Happy Birthday to my Princess!

I love it when you find a stamp that is just PERFECT for an occasion! One that when you see it, you totally let out a SQUEEE at it's perfectness! That's how I felt about MFT's Pure Innocence Birthday Princess:


In my last post I mentioned that I spent my time in Columbia coloring a whole slew of those adorable birthday princesses:


I was making thank you cards for Courtney's birthday. Here's my little birthday princess:


If you remember last year's birthday, yes, this was just a scaled-down rehash of the same party, LOL! It's what the birthday girl wanted, and since it's all new friends here in Georgia, why not? The MFT image worked perfectly for the thank yous because the party was princess-themed, and the favors were little princess & prince crowns!


One thing I did differently this year - I made a princess castle cake! It was actually really easy to do, and it made the birthday girl very happy (despite the cake's lopsidedness!)


One little tip about the card - I wanted to put little pink flower gems on the crowns, but I didn't have my Hero Arts gem stash with me in Columbia. Instead I bought some they had at the store where I was working and colored them with my Copics. I love that you can do that!


My little princess turned four this year. I know everyone says this about their kids, but truly, I cannot believe she's four already! Remember her first princess dress (and one of my all-time favorite cards, hee hee)?I need to treasure these princess days, they will be gone before I know it!

• Stamps: Birthday Princess from My Favorite Things, sentiment from Flourishes
• Paper: SU pink, GP white, BoBunny polka dot
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers
• Other: Martha Stewart heart tape, Fiskars scallop border punch, Spellbinders die, Kaiser gems

Race for the Cure!!

Today is an exciting day - I made a card!! Let's see, carpal tunnel surgery #2 on Tuesday, first post-surgery card on Friday. Not too shabby!! Of course, I don't have full use of my hand yet. I still have a difficult time grasping things (HA! I'm talking about my hands! No jokes about my feeble brain, please!) ...I cannot hold a pen to color, for example. And if you know me, you know I love to color. But today's card has none of that. But it was still fun to make!


I realize it's not October anymore - but really, we can't only think about Breast Cancer Awareness in October now can we?? Plus, this Sunday my sister and I are walking in the Austin Race for the Cure!!! Woohoo!!! I'm so proud of us. :-) As a matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and make a shameless plug here. If you'd like to make a donation to Susan G. Komen, I'd be extremely honored if you did it through my fundraising site HERE.

And now back to the card for a moment. I used my favorite breast cancer awareness stamp set, Think Pink - Fight Like a Girl from Flourishes. I adore this dress (tutu?) image with the ribbons in the skirt, it's so lovely. I thought about adding some Stickles to the ribbons to highlight them a little, but realized I cannot yet squeeze a bottle of Stickles. As a matter of fact, I found this card came together quite quickly when many of my decisions on what to add were determined by whether or not I was ABLE to add them! LOL!

I found inspiration for my card from Taylor's latest sketch challenge:


And one more thing before I go - I wanted to give you an update on my last little cancer-related fundraiser. I'm happy and proud to report that my card auction raised $66.26 for Livestrong. YAY! A great big, heartfelt thanks to those of you who bid!

Thanks for stopping by today! Not sure how much stamping I'll do in the next week or so, but I'll try! And I'll also pop back in with some photos from The Race for the Cure!

• Stamps: Fight Like a Girl from Flourishes
• Paper: Bazzill pink CS, Stampin' Up vanilla CS, October Afternoon DP
• Ink: Ranger Distress Ink (Spun Sugar, Tea Dye)
• Accessories: Stampin' Up scallop edge punch, silk ribbon, American Crafts ribbon, Making Memories brads

Beer Friday!

Last weekend I got to hang out at Archiver's for a mini retreat - it was GREAT, lots of time making cards and chatting with some new friends. Made me happy. :-) I sell cards locally at Old Koenig Engraving & Gifts - they carry a lot of beer steins and pub glasses, so my friend (the owner) has been asking me to make beer-themed cards for the store. Sooooo, that was my focus last weekend! Here's the first one:


The beer mugs are made with an old Stampin' Up set, "Treat Yourself" - they are supposed to be coffee mugs, but I figure color them yellow and add a little Liquid Applique foam, and you've got beer! I'll probably be posting beer cards for the next several Fridays, so if you don't like looking at them, you might want to avoid me on Fridays. But otherwise - cheers!

Have a great weekend!

• Stamps: Treat Yourself from Stampin' Up, Menswear from Flourishes (sentiment)
• Paper: white, red, blue, DP from Fancy Pants Designs
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers
• Accessories: Liquid Applique, button, linen thread, rickrack (CTMH), machine stitching

Breast Cancer Awareness Blog Hop(e)

Michelle in Boise had the fabulous idea to organize a blog hop for Breast Cancer Awareness. Like most people, I have been personally touched by this horrible disease - my Gramma is a SURVIVOR. She fought it like a girl!! So when I heard about the hop, I had to jump right in and play along! It also gave me the perfect excuse to get my wonderful new Fight Like A Girl set from Flourishes inky!! I absolutely adore this set, have you seen it? Flourishes was generous enough to donate a few copies of it to our SCS Shoebox Swap here in Austin, as well as some of their delicious Classic cardstock for everyone to sample. Me and my Copics are loving this paper!! So I am sending out a great big thank you to Jan Marie and the Flourishes team - another fabulous, generous company that I love! Let's see, what else? I decided to play along with the latest Mojo Monday sketch for my card. It was also a perfect excuse to use my sweet little pink ribbon beads I found at the craft store recently - love them!!

Alrighty, so now you want to continue along the blop hop and check out what Martha created! I bet it's beautimous!! And if you just happened upon my post, make sure and head back to the beginning at Michelle's blog. Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Fight Like A Girl from Flourishes
• Paper: Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose, Pink Pirouette, Flourishes white, The Paper Studio DP
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, SU Pretty in Pink, Copic markers
• Accessories: letter & ribbon beads, embroidery floss, Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder, Marvy punches

Mmm cupcakes!!

I'm posting cards two days in a row, can ya believe it?! Well this one came together quite quickly, so it's not THAT shocking, really. :-) Today I'm breaking from my goal of featuring the stamp companies I adore, but only briefly - next post I'll be back with another one!! This fun and yummy card was inspired by a beautiful butterfly card created by sweet Lisa of papergrace cards & crafts. She's one of my Twitter buddies and shared the photo on there - as soon as I saw it I felt an overpowering urge to CASE it! :-) But even though I own a Martha Stewart butterfly punch, I couldn't help but reach for the cupcakes instead! My color combo came from this week's Color Throwdown - Elegant Eggplant, Bordering Blue & Rich Razzleberry. I hope they don't consider it cheating that I added all that Kraft! LOL! So with a beautiful card as inspiration and the color combo figured it, it's no wonder this one came together quickly! I ran the tops of my cupcakes through my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder. The sentiment is one of my favorites, I use it all the time, especially when there are cupcakes involved! It's from a set by Flourishes. I don't know about you, but I'm totally craving a cupcake now!! I'm off to find one - thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Sentiment from Flourishes
• Paper: Kraft, Bordering Blue, Elegant Eggplant, Rich Razzleberry
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
• Accessories: Martha Stewart cupcake punch, SU ribbon, Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, Making Memories straight pin, embroidery floss

Post-Memorial Day Food Coma!

I don't know about you, but this is how I felt yesterday! We had a nice little cookout here with family - although ours involved smoked chicken, not hamburgers. But I didn't have a smoked chicken stamp. :-) I made this card to play along with two of the card challenges on the Stampin' Out Alzheimers site. Have you checked it out yet? I'm telling you - you should!! It only takes a small donation to an important cause to get into the site. They have done such a fabulous job!! Already lots of freebies, challenges and giveaways happening!! So exciting!! For this card I used my cute little Our Craft Lounge elephant. Sprawled out like that, he just looks to me like he's over-indulged in hamburgers! (not to mention a brewsky or two!) The beer mug is from Flourishes, and the fun hamburger stamp is from Hambo Stamps. I spelled out the sentiment with some Stampin' Up peg alphabet stamps (which one exactly I am forgetting at the moment...!). One of the challenges I played was to STITCH on a card. *snort* A no-brainer for me, I do it all the time. I feel like such a cheat when I claim to be playing a challenge like that. But hey, they are offering a prize! So sssh... don't tell that I do it all the time, ok?? I also played a Color Throwdown challenge from a few weeks back - Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze & Certainly Celery. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are easing back into the daily grind ok. I have a ton of stamping to do this week, yikes! I'm going to a huge SCS shoebox swap in north Dallas on Saturday, and I haven't even designed my card yet, much less cut out the nearly 50 kits needed for the swap. Someday I will learn not to procrastinate...!! Thanks for stopping by today!!

If anyone is still interested...

I've been meaning to post these things for ages now! I've mentioned in the past that I had a bunch of leftover pink and Kraft papers, and that you'll be seeing creations in this color combo from me for all eternity. I made a little badge holder mini book, a From Courtney's Closet card, and a design team submission. Well this is what started it all - Courtney's birth announcements! Of course I had to go with a cupcake theme for my little Cupcake's announcements! By the time I finally got these things mailed out, her birth was old news - but at least I finished them...! I also made matching thank you cards with the same cupcake theme. I made last week's Stamp Club projects with the same pink and Kraft paper, and by George, I think I'm finally about out of it!! I'll show you those sometime in the next week - and then, you'll be happy to know, this blog may be pink and Kraft free for a while! ;-)

But if you do happen to like cupcakes and cute baby girls, be sure to tune in tomorrow for this week's From Courtney's Closet... And thanks for stopping by today.

A challenge three'fer!

ETA: Oops! I wasn't supposed to be posting so much info about these challenges on my blog!! Silly me! So I've deleted most of this post. If you want more details about the challenges, become a Fan Club member!!!
I mentioned a couple posts ago about the Dare to Get Dirty '08 challenges over at Splitcoast and said you should be playing them. I'd like to clarify that. FIRST you should play yesterday's From Courtney's Closet challenge, and THEN you should play some of the DTGD challenges... ;-) Last night I was able to crank out a card that fit three of the challenges, woohoo! This beautiful image is from my Coffee with Friends* set from Flourishes. And in case you're curious - I'm a few challenges behind now on getting them all done (three from today plus one other...) but I have ideas in my head for all of them. Just need to find some stamping time! Guess I should have been stamping NOW rather than blogging, oops! I hear the kiddos waking up, darn it! :-) Oh and if you're curious about the Cuttlebug situation - I am using my partial B plate and continuing to use my Cuttlebug, and it's working fine so far. Thanks to those who replied to my post with suggestions!! Being the slow sort that I am, it actually hadn't occurred to me to just use the big broken piece - duh! Ok better go, have a great weekend!!!

• Stamps: Coffee With Friends from Flourishes
• Paper: Gable Green, Basic Black, Whisper White, Making Memories DP
• Ink: Adirondack Pitch Black, Copic marker, white gel pen
• Accessories: Spellbinders dies, Swiss Dots embossing folder, Cuttlebug, May Arts ribbon, straight pin

* if you love this set as much as I do, fyi it's currently out of stock at Flourishes but will be back soon - I realized this when looking for the link, it's missing from the store at the moment!

Pure summer

I am absolutely in love with these Poppy Patch stamps from Flourishes. It's one of those sets for me - as soon as I saw it (when Sharon posted it on her blog the night is was released!) I immediately went and bought it. It's just sooooo beautiful. But honestly that's a problem for me. I have a really tough time making cards with Flourishes sets, because they are just so stinkin' beautiful! I am much more at ease with cute stuff. Beautiful and me don't get along very well. But I am quite happy with how this one turned out. Originally I went in the stamp room thinking I'd watercolor - I had just finished rereading some of Leslie's fabulous tutorials (<-- that should be the link to all the tutorials she's posted so far - she completely rocks, she's my coloring (and general cardmaking and gardening...) idol!!) but mine turned out way too ugly and embarrassing to ever display in public. So then of course I had to give it another try, but this time I gave up on the watercoloring (for tonight) and turned to my best friend, my Copic markers. I really have no clue what I'm doing with the Copics, I really need to go to one of those certification classes people keep bragging about... I really hope someday they have one in Texas! At any rate, my method for using the Copics is just mess around with them until you get to a point that you like what you did, even if it's not done "correctly" and even if you have no clue how to shade things right. I really wish I knew how to shade - I know you're supposed to imagine which side the light is falling on the object and go from there, but I just can't seem to get that. I'm sure my end result is as if there is light coming from every which way!! Oh well. It makes me happy when I color, and that's all that matters!! So after I was done coloring these gorgeous poppies, I put them onto a fairly simple layout of a card. Of course I had to squeeze in some polka dots! I played with adding ribbon for quite a while, but in the end decided it just took away from the poppies so I left it ribbonless. So yay, I've conquered my scary but beautiful poppy set! Maybe someday I'll figure out how to color my lilacs!! Thanks for stopping by today. :-)

• Stamps: Poppy Patch from Flourishes
• Paper: So Saffron, Real Red, Neenah Solar White, Making Memories DP
• Ink: Adirondack Pitch Black, Copic markers for coloring, So Saffron sponged along the edge
• Accessories: sponge dauber, tiny brads from my stash

One big, bold shirt!

I made this card for Carter and Courtney to give to their Daddy on Sunday. I played along with Sharon's stamp simply challenge to "go bold" (ssnotime39). I cheated a little because this blue & red combo is one I love and have more or less used before - but the shirt being so big, red and plaid was fairly bold for me! (and btw - Joel would never leave the house wearing something like this, LOL -but he did like the card) I also used some "different" blues - the lightest blue is SU Bashful Blue textured paper, but the other two blues are from a Bazzill pack I've had for a while. The shirt and tie are from the Flourishes Menswear set. I like this card, but I don't love it - it's one I created with the missing mojo Saturday night. *sigh* I haven't stamped since, I'm a little afraid it will still be MIA... wish me luck!! Thanks for stopping by today.
(ETA: I am obviously NOT a fashionista - I was informed this is not PLAID but instead ARGYLE!! Oops...)

• Stamps: Menswear from Flourishes
• Paper: SU Prints DP, SU Bashful Blue textured cardstock, Bazzill cardstock
• Ink: Adirondack Pitch Black
• Accessories: SU Real Red brads, 1" circle punch