Bird on a Branch

Happy Thursday, peeps!  I want to thank everyone for all the lovely birthday wishes and cards I received on Tuesday….makes getting older a little bit easier, LOL!  I hope to share some of the cards with you soon!  It seems my stamping and blogging time has been severely limited this summer, but that’s okay.  Cassidy will be heading for kindergarten in the fall, so I want to spend as much time with her as I can!  We had a sleepover last night and she is still sleeping at 8am, so I was able to get in a little stamp time this morning:

There is very little stamping on this, just the verse from a retired Cornish Heritage Farms set, which I stamped in Tangerine Tango.  I diecut the bird in Lost Lagoon and the branch in Crumb Cake and punched out the flower in Tangerine Tango as well.  I know these colors are unusual but I saw a dress the other day using these colors, so I had to go with it!  The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches, and I flipped it so my little bird wouldn’t be staring off into space:

and it’s also for the Kraft Journal’s CAS challenge to use an inspirational message!  I hope you enjoy your day…it’s going to be another hot one in PA!

We went to a nearby pool yesterday….it’s in the heart of the Amish country, and yes, the Amish people like to go swimming, too!  It was cool to be at the pool and hear the clip-clop of the horse-drawn buggies going down the road!  Anyway, Cassidy finally grasped the concept of doggy-paddling, so she wore herself out swimming around the pool!  No pix, but when she came home, she continued playing in the water with her water table, flipping the little swimmers:

After dinner, she brought them inside and lined them up with her mini puppies and they took turns sliding down the sliding board, LOL!!! 

Thanks for visiting!

AYSI097 and CTD352

Happy Monday, peeps!  Hope you all had a great weekend.  It’s been too long since I played with the Color Throwdown gals, and their challenge was so cute, I just had to squeak in some stamping time!  Here’s their inspiration:

and the As You See It DT had a fun sketch, too:

And here’s my card:

I used a bunch of fun stuff here!  Kinda Eclectic, Gorgeous Grunge and Watercolor Wishes provided the images and sentiment;  I used Coastal Cabana, Lucky Limeade and Smoky Slate for my ink colors, and my card base is Basic Gray.  Here’s a closeup of the tag:

I diecut some hearts using the Mini Treat Bag die, as well as using some retired sequins, DSP and twine, the small butterfly punch and tag punch!  I gave lots of products lots of love!  Thanks for visiting today!

Paper Players 255

Happy Sunday, peeps!  I hope you had a good week…I thoroughly enjoyed my “vacation”….some of it was a “staycation”, some of it was spent at the Delaware shore with DD and DGD, and some of it was working, as in picking and canning the garden! But it's good to be back stamping! 

My sweet friend Sandy is our hostess this week for the Paper Players, and she has a lovely sketch:

And here's my card, starting with a Pear Pizzazz base:

I love the sentiments and fonts included in the Watercolor Wishes kit, and I needed a sympathy card this week, so this particular sentiment was perfect.  I chose this pretty floral from English Garden DSP for my background, snipping out some of the florals and leaves to put at the bottom of my tag:

It’s hard to see, but the leaves are curled up a bit for some dimension.  I stamped the sentiment in Old Olive and added some watercolory splotches from Work of Art in Blushing Bride and some speckles from Itty Bitty Backgrounds in Sahara Sand.  Of course, I added a few sequins just for a subtle bit of shine.  I snagged some cool cotton cording at a yard sale last week and it matched the colors nicely, so I used it for my tag, tying it with some hemp cord, which I also used to accent the left side of the card, so that allows me to enter this in the City Crafter Challenge this week, which is twine! And finally, Can You Case It has a “Designer’s Choice” challenge during convention, so I am entering this there as well!

I hope that you’ll play along with our challenge this week…it’s a great sketch with lots of possibilities!  You can see what the designers did with it here:

• Ann
• Claire
• Jaydee
• Joanne
• Laurie
• Nance
• Sandy
• Amy
• Jodi
• Lisa

Can’t wait to see what you create!

As I mentioned, last week “the girls” took a couple days to go to the Delaware shore, where we hit the beach at Cape Henlopen:

Jungle Jim’s  water park:

and Funland at the Rehoboth Boardwalk:

The weather was gorgeous and we had a blast!

A Real Shaker Card This Time

Happy Wednesday, peeps!  You all were so gracious about my faux shaker card from Sunday’s post, I thought I would prove to you that I honestly do know how to make a real shaker card!  This idea was rattling around in my head for a while after I received Sprinkles of Life and I finally took it to fruition…no pun intended:

I used some Farmer’s Market DSP and the new Tags & Labels dies to make my shaker window.  I stamped and punched out the tree, bird and apples and assembled the whole thing with a window sheet and foam tape. 

It’s really cute IRL!  I added a couple of banners and stamped the sentiment on an Itty Bitty Banner to finish it off.  And here’s a hint about punching out those small images with the Tree Builder punch.  Stamp your small image on a narrow piece of scrap cardstock (we all have plenty of them, right?):

Slide the strip into the specific punch area from the back….you should be able to wiggle it through the slot fairly easily:

Then just punch!  You won’t have a bunch of other punched pieces flying around!   Here’s my little apple, and I still have more cardstock on which to stamp and punch!

We are on vacation, so I am going to take a little bloggy break, but I’ll be back on Sunday with my Paper Players creation!  Enjoy your week!

TSOT228

Happy Tuesday, peeps!  Hope you’re having a good week so far!  Try Stampin’ on Tuesday has a lovely sketch for you all today!  What do you think:

I am always in need of Christmas cards, and I wanted to use some of the Christmas DSP in the new catalog, so went with some country plaid:

Since our “bonus” challenge is embossing, I used the Snow Flurries EF on a piece of Cherry Cobbler, added some crochet trim and Mossy Meadow baker’s twine and finally, on top, added a W+9 plaid tree and heart stamped in Always Artichoke:

I thought it might be a bit too fussy with the plaid, but I think it works well!  The heart was stamped in Cherry Cobbler as well; cardstock is Naturals White.  And since this week’s Merry Monday challenge features hearts, I’m entering there as well!!

I hope you’ll play along with us this week!  You can check out all the other samples at the Try Stampin’ on Tuesday blog, or on our Facebook page!

A big box, a baby doll and a DVD on TV=Cassidy’s version of going to the movies!

Enjoy your day!

It’s Too Hot to Stamp

Happy Monday, peeps!  Is it hot where you are?  After having such gorgeous weather last week, this week started off with heat and humidity, sparking a lovely sinus issue as I begin my vacation week!  I almost felt like not stamping…but I forced myself!  I managed to squeak out two cards yesterday; the first one is for Less Is More’s beach theme, as well as the colors at Colour Me…!:

I pulled out a retired SU stamp, gifted to me by my friend Teri, and stamped the scallop shell in Watermelon Wonder, using watercolor paper, stamping it off once to get a lighter shade:

I added a little Soft Sky “frame” with my aquapainter, then I stamped the shell again, cut it out & popped it up.  You can’t see it here, but I added some Wink of Stella as well as some speckles and it looks so pretty!  My final addition was a sentiment from a Crafty Secrets set and cheesecloth from Cornish Heritage Farms.

My second card is for the Match The Sketch challenge:

I just received my Paper Pumpkin and what a cute set this one is!  I needed a get-well card for an older woman at my church who fell and broke some body parts, so this came in handy!!!  I added a Cucumber Crush embossed panel (I am forcing myself to use this color), cut the gray panel in half and used the Pumpkin Pie strip as my banner. 

I even added a little flower and pearl to my cactus!

Hope she likes it!  Enjoy your day!

I still have the typewriter I got in high school….can you believe it?  Cassidy wanted to try it out the other day.  She had a little trouble hitting the keys hard enough and wanted to go much faster than it was capable of handling!!!

She really liked making it go “DING”, though!!!  We’ll save this for when she’s a wee bit older….I’d like to keep it in working condition for another 43 years!

Paper Players 254 Faux Shaker Card

Happy Sunday, peeps!  Time for another Paper Players challenge with Laurie as our hostess, and she’s got a CAS challenge for us this week:

Fun, huh?  The DT has some really cute samples using eyeglasses, but alas, I have no eyeglass stamps or dies, but I did have a new cool Simon Says Stamp die called Holiday Frames that I was hankering to use!  My first thought was to make a shaker card.  I love shaker cards!  However, after almost an hour of trying to cut my foam strip (which is extremely sticky) narrow enough for the edge, I gave up and chucked it.  Hence, I made a FAUX shaker card:

Please don’t laugh….you know the issues that can be had with shaker cards….they can be challenging to assemble!  And yes, I know, it’s just got the sequins GLUED on, but the weather is sticky, the sequins jump all over the place and this is supposed to be clean and simple, so this is my story and I’m stickin’ to it!  Anyway, the frame is cut from Gold Foil; the background paper is some stash I’ve had forever; the sequins were a gift from Verve (love the colors), along with some retired holiday snowflakes from SU, and the baker’s twine is SU’s gold.  I used a one-hole bow again to make sure it didn’t wiggle off:

And just for a little extra sparkle, although you can’t see it very well, I heat embossed some snowflakes from Endless Wishes with Versamark and Iridescent Ice embossing powder on the card base:

Please be sure to check out the Paper Players blog to see all the designers’ handiwork:

• Ann
• Claire
• Jaydee
• Joanne
• Laurie
• Nance
• Sandy
• Amy
• Jodi
• Lisa

And be sure to play along!

Last week, Cassidy went to VBS where she learned about missionaries Jim and Elisabeth Elliot; if you don’t know their story, you can read the children’s version here.  Cassidy didn’t talk much about it during the week, but she did finally get excited when they talked about the Elliot’s daughter, Valerie, who was just a baby when Jim gave his life.  Of course, there was a doll there representing Valerie and she was quite enamored with the doll……as she is her own dolls!  Valerie and Elisabeth continued Jim’s work, so God’s purpose was fulfilled despite their loss. The children learned about the jungle as well; here she is with her parrot mask:

and the necklace she made; I think the white things are supposed to be teeth (I hope not bones)!!!  She had a great time and the teaching team did an awesome job as well.

Thanks for popping by today!