A set of Christmas tags

I've never done a set of cards and that's the challenge this week for JUGS. So I started small and made a set of 4 3x3 cards to use as gift tags. My mother-in-law (who died a year ago this summer at the age of 95) always used this type of tag on her Christmas packages because she liked to write on the inside and I think she would have liked these. Three of the sentiments come in the Seasons Greeting Sentiment set from Paper Makeup Stamps. The other (Embrace the magic...) is a single stamp also from PMS.
My dd who is the owner of PMS has made the difficult decision to discontinue the rubber stamps at PMS although she will continue to have everything still available as a digi. For those who want some GREAT deals on red rubber stamps. Check it out here. All stamps and card making products are currently 45% off!!

All the papers on my tags are from the same Christmas Combo matstack. I used a variety of nestie shapes, ink colors, and a little bling. Packaging is NOT my strength so I made a very simple little envelope out of one of the dp used on my tags and decorated it with a little poinsettia and slid the tags down inside. Happy December everyone!! Thanks so much for stopping by!

It's a Baby day....

I'm going to a baby shower today for a good friend who will have a little boy in January and made a card to go with my gift. I used PMS's Baby Jamie Silhouette with Memento London Fog ink.

I was hoping for a "shadow" look but I thought it needed a little boost so I covered the rattle with Star Dust stickles for some sparkle. The inside of the card has this sweet sentiment.I'll also be delivering a gift to another friend who had a little girl about a month ago and I just hadn't gotten the gift to her yet (bad me) so I made a little 3x3 card to go with her gift. It's very simple with background paper, a flower, some twine, and the darling little poem that you can find here. I realized when I took the photo that the bottom of the sentiment isn't cut straight and that drives me crazy....but no time to redo. :(

Have a wonderful day and thanks so much for stopping by!

The Falling Leaves

The leaves are really falling here. Our lawn service came on Monday to pick up leaves and today it doesn't even look like they were ever here! My card today is one of my first attempts to use a digi! It's one of the Friday Freebies at Paper Makeup Stamps from a couple weeks ago.
I colored the leaf in the sentiment with a copic marker. The other leaves were stamped (with a rubber stamp) on papers that have a little color variation (although it's really hard to see in the photo) and then I cut them out and attached them to my card. The leaf stamp is from the PMS Color It Autumn set that you can find here. The set is also available in digi. I "unburied" my Grand Caliber to cut the shape for my card. It's the largest scalloped square which I then folded to form a triangle. I added some baker's twine and just a little bling to finish it off.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Challenges: Paper Makeup Stamps Digi Makeover #10 - Don't Be a Square
Just Us Girls #109 Sketch Challenge

It's Time for Monsters

It's a Monster Hop with Paper Makeup Stamps!! And I'm very happy to be playing along today! You should have arrived here from Juelmarie's blog. If you didn't, hop on over to the Paper Makeup Stamps blog for all the details. In honor of this hop, all monsters at Paper Makeup Stamps will be on sale for 1 week at 15% off using the voucher code MONSTERHOP! Go shopping here, but be sure to come back and finish the hop to see all the fun, fabulous ideas these lovely ladies have created. I chose to use Flubu for my card.

He just looks so, so sad. I sure hope no one is feeling like Flubu today. I do love to paper piece (I think it's because I'm not confident in my coloring) and I've paper pieced Flubu with papers from the Stella and Rose "Mabel" paper pad. I used the same papers on the card along with a Petaloo flower, some sparkly brads, and some grosgrain ribbon. Now hop on over to the lovely Lisa Kind and have a MONSTEROUSLY wonderful day!

Back to School

It was a great summer but I sure did neglect my crafting and did no blogging (obviously!). Today I was back in my craft room (and it needs attention!!) but first I wanted to make a card for the Paper Makeup Back to School Challenge. I used images and a sentiment from the Apples to Apples set that you can find here.


I paper pieced my apples and the paper airplane on the sentiment. I stamped and cut out some extra airplanes to use as embellishments. My papers are from the Basic Grey "Life of the Party" paper pad. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Weeds and Wildflowers

I love to work with sketches but I do tend to take them very literally. :) This is the My Time Made Easy Pretty Pattern #15 sketch. I told myself I would clean up my craft room tonight......but I made a card instead. We're headed to SC this week-end and will be bringing our grandsons home with us for a week. I really do have to get things cleaned up a bit before we leave, but maybe tomorrow night after I get home from my church meeting.

In real life, I like my card much better than what you see here. My photo skills just aren't very good unless I can go outside for natural light. I used kraft cardstock and papers from Basic Grey's Sweet Threads (which seem to be my go-to papers recently). Ribbons, buttons, and baker's twine was from my stash. The sentiment is from the MTME Keep Strong set. I think it's my favorite from that set (although I love the "tea bag" sentiment too).

You may not hear from me again until the boys go home so have a great couple of weeks and thanks so much for stopping by!

For the Birthday Girl!

So today is Katie's 30th birthday!!! Oh my, where did the time go?? (This means that this is the year I will be twice as old as Katie!) Oh yes, I remember when she was racing around with her blond pigtails flying like it was yesterday.

You should have arrived here right from the Paper Makeup Stamps blog and if you didn't, be sure to check it out and get the "scoop" on Katie and the list of everyone in the hop.

I am so happy that Tangii asked me to join the birthday blog hop today to celebrate Katie's birthday. I haven't sent Katie her card yet so she'll at least see it on her birthday! Katie truly loves doing what she does....being a wife, a momma, a make-up artist, a paper crafter, and more. I think the sentiment on my card is a really fitting one for her. She actually made me a vinyl cutout of this for my office wall.
It's been a fun journey to watch Katie's goals change as she's moved through life. Her mind and heart were open and she's found and followed her passion as life has unfolded for her. We are so very, very proud of her. Happy Birthday Katie!! Now hop on to Lisa Kind's blog for more birthday fun.

Card details:
Bazzill cardstock - Color: Piglet (Katie will appreciate that!)
DP - Basic Grey's Sweet Threads paper pad
Stamps - A PMS sentiment and "happy birthday" from the Birthday Cheer set
Inks - Versafine black and Versa Color in Green Tea to smudge the edges of the sentiment
Nestie - Labels 15
Flower - Petaloo
Buttons - from my button collection

MTME Pretty Palette and Pattern #14!

Oh my, what a busy summer so far and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down much! I had a little time today to play with this week's Pretty Palette and Pretty Pattern for My Time Made Easy.

I love pink and browns together and still have some paper from Echo Park's Life is Good collection that work so well for the color choices this week for the challenge at MTME that you can see here. The layout is the MTME Pretty Pattern this week too The sentiment is from Paper Makeup Stamps Grateful Thanks set. 1/8" brown satin ribbon was from my stash and I picked up the organdy ribbon with the flowers attached to it a while back at Hobby Lobby and had never used it!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

More Travel Time

It was traveling time again last weekend. This time dh and I went to NJ to visit his sister for a long weekend. She lives about 45 minutes from NYC and we went in to the city to see a Yankee game on Saturday (first visit to the new Yankee Stadium!) and again on Sunday for a matinee performance of War Horse at Lincoln Center. War Horse was MAGNIFICENT! Hubby and I had read lots about this production and were super excited to be seeing it (and on the day of the Tony Awards too). It won for best play. What a wonderful day!!

I made this card to send to my SIL. She loves dragonflies and has a chair with dragonflies in the upholstery pattern, prints with dragonflies, a wall hanging, etc. I think she'll like Danny, a Paper Makeup Stamp image you can find here. I colored him with copics and used a Labels Four nestie. The sentiment came from the PMS Grateful Thanks set. My dp is one of the Basic Grey Sweet Threads paper. Flower from my stash.

Hope you have a good day and thanks for stopping by!

JUGS #87

The daughter of good friends graduates from high school this weekend! She was one of the flowergirls in our oldest daughter's wedding 12 years ago. Time goes so fast! The JUGS sketch today seemed to be perfect for the her card. The school colors are....you guessed it....blue and gold. :) The sentiment is a Paper Makeup sentiment that comes in two sizes and can be found here. The daisy dp is left from The Will to Daydream PMS kit. I used a lacey circle and an inverted scallop circle nestie and the mortarboard and diploma stamps came from the dollar bin at Michael's. Our graduate will be on the volleyball team at Grace College in northern Indiana this fall and her team is going on a trip this summer to Africa. What an adventure!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Making Wishes

Best Wishes to all of you! I've been looking at wonderful creations on many different blogs in the last few weeks but no time to craft myself. I flew to Nebraska to get my mom and then I drove her to North Dakota for a high school graduation and then 3 days after getting home from that I had a week-end at oldest daughter's new lake cottage (soooo relaxing). This week we're finally seeing some sun and warm weather. Hooray!

Today my card uses the Color Throwdown colors of melon, pumpkin, and celery and the Mojo Monday 193 sketch.

Papers are from Basic Grey's Sweet Threads paper pad on a celery green base. My image is Kirsten Silhouette, one of the new silhouette stamps at Paper Makeup that you can find here, and she's available as a digi too. I'm absolutely no good with digis, but for those of you that are, PMS has a bunch of them! I stamped Kirsten on textured melon paper so it's not as "solid" as most silhouette images but I liked the "faded" look (if a silhouette can be "faded"....). The sentiment is from the PMS set, Dandy Wishes. My ribbon has a little silver sparkle in it. Hope your day is a sparkle kind of day! Thanks for stopping by.

We had a few nice days last week....but more rain all day today. :( I'm soggy!! Hopefully all this rain won't drown all the spring time flowers. I made some flowers of my own today.

I used a technique that was new to me, "kissing with a twist" that I learned about on the JUGS Challenge. I used flowers from Paper Makeup Stamps, Springtime Solids set and inked one of the large flowers up with Angel Pink Memento Ink. Then I used one of the smaller daisy type flowers and inked that up with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink and "kissed" the darker stamp onto the lighter one. It was so much fun, I made 3 of them!

The leaves are from the same PMS set and I used Bamboo Leaves Memento Ink (no kissing :). I drew the stem in with a YG63 Copic that happens to match really well. I used the Pretty Patterns Sketch #9 from the My Time Made Easy Challenge and flipped it on it's side. The dp is from Basic Grey's Sweet Threads paper pad. The sentiment is from another PMS set called Friendly Flowers.

Don't forget to take time to smell the flowers! Thanks so much for stopping by.

Yummy New Paper!

Goodness! My last post was almost a month ago but it's been a while since I've had time to craft. I spent a happy, happy Easter weekend with our grandsons while momma and daddy were away at a friend's wedding. My hubby was in Washington D.C. with his students at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival so he couldn't come with me. It was just me and the boys for 3 1/2 days. I got a little tired :), but it was SOOOO much fun. It was sad to have to come home. The end of the school year is quite busy for me though so it's been crazy since I got home.

I have a card today for the Pretty Patterns #8 at My Time Made Easy. I got some yummy new paper this weekend and I am just drooling over the colors/patterns in the Basic Grey Sweet Threads paper pad. My sentiment is from the Keep Strong sentiment set from MTME.


I stamped it with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink
and added 3 little dew drops.

The flower is Mulberry Street.



I hope spring has come wherever you are. Thanks so much for stopping by!

In the doghouse

Now why am I in the doghouse? You'll see....

I especially wanted to play along with the Sketch Saturday this week since Paper Makeup Stamps is this week's sponsor. I went through my PMS stamps (and there are a LOT of them) to find one that had never seen ink.....there's a few of those too. :) I always smiled at the "I'm in the doghouse" sentiment but had never used it. So here it is.The sentiment and the doghouse image are from the Home Matters set found here. And this is my take on the layout for Sketch Saturday. The colors are this weeks colors at JUGS.

I'm hoping that "jughead" Lisa Kind had a fabulous birthday this week and this is supposed to be a birthday card, right? Well, it is, because the inside will say "I'm so sorry that I'm late for your birthday." :)

The papers are My Minds Eye Stella Rose from the Hazel collection, the punch is Martha Stewart, and the rickrack and buttons are from my stash. This will probably be my only post this week because I'm heading to SC to stay with our grandsons for the weekend while mama and daddy are off at a friend's wedding. We're going to play, dye Easter eggs, play, eat "kid food", play, play and play! Have a blessed Easter!!

Pretty in Pink

I love pink and black together (and so does my dd) so I wanted to play in the CR84FN Color Challenge this week. Aren't these yummy colors? And this is just the 4th sketch in the new Pretty Patterns Challenge from My Time Made Easy.

I don't have any MTME (yet :) so I used a quote/wordart stamp from Paper Makeup Stamps that I love. There's a Inventory Reduction sale going on over at PMS so you should check it out!
As usual, my photo skill is not great. :( I thought this quote went well with the music dp (which I think is Echo Park, but I'm not sure). The pink paper is Bazzill "Pinkini" and there is a little texture so I knew the sentiment wouldn't be as clear as it would be on plain paper but I think it's okay. The sweet little roses are Recollections that I picked up at Michaels and the black grosgrain ribbon is from my ribbon box.

Hope you are having a great week and thanks so much for stopping by.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry.....

I've been involved with theatre all of my teenage and adult life and know the lyrics to LOTS of Broadway shows. I'll bet lots of you know what this blog title is from. :) When I read "chicks or ducks" as this week's challenge at Raise the Bar that song immediately started going through my head. And I had a stamp with little chicks on it! This stamp is very special to me because it's called Carma. Yep, it's named after me and it can be found at Paper Makeup Stamps. It's one of the Beautiful Day Fairies. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska and we'd get baby chicks in the spring. They were so cute but they grew up to be just plain white hens. And then my chore was to gather up the eggs every day. It wasn't my favorite job but I loved the baby chicks.

This image is colored with copics. I used a kraft base and dp from DCWV's The Green Stack. The layout is last week's sketch from The Sweet Stop. The button flowers are Sassafras.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Color Throwdown #136

I just got My Minds Eye Stella and Rose "Mabel" paper pad last weekend so I couldn't resist using them for the Color Throwdown. :) There are four from this collection on this card. It turned out bright and cheery and just makes me smile. I found this layout in a stack of sample sketches I've collected so I have no idea where it came from originally. I apologize that I can't provide credit except to say that it isn't me! This adorable image is one of the March releases at Paper Makeup Stamps and his name is Danny. It seems like I've been using a lot of just sentiments recently or paper piecing images (I do love to paper piece!) so I thought it was time to get back to my copics. I think there's space on here for a simple sentiment and I may add something before it gets sent......when I decide where it's going :)

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

JUGS #78

I'm having fun with my new "stuff" I got last weekend. This card is for the JUGS #78 challenge. It's a sketch challenge this week. I really need to work on my photo skills as they are sadly lacking. My dh and dd are both excellent photographers but it sure hasn't rubbed off on me!

The papers are from My Minds Eye Stella and Rose "Hattie" paper pad. The sentiment is a Paper Makeup Stamp. I chose this one because the spiral pattern on the paper reminded me of the painting, Starry Starry Night. I colored in the stars on the sentiment and highlighted 'all' with a copic (Y 17) and added some stickles to the stars. I used a lacey circle for the backing of the sentiment and added some Studio 18 rhinestones to the corner.

Happy Wednesday!! Thanks for stopping by!

A Quilt for my sister

My sister is a fabulous quilter. I don't know how many she has made....over 30 I think and they are all really, really, really gorgeous. I do lots of needlecrafts, but quilting is not one of them, and I am always amazed at her skill in finding just the right colors and patterns to go together. Last week I saw a quilt block card on Ginger's blog (Scrappin' Story) and just had to try one of my own. My sister's birthday is this week (oops, the card will be late.....as usual). The quilt block pattern I used is one of the many, many variations of a star block.

I think this one is most often called a starflower. The squares are 3/4" for a 3 square inch block. My papers are My Mind's Eye Hazel papers backed with Passionate Bazzill cardstock. It's more "coral" in real life that it appears in the photo. I was going for more coral/orange to play in the My Time Made Easy Pretty Palette Color Challenge. but it's not as "orangey" as it should be. I guess I'll post it to that challenge anyway and hope they'll forgive me. My image is Leigh from Paper Makeup Stamps. I always think of April showers with Leigh so she seemed appropriate for an April birthday. I'm also connecting to the challenge over at Raise the Bar for April Showers this week. I paper pieced her dress with the same paper as the outer border on the quilt block and colored the rest of her with copics. I added some stickles to her wings and to the "splash".

Hope spring has come to wherever you are! As always, thanks for stopping by.

New "Stuff"

This weekend I discovered a place about an hour away from me that has all the papers that I could only order before! Sadly, this is a busy week and I don't know how much time I'm going to be able to find to craft but here is some of my new "stuff".
These patterned papers are Basic Grey's Life of the Party. The sentiment is one of my favorite Paper Makeup Stamps and can be found here. Each half of a 7" zipper is centered with a little star brad.

Challenges: Color Throwdown
Sketch Saturday

Thanks so much for stopping by!