Christmas Stamp-a-Stack

Today is another fabulous day :( I think sleep deprivation is now etched in my psyche. My oldest son cried for 3 hours last night!!! He has a cold & got all wound up crying, then he couldn't stop. I thought this no sleep thing was supposed to end as they got bigger! Tonight is my Christmas Stamp-a-Stack so I hope I can stay awake...

Here's what we'll be doing. Four designs, three of each, for a total of 12 card in one night! I printed a color flyer again with the instructions so that it would ease my time contraints. All the cards were CASE'd or inspired by other cards, so I can't take much credit for how cool these cards are :)

Card 1: 5-Petal Flower Christmas Card
This card is the easiest. It was CASE'd from "You Betcha!" here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/658980?cat=10060.

Ingredients:

Kraft, Old Olive, Whisper White cardstock, Old Olive, Real Red ink, Canvas Background stamp, In the Spotlight, All Holidays, 5-Petal flower punch

Card 2: Christmas Quote Card
This card is a combination of three cards. Here were my inspirations... http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/694412?cat=10728 http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/609022?cat=10728
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/654660?cat=10728

Ingredients:

Real Red, Old Olive, Whisper White cardstock, Dashing DSP, Old Olive, Real Red, River Rock ink, Party Punch stamp set, Sidekick Sayings stamp set, 1" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch.





Card 3: Wintergreen Snowflake Card
This card was inspired bya a card I can no longer find... Why doesn that always happen? Anyway ...

Ingredients:

Always Artichoke, Certainly Celery, Soft Sky, Whisper White card stock, Always Artichoke, Certainly Celery, Soft Sky ink, Wintergreen DSP, Scallop punch, Large oval punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1" punch, 1/16" punch, silver brads, crafter's toolkit, white gel pen.


Card 4: Icy Reverse Masking
This card was CASE'd from Jan Tink. http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/ga...8059?cat=11094
I just switched out the colors, made the matting larger and cut down on the embellishments.

Ingredients:

Basic Grey, Bashful Blue, Whisper White card stock, Basic Grey, Bashful Blue ink, Snow Burst stamp set, All Holidays stamp set, sponge dauber, clear rhinestone brad


On a completely different note, my husband got to see the Prime Minister last night. My kids' school was 100 years old & he showed up for speeches, etc. I'm not too into Stephen Harper but it was interesting none the less that he was here. Maybe he'll remember we exist after all ;)

Paper Bag Books

Hello again, everyone! Life's been very busy again so this time I'll share my favorite Paper Bag book. I decided last year to see how many things I could make with one Simply Scrappin' Kit. I started off with this mini book. The kit I used was At Home. There's another kit this year with the same pieces in different colours called Home Again and it's definely on my wish list!

The book is created by taking two paper lunch bags and placing them in opposite directions. Next you fold the bags in half to form a book. On some books I just punch holes and tie with ribbon, but for this one I decided to do saddle stitching. I used my piercing template for the holes and white crochet cotton to stitch. The "BOYS" title is stamped with the Letterpress Alphabet and cut out. I added vintage brads to the corners and all the rest of the cover is from the Scrappin' kit.

These are the inside pages...

Everything from these pages is from the kit. I tried to make each 2 page spread match. Brown & green for the first two, blue & cranberry for the next set & brown & cranberry for the last two. The whole thing went together in a flash! All I had to do to finish it off was a little journaling around each picture. All my pictures were printed in 3.5x5 so that they'd fit the page size better. I've had so much fun with these books & even done a couple classes with them. Everyone seems to love them for quick Christmas gifts or Grandma brag books :)

Hope you'll have fun with them too.

Halloween Cards

Good morning again everyone! If you're Canadian, hope you've had a great Thanksgiving! Over the weekend I had another party. I wanted to show how much fun punches and DSP were, so we made this set of 3x3 cards. Sorry the picture's a little dark. As usual, I was working on things until all hours of the night. These cards were inspired by the great set made by whitetigers, here... http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/673721?cat=10553 .

These cards were made with the Batty for You set. The card base is Basic Black, with a square of Prints DSP in Pumpkin Pie, Certainly Celery or Lovely Lilac on top. The circle images start with a scallop circle punch from Basic Black, a 13/8" circle punch in the matching color of CS, the image stamped in black on white punched out with 1 1/4" circle and finally the image stamped again in matching ink and punched with the 1" circle punch. The last circle is popped up with a Stampin' Dimensional. Black grograin tied in a knot and "Happy Halloween" stamped in black are the finishing touches!

Because I knew there were going to be a lot of people at the party & we had mulitple projects (either the two card projects or a scrapbook page) I decided to make an instruction booklet for everyone. It was a life saver! As long as I can manage it, I will always print instruction sheets for parties now! Here's a look at the layout for that party... Loved this layout. It's so simple, still looks cool & uses faux stitching and circle punches. I really wanted to show everyone how great punches were at this party :) The bottom scallops were made from tracing the On Board Ginormous Pieces square scalloped frame. The patterned paper is from the Cutie Pie set and the page base is Night of Navy. I used the blue ribbon from Jersy Ribbon Originals. The alphabet is Well-Worn and the circle embellishments were made by punch a 1 3/8" Night of Navy circle, a 1 1/4" Bashful Blue circle & a 1" Whisper White circle . The images on the white circle are made using a circle from Polka Dots and Petals set in Bashful Blue and words from the Everyday Flexible Phrases set stamped in Night of Navy.

Hope you enjoyed this :)

Another Sympathy Card

As I mentioned the other day, I've been working on a batch of sympathy cards. After some of the flowery ones I did, I though I should include some slight more somber ones :) I LOVE this card!!!! It's probably one of the best watercoloring attempts I've ever made!! I found a card by Beate that was so pretty (here... http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/675627?cat=500&ppuser=458) and copied the layout for this card. The base is textured River Rock & is layered with Very Vanilla & some K&Company double-sided designer paper (one piece of which is also matted in River Rock). The tree image is stamped with black StazOn on watercolor paper. I used Old Olive, Close to Cocoa & Soft Sky ink with an aqua painter to color it in. The tree is matted in Close to Cocoa CS. The ribbon is from the Beachfront Ribbon Originals and I used a stamp from one of the Sellabrations sets for the little flourish in Close to Cocoa craft ink. Added the little half pearls to finish :) Isn't it GORGEOUS? I don't suppose this card has to be a sympathy card. I didn't end up putting any sentiment on it.

I think I'm becomming addicted to my sites now too... Several times a day I feel the compulsive urge to check the number of people who've looked at the cards in my splitcoast gallery & check for new comments... I often have to check the web counter on my blog too... Do you think this will end up in couselling? ;)

Sweet Old Cards

For National Card Making Day, I'm having a party in Nipigon (a little town about an hour from home), so most of this week has been getting ready for that. I'll share some of that later :) Instead I've been going through some of my favorite old cards. This is another old card that I love. I was sooooooooo sad when Like it a Latte was not in the big catalogue!!!!! I love this set!

This card is made on a silver CS base. The white background is stamped with Pretty in Pink candy canes & spritzed with Regal Rose, Pretty in Pink & Barely Banana and edged with Regal Rose ink, direct to paper. The "Sweet!" is stamped in silver ink. The pink ribbon is layer on top of another piece of silver CS. The cup is embossed in silver EP & cut out. The whip cream is stamped in Barely Banana & embossed with clear EP. Next I used the Versa Marker to color in the whip cream & embossed that with white EP. Finally, I glued on the soft subtles beads for candy sprinkles. All of this is layered on whisper white CS spritzed the same as the background, Pretty in Pink CS, Regal Rose CS and Barely Banana CS.

What a yummy card! I normally don't do a lot of pink, but this card just seemed to say PINK & CANDY to me :) I saw these stainless steel espresso cups at a specialty kitchen store & loved them! I think that's why I decided to do the silver embossed cup on this card. You can find inspiration anywhere. You know you're truely addicted when every item around becomes an idea for a card or a page... hee hee.

Old Doodle Card

Today I thought I'd post a card I made quite a while ago. I still like it so that 's gotta say something! Do you get bored with your cards as soon as you move on to new ones? I often do. Funny how that happens. My newest projects are always soooo much nicer :) Making more than one of something is often difficult for me too.

Right after the doodle sets came out I worked on this one. I know Doodle That is no longer available, but I'll post this anyway! It's a pretty straight forward card... 51/2" square Always Artichoke card base, everything stamped in basic black. Center image matted with So Saffron, Rose Red & Regal Rose and colored with Stampin' Pastels. The little hearts along the bottom were stamped in black on Rose Red, cut out & touched up with white gel pen. Finally, I used a black marker & added the little circles all the way around the center image. Tah Dah!!! Isn't it pretty????

One of my next projects to share is going to be this cool 3-D tree centerpiece I made for my Halloween Hostess Party. It's somewhat time consuming, but interesting none the less. I've also continued working on the Sympathy cards, so I'll have some more pretty ones soon :)

The Sympathy Cards

One of the guys at work asked me to make 10 Sympathy cards. This has been a fun project. It seems that cards are more interesting when they have a specific purpose. I'm so much more motivated when I have a goal. Here are a couple of the designs I've made. Both are CASE'd. The 5-petal flower punch is sooo cool! Here's the link to Lauraly's card that I LOVED!

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/646538?cat=10060&si=guava&perpage=12&thumbsonly=0&thumbcheck=

My card is very similar. I switched the placement of the guava & sky, added stitching on the Kraft background instead of polka dots and used pearls instead of gems in the flower centers. Because this was supposed to be a Sympathy card, I changed to bottom of the card as well. I love the Word on Word set, but nothing in it is appropriate for Sympathy. Went with the soft sky double stitched ribbon & the white rick rack from the Beachfront Ribbon Original set instead. Added an oval piece of hodgepodge hardware for the sentiment, stamped in Groovy Guava.

The second card was CASE'd from a blog that I can't find now... Sorry. Again my card is very similar, with just a few alteration. I've had such a thing for those half pearls since SU convention!! This card is on a River Rock textured background. It uses the swirls from Baroque Motifs... *again* in River Rock and the flower from Heartfelt Thanks. I matted a piece of Tapestry DSP with chocolate chip CS and wrapped a piece of chocolate chip taffeta ribbon around it. The flower is stamped in regal rose, old olive and the detail is stamped over top in chocolate chip. I don't have the ticket punch so I used the 1/2" circle for the corners. Finally added stamped the sentiment in Chocolate Chip & added the half pearls. Love the elegent look of this card :)

Hope everyone has a great day!