Birthday card for hubby

Today is hubby's birthday, and it just wouldn't be acceptable to get a store-bought card, or worse, no card at all, right? So here's what I made for him. I took my inspiration from this fabulous card by Becky Oehlers.

Details: stamps - Birthday Basics; paper - Ruby Red (Stampin' Up!), Boxer (Basic Grey), Vintage Cream; ink - Night of Navy (SU!); accessories - Nestabilities stars (Spellbinders), rustic wood buttons, rustic twine

Fathers Day card, and another "stamping" friend

I'm a little late getting around to showing you this, but here's my Father's Day card that I sent to my dad. I wanted to make some background paper using the compass rose image from Father Knows Best. The Guidelines 2 paper made it very easy to do. I looked through a lot of sets to find images to use - the compass rose and the small brown concentric circles are from Father Knows Best; the large green medallion is from Simple Little Things (2008 anniversary set); and the green bars are from Simply Stationery.

Details: stamps - Father Knows Best, Simple Little Things, Simply Stationery; paper - Guidelines 2, Ripe Avocado, Dark Chocolate; ink - Ripe Avocado, Dark Chocolate; accessories - dark chocolate twill ribbon, key tag punch and horizontal slot punch (Stampin' Up!)

Remember I mentioned in my last post that my daughters were members in my craft room? Here's another member. This is Tom:

Tom is a two year old parakeet who lives in my craft room. Tom thinks he should be allowed to play with my craft things. What do you think?

I have no idea what's so fascinating about these monster paper punches, but Tom will play with them for hours. He noses around them for a long time, then tries to get on top of them. But they're smooth and he can't get a good foothold, so he slides off and flies away, only to come right back and try again.

If he'd fall in love with a tool that was more his size, he might be a useful contributor!

I have new stamping partners!

A very happy milestone has been reached in our house. My daughters are now full "members" in my craft room. They've both proven that they're able to take good care of all of the toys in there, so I've given them permission to make things pretty much whenever they like. It's interesting to see what they choose to use. Juliette, 11, is drawn toward coloring on stamps with markers to achieve multi-colored looks. Katrina, 9, has been practicing with Copic markers. Both of them love the Elzybells girls and the Chichiboulies from Stamping Bella.

Here is a poster that Katrina made. I love her Copic coloring. I haven't given her any instruction at all. She's learned by watching and by doing.

I bow to Bakerella!

So, if you're not a food blogger, do your baking adventures belong on your stamping blog or on your crochet blog? Hmm. I say they go here. I've been a regular reader of Bakerella's blog for some time now. I love to bake, but have never had the guts to try to make her super-adorable creations before. Today seemed like the day. So I rounded up my nine-year-old daughter, and we went to work. We were using the Cupcake Bites Made Easy recipe.

We certainly have a lot of practice to do before we can make things as gorgeous as Bakerella makes, but we had a great time!

Lots of fun supplies were gathered.

We got messy rolling up balls of cake.

We filled our candy mold with candy melts and sunk the cake balls into the candy.

We dunked the tops of the cake balls into a second color of candy melts and topped them with sprinkles.

This recipe makes a lot of cupcake bites!

This is the most beautiful of the cupcake bites that I could find to photograph.

Fun stamping day with nearly 50 of my online buddies!

Last Saturday was the annual North Texas Stamping Day. We have a big shoebox swap every spring. Each person creates a stamping project and brings all of the supplies prepared for each person to make their project. We spend the day moving from one project to the next, creating beautiful things without the pressure of having to design them all ourselves. It's a great way to get new ideas. And of course it's also just a ton of fun to meet so many people who share a common interest.

This is my project for the swap. I borrowed the design from Joan Bardee. Check out her beautiful card here.

Details: stamps - Friends Til the End (PTI), Friendly Words jumbo wheel (SU - my wheel is cut up into separate stamps); paper - Gina K pure luxury 120 lb. ivory, true black (PTI); ink - pure poppy, true black (PTI); accessories - scallop edge punch, black button (PTI), hemp twine

This was the door prize that I donated. It holds two stamp sets. I don't have a template for this - it was a last minute kind of thing. I based it on designs that I've seen that are meant to hold cards in the two side boxes/pouches. I measured my stamp set boxes and sized the pieces accordingly.





Details: stamps - Beautiful Blooms, Friends Til the End (PTI); paper - lemon tart, spring moss, stampers select white, green tea leaves (PTI); ink - pure poppy, spring moss, true black (PTI); accessories - oval and scallop oval mega punches, spring moss grosgrain ribbon, jumbo eyelets, scor-tape

Some spring gifts

Here are some fun things I've made this month. I borrowed Dawn McVey's fabulous design for these Mothers Day cards. I used the same papers for both cards, but reversed the colors, which was a great way to get the most use out of the 8x8 papers.




Details: stamps - Mother; paper - All Fall (Fancy Pants); ink - dark chocolate; accessories - scallop edge punch (Stampin' Up!), Beautiful Butterflies die (Sizzix for SU!), new leaf button

And here are some little gifts that I made for Teacher Appreciation Week at the girls' school. The sweet little box is from one of Lauren Meader's My Timeless Templates. This template is called Rounded Wrap Up. Super quick and super cute! Inside is a handful of chocolates and several of the little iced tea packets that are meant to be shaken up in your water bottle.



Details: stamps - Seeing Stars (Verve Stamps), Thankful Blossoms (Verve Stamps); paper - kraft, pure poppy, ripe avocado, plum pudding, stampers select white, bitty dots basics; ink - true black, pure poppy, ripe avocado, plum pudding; accessories - Nestabilities ovals (Spellbinders), word window punch (SU), ribbon

Fun with markers

I've been practicing more with my Copic coloring. I have thousands of stamps, but not a lot of them are "coloring" images (yet). Here are some sweet little chicks from Elzybells. I was mainly trying to concentrate on where the sun was shining on them (I hope it's obvious that my sun is in the top left corner). I really like how the shading came out on the pink/purple egg and on the chicks. I still need more practice, but I'm very happy with the things we're learning in Colleen's class.



I am amazed at how many markers you can use to get a nicely shaded picture. I used 26 different Copics for this image. I even took a picture. Enjoy, because it's unlikely that I'll be organized enough to show them regularly!