Whirlpool of Imagination

Enjoying some Happy Mail

ETA: Ooops, this should have posted before the post following this. I had it on the wrong status - oh well, two posts for the price of one!

Happy Friday night!! It has been a busy day so this will be quick. I did not get a chance to stamp during the day today so I have some happy mail for you to look at instead.

This card came from my pen pal Lisa. I really like the white with just a splash of fun color.

This great flower pot card came from my pen pal Gail.

I haven't tried these yet so it was really neat to see one in person. I have a tough time visualizing stuff in my head with just word directions. I really need to see, or even better, hold a sample (and if I only see the sample, I need it broken down into parts). I think that is why I did so bad in biochemistry back in grad school. But that's another story....

This is another great card and it came from my pen pal Jenny. I adore the color combination and am impressed with all the heat embossing and cutting effort that went into all this!

I did a bit of creating tonight because I was at the first class of Stamping Around Connecticut. I will have a cute project to show you tomorrow but I'm beat so I'm heading off to bed. It's back there again tomorrow for four more classes. Can't wait!

Have a great night!

For the Birds

Hi everyone! I had a busy but super fun day filled with stamping! Today was the second day of Stamping Around Connecticut and we had a busy day(but such a good time too!).

The first project of the weekend was presented by Julia Aston. We created the most adorable bird houses. These templates were originally showcased by Nichole Heady and can be found on her blog.

Here is the first birdhouse we made. The birdhouse itself is a template. The roof and floor are pieces cut from nestabilities. The roof was stamped with the Retro Background set in chai ink (both from Papertrey). The bird is a nestie die and I like his cute little pearl eye as a cute accent. The best wishes sentiment was stamped in black and also from Papertrey.

I liked this little template - it was easy to cut out and use and the variation of themes/seasons is endless.

Here is the larger birdhouse that we worked on. The house template was cut out first. This one had more cuts and was definitely the more time consuming of the two projects. Before assembling the house, we created the clapboard front first by inking the bottom of paper strips which were then attached to another cutout of the front of the house. This was then adhered to the template front and now this little house has a lot of character. The roof was stamped with the same items/colors as the smaller house. The bird was created with nesties with the smaller bird die used for the wing. I really liked this little set and may have to add it to my ever growing collection!

Here are the two birdhouses together. They are currently making their home in some of my built in shelves in my dining room. I'm thinking a bunch of these would be really cute for a mantle decoration too.

That's all I have for today. My day has caught up with me and I'm ready to get into my pajamas and do a bit of reading before dropping off to sleep. Have a great night!

Thank You House

Wow - who knew that summer would mean less time for crafting???? I should have suspected it - I usually do my best work while the kids are at school. I think this week I've spent about an hour ALL WEEK at my craft table. Ah well, as my FIL likes to say, tomorrow is another day. (Or was that Scarlett O'Hara?)

One of the mom's at school is a real estate agent and she asked me to make some thank you cards that she could send to clients after they bought a house from her.

I struggled with the overall design until I went with the smaller size. For thank you notes, I generally default to this 5 x 3.5 size. It's usually just right to say what you want to without having a ton of extra writing space to fill. Once I scaled it down, the design came together much easier.

I adore this house stamp from Amuse Arts. I've had it for years and its my go to stamp for anything having to do with moving, new homes etc. The house is colored with copic and prismacolor markers (which for some reason I didn't record?!) I then added a bit of patterned paper (Scenic Route, I believe) as "grass" and then stamped the sentiment from Papertrey with SU blue ink.

The bummer is I had her company wrong and these are not the colors of the real estate agency she works for. She liked the card and I'm going to redo it with different colors (although its not coming together as easily with the new colors). We'll see what happens - the mojo worked only so long for this one - now it seems to have taken a vacation!
Hope you have a wonderful and creative day!

Today we have a CAS card - as if I do much else!!

I had to laugh at Michelle's comment yesterday about me and the CAS challenges. I really don't need a CAS challenge to do CAS do I???? Surprise, surprise - today I have a card I did for yesterday's Splitcoast CAS challenge. The challenge was to make a birthday card.

On Sunday I got the wild notion to make shaving cream backgrounds with my kids. Now, the plus to all that was Mo is down to his last can of shaving cream so we were only able to make one color set (thereby cutting down on ink and shaving cream incidents). We mixed Stampin' Up's brilliant blue with a couple of other blue shades from CTMH. We then swirled in some CTMH key lime reinker to add a bit of pizzaz to the blue.

The kids wanted more color (what kid doesn't?) so then we tried adding some pomegranate (SU). I think that was when we hit the too much color stage. One of the three color sheets came out okay but I was really alright with the kids taking those sheets and me taking the blue and green ones - LOL! What's neat is that now I have some great backgrounds already created so once I knew the direction this card was taking, it turned out to be pretty fast to create.

The stamp is from Spunky Stamps and inked with brilliant blue ink. The sentiment is from Papertrey and also inked with brilliant blue. The rest is pretty obvious. I'm off to yoga for some inner peace - namaste!

Patriotic Flowers

Happy 4th of July! I hope for all those who celebrate you had a wonderful day. We have spent the last two days at picnics and get a chance to relax tomorrow. We also saw something strange - it's called the sun. Yes, that big yellow ball made an appearance - actually had to break out the sunscreen and all.

Today I have a card that contains no stamping. I know you think I only do the CAS challenge over at Splitcoast and 97% of the time you would be right. But I went with the other 3% today and gave the Limited Supply Challenge a try. Since I have stepped a toe in the digital waters, I have downloaded several free digistamps and printed some out today since the LSC challenge was to use a digi image and/or die cut (not sure of the exact specifics) and NO STAMPING. Now, I am nothing but if not a rule follower so that is what I worked on today......

This cute little image came from a set of flower freebies from My Grafico. I printed the image with a laserjet printer onto Papertrey white cardstock. I then colored the image with copic and prismacolor markers.

Copic Markers: R29, G09
Prismacolor: navy blue

Then I added these cutest little embellishments from Stamping Bella. I believe she calls them dots. You can find them HERE under the donuts and dots section. These are the smaller sized dots.

The blue layer is die cut with my nesties.

I am off to bed early tonight - Conor had a miserable night's sleep last night so Mom had a miserable night's sleep too!

Sparklers For All

I finally got a chance to sit down and work on this week's Splitcoast CAS challenge. The challenge was to use something sparkly on your card. So I made a quickie 4th of July card.

This is a new stamp I got recently from Lizzie Anne Designs and I thought the sparkler idea was perfect for this challenge.

The image and sentiment is all one stamp and is stamped with palette noir ink. Then I took my red and my blue spica pens (the first bit of sparkle) and "colored" the sparklers. Then I used red and blue Taylor's Twinkles from Taylored Expressions for the centers of the sparklers. I also made some with Stickles in the center for variety as well.

A quick and easy 5 minute card with a bit of sparkle all set for the holiday.

And that's all the time I have today. We're off to a barbeque shortly and hoping the weather improves. Yet more rain last night and today has sidelined us a bit.

Have a great day!

Playing with Hydrangeas

Do you remember my teacher gift set post from a couple of days ago? On the last set with the Disney gift card, I showed a smaller picture of today's card.

You know I have dipped my toe in the digital stamp waters. I am so not a pro and I am not ditching my rubber/acrylic stamps anytime soon (in fact I have stamps en route to me as we speak!) but I like trying new things (I bet people who drew scoffed at rubber stamps at one time) and this gorgeous image was free.

This hydrangea image came from Nina B Designs (momtoggk on Splitcoast). She has a couple of gorgeous freebies on her blog and is now illustrating for Gina K stamps (so cool!). Anyway, back to the card. It was printed on Papertrey white cardstock using a laser printer. I then colored it with copic markers and twinkling h2o's.

Copic Markers: G09, YG17, E37
Twinkling h2o's: icy iris, periwinkle

The sentiment is from Papertrey and is stamped with french lilac (palette) ink. The added Swarovskis are tanzanite shade. I wasn't sure how the water would work with the computer printed image but no problems or smudging at all.

More rain and storms this week. Is is July or April????? I'm hoping for a rally in the weather for the holiday weekend. I was working on CAS today so check back tomorrow - I might have actually finished this week's CAS challenge!!

Trio of CAS

Good morning! I am in the summer mode and being a bit lazy. In the course of doing the CAS challenge a couple of weeks ago (the sketch one), I made this card. I really (and I mean REALLY) liked the design that I couldn't stop at just one. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have made three more of the same basic design, just changing up the colors and sentiments.

Here are the three new cards as a group. I really like the range of bright and fun colors. The flower image is from Stampin Up (God's Beauty - I don't know the name of stamp sets very often so I like to show off when I do - LOL). The circles were made with a circle punch and nesties. All other info will be listed below next to the appropriate card.

First off, lets start with my orange entry. All the stamping was done with Orangie ink (palette ink pad). The sentiment is from Green Grass Stamps. I'm not sure this company is still around. Last I heard, they had a massive sale and once everything was gone, they were not restocking. Forgive me if I am completely off base on that.

You know I couldn't do a set of varying colored cards without using my beloved Rose Red ink (from Stampin' Up). As one of my all time favorite colors, it gets used a LOT.

Both the image and sentiment are stamped with rose red. The sentiment is from Papertrey.

And finally, here is my blue creation. This time I stamped the images and sentiment with reflection blue ink (palette ink pad). The sentiment is also from Papertrey.

After these, I made myself stop. I had just received a TAC order with palette ink pads and wanted to give them a try. I'm really pleased with the iris, blue and orange shades. I have a few more colors I'd like to stock up on because I really like well these pads work with just about any stamp.

Have a fantastic day!

Final Teacher Gift Presentations

Friday finally saw the last day of school. Meghan cried all afternoon because she absolutely adores her teacher and can't bear to move on to another. Conor took it all in stride. I cried a little but then, I cry at everything. I have shown bits and pieces of the teacher's gifts over the last two weeks. Here they are, in their final presentations.

This is the gift set I was hired to create for another classroom teacher. I was given free reign as to what was in the gift set as long as I followed the purple/grey color scheme as that was the teacher's favorite.

I picked up this cute basket at Michael's and filled it with a comp notebook, paper clip bookmark, rsvp pen, set of 10 notecards, memo cube and little tin filled with candy. Most of the stamps are from Verve Visual although the memo cube was done with Stampin' Up flowers.

Here is a close up of the tag. I used the Papertrey teacher set for the sentiment and image and my nesties to cut out the shape.

Here is the final presentation of the gifts for our two teachers aides.

Inside the "gift for you" box is a gift card to Barnes and Noble. I then added an altered comp notebook, paper clip bookmar and rsvp pen to round out the gift set.

The tag was stamped with the same Papertrey set although I messed up and made it with two scallop circles. I think I prefer the straight circle with the scallop.

And here is the gift set we gave as a class to Conor's kindergarten teacher. We found out she is going to Disney on vacation this summer so that was our theme.

First we got her a Disney gift card. What a great thing - it can be used for just about anything at Disney. I then made up a frame and photo book to go with it. That's a sneak preview of the card for her. You won't see that close up until tomorrow.

Here's a close up of the frame. I used Recollections paper from their Disney line to cover a frame. Her kids are older so I wanted to go with something that wasn't as cutesy as mouse ears.

I added a sprakle star from My Mind's Eye and a button with twine just to add a little something. I thought this paper was great so I wanted to let that be the star.

This is one of those little brag book photo albums that have the plain covers. I used the same sparkly paper for my new cover, used another sparkly star and put that over an old sticker that I had that I thought worked well with the disney theme.

And here is the frame and photo book together. I had a tough time seeing the finaly product when I started this one and I had a few fits and starts but overall, I'm pleased with the way they came out in the end.

And that draws my teacher gift adventure to an end, at least for this year. I'll be ready to do it all over again next June!! Until that time, I'm going to start enjoying our summer.

I'm experimenting with digi stamps and working on CAS cards so that will be some of what you will see in this upcoming week. Have a great day!

Daisy Basket

Aaaah, there is nothing like inking up a new stamp. You know I have a weakness for all things Papertrey. This month I ordered the new basket (and the sayings) set. I really like all the options it gives - a year's worth of wonderful card and gift ideas. Today was give the teachers their gifts day so I was finally able to work on something else. I checked out the Splitcoast CAS challenge as you know I'm all about clean and simple. The challenge this week was to paper piece and as soon as I saw this basket, it just screamed paper piecing to me.

All stamps used are from Papertrey. I stamped the flowers first with palette noir ink. I then stamped a basket below them with Stampin' Up chocolate chip ink. I stamped the basket again in chocolate on patterned paper (Doodlebug blue jean sweet stripes). I cut the handles out and attached the patterned paper.

The colors that I went with on this challenge were loosely based on the color challenge for the week (although none of these papers/colors are Stampin' Up so I won't claim to have accomplished that challenge also).

The flowers and basket are colored with copic and spica markers.
Copic Markers: G09, E37, YR09, Y17
Spica Markers: sand (#19), lemon (#05)

Finally I stamped the sentiment is pacific point (SU) and added the teeny tiny twinkle from Taylored Expressions. The shapes themselves are cut from nesties.

We are down to two more days of the school year - all the craziness will end soon and summer will finally be able to start! Have a great night!