fresh & fun

Sorry my sample for the challenge is a bit late. I didn’t get work on it until 8:30 a.m. (EST) in the morning and I am not the fastest stamper. I did know I wanted to use My Mind’s Eye “The Merry Days of Christmas” Paper to tie this card in with today’s Holiday blitz Tutorial sample. I will post that a little bit later.

I started with stamping the tree from Verve’s Christmas in the Air once on White cardstock, then two times each on two different greens from the My Mind’s Eye paper pack. I cut the white tree out completely. The green tree tops were cut out one a bit shorter then the next. They were layered on my white tree. The edges were sponged with Walnut Stain Distress ink.

The blue layer underneath was cut with Label 8 Nestabilities dies from The Merry Days of Christmas paper. The edges were slightly sponged with Walnut Stain ink. Chocolate chip cardstock was cut with the next size up label 8 die and sponged with Walnut stain ink. I punched a whole with the Crop-a-dile and tied white Taffeta Ribbon through it. The blue layer was adhered to the chocolate cardstock with dimensionals, the tree with dimensionals on the blue layer. Tiny Twinkles on the lower right corner finish off the main image.

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 11″ piece of Core’dinations cardstock folded in half.  My patterned paper pieces measure 1 1/2″ square, 1 1/2″ x 2 1/4″, 1 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ and 2 1/2″ x 3 1/4″. They were layered on a sponged 3 15/16″ x 5 3/16″ piece of Chocolate chip cardstock. The edges were stitched by machine.

The sentiment is also from the new set Christmas is in the Air. It was stamped on the bottom right with Walnut Stain Distress ink.

 I will be back a bit later with today’s tutorial sample. Hugs and smiles

Here is the sketch for this weekend:

To participate in the challenge, 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 WSC105 (NO SPACE INBETWEEN WSC AND 105) in the keyword section. That way we can look at all of them at once! Add a link to your card to either Mr. Linky, or as a comment to this thread so I can go and check it out.

 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!  My sample is in the works. I will be a little late. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. SCS submissions

I love Gina K’s Holiday Cheer set. So when I needed to come up with a variation picture for the Luminaria tutorial, I grabbed that set.

The Riding Hood cardstock base was stamped with the snowflakes from the set in Cranberry ink from Adirondack and sponged with the same color. I added a chocolate Chip cardstock strip on the top that had been punched with an EK Success border punch (sorry….forgot the name).

The windows and the Chocolate chip frames were cut with Label Four Nestabilities. The frame was sponged with Expresso ink before I adhered them to the window with Mono Multi liquid glue.

The bird was stamped in Expresso ink on Vellum. I used my heat gun to dry it, turned it over and sponged Butterscotch and Cranberry over the back. 

To finish it off, I created another snowflake medallion. It was sponged with Cranberry ink in the center and with Antique Linen Distress ink on the edges. Shard Glitter and a button from my Mom’s stash finished it off. It was adhered to the Luminaria front with dimensionals.

Make sure to check out today’s Holiday Blitz Tutorial. Julie Buhler shows us how to make a Window Treat box.

Have a great day! Hugs and smiles

Today’s tutorial is for a simple Luminaria. They can be created lots of different ways, but I thought I start showing an easy one, all out of one piece of cardstock. The images and the background were printed out with the new Flower Soft CD-Rom. It contains some super cute images and helps to make some quick cards and projects.

The ovals were cut with Oval Nestabilities (of course….I seem to not be able to create one project without Spellbinders products. I am truly hooked on those!). Vellum Paper was taped behind the window.

The images were cut out and taped to my box with Scor-Tape and dimensionals. Polar White Flower Soft was added to the trees and ground.

Here is a video for the visual learner:

Thank you all for your kind words. I really appreciate it!

Random.org picked #127. That should be Rachel Hope! Rachel, email me your address and I will get the dies out right away. They are already packed up, ready to go.

Have a wonderful day! Don’t forget to check out the Holiday Blitz tutorials at SCS! Hugs and smiles

Our annually Tutorial Holiday Blitz week is going on at SCS right now. I already missed alerting you about the first two wonderful tutorials, a scrapbook wallet tutorial written by Makeesha Byl and a Matchbook Candy holder by Theresa Momber. I am sorry about that. I was crazy busy packing up sold Stampin’ Up! products and shipping them out. Thank you all for helping me make room in my craft room for new stamps from other companies!

Today’s tutorial is written by Libby Hickson and is for a Snowglobe card. She had posted one last winter and I had asked her right there and then if she would write this for us for this year’s Holiday Blitz. How fun to see one of those on the back of the Winter Mini catalog from Stampin’ Up! earlier this year.

My card is pretty simple. The cute little polar bear and the background are from Flower Soft. Flower Soft has some cute new products coming out. Make sure you come back tomorrow to learn more about them. The sentiment is from Verve. I received it as a thank you with an order last fall. Julee is so sweet to always include a little thank you stamp with each order. It was stamped with Tuxedo Black ink on Gina K’s Pure Luxury Cardstock. It was punched out with the large oval punch from Stampin’ Up! and layered on a Black Scallop Oval Punch-out.

The patterned paper is My Mind’s Eye Merry Days of Christmas. I tied 1″ celery Satin ribbon around the snow globe bottom. I can’t help by make more of those adorable snowflakes, Sherry Cheever showed us how to make. I made a smaller version that I sponged with Faded Jeans Distress ink and sprinkled with Shard Vintage Glass Glitter. The button is from Basic Grey and was tied on with waxed linen.

I hope you have time to check out the new tutorials, let the authors know how wonderful their projects are and try them out.

Have a wonderful day! Hugs and smiles

Last week I crossed another 100,000 in blog visits. My counter got messed up sometime last month or so. It should be showing 3,200,000, but it doesn’t really matter! Thank you so much for always visiting my blog and leaving comments. I really appreciate it!

This time I will raffle away Spellbinders Holiday Cheer dies. All you have to do to enter the raffle is leave a comment under this post. One comment per person. I will pick the winner Tuesday around 2 p.m. EST .

 P.S.: If you are interested in how to use the Spellbinder dies, check this product focus on Splitcoaststampers. Tutorials are listed on the right side bar.

  Hugs and smiles

I am sure you have noticed already that I am not using much Stampin’ Up! products anymore. I decided not to sign the new IDA and today is the first day that I am officially not a demonstrator anymore. I didn’t think I would ever quit being a demonstrator, but I didn’t feel right to only share part of my work here on my blog. I was a demonstrator for seven years and enjoyed every minute of it. I met so many great people and made many friends through Stampin’ Up! I was sad at first to leave Stampin’ Up!, but I am having fun now exploring all the other products out there.

I will be selling a LOT of my Stampin’ Up! products. Please check my for Sale section on the left.

 I hope you will still visit my blog even though I am sharing projects made with non Stampin’ Up! products now. I will focus creating with products from stamp companies who support Splitcoaststampers, either by advertising or being member companies. That is the main reason that I decided to sell my Stampin’ Up! products.

Yesterday was the birthday of an acquaintance of mine. She is the Mom of Lucas and Rebecca’s friends and I see her almost every day. I drive the kids to school, she picks them up. So when her daughter told me in the morning that it was her Mom’s birthday and that she likes Twix, I knew I had to create something. I bought a candle holder and filled it up with Snack size Twix.

I tied red May Arts Silk ribbon around the candle holder and cut cardstock with Nestabilities Label 1 to create a tag. The image is from this month KOM stamp set from Unity. It was stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Gina K.’s Pure Luxury Cardstock, cut out with Label 1 Nestabilities and was colored with Copic Markers (YR21, YR23, YR24, R14, R24, R29).  I tried to get close to the Twix colors with my copic marker choices.

After I adhered it to the tag base, I added Stardust Stickles over the Dragonflies and Crystal Effect over the rest of the colored part. Tiny Twinkles were adhered all around the image with Quickie Glue.

For the inside of the tag I stamped the image again on a Label 1 cutout, this time with Adirondack Butterscotch Dye ink. The sentiment is from Verve’s Circular Sayings and was stamped in Tuxedo Black ink.

I hope you have a happy and safe Halloween! Hugs and smiles!

I thought I could use yesterday’s Way to Use it Challenge to create a card for today’s sketch. Boy…that was a tough one! Julia challenged us to use purple on our card! Purple? Really? I don’t like purple…I wasn’t even sure I had any purple Designer paper. I checked my stash and found a few sheets with purple in my Basic Grey Euphoria pack.

I recently received my first order of Bella stamps, but hadn’t played with them yet. I picked the darling butterfly to try out first. It’s just so adorable. I stamped it with Tuxedo Black Ink on Neenah cardstock, cut it out with Circle Nestabilities and colored it with Copic Markers (YG000, YGoo, YG21, YG23, YG25,RV02, RV04, Rv10, RV17, V15, V17). The image was then first layered on black cardstock, then on Purple Core’dinations cardstock. Stardust stickles was added to the pink dots and Tiny Twinkles on the bows on her antena.

I really like how my butterfly looks, but I am not so sure about the rest of the card. Oh well….I can’t love all of my cards, right?

The Core’dinations card base measures 4″ x 12″ and was folded it half. A 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ piece of Euphoria Paper was adhered to a 3 11/16″ x 5 11/16″ piece of Black cardstock and sewn together. The two wider strips measure 3/4″ x 4 3/4″, the smaller one 1/2″ x 4 3/4″. The thinner strip has a layer of punched black cardstock underneath (EK Success border punch).  I had these layer originally like the sketch, but the black border looked better on the right, so I switched it around.

To finish off the card I added three Kaiser Rhinestones on the top left  and a bow out of May Arts Polka dotted organdy ribbon underneath the butterfly.

I will have to try again to come up with a better card for the sketch. Have a wonderful day! Hugs and smiles