Totally TURTLES

My friend's boy is turning 9 and she had me make his birthday invitations. She didn't have a card to give to her son so I came up with this for her to give to him. I think he'll like it since it's his school colors and he likes to skateboard. Check it out: I used the new color Concord Crush for the purple color. It's so cool! I also sponged Peach Parfait and Daffodil Delight. Basic Gray cardstock is the base. I love my Stazon Ink Pad too. Really get coverage on the silhouette stamps. You Rock is from the retired stamp set Just Jawing. I will not part with that stamp set! Love it! The stars are from that as well. The splotches are from French Foliage in the Mini. I love how you can use different elements from different stamp sets together. Have a great day!

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. She would have been 77 years old. I miss her. Luckily I am able to share some of my friends moms. Especially Cindy's mom, Jeannette. I love her! She's so sweet and funny. My mom was very loving and caring. She always gave me hugs and told me how much she loved me. I'm grateful that I got to be the baby of the family and that my mom and I did so many things together when I was growing up. She showed me how to be a good mom to my two girls. I may not teach them all the basics of life but I show them I love them and I spend time with them. Here's a card I made for my mommy yesterday. Notice that the words, "please know that I care" also got stamped on the card. I did not want that so to fix my "mistake" I stamped the Thinking of you on a scrap piece of white and punched it out with the label and then sponged some Pear Pizazz on the edges. So see, there are no mistakes in stamping. LOL. Here's the new and i...

Oh I'm so excited! I got a new embossing folder with snowflakes on it. I had to create something right away and I thought, "Why not have the background blue like the sky." So I used the technique I had showed you a few weeks ago where you put the ink on the embossing folder and then run it through the Big Shot. Totally looks great! Here it is: It's a good thing I horded all that Baja Breeze Ribbon. LOL. Love it! I used a build a brad and the itty bitty buttons too. I really like this card. This is not the card we are making on Sunday. Way too much bling on it. I may have you all make the snowflake background though. I have to share what a fun night I had with my girls tonight. Amanda didn't get any check marks this week so I had to reward her for that. She had a horse back riding lesson and then I took her and Jessica to Cracker Barrel for dinner. They love looking around the store there. (Don't tell anyone but I do too.) After dinner we ended up going to...

We had 10 ladies come and four ladies in the club couldn't make it. That means we had four guests! Woo Hoo! (Debbie, I forgot to give you a gift for bringing a guest. Remind me!) The food was great. The fellowship was wonderful. The stamping was fun. Even the little turtles got into the act. Carla let me know when it was time to put away the turtles and start stamping though. Thanks Carla. Here's our project that we made last night. I used the Baskets and Blooms die with the Big Shot and also the Beautiful Butterflies die. I bought the naturals designer series paper pack recently and thought I'd get it out and look at it. I love the prints in it. P.S. I'm entering this in the SUO Challenge this month. Check it out here: SUO Challenge See a close up of the butterfly. I used shimmer paper but it's hard to catch the shimmer in the photo. Markers I used for coloring were Rose Red, Wild Wasabi, Regal Rose. I like what Francesca did with the candy wrapper. I ju...

I've been trying to come up with something for my club meeting tomorrow night but I'm having some trouble focusing on it. So instead I CASED this card from Caroline LeBel. Click Here to see hers. I used Whisper White paper, Sponged Pear Pizazz, Daffodil Delight, Peach Parfait. I used markers to color my stamps. Stamp Sets are: Tiny Tags, French Foliage The shimmer you see is the Smooch Spritz in Gold. I masked off the edges and sprayed it. I really like this card. It's so simple but beautiful. Thanks Caroline for the inspiration! Can I enter this in the SUO challenge? Or do I only get one entry?

Well I finally had a chance to make something using Birgit's template for the candle/bookmark holder. Take a look! I used the Newsprint DSP, Punch Potpourri hostess set, lace ribbon and embosslit Beautiful Butterflies. Oh and the black taffeta ribbon that my upline Mandy gave me for no reason. Totally love Mandy! (I love her even if she doesn't give me stuff. ;) I gave this to my hostess Debbie last night for having a party at her house. We didn't get a big turn out but I really had fun showing what the Big Shot could do to Angela and Francesca.  Here's what I demonstrated: Before Decor Elements This is after: I had the shadow box completed except for the spider DE. I demonstrated putting it on the glass. It was so easy! We also did this cute box. Francesca didn't roll her fence real dark so she was able to color in the grass and make wood grain on the posts. Look how the eyes and mouth of the pumpkin have a glow around them. She used a lighter marke...

These Halloween Treats are easy to make and can be used for a Girl Scout troop or class party. Halloween paper, new Glass Glitter , Large scallop punch, Waffle paper, markers, black lace trim, Seasonal Sentiments stamp set, pumpkin pie 1/8" taffeta ribbon. Oh yeah and a toilet paper tube. I gave this one to my new, very talented, German customer. I think she can teach me a few things. LOL. I hope she liked the gift. She was kind enough to give me a template for the box and the candle gift. I'll make something soon with it and then post it. I made another tag for this treat box but it covered the whole tube so it just was too big to use on this project. So I gave it to my 7 year old daughter. Here's what she made with it. She stamped the dog and drew the treat bag in his mouth. Sooooo cute! I'm still working on getting my pumpkins decorated and the little house that we have in the Mini Catalog. I hope to have it done by Friday. Gotta get busy. Happy Stampin...

Oh my gosh! I had the best time yesterday at the Leader Daughter event that the girl scouts put on for us. They booked a room at The Grand Hotel and this place is a resort. It's awesome! A beach on one side and the pool with a water slide on the other. Not to mention all the terrific food that everyone brought. It was a fantastic event and I enjoyed having some R & R with my two girls and the other leaders. We will have to plan more of these events I think. Here's a group shot of all the leaders and their daughters. Yes it's a big group. LOL. Just imagine the whole troop being involved. We number in the hundreds. I told you I would get to the tutorial and here it is. Start by punching out the scallop square. Then you use two way glue pen on some copy paper. If you wait until the glue turns from blue to clear then the glue is temporary instead of permanent. Put the scallop square on the glue and then line it up in the punch again to the size you want. I made i...

My daughter Amanda takes horse riding lessons and recently they started a saddle club. Click here  to see the website for it. She's had to change horses a few times since joining the saddle club but her and Ginger are getting better. Ginger is a young horse too and when you have two inexperienced participants it gets a little crazy. Usually I'm pulling Ginger around the barrels but Amanda can get her to head for the finish line. This is a picture I took before the rodeo started. Amanda is very much like her father in that she's a bit type A. I think she's one of those perfectionists that will want to be perfect at something or not do it at all. Well luckily she's good at riding but sometimes the horse doesn't listen to her and she gets frustrated and wants to just let go of the reins.  I told her that the horse is not like the horse in Avatar. She can't just "think" go and the horse will go. She has to use all the techniques that Mr. Chris as ...

Okay here's my card for the SUO challenge. I hope I get in the top three but I have some stiff competition. I used the stamp set Just Believe and the hostess set Punch Potpourri. Paper: Cajun Craze, Peach Parfait, Soft Suede, Whisper White and packing paper Ink: Cajun Craze marker, Soft Suede marker, Peach Parfait Ink Pad. Accessories: Hemp Twine, Two Step Bird Punch, Scallop Square Extra-Large Punch, Top Note Die and Pearl jewels Pretty cool huh? I thought it came out good. I wanted to add a saying on the card and started by making a scallop sqare with a circle in the middle with the word "freind" in th center. I tried placing it all over this card but didn't like how big it was and took up too much of the card. So then I ended up making a 3 x 3 card for it to go on. Lookie: If you are wondering how we have two sizes of the scallop square I have to admit that we only have one size. But come back tomorrow and I'll show you how I did it. They look great t...

So I had this shadow box for a while now (2 years). I have changed it a few times and I really liked what I did with it before but the colors I had in it just were not going with the colors in the kitchen/eating area anymore. I painted the walls a green color and the colors in the shadow box were blues. So I was looking at all the packing paper that comes in the Stampin' Up! box to keep things from moving around during shipping and I got an idea. Why not use that paper all crinkled up for the background. It's big enough to cover the whole shadow box unlike 12 x 12 paper. I was talking to my friend about it and she said I should sponge ink on it too. Oh Yeah! What else could I do though? I wanted to use the new flowers I made of course. Maybe a die cut. Butterflies. Oh and the new tiny pearls. Yep. I was using lots of glimmer and accessories. Are you dying to see it? Here's the finished project. Here's a close up of the flowers and some of the sponging. Here...

So I have a class scheduled for October to make 12 inserts with a Simply Adorned charm. The idea was to have 12 inserts to change out for the season/month/outfit. I was thinking that this would make a fantastic gift for a teacher or for a family member. So here's another idea. Why not find out their favorite College Football team and make an insert for that. Do you see where I'm going with this?  Take a look: What do you think? I probably could come up with some Auburn ones and LSU ones and GA Bulldogs oh and Florida Gators! LOL. Another fun idea I had was making chocolate wrapped in Designer paper and turned into place settings for Thanksgiving. I made my downline Jeannette one since she made me a cute box with 3 x 3 cards in it. Here it is: I like how this turned out plus the guests can take home some chocolate. Who doesn't love chocolate?!  It was really easy to make using the matchbox die and the Prehistoric Cricket, Oh I mean Big Shot Machine. LOL.  I'v...