Clean & Simple Birthday Card

CAS cards are really my favorite sort to make.  Not a million things to coordinate and arrange, just let the designs of the stamps or papers shine and show their awesomeness!  I love monochromatic cards for this same reason; I won't struggle to get the color combination just so, because it's all blue and white, like Delft china or Wedgewood.

Remember the Top Note Die?  The original stitched edge die by Stampin' Up! Now they're all the rage again, but as Thinlets.  I heat-embossed the flowers from Just Believe in Whisper White, stamped the sentiment from Express Yourself in Night of Navy onto the classic shape cut from Marina Mist card stock.  Of course I used the MISTI to get everything where I wanted it... then a couple of glue dots and white butterflies from the Beautiful Wings embosslit all topped off with two tiny self-adhesive pearls.

This card was created for the Happy Little Stampers July CAS challenge.  Click  to see all the fab creations!

Teacher-themed Card Carrier

I love my kids' schools. So. Much.  Their teachers are just wonderful and I love it when I can find time to make them a gift.   This year, instead of a plain-Jane box of note cards, I wanted to make a case that was just as cute and useful.  I'm glad I stocked up on this Fruits and Flowers DSP while it was still available; the apples with heart-shaped cores are so perfect for elementary-school teachers, don't you think?

Just a little bow to keep the holder closed provides a little embellishment 

without covering too many apples!

Rather than cover any of that adorable pattern, I put an inspirational quote from the Pursuit of Happiness stamp set on the spine of the "book".  I put some sticky strip on the seam between the white and patterned paper so the ribbon would stay covering it.

Inside I made some matching thank you cards and monogrammed note cards.

Also included a few that weren't so teacher-y...

The DSP coordinates with Calypso Coral and Gumball Green, the colored cards are Kiwi Kiss stamped in Old Olive.

Stamp sets:

     Thanks from Perfect Punches

     Swirls from Everything Eleanor

     Thank you from Lacy & Lovely

     Hello from Fresh Vintage

     Monogram from Lovely Letters

I'm going to post a tutorial for the card holder in a day or two.  Pretty quick to put together once I figured all the measurements.  Who would you make one for?

Edited: Click here to go to the full tutorial!

Father's Day Cards That Kids Can Make

Last night I finally found time to craft up some ideas for Father's Day cards that are simple enough for grade-school children to make, and that don't use the Big Shot, since this class is happening in my garage!!  Whenever I'm making cards with kids, I always pull out the long-retired Pun Fun stamp set... cute, colorable, and well-suited to CAS (clean & simple) card designs.  

First, a card for coffee-loving Dads:

Love you a Latte from Pun Fun, cups from Every Little Bit, the largest Circle Punch and Window Frames Framelits (I'll just cut a few before class!)

Next, for the father who is fun:

Pun Fun rocket & Every Little Bit star.

Then I found this adorable dinosaur in a sandbox, and I bought it online, but can't remember the company:

Does Dad brighten your day?

Sun from Every Little Bit and sentiment from a Sale-a-bration set: You Brighten My Day.

Does he mean the world to you?

Uses Chalk Talk, Chalk Borders & Open Sea stamp sets.

Thanks for stopping by!  Please let me know in the comments which one of these ideas you think the dad in your life would really love.

Links to previous Father's Day cards, maybe not as kid-friendly...

Lawnmower Punch Art

Golf Punch Art

Love those tools, handy dad?

BS&J Take it or Leave it Stamp Off Challenge

Today we're playing along with my talented friends: Buffy, Susan & Jackie (hence BS&J).  Be sure to click the links and check out their creations!  My daughter and I both managed to incorporate ribbon and doilies, but I stopped her before she added cupcake images to the gorgeous card she had made!!  I reminded her that it's Take it or Leave it, so if there was no food, she was okay!!

I used a Stampin' Up! doily Thinlet on So Saffron CS, and glued a couple dozen scraps of Certainly Celery, Midnight Muse and Real Red behind it.  The center is embellished with a retired In-Color Adornment that I have always thought looked like candies, so that is my "food" element!!  The Chocolate Chip card base is embossed with a contraband folder by Tim Holtz and the little sentiment is from Lovely Little Labels (retired).  Most of my colors have food names, though celery with chocolate and saffron probably looks better than it tastes!

DD's card uses Papillion Potpourri and coordinating punch, doily stamp from Petal Potpourri, and sentiment from Chalk Talk (retired).  We both used the same Certainly Celery twill ribbon (retired).  Sorry for the shadows on her card... I'm going to say it's the screen, not that my windows need cleaning!

 Buffy

 Susan 

 Jackie 

Serene Lagoon

You know that rare and wonderful feeling when you make a card and it looks just as good in your hand as it did in your imagination?  This is one of those cards for me.  I liked this week's sketch at Mojo Monday, and thought it would look great with the butterfly circle stamp from Serene Silhouettes.  Found a sweet little sentiment in the You're a Gem set that fit inside a circle stamp from Collage Curios... but what about a color scheme?  I had just gotten some cute paper from My Mind's Eye, and it is a near-perfect match to SU! Lost Lagoon and Calypso Coral... and here is the result.  Now to find a worthy recipient!!

Ribbon is Whisper White Taffeta, also from Stampin' Up!

A Big Spring Thank You

My 10-year old is really getting on the card-making bandwagon this week!  She loves the idea of a challenge, I think that's helping!  She started with a sketch we found from MyPaperCrafting and Melon Mambo ink, with Daffodil Delight DSP, some Pretty in Pink (I think) cardstock, and an edge punch from American Girl Crafts.  Retired Stampin' Up! stamps (Beautiful Bunch & Perfect Punches) and punches for the flower and sentiment.

Be sure to check out the other lovely submissions to the Watercooler Wednesday Challenge - this week the theme is Spring!

CAS(e) 217 & LIM 324

This was a fun one!   I colored the flowers from Beautiful Bunch (retired) with SU!'s chalk pastels (also retired); why did they discontinue those?  I love the soft look, even if they are a little messy.  I used the coordinating Fun Flower punch (retiring soon!) to make a mask so the chalk didn't end up all over the front of the card.   Finally, MISTI to the rescue for that nice, straight sentiment! I never could get the Stamp-a-ma-jig to work for me.  Yes, it took a little patience, but without the MISTI it wouldn't have mattered HOW long or how careful I was, that sentiment would have been crooked and my card would have looked yuck.  Now, it's YILM!!

Created for the CAS(e) this Sketch and Less is More Challenges!

CAS Throwdown

Made this card for CAS Colours and Sketches #218 and this week's Color Throwdown...  All Stampin' Up! papers and embellishments, but no stamps!  gasp!  Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral and Green Galore.

My daughter wanted to try the Color Throwdown as well, so here is her card...

Less is More Color Challenge

Blue and brown - one of my favorite color combinations, and it's the theme for this week's color challenge at Less is More!  I used Crumb Cake & Early Espresso cardstock and heat embossed the image from Serene Silhouettes in Tempting Turquoise.  Sentiment from Petite Pairs.

To see the rest of the amazing CAS submissions to the challenge, visit the Less is More blog.

Spring-a-bration blog hop!

While here in NY we are wishing for a break from the freezing cold Mother Nature is dishing out this week, Stampin' Up! has started Sale-a-bration (SAB).  They're dishing out free products with every order of $50.  Gotta love that!!  I'm sure you're also loving the projects my friends are sharing using product from the new Spring Catalog as well as showcasing some of the exclusive SAB freebies.  Links to the rest of the blog hop are at the bottom of this post.

I'm assembling little love notes (3"x3" cards) for a teacher appreciation luncheon at my kids' school, and I made many variations before the organizer and I agreed on the final design.

 First, Calypso Coral with Pool Party.

How about Domestic Goddess DSP? 

 But the organizer wanted a Real Red , so I tried heat embossing in white with a pearl center from the Pretties Kit.  I was worried my kids would graduate before I heat-embossed 65 flowers, and then the pearl didn't give quite the look I was going for, so here is what I finally settled on...

All of the designs shown here (can you believe there were more!!) use the Mixed Blossom and Pretty Petites stamp sets with coordinating punches - Blossom and Petite Curly Label.

In the final design, the flower is stamped in Craft White ink on Real Red card stock, and the flower centers are made with Whisper White cardstock cut with the Sweet Buttons Embosslit (all the cards will match, but not be identical - yay!).   The sentiment is stamped in Crumb Cake to match the card base.

Last time I checked, the Pretties Kit and Domestic Goddess DSP were available on the Clearance Rack.  All other products used are from the Main and Spring Stampin' Up! catalogs.

Finally, here are a pair of digi-cards I created using My Digital Studio (MDS2) using stamps and paper from the One Big Sale-a-bration CD.  All the exclusive SAB artwork FREE w/ your order of $50!  Too good to pass up!   One of my fave features of MDS is that you can zoom in and out on the DSP patterns inside a punch.  Pattern too big or small for your project?  No problem in MDS!!


You can hop forward or backwards to see more Stampin' Up! Spring-a-bration ideas from Buffy, Stephanie, Debbie, Christine and Jean!  

Last-minute CAS for Christmas

I always seem to find myself making a few more Christmas cards at the last minute.  Sadly, thanks to the last minute thing, I'm far less than thrilled with how these photos came out!

Single-layer card with white embossing and clear (NOT yellow) rhinestones on Basic Gray cardstock.  
Snowflake image from Stampin' Up! Mixed Bunch stamp set.  I mixed a touch of Iridescent Ice emossing powder in with the white and it gave the snowflakes a subtle sparkle that I thought was just right for the feeling of softly falling snow against the gray background.   The photo just doesn't do this card justice.   I think I'm going to try this again for holiday thank you notes using Midnight Muse cardstock and the sentiment from Curly Cute.

Embossed the same image onto white this time and sponged each snowflake with Island Indigo and a touch of Not Quite Navy.  The sentiment is from one of the German sets available in the USA, Kleiner Wortschatz, and it's embossed in white onto the colored base.  

Hope you enjoyed these... have a peaceful holiday!

Stampin' Lllamas Christmas Blog Hop

It's here, it's here!!   That wonderful time of year when the elections are finally over and the thoughts of crafters turn to Christmas, and if you haven't started yet, it's time to get going!  I made some Christmas cards back in August, you can take a look at them *here* or click Christmas in the list of Labels in the left column to see all my Christmas projects.

I created 2 versions of my second Christmas card this year.  First a very simple version that would work well for mass-production, and then one that I've "stepped up" with dry-embossing, a colored base and a decorated interior panel.

  Stamp sets: Everything Eleanor, Delightful Dozen 

Colors: Garden Green, Raspberry Ripple, Whisper White  

Tools: Small Heart and Owl Builder punches, Framed Tulips embossing folder

Accessories:  Stampin' Dimensionals, glue dots, white taffeta ribbon

Techniques:  inked only the outer portion of the medallion stamp with a marker to create the wreath,  faux bow is punch art, fork bow dyed with Raspberry Ripple ink 

Finally, I used the same medallion stamp from Everything Eleanor with images from the Mixed Medley Hostess Set to create a square Christmas tag.  Colors are Always Artichoke and Raspberry Ripple.  

Follow the links below to see all the wonderful holiday projects in this blog hop from other Stampin' Up! Independent Demonstrators.

Fall Thank you

Here's a quick Thank You note I whipped up this morning using the always wonderful Day of Gratitude stamp set.  You can make this card without square punches, but I've found that I just LOVE how perfect the  smallest squares are when using a punch, and of course I love the ability to align the stamped image exactly where I want it within the punched shape.  I've used Confetti card stock, as well as Rich Razzleberry, Pumpkin Pie, Cajun Craze and Old Olive.  Each image is glued to a matching mat which is popped up with dimensionals.

You can't see one of my favorite things about this card, tho'... I have the marker in Cajun Craze, so I used the fine point to write my message inside.  Also, my handwriting didn't look too horrific today, so that was a big plus!!

MDS Happiness

A friend posted this wonderful quote on Facebook, and I thought what a great little frameable it would make with the right artwork around it.   I started with one of the designer templates that came with My Digital Studio, called Sunny Day.  I tweaked it to create the trees and house by filling punches with different digital DSP, and found the sun in one of the collections of embellishments.

Halloween Llama Blog Hop

So excited that the second in our series of Fall-i-days blog hops is finally here, and I'm at the beginning of it!   I know my fellow demonstrators have come up with fun and inspiring projects for you!   For links to all their blogs and all of our llama hops, click on the gorgeous banner up there that Stephanie created!

The first thing I'd like to share with you today is a Halloween card.   I love the versatility of stamp sets like this one with lots of little images; they work for treats, tags, cards, anything really!  So cute, too.

Stamps: Spooky Bingo Bits 

Ink: Basic Black, Old Olive, Rich Razzleberry, Pumpkin Pie 

Cardstock: Old Olive, Basic Black, Very Vanilla, Pumpkin Pie 

Tools / Accessories: 1" circle & Curly Label punches, Stampin' Dimensionals

Technique:  Faux Tearing (sponging w/ a torn mask) and actual tearing

Next is a teacher thank you card I created for this week's Mojo Monday sketch challenge using My Digital Studio.   Since version 2 of the software is now in full release, Stampin' Up! is donating the remaining disks of version 1 to schools.   Contact me or your local demonstrator if you would like more information.

I printed out the image from Greeting Card Kids and colored it by hand, then scanned it in and inserted it into my project like a photograph. Used the eyedropper tool to color the circles and the mat of the oval the same red as the girl's apple and the blue of the boy's book.  In the new version of the software, images can be colored digitally; so easy! 


Finally, the first card I've ever made with French Foliage!  A wedding invitation inspired me to make a card stamped with purple leaves.  What do you think?

Stamps: French Foliage, Curly Cute 

Ink: Crumb Cake, Elegant Eggplant, Rich Razzleberry 

Cardstock: Whisper White, Perfect Plum 

Accessories: Linen Thread

Technique: OSW (one-sheet wonder:  create your own patterned paper with your stamps, here I did a half sheet that I cut into strips to make a set of matching cards)

Next in the hop is Marsha, or, if you like to do things backwards, click on the other button to head back to Debbie!