Catch-up Post!

As the beginning of August approaches, and with that, a new release, I just realized that I haven't blogged a whole bunch of cards made with sets from the {stamps} of Life!  This month's club set, island2visit, was a really fun one for a Florida stamper!

The idea to use "cloth" for the hammock on this card was inspired by the cloth slings that moms use to "wear" their babies.  That sweet smilin' baby face is from sweet4babies.  The sky was sponged in using a scalloped circle mask and light blue ink, a technique that I use quite often.  The tops of the palms were embossed so they look shiny like real palm fronds, and they had to be trimmed and strategically positioned to keep the card A2 width.

For this quick card I used the sentiment only...the print on this designer paper reminds me of the shoes piled outside the door when we lived in Hawaii.  Island custom is to take off your shoes before entering someone's home, probably to keep out all the dark red dust from the pineapple and sugarcane fields that would ruin the carpet!

Most of the supplies for these cards were purchased from i {heart} papers.

Used on every card:
Memento ink
Copic markers
Zva Creative dimensional dots
Scor Buddy


Beach scene
Fancy Pants designer paper (a gift from Winter CHA)
Gina K button
jute thread


Babe in the hammock
Kaiser Craft designer paper
Kaiser Craft pearls
twine
*so excited that Kate will be carrying more Kaiser Craft products from the recent Summer CHA!


Life is Good
Fancy Pants designer paper
heart-shaped nestabilities
Basic Grey buttons
Jute thread

Dare to Get Dirty!

It's Dare to Get Dirty week at Splitcoaststampers!  The Dirty Girls and Dirty Dozen Alumni are thrilled to host some fun challenges for our fan club friends...we're hoping to inspire you and get your MOJO flowing!  If you're not a fan club member yet, you can find out about it here!  We hope you'll join us!  You don't wanna miss this fan-club-exclusive event!

I combined this week's OCL sketch with Christine's DTGD challenge for this simple, summer-time card.  All supplies are from i {heart} papers.

Notes:

OCL's Growin' with Granny

Memento ink

Copic markers

Platinum Sparkly Fluff

Echo Park For the Record designer paper

Basic Grey buttons

Burgundy double-faced faux suede ribbon

Zva Creative dimensional adhesive dots

ihp DT challenge

Hello friends!  I'm back from a busy week away at CHA!  So. MUCH. Fun!  I divided my time working booths for two teams and walking the floor with some of my i {heart} papers design team mates!  We had a blast, but somehow it always feels like such a whirlwind...we never have enough time to just visit!  LOVE you girls!  I miss you so much already!

We're posting projects for this month's design team challenge.  During the time that I was searching for ideas for our challenge I had just returned from Costa Rica...with Loretta so involved in foster dog care and Kate considering doing the same, I got the idea of using a favorite charity logo as inspiration for a project.  

I have fond memories of going out to "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" so that is what inspired my simple, cute project.  Our Craft Lounge's Little Boogas was the perfect image for this theme.  I really wanted to use the new Echo Park Apothecary Halloween paper that I fell in LOVE with at CHA, but it isn't available yet so I used an orange print from Walk in the Park for today's project.  The sketch is this week's CPS sketch, flipped to portrait orientation on the front of a one sheet bag (see Beate's tutorial on SCS).  Instead of tying ribbon around the top as Beate did, I adhered a velvet corduroy ribbon handle between the folded edges.


Here are the ihp products I used for this project:
Scor Pal
OCL Little Boogas
Echo Park Walk in the Park designer paper
Memento Ink
Ranger tea dye distress ink
Copic markers
Real Juicy Orange Sparkly Fluff
Spellbinders Reverse Wonky Rectangles
Orange velvet corduroy ribbon
Queen & Co felt flower
Orange button
i {stick} papers redline tape


You can see what the rest of my team mates were inspired to create by visiting their blogs!  Send 'em my love!  :)

• Carolyn
• Gretchen
• Kendra
• Loretta
• Lori
• Lynn
• Megan
• Tracy
• Kate

CPS 227

At Winter CHA in January, one of my favorite new products was Want2Scrap's "nestabling," so I was really excited when I learned that they are this week's sponsor for CPS sketch!  The only hard thing about it is deciding which ones to use!  LOVE these!  Gorgeous and so easy!  Elegant and classic!

Notes:

The Vine, by Melanie Muenchinger for Gina K

Spellbinders Labels 2

Want2Scrap Labels 2 Nestabling

Memento ink

Ranger tea dye distress ink

Echo Park For the Record designer paper

corner rounder

Lizzie Anne's Last Day!

a·lo·ha 

interj. Chiefly Hawaii

Used as a traditional greeting or farewell.

Hello.  Goodbye.  The word seems very appropriate for today.

In Summer of 2009 as a brand new SCS Dirty Girl, I went to Orlando for my very first CHA.  I had the privilege of meeting the Lizzie Anne girls and helping them with their make-n-take at the Splitcoaststampers booth.  Not long afterward, they invited me to join their team.  So thrilled! And now, as I am preparing to leave for CHA Summer 2011, Lizzie Anne is closing its doors.  :(

What a joy it's been to be part of this talented group of artists and stampers!  I love their style, the great variety of stamps they've offered, and their sweet spirits.

Today is Lizzie Anne's last day.  I was in Costa Rica when I first heard the news, and was grateful to be too busy to seriously think about it.  I don't think it has yet had time to sink in...I still feel kinda dazed and confused!  It won't ever be the same!

LOVE you girls...LOVED every minute of being on your team!  You have been so generous, kind, and completely wonderful to me!

So in this case, let aloha not mean goodbye!  Like my beloved ukulele that I have so come to cherish, I hope we see each other often!  Until then, I will remember you with fondness.  Aloha a hui hou!  Until we meet again!

Vintage Christmas

Today, the Flower Soft team is sharing Vintage Christmas projects.  You will love these beautiful prints! They are lovely for the elegant but quick-to-craft, simple projects that I'm fond of giving at Christmas, but would be equally perfect for a more elaborate card.  Here I added Christmas Green traditional Flower Soft and Sage Ultrafine, along with a few hand-cut, sculpted holly leaves and bling berries to the Vintage Christmas scalloped circle design to embellish the lid of a small jar candle.  

Can't wait to share these at CHA!  If you're there, please visit us at the Flower Soft booth!  :)

New Flower Soft Christmas Globes

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been busy working on CHA projects.  Flower Soft has a gorgeous array of new products that will be released, and today on the Flower Soft blog we're sharing projects made with soon-to-be-released Christmas globes.

I love how easy the globe template makes these!  The oval perfectly fits with Spellbinders dies, so they're a piece of cake to die cut and assemble!  The package contains four prints, each designed to fussy-cut and layer with dimensional foam and embellish with Flower Soft (in this case, Polar White) so that the finished globe is filled with wonderful depth and texture.

I kept mine simple and traditional, using a Cuttlebug dotted Swiss embossing folder to texturize the card stock, emphasizing the pattern with a light sponging of white craft ink.  An outline of silver peel-off stickers gives the edges a more finished look.

This particular design reminds me of a song from the old Cokesbury hymnal we sang from when I was a young girl...if I remember correctly, it was #121, "The Church in the Wild Wood."  I can still hear the men singing "Oh, come, come, come!"  That sweet memory makes this particular print my favorite of the four designs!

Hey!

Hey!  :)  Hope you are havin' a good week so far!  It has been busy around here!  With CHA less than a week away, I've been busy making samples, so my blog has been a little quieter than usual.  I'll be sharing some of those as soon as the new sets are released.  I'm sooooo excited to go and see my stampin' friends!  We're gonna have such a great time!

Today's card for CPS #226 was made with Our Craft Lounge's Shout It Out, Sparkly Fluff, and Basic Grey's new Oxford designer paper.  The image was stamped with Memento ink, colored with Copic markers, and given a frame of Nestabilities squares, circles, and bling.  The colors were inspired by the warm Florida sun and surf.

Visit the CPS blog to find out about this week's sponsor and to see lots more inspiration!  This post is linked to the sketch's debut post, so be sure to click through to the top of the blog to see even more inspiration!  

Gina K Designs Inspiration Day 3!

It's this release's third and final Gina K Designs inspiration blog hop, and today our amazing team is sharing projects made with the new One Free with Three, Bold and Beautiful!  

I love the gorgeous butterfly in this set, and inked it up immediately for a submission to Tina's release party glitter and flock challenge.  The card was made with a pretty stripe from Basic Grey's Life of the Party, edged with some Hero Arts adhesive lace and a pretty fleur de lis border, embellished with gold pearls. sheer ribbon and stickles.  

I had so much fun making Garden Fresh tags that I decided to make another with Bold and Beautiful.  I kept it simple, using the marker-directly-to-rubber technique, then filling in the spaces with a watercolor brush and paler inks.  I overstamped the image with linen texture and Ranger distress ink, then again with stamped off script and Memento Tuxedo Black ink, tearing and distress-inking the edges.  Both of these stamps are from Timeless Textures.  A single gold pearl graces the center of the blossom, and the back of the tag is stamped with the sentiment, praying for you!  It would be pretty attached to a potted plant to bring on a visit to someone in the hospital!

Here are today's artists:

• Gina K
• AJ Otto
• Carolina Buchting
• Cathy Tidwell
• Deb Felts
• Donna Baker
• Emily Giovanni
• Giovana Smith
• Jennie Harper
• Jimmi Mayo
• Lee Murphy
• Melanie Muenchinger
• Michelle Woerner
• Sharon Harnist
• Theresa Momber
• Tina Gilliland
• Vicki Dutcher

Gina K Designs Inspiration Day 2!

It's Day 2 of three in a row of Gina K inspiration using sets from our July release...today we're sharing projects made with Whimsical Wishes by Theresa Momber, and another fun set, Garden Fresh!

The bright card set Jimmi shared yesterday inspired me to use my Lauderdale paper to create a gate-fold card with a bold green belly band.  I used twinkling H20's to color the dragonfly, which was stamped on vellum with Stazon ink.

I shared a collage of my tags at the release party last week, but thought you might like to see them individually...they were all made with Garden Fresh, although that's about the only similarity between them!

The first uses the apple image with some fun yellow picnic plaid.

Next is the pea image, colored with Copic markers, paper-pieced with scraps of Cosmo Cricket designer paper.

Here's a slice of watermelon paper pieced with Hopscotch and more of that fun Vintage Chic Stamp TV designer print...LOVE these polka dots!

 And last, a paper pieced carrot.  Don't you love these fun, punny sentiments?!

Here are today's participating designers!

• Gina K
• Theresa Momber – Illustrator Whimsical Wishes
• Tina Gilliland
• Vicki Dutcher
• AJ Otto
• Carolina Buchting
• Cathy Tidwell
• Deb Felts
• Donna Baker
• Emily Giovanni
• Giovana Smith
• Janice Whiting
• Jennie Harper
• Jimmi Mayo
• Lee Murphy
• Melanie Muenchinger
• Michelle Woerner
• Tami Mayberry

Gina K Designs Inspirational Blog Hop

Welcome back!  I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and if you're Canadian or American, that you enjoyed some Happy Canada Day/Independence Day celebrations!

Our Gina K Design Team is sharing inspiration using two new releases today, Tami Mayberry's All Occasion Tags, and Melanie's The Vine.

My first card uses some scraps of Stamp TV's Vintage Chic paper along with red hot, black onyx, and white Pure Luxury card stock and some gingham ribbon for a clean and graphic design with Tami's All Occasion Tags.  I love that this set coordinates with my new Nestabilities Grommet Tags.  Using a scrap of card stock to cut a template makes it easy to line up and cut the shape with the stamp perfectly centered.  The little red outline, colored with a Copic marker, really makes the shape pop against the darker background.

Here's a simple but elegant design using Melanie's The Vine.  I started with a piece of ivory Pure Luxury, stamped the vine with Memento ink and colored it with Copics, then fussy-cut along the bottom edge. The sentiment was stamped and layered on Nestabilities classic circles with vine-like swirls from a Fancy Tag peeking from in between.  Before removing the die, I inked it with tea-dye distress ink, then added a few fussy-cut leaves to tie the design together.

Here's the list of today's blog hop participants.

• Gina K
• Melanie Muenchinger – Illustrator The Vine
• Tami Mayberry – Illustrator All Occasion Tags
• Michelle Woerner
• Sharon Harnist
• Theresa Momber
• Tina Gilliland
• Vicki Dutcher
• AJ Otto
• Carolina Buchting
• Cathy Tidwell
• Deb Felts
• Donna Baker
• Emily Giovanni
• Giovana Smith
• Janice Whiting
• Jennie Harper
• Jimmi Mayo
• Lee Murphy

Come back tomorrow for more inspiration with two more newly released sets!

New TSOL Club Set!

The beginning of a new month means a new club release from the {stamps} of Life.  This month's set is a really great summer set, island2visit, that coordinates fabulously with another wonderful summer set, summer4fun.  Here I used a sentiment from the new set with a paper-pieced, Copic-accented surfboard from the older one. The printed paper that sets the scene is from Fancy Pants, embellished with some flower soft polar white "seafoam" and a few dewdrops.   The ankle tether is made of twine from The Twinery.

I hope you'll join our Flower Soft design team for this week's "bright colors" challenge!  Flower Soft comes in all kinds of colors from the diamond range polar white that I used on my bright summer sunset background paper to bright, nearly florescent neons, so you have lots of options!  Visit our blogs for inspiration, and be sure to link your creation to the challenge thread!