Franz Porcelain Inspired

My sweet friend, Anne (aka Itsapassion on SCS) is hostessing the Inspiration Challenge on Splitcoaststampers. The inspiration website Anne provided features Franz Porcelain items...some of the most exquisite and loveliest pieces of porcelain I've ever laid my eyes on.

I chose this stunning Floral Bouquet Creamer as my inspiration piece. I was drawn to the vibrant blue. I stamped my Delight in Life flowers with Tuxedo Memento Black ink onto white cardstock and then colored the flowers with Copic markers using brushstrokes. I then lightly added thin black strokes with Marvy LePlume thin point marker.

My bow was made with the Bow Easy, and I used the MS zig zag punch for the border under my sentiment.

I hope you'll find some time to play in the Inspiration Challenge. Look for IC204 in the challenge forums at Splitcoaststampers.

New Friends

Not too long ago, I began chatting with another Michigan stamper, Lynn, whom I met on StampTV through the Michigan forum. Lynn had posted a thread that she was looking for some local Michigan stampers to get together with occasionally, and I had responded that I was interested. Well, through a series of e-mails, Lynn and I discovered that we live only eight miles from one another and we work one block away!!!

So, this past Wednesday, Lynn and I met up after work at a local restaurant to meet each other and chatted as if we'd been life-long friends! She is quite the artist and creative soul versus my short six years of cardmaking, but we are looking forward to stamping, creating, and learning together.

This past Saturday, Lynn invited me, along with some other local women stampers, to her beautiful home for a day of stamping and sharing. It ended up that only four of us were in attendance, but we had so much fun, and I wanted to share a few pictures. Hopefully the ladies who had to cancel will be able to come out and play another day!



Here are the other two ladies who joined us. Krista (middle) and Joanne (right). Joanne is Lynn's aunt, and the four of us got along really well. Joanne was really focused and accomplished much more than I did that day. Giggle. I was too busy chatting and eating (no m&ms; the ladies haven't learned about my m&m addiction yet) and checking out the cool supplies everyone brought. Also, a friend of Lynn's had sent a couple boxes of stamps and punches that were out on display for us to use, which was cool. I definitely took advantage of stamping some images to be colored later.



Lynn recently celebrated her birthday. Her daughter gave her a ScorPal (woo-hoo!) Krista brought a tote template to share with us, so Lynn was getting familiar with how to use her new ScorPal by making a copy of the template. Thanks, again, Krista!



Like I said, Joanne was the productive one that day. Hee! Well, actually Krista was pretty productive, too, working on mass production of some of her Christmas cards. Lynn and I were busy playing with embossing folders, die cuts, punches, and stamps we don't have, so I suppose we WERE productive in another way!



Lynn has lots and lots of windows, and these tall ones are so beautiful and provide a wonderful view of the river and fall colors outside. The windows also provided us with spectacular lighting to work by. Check out the view here.



And check out this cutie-patootie. His name is Gomez Addams and he is Lynn's Yorkie. He's such a sweetie and this is HIS spot and HIS blankie on the sofa. Lynn told me a really cute story about how Gomez Addams loves to ride in cars. One day Lynn opened the door to the mailman not knowing that Gomez Addams had dashed past her and out the door! A few minutes after Lynn retrieved her package from the mailman and closed her door, the doorbell rang, again. The mailman discovered Gomez Addams in his delivery truck!!! He was ready to go for a ride! I so wanted to take this little sweetie home with me.



I couldn't believe how fast the day flew by! It was so much fun.

Hey, Traci, if you're checking in, you'll be proud to read that I even baked some pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting....from scratch, no less! For those of you who don't know, I'm not too fond of having to spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking or baking after I've worked all day. I'd much rather be stamping, spending time with family or friends, reading, or watching a good movie.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a moment to see my pictures. I hope YOU'RE having a terrific day and are able to spend time with loved ones---whether family or friends---each day is so precious.

Altered Mini Lunch Tin

Our sweet friend and fearless leader of the CCEE group, Tosha, sent us these cute mini lunch tins and instructed us to alter and fill it as we wished! Since the green was so bright and festive, I felt it called for some Christmas decorations.



As always, we'd love it if you played along with us. You can check out the details and see the altered tins my friends made on our CCEE blog.

Also, you should know that with the upcoming holidays, the CCEE team decided to take off the months of November and December from our weekly challenges. We'll be back in January, though.

Stamps: Merry & Bright, Delightful Decorations
Cardstock: Real Red, Green Galore, Whisper White, polkadotted dp
Ink: Tuxedo Memento Ink, Real Red
Accessories: Copic markers, brads, corner rounder, Sizzix candy cane die, white gel pen, oval punches, 3/4" circle punch, red organdy ribbon, Modge Podge, dimensionals

Warm Winter Wishes!

Hello! Tonight the Gina K Design team (and special guest designers, of which moi is one) are showing some creations with Carolyn King's new Warm Winter Wishes stamp set. This is such a cute snowman set; I absolutely love it and think you will, too!

I chose to make an acetate treat box and coordinating 3 1/4 x 3 1/4" card. There's a great tutorial in the Resources section on Splitcoaststampers.com on how to make these. I'd put in a direct link if I could, but SCS seems to be having server issues and I could not get in when I wrote this post. I filled my treat box with York Peppermint Patties.



I love the fact that you can stamp a couple of the sentiments directly onto the heart of this adorable snowman! The little card is very simple because I wanted the focus to be on the snowman. I colored him with Copic markers; tore the white paper for the snow and edged it with dazzling diamonds; and embossed the background with my snowflake embossing folder.

I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo, but I did stamp the snowflake from this set in Stazon White onto the acetate. Here's a bit of a close up:



And here's a little bit closer view of the coordinating card:



Isn't he adorable??

For even more inspiration visit Carolyn King - the Illustrator of Warm Winter Wishes and the Idea Center gallery HERE.

Then, check in with Carolyn's other special guest designers:

Tina Gilliland

Deb Anton

And, finally stop by these GinaK Designer's blog participating in the hop tonight:

Cathy Tidwell
Cindy Lawrence
Emily Giovanni
Erika Martin
Jessica Fick
Kurtis Amundson
Lee Murphy
Nina Brackett
Melanie Muenchinger
Tami Mayberry
Theresa Momber

and our CenterStage Spotlight Team:

Joy Hadden
Kay Simmons
Linda Payne
Lori McAree

GinaK will be giving away a copy of Warm Winter Wishes on her blog tonight - so pop over there to leave your comment on her blog for your chance to win the set for free! (If you've already purchased the stamp set, we can swap it out for another GinaK stamp set valued at $19.95 or less.)

Wiper Card

Hello, dear friend! Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you're having a spectacular one!

Lynn, technique challenge hostess on Splitcoaststampers, issued a challenge to make a wiper card this past Monday. I was intrigued by the idea of a wiper card, so gave it a try.



The flower is from A Year of Flowers available at Gina K Designs, and the cocoa flourish is from Stampin' Up's Baroque Motifs. I used Soft Sky and Close to Cocoa as my color choices. The designer paper is Soft Sky. I colored the flower with Copic markers and added just a touch of Cosmo glitter to parts of the leaves. The ribbon is a sheer chocolate organdy ribbon.

Happy Birthday, Cindy and Silke!!

Today is my good friend Cindy's (aka Mothermark on SCS) birthday, and, as a surprise, the CCEE gals decided to make teapot cards in her honor. The only other requirement was to use polkadots in our design.

If you know Cindy, you know that she has quite a teapot collection and hosts a teapot challenge on her blog. I am always in awe of her amazing talent and ability to recreate her teapots to the.....wait for it...."tea!"

Although my card probably looks simple, it took me forever to make it. I really wanted to make a special teapot-shaped card for Cindy, but it just was not working out for me. I did make a teapot, using her favorite color blue, but ended up affixing it to a white square base. I used circle Nestability dies and circle punches to create my teapot, as well as a dotted swiss and floral border embossing folders.

Happy Birthday, Cindy! I hope your day is as special as you are, my friend!

My second card is for a challenge given to the CCEE girls to create a card in honor of our monthly Catchy Name Featured Stamper. This month, Tosha chose one of my all-time favorite stampers, Sparklegirl (Silke) and tomorrow happens to be Silke's birthday!!! Tosha told us that we had to make a square card, use a girl image, add some sparkle, leave a lot of white space, and use the faux silk technique in honor of Silke's name. My girl image is from an old Stampin' Up set called Everyday Celebrations. This image reminded me of Silke because she's so sweet and holds those she loves dearly to her heart. I used Cosmo glitter to add sparkle to the heart.

For my faux silk technique, I stamped these Embrace Life flowers with black ink onto white tissue paper and watercolored the flowers with Ridinghood Red and Old Olive reinkers. I added a touch of white gel pen to the flowers, wadded up the tissue, folded it back out flat and adhered it to the white cardstock with spray adhesive.

My buttons are from Basic Grey; I adhered the smaller olive colored button to the deep red one with Aleen's Tacky Glue. I love that stuff! I also used my button border embossing folder at the top of the card.

Happy Birthday, Silke!!

If you'd like to play along with us and see the spectacular cards my friends made, please visit our CCEE blog.

Congratulatory Easel Card

Yesterday I was most anxious about the oral surgery I had to have in the morning, and am so relieved to report that things went very well! I don't have to be back to work until this afternoon, so I got a chance to play with today's SCS sketch challenge and Monday's technique challenge to make an easel card now that the influence of the pain killers have worn off! I'm not sure if I did the easel right because my top panel doesn't stay tucked behind the button brad on its own, so I had to put a pop dot behind the button to hold the base in place. If anyone has pointers, I'd appreciate them so I can fold the card down into an envelope.

One of my co-workers is leaving for another job (sniff), and her favorite color is pink. This is my first time using this Spellbinder's edgeability. I softly sponged it with Pink Pirouette.




Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Twinkling Tall Pears

This week our CCEE head cheerleader and October hostess,Tosha, has instructed us to make a tall card. That's it. No other restrictions. I hope you'll consider joining us in our challenge. You can get the details and see the cards my friends made here.

I stamped my Fruitful Harvest pears three times onto Kraft cardstock, embossing one in gold, one in copper, and one in a mixture of gold and copper. I then watercolored them with my Twinkling H20s. I used a mixture of Nutmeg and Jasper Red on the pear and a mixture of Fresh Oregano and Nutmeg on the leaves. I just love how these turned out and wanted them to be the focus of my card, so I kept the rest of it simple. Here's a close up of the pears.



And here's the card in its entirety. I used black organdy ribbon and copper cording to hold the copper "For You" 3/4" sentiment circle. Designer paper and the scroll punch corners are the only other things I used.



Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

She Certainly Glows!

I was so excited when I saw that Chris Olsen, aka Glowbug on SCS, is our featured stamper today! I love Chris's beautiful work, and I always appreciate how encouraging she is to other stampers.

I chose this beautiful card of Chris's to case. Obviously, I changed the theme by going with a Halloween card in my case of hers:




I had so much fun playing with my new Totally Stampalicious Halloween stamp set that I recently received from Joycelyn and Becky. Have you checked out their cool stamps yet? They are a riot!

The witch, the bg stars, the sentiment and the cauldron are all a part of this cool stamp set. I stamped the sentiment inside the cauldron. I colored everything with Copic markers and dotted her orange dress with black marker.

I used a dauber to apply Pumpkin Pie ink to color my Sugarcane Paper tag embellishment that was part of a package of tags that my good friend StampOwl sent to me earlier this year (thanks, Frances!).

I found this cool Halloween dp at Michael's, and the pretty flowers were a gift from my good buddy, JoJot (thanks, Jo!).

I hope you're having a relaxing Sunday. Hubby and I are off for a little Sunday afternoon jaunt, but I'll be by your blogs as soon as I can!

Hugs,

I didn't have very good lighting to work with this morning and am running late for work, so this isn't the best photo of my card for today's sketch challenge on SCS, as well as for the Mothermark Miss You teapot challenge hosted by MariLynn. MariLynn gave us this birthday hat teapot as our inspiration piece. MariLynn is continuing the Teapot Tuesday tradition---in a slightly different format---while Cindy is taking off some needed R&R. In addition to using this inspiration piece, MariLynn challenged us to make our card a birthday card for Cindy since her birthday is in October.

As you can see, I drew upon the colors and the polkadots (Cindy loves da polkadots!!) from the birthday hat teapot.



I used my 3/4" circle punch for the Gable Green polkadots on the Tempting Turquoise panel, and I used my SU markers to color the Party Hearty birthday hats in the various colors. Circle Nestabilities worked perfect for cornering the "b is for birthday" sentiment and popping it up on dimensionals over the party hats. A Lovely Lilac button was added to the center of the "b".

Cindy, if you happen by my blog, please know that I hope you are getting the rest and relaxation you need and that I, as well as many others, miss you so much! I'll be slinging purple polkadotted birthday cupcakes in your honor today, my friend. Everybody's gonna have purple frosting all over dem!

A Muted Color Challenge

For today's color challenge on SCS to use kraft, mellow moss, and white. I think this is pretty self explanatory. I stamped the image in white kraft. I colored the leaves with a moss colored Lyra pencil, and I colored the pear with an aqua painter and SU reinkers. I added just a touch of barely banana to the pear. This is another image from the Fruitful Harvest (Gina K. Designs) set I so love.

Thank you for your special friendship and always leaving such encouraging comments!

Good Friends, Coffee, Sunflowers....and chocolate

Bev (aka Beestamper) challenged my Doubledog Dare Challenge group last week to make a card using this sketch design. You can check the link out on Splitcoaststampers (SCS) here (post #33) if you'd like to play along. Just be sure to put DDC in your keywords so we can see your creations.

A couple of weeks ago, Lynn, who is the technique challenge hostess on SCS, had a really cool technique challenge that I wasn't able to participate in at the time and that was to make your own layer buttons. They are so easy to make and I love how they turn out!!! It's just a matter of having the patience to let the crystal effects dry. I used the same designer paper as the bottom layer on my card for my button.

This is a great stamp set called My Cuppa Joe designed by Rupe Shevde and distributed by Gina K. Designs. I'm a huge coffee addict and have several friends who enjoy it as well, so this was a set that definitely belongs in my arsenal of stampin' supplies. I stamped the plate of cupcakes first, masked them, and then stamped the coffee mug. The cupcakes and platter were colored with Copic markers, as was the decorated tan section on the coffee mug. I didn't have a Copic marker that closely resembled the Bravo Burgundy, so I used a reinker and blender pen to color that.



For my next card, I made it yesterday in honor of the featured stamper, Clownmom (Lois), on Splitcoaststampers and well as for the technique challenge to use the faux suede technique on SCS.

This is a beautiful stamp set called Fruitful Harvest designed by Asela Hopkins and also distributed by Gina K. Designs. My leaves and the bottom olive panel are of the faux suede technique. The leaves were made by using Stampin Up's Christmas ornament punch. I drew veins on the leaves with my Old Olive marker and folded them in half.

I heat embossed the sunflower image in black and then colored with Copic markers in a summer sun color. I applied touches of glitter to the sunflower by mixing a little tacky glue with water and applying dabs of glue to my image with a small brush and adhering the glitter. You have to work in small sections, though, as the glue dries quickly.



If you're wondering about the chocolate in my post title, that would be for the m&ms I devoured while stamping.

Snugs, snorts, chortles, and giggles....have a great day and thanks for stopping by. I always appreciate your visits and comments!

Shape UP and Make it Round

That's what our head cheerleader of the CCEE challenge group and our October challenge hostess, Tosha Leyendekker, wanted us to do today for our projects: shape up and make a round card! Well, lemme tell ya that when Tosha speaks, we listen!!

Now, I must admit to feeling that my project is not my personal best. I don't know why I struggled so much while I designed my card. I wanted to use my beloved Vintage Violet cardstock that I found at a garage sale this summer, along with the beautiful Bella Bird's dp. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate a bird image since I was making this for a coworker's birthday, and she loves birds. Where I struggled was how I wanted to embellish my card. I tried ribbon; I tried punched butterflies; I tried punched boho blossoms; I tried silk flowers; and, well, you get the idea....you try everything in your stash. My work table looked like a tornado had ripped through my supplies. As you can see, I finally settled on these alternating lilac and black buttons, and I'm still not sure how I feel about this card. Do you ever have those days where you look at one of your designs and you say, "I like it; I hate it; I like it; I hate?" That's how I feel about this one. When I sighed in frustration and whined to my wise husband that my mojo was missing, he consoled me with the following quotable quote:

"A truly talented artist always recognizes that there will be days when their mojo is missing. It is from this recognition that the artist not only remains humble but also grows."

Isn't he smart?

I seriously thought about not uploading my card to our challenge this week until my sweetie shared that deep insight with me. So that brings me to uploading my card and putting myself out there with the thought to ask you for your inspiration/ideas of how you would have embellished this card. So, without further ado, here is the end result.



My Rhona Farrer bird image was colored with Copic markers, and his wing is paper pieced with the Bella Birds dp and popped up. I used circle Nestabilities for my card. I forgot to take a picture of the inside, but I used the circular "happy birthday" image from Think Happy Thoughts.

Would you like to play along with us? All you need do is make a round card and upload it to Mr. Linky on our CCEE blog here. You can also see the beautiful projects my very talented friends made.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great day!

A Wonderful Cause

Happy Saturday! Hubby and I were suppose to have taken a day trip today but he wasn't feeling all that well this morning, so while he slept, I took the time to play in the Inspiration Challenge on Splitcoaststampers. I used this squirrel-themed tray from Kir DeVries website as my inspiration piece as a part of the inspiration challenge on Splitcoaststampers.


















Here's my card I designed based on this inspiration piece:



My friend, Carolyn King, designed this cute snowman stamp set called Warm Winter Wishes for Gina K. Designs. One hundred percent of her sales proceeds will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association in memory of her grandmother who passed away from this terrible disease over a year ago. I hope you'll take a moment to consider hopping on over to Gina K's store and purchasing this stamp set for such a wonderful cause.

I colored my snowman with Copic markers and adhered him to my oval panel and then trimmed off the rest of his body. I also used the snowflake from the Warm Winter Wishes set, which is heat embossed in white on the Cool Caribbean oval. The other snowflake is from Stampin Up's Snowflakes set and the black pine branch is from Peaceful Wishes. I dotted a turquoise Sakura jelly roll pen on some of the bg embossed snowflakes. I sponged the outer edges of the oval and the white bg cs with Taken with Teal. I used my Martha Stewart snowflake punch on Taken with Teal cardstock to emulate the outer floral design on the inspiration tray.

Sketch Challenges and New Rubbah....oh! and Happy Anniversary!

I couldn't wait to use my new Delightful Decorations stamps and punch. I seem to have a thing for punches, especially really cool ones that punch the stamped image for you. This card is also for the sketch challenge on StampTV. A pretty clean and simple card using Ridinghood Red cardstock, dp, and striped ribbon.



I made this card for the sketch challenge on Splitcoaststampers (SCS) yesterday and never got a chance to put it up on my blog. It's also for the Mothermark Miss You teapot challenge hosted by MariLynn on SCS. Cindy is taking a couple weeks off, so MariLynn thought it'd be fun to still have a teapot challenge. Here's the inspiration teapot. Go to post #273 and click on MariLynn's link if you'd like to play along. I'm a day late and a dollar short getting mine done and missed most of the party gals.



Today is my wedding anniversary. Hubby and I are going out to a fancy schmancy restaurant out of town for dinnah to celebrate. Now, if I can just quit eating my m&ms.....I need to save my appetite for the real food!