Polka Dots Gone Wild!!

So MFT has changed up their new releases a little and their ambassador challenges now occur before the release. My friend (and fellow canuck) Julie is hosting these challenges over in the MFT forum on Splitcoast. This month's challenge was to use lots of polka dots and there are definitely lots of polka dots on this card! One of my good friends just got given a laptop and is over the moon excited. It's been a while since I've sent her a card, so I wanted to go with this image because it's exactly what she'll look like with her new laptop!!
I paper pieced the entire image. And when I say paper pieced - I did it the "Joanne" way - making sure all the layers sit on top of each other in the right order. Sometimes I'm lazy and would put the layers on top of the image and not worry that the legs were on a layer lower than the couch. But I heard Joanne in the back of my mind and even paper pieced the arms and legs! I thought about giving the girl chicken pox - but that was taking the polka dots just a touch too far (even to me!).

Hope you're having a great week so far! Later taters!

Sketch Lily!

Friday and Saturday were Virtual Stamp Nights (VSN) over at Splitcoast and I joined in for the first time. These weekends happen every couple of months and basically a new challenge is posted every hour. The rules are that you follow the challenge rules and that you limit yourself to 45 mins. to complete the challenge. You also don't have to complete each challenge when it's posted - you can go back and complete them any time over the weekend as long as they are uploaded by Sun. night. It was super fun! I've completed 5/11 challenges so far, and I'd like to try a couple more today.
This was for the very first challenge on Friday night - to double down (the VSN was Vegas themed!). Basically to create two identical cards. I used the Weekend Sketch Challenge for the layout and pulled out my new Beach Lily stamps. The paper is from Doodlebug and the pink cardstock is from their sugar coated line - it's covered in glitter! So pretty!
Anyway, hope you're having a great weekend! We still get one more day as Monday is a holiday here. Later taters!!

Fairy Sweet!!

I have been dying to get these Enchanted Lily stamps inky - and I finally had time to do it this week. Love this image and the sentiments in the set are super sweet too! I paired Lily with some Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday paper. Pretty simple card - I used this week's sketch challenge from Splitcoast for the layout.
Well this is a long weekend here in Canada - Monday is Victoria Day. We don't have any big plans - just getting some things done in the yard and the house. It's virtual stamp night over at Splitcoast so I hope to complete some of the challenges, seeing as it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. So hopefully I'll have lots to show you soon! Have a great weekend!

Beaver Leader Thank Yous

It's that time of year again when Beavers is finishing up. Beavers is the first level (age group) of scouting here in Canada. We were lucky enough to have six leaders this year who were simply amazing! Unfortunately, it's hard to come up with six gifts - so I decided to go simple. I made up a couple batches of Peanut Butter cups - they are basically a thick peanut butter cookie batter baked in a mini muffin tin, and then when they're hot out of the oven, you stick a mini Reese's peanut butter cup in the middle. I was able to fit 8 of them in each takeout box and made little cards to go with them. The stamp is one of the Billy sets from Pink Cat Studio and the paper is some old My Mind's Eye stuff from a stack paired with some Bashful Blue cardstock. We wrote thank you messages on the back. They had to be easy to create since we needed six of them!
Anyway, hope you're all doing well! Happy hump day! I'm hoping to have some stamping time today, things have been a little crazy with my contract work. Catch you later!!

MFT Mother's Day

I had time this week to play along in the MFT Idol judges challenge. We were to use pink and brown and the theme of inspirational women. Well there's no one more inspiring to me than my mother, so I decided to make her a card and a cup cozy. We love going to Starbucks when we get together and she always orders an extra hot latte, so this is practical as well!

The card was made using Papertrey's Berry sorbet paper and ink, which happened to match the fabric I had chosen. I used the same fabric to "paper piece" the dress so that the card matches the cozy. The sentiment reads "Wherever I go" and the inside reads "You're always with me, Happy Mother's Day".
I made the cup cozy using felt and assorted fabrics. I stamped my mom's name on muslin and used some instructions I found online to sew it all together.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend and Mother's Day!! Thanks for stopping by!

MFT One Click Contest

So My Favorite Things is changing up their former Guest Designer contest. It's now called the One Click Contest and the winner gets the months new releases. The sneak peeks for the sets being released tonight have been awesome - I would love to win this months sets so here's my entry.

Some of the regulars in the MFT forum have decided to start an online book club (here's the link to the thread if you want to join us!). Our first books is Water for Elephants. We have a schedule for discussing certain chapters and time lines. I wanted to create a notebook to jot these down, as well as to record questions, thoughts, impressions, etc... I covered a notebook with Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday paper and used Reading Flopsey.

I also used the Bling Bet to create the title. I stamped the letters on Purely Pomegranate cardstock with versamark and then embossed with clear embossing powder. I cut each letter out.
I used these instructions from Maureen to apply flocking to Flopsey and make him fuzzy. I usually use a Quickie Glue pen to apply flock, but this method was so easy and gave such good coverage that I'll definitely be doing it again. I used Close to Cocoa cardstock and Latte fun flock in this case.
I also decided to make a matching bookmark. Pretty self explanatory - I used this tutorial which was very helpful!

Well - happy hump day!! Hope you're having a great week!

A Deep Blue Breath

I made this card for a friend of mine who needed a couple of cards. I used MFT`s Serenity Now set and paired it with some Basic Grey Marakkech paper. I also used SU`s Pacific Point and Riding Hood Red along with some So Saffron - pretty combo!! I paper pieced the yoga top and used a Carole trick to extend the frame with a copic multiliner. I adhered my ribbon over the original bottom line and stamped the sentiment underneath. The layout is Jen del Muro`s sketch for you to try from a the week before last.

Hope you had a great weekend friends!

Cased Cards!

I've been feeling less than creative these days but needed a couple of cards. So I resorted to shamelessly caseing some very talented stampers. I'm hoping it will jump start something!

This first card is based on this one by Kristina Werner. I happened to have the same stamp so it appealed to me. I know - who am I kidding? I only changed the color scheme and the sentiment - I used my quickutz alphabet for it.


This second one was based on this card by Mercy Kerin. Again, pretty much the same card except for the colour scheme and sentiment. Oh and I left the knot off the ribbon!


Anyway, I hate to case so literally but both cards were awesome and I needed a boost. I have managed to do a couple of sketch cards since these, so maybe it worked! Thanks to Kristina and Mercy for their amazing designs!

MFT Idol - Judges Entry Week 7

One of my good friends ordered a bunch of cards for me and I've been busy working on them. I must say that it feels good to stamp just for the fun of it - no pressure! This week's idol challenge was "frame it". I decided since I was doing a card with an MFT image anyway, I might as well enter. I made a ribbon frame using the tutorial from the technique challenge. The paper is SU's Parisian Breeze and the layout is from the Weekend Sketch challenge (I love sketch challenges!).

Hope you had a great weekend! I was very productive - purged a ton of stuff - it's that spring cleaning urge setting in!! Later taters!

Bellarific!!

Hello girlies!! I made this card for Bellarific Friday - our inspiration piece was pink and brown. I pulled out my new Wendy Papillion and paired her with some Basic Grey Bittersweet paper. I used Jen del Muro's sketch for you to try for the layout. The ribbon rose was made from a tutorial I found while blurfing one day - here it is - it's a video and very easy to follow!

I've actually had a bellarific day today! My son is off school today for a PA day and we met some friends at a new indoor playground. It was fantastic! I treated the kids to lunch and we did some errands as well. As soon as my daughter gets up, we're heading outside to enjoy the beautiful weather. I've finally managed to kick the bear of a headache I've had for the last couple of days. And I'm finished moping about not moving on in the MFT idol contest. Life is good and God is great!! Thanks for reading friends!!

MFT Idol Week 5 One Layer Card

Edited to add: HERE is the link to the voting thread!!

I had such a hard time deciding what to do for this week's MFT Idol contest. Our challenge was to make a one layer card using only MFT stamps (of course!). Way back in January I made this one layer card for the MFT guest designer contest (and won an ambassador spot with it!) so I felt like I had used up all my one layer ideas!

I decided to play with the MFT digital paper packs and see what I could come up with. Here is the card I ended up creating - it took a little playing to get it right - but I did all my work in Microsoft Word (I lost my Photoshop when we upgraded to Vista!).


I thought that I would maybe post some screen shots here so you could see how I went about it - in case you want to try it for yourself! Jody Morrow created some awesome tutorials on how to purchase, download, locate, open and print the papers using only the document viewer (I linked you to the first one, but there's quite a few of them in that same forum). But since we were limited to one layer, I needed to make a few adjustments.

First I opened a new document in Word, then I used the Insert Picture command and selected my digital paper (they are downloaded as jpegs), in this case one of the papers from the Spring pack. I reduced the margins on my Word document as low as I could and stretched the paper out by grabbing the corner and dragging. Once I decided on my card size (6" x 4.5") and orientation, I was able to determine where to drop my boxes. To make the boxes, I simply used the text box tool and drew a box on top of the paper image. I then adjusted the size of the box (to 1.5") and copied and pasted it twice so I'd have 3 identical boxes. I lined up the boxes by using the rulers on the top and left sides.

Once I had my text boxes placed where I wanted them, I decided that instead of having black outlines, I wanted them to have coloured borders so it would look like my boxes were layered onto cardstock. By right clicking on my box, I was able to select Format Text Box which is shown below. I changed the line to a weight of 6 pt. and changed the colour. For the colour, I wanted to use SU's Pumpkin Pie, so I grabbed the RGB code for Pumpkin Pie off of Splitcoast (in the downloads forum) and selected my custom colour for the line.
Once I printed off my paper, I trimmed it down to size. I then used Eclipse masking strips (so much better than post-its!) to mask around the squares so I could stamp my Hooga Boogas in the squares. I coloured them, sponged the edges of the card and outlined the boxes with a W3 copic. I decided to take advantage of the paper's striped design and weave some ribbon. I made small slits in the border of the stripes and fed the ribbon through. I think the rest is fairly self-explanatory, but shoot me an email if you have any questions!

Sorry for the epic post, but I thought there might be people who didn't know that they could use Word with their digital paper packs.

So as always, voting opens tonight at 10pm and remains open until Wed. at 10pm EST. Would you consider voting for me? I'll come back tonight and edit with the link to the voting thread! Thanks for all your kind comments and support! It really means the world to me!

Rumor has it.....

Isn't this just the sweetest image? Jamie made me get it - after I saw this awesome card of hers. And what do you know - guess who is the featured stamper over on Splitcoast today? Jamie!! Yippee girl - so happy for you!

I actually made this card as a thank you for some blog candy I won to Stamping Bella from another amazing stamper - Joanne Basile (the inside reads "You're simply sweet. Thanks a million"). I used the layout from the Weekend Sketch Challenge 77 and made my card a tad bit bigger than normal - 4.5" x 6". I actually have a ton of envelopes in this size to use up so it all works! The paper is Bo Bunny and I just adore the colour combo in it. Well that's it for me! I'll be back Tuesday with my MFT Idol card! Have a great Sunday friends!

Still Alive!!

I am still alive, just recovering from traveling to Calgary (by myself with NO kids!!) over the Easter weekend and a stomach bug. I haven't stamped much lately since we were given a week off of MFT Idol and I took that to heart. I'm back at it now, our assignment for this week is to make a one layer card (OLC). Just to clarify - that's one layer of paper - one layer only!!! I've been playing with a couple of ideas - just need to see which one works best. I'll post my project on Tuesday in hopes of moving on to the next week!

In the meantime, I wanted to pass on a link that my son and I have been enjoying. This blog is not stamping related - it's a guy with a passion for photography and Lego, who takes a picture everyday of something Lego related. He's also got a great sense of humour, I enjoy the captions as much as his set up and photography. I have no affiliation, just stumbled upon his blog and we check it regularly.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a card! I've been inking up my new Bugs and ChiChis from Stamping Bella and I got an awesome new set in Calgary that I can't wait to use! Later taters!!

MFT Idol Week 4

This week's challenge for the MFT Idol contest was to use the set Build a Bouquet (that Kim so generously gifted us) and make only a card. In a way it was a relief not to have to come up with a whole project, but at the same time, hard to come up with an idea for an outstanding card.

I have been loving playing with fabric lately (I swear it was sitting next to Sherrie Siemens at copic certification!) so I decided to use the second smallest circle in the set to stamp on muslin. I used various shades of green for visual interest. I then used this tutorial to give the circles a finished edge, and stitched them together with yellow embroidery floss.

Each circle is stuffed with batting to make it puffy and 3-d. I used the smallest stem in the set to stamp some antennae and circle punches to make his eyes and antennae tips. I just free hand cut his legs. I made the grass by repeatedly stamping the grass from Hooga Booga in Kiwi Kiss ink on Kiwi Kiss cardstock and then cutting it out. I did that twice and layered the two pieces for depth (the caterpillar is in between the two layers). They're also sponged with Kiwi Kiss ink along the bottom. I used the largest circle in the set to stamp a sun in So Saffron and sponged around the edges with More Mustard.
I also used the various flowers from the set and stamped them in Pretty in Pink and So Saffron inks onto the designer series paper, also in Pretty and Pink and So Saffron. I cut them all out and layered them onto each other. I used buttons threaded with the same yellow embroidery floss for the flower centres. The stems and leaves were stamped onto Kiwi Kiss cardstock with Kiwi Kiss ink and cut out as well.
The background paper is Parisian Breeze and is sponged around the edges with Baja Breeze ink. It's layered onto a So Saffron panel and a Kiwi Kiss card base. The finished card measures 4" x 8".

So....what do you think? As always, I would love it if you would consider voting for me. There are seven of us left and the person with the least amount of votes will not continue on in the contest. Voting opens Tues. at 10pm EST and remains open until Wed. at 10pm EST. I will edit this post tonight with the link to the voting thread. Thanks so much for stopping by!!

Bad Blue Dog!!

Happy Sunday morning to you!! Just a quick post before I have to leave for Church. I've been feeling a little guilty about really only posting for MFT Idol, but truthfully I didn't expect how much time and effort this contest would take! I haven't done much stamping outside of it, but am going to make more of an effort as I miss stamping just for the fun of it!

I made this card a little while ago. I actually made it for a sketch challenge going on over at the Our Craft Lounge forum but never got it posted in time for the deadline. I picked my paper and colour scheme first and then was stuck on what colour to make the dog. I guess I must have been feeling a little goofy, because I remembered all the Blues Clues we watched when my son was younger. So I made Pat the Bad Dog into Blue the Bad Dog. The paper is Basic Grey Marrakech paired with Pacific Point and Tangerine Tango.

Well, I'm off to start my day. I need to work on this week's MFT Idol entry - we were assigned to use the set Build A Bouquet and make only a card. I'll be back Tuesday to show you what I came up with! Have a great week peeps!! I appreciate each and every one of you who come here to read and comment!!