Encouragement, BFF Style

So, I promise, I really did make this card yesterday. Last night, to be exact. And the lighting in my house is no good and there's just so much white that no matter what I did I couldn't get a decent picture of it. Hence why I'm posting it today.

The image and sentiment are from the A Muse Studio stamp set called Days Like This. I actually bought the set for this sentiment. I thought it was hilarious. But then before I got around to making a card with it, I thought maybe it was a little mean. Not very encouraging. But then I got to thinking about my dear friend Rebecca and how she's never hesitated to tell me all the things that are hard to hear. So, in my opinion, this is that kind of card, and I think it is really, in fact, very encouraging - for the right person, of course. Sometimes, what a good friend needs to hear is "Look, what you gotta do is suck it up and deal with it. And I'll be here to help you do that."

Day 7 will be up soon!

100 YouTube Subscribers Giveaway!

Howdy folks!

I've not only met, but slightly surpassed 100 subscribers on my YouTube channel! That might not sound too thrilling to some people, but especially in my attempt at a new life-view that does not involve comparing myself to others, I'm pretty psyched! :) So I'm giving away some A Muse Studio goodies!

Here's the video. If you watch it here, make sure you click through to the video page on YouTube and leave a comment there! Comments on this blog post do not count. And be sure to watch all the way through the video for all the rules.



Good luck! :)

Mini Moleskine-Inspired Notebook

This project was inspired by some chevron cards in the 2012 A Muse Studio Catalog and Inspiration Guide. For some reason, when I saw the photo, I thought of the thin Moleskine journals that come in packs of three. My first thought was to purchase some in a light color and stamp on them, but then I decided to try making my own! That way I could have more options in terms of color.

It was a super-easy project to make... I just cut some notebook paper in half, white embossed some chevrons on gray cardstock, stapled the whole thing together and tied some embroidery floss around the spine to camouflage the staples. Just like how you made books when you were a little kid, but classed up! :) And it's the perfect size to toss in your purse or the glove box in your car!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you had a great weekend!

Chevrons	Seattle Cardstock	Versamark Ink	White Embossing Powder
White Embroidery Floss

InLinkz.com

a little birthday tag

We had dinner with some friends this evening - a lovely couple who were married in October and are expecting a baby due in May. Mama's been pretty into blood oranges lately, and we just happened to have made some blood orange marmalade recently. Oh, and yesterday was her birthday too! So I whipped up a super cute tag to tie on the jar of marmalade.

 

I used the Cupcake Companion stamp set and the coordinating Cupcake Toppers die set to create a little cupcake flag... The idea with these stamps and dies is that you would put the flag in a real cupcake, but I love the idea of exploring ways to use them on cards and other projects. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Hey Cupcake	Cupcake Companion	Cupcake Toppers Dies	Bermuda Cardstock
Blush Cardstock	Sugar Cardstock	Buttercup Polka Dot Cardstock	Bermuda Ink
Memento Tuxedo Black Ink	Versamark Ink	White Embossing Powder	Shell Organdy Ribbon
Foam Adhesive

InLinkz.com

Greetings from Southern New Hampshire?

I was going for Cape Cod, of course, but the heart would have completely covered it up, which kind of would have defeated the purpose! :)

All supplies for this card are from A Muse Studio and are available in my webstore.
Stamps: Wish You Were Here, Chevrons
Ink:  Bermuda, Slate, Cherry
Cardstock: Sugar, Seattle, Bermuda
Other: Cherry polka dot organdy ribbon, white embossing powder, Versamark ink

Happy Saturday!

Gray Matter

I'm currently obsessed with gray. Isn't that bizarre? I mean, it's gray! It's almost like a non-color! :) But try as I may, I can't make a project without gray lately. I'm especially in love with A Muse Studio Slate ink and Seattle cardstock.

This one uses the awesome new Build a Cake set. It has a bunch of big cakes and a ton of accessories to decorate them! So fun! I used some of the papers from Pink Paislee's Nantucket collection to paper piece the cake. The sentiment is from Hey Cupcake.

This stamp set is called Sunny Side of Life, and it features this great big gorgeous wildflower image! The butterflies are from the same set as well. You can't really see in the photo, but I clear embossed the floral stamp onto the Seattle cardstock around the circle window. I also used the new chevron ribbon which is awesome! It's kind of trippy to use, because the chevrons create an optical illusion, but I love it!! :-D

I'll be back soon to share more. I've got a few projects in various stages of completion, and I've got a 4-day weekend so I'll have tons of time to play!

Thanks for stopping by!

February Spotlight

I haven't posted too much about the A Muse Studio Spotlights here. Mostly because the months just seem to roll past too quickly. But I am in love with the February Spotlight - the featured products and the projects. The theme is Organization Made Beautiful, so the projects are all office-related. And they're so happy and adorable!

All the Spotlight products are on sale through February 29th. And make sure you check out the Spotlight page on the website to check out the awesome projects!

Since I don't really need any office-y projects right now, I decided to make a card. As I'm sure you know, yellow and gray is pretty much my Number One Favorite color combination, and I'm kinda lovin' the addition of the Bermuda blue! :)

The Floral Duet set is so awesome for modern, bold backgrounds - especially when you emboss it. I'll be showing you some more ways to use it soon!

Gum Wrapper and More A Muse Studio Sneak Peeks

I have to say right off the bat that I love this project. We made these at my friend Jen Pitta's stamp club on Thursday. I decided to borrow the template and A Muse-ify it! :) "Gum wrapper" seems like I dumb name for them, but I couldn't come up with anything better. lol.

 This is the one I made in my video tutorial, which you can watch further down in this post. I sort of had Valentine's Day in the back of my mind when I designed it, but it could definitely be used for other occasions. I used a new stamp set called Keep Calm, which you may have already seen if you read my blog. I'm kind of in love with this set. I also used Grapefruit, which is one of the new colors in the redesigned Winter Signature Palette, as well as the Venetian patterned cardstock in Titian.

I had birthday party favor in mind when I designed this one. It uses another new stamp set called Big Celebrations, which has these awesome big block numbers. And I used two more new colors: Lido from the Venetian collection, and Seattle, which is a new mid-tone gray that fits between Pebble and Slate in the Basic Signature Palette.

And, if you like what you see, here's the video tutorial for the project.


Don't forget, the new 2012 A Muse Studio Catalog and Inspiration Guide will be active as of midnight on February 1st! You'll be able to see all the new goodies in my webstore. And you will be seeing a lot of the new products featured here in the coming weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

Inspiration is a funny thing...

This card might not exist if I had a dryer.

Now hold on, let me fill you in. You know those small, thinly woven gloves you can get at the dollar store? My husband and I have a few pairs of those that we wear when we hang laundry on the clothesline in the winter. My mom gave us a couple new pairs for Christmas, and I pulled one of them out for the first time yesterday. As I was hanging the wash, I started looking at my hands and thinking about the colors on the gloves. It wasn't a color combination I'd ever have chosen on my own, but I decided I really liked it. So I finished hanging the laundry, came inside, and made a card. :)

I used a bunch of new A Muse Studio products on this card that will be available to order on February 1st. Two new colors: Grapefruit and Seattle. New stamp set: Big Celebrations. Trust me, friends, there's some seriously awesome stuff coming!

Oh, and I used a tutorial from Jennifer McGuire to make the chevron pattern. Good stuff.

Hope you had a great weekend! Who's excited for Downton Abbey tonight? :-D

Clean & Simple Cardmaking Day 10 + More A Muse Studio Peeks

Day 10 of the Clean and Simple Cardmaking class was all about card sets. Clean and Simple lends itself to card sets for obvious reasons... Since they're not technique-heavy and usually don't have much in the way of fancy embellishments, they're quick and easy to create multiples of. And it just so happens that one of the brand new A Muse Studio stamp sets was practically made for a CAS notecard set! :)

I love this stamp set! There's also a 2-step Union Jack stamp that I think will be super fun to do some Andy Warhol style effects with :) I also wanted to feature some of the new colors in this card set... Grape, Grapefruit, Pistachio, and Lido, Bellini, and Burano from the Venetian Collection. The Venetian Collection colors are a little more neon-looking in real life than they look online, but they're still super fun, bright colors.

One of the tips from the class was to try a smaller size card - like a 4-bar, which is 3.5x5 inches. I decided to try that for these cards, since a lot of the everyday stationery notecards you can purchase are about that size. It's perfect to jot off a quick note. And then there's another tip from the class that I didn't follow... How important it is to make sure that your technique and construction are as perfect as possible because it's so much more obvious on a CAS card. If you look closely, you can see that I should have used an anti-static treatment before I white embossed the stamp! Oh well! :)

One more quick announcement before I let you go: The A Muse Studio National Convention was this weekend and the gals that went were the first to get the new catalog as well as more new products. Check out my facebook page for some of the photos they've been posting from Convention!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Muse Studio Sneak Peek!

Just got my hands on some of the brand new A Muse Studio 2012 goodies! There are 9 new colors - 4 new Signature colors and 5 in the Venetian collection. There's a new pattern of cardstock that coordinates with the Venetian collection, and awesome new stamp sets! The catalog will debut to the public on February 1st, and believe me, you will not be disappointed!

Check out the first card I made with the new items :)

I wanted to try something new to me - emboss resist with pigment ink. I have to be honest, my least favorite thing about A Muse Studio is the inks. Don't get me wrong, they're great quality inks in awesome colors. I just wish they hadn't chosen to carry exclusively pigment inks. When you're just stamping, they have a great look - kind of like chalk inks - but you just can't do a lot of the inking techniques unless you're using a dye ink. So I decided I needed to figure out the techniques that can be done with pigment inks! Emboss resist is definitely one of them, but the embossed areas won't wipe completely clean. In this case, it worked well with the soft, smudgy look I was going for.

Supplies:
- A Muse Studio solid cardstock in Lido (available 2/1) and Sugar (available now)
- A Muse Studio Venetian patterned cardstock in Lido (available 2/1)
- A Muse Studio ink in Lido and Burano (available 2/1) and Fern (available now)
- A Muse Studio Charming Gardeners stamp set (available 2/1)
- Other supplies: Nestabilities Labels 8 dies, various gems and pearls, mini sponge daubers, white embossing powder, heat tool

Stay tuned for more! :)

2011 A Muse Studio Retiring List

Here it is, folks! These are the stamp sets from the 2011 Catalog that will NOT be returning in the 2012 Catalog - which will be available to customers on February 1, 2012.

As for the 2011 Holiday Catalog, some items - stamp sets and other items - will be returning, and some will not. They haven't made that information available to us yet, so I'm not sure if I will be able to let anybody know before February. I'm told I will be able to see a list of retiring tools and embellishments soon, but I don't know if that will include dies, etc from the Holiday Catalog. Bottom line: If there's anything you think you want, get it now! :) You can see everything from both catalogs at www.amusestudio.com/annakeyes. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them!