Well Isn't That Completely Awesome

What is this glorious piece of art?  I can practically hear your oohs and ahhs through the fiber optics that connect us.  I'll tell you what it is - a custom coaster.  I saw this tutorial through my cousin's pinterest site and knew I had to give it a try.  You see, my cousin is one of the top 10 most amazing people in all of the world, and she's always sending me ideas that she thinks I would like.  And I'd say she's pretty much bang-on almost all the time.

Anyways, this is one of the things she sent me.  I'm in a rush to get out the door (climbing the ski hill at boot camp tonight - I can already imagine how sore I will be in 2 days...) but I wanted to share this awesomeness with you before I went out.  I've got big plans to make a schwack of these tomorrow after work, so I'll update the post then and include the link to the original site this idea came from.  What you need to know tonight is that tomorrow you will need to go out and purchase some beautiful patterned paper, some Modgepodge, a sponge brush, some 4x4 tiles (glossy ones are just fine, and they're usually the cheapest), and a can of spray acrylic sealer.  Oh, and you'll also need some little chocolates to keep you busy while you're waiting.

More Spice Cake

I'm not sure I've seen another combination of colours that I like quite as much as the palette offered by Spice Cake.  Browns and blues always look great together, but I certainly wouldn't have thrown in Mustard on my own.  Nevertheless, it's quite a pleasing combo if you ask me.  (My rosette die making yet another appearance.)  It's a little hard to tell since I cropped the photo, but this is a 3.5 X 3.5 post it note holder.  I cranked out 42 of them this afternoon in preparation for the fair.  And since I'm super far behind in regards to how much I wanted to have made by now, I decided to sign up for another fair!  I shouldn't be left unsupervised.

This is one of the cards my stamp club will be making next month using Day of Gratitude in conjunction with the colours du jour.

Stamps:  Day of Gratitude
Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, Pool Party, Soft Suede, More Mustard
Paper:  Spice Cake, More Mustard, River Rock, Soft Suede
Extras:  Scallop punch, Decorative label punch, Pear Pizzazz seam binding ribbon, Designer Printed brads

Life Is All About Compromises

Last night my DH and I decided to sit down after dinner and watch a movie.  As per my post yesterday, I am obsessed with rosettes right now on account of my new die.  I though, "Ooh, I should make a bunch of rosettes while we're watching the movie."  So I cut 42 strips of paper and brought them out to the living room.  Much to my dismay, there was a show on about those guys that beat the you-know-what out of each other.  UFC I'm pretty sure it's called.  "Ah ha!" I thought to myself.  "I'll get Chris to help me make these in exchange for watching this grotesque display."  It turns out that it wasn't a fight, but a show about each of the fighters to get everyone hyped up for the barbaric display this weekend.

                            

However, I sat through it anyways in exchange for help folding and gluing these little suckers.  Sometime into it I chuckled and said, "Isn't it funny that we're watching a show about fighting while we're on the couch crafting?"  To which Chris responded, "I'm not crafting.  I'm folding."  This made me smile.  Let the record show, he was FOLDING and GLUING, not crafting.  I love him.

So here are the fruits of our labours.  This morning while he rides his bike for an hour I am going to put together (well, try at least) a wreath.  I still have to make some of the big ones by hand *sigh*, but I'll try and limit those.

Yay For (More) New Toys!

 


I have had the same camera for about 6 years.  It's been dropped about a hundred times, there is sand from Mexico under the display, and the megapixels are, well, downright embarrassing.  However, tomorrow is our anniversary, so we finally decided to get a new one.  It's nothing fancy, but it's like driving a Benz after owning a Datsun.

My other newest toy is the new Tim Holtz rosette die.  Love.  It.  I don't have a lot of patience, so scoring and folding my own was not very high up on my list of things to do.  I really like them though, so this does the trick for me.  I bought the newest version, which has 2 smaller patterns.  After playing with it today, I called the store and asked them if they would ship the other one to me.  They will.  Yay.

So here it is in all its glory.  These are a couple of little post it note holders that I've made up for the market this weekend.  

This one's a Petite Pocket using some First Edition DSP for the rosette.  The paper is Pear Pizzazz and I've stamped it with one of the small flourishes from Established Elegance.  I just cracked this set today and it is nothing less than extraordinary.  I'm going to play around with it some more tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

Cherries and Olives

I was in Costco this weekend, and I saw that they had their Christmas cards out.  Yay!  I am fully justified in posting Christmas stuff regularly.  I've been cooking up cards that I can use in a Christmas card buffet, and this is one of the newest.  I posted some cards that use the snowflakes from this set, but this is the main image.  I love swirly things, and I LOVE Christmas, (especially the tree) so this is a perfect set for me.  What I like about this card is the texture of it.  I stamped the notes on a piece of Very Vanilla, and then used Versamark to stamp the tree.  I then applied some clear embossing powder and heated it up with my heat tool.  Once the paper had cooled a little, I daubed my sponge into some Old Olive, and went in small circles from the inside of the tree out.  After each application I wiped off the excess ink from the embossed area, revealing the resisted imaged below.  I'm envisioning doing the same with some silver and navy ink as well.

Stamps:  Snow Swirled
Ink:  Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler
Paper:  Very Vanilla, Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler
Extras:  Scallop Trim punch, clear embossing powder

Day of Gratitude

Not that Thanksgiving is anytime terribly soon, but my stamp club is making some projects with this set for their September meeting, so I thought I'd play with it a bit to see what I could come up with.  I love the colours that autumn brings, along with the sweet scent of falling leaves in the gentle sunshine.  These colours seemed to go hand in hand with this set for a traditional Thanksgiving feel.

Colour Q 96

I love surfing through the various challenges on the net, and ColourQ is a great one.  There are a LOT of challenges to choose from, as well as a weekly one that you can enter.  This is from a past challenge, but I loved the combo right away.  I think I'll try it out a few more times to see what I can come up with.

I have been neglecting this set for quite some time now and decided I needed to pull it out again.  It's really quite beautiful, so I don't know why it made it to the bottom of the pile.  But, here it is.  I saw a card with this image stamped on First Edition DSP, so I can't claim that was my idea, but it was lacking something.  That something turned out to be this colour scheme!  Bashful Blue is a lovely, gentle hue, but I don't ever really let it function that way.  Poppy Parade is my favourite partner for this shade, but I think that Lucky Limeade might start making an appearance with it as well.

Stamps:  Just Believe

Ink:  Lucky Limeade, Tempting Turquoise

Paper:  Basic Grey, Bashful Blue, Tempting Turquoise, First Edition DSP

Exras: Scallop Edge punch, Itty Bitty Shapes punch pack, Basic Jewels Pearls

Is That What I Think It Is?

Yep.  It's a Christmas card.  Time seems to have slipped by me these past few weeks and I haven't really done a whole lot to get ready for the fair.  Yesterday I realized that I have next to nothing made, and that there are four sets of Christmas stamps waiting to be mounted onto their blocks and used.  Thus, Christmas cards in August!  I also posted some upcoming events for anyone local that happens to look at my blog, and figured it would be nice to show some photos of a few of the projects they'll be making at our Stamp-a-Stacks and buffets.

Don't get me wrong, I love red and green (you'll see many cards with that scheme as we get closer to winter), but I really like using non-traditional colours for Christmas.  We have two sets of decorations for our tree which we alternate between (red, gold, and green - turquoise, white, and silver) but I'm thinking it's about time to add another set into the mix (I have yet to figure out where we'll store those boxes...).  Night of Navy and Pear Pizzazz make a lovely duo, but I'm quite smitten by Basic Grey, Wisteria Wonder, and the amazing new Silver Glimmer paper.

If you don't recognize the sets used in these cards the snowflakes are from Snow Swirled, and the ornaments are from Delightful Decorations.  I'm not really into Santa cards, so these were a must for me. I made a few emboss-resist cards with Snow Swirled (will post at another time) and it makes for magical looking images.  I want to say that if you were only going to buy 2 sets for Christmas, these should be them, but I'll wait until I'e played with Winter Post before committing to such a remark.  However, if you really needed a few sets right now, buy these ones.  Of course the ornament punch is awesome, but if you had to choose between one set and a punch, or 2 sets, take the 2 sets.  It's not a super difficult shape to cut out.  If you're anything like me though (lacking any self-control when it comes to crafting items) buy them all!  And Glimmer paper, and silver embossing powder too!

Stamps:  Snow Swirled, Delightful Decorations

Ink:  Night of Navy, Pear Pizzazz (top)

Paper:  Night of Navy, Pear Pizzazz, Whisper White (top), Wisteria Wonder, Basic Grey, Silver Glimmer (bottom)

Extras:  Ornament punch, Silver embossing powder (bottom)

Colour Coach - More Mustard

I love this combination of colours.  I am lacking in the manly stamps department (though I did just order 2 new sets that should help fill that hole), so when I need a masculine card, I turn to these colours to help me out.  I am really getting my money's worth out of this little stamp set too.  It's quite versatile, and of course, manly.  I'm actually a little sad that it didn't carry over into the new IB&C.  I refuse to give it up however, since I seem to find a lot of uses for it.

Stamps:  Plane and Simple
Ink:  Not Quite Navy, Cajun Craze
Paper:  More Mustard, Not Quite Navy, Cajun Craze, First Edition DSP
Extras:  Square Lattice EF

CCMC 161

I had seen this colour challenge last week and had wanted to complete it.  This morning I had some time to play in my room and came up with this card.  I've had Word Play for quite some time and use many of the sentiments in it, however I hadn't found the opportunity to use this one for anything.  On most of my cards I use punches to add extra layers but I really like the look of sentiments stamped right on the patterned paper, so I gave it a whirl.  I like it.  Once again, Fabulous Florets has proven to be an amazing set.  It fits pretty much any occasion, and gives you the versatility to use many colours.

Stamps:  Word Play, Fabulous Florets
Ink:  Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Basic Black
Paper:  Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Basic Black, Whisper White
Extras:  Basic Black grosgrain ribbon, silver brads

If you're looking for a challenge blog, this is a good one Create with Connie & Mary.  They have a great selection of colour and layout challenges, using all Stampin' Up colours.

Patience is a Virtue (however overrated it may be)

As promised, here is a shot of one of my new toys.  On my little trip to Ever After (where I spent way more than I intended) the girl who owns the shop told me all about this little toy.  It's a set of dies that cut neat little strips which you use with a quilling tool to make these chrysanthemums.

I carried it around the store with me for about half an hour before deciding that I would take the hit and buy it.  I've been on a little binge making these tiny journals (you can't tell in the photo, but it's only 4.5" X 3.25" - really cute) and this was the perfect place to put a little flower.  I use my larger flower dies for the regular sized journals that I make, but this one was a little small for that so I tried it out here instead.  I think it would be the perfect little gift for someone's purse, or for a small person that wanted to have a beginner diary.  It took me a bit of fidgeting and more patience than I wanted to exercise, but it came out looking pretty great.

Paper:  Melon Mambo, Pear Pizzazz, Daffodil Delight
Extras:  Cuttlebug Chrysanthemum die, Pool Party ruffled ribbon, Butterfly punch

Petite Pocket

Yes, I am officially the world's worst blogger.  I get a little side-tracked by the sun.  July was the worst month EVER for weather (rain, EVERYDAY), so since the sun's been out, so have I.

However, I have made a commitment to myself to create at least 2 little projects each day and it seemed like the perfect time to try out this die.  I love the size of it (perfect for a gift card or some cash - if you wanted to fold a scratch and win, they would fit too).  I tried a few options out, but seem to have misplaced them and this is the only one I took a picture of.  Hope you like it!

It really didn't take very long to put this little baby together.  A few runs through the BS, punch a few scallops and crunch them up, add a little glue and voila!  ( I love that word.)

I've got a few new fun things to play with this afternoon that I picked up on a mid-week weekend trip to Kelowna.  I'd been trying to get into this store on the past couple of trips but I was always there on a Sunday and wasn't in town when she opened up.  It's a good thing that this was my first trip in there or I'd probably be living in a box by now due to over-spending.  If you're in the Kelowna area, or need a reason to go there, this store  Ever After is a must see.  The girl in there is just about the loveliest person you've ever met, and clearly passionate about what she does.  Though I went in there telling myself I'd just buy a few sheets of paper, I somehow managed to come out spending $120.  Hmmm....  Weird how that happens...  Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the new things I picked up there.

What's the Difference?

In the past few weeks, I haven't really been very good at posting.  For the whole month of July, it rained.  I mean it.  Everyday it rained.  This is supposed to be summer, but apparently whoever is in charge of the weather didn't get the memo.

And then, summer arrived!  The sun has finally been out for a week now, and I have been out with it.  I've still been crafting away in the morning while drinking my coffee, and in the evening when it gets cool.  I haven't been posting anything because I'm in mass production mode, trying to get a start on craft fair stuff (Close up is a magnet with some retired DSP).  This morning however, I woke up thinking about how much I like black and white together, and decided I throw together a card.  When I finally poured my coffee and made it to my craft room, it seemed like red needed to be added to the mix.

Stamps:  Fabulous Florets, Teeny Tiny Wishes

Ink:  Real Red

Paper:  Basic Black, Whisper White

Extras:  Decorative Label punch, Modern Label punch, Word Window punch, Perfect Polka Dots EF, Fun Flowers BS die

And this last one has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, but I have the most hilarious dog ever and figured I needed to share this pic.  My husband was trying to get a nice picture of us together, but she was only interested in licking my face.