A girly birthday card

This card is for a brand new challenge, Virginia’s View. This challenge is going to be a monthly one courtesy of the fabulous Virginia Lu. This is the inspiration photo that we were to use:



I love the colors and the dangling hearts, so I chose this dangling heart stamp from my collection and stamped it in various shades of pink and orange.



Details: stamps – Bright Spirits (Verve), Think Big Favorites #7; paper – White, Hibiscus Burst; ink (all Stampin’ Up) – Melon Mambo, Pink Passion, Cameo Coral; tools – large scallop border die

Scrappy birthday cards

Here are some colorful birthday cards created using scrap strips of various patterned papers. These were fun to make. The only tiny challenge was choosing the ink colors to go with the papers. I made these on the scrapbooking retreat a couple of weekends ago, where I had taken limited inks with me. I found that my dew drop Memento pads yielded close matches for pretty much every paper shown here.





Details: stamps – Birthday Bash Sentiments, paper – White, Kraft, Bitty Box Basics, Bitty Dot Basics, Distressed Dots, ink – various Memento inks; tools – Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers)

OLW 75–Masculine Birthday

Okay, so it’s not Wednesday, but I did it! I finished an OLW challenge before the deadline passed me by!

This week’s One-Layer Wednesday challenge  was to create a masculine birthday card. I love this new birthday stamp from Papertrey Ink, and the distressed stripes seemed to be a good foil for it. I really like this and might just have to make a bunch of them in different colors.



Details: stamps (all Papertrey) – Think Big Favorites #12, Distressed Stripes, paper – Rustic White (Papertrey), ink (all Stampin’ Up) – Dusty Durango, More Mustard

More scrappy stripes

Here are a couple more of the cards that I created from the scrap stripes. These were so much fun that I can definitely see doing some more using various papers and dies.



Details: stamps – Think Big Favorites #7; ink – Bamboo Leaves (Memento);paper – Stampers Select White, Bitty Dot Basics, Bitty Box Basics, Distressed Dots; tools – Seeing Stars dies



Details: stamps – Enjoy the Ride, Background Basics: Circles; ink – Bamboo Leaves (Memento), Cantaloupe (Memento);paper – Stampers Select White, Bitty Dot Basics, Bitty Box Basics, Distressed Dots; tools – Seeing Stars dies

Happy stripe scraps

While at the scrapbook retreat, I decided to make a sheet of striped paper from “scraps”. They weren’t really scraps – I cut strips from whole sheets of patterned paper, but it would be a great way to use scraps if I’d had some with me on the retreat. I glued strips down to a half sheet of cardstock and then started die cutting stars from it, with the intention of using the stars on some cards. My plans went slightly off track when I saw the negative image left by cutting three stars out of the sheet. I loved it so much that I quickly trimmed it to card front size so that I wouldn’t mess it up. This is the card that resulted, and it’s easily in my top five cards that I’ve ever made.



Details: stamps – Birthday Bash Sentiments (“happy”), Mother (“birthday”), Everyday Classics (star); ink – Rhubarb Stalk, Bamboo Leaves, Sweet Plum (all Memento); paper – Stampers Select White, Bitty Dot Basics, Bitty Box Basics, Distressed Dots; dies – Seeing Stars

CAS-ual Fridays–Penguin Awareness Day

This week’s challenge on CAS-ual Fridays is to celebrate Penguin Awareness Day by creating a card using only black and white. I was excited to use this amazing stamp. It’s spent several years languishing in a box across the room from the rest of my stamps because it’s too big to fit in a CD case. My new storage system allows it and the other gigantic stamps in my collection to join the others where I can see and use them!



Details: stamps – Pollen Dust (Fancy Pants), Think Big Favorites #12; ink – Versafine Onyx Black; paper – White

Sunflower note

Here’s another fun card from the scrapbooking weekend. I love, love, love Simple Sunflower. I was born and raised in Kansas, where it’s the state flower, so that’s my excuse for my adoration of the lovely sunflower. This is just about my all-time favorite sunflower stamp set, and I’ve owned (and sold) a bunch of them!



Details: stamps – Simple Sunflower, Background Basics: Sheet Music, Accent Notes (Verve); cardstock – Kraft, Pure Poppy, White; ink – Chocolate Chip (Stampin’ Up), Cantaloupe (Memento), Bamboo Leaves (Memento); dies – Simple Sunflower, Eyelet Lace

Here’s what I took with me on the retreat, in case you’re wondering:

one DVD box of stamps – I focused on birthday, thank you and thinking of you sentiments, and chose a variety of stamp image categories – a few flowers, circles, backgrounds, frames, flourishes, leaves, trees

ink – I only took a handful of full size pads (dark chocolate, crumb cake, bermuda bay, real red, and lucky limeade from SU, Versafine onyx black, Versamark) and at the last minute I decided to bring along my box of 24 dew drop Memento inks

cardstock – full packages of kraft, white, pure poppy; a handful of sheets of bermuda bay, lucky limeade; about 15 sheets of patterned paper in various colors taken from bitty dot basics, bitty box basics, and distressed dots collections

tools – Big Shot, box of dies, a couple of embossing folders, Tonic paper cutter

That’s all I took other than my usual stamping “kit” – scissors, adhesives, etc. I was surprised how much stuff everyone else brought compared to me! And then the funny thing was that when people were looking for something specific in terms of stamps or dies, I was often the one who had it. So I guess I packed pretty well. I’ll definitely do the limited color scheme thing in the future. I had plenty to play with, but not having every single color of ink and paper available to me really helped to focus my energy.