The snow is on it's way!

It's all over the news tonite... Minnesota is gonna get hit with the white fluffy stuff tomorrow & then it will promptly glaze over with ice! YIKES! So scary! But it's sounding like it will be a cozy weekend inside! I'm in a hurry to pack up here and head to my parents house to help put up the Christmas tree tomorrow. I was going to leave in the morning but I want to run before the snow hits & I'm stuck here! So this is my last post until probably Monday as I'll be out of commission & probably shoveling my butt off on Sunday night.

The cards above were done with both the Penny Black Christmas Critters set. I thought the sentiment from the Crafty Secrets Vintage Christmas set fit this singing mice image PERFECTLY! Get it? Making your pathway bright...lantern?

Just a quick announcement: the Crafty Secrets Design Team will each be giving away blog candy on our blogs courtesy of Sandy from Crafty Secrets! We each get to pick out our favorite stamp set, cotton scraps and booklet, and give it away to one lucky blog reader! So make sure to check out the crafty team blogs during December to get in on the drawings!

This week, the candy will be on PAM HOOTEN'S blog, so make sure to go check out Pam's favorite products and get in the drawing!

If I don't post on Monday night can somebody send a snowplow to my house? It means I'm buried!

I am COVERED in glitter again tonite.

I swear, you can always tell where a stamper lives by the glitter trail that follows them. I am seriously close to the end of my 50 card order & am already breathing a sigh of relief that it will be one thing off of my to-do list! YAY! Still posting photos from Thanksgiving weekend from the card stack I showed you earlier in the week. These sweet little kitties are in my fave Penny Black Christmas Critters set that I played with last weekend. The paper is from Daisy D's, Snowflake & Holly Line, called "Holly Paisly, Snowflake Blue". Copics used for coloring the kitty: Dull Ivory, Light Walnut and Africano. Holly headband: Cadmium Red & Moss colors. The snowflake stamped on the main image is from the Crafty Secrets Vintage Christmas set.

5 Hot Firemen and Halloween pajamas.

So why is it that the only time you have 5 cute firemen in your house, you're wearing Halloween witch pajama bottoms and an old navy thermal t-shirt that hangs down to your knees?

We had a slight emergency last night involving carbon monoxide detectors and Walgreen's batteries. Apparently in some of the detectors, you're only supposed to use certain battery brands, because the Walgreen's battery kept setting off the carbon monoxide detector. While we sat and pondered whether it was the battery or we were actually going to die in our sleep last night, divine intervention happened. 3 police cars and a St. Paul fire truck showed up at our house. Since the firemen got called to our neighbor's house to inspect their car, we had them do double duty and check the furnaces and stoves for our carbon monoxide mystery. So yeah, I'm still single. Apparently I need to invest in new pajamas.

Ok, just one blurry photo tonite, as I already took all of these cards into work with me yesterday..these little Stampendous guys from the Pixel and Pookie line are SO DANG fun to color! I love that they can do double duty, as either Christmas cards or winter generic cards! I just want to giggle every time I see his face! He's colored in with Copic markers & the background paper is a mixture of K & Company Wild Saffron Petite Stripe & Cosmo Cricket Be Good, "Believe". I bought Snowbound Pixel...(or is he pookie?) from Eclectic Paperie shortly after CHA in August this year, so I'm excited to finally be in the holiday mood to color him in & use him on cards.

Crafty Secrets 4 new stamp sets!

Sandy from Crafty Secrets just released 4 new stamp sets this morning! This is my fave set from the new releases: it's called "Little Chef" & is a mini-version of Crafty's big kitchen set, only with different accessories.

This set has lots of baking-themed stamps, like a whisk, flour canister, utensils, muffin tins and another Campbell's kid, Chef-style! Here I used the stamps to create large gift tags that could be added to baked Christmas goodie gifts!

I also pulled the egg theme from the set and created a birthday card with eggs on the front.

The sentiment "Have a "delicious birthday" on the bowl card is from Rubber Soul. Sandy from Crafty Secrets is having a 2 day shipping promotion...check out her blog HERE to see 3 more sets, more samples from the design team, and to find out how to get the free/reduced shipping promo.

Have an eggstra special day, everyone!

Congrats to Cheryl Close, Comment #74

Yahoo! Cheryl & her sister's pecan pie tarts are the winners of the new release Hanna stamp set, "Things Hanna would Say!" Cheryl, if you could email your address to me at shabbychickjunk@hotmail.com, I'll send your name to Kristy and she'll send out your stamp set!

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:74
Timestamp: 2007-11-26 01:05:38 UTC

Thanks everyone, for entering! Make sure you check the other design team blogs to see if you won in one of the other blog candy drawings!

Happy Sunday to all! :)

L.

AAAACK! Too much going on today!

Just a few announcements! First off, I want to say congrats to Kristi for getting the new Hannastamps website up and running! It looks FABULOUS! Tonite the Hanna design team will be drawing winners for a new release set called "Things Hanna Would Say!". If you didn't get a chance to enter, make sure you post a comment on my blog HERE, as I'll be doing the drawing tonite after dinner (7pm central time)! Also make sure to click the Hanna stamps design team blogs to the right, so you can make sure to get into their drawings as well! 19 chances to win! YAY! I love freebies.

Also tonite at midnight, Crafty Secrets will be releasing *4*, count 'em, *4* new stamp sets! The design team has been busy cranking out samples, so head over to Splitcoast to check them out tomorrow. We will be adding the samples to the Crafty gallery as well, and I'm sure you'll also be seeing them on the Crafty Design team blogs. BUSY BUSY stampers, we are!

The sweet little mousey cards above are for my card stash, and to sell at work. I couldn't decide on just one design this year, so each person on my Christmas card list will receive a unique and different card, as there were too many fun images for me to decide on just one. I used this fun minty Deja views paper called "Snowball", from their Flurries & Frost collection on this set of cards. The green crackled wood paper is from K & Company, called "Teal distressed wood flat paper". The mousey is from my favorite Penny Black 'Christmas Critters' acrylic set that has now been wiped out of stock at Eclectic Paperie! E.P. had a wonderful sale on Christmas stamp sets over there..sounds like you guys have been out shopping this weekend, because they sold out of Crafty's Vintage Christmas set too! I've been coloring up a storm with my copic markers. Since I only have a few colors of the markers, I had to make do with just one solid marker when I colored these guys. I used a putty colored marker for the mouse, colored him in lightly first, and then kept adding layers of color with the same marker to create the darker edges.

Ok, so I'm off to run some errands, and then I'll be back later tonite to announce the Hanna Stamps sentiment set winner! Happy Sunday!

Penny Black Hedgies!

I'm back from Wisconsin! Yippie! I still have 2 days of vacation before going back to work! Hope everyone had a fun Thanksgiving! Did you guys do the black Friday sales? My family and I normally go out and brave the crowds to get the doorbuster bargains, but this year decided against it. The only stop I made was at Michael's for adhesive, as I'm trying to finish up the santa/sleigh cards for work. I brought the supplies with me to Wisconsin but ended up forgetting a key stamp, so I didn't get very far with them. Luckily, my Eclectic Paperie order came before I hit the road, so I had these fun little Christmas Hedgies that I could color! I now have 2 favorite Christmas sets, my Crafty Secrets Vintage Santas and this Penny Black hedgie set! It is UNBELIEVABLE to me that the hedgie set was only $12.99 (actually I just noticed it's on sale for $10.39 at E.P. right now!) I mixed the 2 sets and used the sentiment from Crafty's Vintage set. I made a ton of cards with the Hedgies & my Copic markers, so I'll be showing you more samples from this set all week. The hedgies & mice from this set are PERFECT size for putting on 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 cards. I also ordered more colors of Copic markers, and decided that for the money, I like the Ciao markers just as well as the sketch version. They are cheaper so I can get more markers for my money. The paper I used on the hedgie cards was from Daisy D's Paisley Sugarplum collection. Here is as far as I got with the work Christmas cards before noticing that I left my large background block at home. Oh well, I had fun with the hedgies anyway!

Happy Saturday, all!

Blog candy - I am thankful for YOU!

I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow and to say THANK YOU to my family, friends and all my sweet blog readers! Kristi from Hanna Stamps has generously donated a brand new release sentiment set "Things Hanna would say" to each of the design team members to give away over Thanksgiving! So you have 19 chances to win this set before it is released!

The sentiments in this set are designed to coordinate with all of the Hanna stamp sets, past, present and future! Each design team member will be posting a different sentiment on their blog & giving away this set!

...so leave a comment here with your favorite food from your Thanksgiving meal to enter my drawing (I'll draw Sunday night) , and then go click on the Hanna Team links to the right, explore the other blogs & enter their drawings too!!

Have a safe & happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

L.

Look Who's Coming for Dinner.

I threw together a quick card to bring to my Aunt Jan's house for Thanksgiving with a hostess gift. The turkey image is from Crafty's "Fall" Cotton Scraps, which are actually vintage images printed on cotton twill. You can cut them out and sew them on purses, clothing, whatever you want! Here I cut out the turkey image, peeled the backing off and sewed it onto a cardstock matting. The "Red Bird" green beans image is from Crafty's Earthy paper pad, and the blue crackled wood background is from their pastel paper pad. Makes for a quick and easy card!

I'm heading to Wisconsin tomorrow for the Thanksgiving holiday...be sure to check in with the Hanna Stamps design team blogs during your holiday, as there will be blog candy galore given away this weekend! YIPPIE!

Blackened Turkey.

I've had this card in my head for AGES and finally got a chance to create it this weekend. Lets just say my cooking skills need improvement, so I thought it would be funny to have the Campbell's kids eat out on Thanksgiving because they burned the turkey.

The Campbell's kids stamps are from the Crafty Secrets "Kitchen Classics" set that retails for $25.75. If you haven't bought this set yet but want a mini version of it, you are in for a treat...a week from today, Crafty will be releasing a new small set for $7.75, that can be used on its own, or used with the large kitchen set! You can catch a sneak peek of the new set on the Crafty Secrets blog HERE, and enter to try to win some goodies that Sandy is giving away!

Turkey day is almost here...have you bought all the fixin's yet? Or are you eating out?!!

A light blue Christmas & a Crafty Drawing!

**Note** Check out the new Crafty Secrets blog HERE, & enter to win a new release stamp set!

I know we haven't hit Thanksgiving yet, but I'm already feeling the Christmas rush pressure this year! I think it started WAY earlier this year, with the retail stores already having hot deals out there! I hate to rush you guys, but you know, there are only 36 days left before Christmas! AAAAACK! PEOPLE, IT'S ALMOST HERE! I'M NOT READY! STOP IT! STOP THE CLOCK!

Since next weekend it will all hit, I thought I'd post these Christmas ornaments, just in case you're looking for gift ideas! I had made these months ago when it was too early to post them, and then forgot about them! The photos with the Christmas tree on Vicki Chrisman's blog reminded me that I had made ornaments for Crafty's trade show booth a while back. These tags are made of wood, and come in a set of 4 tags (I don't remember pricing but I know they were cheap) from Michael's. I painted the backs of the ornaments with acrylic paint, and then mod podged paper onto the front of the ornaments. The paper is from Crafty's "Earthy" paper pad, and is sort of a sky-blue color. I stamped the snowflakes from Crafty's "Vintage Christmas" set onto the paper in versamark ink & embossed the snowflakes with white embossing powder. The Father Christmas images are stamped onto white paper, colored in and then I used the cracked glass technique on top of the images to make them look old. All along the edge is some irridescent "snow" that I had in my crafting supplies from a while back. For the ornament 'strings' I used old vintage tinsel cord. You could also use ribbon or gold cord or whatever you choose for the hanger. I'm a re-use it kind of girl!

Hanna Stamps Release Tonite!

The new Hanna set, "Rainy Day" will be released at midnight tonite!

This is a larger card since I'm on such a SUPERSIZE roll lately! I wanted to make it look like the ducks were all paddling along behind her in a straight little row, so I needed a large space to do that in. Now that I look at this, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have placed the cute little wormie where I did. He sort of looks like duck poop, doesn't he. Oops.

I used brown fun flock for Hanna's hair, and I took crystal effects (diamond glaze) and put it over the raindrops so that they are glossy and 3-d. The sentiment is stamped on die-cut ovals that I punched from the Nestabilities Dies that I bought at Ellen Hutson's online store.

I outlined the ducks with dazzling diamonds glitter so that it looks like the rain is sparkling off their little heads and top of their bodies.
This was a fun set to play with, for sure!

My blog banner today was designed for me by the incredible Bethie Silaika of Freckled Fun designs!

Say cheese.

Ok, "Say cheese" has nothing to do with this post, it just seemed appropriate after I just ate a 1/4 of a brick of swiss cheese for dinner tonite. I had one of those days that just smacks you out of nowhere and stresses you out. Friend Lana had one of those days too, however she got on a treadmill and worked through it. I, on the other hand, ate my weight in swiss cheese. I'm hot.

So here is my finished card for the HR dept. at work. I think the final tweaks they asked for made all the difference...the larger image fills up the card better, and adding color to the music notes helps a bit too. (This is a ginormously sized card, measuring 5 1/2" x 8 1/2") Tonite I got into prep mode by shoveling off my stamping table and putting everything in order so I can work on creating 50 of this card this weekend. The biggest thing to remember when doing special card orders with large quantities, is to not use obsolete things that are not readily available. For instance.... the red rick-rack that I got on clearance 4 years ago at Michaels. Stay clear of it. I may end up substituting red velvet rick-rack, since it's all that is available to me in the stores right now. Also, red brads are hard to come by, when you need a package of 50. Make sure when you're quoting your card prices you are either a.) quoting supplies on actual cost & your labor separately, or b.) You have done all the research & know the exact price it costs you to create the card. Also, it helps to know where you can purchase the supplies locally without having to special order things from the internet & wait for them to arrive 5-7 days later. Sometimes requests come through for extras or you run out of supplies or screw something up & need more. Not that I've done this. Ok, yeah I've done that.

Tomorrow night: Another rainy Hanna sample.

Stamp set by Crafty Secrets: Vintage Christmas

Hanna Stamps New Release Sneak Peek

Sandra and Carol, your wish is my command. The mushroom has its own banner now! Tonite I'm on a Hanna Stamps mission for the set release Friday of the next Hanna set! The set will be released at Midnight on Thursday! I have another sample that I did tonite that needs some drying time, so I can show you this one for right now!

This set has lots of cute little rainy accessories with it, I can't wait for the set to be unveiled so you can see all the great little elements Krissy has put into it! I stamped Hanna with Brilliance Black pigment ink and heat set her with my heat gun so that I could use my Copic markers on her (thanks to Julie Ebersole for this tip, it works like a charm!). Her raincoat and the ducks are done by paper piecing; stamping on patterned paper and cutting out the image to paste onto your main image.
Michelle Wooderson has a great tutorial on paper piecing HERE.

I cut the feet off the ducks so that it would look like they're swimming in the puddles but I don't think I got the perspective right on this! The paper is Daisy D's Cherry Tomato dots...this is the first time I've ever used that paper! NOT! FAVE FAVE FAVE paper! Hanna's hair has been fun-flocked brown.

I got the cute little umbrella charm at Krissy's ebay store HERE...she's got a ton of cute little metal charm embellishments that make a simple card into something special and fun! The charms are a really good quality weight..they are heavy and DOUBLE SIDED, so the etched pattern on the charm is the same on both sides. Tomorrow night I will for sure post my finished ginormous Christmas card sample, I'm putting the final finishing touches on it tonite & it will be ready for your approval tomorrow!

Happy Tuesday sweet friends! L.

Good thing I don't like mushrooms!

Thank you SO much to Janine Tinklenberg & Petie S. for helping us identify the Super Mario Brothers mushroom (Pegg S, you make me giggle!) Check out this link that tells all about my Mom's mushroom! I did *NOT* see any smurfs living in it, but then again, I did not EAT any of it! HOW COOL IS THAT... we had poisonous, hallucinogenic mushrooms growing at our cabin! AND MY MOM found it! Can she get arrested for for growing mushrooms? Just checkin'.

These cards are some of the projects I worked on this weekend; I was asked to design some Christmas cards for the HR department where I work, as they want to do a special order of cards from me instead of ordering printed cards this year. These cards are GINORMOUS, because they wanted everyone in the department to be able to sign their names to the card. The red Santa card is a full 81/2 x 11 sheet of paper folded in half! HUGE!

All of the images and sentiments are from Crafty Secret's Vintage Christmas Stamp Set, except for the row of birds, which are from the Birdnotes set. It was sort of difficult to fill such large space for me, as I'm so used to making 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" cards! They chose a design today, which was tweaked from 2 of these cards. Tomorrow I'll show you the final version that they decided on. I've been in production mode already tonite, cutting cardstock! Tomorrow, I'll post the finished product. I'm off to continue cutting; I have 50 cards to produce this week & a Hanna release on Friday! More tomorrow! L.

The Mushroom Story.

So I have to tell you guys this story. I meant to tell it a few weeks ago and then got sidetracked cranking out cards. We closed the family cabin 2 weekends ago, and as I was packing up to go to the cabin, my Mom called and said ..."Hey, bring your camera, ok?" I asked why she wanted it and she said, "Because there is this mushroom that's really cool". I said, "Mom, why do you want a photo of a mushroom?". She says, "Well I thought you might want it for your blog". I said, "Mom, why would I want to put a photo of a mushroom on my blog, it's a cardmaker's blog?!" She said "Just bring the camera, it's really cool". So I get to the cabin, and check out the freakin mushroom...it is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life! It looks like it's been spritzed with orange GLIMMER MIST! WTH?!!! DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT KIND OF A MUSHROOM THIS IS?! It was growing next to the house...Mom picked it up and moved it into an old log to make it look a little more picturesque! So my Mom goes for a walk & my sister and I are discussing why I'd want to put a mushroom photo on my blog, and she says, "Well take some pictures of it next to some cards and it will make sense then." So here you have it, mushrooms and crafts. I made these little boxes that weekend at the cabin for my Mom's bridge club...they hold a deck of playing cards. The boxes are such a steal, from Oriental trading: $4.95 for 12 of them! I covered them in different shabby papers and stamped crowns on them from the Crafty Secrets "Birdnotes" set. The image is from Crafty's "Wacky and Wonderful" booklet.


So if anyone has any info on this mushroom, please email me! Have you ever seen a mushroom like this?!!! Happy Sunday! L.

Cranked out.

Still more cards that I cranked out last weekend! We're getting near the end of that batch of cards. This weekend I'll be cranking more out on Saturday. I'm very impressed with myself tonite because I banned myself from my stamp room and got a ton of stuff done including bagging up the leaves in the front yard. It gets dark so early now!

The fluffles stamp is by Stampendous; I was able to stamp off a bunch of these guys at the stamping retreat I was at in August! I loved this guy so much that I bought the grasshopper version of him from Eclectic Paperie.

Paper is by K & Company, I got it at Michael's in a paper pad with my 40 percent off coupon. I love the shabby florals and stripes in this paper!

Sentiments by Papertrey, Faux Ribbon.

You had me at Merlot.

These great "My friend Ronnie" images came from my sweet friends Joy & Daisy from Eclectic Paperie! I probably mentioned this before but I just love trading stamped images with friends, as it makes you create outside your comfort zone! You guys know me as a vintage kind of chick, but when I saw these images, I knew I HAD to combine her with the Crafty Secrets Wine Set because I love the saying "You had me at Merlot." I think the expression on this cute chickie's face says it all! It could be a fun friend card, or a *hint hint* card for your sweet hubby!

Poppy Hedgies

Can you believe I've had this stamp for 2 months and have not done anything with it? This weekend was the first time I played with the Penny Black Poppy Fields stamp that I got in my last Eclectic Paperie order.

These are done with the Daisy D's Beacon Hill 8 x 8 paper pad that was gifted to me by friends. Still crankin' em out! Sentiments by Papertrey, Faux ribbon set. P.S. Ignore the watermark that says "Stampendous." The stamp is from Penny Black. DOH!

Cleaning up the Halloween Decor

We had SNOW flurries today in MN! Lets just say I'm not ready for winter yet... I still haven't taken down my Halloween decorations! @#$&#@!!

These are some of the "Git R Done" cards I did this weekend, using these cute papers from Daisy' D's Paisley Sugarplum collection & My Mind's Eye (Tres Jolie). I bought extra sheets of this red gingham xmas paper because I know I'll use it throughout the year. I love paper that that serves dual purposes!

I can see myself using this gingham as much as my favorite red Daisy D's polka dots. The cute little Stampendous fluffles stamp with the ladybugs is from Eclectic Paperie. Completely easy and fun to color! The red velvet rick-rack is from Starlit Studio's ebay store. My sweet friend Carol Halvorson split her rick-rack with me after she was in a ribbon swap a few months ago! Look how yummy it all looks sitting in a cheap 1.00 compote that I bought in my junking adventures! I have the compote sitting on my stamping desk so that I can have it at my fingertips.

The smaller sentiments are from Papertrey's Faux Ribbon Set; I love how perfect the size of these stamps are for cardmaking. Have a happy Monday, everyone! L.

Penny Black Hedgies

I had so much fun coloring last night! I only made about 10 cards but I have to say, I finally calmed down long enough to start experimenting with my copic markers. I'm starting to kind of get the hang of them a little. I know I have a long way to go, but it's a start! When I colored these Penny Black hedgies, I ended up using 3 different shades of brown along with the blender pen. I layered on the lightest color first, then the darker color around the edge where the shading lines were, and then used a medium color and blended the 2 colors together with it. The paper was SO fun to work with...I was gifted with 2 of the Daisy D's 8 x 8 paper pads (Eclectic Paperie) by 2 sweet friends of mine at the stamp retreat I went to in August. It had my FAV polka dot paper in it, which I am SO addicted to, and the awesome part is that the polka dots were sized down for cardmakers, so it was a smaller print. Also, in the back of the pads are punch-out tabbies and flowers and photo corners & turns to put on your cards. Makes it easy to coordinate papers on your cards! I also used a sakura gelly roll glitter pen to outline the bee's wings and the flowers. Thank you, sweet friends!