This week I was in a watercolor mood!
Maybe because so much water is falling from the sky! I am seriously over thunderstorms! Anyways... we'll be using our Stampin' Up! inkpads to do a watercolor effect card with the To A Wild Rose stamp set! And to keep all that water corralled some nice gold heat embossing adds some sparkle too!
This week.....
We're tossing the templates and doing a lattice edged card using just a ruler. pencil, eraser and a paper scrap!
I've seen a lot of videos that require that you download a raggedy looking template, try to hold it in place on your card base and snip thru both the template and the card! That just seems like a recipe for disaster to me (!) so I found a way around it 😃. Since we'll be concentrating on the lattice I *cheated* and used premade flowers that I got from scrap-flowers.com! And, Hey! if you liked that sentiment & tag set I used, you can find that HERE!
I'm keeping with my New Years Resolution...
And using some of my beautiful precious patterned papers! I got out some of my older papers from Heartfelt Creations and added a coordinating rose from the To a Wild Rose bundle from Stampin' Up! and made not one but three all occasion cards in different colorways!
They are very simple and quick to put together but still look beautiful and will go thru the mail easily! It will probably take longer to pick out your papers if you are anything like me!
Woo Hoo! Today is the day!
Drum roll please! The new 2019-2020 Stampin' Up! Annual Catalog is now live! CLICK HERE for the PDF!
It's getting close .....
To new annual catalog time with Stampin' Up! I can't tell you much about it right now (shhhhh it's a secret! lol) but I found lots of good stuff to be happy about 😃 and some retiring items to be sad about 😢. Check here on June 4th for the PDF of the catalog so you can see what's happening in SU land as soon as it goes live!
This Father's Day day is a 2 plus 2! I'm using A Good Man stamp set and it has some GREAT images in it! We'll be using the boy or girl version (that's the first 2) and then I'll show you how to get a watercolor effect using actual watercolors (who'd have thought? lol) and your SU dye-based ink pads. If you want to give watercolors a try I highly recommend the Prima Confections Watercolor sets. They aren't what I would call "artist grade" but on the plus side, they aren't very expensive, you can lay down good color with them, they provide a good color range and they are a wonderful way to see if you like that sort of thing for under $20! I have the Tropical Set and the Classic Set!
A friend and I...
went to see the movie "Poms" today! What a good movie! Diane Keaton was great, as I expected she would be. I laughed and I cried! If you want to see a chic flick I highly recommend this one!
This weeks card is another fisherman Father's Day card. Our fisherman is out at the crack of dawn hoping to catch the big one!
It's raining! It's pouring!
We're kicking off the rainy season here in south Florida in grand style this year! I do believe it's raining weed seeds in with all the raindrops! Boy, do I have a lot of gardening to do in between rain storms!
This weeks Father's day card celebrates all the car enthusiasts! Here's a fun card using the Stampin' Up! Geared Up Garage bundle!
It's the Wednesday before Mother's Day....
But it's already time to start thinking about Father's Day cards! I usually dread making cards for the guys because... well ... There's no flowers and lace! My two favorite things for cards! This year it was a lot easier. I had the Best Catch stamp & dies and the All Geared up sets and came up with 2 cards right off! There's a brand new set called A Good Man coming in Stampin' Up!'s Annual Catalog that's really nice too! My preorder (with A Good Man) should be here any time now! As soon as the AC goes live I will post the pdf of it here and on my Facebook page!
Today's card uses the Best Catch stamp & die bundle. I also promised to share where I got the stencil for the waves and here it is! <------- click there! 😃
Happy Wednesday y'all!
I think there should be some kind of law against discontinuing stamp sets. At least, the stamp sets I like! Stampin' Up! recently posted all of the discontinued stamps, dies and other stuff so I have 12 pages (small print) of things that I need to get rid of 😲. They aren't the only ones either! The beautiful script background stamp I used in today's card has gone off to stamp heaven 😇 I did find one that will work by Stampers Anonymous on amazon.com. If you want to check it out you can find it here. It's just a little smaller than the one I've used. I also used a really pretty fern leaf stencil that I found here on aliexpress.com. This storefront had some other nice basic stencil designs (some of which I couldn't resist and bought!) as well as some die sets for excellent prices!
Today's card is a Mother's Day card for all the friends that are mothers! I have a lot more friends that are mothers than I do actual mothers and I bet you do too!
It won't be long now...
till Mother's Day AND the Stampin' Up! Annual Catalog will go live in June! I'll post the pdf file here for the catalog so ya'll can see it soonest (soonest? most soon?). I'll be placing my pre-order this week, most of it will be all the new in-color things, ink pads, markers, papers, that sort of thing but I will be getting a couple of the newest stamp sets! It's all very exciting! One thing I'm sad about is they are discontinuing the Stampin' Trimmer 😒 so I guess when my reserve cutting blades are used up in the trash it will go!
This weeks card uses a cool technique where you ink up your embossing folder! YES! I said embossing folder! What a beautiful background it makes! I made a mistake and used a retired embossing folder but any nice floral folder (think roses!)
will work!
And guess what! I found the Mother's Day stamp set on aliexpress.com! I doubt you'll get it in time for this coming Mother's Day but it has the nicest sentiment's in it! I found it here!
So, my friends....
What are your Easter plans? We'll be having family dinner here and it will be our first egg hunt for my grandson. It should be fun! I sent my husband to the local Dollar Tree for some of those plastic eggs and some kind of little toy/treat to put in them and what do you think he found??!! They had Paws Patrol figures!!! If you have any small children around you know what they are!!! My grandson loves them and can tell you all about each of the characters (at 2.25 years old!) And they were a DOLLAR each! What a score! I can't wait to see what he thinks of them!
On the crafty news side... The Stampin' Up! Annual catalog will be coming out in June for all of you - I got to have a look now 😄 and they did a great job on stamp sets this year! I felt like they kinda "phoned it in" last year and was disappointed but this year it's going to be hard to keep within my budget! As soon as I'm allowed to I'll put up the PDF here and on my fb page so ya'll can see what's available right away!
Here's this weeks card! I used the Tea Together stamp set (which will still be available in the coming year!) and I think it's just darling for a Mother's Day card. Of course you can always switch out the sentiments and make it for other occasions too!
The first half of the year is just loaded...
With card giving occasions! It seems like we just get past Christmas when Valentine's Day comes along. Following that is St. Patrick's Day (if you give cards for that!) then Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day! Add in a few weddings, baby showers, and birthdays and you have crafting excuses (like I need an excuse to hide out in my craft room!) for MONTHS!!!
I've been trying to keep the Mother's Day cards interesting but mailable this year! Wish me luck! I can feel myself breaking out in nice big dimensional flowers! This first card has some nice dimension but should still go thru the mail just fine! 😄
The Leafy Borders and flowers came from Heartfelt Creations, the inks, cardstock and various tools from Stampin' Up! I found the Happy Mother's Day die set here and the Mother's Day sentiments stamp set here.
*** It appears the MSE Mother's Day sentiment stamp is no longer available. How can they do this to us? It was probably the BEST Mother's Day stamp set! A solution to this great problem would be to find a pretty font in word and print it out!
As I was looking thru the cards I had on hand ...
I realized I didn't have any "Get Well Soon" cards! As we all know, when someone is sick you want to get a card to them as quickly as possible so there's no time to think up and make a card. This one is bright and cheery and I finally got around to making a pocket card which I had been thinking about for quite some time!
I'm also checking out what all the hoopla is about with using make-up brushes or "life changing ink blending brushes". Go ahead, do a search on youtube on life changing brushes, you'll see what I mean! I've found them to be wonderful for a light colored background and they make blending with dye based inks soooooo easy. The brushes I used I found here on amazon.com. At $8.99 I figured it was worth trying them out!
