fresh & fun

This weeks inspiration piece is a J. C. Crew dress.

Use the colors or the pattern….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

Jennifer Buck

Silke Ledlow

I will post my sample later. I didn’t feel inspired yesterday! I am going on another walk this morning and will start right after that.

If you upload your image to your splitcoast gallery, don’t forget to add BIC15 in the keyword section. That way your card will appear in this search: SCS Submissions

I knew I wanted to use the stamp set The Free & The Brave today. I ordered it, but it hadn’t seen ink yet. So when I checked out today’s Technique Lover Challenge, I thought I could use the set and participate in the challenge at the same time.

Today’s challenge was to pick one of the first then Technique, Color and Sketch challenges and combine them into one card. The only half way patriotic Color combo out of the first ten Color challenges was Rose Red, Night of Navy and Brocade Blue (CC03). I picked SC10 as layout, since it had a big square as focal point. That would work well with the eagle and the Spotlight technique (TLC06) for my technique challenge.

The card turned out rather simple, but since it’s going to Rick, it will be allright. LOL

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 11″ piece of Night of Navy folded in half.

On the bottom I added a 2 3/4″ x 4″ piece of Brocade blue that was stamped all over with the three star row from The Free & The Brave. Over it was a 3/8″ x 4″ piece of Kraft cardstock. I added a red (rose), white and blue brad on the left hand side.

The main image is also from The Free & The Brave stamp set. I stamped the eagle once in Rose Red on Kraft cardstock, once in Night of Navy on Whisper White.  I cut the blue eagle out and layered it on the Kraft cardstock. The Kraft cardstock was then layered first on a Rose Red, then on a Whisper White cardstock layer and the edges of the Kraft cardstock were  paper pierced.

I stamped the first half of the sentiment in Night of Navy on the bottom right. The second half was stamped on a 4″ x 5 1/4″ piece of Brocade Blue that was taped on the inside of the card.

I want to wish you all a Happy Memorial Day!

The kids and I are going to see the new Narnia movie. Since we didn’t read any of the books, we won’t be dissappointed. I like to go to movies that have been running for at least a week. That way the theaters won’t be that crowded. Next week will be Indiana Jones time! I love watching movies!

Random.org picked #67.

That is Brenda, with this card.

You can see more of Brenda’s work on her blog Stamp It Up.

Thanks to everyone who tried out the sketch! The samples looked amazing!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day!!!

Random.org picked #88. That is Mary P.

Mary, please email me your mailing address and I will send out the set to you.

Thank you all for your kind words! You are the best!

Hugs and smiles

I like using my sketch challenges as layouts for my scrapbook pages when I can. I did that for this weeks Scrapbook Sunday share.

I love this picture of Rick and Rebecca!

I took it on our trip to the Smoky’s.  As you can see the trees were still bare and it was foggy.

That didn’t matter because we had Rick home for a little while.

I pulled the colors from the gray day and Rebecca’s jacket.

The page base is a 6″ x 6″ piece of Basic Gray. The top was stamped with the background stamp from Fresh Cuts in Basic gray. I stamped additional branches from that set in gray over the background and sponged the edges.

I cut the photo down to 3″ x 6″ and taped it to the bottom of the page. Over it a 1″ strip of Berry Bliss Designer paper was adhered. The top edge was paper pierced and a piece of polka dotted Sherbert Ribbon was layered over the bottom edge.

For the circular layer I stamped  a Day to Remember from Sweet Celebrations in second generation Basic Gray and once in full strength of Purely Pomegranate ink. I cut out the gray layer with my round Nestabilities, the Pomegranate layer with the 1 1/4″ circle punch. I taped both layers together and stamped the branch from Fresh Cuts in second generation Pretty in Pink ink. The little journaling I did was done with a 03. black Micron Pen. Both layers were adhered to a bigger Basic Gray Scallop circle, cut again with round Nestabilities.

I stamped the flower from Fresh Cuts in Purely Pomegranate on Whisper White cardstock and cut it out. It was adhered with dimensionals to my circular layers and a pink rhinestone brad (Fire collection) was added in it’s center. Last I taped the circular layers down with dimensionals.

My counter crossed the 1,800,000 mark today! Thank you so much for always visiting my blog. It is very humbling to know how many of you check in with me. To celebrate the mailstone I am raffling away a Unity Stamp set.

It is an unmounted set called Daisy Days.

To participate in the raffle, just post a comment under this blog entry.

Please add your entry number (comment numbers + 1).  One comment per person. If you see the number is messed up, please don’t post again or the numbers will just get messed up even more.

I will pick a winner sometime tomorrow afternoon with the help of random.org.

Personal Note:
I started working out again and went on a 2.6 mile walk after doing my workout with my neighbor. It feels good to work out again, although my muscles are screaming today. Last night I played cards with the kids. We only have a few termites last night. Thank goodness. I have been working on SCS work and checking out all the WSC entries so far and hadn’t had time to stamp yet. Sorry! I have no stamped project to share with you today.

I was so excited when Stampin’ Up! announced that customers could order a set from the new catalog in June and hostesses could earn it for free. If you read my blog, you know I was already stressing over not having any new stamps for such a long time (THREE more month until August. Can you say TORTURE?) Demonstrators are lucky enough to be able to preorder the set this month and mine arrived yesterday afternoon. Needless to say I had to try it out right away.

While I like how my card came out, I think it will look better as a 3″ x 3″. I will try that next. I think this card has Customer Thank you for next month written all over it. I used this weeks color challenge on SCS on the card.

I added most of the stamps that come in the set in this picture. Just in case someone hasn’t seen or heard about this special yet.

My card base is a 4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ piece of Certainly Celery cardstock folded in half.

Next is a sponged and ticket corner punched 4″ Blue Bayou square.

On top of that sits first a 3 3/4″ Whisper White square that was stamped in Soft Sky with the background stamp from Fresh Cuts. The branch from the same set was stamped on the upper right hand side in second generation Blue Bayou.

On the bottom half of that layer I added a strip of Blue Bayou Prints Designer paper. The white cardstock edges were paper pierced and a white gel pen dotted border was added to the designer paper. 5/8″ wide Celery Grosgrain ribbon was tied around the layers.

I stamped the background stamp again on a scrap of Whisper White cardstock, inked up first Thank, then You from one of the two sentiments that come with that set in Blue Bayou and stamped them over the background. I then punched the saying out with my 1 1/4″ circle punch and sponged the edges ever so slightly with Blue Bayou. This circle was layered first on a 1 3/8″ Certainly Celery circle, then on a sponged Blue Bayou scallop circle. From the rest of the stamped White scrap I punched out three 1/4″ circles, adhered them to the bottom right of the Designer paper and topped them off with Celery Brads.

Finally I stamped the small flower from Fresh Cuts in Blue Bayou, cut it out, adhered it with dimensionals to my sentiment circle and placed a medium clear rhinestone brad (Pretties Kit) in its center.

I didn’t get to finish my sample. I had a wonderful visit from one of my long distance downline members yesterday. We didn’t get to stamp but chatted the morning away and went to P.F. Changs for lunch. The day started so well!

I started to stamp my sample last evening watching TV. BUT….a big swarm of flying (one day) termites seemed to have landed on our house and I spend the rest of the evening vacuuming up those nasty little suckers. That is the grossest thing ever. I would never live here permanently because of that. They only swarm in May. I had them crawling in my bed!!! Under the covers!!! Let’s just say I am very tired because I didn’t want to go to sleep. I kept watch for new termites to kill.

This morning I got up early to clean up the rest of the termites that crawled out last night. I wanted to have most of them gone before the kids got up! They were as freaked out as I was (I tried not to show it. With Rick gone, I had to be the strong parent.).

My sample is half finished. I hope I will finish it up soon.

I saw a card made with this sketch by the ever so talented Patty Bennett and thought it would be a fun sketch for the Weekend sketch challenge.

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.

 If you upload your card on SCS, put WSC49  (NO SPACE INBETWEEN WSC AND 49) 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.

I will determine the winner  with Random.org on Monday at 11:00 a.m. CST

To see samples made with this sketch now, check out the blogs of

Cambria Turnbow

Charmaine Ikach

Jenn Balcer

Laurie Schmidlin 

Lori Craig

MaryJo Albright

Sharon Harnist

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

SCS submissions

Here is another 3 1/8″ square card made with the largest of the long scallop rectangle Nestabilities die templates (that’s quite a mouthful!)

The card base is cut out of textured Groovy Guava and folded in half.

Wasabi double stitched ribbon was tied around the bottom half of a   2″ x 2 7/8″ strip of Tea Time Designer Paper. The strip was adhered to the left hand side with dimensionals.

The head of the rose from Bloomin’ Beautiful was stamped in Black Stazon on a Whisper White oval. It was colored with Aqua Painterand classic inks (Groovy Guava, Soft Sky and Wild Wasabi), layered on a Wild Wasabi scalloped oval and a border was paper pierced along the edges. Both ovals were cut with the Oval Nestabilities. The image was attached to the card base with dimensionals.

To finish the card off I added two 1/4″ Wild Wasabi circles to the bottom right and topped them off with silver brads.

If you have questions about Nestabilities die templates (Where did I buy them? Which ones do I own? How do you use them?) check this blog entry.