PaperFections

Easter Birds

When I saw Michelle Wooderson use this cute layout, I knew I wanted to try it right away! It's a 4.25" square card with the focal image attached at the top and extending to make the overall height 5.50". I also adored these little birds by Crafty Secrets when I saw them in Anna's store -- they are great fun to watercolor! I stamped the birds with Timber Brown StazOn on watercolor paper and used dye reinkers to watercolor them. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up's Faith & Hope stamp set I used below. The birds are matted with bliss blue cardstock, edges clipped with SU's Ticket Corner punch, gold brads attached, and mounted with dimensionals on the bliss blue card base. Designer paper is BasicGrey Lily Kate 6x6 pad I got from Eclectic Paperie. A yellow piece of paper from the same pad is faux stitched and attached on the lower portion of the card. Happy Easter to everyone! Read more →

Easter Blessings

I love this little stamp set (Faith & Hope) from last year's SU Spring mini catalog and hope it makes it to the big catalog this summer -- it's just the sweetest! Since we had to send Easter baskets to school for egg hunts this week, I thought it might be nice for my girls to be able to tell their baskets apart from all the rest. Plus, then the Easter Bunny will be able to remember which basket goes to each girl when he gets ready to fill them! ;) These are the "luggage tags" that I first saw either Emily or Jen create. They are really badge holders found in the office supply section at Wal-Mart . . . 12 for about $1.79 (not sure of that price but I remember them being very reasonable). They are clear plastic with a sleeve, into which you can slip anything. They are available in either horizontal or vertical format and have about 3-5/8" x 2-1/2" space to work with. I stamped the image with StazOn Timber Brown on shimmer white cardstock and colored it with dye based markers. A little clear Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust pen gives the image some... Read more →

New Banner!

Look at the pretty new blog banner my friend, Beth over at Freckled Fun Designs, made for me! She was a breeze to work with (and speedy!) and also made me some beautiful new watermarks to use, too! You'll see those in some upcoming posts but in the meantime, you can check out her blog post here to see some examples of her work and also an explanation about copyright compliance issues with Stampin' Up! Learn if yours is compliant and if not, she can fix it! On a sad note -- you know that brand new SUV I just got 5 days ago? We had some bad thunderstorms come thru here tonight, along with -- you guessed it -- HAIL, ugh! And since we're in temporary housing using the small garage as storage, I got a few dings before hubby could get it under cover. :-( I'm just thankful that's all that happened becaue a small tornado was also sighted a short distance from us. It was not a fun evening huddling in a tiny downstairs bathroom with two terrified little girls, listening to the storm sirens wailing around us! These are the signs of Spring that I'm NOT... Read more →

Bloomin' Friend

Do you see a pattern here on the blog this month so far? Yep, I love flowers and Spring is a good excuse to bring them all out! I love this new set by Stampin' Up -- Big Blooms (available in the Spring mini catalog until June 30). I inked the large flower with rose red classic ink, then outlined it directly on the rubber with chocolate chip marker and stamped onto vanilla cardstock. Cut out the flower and punched a center for it out of SU's Au Chocolat double-sided designer paper. The flower is mounted with dimensionals to a chocolate card base and saffron background that was stamped in Versamark with a smaller flower from this set. A strip of another design in the Au Chocolat series paper helps anchor the flower. "Friend" from the That's Nice set (SU Spring mini catalog) is inked with chocolate marker, omitting the rest of the sentiment. Rose red brads secure the corners of the background and a double row of faux stitching finishes the card on the left. These cards are headed out in the mail to some sweet gals I was supposed to get together with and swap but had to... Read more →

Texas Bluebonnets!

Ahhh, the Texas bluebonnets (our state flower) are in full bloom right now and we got some good photos this weekend. We happened to find a nice field here in town with no cluttering buildings, cars or freeways in the background, believe it or not! It's just not spring until we get our annual bluebonnet pictures and last year it wasn't wet enough for them to grow, so I've missed them! Above is our oldest daughter, Alix (7). But along with the beautiful flowers, of course, come bees and ants. Sooooo, after my youngest (Alyssa, 4-1/2) saw the first bee, it was very difficult to get her to look at the camera! Then there was the ant crawling up her leg . . . needless to say, I barely got the photo below of both of them, let alone one of her by herself! I snapped that one and they declared the photo session was OVER . . . so this was the best I got! Please share below what your favorite ritual of Spring is. I'm off to do some more fun (as opposed to deadline) stamping, so check back tomorrow to see what it is! Read more →