Did you Ever CASE a card?

Most of my readers will know what CASE is but for the few who won't recognize the acronym, it stands for Copy And Share Everything. I cased this card from Sandy McIver, a very talented Stampin' Up demonstrator. I didn't have all the things she used so I substituted the stamp set but it turned out fairly close to her beautiful card.

I love the Very Vintage Wheel that is used on the bottom of the card. I wheeled it in Old Olive ink and then used a sponge dauber to age it some. I've used the Beautiful Wings Embosslit on many other projects, those embossed butterflies are so wonderful and with 5 butterflies in different sizes and designs, they are perfect for so many things. I used the leafy stamp from the Embrace Life set on the top of the card and also used the sponge dauber around that.

The second card was very loosely cased from a card by Michelle VanWiggeren. I took the basic element of the bird on the ribbon and the Modern Label punch for the sentiment but even the original creator of the card that was the inspiration for this probably wouldn't recognize it. That is they way casing goes. Sometimes you hardly change a thing and sometimes you only use an element or 2 as your inspiration.

I am a member of both the Late Night Stampers yahoo group. If you want to join, click on the owl in my side bar. Every week day Kelly posts the blog finds of the day. There are usually 15+ links to posts with great ideas. We put our creations on our blogs to inspire others, right? I often get great ideas from these links she shares. It saves me time and I discover some great blogs that I might not have found on my own. To make things even better, Kelli lives in Germany and when I wake up in the morning she has already got the blog finds posted so I can get inspired right away. I'm sharing 3 of my favorites with you from today's blog finds. Just click on the picture if you are interested and it will take you to the blog.

I really liked the idea of the oragami flowers. I guess because I'm wondering if my buttercups will EVER bloom! They have had yellow buds on them for 3 weeks but nothing yet. The temperatures are supposed to be above 50 for the next several days and sunshine is in the forcast so maybe I'll be including pictures of the first blooms in a blog post very soon. The crocus bloomed about the time I noticed the buttercup buds, such a brave little flower :~)

Next is a very simple yet georgous card using the beautiful Fifth Avenue Floral stamp set. Why, oh why haven't I bought this set yet? It's beautiful! And Melissa did a beautiful job with the watercoloring. I love Stampin' Up's watercolor pencils and crayons and I don't have that many stamp sets that are open for coloring. Humm, I need to take care of that "problem"!

The last card I'm going to share is just plain cute! I love how Andrea put the little chicks in the egg halves. This is one of the cutest Easter cards around!

I hope you enjoy the extra shares! I reckon I'll go stamp something. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are today!

More Big Shot fun

I've been playing with my Big Shot and fabric again. I had so much fun making the flower pins that I wanted to try other fabric projects. I used to sew a lot, I mean seriously A LOT! I made all of my clothes and nearly all of my children's clothes. I even made my sons little briefs with silky fabric that they loved! Life got busy and fabric went way up until it cost less to buy things ready-made and I got away from sewing as much. I set up my sewing machine and guess what - it still works!

These patchwork purses using the Scallop Square die have been all over the Stampin' Up blogging world so I needed to make one (or 2 or 3. . . ) I have gotten a large print set of scriptures that won't fit in my old scripture case and I think this will be the perfect size to accommodate them along with my Sunday School manual. I will probably make the handles shorter to use it for a scripture case.

I've seen these purses with flaps to cover the top and with button and loop closures. I've seen them made with more squares and with less squares. Someone also posted a great idea, they used 1 square per side to be used as little collapsible trash bins for their work tables, how fun would that be to take to crops!

With all these Big Shot projects going on and Sale-a-bration until the end of March, I think this is the perfect time to join the Big Shot world! Read on:

Have you been wanting to get a Big Shot to use at home for your craft projects? Did you ever think about how Sale-a-bration is a great time to get one? Since it costs $99.95, just add a small item with it and you can earn 2 of the Sale-a-bration products!

Hey, while you are at it, why not buy a few dies for your Big Shot and pump your order up to $150 so you can earn hostess benefits. You would get a level 1 hostess stamp set, $15 of free merchandise and 3 of the Sale-a-bration products! You are thinking, it really can't get any better than that but it can. Because I want everyone who wants a Big Shot to be able to get one, I'm adding my own special. If you order your Big Shot from me as a hostess order I will add one of the $15.95 dies free from me! This special is only good only from me and only until Sale-a-bration ends on March 31.

You can call or email me if you want to take advantage of the special or you can click on my website button on the right and order it all online. I will contact you to find out what you want for my special of the free $15.95 die.

If you order your Big Shot from me, you are also invited to come to a Big Shot class for free to learn how to use it. This is a 2-part class where you will learn a lot of what you can do with your new Big Shot and come away with several projects from each class. There will surely never be a better time to buy a Big Shot!

Two Step Bird Punch

I can tell this is going to be one of my favorite punches for a long time. Here is another card that is made quick and easy with this punch. This little bird is a great size for both card embellishments and for scrapbook page elements. The branch can be used in projects without the bird, I just cut a strip of cardstock about an inch wide and put it in the punch and look at the bottom to line it up so I don't have too many green birds to figure out what to do with!

I have a great idea I'm planning to do since last Wednesday but haven't had the time to get it done yet. Maybe I can get it done tomorrow after I torture myself at the YMCA! Or maybe I'll do it in the morning and go to the Y afterward to reward myself. I actually love my torture! It feels good to be doing something for myself and I feel much better now than I did a couple of months ago.

First is a card using the I {Heart} Hearts. This is the stamp set that Stampin' Up is donating $2.00 from each set sold through Feb 28th to the Hatian Relief Fund. Two weeks into the fund drive there were a total of 7524 sets sold. I think we should try to more than double that amount by the end of the month! I love that Stampin' Up has thought of such a generous and easy way for their customers to help out. If you haven't ordered this fun and versatile set which you can use all year, not just for Valentine's Day, you can order it wood mounted (117010 for $26.95) or in the new clear mount option (118571 for $18.95)
Click on the option you want to place an order online or email me for help.


Second is a cute card made by Melany Watson. She stamped and cut out the owl from the Fox and Friends set (wood mount) (clear mount)and perched him on a punch art tree using the scalloped circle punch and snowflake punch. Isn't that a great idea for trees????

She also used the scalloped oval punch for the bushes and the great new Scallop Trim Border punch (it can be yours FREE during Sale-a-bration!!)

The last card uses a fun set called Crazy for Cupcakes from the large catalog. It also has a single large cupcake stamp and a balloon and other birthday stamps. It really seems to be a requirement to put glitter on the icing of this stack of cupcakes, doesn't it?

Well, I reckon I'll stamp. I've got a fun and very different project I'm working on that I will hopefully have finished and ready to post tomorrow. Check back soon and don't forget to order the I {Heart} Hearts set to help the people of Haiti.

Valentine's Digital Layout

I took some pictures of the grandkids yesterday all dressed and ready for church so I need to do a Valentine's layout for those pictures. The baby wasn't excited about the whole thing but we needed to head out for church so we didn't take the time to try to make him happy for the pictures. He stopped crying by the time we go to the car, typical for a 4 month-old, huh?

I used Stampin' Up's My Digital Studio software to create this layout fast and easy. As much as I love scrapbooking with the feel and texture of all the fun embellishments, I love how I can have a layout quickly done with My Digital Studio! The best of both worlds, whichever I choose I can use!

Swaps from Team meeting

Did I ever mention how much I love participating in swaps? It is always such fun to see what everyone has created and be able to hold it in your hands and take it home with you! I get lots of great ideas through swaps.

Here are a few of my swaps. First, the swap of my new recruit Debbie. I thought she did a wonderful job since she got her kit less than a week before the meeting. I love the bright colors and the fun sentiment she stamped. Hi Debbie!

Second is a fun card that uses the scalloped circle puch and heart punch as flowers. She clipped the petals apart for a different look and put die-cut buttons for the centers. The bright colors remind me that Spring will come, even when it seems like cold and snow will be here forever!

The last card I'm going to share today is a 4-square card featuring the Fox and Friends stamp set. It has a fun red and white color scheme and the red ribbon with the white polka dots. I'm falling asleep as I type this so forgive any mistakes and I'll come back and fill in tomorrow when I will be able to keep my eyes open.

Swap for Team Meeting

We had a Stampin' Up Team Meeting in Mt. Juliet, TN Thursday night. It was a lot of fun and I learned several new things. We made a little box and set of 8 cards to go in it. We also had a card swap so I will have cards to show over the next week but tonight I thought I would share the card I made and a few tips for making it.

I decided to go with a baby card and used the Big Shot Scalloped Circle die for the blanket. I cut one from a scrap of paper and numbered each scallop and used some basic algebra to figure out where to fold it. To keep the blanket edge from overlapping too far it needed to be 8 scallops wide at the top. That would make the center fold at the bottom at 19. I used this scrap paper as a folding guide since I was making 16 of them.

The stripe on the back of this paper is one of my favorites from the Sweet Pea paper pad but isn't exactly what I wanted for the baby blanket so I cut some of the scraps to cover what would show on each side of the baby's head.

I used the 1 3/4" circle punch for the baby's head and drew in his face with Stampin' Write markers. I used the Sponge Daubers to add some color to his cheeks and added a little tuft of hair.

For the hair I used Very Vanilla 5/8" ribbon and cut down each side about an inch and frayed out the threads so I had a soft length of fibers.

I folded this into 3 layers and adhered it to the back of the baby's head.

This was a fairly easy card design and I just love the happy little guy!

Using new corner/border punches

I made a couple of cards yesterday. By some amazing chance, I had my swap cards for the Team Meeting finished and had time to create something else. It kind of freaks me out when I finish things early. I'm so used to doing EVERYTHING in a rush at the last second! Could I possibly be becoming a non-procrastinator???

The first card is a card I made using the Movers and Shapers card die with the heart insert. It looked so plain and I wanted to do something around the heart hole so I ended up just using the Signo gel pen and making some little doodle scallops.

We were having our quarterly team meeting last night and my upline asked me to demonstrate how to do a mat with the new punches. I had been fustrated with the punches because it was hard to get them to come out right and I had places where the scallops didn't meet right and had to cover them up with flowers or butterflies or something. I was delighted to find out how to use them to make perfect mats. Patty Bennett had a list on her blog of measurements to pre-cut your paper to make different size mats and they were all perfect except the 4" one. I just couldn't get it to work. Then I found out how to do them from any size paper.

I had complained that the corner punch guides weren't big enough to keep the paper in unless you were very careful with it. Well, there is a reason for that! It is so you can insert the paper in farther to put the corner where you want it so you don't have to remember measurements or find where your chart is that you made of the measurements. I cut a 5X7 piece of cardstock and punched it this way, ending when I got nearly to the edge of the paper and it made a perfect mat for a standard 4X6 photo.

Begin by punching a corner. As I said, the paper guides aren't very pronounced so I always turn the punch upside down and insert the paper until it reaches the corner. Switch to the border punch and punch until you get nearly to the other end of the paper. Switch back to the corner punch and insert the paper so it aligns with the last scallop. You can see that the edge of the paper is farther out than the corner guide.

Punch the corner and then put your paper in the trimmer and line it up with the outside edge of the punched area. Trim off the excess. Continue punching until you get to the end and do the same thing. The last row should match up with the first corner you punched.

As I said, a 5X7 piece of paper makes a good size mat for a standard picture. I would say cut the paper an inch larger each direction than the piece you want to end up with. If you are low on a specific paper you want to use for a mat you might want to experiment on a scrap of cardstock to make sure it will yield the size you need before punching the paper you want to use.

Another thing you can do with the corner punches since you can insert the paper all the way in is a large border. I inserted the paper in as far as it would go so all of the "peaks" would be the same height. When I punched subsequent corners I held the punch upside down and made sure the very edge of the corner of the previous punch was barely showing. For this card I used Sweet Pea paper with the Friends 24/7 stamp set as well as a sentiment from the Whimisical Words Sale-a-bration set.

For the last card I matted the DSP on a rectangular mat and then made 1 1/2" X 1 1/2" squares to put under the corner peaks. I think I need to add some ink around the edges but I like how the card turned out. The DSP is the little 6X6 paper pad from the Sale-a-Bration catalog.

Valentine's Cards

I had an open house today and these are some of the Valentine's cards we made.

The fish may look familiar. I did a card with them back in the fall with bright colors. I decided to make them in pink and red for a valentine's card and make them kissing. Then I thought I'd try and use the heart die and, although they are pretty cute, I like the ones using the Ornament punch better.

The other card was made using the Something Sweet stamp set from the Occasions Mini catalog. I tried to match the candy hearts as much as possible to stamp the hearts for the background of the card.

February Newsletter

I thought this was funny, this link to my Stampin' Up website takes you to where a lady walks across the Sale-a-Bration logo and starts talking to you. Very cool. I'm very impressed with technology.

I meant to post my Feb newsletter last week but kept forgetting. I also made a cute fabric purse with the Big Shot Scallop Square die that I'm going to try to take some pictures of and get posted. I'm having an open house today though so I better mop the kitchen and dust first! If you are in the area, you are invited to come to the open house. More info can be found here.

Unless your eyesight is a lot better than mine you will have to change your zoom level to about 150% to read this!