A fun gift for my stampers

Once in awhile I like to reward my stampers with a little gift just for coming to stamp with me!  I made this cute little flower basket filled with drink packets.  I got the idea on pinterest, so here’s the link so you can make one!

Again, I used the pop-up posies kit, it has these little cupcake liners and big Summer Starfruit brads that make great daises. I layered these over a flower from the mixed bunch set.

I tucked a little thank you card into each one too, here’s a peek at that.  It uses the petite curly label punch and the pretty petites stamp set from SAB.  I punched out images from the Patio Party designer paper, which is where the Summer Starfruit dot paper comes from in the basket too.

Fun with scraps

I made a couple more cards with leftover card elements, I think this one looks better in person as none of the blues or greens (Always Artichoke, Marina Mist, Pool Party, lucky limeade, and Daffodil Delight) entirely match but the combination works.

The next one is a much better color combination, using Marina Mist, Rich Razzleberry, pool party and lucky limeade.  Plus since there’s a new petite curly label punch, its been on my mind, so I used the full sized punch, cut in half for the sentiment.

Cor’dinations and embossing fun

I have a lot of thank you cards to send out from all the fabulous baby gifts I received.  I also had some card elements leftover from past stamp camps, so I played around and came up with a couple cute cards 🙂

This card has cor’dinations paper that I embossed with the vine embossing folder from SAB and a pop-up posies kit flower.  I even used the splatter stamp from my Paper Pumpkin kit.

Then I made another card, very similarly, just used a different embossing folder. By the way, you have to sand the embossed image for the effect to work 🙂

My Paper Pumpkin welcome kit!

My Paper Pumpkin kit arrived and so I first tackled the card as instructed in the kit, but branched out from there.  I still have one more left to make but for now I’m saving it for later 🙂   I changed up the other 2 with the pop up posies kit and with a simple orientation switch-up and a flower stamp that I hand cut.

  Visit www.mypaperpumpkin.com to sign up and get your welcome kit!  I’d REALLY appreciae it if you chose me, Krissie O’Donnell, as your demonstrator when you sign up too!  Then a surprise kit will come each month that follows 🙂  You get a D sized clear block in the welcome kit that you’ll be able to use on all future kits.

Baby Shower fun

The great thing about being in big families, is sometimes you’re not the only one going through something new, like a pregnancy.  My cousin Jessica is also expecting and is due in June, and on my husband’s side of the family, his cousin Jenny is due in May, and his cousin’s wife Bethany is also due in June.  So since his side of the family is pretty spread apart, we had 1 baby shower for the 3 of us.  It was a lot of fun and a little less pressure from the spotlight that is pregnancy.  This is the card I made for Jenny as she’s having a girl.  And I made a very similar card for Bethany, who is having a boy.

Stamps: Baby Tees (wheel converted to clear mount stamp), Ciao Baby!

Paper: Regal Rose & Pretty in Pink, Marina Mist & Bashful Blue, Whisper White

Ink: Regal Rose, Marina Mist, Basic Gray

Accessories: Stampin Write Markers – Daffodil Delight, Bashful Blue, Pretty in Pink; Aquapainter, 7/8″ Scallop Circle punch, 1-1/4″ Scallop Circle Punch, Regal Rose grosgrain ribbon (retired), Marina Mist 1/8″ taffeta ribbon, subtles designer buttons.

For their gifts I made them diaper cake owls, which I later found out that Jenny had owls in mind for her little girl’s nursery theme. How perfect! I love how the owls turned out. They featured lots of necessities for baby to create all the owl’s features. I found the idea on Pinterest (where else?) and made a few tweaks of my own to create more useful supplies for the eyes and better looking eyebrows.

Just For You – Pop-up Posies

We made this cute card at a group meeting last month, and it is such an easy card, I used it with my stampers last weekend too!  It uses the pop-up posies kit which is filled with great instructions, flowers, brads, and more to make lots of pretty projects.  You can easily supplement your kit with ribbon and brads to make even more with all the flowers!

Stamps: Just for you (included in Pop-up Posies kit)

Paper: Crumb Cake

Ink: Early Espresso

Accessories: Calypso Coral brad, pop-up posies kit flowers, 7/8″ Natural Cotton Ribbon.

You’re Swell.

Sometimes, you just need to tell someone how Swell they are 😉

I’ve really enjoyed the yellow and gray trend, as much as I’ve liked the Chevron trend.  So I joined them together.  It wasn’t too unrealistic as our convention bag from last summer was made up of yellow chevrons.  I even bought a dress to match it!

So the itty bitty cute curly label is new! Its free in our Sale-a-Bration brochure, and it will carry over into the catalog after SAB is over.  It has a free set that matches called Pretty Petites, but it also has another set to match called Ciao, Baby!  Which is where this image comes from.  That set also has cute little images for our newest and smallest scallop circle punch.  I love all these little versions since it makes it fun to layer!

Stamps: Ciao, Baby

Paper: Basic Gray, Daffodil Delight DSP from paper stack, Very Vanilla

Ink: Basic Gray

Accessories: Daffodil Delight grosgrain ribbon, Chevron embossing folder, Curly Label Punch, Petite Curly Label Punch (SAB item)

Oh, Whale with Chalkboard Technique

Oh, Whale has got to be my absolute favorite stamp set in the Spring catalog.  It could be that its because I’m having a little boy and a lot of Carter’s line right now has cutie little whale clothing…. but the whole product suite set up around this set just makes me smile.  I’ve always loved rainbows and the DSP in the product suite uses a pretty spectrum.  So why didn’t I use any of that prettiness on this card?  Because I’ve also really liked seeing the chalkboard technique and wanted to try it out myself.  There are a few different ways of going about this technique and I used one that utilized our products the best.  A simple sponging of White craft ink around the edges and on top of the cardstock (with a light hand!) I also had to emboss with the cute new clouds embossing folder.  So, I sponged over those too!  I made the mistake of embossing before stamping my sentiment… oopsie, so I used a wide marker (capped) to “erase” some clouds to have a place to stamp.  I will give my stampers the option of either doing what I had to do to cover up my boo-boo, or having them stamp first, but I think having the flat space does look nicer.

I made some waves with the scallop edgelit, and what a selling point for this stamp set, there’s a clearlits die that lets you punch out the whale!  LOVE it!  I added a pearl to highlight the eye and did some more chalkboard effect with his little water squirts!

Stamps: Oh Whale, Happiest Birthday Wishes (retired hostess… oops!)

Paper: Pool Party, Basic Black, Basic Gray

Ink: Pool Party (sponged), Whisper White, Basic Gray

Accessories: Happy Whale clearlits die, Scallop Edgelits, stampin’ sponge, Cloudy day embossing folder, Pearl accents

Blue Ribbon meets Print Poetry

Sometimes you obtain items that you really don’t have any ideas for.  Paper stacks are often like this for me.  The print poetry stack in the Spring catalog has beautiful patterns featuring the current In-Colors, both masculine and feminine.  I often have a hard time thinking up masculine cards, and really its what I need most, I have so many men in my life… The Blue Ribbon stamp set is new to me, and I found a great way to punch out the scallop part of it from Patty Bennett’s blog, so I went for it.  It doesn’t punch out super perfectly but much better than having to cut by hand!  The secret is, just cut around the outside of the bottom ribbons, then place the stamped image into your punch with the tails hanging out the top.  Its a bit tough to line up still as you’re using limited space, but it gets the job done as long as you’re careful.  I did find myself wishing I’d used colored cardstock to stamp on rather than Very Vanilla, but that is something I can give my stampers the option of changing up this weekend when we make this card at our stamp camp!

Stamps: Blue Ribbon

Paper: Midnight Muse, Print Poetry DSP, Very Vanilla

Ink: Midnight Muse, Crumb Cake

Accessories: Midnight Muse ribbon, 2-3/8″ Scallop circle punch

 

You are Loved – Thank you!

Sometimes designer series paper and stamp sets match eachother so nicely, that you can’t help but use them together.  Ever since I got the Comfort Cafe designer series paper, I have been wanting to use it with the You are Loved stamp set since they complement eachother perfectly!  I saw this idea on Linda Arhus’ blog (she has great ideas!) and had to make one myself.

I definitely need to invest in some new cutting pads for my big shot as they are warped in such a way that my dot embossing didn’t come out too great, but you get the idea…  I also had to use contraband (sorta) product to get the circle layering to work.  I used Sizzix circle framelits.  Which we sell, just not in the circle shape… hopefully eventually we will!

Stamps: You are Loved, Teeny Tiny Wishes

Paper: Very Vanilla, Cajun Craze, Comfort Cafe DSP

Ink: Cajun Craze, Soft Suede

Accessories: Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder, Framelits Circles, 1-3/8″ circle punch