Christmas Gift Tags galore

One of my most favorite things I do at Christmas is a tags class.  I give everyone 2 x 3 whisper white tags, and bring out ALL of my Christmas stamp sets, along with a bunch of stamp pads and stampin' write markers, and we just create.
It's super fun, and I love the creativity that people do.  I love that we personalize our gifts in a simple but fun way!
Here are some of the ones I made:

 And soon to be featured on a friends blog http://thehiplifeblog.com/ are these gorgeous, simple tags:

She cut them down to be 1 1/2 x 2 1/2, and used the stamp sets "ornamental pine" and "wonderland" by stampin' up.
Here is wonderland, which she used the antlers and tree:

She stamped the images in tip top taupe and early espresso ink, then dragged the ink on the edges to complete the tags.  For some she added a little sparkle with dazzling diamonds and a two way glue pen.  I loved how they turned out!

Christmas Stamp a Stack

Well my stamp a stack was a huge success! Thanks to everyone who made it out.  We made 16 CARDS this year, and it was a marathon... but I hope it was worth it.

here are the cards that were voted for us to make!
Each one had different focuses, the fireplace was a lot of coloring with a blender pen, the coffee cup was creative as you could customize the background and pick different washi tapes to give it a different look.
The Ornament Card was mostly assembly, but created a stunning 3D scene... and the Silent Night card surprised me, it took everyone 20 minutes to make all 4 cards, and not one card didn't turn out! I loved that each one looked slightly different.

My next class will be to make 25 Christmas tags for $5... this is a non structured class... basically you get inspired and eat and drink homemade hot cocoa!  send me a comment for more details!

Fall Foliage and freshly sharpened pencils

I really love the fall.  I love sweaters, and PSLs, and caramel apple cider, and tea, and pumpkin chocolate cookies, and scarfs and cooler air.
And with fall comes beautiful cards that are SO FUN to display at thanksgiving!
The first card we made this month was with the stamp set "Autumn Wishes" and used the new most fantastical texture folder I've seen... it's versatile and does so much fun stuff.
It's called "woodland texture folder".

 I love the use of the colors that get used the most in the fall... Always Artichoke, Hello Honey and Cajun Craze.   This is Very Vanilla with Crumb Cake and some Chocolate Chip thrown in!
Here's an example of a similar card with non conventional colors, also:

Next is a card I did NOT make using the same folder.... props to Deb Valder for using this and making a simple and stunning card!

and other Christmas one:

and to round things out, a Halloween Card, using Masking and the Brayer!

WOW! I love this texture folder so much, you can do so many things with it!
Get it before it's gone on January 4th :)

Wetlands and lazy hazy days

While I stuggle with the heat that comes with Summer, I sure do love the flexibility... no school lunches, no rushing out the door.

I made this card to reflect the laid- backness of Summer.

I used the "masking" technique at the top and the bottom of the card, and just sponged on the different layers.  Then I used a ruler in the middle to create the line in the middle.  Super simple, super effective!

This is with the stamp set "Wetlands", that truthfully never really caught my eye.... but now that I have it I can think of a million ways to use it!

Sprinkles of Life and other new items

The new catalogue is here!
Which means the days of summer that I ignore my children and look longingly at the catalogue on a beach chair in the year is here! I'm kidding (mostly) but there IS something really exciting to me about the new catalogue... new colors, new stamp sets, new inspiration.

The Ronald McDonald Stamp set this year ($3 of every stamp set sold) supports the Ronald McDonald House program....and the stamp set is AMAZING.

You can make ice cream cone, cupcakes, bushles, a tree, clouds with raindrops... SO much.  AND there's a matching punch ("tree builder") to boot!  Which means you can quickly punch out this whole set and make stunning cards in NO time!

Here are my open house cards with this set and a couple of the new in colors (LOVING watermelon wonder and tip top taupe)

I hope you enjoy browsing through the new catalogue as much as I do!

Father's Day and Geometrical Sadness

Father's Day is coming up and I always struggle with a good "manly" card... but I think I've made a great one!
You can change the sentiment to say "Happy Birthday" and it's a great card any man would love.

I used the stamp set "six sided sampler" and the co ordinating texture plate, hexagon... plus the wood texture plate for the early espresso piece.  I also broke out my night of navy, that I just don't use enough!

And I also made this card with Geometrical, which is sadly retiring.  I haven't even used it more than this once :(
But alas, there will be dozen more stamp sets I will want, so this is life!

For Mother

For club we made an ultra simple, but perfectly elegant, Mother's Day Card.
I am sad that we are saying goodbye to the Apothecary Art Stamp set... (order before May 26th or it is gone forever).. but I am devastated we are losing Crisp Cantaloupe (and strawberry slush and pistachio pudding and coastal cabana).

I love the mosaic background from the bigshot.  The image is from Apothercary Art, and we used blender pens to color the flowers, then the big shot to cut out the shape, making a perfect image everytime.  The paper is crumb cake... and of course, the pearls finish it off nicely.
The sentiment is from teeny tiny wishes!

Thank You

I find you can never have enough thank you cards.  This is a simple one I CASED from stampin' up directly... I switched it up a bit by adding the embossed hearts on the bottom.. and originally the stampin' up card used the blendabilities... but now that we no longer sell them I had to figure something else out... I used ROY G. BIV for the order of the colors, and then just the stamp pads and a blender pen to still give it the umbre effect.

Thanks for looking!

Bokeh technique.

I do not know how to pronounce this technique, so I won't even try... but at club we had a blast doing it!
We made this card:

We used watercolor paper, and then an aqua painter to "dab" the color onto the paper... i used calypso coral, pistachio, coastal cabana, and crisp cantaloupe.  Then we let it dry, and used a sponge dauber and whisper white to put circles all over the background.... I used the circle die cuts on a piece of window sheet to create different sizes of circles... You want to do varying shades of the white.

Then we used the stamp set "nature's perfection" from saleabration... this is currently retired, now, but you can use any stamp set from the catalogue that is a flower.  We embossed it, twice, in whisper white and white embossing powder, than used blender bens to color the flower.
The neutral is basic grey.

Project Life

I don't like change.  I'm the first one to admit it.
But the new products from Project Life are game changers.  You can literally scrapbook two 12 x 12 layouts in 5 to 10 minutes.  NO JOKE.
Maybe I'm the only one that would print photos, then spend 2 days completing a 2 page layout... but if you're anything close to me these will change your life.
What I am planning on doing is using them as WELL as a traditional scrapbook layout, and intersperse them in the "baby" books that I am 7 years behind on.

For my club recently, I bought "little moments" and let them have at 'er... we had a ton of fun...
I love that it is coordinated, as usual, but also just so, so, so simple.  And yet I felt like I still had a say on what I was doing!

Here is my page I did as a sample, this was Lexie, our third born, the day she was born.

not the best photo in the world... but I hope you get the idea!
So affordable, easy and fun!

Big Day Birthday Card from Stampin' Up's Saleabration 2015!

I love saleabration!
Get a free stamp set or item (exclusive and NOT available any other time of the year) including the new stamp set "Big Day":

 We made this card at club last month with it!  I love how the cake creates a background simply using a whisper white stamp pad.... I choose blues, but we have a "free stamp club" meaning they can choose whatever color they want.  Notice the umbre of the cake, used with the now discountinued product "blendablities".  You can get a similar affect by using three of the same color but different shade felts, not blending into each other.

Lotus Blossom

It always catches me by surprise how fast mid november to january goes!
here we are 2 months later.
It's saleabration time in Stampin Up land... the happiest time of the year!
Choose from dozens of FREE items when you spend $60 or more!

We made this valentine's card using tons of the items from the new Occasions Mini...

We used the new washi tape, the hearts confetti border punch that I'm quickly becoming obsessed with, and the Stacked with Love DSP and Best Day Ever stamp set from saleabration!
The best part of this card is the hearts SHAKE!!!!!

Which doesn't look like much, but is SUPER fun!

Next we made a super simple card with the saleabration stamp set "lotus blossom"

Usually you use 3 of the same color in different tones, but I wanted to see what happens when you mix it up!
I love Rich Razzleberry with Calypso Coral... and we finished up with Crisp Cantalope on the third layer.

As always, I let my Stamp Club decide on their own color choices for cards, and one of the stampers (a first timer, I might add!) choose to only do two layers with Indigo Ink and Tempting Turquoise