Casing My Favorites

Last night I decided to do some sorting and organizing. Not of my stamp room, but of my Favorites folder over on Splitcoast Stampers. I had 8 pages of favorites and at 48 cards a page, well, you do the math. I put card in my favorites for one of three reasons.

1. I own the featured stamp set and love the way the original artist used it.
2. I love the colors that have been used together.
3. I love the layout.

So I went through all my favorites and got rid of everything that featured a set that I no longer owned, unless of course numbers 2 & 3 applied. I also got rid of a lot of stuff that was just plain outdated. Then I kicked out the stuff that I still loved but knew I would never recreate. For example, there were several cards in there that had a lot of the images cut out. Too much time for me. I like instant gratification. So now, I have only 5 pages of favorites. Problem is that in a few months I will have at least 8 pages again. So I decided I better start casing what I already have (once I case a card I remove it from my favorites) so that I don't get overrun by them all again.

So I created this card. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 apply to this card. My nephew has a birthday next week and I thought this card would be perfect. You can see Rohla's original version here. I changed the colors just a little to fit this weeks color challenge. I also left off the brads and tag. I changed the background and added beady little eyes. He's going to be four and I figured that the beady eyes would get much more appreciation than brads and a tag.

Stamps: Wild About You, Polka Dot and It's Your Birthday

Inks: Taken with Teal, Real Red and Certainly Celery

Paper: Taken with Teal, Real Red, Certainly Celery and Whisper White

Accessories: Mat Pack, Real Red and Certainly Celery Grosgrain Ribbon and beady eyes

2008 Chipboard Calendars

I just had to try the little chipboard calendars Beate made for this tutorial on SCS. I printed my calendars using an altered version of Cat's template. There is absolutely NO stamping on this calendar. I did not intend for that to happen but once I put the calendar portion in place I thought it would look overdone if I added anything else. This will have a magnet on back so it can be put on the fridge as soon as I can find my roll of magnet strip.

I also wanted to say how amazing all of you are. I received several messages about my Heartfelt Trio cards from yesterday. I often get comments here and over at my gallery on SCS but no one ever messages me to let me know how much they like my creations. I am so glad that so many of you enjoyed them, you made my day and made me glad I share my creations. Thank you all so much.

Also a few of you had questions about my storage unit behind my trio of cards. The unit is one of those workshop storage things that usually holds nuts, bolts and nails in a garage. Mine holds all of my craft spots, reinkers and a sponge and dauber for each color. I printed out all of the SU! colors and then punched them out with my word window punch. Then I just stuck them on. I got the idea from StampinMelis. I absolutely love it. I used to hate when I would use a sponge that already had another color on it. This keeps all my sponging from looking muddy.

Maybe I will get a few more pictures of my storage solutions and post them soon. In the mean time, what storage/organization solution have you found that really works for you in your craft area.

Paper: Brocade Background DSP, River Rock and Always Artichoke Card Stock

Accessories: Vintage Brads

Heartfelt Trio

I never use this set. I bought it because 11Valerie11 over at SCS made me fall in love with it, but for some reason I never grab it. I wanted to do some cards with flowers for the Demonstratable Cards Challenge and my new secret sister mentioned that this is her favorite set so it seemed like a perfect time to pull it out.





For each card I stamped the same focal image of the trio of flowers in Groovy Guava and used a Mellow Moss marker for the stem. Then I did the the detail lines in Ruby Red. I did not want the stem detail line, so I used a Ruby Red marker to ink up only the blossom. I distressed all the edges in all of the cards as well.





On this first card I used a mat pack to pierce some holes in the top corners of the Guava card stock and then sponged the edges with Guava ink. I also sponged the edges of the focal image with Moss ink. The using my Stamp-a-ma-jig I stamped the word Happiness from the Warm Words set in Ruby Red ink. I was thinking later that it would be cool to emboss all the Ruby Red accents, but wanted to keep this one simple for an upcoming workshop.






For the second card I added a little Dazzling Diamonds Glitter to the blossoms using my two way glue. I also added some Mellow Moss grosgrain ribbon. I used my word window punch to make the "special friend" tag. I attached it to the ribbon using some gold wire.







For the final card I put glitter on the blossoms as well. I used the mat pack again to pierce the corners. It is hard to see in the photo but I used Versamark ink and stamped the detail lines for this flower on the bottom half of the Guava card stock.I also used some Moss grosgrain. I had planned on just one strip but it looked unbalanced so I added another one. I was not going to put a sentiment on this one, but when I was done it looked naked. So I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to stamp the "from the heart" sentiment from the Holidays & Wishes set.










Stamps: Heartfelt Thanks, Holidays & Wishes, Warm Words, Everyday Flexible Phrases
Inks: Groovy Guava, Mellow Moss, Versamark, Ruby Red
Card Stock: Groovy Guava, Naturals, White, Ruby Red and Mellow Moss
Accessories: Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, Word Window Punch, Mellow Moss 1/4" grosgrain ribbon, gold wire, mat pack

We Have A Winner

We have a winner! I went random.org and it picked number 5! So Silvia Mabie, who has a blog called Mabie Stampin' is our winner.

stampinsilvia said...
Sweet! Thanks for the chance to win some candy...real candy even!!!I hope you Merry is Very!

Stampin Silvia

So Silvia send me your address and I will ship out your goodies!

Thanks for playing everyone. I hope to get some stamping done this weekend. Everyone around here has had a stomach bug. With three kiddos sick it is hard to stamp, or homeschool, or clean, or sleep... LOL. Okay, maybe I won't stamp. Maybe I will catch up on the house, lessons and laundry. We shall see. Have a great Saturday!

Christmas Blog Candy

Well, at 73 degrees, it does not feel like it is almost Christmas. But sure enough the calendar says it is less than 2 weeks away. So, in order to get me in the Christmas mood. I thought I would give away my first Christmas gift. So post a comment on this post and I will pick a winner Friday, December 14th. The winner of this gift will get some 2-4-6-8 boxes complete with chocolate inside, some Christmas ribbon from Michaels, some holiday $1 stamps also from Michaels, 10 sheets of Stampin' Up! (retired) Forest Foliage and some 6x6 printed paper that came from somewhere that slips my mind.

Merry Christmas,
Julie