God's Beauty

While stamping last night, I did something I haven't done in a long, long time - I made a Stampin Up-only (SUO) card! Not just mostly SU, but all SU. Are you proud of me? The whole SUO idea usually makes me nervous, as I've become quite dependent on my Spellbinders dies, non-SU stamps and embellishments, and non-SU designer papers. But I'm happy with this one, thanks to the fun corduroy buttons and the beautiful Parisian Breeze textured designer paper.

And then there's the awesome sketch I worked with - Jen's Sketch For You To Try. You can see the sketch and Jen's sample at Jen's blog, i{heart}2stamp. While you're there, be sure to give a warm welcome to April's guest designer, the fabulous Kimberly Crawford! Also be sure to take a peek at what the rest of the SFYTT sistahs have cooked up. We love when you play along, too! Remember to use keyword SFYTT if you upload to SCS.

Jen, with the sketch and guest designer
Amy Rohl
Carole Burrage (she'll be posting later tonight or in the morning, FYI)
Kelly Lunceford
Susan Liles

Have a great weekend!



Stamps: God's Beauty (SU hostess Level 1)
Paper: Baja Breeze, Chocolate Chip, Parisian Breeze Specialty dp
Ink: Chocolate Chip craft
Accessories: clear embossing powder, Baja Breeze ribbon, white taffeta ribbon, Chocolate Chip corduroy buttons, paper piercer, dimensionals, scallop border punch
Size: 5" square
All supplies by Stampin' Up

Still Living My Dream

It's been way too long since I've participated in one of Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenges, but this past weekend's sketch was just tooooo good to pass up. I followed Mary Jo's lead on colors and keepin' it simple and really like how this one turned out!

I'm sure I'm not the first to do this, but the idea to have the little Curly Label Punch pieces peeking out behind the striped panel was something new to me. I love how they look kind of like brackets. An easy, trendy little accent :)

Note: I feel like I use this tall flower image from Live Your Dream ALL the time! It really is my go-to image :) Hope you're not sick of it!

Thanks for stopping by,



P.S. Not only is this one Stampin' Up ONLY, but everything is current, too (I think)!I haven't done that in a while either. [Edited to Add: Well, there you have it on how "with it" I am when it comes to Stampin' Up - Live Your Dream is NOT current after all! LOL. (That's really disappointing, too!)]

Stamps: Live Your Dream
Paper: Not Quite Navy, Baja Breeze, textured Kiwi Kiss, Whisper White card stock, Urban Garden dp
Ink: Kiwi Kiss, Not Quite Navy
Accessories: vintage brads, curly label punch, paper piercer, gray taffeta ribbon, dimensionals, sponge daubers

Scrapbook Club Make-and-Take

After a summer hiatus, my scrapbook club is meeting again tonight for some crop time and a make-and-take. I've said before (but it's been a long time) - it's haaaaard coming up with make-and-take ideas. Everyone scraps a little differently, plus there's a mix of women at different ages and stages in the group. We all love papercrafting and we're all wives and moms. But those are about the only things we have in common. I opted for an easy Halloween spread for tonight - can't go wrong with that!

Sorry for the poor photograph - I haven't figured out how to get a good picture of such a big project. Anyway, I'm a bad demo for a lot of reasons ... one is that I don't mind pulling out my retired stuff (Booglie Eyes) and using contraband when it works (oval Nestability). If I were doing a workshop with potential new customers, I wouldn't do this, but these girls have been with me forever, and they don't mind.

The page base is 12x12 black card stock. The large green pieces are just single sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 turned landscape (yay, no cutting!). The space on the left where I've added my watermark is intended for journaling. Since the green panel is 8 1/2 x 11, they'll easily be able to print their journaling on the computer if they want to. They will be stamping the Halloween creatures on watercolor paper and watercoloring with SU markers. See that spider web on the right-hand page? I got that idea from this amazing card by Monika Davis. I wouldn't live to post here again if I had my club ladies stitch that web with a machine!! So we're doing some piercing and faux stitching (with a black marker) instead.

Have I mentioned before how much I loathe full spreads these days? The day I let go of the notion that opposing pages had to match, and started creating stand-alone single pages instead, was the day I found freedom in scrapbooking. One thing I dislike about full spreads is finding a way to visually connect the two sides, so that they really look unified. On this spread I tried to do that with the thin white strip that runs full-width along the bottom and by connecting the two pages with hinges made from Stampin' Up's tag punch.

Here are a couple of detail shots:





Thanks for stopping by!



Stamps: Booglie Eyes [retired], All Holidays (SU!)
Paper: Basic Black, Certainly Celery, Lavender Lace, Tangerine Tango, Whisper White (SU!)
Ink: Basic Black, Jet Black Staz-On (SU!)
Accessories: Basic Black, Certainly Celery, Lavender Lace, Pumpkin Pie, Going Gray markers, paper piercer, silver brads, tag punch, Tangerine Tango double-striped ribbon (all SU!); classic oval Nestability (Spellbinders)

FS74 {Teneale}

This past Sunday's Featured Stamper on SCS was {Teneale}. What a fun gallery to look through! She's got an amazing clean, elegant style that I couldn't wait to CASE. I chose to copy the layout and the butterflies of this card and the colors of this one. I changed around the layers a little bit and used a different butterfly, then added some sparkle and shine with some heat embossing. I inked the edges of some of the panels with VersaMark, then heat embossed with Iridescent Ice. The swirl from Baroque Motifs on the Sage Shadow background is embossed in clear, and the medallion on the Chocolate Chip background is embossed in Iridescent Ice.

Here's a detail shot:



Thanks for stopping by!