Same Sketch Different Card

First of all, sorry that the photo is slightly blurry! Hope you had a great weekend! Mine was sticky and soggy, but I'm hopeful that this week will be better.
On Saturday, my friend Karen came over to stamp. She wanted me to show her how to make some of my projects using items that she has on hand. She really loved a card that we made during SAB, and she wanted to do that same card again. We grabbed the new In Colors and her Thoughts and Prayers stamp set. I showed her how to make her own patterned paper using one of the stamps. I think the card turned out great! The color combo (Crushed Curry, Bermuda Bay, Old Olive) is so pretty and works so well with the stamps we used.
Happy stamping!

Dawn Griffith's window card

Have you ever visited Dawn Griffith's blog? She is awesome! She is very creative and posts great videos of her projects. Last week, I saw this beautiful window card that she made for her convention swap, and I asked her if I could use it for this week's workshop wow. She was kind enough to say yes! It is so cool-looking and so easy to make! Let me know if you want me to do a photo tutorial; if a few people ask, I'll do one. I know some have trouble watching videos online.
Supplies (all SU): Stamps: Eastern Blooms, Heard from the Heart; Paper: Confetti White, Razzleberry Lemonade DSP; Ink: Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry; Accessories: window sheets, 2 way glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds, Crushed Curry dotted grosgrain ribbon
Happy stamping!

WICKED kite

This month's WICKED challenge for demonstrators on SCS has a summertheme. Sharonstamps gave us 3 great challenges, one of which was to create a kite card. Here are her directions for making the kite: To make a kite, cut a 3 1/2" square. Place one corner in the channel of your paper trimmer, and the adjacent corner at 1"... cut! Flip it over, repeat.. you have a great kite! I wanted a slightly smaller kite, so my Pumpkin Pie piece started as a 3" square. The whisper white piece was 2 3/4" square. I will also admit that the first piece I cut ended up a parallelogram; not sure how to work that into a card!
I kept the rest of the card simple. I used the big swirl from Priceless to imitate the wind blowing, and the tail of the kite is Crushed Curry ribbon with Pumpin Pie pieces tied on.
Happy stamping!

Stampin' Success sketch

One of the benefits of being a SU demonstrator is that we get a great magazine, Stampin' Success, every month. This was the sketch from the most recent magazine. I changed the size of the circles; they used 1/2" circles, but I wanted to use the heart from Love You Much which is 3/4". Since I have Bermuda Bay ink now (Hooray!), I wanted to use that color for sure. The color combo is Bermuda Bay, Old Olive, and Summer Sun. A little border or ribbon would be a great additional touch to step the card up.
Happy stamping!

Thursday's workshop

Thursday night, I had a workshop at Louise's house. I don't have a large client base, just one group I work with. We are all good friends, so the workshops are lots of fun! We made the paper bag purse and the 3-D card with the horse from Wanted. Both items were a big hit! Here are the purses we made. They all use the Razzleberry Lemonade DSP.

Every time I'm at Louise's house, her cat gets in my purse! (I believe this is Baxter.)

Sorry for the erratic posting this week. Sometimes life gets in the way of stamping and blogging (and reading blogs--I have over 200 posts to read in Google Reader!). I'm planning to get in some good stamping time today and get my blog posts done and scheduled so they will post on time.

Happy stamping!

Evolution of a card

Hi all! Sorry for the late post. It's been a heck of a week, and I'm still recovering from my computer problems last week. (I had to get a new hard drive and motherboard, so I lost all of the stuff on my old one. I still have recovery hopes though.)
I just did a swap for non-convention goers. SU has their convention now, and some of us who can't go (sniff, sniff!) participated in a swap.
The photo above is my final product, but it didn't start out that way! Here's what happened:
Here was my first one. I started out with a sketch. I think it was a weekend sketch challenge by Lori Craig. It had 3 circles down the side, but I could only fit 2. I knew I wanted to use Rich Razzleberry and Melon Mambo and then added Old Olive. I thought this was OK, but the Old Olive crimped strip seemed to be too much. I decided to change it to Chocolate Chip instead.

This was my second version. I liked the chocolate chip textured strip much better, but the card still needed a few more touches.
In my final card, I colored the flower centers chocolate chip and embossed them with Irridescent Ice embossing powder. The sentiment was stamped in 2 different colors to add more visual interest.
Special touches I used: The Old Olive layer in the flower was punched with the scallop circle punch, adhered to a strip of paper and punched again with the same punch to create the pointy edges. The flower was inked in Melon Mambo, and the Rich Razzleberry was added around the edges with sponge dauber. The Old Olive layer behind the sentiment was made with the modern label punch; I cut it in half and adhered it behind the sentiment (punched out with the same punch).
Happy stamping!

Beate's weekend sketch and some more DSP

Beate had a sketch posted that I thought would be perfect for using more of my new Razzleberry Lemonade DSP. What is it about using new stuff that is so appealing?
I think I ended up using a 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 piece of DSP. I adhered it to a piece of Rich Razzleberry textured cardstock and added a scallop border to mimic the Razzleberry scallop in the DSP. I used Pumpkin Pie for the card base and stamped a circle from Circle Circus so that there would be some stamping somewhere on the card!
I colored the flower using ink and an aquapainter. I was not very happy with it because the Melon Mambo ink spread much further down on the petals than I wanted. Next time, I'll put the lightest color on the outside edge and work my way in. For the center of the flower, I used a brad from the Hodgepodge Hardware inside a jumbo grommet. I put the brad inside the grommet then pressed the grommet prongs in around the back of the brad to keep the grommet in place.
For the 2 strips in the sketch, I used Crushed Curry grosgrain ribbon and a strip of Melon Mambo textured cardstock. The ribbon is 1/2" so I cut the strip 3/8".
Supplies (all SU): Stamps: Circle Circus; Paper: Pumpkin Pie, Rich Razzleberry textured, Melon Mambo textured, Razzleberry Lemonade DSP; Ink: Crushed Curry, Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie; Accessories: scallop border punch, Chit Chat rubons, Pretties kit, aquapainter, Styled Silver HPH, jumbo grommets, Crushed Curry grosgrain ribbon
Happy stamping!