Lockhart Apples

A quick announcement... Crafty Secrets has a contest going on the blog...make sure to check it out and enter to win a $100.00 gift certificate! Sandy just posted a ton of Father's day samples for you to get inspired, too... June 15th is coming up soon!

I'm still camera-less and heading to the cabin today for the garage-sale-around-the lake, so a quick post with the Lockhart Apple stamp from Ellen Hutson. I saw this layout on Lori Craig's blog a while back and made some cards with it. I believe it may have been a Beate sketch challenge originally...either way, I LOVE the layout!

The paper is old Crate "Cowgirl" patterned paper. Apples are colored in with Copic Markers, "Cadmium Red" & bowl with Dull Ivory & Light Walnut.

Have a sunny weekend, all, and I'll hopefully see you Sunday with a new camera & pics!

The short week is flying by~!

I, for one, am SO glad this week is flying by and that it's already Wednesday! I've got more of my photo stash to show you tonite....these are simple stamped thank-you cards done with some See-D rubber stamps I bought at Crafts Direct a while ago. I was trying to use up older patterned paper from my bin, and decided to go with the caribbean blue and orange colors in these Crate & My Mind's eye patterned papers.

The flowers and vines were quick and easy to color with my Copic Markers. I may have to experiment with this layout some more...the paper piecing on the diagonal almost makes the orange paper look like big photo corners, doesn't it? Hope your week is flying by too! More tomorrow night!

L.

P.S. One quick announcment! Crafty Secrets is having a Father's Day contest where you can win a $100 gift certificate! Details on the Crafty Secrets Blog HERE!

Karen Stolper Thank You's

Back at work today and settling into the weekday routine. It's been nice here today so I spent some time outside mowing the lawn and taking a short walk. THE LILACS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND SMELL SO GOOOOOD! Except my nose has been running nonstop since I got back from the walk! That's too much info, isn't it.

So on to some flowery cards that won't make your nose run. These are some Karen Stolper images that I begged off friend Angfab Shober at our last girls gathering in St. Cloud. These are so quick and easy to color. I paired these girlies up with the sentiment
"Thanks a Bunch" from Crafty Secret's Sweet Kids set, and some Making Memories Chelsea's place patterned paper from Michaels. I love the shabby red floral paper on these. I need to try pairing that paper up with some polka dots! I've been trying to use up prima flowers too. Happy Tuesday all!

Daisy D's Sympathy Cards

Hi All! Hope everyone is having a wonderful memorial weekend! I'm back from the cabin and finally have time to sit and do a blog post! I ran around last week looking at new digital cameras, and think that I've got one picked out that should be fabulous for doing close-ups of cards. I'm excited to get it ordered and play around with it. The great thing is that it should be good in low light, as many of my card photos are taken on a shelf in a cupboard I have in my stamp room. I worked on a ton of new stuff at the cabin so I have lots of new creations to post, but I need to get the camera in my hands to start photographing stuff! So in the meantime, here are some sympathy cards I made a few weeks ago. I've used a few different stamp sets with the same patterned paper, which is a xmas paper by Daisy D's called "Timeless Holiday". It totally did not strike me as holiday paper, and I've been using it in lots of summer projects. I was so excited to see it being clearanced out at Archivers, so I picked up more of it for my stash! The floral stamp is an Anna Griffin stamp from Michaels.

The bird and flower pot image is from a Stampin Up retired stamp set called "Feathered Hope". I'm hoping to have a post every weekday this week since I've been missing in action lately. We have our second garage sale coming up this weekend at the cabin, so I'll be up there trying to unload ...er, I mean 'sell' more junk. This time, the camera will stay safely at home! :) Happy Monday!

Sentiments by Papertrey and Stampin Up.

Lunch blogging.

Dang, I had every intention of blogging last night and got sucked into the AMERICAN IDOL finale! So I'm doing some lunch blogging today.

Here's more cards from my 100 card weekend a while back. These are Stampendous Changitos from Eclectic Paperie. I discovered you can change the saying inside the frame by stamping a saying on plain cardstock and paper-piecing it in

to the frame.

Patterned paper is by Crate, "Sweet Branch" collection. Changitos colored in with Copic Markers. I'm heading back to work now...have a beautiful Thursday!

Monkey business.

So here's the good thing. I have a file FULL of card photos that I haven't had time to upload to my blog! I think it's a perfect time to use them, being that I am camera-less this week!

This fun little monkey stamp is a Whippersnapper design by S. Comisky. It's a good one for practicing your shading on with Copics! I got it in January from Crafts Direct at a girls gathering in St Cloud.

He fits perfectly with Stampendous' Changito sentiments! He's a little more detailed than the Changitos, so I gave him shading by coloring him with a brown Copic (Light Walnut) and then going over him again with the same color, just shading in the outside edges of his body. I left his back lighter, as if the sun was shining directly onto his body straight on.

The paper is by Crate's "Cowgirl" line.

Rainy, camera-less Monday!

I'm back home again tonite, with no stamping photos but a lotta junk shots! It was the big garage sale weekend in Wisconsin at my parents house. We had a beautiful weekend for a sale and had lots of shabby treasures to offer up to garage-salers. I called Mom and had her take photos of the sale before it opened on Friday morning so you could see the junk in its full glory!





We had tons of vintage china for sale...my Mom and sister cleaned out their cupboards and got rid of lots of odds & ends of dishes! (I can't part with mine yet so they're still in my cupboard)! We are all gaga over floral china, and none of us can resist a stray teacup and saucer, or pretty floral plate, even if it doesn't match anything we own. These are odds and ends put up for sale.


















Wicker items seemed to be popular...we had something from every era! My Mom cleared out her Santabears (Dayton's department stores), which were hot items back in the day but are now just big stuffed animals, taking up space!









This is Elliott, the neighbor's dog, who hung out with us most of the weekend. Here he's guarding the check-out table!






This is Elliott's owner, Oliver (Mom & Dad's neighbor). Oliver ran back and forth between the 3 garage sales all weekend, buying new toys and junk with the money he made from his Mom's garage sale. Here he's showing his brand new Fischer Price train set that he scored from the neighbor's house. We heard all about how cool the set was in great detail.




I went over and helped him set up his train set in his yard. A little while after that he came over with a gift for me....




This beautiful rubber band bracelet with his name on it. I'm supposed to wear it so that I won't forget him when he goes on vacation next week in Mackinaw Island. So that's my weekend in a nutshell, minus my dandelion weeding adventure when I returned home last night. I also have a slight problem this week...my camera went missing at the garage sale! So my blogging this week will be done using older photos of cards that I've done, while I'm out shopping for a new camera! Happy Monday all!

L.

I'm crankin' em out again! I don't even really NEED birthday cards but I was so psyched to stamp with the new Penny Black Acrylic sets I just got! I had to get all of the new acrylic sets in my last Eclectic Paperie order because I loved the Penny Black xmas stamps I got last year SO MUCH!

I'm so so happy they came out with acrylic sets for birthday and other occasions because I have so much fun coloring them in. They are PERFECT size for cards! Not too huge, not too tiny~! So I hope you like Penny Black stuff because you'll be seeing a lot of them! I bought "Every which way", "Critter Party" and "Bubbly" sets.

I was FINALLY able to play in the weekly Crafty Secrets challenge again, over at Splitcoast!

Lori posted a great "Smorgasboard" challenge HERE, if you want to play along!

I used 2 of the challenges; first, I used "BUGS" on my card, from Crafty's "Bugs Life" stamp set, and second, I stamped on my ribbon using Crafty's "Flourishes" stamp set. I decided to try embossing on the ribbon but that ended up in the trash because I think my embossing powder is old; it wasn't melting right and the ribbon ended up in the trash! Some nights are just like that, I guess!

Dollar Stamps

It is GARAGE SALE season, and you know what that means? Bargain stamp time! I was at a scrapbooking retreat a few months ago, and on the first night of the retreat they hold a 'garage sale', where you can bring stuff you want to sell and people at the retreat can buy your old supplies at whatever price you mark on them!

Well, I sold a bunch of my stuff and then 'shopped' around for stamp sets for myself. This is one of my bargains. I paid a dollar for this "Make a Wish" stamp at the retreat! The brand on the edge of the stamp block is listed as "JRL Design". I'm not familiar with them at all but I loved this little birthday cake and present image! I stamped a bunch of these images off and packed a 'to go' tote of images and copic markers so I could color images yesterday at my parents house. We also got the garage all set up for our upcoming garage sale next weekend. We're calling it the 'traveling crap show", since anything that doesn't sell at my parents garage sale will get packed up and hauled up to the cabin for the cabin garage-sale-around-the-lake. I can't wait to check out the cool junk that all the cabin people at the lake will have for sale!

Patterned paper: Webster's pages "Pink Lemonade" Snickerdoodle.
Image: JRL Design Co "Make A Wish"
Supplies: Copic markers, glitter, copic multiliner (for doodling), May Arts ribbon

Happy Mother's Day!

I am *SO* relieved that I got all of my projects done for Mother's day tomorrow! I've been putzing around most of the day and was completely inspired by AngelNorth's (Joanne Allison's) beautiful lilac card in the Crafty Secret's gallery! Joanne is this month's guest designer at Crafty Secrets; you can check out her gorgeous eye candy on the Crafty Secrets blog or in the gallery. I went and pulled out the gorgeous lilac paper that has been a personal fave from the Crafty Secret "Radiant" paper pad & got to work on a scrapbook page for my Mom for Mother's day. This is one of the photos I was able to copy from my Grandmother's photo albums. I used Vicki Chrisman's technique to sew a sheet music ruffle for the bottom of the page. I used an exacto knife to carefully pop the lilacs off the page so they look like they are covering the top of the photo.





I also duplicated this page of my Grandma at Roy Lake, and went to Michaels and got a 12 x 12 frame to put it in. I thought she'd like to have a copy of the page for herself! I am going to try to start making more gifts for my family....now that I have a bunch of Gram's photos, I can start doing projects with them more often.







I wanted to make cards for my Mom and Grams, and was glad to have the "Summertime" Crafty Secrets Booklet with all of the gorgeous seed packet images. Makes for quick and easy cards!







Sandy and Cindy outdid themselves again on these booklets...the colors on the images are phenomenal!





I used Crafty's "Card Sentiments" stamp set to stamp the sayings on the insides of the cards.



I had a slight gift-wrap snafu. As in, I have NOTHING but Christmas wrapping paper in my stash. So I tried to make this xmas stripe work. It has pink and blue in it so I figure it can work as non-xmas paper. I made little tags for the tops of these gifts with my polka dotted Daisy D's paper. These are for the rest of the Moms in our family.... some are just dog-Moms, but it still counts. Any reason to give a gift, right?



I tried to disguise the Christmas paper with a Crafty Secrets red embossed swirl from the "Flourishes" stamp set.

So all in all, it was a pretty Crafty day. Hope your Mom's day is wonderful tomorrow!

Crafty Secrets Mom's Day Giftcard Tins

I'm starting to finally focus on Mom's day this weekend and have a bunch of projects I want to get done before Sunday! Tomorrow's my day to focus! I started on part of the gifts for my Mom & Grammie...I had purchased some gift card tins from Michael's on clearance for .25 cents each a while ago. I used Mod-podge and adhered vintage sheet music to to the tops of the tins and distressed them with Stampin Up creamy caramel ink. I then attached some images from the new Crafty Secrets "Birds & Botanicals" booklet. Slap on some buttons, swirls (Crafty Secrets "Flourishes" set and some paper flowers (Kaiser) and it was a quick, easy project! Isn't this bird image beautiful? I added glitter to the flowers with a Sakura clear gelly roll glitter pen.

I usually get my Grandma a gift certificate to Herbergers or Target, but this time I decided on an Applebee's gift certificate, so that we can spend some quality time together, or she can treat someone to dinner with it!

Here's what the tins looked like before I altered them. Pretty bright, eh? I'm heading to a girlfriend's tonite for drinks & a bonfire, but will be back home tomorrow and spending the day in my stamp room to get stuff done! I'll have more Mother's day projects tomorrow night for you!

Have a great Friday evening everyone! L.

Anna Griffin Sympathy

More quick cards to stock my card stash...these were SUPER quick, and minimal coloring! I've had this Anna Griffin tulip stamp for months that I bought with a 40 percent off Michael's coupon. I need to start using it more because it covers a multitude of occasions; birthday, sympathy, elegant thank-you, the list goes on! On these images I colored directly onto the rubber of the stamp with Stampin Up water based markers (burgundy & mellow moss) and then stamped the image onto white cardstock. I colored the tulip in with a creamy caramel marker to get the 2-toned effect.

I then stamped my sentiment directly across the top of the leaves of the tulip. SO EASY! Mat that sucker and add it to your card! Papers are still from my K & Company Classic K Bailey paper pad, also from Michaels.

YAY FOR FRIDAY AND WEEKEND!

L.

Mom's Day Cards

The spring weather has been so nice here in St Paul lately that I haven't spent much time in my stamp room! I was reminded of that today at work when I had people asking if I had any Mother's day cards. NOPE! Not a one! Not even for my own Mom! It dawned on me that it's 4 days until Mom's day and I GOT NUTTIN, HONEY! So tonite after my walk I sat down and did some really QUICK Mom's day cards to bring into work with me tomorrow.

I'm using up K & Company Classic K "Bailey" paper, which makes me VERY happy as my supply is dwindling! I love the shabby floral pattern in this paper. I paired it up with an Anna Griffin basket of flowers image from Michaels. The images are colored in with my Copic markers to match the colors in the paper.

I need to still get in my stamp room and play with some of the botanical images from the new Crafty Secrets booklets, and make a special card for my Mom for this weekend! Happy Wednesday, all!

Crafty Secrets Bugs

We're BAAA-ACK! The Crafty Secrets bugs & I, that is! I didn't do any stamping this weekend but I did find some muscles in my legs and butt that I haven't used in a while. We stained the deck at the cabin and I am SORE with a capital "S"! So tonite I have some cards that I started last week to show you. I had a bunch of requests at work for 'good bye' cards, for people that were leaving the company. The Crafty Secrets bugs fit the bill perfectly! These 2 little interchangeable lady bugs are so sweet. I had to pull out my fave Daisy D's red polka dot paper since the bugs were polka-dotty!

I am putting Kaiser paper flowers on everything lately. I'm WAY into stamping the music notes from Crafty's "Altered Art" stamp set on top of the flowers.

The striped and green patterned papers are from Kaisercraft's Christmas line, P148 "Cheer" and P154 Mistletoe. The yellow dots are My Mind's Eye "Peaceful Treasure Golden Rubies" Paper from Jen Wilson's 29th St. Market line.

Crafty Secrets Wildflower Sympathy

Hi All!

One last quick post before leaving for the cabin tonite...we're doing dirty work this weekend and staining the dock and the deck in preparation for WARM WEATHER, if it ever gets here!

I had made a bunch of sympathy cards a while back and am just getting around to posting them. I used the Crafty Secrets "Wildflower" stamp set and masked off the fern and yarrow images to make it look like a field of flowers.

The sentiment is from Crafty's "Card Sentiments"stamp set; inside the card reads: "May prayers strengthen you and memories comfort you". I've made quite a few of these for my Grams to send out. She makes me laugh...I usually don't sign my name to the back of the cards I make for her, and she has been telling me for ages to sign my name! When I was at her house a few weeks ago and brought her more cards, I noticed that she was signing my name on the back of them in her sweet little chicken scratchy handwriting; made by grandaughter "Lisa Zappa". It just touched me for some reason. The funniest thing is that she gave me a card that I MADE for my birthday. Someday I'll have to show you the little birdies and hearts she always draws on everyone's birthday cards. They're her signature! Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you next week!

L.

Paper by K & Company, Classic K "Bailey" paper pad.

Hanna Workout Gift

WHEW! Finally this is out of my head and finished! This is another project I had for last month's Hanna release, done with the "Getting Physical" stamp set!

All the stuff was from another Dollar Tree shopping trip....they had these cool clear plastic storage boxes and water bottles to match! They came in blue, green or pink! I thought since we're all desperately trying to lose our winter excess weight and are getting active again now that the weather is nice, it would be fun to give to a workout buddy!

I started with the Hanna "Getting Physical" stamp set, and stamped and colored in Hanna with my Copics. I added the 2 green eyelets to the bottom 1/2 of the image, then I punched holes with my crop-o-dile straight through both top corners of the finished Hanna image AND the plastic bucket! I set the top 2 eyelets so that they are through the image and the bucket itself. It holds the entire image to the front of the bucket WITHOUT adhesive!

Then I made a bunch of small misc. tags with different small images from the set, and tied the tags around each of my little workout treats! The whole bucket cost $5.00! The bucket $1, the water bottle $1.00, Pria bars x 2 = $2.00 and the Capri-sun sport water mix ($1) (from Dollar Tree in the drink mix/food section!)

The sentiment is from the stamp set "Things Hanna would Say" and all of the stars are glittered in with a 'Stardust" gelly roll sakura glitter pen.

You could even punch holes in the bucket sides and add a ribbon handle if you wanted!