Giggle Greetings and Love You More...

These were the two stamp sets that I picked out for my stamp set of the month club.  The ladies that attend get the stamp set and make four cards with it….great fun!  It's a time when we try out different card formats and/or techniques.  Over the next 4 days I'll share a card from each set that we made.

Both groups made the double pocket card--yay--I could use some of my retired designer series paper.  (I have a d.s.p. problem--I buy it then don't use it because it's too cute and then I end up with tons of paper--totally makes sense--right?)  The tutorial for this was on Dawn's Stamping Thoughts here.

Love this color combo and I love that paper--I think it was the SAB paper from last year?

Here's the same card style with the Giggle Greetings stamp used:

I changed out the baker's twine for some retired ribbon that looks much nicer when we made the card.   

The cherries on the left tag were from the cupcake punch and had crystal effects on them.  Very cute!

I'll be back tomorrow with the next installment!  Off to work on school stuff now.

Happy Birthday, Mya!

We celebrated the first birthday of this little sweetheart this weekend!  Mya Jean is just starting to walk and chatter and she has one of the sweetest smiles I've ever seen---but then again, I'm a bit biased as the grandma.

She might have inherited a love of sweets from Grandma….

• Here's the birthday I created for her….I cased the punched animals from a pin on pinterest by Doris Denman.  
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I hope I'll be back this week with more stamping!

Snow Banner with Festive Flurry Snowflakes

Our family is blessed in so many ways and to be honest--we don't need anything.  So instead of exchanging Christmas presents we take the money would've spent and give it to a charity of choice.  This year we gave to Heifer International.  I've said all of this because I'm trying to explain about our "white elephant" gift exchange.  This year I made 2 banners using the banner kit, festive flurry snowflakes and punched out snowflakes from an old big shot thingy.  I forgot to take a picture of the first one and then quickly tried to snap a photo of the 2nd before I wrapped it up…but the exposure was horrible!

Sorry--it's the best I could do!  They turned out really cool, but to be honest--I should have made one for myself--because now I totally don't want to make another one--those little snowflakes were a pain in the butt!

Calm Christmas

Every year a Dr.'s office in town asks me to make their "bonus check" Christmas cards and every year I say yes, but always wait until right when they need them to get busy with the cards.  So this year I had a SU Party at my house and then had 10 cards to make….and was up until 2:30 a.m. finishing them.
Here's what I came up with:

I will say that they did look better in real life--not sure the colors are true in the photo.  Here's the inside of the card…

I sprayed a bit of sparkly over the front of them and they really were quite striking.  

Joyful Christmas Stamp Set of the Month

Hey all!  Sorry it's been so long since I've posted…it's just a busy time and with Thanksgiving and Christmas so close together it seems even more busy!  Here are the cards we made for the Joyful Christmas set.

This uses gold embossing powder on vellum and then the backside of the vellum is either sponged or colored.  I had a horrible time getting my vellum to dry so it was difficult getting it adhered to the card…anyone else have this trouble when using the stained glass technique?  I cased this card from Natasha at inkingoutofthebox.com

This one is so striking, but very easy.  Silver embossing powder on vellum, rhinestones and the beautiful Frosted Finishes embellishments.  I cased this, but it didn't have a watermark so I don't know who did it--but it's awesome!!

This is simple, but understated….I changed the ribbon and designer paper in my final--thought this one was just too….blah.  This was cased from Natasha at the same link as the first card.  

This is probably more my style than any of the others--love the real red agains the crumb cake.  I cased this from Sabine who is a demo in Germany.  Here's a link to her site.

I'll be back tomorrow to share the cards I did for bonus checks at a Dr.'s office using Calm Christmas.

SU Weekly Deals for Nov. 12 - 18

Hey my stampin' friends!  I'm going to be sending an order in tomorrow that includes some of these items so if you'd like to tag along with me to save on shipping let me know asap!  I've been waffling on the bow die for awhile, but just in the past week I found 3 different ideas that used it in alternative ways .....and now it's on SALE!

I sure hope I haven't waited too long....and it's sold out!

Halloween Treats

I have a first grade class of 25 students this year...they are a great group of kids and I'm enjoying our time together!  Every year (since I live in the country) I sit out in front of our school and let the kids come trick or treat me there.  I've done it for so many years that I often have past students come and visit me too!  Here are the treats that I made for my kiddos!  The bat idea I got from Julie Davison and I found the sucker idea on pinterest--Sara Stamper is the blog I found the directions on.  They were in cm  so I had to translate to inches....but they came together very easily.

I also give them a book along with the treats! 

A side note--towards the end of my time sitting in front of my school 4 middle school aged boys were coming down the street and as they huddled together about a block away I thought "oh great--what are they planning?"  and to be honest, I was a little nervous.  I was sitting in my lawn chair huddled in blankets since it was a bit cold and here they came.  I chatted with them and gave them some candy and as they walked away two of them held up some money and said, "We saw you from across the park and thought you were homeless....we were coming to give you some money."  Aww....made my night and really touched my heart.