fresh & fun

I am still stunned and saddened by Laurie’s bad news. I really urge you to help me to shower her family with cards and prayers.

My sample for today’s sketch is a Happy Halloween card. I didn’t know about Halloween until I moved to the States. Now it’s in Germany as well, but when I grew up we didn’t have that. My kids though, they know and love this holiday. What could be better then dressing up in fun costumes, getting a major load of candy and being allowed to eat as much candy as they can stomach? LOL

I am wishing you a Happy, fun and safe Halloween. May your kids (and you) get lots of their favorite candy and NO stomach ache.

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ piece of Basic Black cardstock folded in half. It is layered with a 4″ x 5 1/4″ piece of distressed (Cutter Kit) Whisper White cardstock followed by a 1/4″ smaller piece of distressed and paper pierced Haiku Designer Paper.

The distressed Kiwi Kiss Pattern Designer Paper measures 2 3/4″ x 4″  and is layered on a 1/4″ bigger piece of Basic Black. I should have made it at least a 1/4 shorter, but I wasn’t thinking about the additional white border I would be adding later. The top and bottom of the layers were punched with the Spiral Punch, the side layers were paper pierced. I sanded over the Designer paper with my sanding block to distress this layer even further.

Next I took two 3″ strips of Whisper White cardstock, held my 1/4″ square punch diagonal to the paper and punched my zigzag border. I just couldn’t see scallop borders there working for a Halloween card. I taped the border on the top and bottom of my Designer paper layers. Now the white was showing through my spiral punch. I didn’t like that so I covered each of those squares with a black brad. So much better! Next I tied Tangerine Grosgrain ribbon around both layers.

I stamped the cat from Halloween Frights in Black Stazon on Whisper White cardstock, punched it out with the        1 3/4″ circle punch and layered it on a black scallop circle cut with the Pennant Die. I paper pierced the edges fo the white layer, threaded Linen thread to the hole on the top and tied it to the ribbon. I also attached it with dimensionals to the front to keep it in place.

I stamped the sentiment in Black Stazon on Whisper White cardstock, punched it out with the large oval punch, taped it to the lower left of the layers and paper pierced underneath the sentiment. I stamped the bat in Black, cut it out and mounted it with dimensionals on the top right of the sentiment.

Here is the inside of my card.

To participate in the challenge and be entered in the  raffle, make a card with this layout and upload it either to your blog, or to an online gallery. This time, because I just passed 2,400,000 hits on my blog, I will raffle away these goodies:

• Melanie Munchinger’s Just so hoppy  stamp set (Gina K.)
• CuttleBug Embossing Folder Number Collage
• Ribbon assortment

If you upload your card on SCS, put WSC64  (NO SPACE INBETWEEN WSC AND 64) in the keyword section. That way we can look at all of them at once!

Post a link to your card to this blog entry as a comment. Please add your entry# to it. Please only comment once per card. If you forget the entry number, it’s okay. I will fix it. Don’t post again. Only card entries will count for the raffle.

I will determine the winner with Random.org on Wednesday morning.

I saw this layout at in the new idea book and catalog on page 117. To see samples made with this sketch now, check out the blogs of

Cambria Turnbow

Charmaine Ikach

Jenn Balcer

Lori Craig

MaryJo Albright

Sharon Harnist

Have fun creating! I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

SCS submissions

I have a card request for you:
Laurie Schmidlin’s twelve year old daughter Ali is very sick. Could you please send her a get well card or a thinking of you card to Laurie? Laurie is such a wonderful person, my heart just goes out to her. If you don’t have Laurie’s address, please email me and I will send it to you.

Check out the great Halloween card Roseanne Knowles sent me.

You can see more of Roseanne’s work on her blog Stampin’ World.

Thank you Roseanne!

I recently got some Flourishes stamps. I try really hard to just use Stampin’ Up! stamps, being a demo and upline and all, but it is getting harder and harder not to branch out. Especially with gorgeous stamps from Flourishes, LLC.

The triangle box is made from a 2 1/2″ x 5″ piece of Kraft cardstock. I stamped Flourishes Damask background stamp with White Craft ink over it.

The box is pretty small. I fit one of these little Dove Chocolate pieces in it. I tied it shut with Red Taffeta ribbon.

The Ornament was stamped with Encore Gold ink and embossed with Gold embossing powder on Shimmery White cardstock. I colored it with Riding Hood Red ink and Aqua Painter, cut it out and tied gold elastic cord around the top. I stamped Joy with Encore Gold  on a 5/8″ wide strip of Shimmery White cardstock and embossed it in Gold embossing powder as well. I punched the right edge with my 3/4″ square punch and sponged the edges with Riding Hood Red ink. I taped the sentiment strip down and adhered the ornament over it with dimensionals.

Check out this beautiful card Pam sent me.

Make sure you check out her blog, The Stamping Addict.

Today’s Tutorials on SCS is on how to make a triangle box. It’s simple, it’s quick and easy changeable to different sizes. For my tutorial sample I started with a 5″ x 10″ piece of textured Baja Breeze Designer Paper.

I stamped the cardstock with the snowflake from the Stampin’ Up! Winter Post stamp set. I stamped the snowflake first in Baja Breeze classic ink, then in Whisper White Craft ink all over the cardstock.

Since we are also running a new product focus page about the new JustRite Harmony stamp ensembles, I decided to use one of the the stamp sets I received for the tutorial as well. The sentiment and the oval frame are both from the Classic Harmony Oval II stamp ensemble. After conditioning the stamps (check out Sharon’s awesome tutorial also published today on SCS) I stamped them in Chocolate Chip ink on Ski Slope Designer Paper. I cut them out with my Oval Nestabilities. The stamps fit great in those die templates.

I layered it on a Whisper White circle and Chocolate Scallop circle, both were cut with Circle Nestabilities. The inside of he oval frame was paper pierced. I added a silver paper clip from the Paper clip assortment from Stampin’ Up! to the top left of the sentiment and tied Pink Taffeta Ribbon around it. On the bottom right I added a Snowflake from the Little Felt Flurries, added a Jumbo Eyelet in it’s center topped with an Fire Circle Rhinestone brad.

I created smaller sample with a 2 1/2″ x 5″ piece of cardstock. I will share that with you tomorrow.

Have a great day! Hugs and smiles

How fun that Random.org picked #63 for the winner this week! That is Carolina Buchting with this card.

Check out her blog Carolina’s Creative Pad for more of her great work.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the challenge! I haven’t seen all the samples yet, but all the cards I have seen so far look wonderful!

Hugs and smiles

I had no desire to stamp yesterday after getting done with my chores. I made this card early this morning. I have to walk Rebecca to school. I will be right back to the details. Still no mojo here, so I went back to my fall back layout! Thank goodness the BIC was easy. It was screaming for me to use the Urban Garden Paper and Pocket Silhouette stamps.

This time I started with my image and worked my card around it. I stamped the leaf stamp from Pocket Silhouette in Black Stazon on Whisper White, punched it out with the 1 3/4″ circle punch and added a blue shadow with my Blender Pen and Baja Breeze ink pad.

I layered it first on a slightly bigger Old Olive circle that I had cut with circle Nestabilities, then on a black scallop circle cut with the Bigz XL Pennant Die from Stampin’ Up!. I added 9 paper piercing holes on the lower left and the top right. I punched a small flower from Baja Breeze cardstock with Trio Flower Punch, sponged it’s edges with a sponge dauber, added a 1/8″ black circle, adhered it to the image with dimensionals and topped it off with a small Ice Circle Rhinestone Brad.

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ piece of Kiwi Kiss cardstock folded in half. A white gel pen dotted border was added 1/8″ in all the way around.  The next layer is a 3 3/4″ square of Basic Black cardstock. Each corner was punched with the ticket corner punch. The 3 1/2″ Whisper White square that is the next layer was first scored every 3/8″ vertically to create the look of the wall of the inspiration piece. I used my Scor-It to create those scores. It creates deep score lines and you can add those score lines anywhere you want. (Click on the image to see the image bigger and the score lines better.)The bottom part was layered with a 1 3/4″ x 3 1/2″ piece of Urban Garden Designer paper piece. Each corner was punched with the ticket corner punch and the edges were paper pierced. I tied ribbon from the retired Jersey Ribbon Originals Pack around the layers. I didn’t even realize until now that it’s the same ribbon that now comes in all six In Colors. I wish we still had a little bit wider black ribbon like that (sigh).

The sentiment was stamped in Black Stazon on white cardstock and punched out with the small oval punch. I cut the right edge off and lined it up with the edge of my designer paper, paper pierced a line underneath the sentiment and paper pierced a line under the sentiment. I punched a flower out of Kiwi Kiss paper with the Trio Flower Punch, sponged the edges and added a 1/8″ black circle before adhering it under the sentiment with a dimensional. Again the flower was topped off with a small Ice Circle Rhinestone Brad.

Use the colors or the pattern from this Pottery Barn Layout….anything that will inspire you to create your card.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Check out the cards made by the Inspiration Challenge Team:

Charmaine Ikach

Danielle Lounds

Dawn McVey

Jennifer Buck

Silke Ledlow

Susan Roberts

If you upload your image to your splitcoast gallery, don’t forget to add BIC29 in the keyword section. That way your card will appear in this search: SCS Submissions

Last Monday’s Technique challenge was to color an image with watercolor pencils and then blend them with watercolor brush and pink twinkling H2O. I thought that sounded interesting and gave it a whirl. I went a little bit overboard with the Twinkling H2O’s, but it was still fun.

I stamped the image from the Serene Spring hostess set in Black Stazon on  a 2 3/8″ x 3 1/4″ piece of watercolor paper. It was colored with Watercolor Pencils that were blended with my Aqua Painter and Rose Twinkling H2O’s.

The corners were punched with the ticket corner punch and the edges were paper pierced. The watercolor paper was adhered to a 1/4″ bigger piece of Basic Black cardstock. Each four corners were ticket corner punched as well.

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ piece of Basic Black cardstock folded in half. It was topped with a 4″ Pink Pirouette cardstock square that had a 2 3/8″ x 4″ layer of the retired Rose Red Prints Designer Paper attached to the bottom. The designer paper was distressed with a sanding block and Striped Bashful Blue grosgrain ribbon was tied around the top. The top right corner of the Pink Pirouette layer was paper pierced.

The sentiment was stamped in two rows, punched out with the small oval punch and layered first on a 1″ pink pirouette circle, then on a Black designer label punchout. A Flower designer brad with an 1/8″ bashful blue cardstock circle in it’s center finish off the sentiment. To tie in the hardware, I added two styled silver brads on the left hand side next to the top and bottom corner of the image.