Whirlpool of Imagination

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!

Altered Notebooks

The end of the school year brings my job as room mother to an end. I have really enjoyed being room mother for Conor's kindergarten class and will really miss this fabulous group of kids and parents. One of my final responsibilities is to organize the class gift. By doing the gift as a group, we can usually get something a little nicer without all having to spend too much. I have taken pictures of all the final gift sets but haven't uploaded them to my computer. Today I offer you a piece of two of the gifts.

There are three kindergarten classes at our school (we have all day kindergarten here) and to help the three teachers there are two paraprofessionals. They are a wonderful help to our teachers and are so very nice. They both like to read so the class gift is first a gift card to the bookstore. Now because I'm me and do what I do for a living, I couldn't just leave it at that so I made little somethings to go along with the gift cards.

I thought altered composition notebooks would be a nice gift. Because this is such pretty patterned paper (K & Company) I made a conscious decision to showcase that paper and keep the extras to a minimum.

The sentiment (Papertrey Ink) is stamped with palette noir ink and I used my nesties to cut out the shape. I added a few flowers at the edges and left it at that. I used the same paper to decorate an RSVP pen to go with the notebook.

Remember those clip bookmarks from yesterday's post? I made up two of these in the yellow version and will be part of the gift set.

I am itching to try the CAS challenge for the week so tomorrow I will take a break from teacher's gifts to jump into the CAS world. See you tomorrow!

Where was I?

We are at T-minus 4 and counting to the end of the school year. The kids are finally finishing up on Friday and this week I am busy with the last touches on teachers gifts and packaging it all up. Today I have samples of a quick little project that I've shown before - clip bookmarks.

I took flowers from Verve Visual and stamped them with palette noir ink. They were then colored in with copic markers.

Using a SU circle punch, I punched them up. THe second circle and scallop circle are made using my nesties. Put all the layers together and I added a Doodlebug jewel in the center of the flower.
**As a note.....I made another straight circle and scallop circle for the back so these look nice and finished.

I used my hot glue gun to attach both sides to the jumbo paper clip. And voila, quick and easy bookmarks. Tomorrow I will show you a cute comp notebook to match the yellow flower.

Have a great night!

Another Grad Card

This is the second of two graduation cards that I was asked to make. This time the card is for a girl who just graduated from a Masters program.

The colors of the college are blue and white so that was my jumping off point.

This stamp is an OLD stamp that I have had for years (as in about 12 years) and is from Northwoods. I haven't used it in ages so I thought I'd do something different for this card.

The image is stamped with palette noir ink and colored mostly with copic markers. As I'm working on about 263 projects at once, I once again didn't write down the number of the markers I used. I do remember that for the brass of the tassel I used the new sand spica pen - it's a great color in person. The flowers are actually painted with twinkling H2O's (garnet) because I wanted to add just a little bit of sparkle.

The hardest part was deciding what to do once I had the image done. It's a fairly large image so I was stumped on how to lay it all out. I figure you can't go wrong with swiss dots so that white layer is cuttlebug embossed with the swiss dots folder just to add a little bit more.

Mother Nature gave us a glimpse of good weather yesterday but the clouds are back again today. It's one of those days where you are waiting around waiting for it to just start pouring! I'm off to a bridal shower tonight so I'll need to go out into the mess once it all starts - hope your night is a good one!

Barney has taken over the blog!

First let me state that while purple is my favorite color, I do not consciously try to make so much in purple, it just happens sometimes. And in my defense, today's item is a customer order and the colors requested were purple and grey.

I was asked by a room mom to make up a gift basket of items and the teacher's favorite color combo is purple and grey.

Some of the items in the basket are things you've seen before but this altered composition notebook is a new design.

I wish I could tell you what paper I used to cover the notebook with but I cut and adhered the paper before I thought to look at the back. And wouldn't you know, I used the parts that would have given me all the info I needed!

All stamps used are from Verve Visual. The flowers are stamped in palette noir and colored with copic markers.

Copic Markers: V12, V15, G09

The sentiment is stamped in eggplant (Stampin' Up ink).

Apparently the jet stream or something has parked itself right over New England so we are in for at least FOUR more rainy days. Just warning you, I will be cranky by next Monday! Hope you all have a great day!

CAS Thank You

On Monday I looked at the CAS challenge and that was as far as I got with it. I needed a thank you card so I decided to give the challenge a try. This week the challenge is basically a sketch challenge. The original card was a square but since I don't like to pay the extra postage for square cards, I made it a rectangle instead.

The flowers are from Stampin' Up and are stamped with palette iris ink. The sentiment is from Papertrey and is stamped with palette french lilac ink (can you tell I just got some new palette inks and wanted to play??)

A simple, yet pretty card. I am happy with the results and think I'd like to try some other color and sentiment schemes.

I enjoyed my one day of sunshine for the week. We are supposed to get rain for the next FIVE days (and cooler than normal temperatures).

Hope your days will be sunnier than mine!

Purple Grad

I'm back. I had great plans to blog yesterday but it was one of THOSE days. I swear, I couldn't get out of my own way for trying. After a good night's sleep and a day without rain, I am feeling much livelier. And I was able to get creative too which was a good thing because I have customers waiting for orders!

I was asked to make a card for a high school graduate. Thank goodness for google images - I was able to do a little searching and find out the school's colors were a kind of violety/orchidy purple.

Bella is stamped with palette noir ink and colored with copic markers. Sadly, I didn't write down the purple color I used so I am of no use with the little details in today's post. I do know that the green is G09 and her face is E00. The flowers are colored with a spica pen (lipstick red - LOVE the new colors). Her hair is colored with a dark brown prismacolor pencil and blended with baby oil.

I originally was planning to use a Splitcoast sketch challenge sketch for this card but that fell by the wayside when all the elements just weren't clicking so I veered off in my own direction.

The sentiment is stamped with palette noir ink and is from Verve Visual. I used my scor-it to add a little more to that layer and I used some dew drops/rain drops to the right of bella. The rain drops are from Stamping Bella but I can't remember which is which, they are all in the same containers. I finished off with a prima flower with an amethyst Swarovski crystal for the center.

I'm off for a little tv watching before bed. Hope you have a great night!

I Achieved My Goal

I don't have anything crafty for you today so feel free to skip my post if you want.
In all the years that I have been exercising, I have never liked running. And as a result, I rarely do it. Three months ago I set a goal of running a 5K. I can officially say that I have reached my goal!

Now, I can't say that I all of a sudden love running (and may never say that). I also can't guarantee I'll run more races but I can say that I did one. I ran for a good pace (for me) and I completed it without stopping so I have achieved the goal I set for myself.

I hope you are setting goals for yourself and feeling the sense of accomplishment after a job well done.

Tomorrow, it's back to crafting.