The simple things

Here is a quick card thank you card. I find that you can just never have to many of these. I try to have them on hand along with birthday cards.

This year one of my goals was to send out more cards and I did. I wish I would have sent more but I am a work in progress right?

Sometimes when I make cards I like to do lots of layers, lots of fancy cuts and lots of embellishments and sometimes I do simple.

Simple works -

Simple can be good

To quote on of my favorite songs by Jim Brickman with a great message:

The sun, the moon, the stars, the beating of two hearts
How I love the simple things, the simple things just are

I hope you enjoy the simple things in life and have a very Happy Week with your friends and family!

Supplies*:

Cardstock - Autumn Terracotta (1270), Chocolate (X5643), Colonial White (1388)
Ink - Olive (Z2137), Chocolate (Z2111)Stamp Sets - Thanksgiving Wreath (B1454)
Pattern Paper - Pathfinding (X7186B)
Embellishments - Sparkles Brown & Tan Assortment (Z1753)
*All supplies are from Close to my Heart unless otherwise noted.

You can find these Close to my Heart products at Jessica's CTMH store. Don't forget to check out the rest of the design teams blogs throughout the week. You can find a link in the sidebar.

A Fish Tale

A while back my mom came over to tell me a whopper fish tale only it was actually true she went fishing and caught a giant fish! The funniest part of the story was her boyfriend only caught a fish about the size of a minnow. Hahaha

Anyway she wanted me to make a scrapbook for her. I was going to use the Timberline Kit because I thought it was perfect for fishing. Well when I saw all of the photos it just wasn't a fit. So I set them aside, and they sat and sat and sat. As you may know I am trying to use up my papers and I came across the WOTG Kit Tommy. WOW can you say perfect fit? Wait until you see this...

Here is the cover it is just a  Koozie that I cut down

I found this album on a garage sale table for $1 and it was full of page protectors. So I scrapbooked the best photos of the 50 my mom gave me and put rest throughout the pages and it just turned out perfect.

I made this mat with the Artbooking cartridge

 

 

 

Apparently they had to get a fishing licence for a  day so here is my mom overlooking the water and that little tab above her head pulls out

 

See - pretty nifty that opens up

 

Here is one of my favorite pages love how the embellishments came together

 

 

 

Here is a photo of that giant fish I was talking about hahahah note the arrow pointing it out

 

 

 

 

 

 

The captain even cut and cleaned the fish for them.

 

The whole gang...it sure looks like a fun day.

 

The best part of using WOTG's is how much you have leftover...

Wait until you see all the cards I  made, I will share them in the next week or so.

Do you like to make mini albums?
 
Supplies used - Tommy WOTG & Artbooking

Who's the boss?

Not me...that is why I made a card for my for my super awesome boss. I definitely hit the jackpot there. I have had a few not so great ones but most of the time I have been lucky and have had good ones. I am going to go out on a limb and say it is because I am a super duper employee.

Anyway I am the boss of my craft which means I do what I want when I am paper crafting. I can color outside the line and break the "rules" if I want to.

Can you spot what I did on this card?

If you noticed that my boarder stamp is the same wreath I have been using then yes you guess it! I cut my stamp up. Say what?

I was very careful and trimmed between the image and then I made it a boarder.

I will admit I was a little nervous in all my many stamping years I have never cut a stamp before but I really wanted to use this as a boarder so I just did it.

Love it.

I also did something else a little different on this card. I had an emergency with my olive cardstock as in I ran out! Wha wha what? How could this be it is one of my favorite colors anyway and what with it being fall and all...what is a girl to do?

Make my own

 

 

I think it turned out pretty good. I also like to do this if I just need a little big of color or a brushed look.

Supplies*:

Cardstock - Champaign (x5931), Barn Red (X56372), Colonial White (1388)
Ink - Black (Z2105) Olive (Z2137)Stamp Sets - Thanksgiving Wreath (B1454), Pennant Alphabet (E1018) retired
Pattern Paper - Pathfinding (X7186B)
Embellishments - Opaques Mocha (Z1333) *All supplies are from Close to my Heart unless otherwise noted.

You can find these Close to my Heart products at Jessica's CTMH store. Don't forget to check out the rest of the design teams blogs throughout the week. You can find a link in the sidebar.

 

Back to my roots

So earlier this month it was World Cardmaking Day. Did you make any cards? I did! I made a few cards and a Christmas present. I am not quite ready to share that yet but I will share the cards. Once I was done I realized I did not use any pattern paper...what? I guess I just went back to my roots for the day. Once upon a time I was a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, that seems like a million years ago. Anyway when I was with them I never ever used pattern paper it almost seemed like I was cheating on the rubber. Haha, now these days you see Stampin' Up! Demos using pattern paper in their designs but that just shows you how the crafting world has changed.

Anyway the cards...

As I was playing with the marvelous hostess only stamp set Thanksgiving Wreath I was just itching to do some random stamping and create my own back ground...so I did.

Oooooohhhhh....ahhhhh random stamping super fun!

The secret to random stamping - stamp in triangles and turn the image a 1/4" every time. I learned that from my friend Patti (Stamping Yoda) who used to be my SU Demo. We are still great friends 10 years later...just another reason I LOVE papercrafting.

 

What do you think? I also did a nifty little paper sanding trick since our paper is white core. I scored those lines at a 1/2" and then sanded over them. Perdy!

Ok now onto card #2 I just really love this tree in Artbooking and so I made several and then I had a lot of tree's and a lot of leaves. (gift hint: I used a bunch there too) Anyway I wanted to try the tree without the outline and here is what I came up with.

I actually glued those into each spot using the outline of the tree and then I just removed it. I pieced the background together first, the grass, sky, and clouds.

Finally I added this little thanks I think it looks a little like it is hanging on the tree, if it were a little bigger it might look like it was carved on there.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane and if you stamped on World Cardmaking Day I would love to see what you came up with.

Supplies*:

Cardstock - Campaign (X5931), Cocoa (X5642), White Daisy (1385), Olive (1245), Autumn Terracotta (1270) Barn Red (X5637), Lagoon (X5762), Goldrush (1243)
Ink - Olive (Z2137), Barn Red (Z2104), Autumn Terracotta (Z2101), Goldrush (Z2123)Stamp Sets - Thanksgiving Wreath (B1454)Embellishments - Sparkles Brown & Tan Assortment (Z1753), Olive BradOther - Artiste (Z1790), Artbooking (Z1906)
*All supplies are from Close to my Heart unless otherwise noted.

You can find these Close to my Heart products at Jessica's CTMH store. Don't forget to check out the rest of the design teams blogs throughout the week. You can find a link in the sidebar.

Thanks

You can never have to many thank you cards can you? Life has been throwing me a ton of curve balls lately and so I have had to rely on others and will have continue to do so for the near future so I will be sending out some of these babies.

Anyway let's find our way back to the right path...haha did you see what I did there? Find our path...pathfinding lol. 

I got this gorgeous Pathfinding paper a few days ago and have been trying to decide what to do with it. I just love the colors: Champagne, Chocolate, Autumn Terracotta, Olive, Goldrush, Lagoon...and the beautiful new Glacier!

Last night I came u with this card. What do you think?

Isn't is adorbs? I had a ton of fun coloring the leaves. I used a little barn red and then the autumn terracotta and then olive to topped them off with some liquid glass. I decided to mount the wreath onto a rosette. I have always loved these but hated how they always popped up after a while but then I saw this tip somewhere: put a dab of hot glue on a circle and stick the rosette down into that. You do need to cover up the middle so you can't see the glue and I usually do that with a button or something. In fact I did try to add a button here but I just couldn't get it to look right so I did the little banner instead.

Isn't this stamp set so pretty? It is called Thanksgiving Wreath it is a special hostess set. The only way to get one is to host a party and be a hostess with the mostess. Did you know you can even host a long distance party if you are not close to Jessica? You can!!! Reach out to Jessica here to set up your own online gathering.

Supplies*:

Cardstock - Campaign (x5931), Cocoa (X5642), Colonial White (1388)
Ink - Cocoa (Z2144), Olive (Z2137), Barn Red (Z2104), Autumn Terracotta  (Z2101)
Stamp Sets - Thanksgiving Wreath (B1454)
Pattern Paper - Pathfinding (X7186B)
Embellishments - Sparkles Brown & Tan Assortment (Z1753)
Other - Liquid Glass (Z679), Artiste (z1790)
*All supplies are from Close to my Heart unless otherwise noted.

You can find these Close to my Heart products at Jessica's CTMH store. Don't forget to check out the rest of the design teams blogs throughout the week. You can find a link in the sidebar.

Fall is here fall is here fall is here

Here in Illinois we really barely even had a summer so I am not sure why I am so excited that fall is finally here. Perhaps it is because it involves warm sweaters, boots, hot apple cider (spiked cough cough), football, bonfires, scarves, snuggling under warm blankets...the colors of the leaves...pumpkin patches. The list can really just go on for days.

I did mention the colors too I really enjoy the fall colors. I have had this pretty paper for a while now and I am trying to use up my paper. Mostly because if I use it up I can buy more! Yay more pretty paper. Also if I don't use it and it retires sometimes I can't get more or get the proper embellishments to go with it and while some people are really great at just winging it and making things match close enough I am all about matching so I like to use it up.

I am trying to stock up on my stash so I made some birthday cards I made three of the same ones with a different saying in the middle. I did one of my favorite stamping techniques rock and roll. First you ink up your stamp in a light color and then roll the outside in a darker color. It looks pretty neat if you do more than two colors as well.

 

I also like to decorate the insides of my cards...just a little peek.

 

Here it is, sorry it is a little blurry but you get the idea.

This one also has a lot of layers but I love to layer my cards too.

 

Well this card is just full of love isn't it?