Here’s the first thing I want to share with you from the crop. My new stamp, a Sassafrass Lass Oliver and Friends set, that I actually purchased from the stamping store in Shawnee Mission, KS… a suburb of Kansas City. My lss sells Sassafrass but not this particular set. They said that they’re going to try and get Olivia for me. Yes!!!

This is my first Sassa stamp set and I am quite happy with it. It stamps crispy clean. I think you should try some {::WINK}.

The background paper is Basic Grey and the ribbon… uhm, not sure, it just coincidently matched. It was at the lass. This was one of the display items that I did. They didn’t care what stamp set I used.

About the picture. My lss has white walls and I took the pictures for the cards on top of white plastic bins. I set my aperture to super low, I think 2.2 for this, and the lighting was really bright too and set my camera (Canon XTi with a 1.8 50mm lens) in RAW (I always shoot in RAW and I have a tutorial of this in my digi tutorial page) and edited it in Photoshop. Except for the paint dark line of the bins the picture looks like it was taken using a studio kit I think. I’m going to see if I can find white and gray fabric on sale and try this at home.

Right now I’m home sick. I thought I had a sore throat Friday evening due to talking to much when I was in my training session but I guess it’s just a plain old cold. Saturday I had the most horrible sore throat and Sunday everything began. I think I’ll be much better tomorrow, usually it’s how it works, two days of hacking and sneezing and it’ll calm down. Just during those two days I can’t sleep much and that’s why I stay home, to try and catch naps here and there. M’s “sick” with me. She’s fine but I’m not motivated to take her to school/daycare. I was messing with her and told her that she’s not sick and she let out some pathetic coughs and sniffles. But then she said that she wants to be with me to “help” me feel better. Ha, we’ll see. Right now she’s happily watching Bambi AND scrapbooking. Alright, laters… nap time.

Wow, great scrapbooking day yesterday and today, I am hosting VSBN at SCS from 1-3 p.m. CST. Come play with me!!! Upload your page to SCS or post a comment to a link on your blog. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!!

Yesterday I got four cards done and five scrapbook pages. Two were digital. Yes! I was and am quite happy with my accomplishments. I’ll share them with you throughout the week.

In two weeks there’s a two day crop but I’m not sure if I’ll go the two days. I might just do the Saturday. Two days seem too many! I did it a few months ago at two different places and I wasn’t very productive the second day. I wasn’t inspired. But, we’ll see.

This card was a card that I made for my scrapbook blog sisters’ swap. The theme was summer. What do you think? Summery enough?

Well, I better go. I need to chat with the other ladies in the forum. Hope to see you there or see your work uploaded to SCS with JUN08VSBNN as the keyword or link here.

Laters and have a great rest of your weekend!!!

I got two cards put together. Yeah!!! This first one I did Tuesday night and the other one, the blue cardstock base, I did last night. They’re super quick cards because I was only in my craft room for a few minutes. I smuggled myself in there {::SMILES}.

As you can see they’re super simple. The material for this tan card is:

Paper: SU Kraft paper
Ribbon: Offrey grossgrain
Ink: Chocolate chip
Stamp: A*Muse Clear stamp and SU Dots

I created this card for my blog sisters’ swap BUT, I fail to remember the theme: SUMMER. So… no can do. This looks awefully, fall, don’t you think? One thing about this stamp set… I LOVE A*Muse’s clear sets. They stamp SOOOO well!! They’re not like some clear stamps where it just doesn’t stamp clean, which I hate. I want to buy more!

Due to my lack of attention to details, I have to think of another card design for my swap. Pressure, pressure! Due date’s the 20th!!

This second card I made just because although I might use it for another swap that I have here locally. Again, the theme is: SUMMER, and I think this is more summery than my first try. Yes?

The material:

Cardstock: SU Whisper White and Soft Sky
Ribbon: From Michael’s (on sale last week for $1!)
Stamps: SU’s Always, Dots, and PaperTrey
Ink: Regal Rose, Old Olive, and some blue one (ha, so bad me!)
Tools: Corner rounder for the scallops, piercing tool, and Stamp-a-Majig

These are just two items I want to share today. Two super simple cards that you can do under five minutes and with the right touch of ribbons they become more jazzy. Yes, I am a ribbon freak-o {::SMILES}.

I am quite behind. I have six swap cards to make and my scrapbook page for the Scrapperie contest. I haven’t even touched that last item. Ta-ta for now. More later!

Just a quick card post for the weekend. I used Kristina’s color inspiration #11 for this card. It’s rose red, so saffron, going gray, white, and old olive. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that I’m using purely pomegranate.

This week has been a busy and fun week. Emma loved going to VBS (she’s always sleeping on our drive home) and yesterday, the whole family had a great time taking pictures and watching the kids have fun. Then a BBQ after the event was just the perfect ending. I’ll share a few scrapbook pages from the event later. It’s my goal to create a few pages, digital pages, for the church so that people can print a page or all of the event.

Ok, they’re all waiting for me… have a great weekend and if I don’t pop in tomorrow, have a great father’s day!!!!

And groom {::SMILES}. But not my hubby and I. No, no. Actually we’d love to renew our vows at a church so hopefully that will happen this October. Long story short, we did a civil marriage because we were both divorced and if you’re Catholic, you know what that means. We never did get an annulment but we’ve been going to the Episcopal church and they will be able to annul and do a little ceremony for us. So this will happen IF my parents and brother + SIL do come and visit us from Indonesia.

So it was quite interesting when Clear and Simple Stamps sent me this set for my first projects (coming in July!). Even though we’re not going to have a big hoopla, my sister is and so I created this as a sample for my sister who’s for sure getting married in October. They did a civil service last year and will do the service with close families and friends this fall. That’s why my family’s visiting. This is also why we’re in a rush to finish the basement. It’s great motivation though. We need more space and we need to finish anyways. The unfortunate part is cleaning almost 3000 sq.ft. of space. Eek! But we’re guessing that we’d probably be in the basement more so than anywhere else during awake time. I mean my craft room will be down there after all {::SMILES}.

These are super simple and very inexpensive handmade cards to make. Perfect for mass producing. I did have a colored version of the bride and groom but decided that just the stamped image looks a lot better. I printed the program on the computer. I printed a few of them on regular paper, tested the stamp placement and all that too, before I ran it through the white card stock. The inside of the cards and programs are blank which is on purpose since the program and invite will be on printed white card stock which can be easily added on later. The inside of the invites can be quickly glued right before mailing and the programs can be done a few weeks or even the day before in case of last minute changes. Or, start and finish at the time of creation and be done with it. Super flexible.

I really like how they turned out. Not only were they super quick to put together, I think they look quite elegant, and extremely flexible in terms of changes to the main content of each item.

Material:

Amy Butler pattern paper
Stampin’ Up! card stock
Satin ribbon from a craft store
Corner rounder (for the scallops on the pattern paper), scallop circle, and circle punch
Black SU ink
Two sided glue and dimensionals

What’s the little jar?

It use to be honey. It was from my colleagues wedding and I now use it for brads. But, I thought I’d use it for this project and if my sister does like it, we can just recreate this to the size of her jars.

For this project, I just used my ATG glue gun and it stuck well - I just glued the top of the paper to the glass jar. I’m not sure of the red double sided tape will hold better but you can give it a try. I used the ATG when I did the Target mailbox project and the paper and ribbons are still stuck to it. For the top stamp, I stamped the bottom heart image first and then I used a circle punch to cut. Last I did the sentiment stamp and used dimensionals to adhere the sentiment to the scallop paper (used SU’s scallop punch). The jar lid is the type where the sides and the top are seperate. So I just used the circular top as a template for the brown paper and cut. It wasn’t perfect but the sides of the lid covered it up well. You can also add a little thank you tag with names/initials on them and let it hang on the ribbon. Just another idea for this easy project.

If you’re getting married or know of some one, pass this along. I hope it can help somebody out there {::SMILES}.

Today was a great day. Not only did I have a productive day, I got to spend my productive day with one of my favorite person, my daughter {::SMILES}. To many, this might not be a big deal, but to me, who works outside the home, today was a special day.

I worked from home today. I told myself Tuesday that I was going to start at 6 a.m. so that I could get done early. Well, I was 15 minutes late, but hey, I did get up early and that’s a plus! M didn’t wake up until 8:30-ish. Lazy girl!! She ate breakfast and she did what I asked her to do… I’ve been prepping her since Monday about her playing alone and me working until it’s break time. She did her end and I got a lot done. I had two breaks and a lunch break. I did do a bit of work after 3 p.m. but it was because I wanted to finish a few things and M was napping (until almost 5!). We did talk a lot and I had activities for her so it was quite nice. The dogs were happy too. They just curled up next to me and every so often they’d ask for a belly rub.

Great day! This was the first time that M stayed home with me while I worked. I’ve worked from home before but I always drop M off at school and then daycare. We’ll be doing this again!

This card is a super quick card that I did today. The card stock are Stampin’ Up! (the yellow is Summer Sun) and the pattern paper is Making Memories 5th Avenue. Ribbon, Offrey from Wally World. The bird stamp is from the Natural Beauty set. I’ve had this set for a looooooong time and barely use it. This is the first time I’ve used this bird actually. The sentiment is PaperTrey’s Shapes by Design. The colors were actually inspired by Cindy Beach. You should check her out. She’s one awesome stamper! I think this is her first inspiration challenge… not sure but hey, it got me {::SMILES}.

Finally a card! This is the first time I used this stamp set. I’ve had it for a little while but just haven’t had the mood for it until now. I have a couple other stamps that are in this state.

This is a pretty simple card to make. I just used Cameo Coral and Sky Blue besides white card stock and a ribbon that I bought from my lss. The ink I used is Cameo Coral and black. Just cut, cut, cut and glue, glue, glue and that’s it. I actually used two size dimensionals on the flowers. I paper pierced under the sentiment too. I think it gives the card some accent. Ok, so not the greatest. I don’t think I’ve made the flowers pop but it’s a good start {::SMILES}.

A busy (short) week. I’ll have more later.

It’s his birthday today. The big 30! We’re going to a nice French restaurant to celebrate. We can’t wait. It’s one of our favorite restaurants. Oh so yummy but then I might just be partial since I love anything French {::SMILES}.

This is the card that I made him. It’s simple and bright. The black cardstock is SU, the green cardstock is uknown, the pattern paper is Making Memories 5th Avenue, ribbon unknown and SU’s Spring Solitude stamp set. I do have some 5th Avenue papers, it was part of my Studio Calico March kit but I ordered this 5th Avenue card kit from Etsy (there is no more, this was the only one) I love that place. If you haven’t gone there and at least take a peak, you should. I want to buy a handbag and apron… oh and some handmade dolls… an owl or something… I can go broke there! Etsy’s a place for handmade stuff or a place to buy things to make handmade stuff. LOVE it!

Today’s also our meeting anniversary. I met him on his birthday. Quite nice since my wonderful hubby is bad with dates. He has an easier time remembering when we met than when we got married. Ahhh… we need to redo our vows, pick an easier date, oh maybe on my birthday, so that he can remember {::SMILES}.

Well, au revoir, à la prochaine (good-bye, until next time)!

I’m moving on to round three in the Scrapperie Gauntlet contest. Wuih! Lots of awesome entries! What was the challenge? To create a card that’s not a rectangle, square, or circle. So here’s my take on it.

Here are the details of the card:

Cut an 8.5×11 paper in half. You should then have two 5.5×8.5 pieces. Score on the 8.5 side to obtain a 4.25×5.5 size card. The roof, I eyeballed it. the width is 4.25 but not sure on the height. It was a rectangle and I found the center, marked it, and cut to form the rectangle. The piece between the rectangle and the triangle is a 4.75x.5 paper and I just tied this piece with a ribbon. I added some glue dots to hold the ribbon and paper together. I used this piece to join the bottom piece and the roof together. It works really well, the card is sturdy.

The door I eyeballed too. I cut the pattern paper first and then whatever the measurement was I added 1/8″ for the yellow paper behind it. The grass… I just got motivated with the scissors.

Material:
Ribbon: Offrey
Stamp: Stampin’ Up! Kind Thoughts
Cardstock: Stampin’ Up!
Alpha: American Craft Foam “Giggles” Thickers
Pattern paper: SEI (the door paper is a more recent purchase but the rest are super old paper)

So yesterday I gardened and boy was I sore after that. Blisters from raking, sore neck from looking down, etc. I’m just a wussy when it comes to labor work. Actually hubby did all the heavy jobs. All I did was remove the chunks of rocks and grass, rake, plant, and water!

So sleepy (M was super tired too, she spent a lot of time gardening too) — oh, I need a massage!!

Need a super quick card? You can’t beat this! I used the Just Celebrate and the Polka Dot background from Stampin’ Up! and Happy Birthday from PaperTrey’s Shapes by Design for this card. The ribbon was from WalMart. Got a few yards on sale.

M’s going to her friend’s bday party tomorrow. Her little fried is turning three. Emma did started out making a card for her friend but she ended up scribbling it. Not sure why. I thought what she did was cute. I think it was because she wanted me to make the card in the first place. Who knows…

Wow, it’s been a busy two days. Yesterday was M’s little graduation. She’s going to the 4-5 class and quite excited. Today we had a picnic at her school and a little reception at work for the end of this yearly faculty event. So I went to M’s party at 11:30, ate a bit, and then went back to work and straight to the reception area at 12:30. I ate again AND had dessert (actually I did get some sort of cookie bar at the party). I don’t own a scale but I think I gained a few pounds this past winter. This last couple of weeks I’ve been on a “diet” and did workout a bit and I think I lost a few pounds but I think I’ve gained them all back today. Hubby said I’m psychologically insane when it comes to my weight. He said that you don’t loose weight after a week of working out (least my workout). I dunno, I think I do.