Lovely Lilacs!

This is what I worked on at the cabin last Saturday morning. I'm missing lilac season by a few weeks, but as soon as I saw this gorgeous lilac paper in the Crafty Secrets "Radiant" Paper Pack, I knew it would have to star on something large, to get the full effect of the lilacs. So it is starring on a Crafty Secrets Wood Clipboard album, and and an altered garden journal from Michael's buck section. I don't own a binding machine, so I always look for cheap journals with a certain wire edge that can be bent back to remove the front and back covers.

These projects use the mother-load of Crafty Secrets stuff...I used their Artsy Alphabet for the lettering on the journal and clipboard, the "Birdnotes set" for the bird on the journal to the right, and the Card sentiments set for the sentiments. The card uses a lilac image from the "Friends and Flowers Vintage cuts, and a sentiment from the Card Sentiment's set. The swirls on the card were made with the "Cherubs" Set. All of the lilacs are glittered up with Stampin up dazzling diamonds and Sakura Gelly roll glitter pen.

I have to let you all in on some fun news...I've been asked to be on the design team for Crafty Secrets! This is going to be an effortless job for me, because I am totally and completely addicted to their stuff already! This just makes it official! I will be in the company of some tremendously talented artists...if you'd like to see their work, head on over to the Crafty Secrets Gallery and check out all the yummy stuff they've been uploading! I stand in awe of the talent Sandy has gathered together. Thanks, Sandy, for giving me the opportunity to officially design with your wonderful products. I will try my best to keep up with the talented women that are on the team :)

It's a date.

There are some disadvantages to being a cardmaker... the biggest one is that I haven't stepped foot in a Hallmark store in years. So therefore, I don't own a little calendar for in my purse.... you know, the little square ones that used to be free at the check-out counter? I loved those calendars. Now I'm all nostalgic on you guys. ANYWAY.


This weekend when I was at Bargain Bills, I was in the stationery section and was looking for a purse calendar. The only thing they had were ugly little check-book looking calendars with a cat on the outside for .99 each. Dang, I should have taken a picture of the cat. I thought, well, who cares if the outside is ugly...I'll just alter it. The main thing to me is that the inside of the calendar was ok to look at every day. So I had one calendar in my cart, and it dawned on me that THIS IS WHAT I DO, I ALTER STUFF. DUH, BUY MORE! So I bought 6 of them and brought them back to the cabin and altered a couple. Wouldn't these be fun little gifts for your stamping friends? The best thing is that the calendars go until 2008. TWO YEARS for the low low price of .99! AND they have a plastic covering, so that my stamping work won't get spilled on! You'll be seeing more of these bad boys! :)




Paper is by Daisy D's, Beacon Scroll - Colonial Blue

Stamp is by Anna Griffin (Michaels clearance, $2.50!)

AND there's that Daisy D's Cherry Tomato Polka dot again! :)

The unthinkable.

Y'all are going to clutch your heart when I confess to this crime. I got the "Card sentiments" set from Crafty Secrets, and.... (get closer, I'm going to whisper this)... I cut the acrylic and removed the "YOU ARE INVITED" sentiment from the hare image. GASP! Went right in with my rubbah scissors and cut that sucker right out of the middle of his little banner! I needed to get at this awesome vintage rabbit image and use it for Birthday and Thank You cards.

Now I know you can mask off the sentiment very easily, and no rubber or acrylic is harmed in this process. But I am, what you would call, a LAZY STAMPER. I just don't want to mess with masking! I will confess to more crimes of this sort....cutting up entire phrases, word by word, so that I can just stamp the word I want and GO. I have to say, I learned this from my Stampin' Up days! Only now, because the stamps are acrylics and I don't have to worry about wood blocks to mount them on, I'm out of control. I'm cutting here, cutting there, killing my poor acrylic stamp sets. But you know what? I'm getting so much use out of them!

I love that it looks like this guy is making a huge announcement. The paper I used with these cards is "Beacon Scroll - Colonial Blue from Daisy D's". I think this paper looks so masculine...almost like a classic old cigar box. How great will this be for male oriented cards? I have to share a huge score with you...we ran to Rice Lake, WI this weekend, and there's a store called "Bargain Bill's", that has a whole outbuilding dedicated to scrapbooking & stamping. Anyway, they have a huge BUTTON bin, and you can grab as many buttons as you want for a penny each. I dug through that bin for 15 minutes and picked out some gorgeous buttons... and the beautiful part was, I only spent $1.25! In stamp math, that meant I got to buy a new stamp because I saved SO much money on buttons. Plus I got to pick out exactly the ones I wanted! :) Happy Tuesday everyone!

Stamp sale at Michaels

Hope everyone had a wonderful 3 day weekend and made sure to take a moment to honor their heros today. I'm back from the cabin...this weekend was sweatshirt weather and cold, so I have lots to show you on the stamping front!

I meant to do a quick post on Friday before I flew out the door but never had time to do it...Michaels is clearing out a lot of their stamps, making room for Martha Stewart goods. I was there on Thursday night and they had 50 percent off of the lowest clearance price! I got this whole set of Anna Griffin rooster stamps for $6.00! YIPPIE! I love a great deal! You may want to check your local Michaels and see if they still have the 50 percent off clearance deal going on. I ended up with a ton of the Anna Griffin stamps, so you'll be seeing a lot of her stuff this week!

The paper is by Crate, Cowgirl Collection. The floral is called "Side Saddle" and the polka dot is "Red Boots". The Anna Griffin stamp set comes with the cool checkerboard pattern stamp, and a great script stamp too (see photo below). I hope the Anna Griffin stamps are still out there for you guys to score...they are a heck of a deal and so easy to color! Next time I'll be more on the ball and issue the Michael's alert earlier! :)

Thank You, Joy and Daisy!

I made these cards tonite with Joy and Daisy in mind... I just wanted to say THANK YOU, Joy and Daisy from Eclectic Paperie, for having me as your blogger of the week! I had such a fun time and met so many of your wonderful subscribers! I wish you sweet girls all the success in the world... there is no one I'd rather shop with, ANYWHERE! I can't wait to see who is next week's blogger of the week..I look forward to seeing more of your creative E.P. friends & their gorgeous creations!

I love the saying on this Michael's $1.00 stamp... I think it speaks volumes: "Of all possessions, a friend is the most precious". Thank you again for a fun week, girls!

Crate Samantha

Stampendous Bee's

Prima Bubble Flowers

More Vintage Lace

I've moved on from the Paper Salon paper, but not very far! Tonite I used the K & Company Girl Scout papers again, this time the pattern name is "Pink and Green Fun Circles". I'm still working with the papers I bought at Eclectic Paperie last time. I have to tell you, you cannot beat their prices vs. the local scrapbook store. It's SO nice to know how much the paper is BEFORE you buy it, because I've gotten hit big time with some of those patterned papers out there. You just start grabbing paper and when you get to the checkout you have NO idea what you've spent or how much a sheet of 12 x 12 paper is!

The pink and green lace is still from that box of vintage ribbon that I got for .50 & treated with oxi-clean. It was well worth the effort because of the colors of this lace...positively pink and celery green! YIPPIE! I'm still doing the double ribbon thing...I don't feel as bad using up ribbon and lace together when I've only paid .50 for it! I bought the cherry red brads specifically for this Stampendous "Tiers of Treats" stamp, and I also got small red rhinestone bling for the same purpose. I love that the brads are round and shiny, like a cherry would be!

Also, I figured out an easy way to avoid marker lines on your images if you want full-blast, in-your-face color...try this... BEFORE you use your Stampin up markers, take your aquapainter and lightly wet the area to be covered. Then color it in with your marker. Since the paper is slightly wet, the marker should glide over the paper, yet still give you full-blast color, and no 'line marks'! Try it and see if it works for you!

Vintage lace

Ok, I'm sure you guys are getting sick of the Paper Salon "Pristine" paper. I promise I'm moving on to different paper soon!

What I really wanted to show you guys was this vintage lace that I got in a huge lot of vintage craft supplies from an auction I was at a few summers ago. I'm a big fan of re-using old loved items, and I love this flowery blue lace that was in the box that I got for 50 cents. Seriously, even if you don't have a clue what's in the box, if a box goes for 50 cents at an auction, GRAB it. It's worth the entertainment value alone, and there could be some HUGE treasure in there! This was my treasure, along with a few other plain colors of lace. I know sometimes when you get old stuff from auctions, it has that 'old lady' perfumey smell. I've found that in general, oxi-clean will get that smell out, and also stains to boot. I soak the lace in my kitchen sink full of hot water and oxi-clean. Also, Febreeze is a great way to freshen stuff up. Friend Debbi Thwaits also soaks her stampin' scrub pads in oxi-clean, to get out the black ink. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to check out those garage sales and estate sales for older craft items. You may be able to use them and you'll have a one-of-a-kind card!

Floral stamp is by Paper Salon, Create-a-flower.

What's your process?

For those of you that just found me through Joy and Daisy's "Eclectic Expose', I wanted to show you a little bit about my process. I find it so interesting to read about how people are inspired and what drives them when they are creating. Heather Nichols (Pinefeather) has an AWESOME post on her blog about her process...if you're interested & haven't already read it, her blog link is HERE. My process is a little..uhm, shall we say MESSIER. Friend Angfab calls me an EXPLODER"; as in, your desk looks like a bomb exploded on it when you're done. I find inspiration in papers messed up in piles.

I usually start my process by pulling out papers that seem like they jive together. Sometimes it's easy, as with these Paper Salon "Pristine" papers. The whole line is made to coordinate, so it's easy to pick papers that go together. I usually end up mixing it up a bit and adding papers from other lines, if they strike me right. My first step is to put together a bunch of layouts, all using the same few papers. Here I've done about 10 or 11 card layouts. I'll then go back later and add a focal image or embellishment. Because these papers are bright and flowery, I'll probably choose cartooney or fun, cutesy images. But the most important part of my process is to make sure to avoid all cleaning or housework. This ensures that I get a lot of stamping done.

Yesterday you saw a few of the cards I created with the 'Caribbean Blue' colored cards. Today I'm playing with the chocolate brown papers. The floral stamps are by Paper Salon's Create-a-flower Tin.

My unbelievable banner today was designed by Bethie Silaika of Freckled Fun designs.

Vintage Millinery Hats

I was able to score these beautiful hats from my Mom, who was selling them at the garage sale this weekend. They belonged to a great-aunt of mine that has long since passed away. Before the sale opened, I grabbed these 5 hats because of the sweet little silk flowers all over them. She was selling them for $1.00 each, so I thought that I'd be able to salvage the flowers and use them on my cards. After admiring them for a few days, I decided they are too beautiful to rip apart. I wanted to share them with everyone! Aren't they beautiful!

Today I was home all day, putzing around the house, cleaning and doing more card layouts. I'm working on a bunch of thank-you cards now..... I'm back to using the "Pristine" collection from Paper Salon, which I got in my last Eclectic Paperie order. I had been putting away all the stamp sets that didn't sell from the garage sale, and found this cartooney coffee-mug stamp, by Uptown Rubber Stamps called "Coffee Cup". I have no idea how old it is, but I would bet it's one of the first few stamps I bought, YEARS ago. This just proves that you can freshen up any of your older stamps by using newer patterned paper! The polka dot flowers are from the "Create-a-Flower" set by Paper Salon.

Look at the sweet little strawberry hanging off the side of this hat. There are also vintage rhinestones and beautiful, thin netting scattered throughout the flowers.

Garage Sale-ing, 101.

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA, I've been at my Mom & Dad's house all day for the big GARAGE SALE. My biggest challenge when having a garage sale is to not come back home with MORE STUFF than I brought to the sale, after having bought everyone else's JUNK. Today I'm proud to say I only spent....DRUMROLL.... fifty cents. That .50 cent purchase spawned these cards. My Mom knows all the great garage and junk sales...she brought me to this sweet little farm filled with flowers galore and we shopped their junk sale. I snatched up these 2 little felt birds. A QUARTER EACH! HELLO!!!

Since I've been playing with the Stampendous FUN FLOCK from Eclectic Paperie, I HAD to try to recreate these little felt guys on paper. So I took some scratch paper, drew out the bird, and used it as a template to draw the bird onto heavier, patterned cardstock. Then I covered the cardstock with glue and slapped on the fun flock.

The fun paper is by Crate; Zoom stoplight & Zoom freeway. The ribbon is from Starlitstudio (May arts). The ~Thank You~ stamp is from Stampendous.

Here are the little felt guys hanging around while we were manning the garage sale at Mama & Papa Z's house.

Create-a- flower

I can't believe my sweet friends Joy and Daisy chose me as Eclectic Paperie's blogger of the week! YIPPIE! Oh wait, now I have to come up with some GOOD stuff! Joy, can I back out of this? Hopefully the mojo gods will be smiling on me this week!

What a mishmash of different papers on these 2 cards, huh? I'm not sure what inspired me to put them together, but they all seemed to have similar colors in them. I think they just needed these fun little flowers from the Paper Salon Create-a-Flower set to tie them together!

My favorite paper this year has got to be this sweet red polka dot shabby paper (Cherry Tomato) from Daisy D's. I find a reason to use it on everything! Joy and Daisy, I'll take a case of it with my next order. I'm on my 5th 12 x 12 sheet of it! The yellow dotty paper is by Chatterbox, "Guest Eyelet" and the floral one is by Pebble's inc, "Loverly Flower".

For the flowers, I usually don't think of using watercolor paper for cartooney images. I had a scrap of it so I tried it with these flowers, and it seems to give a more country, casual look. I think I may try using my watercolor paper more; it really gives a great effect with the aquapainter. I used more mustard ink on the flowers. The fun little corner on the tall card is from Prima Pop-ups, "detail" pattern.

Fun Flock!

I wanted to try out the new Stampendous 'fun flock' product that's out there, because of the yummy candy colors it comes in! I wanted ALL the colors but settled on 'green apple' until I knew exactly how it was going to work and if I was going to like it. So tonite I played around with it a little bit and wanted to give you the 411 on how to use it.

I had a discussion with Pam from the Archivers Woodbury MN store that I used to work at, and we were trying to decide if it would work better on solid stamps using a glue ink, or by coloring in a line image with a glue pen. I'm happy to say that it works JUST FINE with line images. First off, I like that it doesn't COMPLETELY cover your black stamped image lines..it is sort of transparent. So the first hint is to make sure you color in your image before you apply the flock, for maximum color effect.

This is what my image looked like when I didn't color it in.

Much better after coloring in the bird with a celery green SU marker. Make sure that after you dump the flock on, you press it into the glue with your fingers, so lots of the fibers stick in the glue. I'm going to experiment with other glues; here I used a Stampin up liquid glue pen.

Green Birthday Trio

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Ok, I've never been a girlscout, nor have I ever been mistaken for one. But I'm having so much fun with this paper, I'm finding myself humming the tune, "MAAAAAKE NEW FRIENDS, BUT KEEP THE OH-OLD, ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER-GOLD". Heh heh. Val, try getting that song out of your brain. You can thank me later. :)

These are some of the paper piecing cards I did this weekend. I love that I can whip a card out because I already did all the layout work. Tonite it took me 15 minutes or so to putz around with the coloring and embellishments.

The stamps are Tiers of Treats and the Bundt cake from Stampendous ( from Eclectic paperie), and the paper is from K & Company's Girl Scout and "Brownie" line. The sentiment "Have a delicious birthday" is from "Rubber Soul".

Sorry everyone, for the song in your head. No backs.

Vintage Balloon

This sweet vintage image of this little girl holding a balloon caught my attention immediately when I got the "Wacky and Wonderful" image booklet from Crafty Secrets. I'm finding that red and pale yellow are 2 of my favorite colors right now!

The papers are from the Radiant & Earthy paper packs, also from Crafty Secrets. The booklet images make for quick cards, no coloring involved!

Sentiment by Stampin Up, "small sayings".

Back from the Cabin!

Hope you all had a great Mother's day! I spent Mother's day at the cabin with my parents and sister. On Sunday Mom & Dad cooked chicken on the grill and had the whole family over, including Grandma, Auntie Jan & Toonie (see Toonces, you're famous now), Uncle Bob & cousin Jessie. We had gorgeous weather on Saturday. Our days at the cabin are full of inspiration; garage sale-ing, antiquing, fishing, grilling out, pontooning and for me, making cards. Its so easy for me to be inspired at our cabin.

I got this great new Crate paper at Eclectic Paperie. I spent one of the days putting layouts together; basically piecing paper onto cardstock for about 30 cards. Later I'll add main stamped images and embellishments. I did actually finish these 2 cards. I was working at the table with this vintage 50's tablecloth on it that used to be my Grammie's. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I finished the cards, I noticed how much the colors I chose for the cards mimic the tablecloth colors.

Mom bought gifts for the auntie's and Grandma; she scored more buckets from Michael's and added these beautiful plants to them. The buckets are 40 percent off right now...I see a trip to Mike's in my future!

The bird stamps are from Crafty Secrets, from the Birdnotes set.

Happy Mother's Day!

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a HAPPY HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY. Make sure you give your mum some hugs and tell her how much you love her and appreciate everything she's done for you!

My mum is up at the cabin without internet so I can post this! I made this last winter for her; I thought this image from SU's "Tender Toile" set was just perfect for Mother's day.

The paper is from Daisy D's Modern Romance Collection, and the background stamp is SU's french script. I will NEVAH NEVAH sell that stamp! EVAH! Have a happy weekend everyone!

Green Galore

I have to admit, I'm not a big green galore fan. (No offense to any green galore lovers out there).

But when I got this fun K & Co "Girl Scout" paper from Eclectic Paperie, I had to make friends with it again. It seemed the perfect cardstock to make the colors in this paper pop. Although I did have to shabby it up with old olive and creamy caramel ink to tone it down.

I had a million of these little white buttons that I got at a dollar store in a sewing pack of buttons. I think they added a fun little pop to the card. And since they're all plain white and cheap, I was able to let go of them without guilt!

The tulips are from the create-a-flower set, stamped on SEI polka dot paper. The sad little paper piercing around the circle is done with my sewing machine.

Paris in the Spring.

Oh crap. I've been digging through my 'for sale' pile for the garage sale and pulling out stamp sets. I walk past them and think, NO NO, I CAN'T GET RID OF THIS ONE. Look at me...what a sad sad little hoarder who is TOO attached to her rubber! So I'm making myself use these sets, once and for all, to prove to myself that I really will use them again.

I can't get rid of "Paris in the Spring" for ONE reason. These cartooney gifts! I haven't touched the chickie on the motorscooter, but I'm a whiz with the presents! GEEZ!


How many more sets will I snag from the pile before the garage sale hits? And one more question regarding the dead lawn mower. Why is it that it won't start when a girl is trying to use it, but my Dad comes over and it starts up immediately for him? Is it some guy-designed starter that is programmed to only start if it senses you're male?

Still playing with the primas and the Paper Salon Paper! Oh, and OLD stamp sets! :)

Eclectic Paperie

Aaaack what a night. I've had chaos going on around me; the last hour has been crazy. I got home, changed my clothes, and went face-first into a series of catastrophes, all within a 15 minute time frame. The lawn mower died, my cell phone died, the timer for the laundry I was doing went off, and the smelly-cat had problems in the litter box. Lets just say the chicken I fed him at lunch did not go over well.

I'm amazed that I got these cards made tonite. They are lacking in quality but what can I say, I was trying to do 4 things at once. I did come up with a few fun tips. These Prima 'bubble' flowers are large enough that you can take the flower centers from the create-a-flower set and stamp them in the middle. If you look closely under the glitter, I've created centers with ink on top of the flowers.

The other fun thing is the asymmetrical flower on the card to the right. I screwed up and didn't cut the flower image straight, so it's top heavy. I think on my next batch of cards I may exaggerate it more, and make the top wider than the bottom. We'll see how it turns out! Yippie for new flower stamps!

Everything is from Eclectic Paperie: Paper by Paper Salon, "Pristine" collection, stamps by Paper Salon, Create-a-flower.