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.

Paw Prints Are Foot Prints!

DawnL chose Footprints27 as our CCEE Catchy Name Featured Stamper this month and told us that we had to have footprints on our card. I staunchly maintain that doggie paw prints ARE foot prints because our beloved poochies are our babies and so human like.



A couple of my coworkers have recently brought new puppies into their lives, so I was working on some kind of design to congratulate them on their new babies and figured Dawn's challenge fit the bill perfectly! This particular card will be sent to our CNFS, as we always do, but I made more than one of these for my co-workers. I think they'll get a kick out of them.

How about you pull out your foot prints stamps and play along with us? You can get all the details on our CCEE blog, as well as see the other cool cards my friends made.

Stamps: Inkadinkadoo, Short and Sweet
Cardstock: Black and White
Ink: Black
Accessories: Cuttlebug dotted swiss embossing folder, red and black plaid ribbon, word window punch, rectangle Nestabilities

It's Flowergal36

I love our CCEE Catchy Name Featured Stamper (CNFS) challenge. This month I chose Dawn, aka Flowergal36 on Splitcoaststampers. Dawn is so sweet and a very talented stamper. If you get a chance, check out her gallery on Splitcoaststampers and leave her some love.

Dawn told me that she loves to garden and has quite the green thumb, however, she finds it difficult to stamp with flowers. Therefore, I told my CCEE team mates that their project had to have flowers on it. The other fabulous thing about Dawn is that her favorite color is the same as mine: Purple!!! Yeah, baby!

One of my favorite flower stamp sets is A Year of Flowers designed by Melanie Muenchinger (distributed by Gina K Designs). This rose is so exquisite and a pleasure to color. I gold embossed the rose and watercolored it using my Stampin' Up reinkers (Pretty in Pink and Riding Hood Red). I also gold embossed the stem and leaves onto Always Artichoke cs and cut those out. The flower, stem, and leaves are raised on dimensionals. You can't see it in my photo, but I added droplets of Crystal Effects onto the rose petals to simulate morning dew.

I just received this SU Bella Rose dp and knew I wanted to use it in my card for Dawn. The opposing side of this pretty floral is the Kiwi Kiss green and white polkadotted dp you see on the inside of my card, which I punched with the MS picket fence punch that I used on the white cs on the outside of my card.

Would you like to see the projects my friends made or play along with us? Check out our CCEE blog for the details! We will send our projects to Dawn.

Stamps: A Year of Flowers (Gina K. Designs)
Cardstock: Riding Hood Red, Old Olive, Whisper White, Bella Rose dp, Cryogen Sparkle White, Always Artichoke
Ink: Gold, Always Artichoke, Riding Hood Red, Pretty in Pink, Versafine Black
Accessories: Cuttlebug dotted swiss embossing folder, Marvy scalloped corner punch, Martha Stewart picket fence punch, oval punches, gold embossing powder, dimensionals, crystal effects