RRCB163

Hi stampers!  Tuesday brings us a new Retro Rubber challenge, where we give some love to our older stamps!  This week we have a tic-tac-toe for you:

Unfortunately, I needed another sympathy card for my daughter's cousins who lost their dad recently.  I chose the top row across of masculine, square and mechanical, using an older Artistic Outpost stamp set called The Outpost, which is probably ten years old:

I stamped the image in Soft Suede on some Naturals White cardstock and sponged in some color to give it a bit more depth.  The mat is stamped with a script stamp from the same set and it was distressed by dabbing a Sahara Sand ink pad directly on the paper, then fraying the edges with the edge of my acrylic ruler.  I mounted it on a piece of woodgrain DSP and added a sympathy sentiment from Hero Arts (I've had it for years) stamped on Crumb Cake and diecut with a banner die:

I hope you come play with our tic-tac-toe board this week...it's got a bit of a masculine vibe to it and we all know those are the most challenging cards to create, so take advantage of the ideas on the board!  Just be sure to use stamps that are at least a year old and tell us how old they are!  See you at Retro Rubber!

Shark alert!

Thanks for visiting!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

 "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."  Proverbs 16:9

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	The Outpost (Artistic Outpost), Sentiments (Hero Arts CL342)
Card stock & Papers	Crumb Cake, Naturals White, Nestled DSP (Authentique)
Ink	Sahara Sand, Bordering Blue (ret)
Accessories	Candy Dot (ret), Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Banners Dies (Nestabilities)

IMC453 Shaded Summer

Happy Tuesday, peeps!  I am squeaking in this challenging card just shy of the deadline!  It's for the In(k)spire Me challenge, and I challenged myself to use both the sketch and the colors!  Here we go:

I wanted to use the Shaded Summer stamp set because one of the upcoming SAB items is a matching die!  How exciting!  But as I said, I did find these colors a bit of a challenge to use together, but I finally ended up with this:

I stamped the floral image in Crumb Cake and used the dies to cut it out, then stamped it again in Merry Merlot and Polished Pink and cut out the flowers and popped them up on a Dots-embossed panel with some Pale Papaya ribbon behind it.  I mounted that on a Pale Papaya scalloped die as well:

I stamped a sentiment from the same set and embellished it with one of the little sprigs from the same set and everything went on a Crumb Cake mat embossed with the Tasteful Textile embossing folder. 

For a little extra bling, I added a few sequins from Sequins for Everything; in the photo they look red, but in real life, they match the larger flower nicely!  Now to send it off in the mail!  

Thanks for popping in today--be sure to stop back in a few hours for a new Retro Rubber challenge too!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Shaded Summer
Card stock & Papers	Basic White, Crumb Cake, Pale Papaya
Ink	Merry Merlot, Crumb Cake, Polished Pink
Accessories	Pale Papaya Open Weave Ribbon, Sequins for Everything, Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Tasteful Textile EF, Scalloped Contour Dies, Summer Shadows Dies (upcoming SAB)

ICC095 Sympathy

Happy Monday, peeps! Hope you had a good weekend!  Thankfully it cooled down a bit...we didn't even turn on the A/C yesterday!  Sadly, I needed a sympathy card this week.  My cousin Nancy, who lives in Venice, FL, lost her husband on Friday.  He was a pretty special guy; they started Challenger Baseball in Venice so that physically-challenged children could play ball.  I only met him a couple of times and never really had a chance to talk to him about it, but he was well-loved by many members of the community.  You can see a little news clip here, and if you're on Facebook, can look up Richard E Carroll to see lots of pictures (that will cause you to tear up, guaranteed), including the amazing Christmas village they set up each year that thousands of people would drive through to see!  So, all that to say, I created a baseball-themed sympathy card for his family:

The baseball gear is all from a retired SU set called Have a Ball, and the sentiment is from a Hero Arts sentiment assortment; papers are from my stash.

I used the great sketch from Inspire.Create as well:

Thanks for visiting today!

A little beachy fun:

LOL, Wayne looks like a real sailor!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

"Who is wise?  He will realize these things.  Who is discerning?  He will understand them.  The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them."  Hosea 14:9

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Have a Ball (ret), Sentiments (Hero Arts CL342)
Card stock & Papers	Basic White, Frontier DSP (Authentique), Stars & Stripes (unknown)
Ink	Real Red, Crumb Cake, Cinnamon Cider
Accessories	Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Shapes Dies (ret)

PP550 Bee Happy

Hi stampers!  Happy Sunday!  I am the hostess at the Paper Players and it's a clean and simple challenge:

The hardest part of creating this card was deciding WHICH bee stamp to use, as I have lots of them!  I love bees!  In the end, I combined several images and used the sketch from Just Add Ink:

So here we go:

I started with a plain Basic White card base and stamped the honeycomb image from an older My Favorite Things set called Distressed Background Blocks in Bumblebee ink at the bottom,  The main bee is from SU's Honey Bee set, stamped in Stazon ink and colored with markers; I diecut it out and added some Wink of Stella to the wings and a gem to the body:

The "B" with the crown and happy sentiment are from a really old Cornish Heritage Farms set called Sweet Bee; the crown was also stamped in Stazon, colored with markers and a gold Wink of Stella pen, then fussy cut.  The happy was stamped in Bumble bee and diecut with a banner dies.  For fun, I stamped a sentiment from Best Year and another bee from Honey Bee, along with some "trails" from a CTMH set called Stitched Borders:

And since the Krafty Chicks challenge is CAS this week, I'm going to pop this in there as well!  I just can't help myself when stamping bees....I want to put them everywhere!  I hope you'll find some bee images and create a clean-and-simple card for our challenge this week!  Be sure to check out what the designers created at the Paper Players, then share yours with us too!

And speaking of bees, I caught this busy one as I was leaving my library yesterday:

There was a whole bed of these echinaceas...they were beautiful! And so were all the bees on them!  Thanks for popping in today--enjoy it and be blessed!

"Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones."  Proverbs 16:24

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Best Year, Honey Bee (ret), Distressed Background Blocks (My Favorite Things), Sweet Bee (Cornish Heritage Farms), Stitched Borders Essentials (Close to My Heart)
Card stock & Papers	Basic White
Ink	Stazon Black, Bumblebee, Sahara Sand
Accessories	In Color Gem, Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Detailed Bee Dies (ret), Markers in So Saffron and Crushed Curry, Wink of Stella, Gold Wink of Stella (ret)

HSSC368 Merry Christmas

Happy Saturday, peeps!  Hope you have something fun planned this weekend!  I am gearing up for a Christmas stamp camp, so I think I'll be hunkered down in my craft room....well, maybe after I tackle a boatload of zucchini that came from my garden!  Anyway, I did make a Christmas card yesterday; it uses the sketch from Hand Stamped Sentiments and the theme from Jingle Belles...well, at least I thought it did!  Here's the sketch:

and the challenge from the Jingle Belles is to create a card inspired by a Christmas movie or story.  Well, I had it in my mind the "jingle" from my card was from a Christmas movie starring Judy Garland, but when I went to look it up, it was from The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole!  Wow, that's what I get for stamping late at night!  Anyway, it was all done, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it:

I used some papers from My Mind's Eye Winterberry pad and the sentiment is from Impression Obsession.  The card base is Mossy Meadow, and I had to flip the sketch to get the church into the picture!  I diecut the sentiment with the Stitched Shapes dies and my "banners" are Dazzling Diamond Glimmer paper stars:

   

I had this Smoky Slate panel already diecut in my cardstock stash, so I simply stamped a Papertrey sentiment on it in Mossy Meadow and it was good to go!

Here is just a part of our zucchini haul....that one in the middle kind of got away from us!  We just picked the day before too!  I'll be grating most of them up for faux crab cakes and zucchini bread!  We've got beans and peppers too, and our tomatoes are beginning to ripen!  Busy time of the year!

Thanks for popping in today! Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Merry Christmas D14802 (Impression Obession, Holiday Wishes (Papertrey Ink)
Card stock & Papers	Basic White, Mossy Meadow, Smoky Slate, Winterberry (My Mind's Eye), Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper (ret)
Ink	Cherry Cobbler, Mossy Meadow
Accessories	Big Shot, Stitched Be Mine Die, Stitched So Sweetly Die, Stitched Shapes Dies (ret), Star Die (Verve)
Tools

Stitched Greenery Hello

Happy Friday, peeps!  I must say, my stamping energy has melted with the heat...just don't feel much like stamping a thing!  I did have a card made last week that I CASEd from someone.....I saw it probably on FB, but I cannot for the life of me find the original card, so if anyone knows, let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!  At any rate, it uses the Stitched Greenery die on a piece of Soft Seafoam, then I colored in each leaf with a couple of different Blends:

I used Dark and Light Soft Seafoam Blends to give them some shading, then added a wee little bit of Light Old Olive as well.  I stamped and diecut a sentiment from Tasteful Touches in Old Olive, but before adhering the diecut, I snipped out a couple of leaves from under where the diecut would sit and added them to the sentiment with some In Color Gems:

I did add some retired white ribbon before adhering it to a Basic White card base.  I love this effect!  Thanks for popping in today!

Our poor rickety swing set and slide is still hanging in there...Cassidy set up her own version of a slip and slide when my SIL brought over her grandkids last week.  Emma, Cassidy and Lucy still had fun, although Cassidy is almost too big for it!

Still cooled them off on a hot summer day!  Enjoy yours and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Tasteful Touches
Card stock & Papers	Basic White, Soft Seafoam
Ink	Old Olive
Accessories	Dimensionals, In Color Gems, White Ribbon (ret)
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Greenery Die, Blends

TTTC122 Birthday Chevy

 Hey there, everyone!  It's Thursday afternoon and time for a new Tic Tac Toe challenge!  It's Team X's turn with Betty as hostess!  I needed a very special birthday card for a very special man in our church who turned 80 years young!  The grid this week was perfect for my vintage Chevrolet card; I chose Diecut, Sentiment and Metallic:

And here we go:

I used an old Cuttlebug embossing folder to do the diamond plate embossing on a piece of Silver Foil cardstock; the Chevy image is from a Unity set called For the Guys.  I did some diecutting with some Stitched Rectangle and Stitched Shape dies, then added "hb" using an old Papertrey die:

I added two sentiments, both from Unity sets, to add a little humor to the inside!  I know he'll like it!

Hope you'll play along with our Tic Tac Toe grid this week and be sure to check out the amazing samples from our Design Team!  Can't wait to see what you create!  Thanks for popping in today!

Speaking of cars, we had a luncheon at church on Sunday for a visiting pastor, and my former shop teacher, who is now retired and mows the grass for us, showed up in THIS CAR:

It's a 1939 Ford Model A, which he restored.  He brought it to give our pastor a ride, LOL!  The cool thing is that he has a license plate on the front that shows he drove it to Kanab, Utah!!!  I wonder if he visited the Stampin' Up! factory while he was there?  (Probably not!)  It reminds me of my first bookkeeping job, which was at a Buick dealership; once a year, my boss would get out his old Buick and take us for a ride through the town of Summit, NJ!  I would love to drive this one, but no power steering or brakes...I'll just look at it!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Consider Yourself Vintage, For the Guys (both Unity Stamps)
Card stock & Papers	Basic White, Basic Black, Real Red, Silver Foil (ret)
Ink	Real Red, Memento Black
Accessories	Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Rectangle Dies, Stitched Shapes Dies (ret), Alphabet Dies (Papertrey), Diamond Plate EF (Cuttlebug)