Since today’s the last day for my Crop ‘n Cards class this month, I thought I’d share the third and final layout and card from the class. I liked this one the best–I think–gosh…I don’t know. Don’t make me pick! It’s like having to pick your favorite child for goodness sake! 

 I just can’t do it!

I think what I like about it is that it looks difficult and involved but in reality, it’s not because it’s mostly punching. Shocker there? ha ha ha! Practically everything I do has punches!  Why should I change now? If you took away my punches and ribbon, I’d be a lost lil’ paper crafting junkee!

Here’s what I used:

• 117153 Sending Love Specialty Designer Series Paper $11.95
• 113693 Full Heart punch $15.95
• 117193 Small Heart punch $5.95
• 118402 Scallop Trim Border punch FREE!! with a $50 order
• 117332 Scallop Heart of Hearts Embosslits die $11.95
• 115617 Chocolate Striped Ribbon $8.95
• Chocolate (114339), Pink (117681) & Red Corduroy buttons (117268) $9.95 ea.
• Very Vanilla, Basic Black, Pretty In Pink, Pixie Pink and Real Red Card Stock $5.50 ea.
• Basic Black Classic Pad and Marker

Here’s the coordinating card:

Additional products used to make the card that are not included above are:

• 117335 Perfect Polka Dots Textured Impressions Folder $7.95
• 116630 Designer Label punch $15.95

How about you? Which of the last three layouts/cards I’ve posted are your favorite? Leave me a comment on this blog (not via e-mail) and I’ll send a random winner the three cards from class! Blog candy rewards, too? I know — all this sharing is going to my head! ) I’ll draw a winner at the end of the day on Sunday. Hope you win!

Have a great weekend!

Here’s a card we did last night at the Tampa Ronald McDonald House. We had 2 employees and three RMH guests enjoy an evening of creative fun making four different cards.

I always find this monthly class so rewarding as I know it helps these worried women take their minds off their sick children for just a few hours and just relax and enjoy some creative therapy!

This card was inspired by the recent layout I did below for my Crop ‘N Cards class. (See previous entry for more info on that.)

Does this look familiar to anyone? It was actually inspired by the February cover of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Here’s a little print of the layout that I robbed from their website. :O)

I know it’s tiny! That’s the best I could do folks! Go pick up your newstand copy and you’ll see what I mean. :O)  I just thought it was so cute and with our new GIGANTIC pack of Sweet Pea Designer Series paper, it was easy to combine some cute designer papers to make this layout adorable!

I LOVE THIS PAPER PACK! OMG!! All I have to do is just leaf through its gigantic array of papers and my fingers start itching to scrapbook! There’s so many different, but coordinating pieces that the hard part is to pick which ones you want to begin with! )

Yes, I know my stamped words barely made the right side of the paper. But rather than re-stamp it, I left it to show my customers that "It’s OKAY!!" You don’t have to stamp alphabets straight; you don’t have to make it "perfect". The page speaks for itself! Now, one of my customers added stitching marker detail to the page’s flower petals in the upper left corner and that really made the final pop that was needed! )

So here’s what I used:

• Sweet Pea Designer Series paper (patterns pictured below)
• 1 3/8" & 1" Circle Punches
• Full Heart Circle punch (cut heart up middle to make bug wings. Surrounds the 1" Circle punch to make the flower accent)
• Chocolate Chip, Bashful Blue, So Saffron & Whisper White card stock
• Chocolate Chip marker and ink
• Pumpkin Corduroy Brad
• 1/4" and 5/8" Chocolate Ribbon
• Well Scripted Stamp set (Greeting on card. Stamp set featured below)

117161  Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Pack  $24.95  2 ea of 24 double-sided designs 12×12 size

117072 Well Scripted stamp set  (Wood Mount) $19.95 for a set of 6

118601 $14.95 (Unmounted)

Well, that’s it for today! Hope you were inspired to go stamp or scrap somethin’! Make it a great day!

 With only about 2 weeks left before Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share the projects from my latest Crop ‘N Cards class and give you a break from all the punchy stuff! ) At Crop ‘N Cards class, attendees can opt to create three 2-page spreads, three single pages and three cards or 9 cards (3 each of 3 designs). This is a new class for me but those who attended my first session gave great reviews. (Whew…I was secretly worried! )

Here’s one of the pages we did:

And here’s the coordinating card:

I must tell you that I {Heart} that I {Love} Love Jumbo Wheel. It is just GORGEOUS! And, what a nice ensemble it makes with the I {Heart} Hearts stamp set. If you didn’t already know, $2 from the proceeds of the purchase of this stamp set goes to Haiti relief. So, how can you beat that ? You get a cute, VERY VERSATILE stamp set, and make a donation to Haiti–a win, win! And this stamp set also coordinates with our Full Heart punch or our Heart to Heart punch.

Now check this out, if you ordered the stamp sets, a punch and the jumbo wheel to make this card, you could pick up a FREE Sale-A-bration product, too…a $15.95 value! How’s that for saving some peanuts? LOVE IT! So, whatcha waiting for, huh? Call or e-mail me today with your order, help Haiti and get what you need to make this layout or card to boot!

I {Heart} Hearts stamp set (Set of 8 stamps)

Wood  117010  $26.95    Unmounted 118571  $18.95 (also available in Spanish and French)

Heart to Heart punch 113694  $15.95     

Full Heart Punch  113693  $15.95                  

I {Love} Love Jumbo wheel 117084 $8.50

 Sounds violent doesn’t it? ha ha ha! No we didn’t have a boxing match between Sue and Poochie the Poodle. It’s just two more cards from my January Get Punchy class! ha ha ha!

 Above, poor sicky Sue (looks like me the last week and half as I fought off the flu!) looks so pitiful, doesn’t she? But she was so simple to make:

• Head is the 1 3/8" punch out of Blush Blossom.
• Thermometer is the Slit Punch in Pretty in Pink with black pen details.
• Hair bangs is small oval punched out of Chocolate Chip then put face up through the opening of the Scallop oval punch to get one side of oval scalloped for the bangs.
• Har is the Scallop Oval punch out of Chocolate Chip card stock.
• Face is just freehand markers drawn on.

Cute and easy—TOLD YA!!

This next one, of Poochie the Poodle, is so stinkin’ cute! And, not too hard either!

Poodle Parts:

• Head: Heart punch with Scallop Oval on top
• Ears: Word Window cut in half
• Neck:Half of Word Window
• Body: 2 Scallop Circles overlapped
• Legs: 4 Word Windows with Trio Flowers above feet

The collar is our black Jumbo Grommets with a Yellow Rhinestone brad from our Square Fire Rhinestone brads. The Designer Paper is from Flock Together. Fancy black bottom edge was created with the Scallop Trim border punch — A FREEBIE with a $50 order during Sale-A-Bration!

Hope you enjoyed these two projects. There’s still one more to share so stay tuned!

 
Senior Fun at Aston Gardens Assisted Living

Every month I head over to a beautiful, upscale Senior Living center and stamp up some projects with the residents there. Most of the ladies are 85+, who have a ball despite their failing eye sight, memory loss and arthritic hands.

Even though my patience is sometimes sorely tested , I always leave there uplifted because they are so appreciative! Just to see their eyes light up when I get there and the big grins on their face when they finish a project makes it all worthwhile!

Here’s the project we did this month. They love having something to decorate their apartment/room on the inside or outside much more than cards, packaging or giftable. So we did this cute plaque they hang on their wall or outside door.

I pre-stamped and punched the circles and "Tweet" greeting as wel as the bird. Here’s what else we used:

Project Ingredients:

• Book Basics Chipboard (Small) 110712 $5.95 for 4   5 x 7 1/2" pieces
• 5 x 6" piece of Sending Love Specialty Designer Series paper 117153 $11.95 for 12   12×12 sheets; 2 ea of 6 double-sided designs
• 1 1/2 x 5" piece of Pretty in Pink card stock & scraps for 1 3/8 circles
• Real Red Card stock
• Real Red Classic Ink
• Extra Large 2 step bird punch
• Sage Shadow card stock
• Red Satin ribbon
• Retired alphabet stamp set

Ahh…the questions! Several of you have peppered my e-mail and blog comments with questions about Sweet Treat cups. But before I answer your questions, let me share another fun Sweet Treat cup sample with you (scroll further down for a cute punchy sample using Sweet Treat cups and another cute cup offering shaped like a heart!):

This is my workshop card make & take through Valentine’s Day! So, if you’d like to make this one, book a workshop with me and you and your workshop guests, too, can make this little beauty! Sweet, huh?

Card Ingredients:

• Whisper White, Close to Cocoa, Pretty in Pink and Pixie Pink card stock
• Basic Brown Stamp Pad
• 117153 Sending Love Specialty Designer Series paper ($11.95) It’s got some beautiful glittery diesigns built right in!
•  117688 Wood Mounted 118589 $27.95 Unmounted $19.95 Something Sweet stamp set
• This stamp set makes such cute stuff! The small petals next to "you are my Sunshine" make a cute flower stamped all around the circle. the "bat-looking object" added to the circle makes an adorable rattle or mirror for baby and there’s lots of little stamps to fill up the gumball machine!
• 1 3/4" Circle punch
• Designer Label punch
• Chocolate Satin Ribbon (new in the mini catalog) LOVE IT!!
• 116802 Sweet Treat cups — Quantity of 12 for only $2.95 CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!?

Let’s have some fun at a workshop so you and your friends can make this card and get some FREE Sale-A-Bration product!

Here’s a photo of a Sweet Treat cup

Answers to your Sweet Treat cup questions.

I always forget that not all my blog readers come to my classes. Some might not have a clue as to what a Sweet Treat Cup is. ) I live in my bubble world and just need little reminders to explain!  Sorry ’bout that!

Sweet Treat cups are one of the latest new products that Stampin’ Up! added to our product line-up last Fall. They are wonderful clear cups with an adhesive rim that can be added to any card to hold candy, money, keepsakes, scrapbooking brads, buttons or eyelets,  jewelry –ANYTHING that can fit in that 1 3/4 inch mini cup. If you don’t care if someone rips up the card to get to the cup’s contents, just peel of the adhesive on the rim of the cup and stick it to the card. If you want them to be able to keep the card intact, but still get the contents out,  there’s several ways to do that, too.

For instance, here’s a cute Sweet Treat project we did in my January Get Punchy class:

For this particular sample, I punched a hole with our 1 3/4" circle punch (112004 $15.95) and built in a trap door on the inside of the card to be able to get the money out (unlike my Trickster Nephew’s $20 basketball card in my previous post)

Here’s the easiest way to make a trap door:

 Just glue a 3 1/8 x 3 1/8 Mini Square envelope (107309  $7.50 for 40) on the inside of your card with the flap removed. (You can position it to open left, right, up or down–whichever you prefer)

Punch a hole with the 1 3/4" circle punch all the way through all layers of your card and glued-on envelope.

Cut a 3×3 inch piece of card stock to insert in the envelope (here I added our Round Tab Punch (108340 $15.95) to create an easy-to-pull tab to open the trap door.

So, now you can take the money out and slide the trap door closed again. ) SIMPLE!!

Don’tcha just love it!? I KNOW!! It’s killing me, too! But wait! Stampin’ Up!’s outdid themselves again! They’ve added another Sweet Treats cups option!

So stinkin’ cute…can ya stand it?

Here’s the stamp set:

 Sweetheart Stamp Set of 4 stamps

120415 Wood mounted $21.95   Unmounted $15.95

Here’s the Heart Sweet Treat Cups

120435 $2.95 for 12

 You may want to also consider the following:

113693 Heart punch $15.95

116911 Sweet Treat cup padded envelopes ($2.95 for 3)  to mail your masterpieces:

And guess what? If you ordered this stuff–you’d be eligible for a FREE Sale-A-Bration product! Ain’t that nifty?

Well, hopefully that covers what ya’ll needed to know about those Sweet Treat cups. Now aren’t you glad you asked? ) Me, too.

Now go stamp something!

Apologizing AGAIN!

Sorry for the gap in posts — AGAIN. Between Christmas, aftermath, stamping crazy for Leadership, going to Leadership and then coming home only to catch a bad case of the flu (in bed for 4 days), I’ve had to put blogging on hold.

But, I’m up and at it again and feeling much better. I will tell you that the flu bug going around will kick your hiney! So, please wash your hands and be careful not to catch that nasty bug!

Getting Tricky!

If you were wondering what kind of stamping I’ve been up to–it hasn’t been much! ) I did have a Get Punchy class I can share as well as a cute project I did with my elderly pals at Aston Gardens so stay tuned! I also stamped a card for my nephew who just turned 12! Cody is such a trickster so I knewI had to do a different kind of card for him. He’s always tapping your shoulder and pretending that he didn’t do it, hiding around the corner to pop out and scare you and sticking things on you to laugh at you as you "unknowingly" (I always pretend I don’t know )   ) walk around with it.

The picture above is of him counting his candles on his birthday cake last week. He then said to my sister, "Mom, there’s not enough candles on the cake." Which, of course, made my sister count the candles to make sure there were 12. When she discovered there were enough and protested, Cody got a big laugh that he was able to make his mom count them again. Get the picture of what makes this sneaky fellow so adorable? (Hey , I admit I’m partial!)

So back to the card! I decided to put a $20 bill in one of our Sweet Treat cups. Cody plays basketball at his Christian school and obviously didn’t want anymore "cutesy" cards. After all, he is a "teenager" ! Duh! )

But, ahhh haaa…the expression on his face when he opened his card and couldn’t figure out how he was going to get the money out was priceless! It’s especially funny as my whole family makes a big deal out of my cards. When they open them, it’s like opening a gift in itself so they are treasured. He was so perplexed as to how he was going to get that money out without "ruining" the card! We all got a good laugh out of that facial expression! Then, he laughed, too! He may be a trickster but he’s a great sport, too!

Even, funnier, I know right now he’s probably got something else in that card (probably just a dollar), tricking all his friends with it! Ahh–KIDS!

Well, hopefully, I’ll get to posting regularly again. I  know I’ve missed sharing with you. Check back soon for some fun punchy cards! Toodles!