fabulous colors including silver and black!  A little birdie told me that ecelctic Paperie might be carrying these in the near future so be sure to keep a look out.  They also have round and square stones as well as flowers.

The pearls are equally as yummy and come in lots of colors including chocolate. Below you see them in a soft green.

Lori and I waited in line for quite awhile to be able to do the Make & Take at this booth.

It was amazing how many kaiser products were used in this adorable M&T.

Everything you see on this project is a Kaiser product – starting with the wood (not chipboard) tag.  The letters are also wood – very cool and they even make the paint we used on the letters.  We had our choice of a table full of gorgeous papers to use, a whole box of ribbon and another entire box of bling and flowers.  It was totally worth the wait!  Oh and then she offered us our choice of gifts.  I chose a wood acordian frame.  Sweet!  🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day.  I’ll be back later to share the card I made for Curt.  Thanks for stopping by.

It’s time for another Divine Design Bible Verse Challenge.  Click here for Challenge details and please join with us – everyone is welcome!  We’ll be uploading on the 8th of each month, but if you don’t make it that day you can always upload later as well.

This month I chose Philippians 4:6-7 because it has been one of my life verses so it was really a natural for me.  As someone who has struggled off and on throughout my life with anxiety/panic disorder there have been many times when this verse has been like a life preserver in a stormy ocean.  The peace of God which truly is beyond human comprehension is one of His most wonderful gifts.

The card, like last month is made to fit in a small tin and opens so I can journal inside.  The verse was printed on vellum and I used the SU set Always along with Berry Bliss designer paper.  I got the “everything” crooked at the bottom despite using my Stamp-a-majig and it’s bugging me, but there was no time to start over tonight.

I can’t wait to see what the other Scripture Chicks have done this month.  Click on their names to go to their blogs or click here to go to the Bible Verse uploads on SCS.

Lori

Taylor

Angel

Nancy

I have to show you my little shopping find.  I whizzed through Kohl’s really quickly and check these out…

Super Duper Gargantuan Jumbo Clips!  There are three in a package.  The original price was $19.99, but they were on sale for $7.99.  I resisted the urge to buy all they had, even putting down the second package I had in my hands.  Are they huge or what?  I put the jumbo clip I made last week next to them for size reference.  Office supplies in the Land of the Giants!  LOL!

 Lori arrives this afternoon!  WooHoo!  The next few days are going to be so incredible!  I’ll post when I can.  Be sure to check in…I’ll try to have some CHA product photos *wink*

Thanks for stopping by!

It’s a rainy cold Southern California Sunday.  What was I thinking when I scheduled a pedicure in February?  My feet are freezing now, but I don’t want sock marks on my pretty pink polish!  Curt is off buying wrapping paper for my birthday present so he’ll be set for tomorrow *grin*, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to blog.  I almost completey forgot that I had not yet posted the card I made for my SAB swap.  I always host swaps, but don’t often make cards for them.  This time I had one spot left open and needed to just take the spot myself as time was ticking.  Here’s my card using Friendship Blooms.

I wanted to incorporate the felt flowers from Flower Fusion and the tin full of flowers inspired my color combo of Old Olive, Pink Passion and Pumpkin Pie, along with River Rock as my neutral.  I used the large flower image from the set to create a tone on tone background.  A pretty simple straightforward card – very fun stamp set!

I’ll have lots of swap photos to share really soon.  I just need to download and edit my pictures.  So stay tuned for that.  In the meantime if you’d like to check out the ones that have been uploaded so far to SCS galleries click here. 

I noticed that Tuesday Morning will have several styles of OTT Lites on sale this week starting February 5th.  If you don’t already have an OTT Lite on your stamp table you NEED one!  They are well worth the money even at full price, but clearance prices are even better!  So nice to see true colors.  Oh and if you happen to be over 40 like me and experiencing dimished up close vision you’ll find the OTT Lite to be a God-send when working with small embellishments and coloring in detailed areas.  If you have a Tuesday Morning store in your area head on over there this week and let me know what you come home with.

Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Sunday.

My new catty order was delivered yesterday while I was at work.  I kinda broke my self-imposed rule of not getting more than 3 or 4 stamp sets at any one time.  You can click on the thumbnail to see the big picture…     Wow!  What was I thinking?  I was thinking “I want that and that and that…and I can use that in my next class…and I’m getting hostess benefits!”  LOL!  Seriously I do have a general rule of not getting a lot of sets at one time because I feel I don’t use and enjoy them as much, but it just didn’t make sense this time to spread them out so here you have it.  🙂  As you can see I started mounting them during American Idol last night, but I have a long way to go!  Perhaps all this new stuff will help get me out of the creative slump I’ve been feeling.

I still have (or I should say I *again* have) a bunch of my stamp room stuff out in the living room.  It was out and then piled back in the stamp room floor for Christmas and then dragged back out again.  This is left over from when my awesome custom cabinet was put in my stamp room creating the need to completely reorganize EVERYTHING.  Of course that happened right as the holiday season started up so that project was never finished.  I have promised Curt that I will have everything out of the living room and put away by the end of January – I really need to get cracking on that!  I know when I get my stuff organized I will feel more like stamping too.  The constant clutter really zaps my creative energy and not being able to find stuff doesn’t help either.

I’m so excited about each set…I hope to have some samples to show you very soon.  Thanks for stopping by.

I sure hope you all have a new Stampin’ Up! Catty in hand by now and have had plenty of chance to drool all over it!  My boxes arrived yesterday and several customers have already been here to pick them up.  *grin*  Today I got my copy spiral bound. I have been waiting all week to do this and now I am soooo happy!  It feels so official now.

I went to Office Max and said I needed it ASAP – I DO NOT like to leave my catty unless it’s absolutley necessary.  At first the guy wanted me to come back in 4 hours and I must have made a really sad face because he went and asked someone and came back and said half an hour.  Then while I was deciding on coil color the guy who was going to do it walked up and said he could do it while I waited.  I was on pins and needles the whole time (yes I know that’s silly – what can I say?)  He did a really good job!  Some people like to have their covers laminated, but I prefer to have clear plastic covers front and back (just a matter of personal preference either way).  I had clear binder pockets (by Avery) inserted just inside the front and back (I trimmed them down at home first – some places charge per cut).  Cost of having this done varies widely across the country.  Today I paid $5.48.  Even when I paid almost $8.oo one year (Kinko’s) it was still worth every penny!

Now that I have the new catalog I’m finding it a little hard to stamp – all the excitement I guess.  But I realized today that it will be 2 weeks or more before I have new rubber so I decided to just go to my stamp room and find something to play with (not like I don’t have plenty of choices!).  Looking around I decided to check out my contraband (non-SU) drawer.  I pulled out several things and ended up working with this darling cupcake girl from American Art Stamp.

I started out trying to make her into an ATC, but as you can see the ATC got mounted onto a 4.25″ sqaure card.  The image was stamped onto Shimmer White cardstock with Noir Palette Hybrid ink and watercolored with SU markers and aquapainter.  The background is a Judikins stamp called Bead Curtain.  It is very similar to a new SU jumbo wheel called Spotted.  Colors for this card are Barely  Banana, Black, Gable Green and Tempting Turqoise.  Plaid ribbon is from the big Costco pack and polka dot grosgrain from my stash.  Liquid Applique was applied, heated and brushed with pastels for the cupcake frosting.  I just love the puffy look of LA!  Crystal Effects was used on the chocolates and some Stickles were applied for accents.  SU brads (lined up using the mat pack) are the final touch.  I’m glad I “made myself” do a little stamping tonight.  The mojo was a bit elusive, but it felt really good in the end to create something after a busy day.

Enabler Alert!  Have you  heard about the .99 business cards at Office Depot?  Click here to order 250 plain white business cards for .99 with free shipping.  I learned about this on SCS and ordered last week.  The estimated arrival was July 10th, but the arrived today!!!  Very cool. I plan to stamp on them too.  At that price think of all the possibilties!  Have some printed just to make it easy to give out your e-mail address when needed, use them for coupons or gift certificates, staple them to little bags of candy to give out to promote your business, and on and on!  Shoot – maybe I should order more!

Hope you have a fantastic weekend.  I’m getting together with some of my best stampin’ buds tomorrow afternoon – it will be so FUN to discuss the new catty, eat and oh yeah…maybe stamp a bit!  Thanks for stopping by.