Occasions Mini Sneak Peek!!

Hi Stamping Friends!

Well only a few more days until the goodies from the Occasions Mini Catalog are available for sale.  The dates of this catalog are January 5th through April 30th.  I pre-ordered a few things, but I'm waiting to place my BIG order on January 5th so I can take advantage of the Sale-A-Bration benefits!!! 

Today's card uses the sketch from the Pals Paper Arts challenge blog PPA22.  And I'm barley going to get this in on time!!  So I better quit yacking and get this posted.  Here's the sketch:

And here's my card using lots of new goodies from the Stampin' Up! Occasions Mini Catalog:

Isn't that Designer Series Paper gorgeous!  And you can kind of tell from the pic that it is shimmery.  Love it!!  The Scallop Heart Embosslit is also from the catalog. 

And if you stop by my blog on January 1st, you can visit a fun blog hop presented by Stampin' Addicts.  The tour opens at noon on Friday, January 1st and runs through Sunday, January 3rd.  Twenty-three fabulous stampers will be partcipating and each will showcase a different item from the SU! Occasions Mini Catalog.  I will be presenting the Scallop Heart Embosslit and I have some great projects showing how versatile this little Sizzlit is!  I hope you'll hop by!  I better get this posted, so I can link it to the PPA challenge!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

Christmas Thank Yous

Hi Stamping Friends!

After Christmas gifts comes the Christmas Thank Yous.  I CASEd the idea of this card from one I saw on SCS.  I added the dangling snowflake.  These were super easy to make, which is always helpful when you need to make a few of them.  I even cheated and printed a sentiment with my computer on the inside of the card.  Now I just need to personalize them, address the envelopes and get them in the mail!

The card base is Whipser White.  The DSP layer is the Christmas Cocoa Specialty paper.  I love this paper, because it is flocked.  It has such great texture.  That's what I love to look at in a card, how does it feel?  The snowflake is punch out of SU! Shimmer White cardstock.  The little snowflake stamp comes from the Snow Swirled set.  The thank you sentiment is stamped in Real Red and comes from the Thank You Kindly set.

Thank You Kindly  #111700  $13.95

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

Merry Christmas!

Hi Stamping Friends!

Merry Christmas!  Hope your day is filled with lots of joyful memories spent with loved ones.  Here's our Christmas card that we sent out this year:

There were three more photos on the other side, an individual shot of each of the three kiddos.  The fourth square had our Christmas greeting.  I made 100 of these and then when I went to print out my address labels, I realized I should have made 125!  Ooops!  I chose 25 people to get a 5x7 photo card that I desgined in Photoshop, instead.  And we recieved another 10 or so cards from people that I did not send cards to.  They are getting a 5x7 photo New Years card!

Here's a couple of shots of the card production line:

Thanks for stopping by!

Merry Christmas!

Baby Jesus Is Born

Hi Stamping Friends!

Well today's double challenge nativity card has lots of "new" stuff.  Well, it's only new to me!  I bought the Stampin' Up! set Baby Jesus Is Born, before it retired.  I haven't touched until today!  I even had to cut it out.  Yes, it's that old!  No die cut rubber.  Boy, I sure don't miss the good ole days when it comes to cutting out stamp sets.  I'm spoiled with the die cut rubber.  Once in a while I'll cut something that leaves an edge, or if the center needs to be cut out, but otherwise I just punch them out and mount them.  The other "new" item I used was my Watercolor Pencils.  I know they are not new in the sense that they have been around for years, but I just recently bought them and today was the first time I used them.  And I love them!  I wish they came in all 48 SU! colors.  I used them with my Blender Pens, and it was soooo easy!

I also have a new-to-me challenge that I played in.  It's from the Embellish Magazine blog.  Very cool inspiration pieces.  This was their Snowflake Color Challenge, and I just realized that I was supposed to include a snowflake.  Ooops!  Oh well!  Next time I'll play by the rules.  I also used the sketch from Karen Giron's blog The Sweetest Thing SSSC49.  Here are the challenge pieces:

And here's my card:

Maybe my star will pass for a snowflake!  I wanted to keep the card simple, so the image takes center stage.  Sometimes I get a card so full of stuff you don't know what to look at it.  I think Dawn McVey at her blog My Favorite Things, does a fabulous job of keeping a card simple but interesting.  She has a great style that I love to be inspired by.  My card base is Kraft.  The DSP is a scrap of retired stuff from SU!.  The star is punched out of Yo-Yo Yellow attached to the Chocolate Chip ribbon with Hemp Twine.  The brads are from the Vintage pack.  Baby Jesus almost looks like an Easter egg dressed in bright yellow swaddling cloths!  I've got another retired nativity stamp set I hope to show off tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

A Gift From Heaven

Hi Stamping Friends!

Well my posts are few and far between this month.  I hope you can forgive me.  I do plan on being a better blogger in the new year!  I've told you about my obsession, er I mean collection of Stampin' Up! nativity sets.  Well today's card is another of the sets I received from Lisa Hunter (THANK YOU!).  This is actually the set that got the whole ball rolling.  I saw it in an old catalog and just HAD to have it!  I love the image.  Although, I'll have to practice using it, since it is an image that needs to be colored in, and that is not my specialty.  I hope to work on that in the new year too!

Today's sketch comes from the Mojo Monday blog Mojo118 and the color combo comes from the ColourQ blog cQc12.  The colors really don't fit the image, but I thought they were cute, so I went with it anyway.  I just think Arielle finds the best color inspiration pieces!

And here's my card:

This set is called A Gift From Heaven.  Isn't it darling?!  I love the cute little animals peeking at baby Jesus.  It doesn't show up in the pic, but the Certainly Celery layer is embossed with the Polka Dots Texturz Plate.  I can't wait to get the Polka Dots Impressions Folder, that is in the new Occasions Mini Catalog.  I know I'll be using it to death!  Come January 5th, I'll be placing a nice, big order and getting lots of Sale-A-Bration freebies!  Thankfully this image has lots of white animals, which means less coloring for me.  Not sure if baby Jesus' swaddling cloths were Certainly Celery, but it needed a little color near all that brown, and Pretty In Pink just seemed wrong! 

I hope to be able to stamp a few more of my nativity images before Christmas actually arrives.  We had a two family Christmas parties this weekend and now can relax until Friday.  I do have lots of Cards for Mission packs I need to get done.  So far I've sold 25 packs... that's 125 cards I need to make!  Better get stamping!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

More Christmas Cards!

Hi Stamping Friends!

Did ya miss me?  I can't even remember the last time I blogged, but I know it was waaaay too long ago!  I would apologize and all that, but really... I've been buried... under cardstock!  Since I last blogged, I made 710 Christmas cards.  Not all for myself of course!  They had no stamping on them, but that doesn't make them any less time-consuming to create.  Especially when your printer decides to get persnickety and you have to feed each sheet of cardstock through one at a time!  I only made 100 for myself... and then I discovered I needed 125!  But that's for another blog post.

I did have some help.  Some of the cards were for a very dear, sweet friend from church who found out just a couple of weeks ago that her cancer treatments are not working and she only has a few months to live.  She was bound and determined to get her Christmas cards out.  So five of us got together on two days and worked for about 4 hours each day.  And I am so pleased that I got to be a part of that. 

Well now that my life is somewhat back on track, I finally had time to stamp!!  The card I created today is for the Colour Q challenge and Mercy's sketch challenge.  Here's the challenges:

And here is my card:

I really need more practice watercoloring.  I would love to take a class.  The only reason this looks halfway decent, is because the pic is so bad!  :)  My favorite thing about this card is the image.  I'm trying to collect SU! nativity stamp sets and a dear Stampin' Addicts member, Lisa Hunter, gifted this to me.  Wasn't that just the sweetest?!  I still haven't decided how to repay her.  Any ideas?  This set is called The Spirit Of Love.  The copyright says 2000, but I don't know when it retired.  I'm just glad that I got it!  It's so beautiful.

I hope to have more time to blog next week, even though most of the challenge blogs are taking a break for the holidays.  I guess that means I'll have to get creative and come up with my own sketches and color combos.  Nah!  That's too much work.  I'll just go back and do the ones I missed!  It's great to be back!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

My New Collection

Hi Stamping Friends!

Do you collect anything?  Well, besides stamping/crafting supplies!  Years ago (1979 to be exact!) my mom gave me my first Precious Moment figurine.  That sparked my desire for collecting.  Besides Precious Moments, I also collected keychains as a child.  You used to get them free from gas stations and truck stops.  All my family members would give me keychains from places they visited.  Even my grandpa, who I rarely saw, since he lived 2,000 miles away, brought me a keychain once.  Very special memories. 

Since then, I've moved on to bigger (and more expensive!) collections.  When I had a "real" job, I collected Depatment 56 village pieces.  I also collect nativity sets.  We have almost 30 of them set up this year throughout the house.  Some expensive (Willow Tree), most not (Veggie Tales). 

Well this year, I got a bug in my bonnet and decided I needed to put my two favorite collections together.  So now I'm trying to collect Stampin' Up! nativity stamp sets!  I posted in the ISO Forums at my favorite Stampin' Up! online hangout, Stampin' Addicts, and I had some great responses. So over the next several days, I'll be sharing some of those sets.  Most are retired.  Why would a Stampin' Up! demo show off retired stamp sets?  Well, to encourage you to buy what you love NOW!  Don't miss out on those sets you love, and then have to go search for them later.  Remember, the Dormant Stamp List will be retired on January 4th.  If there is anything you love on that list, you better get it NOW!

So enough yacking, get to the card!  This sketch comes from the Card Patterns blog CPS44.  I didn't use a color challenge, because I wanted a monchromatic card.  Here's the sketch:

And here's my card:

Isn't that a gorgeous image?!  I love that it looks like a woodcut.  I didn't even know this stamp set existed.  It's called A Child Is Born.  When I posted to SA that I was looking for natvity sets, AmySings responded that she had this set she would sell to me.  Well of course I jumped at the chance!  Who could resist a beautiful set like that?!  The sentiment is from a different retired set, To You & Yours.  It was in last year's catty.  All the DSP is also retired.  The only thing that is current is the Kraft cardstock, the Choclate Chip Taffeta ribbon, the Chocolate Chip ink, the Circle Punch, and the More Mustard Pastels.  I also used the Distressing Tool that is part of the Cutter Kit. 

I'm so glad Amy decided to look through her stamp sets for me.  This is a great addition to my new collection!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

Time to stamp for fun!

Hi Stamping Friends!

Well it always seems that this time of year keeps me too busy to do any "fun" stamping.  This weekend, for example, my two oldest kids had a swim meet on Saturday and Sunday, plus music recital practices and performance.  And we still have our church Christmas musical coming soon.  Plus I'm neck deep in creating our family Christmas card.  I'm almost finished.  Just need to add our greeting, possibly an embellishment and then stuff them and get them in the mail.  This will be the earliest my cards have been mailed, in years!  And let's not even talk about the decorating and gift buying I still need to get done!  But tonight I wanted to take a break and stamp "just because".  There are so many great challenges out there, that I hate to miss them!

Today's double challenge card is inspired by the Pals Paper Art blog PPA19 and gets the sketch from the Mojo Monday blog MOJO116.  Here are the two blog challenge pics:

I love the vintage look of the PPA challenge piece.  Just simple, traditional Christmas.  Here's what I came up with:

I just wanted to keep it kinda simple.  I tried adding other embellishments, like buttons, but it just wasn't working.  Sometimes you just have to leave well enough alone.  There are some crafters out there that can make the simplest cards look absolutely gorgeous!  I'm trying to learn their techniques.

The card base is Kraft, layered with Real Red.  The stamp images come from the SU! set A Cardinal Christmas.  I'm terrible at watercoloring, so I used Blender Pens and ink from the ink pad lid, to color this image.  I also colored part of the bird with sponges, to give it a softer look.  The Old Olive circle is embossed using the Perfect Details texturz Plate and the Real Red circle is embossed with the polka dots from the SU! Background 1 Texturz Plates.  I sponged all the edges of every layer with Chocolate Chip ink, to help with the vintage look. 

A CARDINAL CHRISTMAS  #111760  $23.95

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

My First Blog Hop!

Hi Stamping Friends!

I'm sooooo excited because today is the very first time I'm participating in a blog hop!  My demo friends over at my favorite online Stampin' Up! hangout, Stampin' Addicts, put together a fun little hop highlighting the just announced Dormant Retirement List from Stampin' Up!.  These stamp sets are on the Dormant List and did not appear in the current catalog, even though they are available for purchase.  They will be retired on January 4th, never to be seen again!  So have a great time hopping through our blogs.  And don't forget to order these fabulous sets before they are gone forever!

If you started the hop at the beginning, that means you came from the very talented Melissa's blog: STAMPING WITH MELISSA.  I love Melissa's clean, classic style.  She knows how to add just the right amount of "stuff" to a card to make it look spectacular!  If you just found the hop now, you can start here and continue on through.  There will be another link to the next blog, at the end of my post.  (If all the links are not working yet, please be patient.  This hop doesn't officially start until noon on Saturday.)

For my set I chose Grand Soiree.  It was on my must-have list when it first came out in the Fall-Winter 2008 Stampin' Up! catalog.  I love the chandelier image.  I needed a little help getting my mojo going, so I used a couple of challenges to bail me out.  The first two projects use the color combo from the Colour Create blog.  And the first card uses the Mojo Monday sketch.  Here are the challenge pics:

I knew I wanted to use this set for a New Year's Eve style invitation, and I thought these would be super fun colors to use for a New Year's theme.  So I created an invite and a little party gift to match.

Wouldn't this be just fabulous for New Year's?  It's difficult to see in the pic of the invite, but the Orchid Opulent layer is embossed with the Perfect Details Texturz Plate, just like the Matchbox is.  Both sentiments and the chandelier are embossed with black embossing powder.  Gives it so much fun texture and shine.  The Bermuda Bay tag on the Matchbox comes from the same die.  And a chandelier is not complete without a little bling!  So I HAD to add some Clear Rhinestone brads.

I love the "Ain't life Grand" sentiment so much, I made another card using it.  The chandelier looks great embossed in any color, but I love the striking look of black, so this one is black as well.

Don't you just love pink and black?!  So classic.  And that's what I love about this image, it's fun, yet sassy, yet classic.  This would be the perfect card to give to a friend who just had something special happen in her life, promotion, engagment, pregnancy, etc.  There are just so many "Grand" moments in life that should be celebrated!  I love how the Top Note die shape mimics the shape of the chandelier. 

I hope you enjoyed your stop here at my little stamping world.  Be sure to stop by again!  Plus be on the lookout for our next Stampin' Addicts blog hop, coming January 1st through 3rd, where we will be featuring lots of new goodies from the upcoming Occasions Mini Catalog.

To continue on this fun little Stampin' Up! Retirement journey, hop on over to the super creative Yapha's blog: RUBBER STAMPING AND CARDMAKING WITH YAPHA.  I know she'll have something adorable for you to see!

GRAND SOIREE  #111580  $24.95

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

Color Throwdown #71

Hi Stamping Friends!

Surprisingly enough, today's card is for only one challenge.  I know!  What happened?!  Well, I've been trying to finish up my Christmas cards and haven't had a lot of extra time for "fun" stamping.  But I really loved the colors form the Color Throwdown blog CTD71.  Here are the colors:

I just LOVE these colors!  They would be FABULOUS for Valentine's Day, but since I have Christmas on the brain, I used them to make this Christmas card:

It's hard to see in this photo, but I used the Faux Linen technique on the pointsettia and the leaves.  Looks so soft, almost like real petals!  I first inked up the flower image with Pretty in Pink.  Then using my sponge daubers, I inked up the edges with Real Red.  Then I stamped it on tissue paper.  After a minute to make sure it was dry, I crumpled it all up, and then un-crumpled it.  I glued it to a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock and cut it out.  I did the leaves the same way, using Old Olive ink.  This is such a classic color combo.  I could use it year round.

Make sure you stop by Saturday or Sunday, as I will be participating in my very first blog hop!  Some demo friends (and I!) from my favorite Stampin' Up! online hangout, Stampin' Addicts, are having a Dormant Retiring Hop.  If you haven't bought some of these stamp sets, you better do it before January 4th, because after that they will be gone!  I will be showcasing one of my favorite sets, Grand Soiree.   So if you want to see what sets are retiring, come to our blog hop!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stamping!

Cards for Missions Update

Hi Stamping Friends!

Way back in September I told you about a mission trip to the Dominican Republic I felt called to go on with a team of women from Students International.  Well it's been awhile since I posted about it.  I've been struggling with how to find support to go on this venture.  The cost is $1700.  And I don't have an extra $17 let alone $1700!  One of the biggest obstacles I've had to overcome (so far!) is my pride.  God has really been chipping away at me on this one.  I didn't realize how hard it would be to ask other people for money!  I finally sent out my letter (of course I made a card!) requesting support.  I sent out 150 cards to family, friends, and fellow church members.  Here is the card that I sent:

Inside I asked for prayer support and monetary support.  I also included an order form for various card packs: birthday, friend, scripture, etc.  I'm selling the packs of 5 cards for $15.  I've already had three people place orders!  And Scott's great uncle already sent a check.  I'm so overwhelmed by God's goodness and provision. 

Many people have been asking how they can see the card packs that I have for sale.  So this post will be dedicated to those photos.  I have some pictures taken of some of the card packs and will continue to add more.  Thank you all so much for supporting me on this venture.  God is good!

BIRTHDAY BOY:

BIRTHDAY GIRL:

BIRTHDAY BOY TWEEN:

BIRTHDAY GIRL TWEEN:

I will continue to add more photos as time permits.  Thank you to everyone who is helping to make this mission trip possible!  I pray that God's glory will shine all the way to the Dominican Republic!

Thanks for stopping by!