And a Cherry on top!

Usually I post only stamping things here but I am learning to sew and wanted to show off my project. Pity my poor sewing teacher. I am taking classes once a month from Trish (check out her Two Peas blog and Etsy store) and I am probably the least knowledgeable of anyone in the class. Trish is extremely talented and soooo patient! This month we made a cute little swing skirt and an applique t-shirt. I was not able to finish my skirt and applique in class but I got it done over the weekend and I'm so happy with it! The pattern is the Girly Skirt by Pink Fig. I added a Pure Poppy button from PaperTrey Ink and some SU! ric-rac to my cupcake for fun. Sorry, I can't remember who made the fabrics but if you want to know I can check and see if I have a piece left with the manufacturer's name on it.

I made a 3t size (I know it looks huge in the photo) and it is a bit long for my little girl so she may even be able to wear it next Spring. I bought some yummy new fabric that is a bit more Fall-looking and I plan to make another skirt soon before I forget all the tips of putting it together.

Have a good one and thanks for stopping by!

Spooky Greetings!

Well, it's an exciting night in our house. Papertrey release night! I am stalking the website to participate in all of the fun. I hope I win the big package tonight so I can get all of the wonderful goodies. In case I don't win I have my list ready to place an order but I had to make some hard decisions and some things will just have to wait for another month. While I'm waiting I thought I'd share a couple more Halloween cards with you. These also use the new Papertrey Halloween Tags set that was released last month.

Although it looks black in the photo I actually used Smoky Shadow ink for the card base and the graveyard border punch. I stamped the decorative circle from Spooky Sweets II onto Spring Moss cardstock and then cut it out with my Nestabilities and distressed it a little. Then I stamped the Boo tag onto the plaid paper from the Autumn Abundance collection and layered it over a ribbon on top.

This card came together very quickly. I find that having a small child in the house and very limited time to create, I want to get as much accomplished in my time as possible so I am going for simpler cards when I have to mass produce for holidays but I still want them to have some pizazz. For low fuss but a nice impact I have been trying to use up more of my decorative papers. Plus I can clean out some of the giant stacks I've accumulated and make way for more Papertrey stuff! I simply layered some cute K& Co web paper onto my orange zest cardstock and then topped it off with one of the holiday tags and embellished with some ribbon, buttons and rhinestones. Easy peasy! I hope you enjoyed my projects. :)

Supplies Card #1: Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009, Spooky Sweets 2. Paper: Smoky Shadow, Spring Moss, Autumn Abundance. Ink: Palette Noir and Smoky Shadow. Accessories: photo corner punch, Martha Stewart border punch, circle punches, Nestabilities, Orange Zest ribbon and button, vintage twine, white gel pen.

Supplies Card #2: Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009. Paper: Orange Zest, Smoky Shadow and K&CO dp. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: corner punch, rhinestones, Plum Pudding buttons, black ribbon, black twine.

Ghouls and Goblins Time!

I just love Halloween! To me this holiday is pure FUN! Lots of fun decorations, candy to eat, cute costumes, and no juggling which family to visit when, etc. :) Every year we get a few more decorations. My DH loves to do up the outside of the house. That's his "thing". He could really care less about the inside decorations. Honestly, with a 2 and 1/2 year old in the house we don't do a lot of "decorating" right now, unless you count the assortment of toys all over the carpet. LOL! This weekend we started putting out the Halloween decorations and I even came up with a few displays indoors in places where little hands can't reach.

Tonight I'm sharing with you a card made with the new Papertrey Ink Halloween Tags set. It has so many wonderful images in it and I am just beginning to explore all of the possibilities.

This card is my favorite of the ones I've made I think.

I started with an orange card base and layered on some cute K&Co paper that I"ve been hoarding since last year. I keep meaning to do more of this layering with all of the paper I've accumulated but it is so much fun to create my own backgrounds with PTI stamps that I usually forget. :) Any way, after I put on the dp I layered several scalloped circles cut out with my Nestabilities and then the Black cat image was stamped in Black on Spring Moss. For a little "bling" I used my quickie glue pen on the cat and then doused him with some Doodlebug black glitter. It's so sparkly! I added some lovely Black dotted ribbon and Plum Pudding button from Papertrey. I felt that the bottom of the card needed something so I used this fun new border punch from Martha Stewart. It's a little graveyard. How spooky! Then I framed a sentiment from the Halloween Tags set and colored my hodgepodge hardware Black by using a Copic marker. Those markers a da bomb! Held the hardware in place with some rhinestone brads and I'm done!

Supplies: All supplies by PTI unless otherwise noted.

Stamps: Halloween Tags 2009. Ink: Palette Noir. Cardstock: Orange Zest, Smoky Shadow, Spring Moss, Plum Pudding bitty box paper and pumpkin paper by K&Co. Accessories: Martha Stewart graveyard border punch, hardware (SU!), rhinestone brads (stash) and Vintage button in Plum Pudding and polka dot ribbon.

Happily Ever After....

Recently my husband and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. I am a very lucky woman to have found such a fabulous man I am proud to call my husband and my best friend, not to mention THE best Dad to our little girl! We have been a part of each other's lives for 20 years now and I can't imagine my life without him! I actually made him 2 cards for our special day. I momentarily considered making him 1 card for every year we've been married but I got started way too late to come up with 9 cards. This is one of the cards and I used many beautiful Papertrey Ink stamp sets ( Heart Prints, Wedding Day, Vintage Labels and Retro Backgrounds) to get the look I wanted. The heart was stamped and punched out 3 big hearts and 1 little heart and then adhered only in the center and then fanned out to make it dimensional. (I should have taken a photo from the side so you could see the layers better. Sorry!)

Our anniversary was on a weekday this year and unfortunately I had to travel out of town that day for work. I flew to Detroit but as luck would have it, while I was en route the event I was traveling for was cancelled. I found out when I was in my taxi on the way to the hotel. I was NOT too happy about that, let me tell you! But there is a silver lining in every cloud and I was able to get a quick return flight back home. I arrived home around 9:00, just about the time I usually call and check in if I'm on the road, but this time I was calling from the front porch! ;) I was talking to my hubby like I was still on the road but then I rang the doorbell and boy did he get a surprise! I'm so glad we got to spend our anniversary together after all. :)

I hope you enjoy my card today. Supplies are listed below. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. Stop back by soon. I have another anniversary card and several Halloween cards to share in the coming days.

Go and hug your special someone!

Supplies - All by Papertrey Ink unless noted: Stamps - Wedding Day, Retro Backgrounds, Vintage Labels, Heart Prints; Cardstock - Kraft, Aqua Mist, Sweet Blush, White; Ink - Vintage Cream, Pure Poppy. Accessories - Pure Poppy ribbon, vintage twine and button, border punch by Fiskars, Nestabilities Labels 1.

What should I do first?

Do you ever feel like you never have enough time for your hobbies? :) Boy I sure do and then when I get a little free time, I can't decide what to work on first. I have been learning to sew and I've been spending some time with my machine and making fun sewing things like a little wallet, a cover for a little pack of tissues, a table runner with pumpkins appliqued to it, and other assorted happy little things! Stamping cards has taken a backseat lately while I explore my sewing machine and prepare things for the season's craft shows.

I did sew and stamp some sweet little lavender sachets using an assortment of Papertrey stamps. Here are a couple of photos but you can find several more in my Splitcoast gallery

Well, I have to run - already late to pick up my DH! I will come back and describe the process of creating these and add a supply list later. The inspiration for these sweet little numbers came from Heather Nichol's blog. You can see the tutorial on Nichole Heady's blog under the Introducing Rustic Branches post here.

Edited to add supplies:
Assorted Papertrey sets and inks, Perfect Match ribbons and buttons and coffee stained muslin cut using Nestabilities.

Halloween in July??

Halloween in July??

You’ve heard of Christmas in July, well what about Halloween? We love Halloween and have already been talking about what we need to do to get ready for this year. I guess that it what made me think of my Halloween stamps for this month’s Papertrey Ink blog hop.

The PTI challenge was to focus on text and use it any way we wanted in a project. The first thing that came to mind was to create a fun text background using my PTI Halloween sets Spooky Sweets and Spooky Sweets II. So here we go!

I love the funky pattern on this first card. Look real close to see how I created this retro looking background. It’s one of the bat stamps from Spooky Sweets! I stamped the bats in a row across a sheet of Guidelines Two cardstock and then turned the bat upside down and stamped it directly underneath the other bat. The result was this really cool pattern. In between the X created by the bats I used the Boo! stamp from the same set. I kept the layout very simple so the focus would be on my background. Just a simple band of orange suede ribbon topped with a scallop circle and a little bat and sentiment on Ripe Avocado cardstock.

Backgrounds for the next two cards were also stamped on Guidelines Two cardstock. I can see that I am going to need more of this cardstock! ;) The cards are basically the same but with a few slightly different embellishments. I started my background by stamping one of the decorative ring stamps from Guidelines Two around the circles. Then I stamped the little spider from Spooky Sweets in the negative space between the circles and alternated sentiments inside the circles. Again I tried to keep the focus on the text since that was the theme for the Blog Hop. :) I cut out the text background using Nestabilities Labels 2 and then added another layer with Smoky Shadow cardstock. In the first sample I edged the panels with silver pen and added black glitter to the little spiders. For the embellishment I stamped the larger spider on PTI white cardstock and added Doodlebug crushed velvet in black. IRL it is so cool looking and fun to touch, unlike real spiders which give me the willies! Why do I like making Halloween cards with spiders when I’m terrified of them? I’m sure Freud would have had something interesting to say about that but I digress. I finished it off by using some thin silver cord as the spider’s web string. I got a little messy with the silver pen. Note to self: Add silver pen BEFORE you glue down the layers. If I had it to do over again I would probably leave that part out.

The second card is just like the first without the silver pen and using some lovely polka- dot ribbon and a big Summer Sunrise button. And I’ve included a shot of the inside of the cards too.

Thanks for stopping by! I can’t wait to see what you all came up with.

Happy Halloween 3 months early!

Kim

Supply lists (All supplies by PTI unless otherwise noted):

Card #1: Stamps: Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, Ripe Avocado. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Suede ribbon (stash), circle punches by SU!.

Card #2: Stamps: Guidelines II, Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: PTI White, Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, SU! Pumpkin Pie, Heidi Grace dp. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Doodlebug glitter and crushed velvet, Silver Cord (stash), silver pen (Prismacolor), circle punches by SU!

Card #3: Stamps: Guidelines II, Spooky Sweets, Spooky Sweets II (inside). Cardstock: PTI White, Guidelines II, Smoky Shadow, SU! Pumpkin Pie, Heidi Grace dp. Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Swiss dot ribbon, Summer Sunrise button, black twine (stash).

ETA: Fixed some spelling errors and put in the title of my post. Geesh, I always forget to do something when I'm prepping for Blog Hop! :)

A GSS submission and babble

I am not so patiently waiting for the PTI July release on the 15th. This month I am really loving most of the sets previewed so far. If only money were no object! Well in the meantime, I uploaded this gift set for the PTI Guest Star Stamper contest this month.

The set contains 4 note cards w/ envelopes, an altered frame and a cute little altered tin. The inspiration for the color scheme and design came from the pretty Daisy D's paper I used on the picture frame. The colors were a great match for PTI's Spring Moss and Melon Berry and I thought the images from Life would make wonderful images for the cards.

I first stamped a foliage image in Spring Moss on Bitty Box paper and then stamped a flower image over it in Spring Moss (stem) and Melon Berry. Before I loaded on the Perfect Match ink I stamped my stamp in Versa Mark. That way I was able to emboss the flower image. It deepened the color of the flowers and gave it a nice finished look. I stamped various sentiments from the Life set on the bottoms of the cards and found lovely coordinating sentiments from Birthday Basics and Mother to go on the inside of the cards.

I used some fun natural cotton trim for accent on some of the cards and around the photo cut out on the frame. When I make cards to give away I make them as flat as I can, while hopefully keeping them interesting, so that the person I give them to can mail them without having to pay extra postage or worry about embellishments punching through the envelopes.

For the frame I stamped my sentiment on the paper and then adhered the paper to the frame with Perfect Paper Adhesive. This is my favorite product for attaching paper. It's not as wet as ModPodge, doesn't leave my hands as sticky and I have less problems with bubbles. When that was on I adhered the trim, buttons and ribbon.

The tin was super easy. It already had those cute embossed flower

designs on it so all I had to do was punch holes in it and thread on my buttons

and ribbon. Easy Peasy! I think the set turned out super cute!

Supplies: Stamps: PTI Life, Birthday Basics, Mother. Ink: Melon Berry, Spring Moss,

Vintage Tea Dye Duo, Versa Mark, Ranger Walnut Stain. Cardstock: Rustic Cream,

Melon Berry, Kraft, Accessories: Bitty Box paper, Daisy D's paper, border punch,

PTI vintage buttons, ribbon and twine, cotton trim (stash) tin box - Target.