Cherry on Top!

Hi everyone,

It's challenge time with my friends over on the CCEE Stampers challenge blog. Lois Bak our challenge hostess finishes off the month with one last challenge.

Apparently today is National Cherries Jubilee Day, so for our challenge this week Lois has requested that we make a card featuring cherries; or, if you don’t have any cherries, use any fruit.

I love when a cherries finally makes me use a stamp set I have had for sometime and that is exactly what happened when I went looking to see if I had any stamps with cherries (I am sure I have a few!). 

Anyway while looking through my stamps I found this Inky Antics stamp set which can be used with Bee Paper (or Honeycomb Paper) another thing I haven't used for sometime.

As you can see I created a Pull Card using the Rectangle Pull Card set designed by Karen Burniston for Elizabeth Craft Designs.

I am not sure if that is cherries on my designer paper, but I figured it looked a little like it so if it wasn't it is now haha!

When you pull the card open, it reveals the bee paper cupcake and the bird holding the cherry which is on a spinner.

Elizabeth Craft Designs wants to wish you a 'Happy Fall', so we are offering FREE shipping on all Karen Burniston Pop it Ups purchases of over $50 on our website. This offer is available to the first 50 people only, so hurry! When you get to the checkout with your $50 or more of Pop it Ups purchases, just enter the code HAPPYFALL2015  to receive free shipping for your order. Please note: To receive free postage on orders to Australia your order needs to be for purchases over $150

Don't forget to check out the CCEE Stampers blog (goes live 12 AM EST) to see the rest of the creations the CCEE Stampers created this week. You can also see more details of their creations on their individual blogs:

Amber Hillman

Anne Harmon

Joanne Grzelak

Liz Williams

Lois Bak

Lynn McAuley

Maryann Einam

Sabrina Friel

Vicky Gould

Stamps: Cupcake Birdy - Inky Antics

Paper: White; Pink; Red; Chirp DP - Kaisercraft

Dies: Rectangle Pull Card; Merry Christmas Pop Up Card - designed by Karen Burniston for Elizabeth Craft Designs; Mini Scallop Border - MFT Stamps

Other: Black Ink; Brown Honeycomb Paper; Pink Honeycomb Paper; Foam Tape; Copics

Happy Easter

Hi everyone,

It’s challenge time with my friends over on the CCEE Stampers challenge blog. Being a brand new month, we have a new challenge hostess which is Kathy Bradley.

For our challenge this week Kathy has tells us that … The Easter Bunny is coming to town on  April 20^th – make a card using a bunny or an egg – or both if you like!



As you can see, I decided to use a bunny on my card for this week’s challenge. This is one I have had for a number of years and hadn’t gotten around to using yet … I am not sure why as it is one of my favorite Bunny stamps.

I have made another pivot card using the Katie Label Pivot Card die set designed by Karen Burniston’s for Elizabeth Crafts Designs. I seem to always be using this die lately for CCEE challenges, I don’t purposely do that … it is just the way it happens LOL! Maybe next week I should do another style of card haha! We will see … I do love using this die as it is so versatile!




Here is the front of my card … I decided it needed something on the right hand side, but didn’t want to add another bunny or anything else Easter related. I searched through my Elizabeth Craft Designs dies and decided to use the Flourish with Flowers die which I cut from black card and adhered to my card.



Here is the back of my card … nothing too special here. But it is still a lot less boring then most backs of cards .

Don’t forget to check out the CCEE Stampers blog (goes live 12 AM EST) to see the rest of the creations the CCEE Stampers created this week. You can also see more details of their creations on their individual blogs:

Amber Hillman

Anne Harmon

Joanne Grzelak

Lois Bak

Sabrina Friel

Shirley Quarry

Vicky Gould 

 
Here are the products I used to create my card:

Katie Label Pivot Card (768)

Flourish With Flowers Die

InLinkz.com

Stamps: Huggin’ Bunny – Inky Antics; Happy Easter – Penny Black

Paper: White; Orange; Black; Scoot DP – Echo Park

Dies: Katie Label Pivot Card Die – designed by Karen Burniston for Elizabeth Craft Designs; Flourish with Flowers – Elizabeth Craft Designs

Other: Black Ink; Foam Tape; Copics

Girls Night Out!

Girls night out! that is the theme for todays mini VSN. There are a total of 4 challenges that you can do and you can take as long as you want to create them ... it doesn't have to be 45 mins as it normally is for VSN challenges.

I am one of the hostesses for todays mini VSN .... my challenge is a sketch challenge, you can see my card above. As there are such a lot of sketch challenges around these days I decided to go back to basics .... thinking along the theme of this VSN .... having a little black dress (well not so little for me ;) ) in your wardrobe is a great investment cause you can dress it up or down whatever the case may be depending on the occasion .......... well that is what I thought about this simple sketch.

I couldn't resist using this image that I did for my sketch card ..... it isn't just the young girls who enjoy a good night out now is it! I am looking forward to seeing what others do with this sketch on SCS!


This second card was made for the "Time for a Martini" challenge .... we had to use the verse that goes "One martini, two martini, three martini, floor". This is such a fun verse and of course I had to have it even though I don't drink. I decided I wanted to play with my new nestabilities dies for this card and create a tent card .... I am loving these dies .... so far I have used all my sets and have ordered the rectangle too but I may have to wait before that arrives .... that is ok the other 3 will keep me busy! I didn't have room on my card to put the whole verse on the front of the card so I just used the first two lines of it on the front .... the rest of the verse is inside the card.

That's all the challenges I have done so far, hopefully I will get some time to do some more. For more info on all of the 4 challenges been run check out this thread.

Recipes:

Girls wanna have fun:
Stamps : Inky Antics
Paper: Red, White, Purple, Purple Stripe - Making Memories
Other: Black Ink; Red Brads; Ticket Corner Punch

One Martini:
Stamps: Inky Antics
Paper: Not Quite Navy, Old Olive - SU; Pheobe Basic Grey DP; White
Other: Black Ink; Oval Nestabilities; Oval Punch; Label Punch; Olive Grosgrain Ribbon

ATC - Cheers

Here are some ATC's I made for a swap I am in, the theme for the swap was "Ribbon" we had to include ribbon somehow on our ATC. This is what I came up with. I wanted to stamp something on a scallop shape so I ended up going with this girl and my scallop oval punch, I even had room to add the word - Cheers!

The background is created by first stamping my polka dot stamp all over the pink card using rouge fluid chalk and then using my spots & dots cuttlebug embossing folder to create the texture. Of course I then added my ribbon to the card. I enjoyed making this one.

Recipe:
Stamps: Girl - Inky Antics; Cheers - Stamping Bella; Polka Dots - SU
Paper: White; Pink and Fuchsia
Other: Black Ink; Rouge Fluid Chalk; Oval Scallop Punch; Pink Grosgrain Ribbon; Spots & Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder

A Martini or 2 or 3!

When I first saw Beate's sketch challenge for this weekend, my first thought was to either use a large prima flower or a use a large flower stamp in the section where I have put my cocktail girl. However as you can see I decided against that idea for a few reasons, mainly as others had use flowers on their cards for this challenge including Beate - so I decided that would be toooo easy for me to follow suit. These two stamps have been sitting on my desk all week since I received them on Monday so I decided why not use them for this particular sketch as it wouldn't be toooo hard to make it all work.

The girl is stamped onto white card and then punched out using a circle punch, I then used my circle scissor to cut out the olive circle and then my mega scallop punch for the rose red layer. I decided I would separate the verse as I did on the card I made using these stamps on Monday. The sage shadow layer on the back is embossed using the spots & dots cuttlebug embossing folder. The ribbon was colored using my tria's as I don't own olive grosgrain - and now I know I can color using my alcohol markers I am not sure if I want to buy every color ribbon - esp plain grosgrain - as long as I have plenty of white I can create most colors I need.

Recipe:
Stamps: Inky Antics
Papers: Rose Red, Sage Shadow & Old Olive - Stampin' Up; White; Pheobe - Basic Grey
Other: Black Ink; Spots & Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder; Scallop Circle Punch; Circle Scissor; Circle Punches; Prima Flower; Olive Brad; Slider Cuttlebug Die; White Grosgrain Ribbon; Tria Markers

Charmed, I'm Sure!!!

This week's featured stamper on SCS is Charmaine aka Charmwarm. I normally get to make my card for this challenge on a Sunday afternoon but this week the challenge wasn't posted until later so I had to wait until today to make my card. Which is most probably just as well because I wouldn't have been able to make this particular card yesterday as the stamps only arrived in the post this morning - there is a reason for everything LOL!

Charmaine has lots of fantastic cards in her gallery and lots I would love to CASE given the time. But the one I decided to use for this challenge is this one here. I guess the thing that I noticed first on Charmaine's card was the dot paper she used, I had just purchased some dot papers on Saturday while out shopping. So with the combination of the new dot paper & new stamps this card was created. As my dot paper had a white background I decided I needed a colored card for the base, so went with certainly celery as there is some of this color in the paper or close enough match anyway.

Here are the things I changed:

• Changed the image used
• Changed the colors
• Changed the direction of my ribbon (of course I had to decide that after I had attached my image didn't I LOL!)
• Changed the color of my brads used
• Added my verse to a colored circle at the top left corner of my card.

Recipe:
Stamps: Cocktail Time & One Martini - Inky Antics
Paper: Certainly Celery - Stampin' Up; White; Pink; Dot DP - KMart???
Other: Black Ink; Green Brads; Certainly Celery Grosgrain Ribbon; Circle Punch; Tab Punch - SU; Foam Tape

Patriotic Cards

1. This weeks limited supply challenge is to make Patriotic cards. We had 2 options.

Option 1 was to use patriotic colors to make a patriotic themed card but not to use
traditional patriotic stamps.

Option 2 was to use patriotic colors and any images but it can't be a patriotic card.

2. I needed to make a card or actually a card front for a book club I belong to - the theme was "Ideas for the Little Ones" in other words a kids card.

3. I decided to go with "option 2" to make use patriotic colors and any image but it wasn't a
patriotic card.

4. I wanted to combine the limited supply challenge and make a kids card for #2 above. I also liked the idea of making a card in the colors red, white and blue.

5. I live in Australia - although our flag are the colors of red white & blue these aren't the colors we would consider "Australian colors"

6. Australian colors are - Green & Gold

7. While I was making my pirate card for this challenge, my daughter asked me what I was doing and I explained the limited supply challenge and what the theme was for this week. My daughter said "those aren't Australian colors!" I knew that, but I wanted to use them making a green & gold card wasn't as big of a challenge.

8. To keep everyone happy I decided to make 2 cards for this challenge - my 2nd one is in Australian Colors - Green & Gold.

9. I decided to use my new chicken stamp I got last week as a chicken can be yellow (gold).

10. This chicken for some reason reminds me of my friend on SCS Cindy aka Mothermark. Cindy would normally describe her cards in this fashion and for this particular challenge I decided to too. I am sure Cindy won't mind for one time LOL.

11. I took the card in to show my daughter when I had finished, she said "It's Green & Gold!"


Recipes:

Ahoy Matey:
Stamps: Ahoy Matey & Matey's Map - Stampin' Up
Papers: Red; White; Blue & Black
Other: Black Ink; White Brilliance Ink; Bisque Fluid Chalk

Hi Chick:
Stamps: Chicken - Inky Antics; Chicken Wire - Unknown; Dirt - SU; Greeting - Karen Foster Snap Stamps
Papers: Marigold Morning & Certainly Celery - Stampin' Up; White
Other: Black Ink; Amber Clay Fluid Chalk; Circle Scallop Punch; Word Window Punch - SU; Tiny Bubbles Cuttlebug Embossing Folder; Tobacco Brads

Cheers!

As you can see I have started playing with my new stamps I got yesterday while I was at the Scrapbooking & Papercraft Expo. As soon as I saw this girl from Inky Antic's I immediately thought of this weeks sketch challenge and how perfect she would fit in that long skinny panel. I also was thinking off all those cards I have seen on SCS of the preggie girl and the "BIG" stamp - where the girl takes the place of the "I" and thought it might work with this stamp too, she is taller but it is worth a try and I don't have too many people getting pregnant around me, but girls do turn the big "0" all the time. Come to think of it my DD turns 30 this year and anyone who knows her would agree she is skinny like this girl - tick tick tick!

I was originally thinking of using this card for the limited supply challenge on SCS, which is creating backgrounds using non traditional background stamps - but then I decided to use the stamps from the sweet spots set which I think would fall into the background stamp category so I scratched the idea of using it for that challenge as I did want to use those stamps.

Recipe:
Stamps: Beverage Girl - Inky Antics; Sweet Spot - SU; Greeting - Stamping Bella
Paper: Rose Red, Chocolate Chip, Sahara Sand - SU; White
Other: Black Ink; Barn Brown & Grand Cranberry Whispers Ink; Slot Punch - SU; White Gel Pen; Tria Markers.

Someone left a question in the comments of yesterdays post, so I thought I would answer it here in case anyone else had the same question.

Question: OMG! What an awesome shopping day you had! I think the crossword puzzle stamp is neat and versatile. What images are the clear stamps? And what is a tape writing tool?

Answer: First up the clear stamps were a new set from Hero Arts called "Tiny Bird Messages" there are 6 little stamps each with a bird image on a tree, some are solid and others outline and each have a little message to go with it. eg. Hey; You're special etc.

Here is a link to the tape writing tool, I think that can explain it better than I can. I would call it a dymo or label maker, however different countries sometimes have different names of things so in this case I will let the picture in the link tell the story. I think it is self explanatory, what I really like about this is the fun colors you can get for the tape and also that you have the option of different fonts - mine came with two font wheels one upper & one lower. I was also told by the person selling it to me that other font wheels will be available after July - I am hoping this is true.