Cycle of Life

We celebrated Seth's Grandma's birthday on Saturday and had a wonderful time talking about her childhood and sharing memories.  After we were home that night, we got a call from Seth's mom regarding Seth's Aunt from the other side of the family losing her battle to ovarian cancer.  We definitely experienced a high and low in the same day.

I made this card for the Paper Craft Planet sketch challenge this week.  You can see Keely's sketch here.  Hope you can plan along this week.  I could only think about making a sympathy card knowing we will be heading out of town again on Wednesday for Janet's funeral.

Life is precious and we need to live each day laughing and loving.  These situations really put perspective on any stresses I might feel.  Hug your kids and parents today!

Materials used are stampin’ up! Unless noted

Stamps: lovely as a tree

Paper: to the nines (retired), chocolate chip, very vanilla

Ink: early expresso

Accessories: chocolate brads, chocolate corduroy brad, square lattice impressions folder

Punches: ticket, scallop border, 1 3/4" scallop circle

Techniques: basic stamping

Watercolor Tree

My Father-in-law's birthday is coming, so I needed to make him a masculine birthday card.  I used one of my favorite sets, Lovely As A Tree.  I used the direct marker technique, sprayed the stamp with a fine mist of water, and stamped the image on watercolor paper.

Materials used are stampin’ up! Unless noted

Stamps: lovely as a tree, teeny tiny wishes

Paper: watercolor paper, old olive, cajun craze, chocolate chip

Ink: chocolate chip

Accessories: Markers (old olive, tangerine tango, cajun craze, riding hood red, chocolate chip), dimensionals, metallic brass brads, olive button (other)

Punches: word window punch

Techniques: watercoloring

Tanner, has been wanting to make a bee from my punches for about a week, so I finally broke down and let him play by himself with my punches and paper.  He knew exactly what punches he wanted to use, because he has helped me make a few punch animals.  Below is his bee on the left, and then Tate had to make a bee on the right.  Tanner's looks like a nice bee, and Tate's looks like a killer bee to me.  Oh, I couldn't talk Tanner out of putting the yellow legs on the bottom of his bee.  He knows they have legs.  LOL!  Love my boys!

Lovely As A Tree Scene

I'm back from a wonderful weekend at my sister's.  We had a great time at JoAnne's workshop on Saturday.  On Sunday, I left in the morning to go to Michelle's Zindorf's brayer class in Grinnell, Iowa.  Oh, what an amazing time.  I met some wonderful people and learned A LOT.  I am not afraid of my brayer any more.  Yippee!

This is the first card we made after Michelle taught us how to use our brayer.  I love this set (Lovely As A Tree), so I was thrilled to be working with it.  Now, remember....when we start the paper is totally white.  In fact, it is Whisper White...LOL!  I can't believe mine turned out this well on the first card.

We made a total of three cards in our beginner's class, and three cards in our advanced class.  I have a couple of favorites.  I will try to go in order of how we made them, when I post them this week.  I am going to keep my favorite from the advanced class for the last card.  I am so happy I decided to invest in this class and my training.  I hope you will like it!

Don't forget.........Bleach Stamping LIVE.....Wednesday, September 1st @ 9 p.m. CST

on My Ustream Channel.  

See you there!

You will need to Join Ustream in order to view these classes.  It is easy to do.  I am going to do a test video before Wednesday night, just so I can work the bugs out.

Bleached Trees

Oh, I have been wanting to show my club the bleaching technique for a while.  I always love the cards I see where the stampers using bleach as their ink.  I am so happy with how this turned out.  In addition, I have been wanting to create a card using the scallop circle for a flower, so I combined both for this card.

Lovely as a Tree is such a versatile set.  If you don't have it, you need to get it.  I had fun putting this color combo together.  Why?  I used the My Create, Ink Color Lab.  It allows you to choose colors from Stampin' Up! and it gives you choices on color combos.  Of course, you can see why I like this one.  Brown, blue and orange is my favorite color combo (my blog design) and I was happy to see it was one of the choices the lab listed.  I will put a link to this Color Lab on my sidebar, so you can visit any time and use it.  

I used the Newsprint designer series paper for the flower.  I have seen these flowers while blogging and haven't made one until now.  I am addicted, so you will probably be seeing more of them.  I have been using my Tiny Tags and Medium Jewelry Punch too.  It is nice when you don't have a lot of room for a sentiment.  

Materials used are stampin’ up! Unless noted

Stamps: lovely as a tree, tiny tags, sanded

Paper: chocolate, pacific point, cajun craze, black, newsprint DSP

Ink: early expresso

Accessories: black grosgrain ribbon, natural hemp, bleach (clorox), dimensionals, blue bigger brad (other)

Punches: scallop circle, medium jewelry tag

Techniques: bleaching

My mom will be here today, so I won't be blogging much.  I created a lot yesterday, so I am ready for my clubs.  I even started making Christmas cards for my Christmas card class this fall.  I hope you have a great week!

Happy Father's Day

Lovely as a Tree is one of my favorite stamp sets from Stampin' Up!.  My tree didn't turn out as well as Kim's example.  This was the first time I tried this watercolor technique.  Instead of spritzing the stamp with water, we sprayed the water on the paper after coloring the image with markers.  Then we stamped the image on the paper.  I sprayed my paper too early and that is why the top of the tree is different.  That part of the paper was too dry.

Materials used are stampin’ up! Unless noted

Stamps: lovely as a tree, teeny tiny wishes

Paper: naturals ivory cardstock, watercolor paper, chocolate chip cardstock, sahara sand cardstock

Ink: chocolate chip, old olive marker, chocolate chip marker

Accessories: dimensionals, textured impressions embossing folder

Punches: none

Techniques: watercoloring

As the debut of the 2010-2011 Idea Book & Catalog approaches, it's almost time to bid farewell to our retiring stamp sets and Definitely Decorative products, and discontinuing accessories.  On June 1st, I will post a list of last chance items that will be retiring.  The items tend to sell out fast, so don't wait too long to place your order for them.

Click here to place an order

Sparkle Christmas Challenge #13

Sparkle is busy at the Olympics, but still had time to give us a challenge this week to keep us on task.  Our challenge is to make whatever type of Christmas card we want.  YAY!

I decided to include this Christmas card in my March card class.  Everyone always says they wish they would start their Christmas cards sooner, so I am giving them a push this month.  This is one of my favorite stamp sets by Stampin' Up!, Lovely As A Tree.

Materials used: Material CTMH unless noted.

Stamps: Lovely As A Tree (SU)

Paper: cranberry cs, Evensong Creative Basics, white daisy cs

Ink: chocolate, new england ivy, olive

Accessories: sweet leaf grosgrain ribbon, cranberry bigger brads, cranberry baby pin, sweet leaf brad

Punches: Large Snowflake (SU)

Have fun creating,

With Sympathy

Last week, I went to another stamping party. I am a sucker for stamping parties! We made two cards and this is my favorite of the two. I like the other one, which I will show you later this week. We played with new colors from SU and the stamp set Lovely As A Tree. We were showed how to use our brayer again to make a background. Wow! I love those colors! Of course, mine is not as good as the demo. When I go to these parties, it seems like I don't remember how to stamp. LOL!

Isn't this card sooo pretty? I love trees! I decided to make mine a sympathy card, because I am out of these types of cards. You can see how the front of the card is cut out just right for the sentiment to show through from the inside of the card. This is sooo cool!

I am working on a project for Paper Craft for tomorrow, so I will be back tomorrow to show you what the Design Team has been creating.

Happy Stamping!