safe to say I'm obsessed?

:-D

I am seriously loving Stampendous Christmas stamps! I can't even believe how wonderful these images are!

Supplies: stamp - Stampendous Cling Snuggle Season; patterned paper - Cosmo Cricket Matilda mini-deck; cardstock - Pure Luxury by Gina K. Designs, Neenah ivory, Bazzill white

Close-up :)

(Are you squealing yet?)

Here's a card I made using the Holiday Wishes set... I wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but now I'm thinking the best thing is to use the sentiments as focal images.

Supplies: stamps - Stampendous Christmas Wishes; patterned paper - October Afternoon; cardstock - Pure Luxury by Gina K. Designs, Neenah white
 
I colored the holly with Copics to frame out the card.

If you happen to get this stamp set, I don't really recommend trying to cut out the bits of holly - They're soooo tiny! :)

A Matryoshka nativity! How do they come up with this?!

Supplies: stamps - Stampendous Cling Nested Nativity, Gina K. Designs Blessed is the Season, Glory to God by Stampabilities; cardstock - Pure Luxury by Gina K. Designs (red), Stampin' Up (ivory); embossing powder - Queen's Gold by Ranger

(Sorry about the wonky angle!)

     

For now I just stamped the image and embossed it in gold. Then I masked it and stamped the scripture stamp from Blessed is the Season (Gina K. Designs) in red. But I can't wait to color this stamp!... I think I might need to pick up a couple new Copics though - not sure I want to put Mary in crayon colors! :)

I don't really know what I was thinking making two cards with embossing in this crazy, sticky, humid heat that's suddenly hit us. But I was so inspired by a card that Jennifer McGuire made with some new Hero Arts ornament stamps, and my buddy Cliff the mailman brought me the gorgeous Ornament Greetings set from Stampendous this morning, so... :)

I used some of the vintage sheet music I got from ebay for another project. (I'll share that one soon I hope!) I scrumpled it all up and rubbed on some Old Paper Distress Ink... and I don't really love how it looks. But that's ok. How gorgeous are those stamps??!?! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

tricks and treats!

ETA: It finally stopped raining here, so I was actually able to get some half-way decent photos of these cards. They're still not stellar... Man, I need a new camera! :)

I'm pretty sure Stampendous's Costume Kids stamp set is THE cutest thing I've ever seen! And I just happened to get Cosmo Cricket's Matilda mini-deck in the same envelope as the stamps! :) They're both cute and kid-like and whimsical so they go perfectly together.

This little vampire was just begging me to paper piece his cape :)

And how adorable is this paper?

Here's the whole card...

The set also includes precious little girl in her kitty costume. I wanted to color her orange, but I only have a small selection of oranges and yellows and I knew I'd have to use them on her pumpkin pail. So I chose to use two Warm Grey markers and smudge them around with my blender pen. And, I'm so psyched I *finally* got Spellbinders large and small classic oval Nestabilities! Have to say, actually, I'm a little disappointed that they don't go a little larger... I've already run into two Christmas stamps I was planning to use with them that don't fit :( But I'm still pretty darn psyched to have them!

 
Oh, and check out those cute little mice in the background paper! :)

The mini-deck includes a really fun paper with black and charcoal clouds with a little moon in the corner. I stink at "scene" cards, but I couldn't resist trying to combine that paper with the vampire. I definitely feel like this card is missing something, but I don't hate it.

I stopped in at the store where I'm selling my cards a couple days ago. It looks like I sold 9 cards in 9 days! So I have to try really hard to set aside Halloween and Christmas for a little while and get some fall-ish-looking "everyday" cards made to get me through September. My goal is to get 20-25 Halloween cards out on October 1st, 20-25 Thanksgiving cards out November 1st, and 20-25 Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice cards out December 1st and have that be it for the store. Add to that another 20+ Christmas cards as well as all my other paper and fabric items for the craft fair I'm doing on November 20 ... which is now officially less than 3 months away!! ... Needless to say, it's a little daunting. I think I need to figure out a way to get myself a little better organized and set some more specific goals!

So, I hope you're having a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

Hero Arts 2010 Holiday Catalog

Have you seen it? Boy is there some great stuff! You can check it out online here.

I know most of the items are starting to be available online at various places, but my awesome LSS, Colorful Creations in Hyannis, MA, is doing a pre-order with 10% off and (obviously) no shipping. So here's what I picked out :)

So Thankful clear stamps

(I can't wait to color these!)

 Wreath of Leaves cling stamp

(Doesn't it just beg for red rhinestones?)

Felt Poinsettias with Leaves

Mixed Cards and Envelopes (A2 with white interiors) in Foliage

So excited! :)

school themed? gotta have it!

The lovely Kimberly Crawford has a new line of stamps that she's designed called Mint Motif. She's just released her third set, School Basics, and it's got 'school' in the title and a handwriting line stamp so of course I had to have it right away! :) It's been sitting on my desk for a couple days because I'm still getting used to designing cards that are based primarily on stamping, but last night the seal was broken. Let me just tell you these stamps are awesome. They're so adorable and really great quality. And they're really thoughtfully designed - an outline and a solid of each image, the words are all separate so you can customize your sentiment, and all the words fit on the handwriting line. It's so apparent how much consideration and expertise (from much trial and error with other companies' stamps I'm sure!) went into designing the set.

Here's my first card, using School Basics and October Afternoon's Report Card. (BTW: OA has a new school collection coming out soon (ish?) and it looks incredible!)

Happy Friday!

more Stampendous goodies :)

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus

This is an older stamp by Stampendous that I recently discovered on ebay. I didn't realize at first that it was a quote - I just thought it was a pretty sentiment and I LOVE the font and the layout of the stamp. It's funny, but I actually don't like quote stamps that reference the author - I know you should give credit where it's due, but I guess it just feels too clunky for me.

Anyway... So I again used Studio Calico's Summer Camp kit for fall cards :) But I feel like it works really well. I also had a blast playing with some gorgeous (also not new) Prima flowers and leaves that I also found on ebay.

  
AND... I love coloring fall leaves with Copics! I used the technique that Jenn taught us at Colorful Creations. It's about as realistic as I've seen and it could. not. be. simpler! You pretty much just take all your green, red, orange, yellow, and brown Copics (which isn't a huge selection in my case!) and randomly color them all over each other. Seriously! The less you think about it the better it looks! Awesome!

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh and a little P.S. regarding stamps with quotes... Remember this post about the Gina K. Designs Blessed is the Season stamp set? (No, of course you don't, because nobody's actually reading this blog!) Well, I mentioned how much I loved the sentiment "blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love," and I wondered if it was a quote. Well it is, and the credit is due to Hamilton Wright Mabie, a 19th century American essayist, editor, and literary critic. There. I finally remembered to look it up.

Penguins + Copics = Happy Me!

Other than a few incidental, pre-brand loyalty purchases throughout the years, Stampendous is a new-to-me stamp company. I don't really know how, but I recently stumbled upon their 2010 Holiday Catalog online and oh. my. word. did I ever fall in love with what I saw!

My first order: 2 Christmas stamp sets. Yule Penguins and Christmas Wishes. I adore the fonts in the Christmas Wishes set, but I haven't quite figured out how to use them yet. So for now... some cards with the Yule Penguins and Kaisercraft's Be Merry collection. (Variations on a theme again! I only have a small selection of copic markers, so I have to find colors that work with my patterned papers and run with them!)

I used the direct-to-paper inking technique with Colorbox chalk ink in Ice Blue for the background of this card.

This was my attempt at CPS Sketch 178. I don't love it. There's something... I don't know... careless? random? ... about it. It just doesn't work for me. I think part of it is that I don't really understand the sketchy box behind the penguin.

This card is based on CPS Sketch 176. The oval had to be bigger than I'd planned so you can't tell that the red striped portion is actually two pieces, as in the sketch. I chose to break up the sentiment on this one - I added the ellipsis (...) with black marker and kept the inside portion super simple...

That's it for me tonight. Tomorrow's my day off and I will *hopefully* have some more Stampendous goodies to share! :)

my craft space

A lot of people feature photos of their craft rooms/spaces on their blogs, and yesterday I walked into our home office where my craft desk is and it was just screaming out to me to be photographed. So here it is... Much, much, MUCH more often than not, my craft space looks like this:

Do you love it? :)

a scoring board tip

This is pretty much the most obvious thing ever. But I was so proud of myself when I figured it out! So I thought that if I could share my lightbulb with just one other person out there it would be worth it!

So we all know scoring boards are awesome, right? Personally I have the Martha Stewart Crafts brand scoring board and I love it. But if you're using your scoring board for projects other than just scoring a standard A2 card, it can get a little tricky. I've done two projects recently where I had to score at 1/2 inch. It's difficult!

Where do I put my fingers? How can I hold my cardstock so that I'm sure it won't slip?

I've heard some people suggest turning the scoring board sideways.

But I've found that my bone folder slips out of its groove more often when I try to score sideways rather than pulling the bone folder straight down. And we don't want that!

So I've discovered a super simple solution! Flip your paper around 180 degrees so it's upside down. Then subtract a 1/2 inch (or whatever your measurement is... I have a hard time with anything under 1 or 1.5) and score at that mark!

Voila! Easy!

:)