Monthly Stamp Club

     Last night I met with my local Stampin Up! demonstrator at our monthly stamp club.  We made a very adorable bunny treat bag and a cute get well card.   While these are not my own creations I have so much fun with these classes.  They remind me of techniques I don't think to use often and give me new ways to use the supplies I already have.  Plus, while I freely admit I'm a bit lazy with my card making sometimes most of the cards are more intricate than I think to make on my own.  Lots of layers, supplies, cuts and intricate work I don't always go through the work of putting together myself. 

For the card oval windows were cut in the yellow card and the umbrella paper using the big shot.  We then tied a pretty blue bow and used the modern label punch to cut out the words and a the pink strip that goes behind it.  We cut the pink modern label punch piece in half and attached it to the words so that it made a border at the end and then attached that to our card front. 

With the card front done we turned to the inside.  A white piece of paper was run through the big shot twice; once to cut it using the labels collection framelits and once using the cloud embossing folder.  We then used some blue ink and a sponge to lightly shade the clouds blue.  We stamped two boots in versamark and used pink embossing powder to emboss the boots.  We colored them green with an ink pad and a blender pen and then covered both boots completely with versamark ink and clear embossing powder.  Once embossed it gave the boots a nice shiny rubber boot look. We attached the boots inside the window using dimensionals. 

It was adorable and I loved having most of the cutting already done for me! 




























 My Favorite project though was this adorable bunny bag. 

How could you not love this bunny? 

He's so adorable! 

The original picture we were going off of had a cute little pink bow and a white bunny (still totally adorable!) but we made ours out of brown and pink paper and the demonstrator mentioned making a hat or something for "boy" bunnies.  I immediately thought of the baseball caps I make using the large 2 1/2 circle punch so that's what we did.  I loved the girl bunnies and the pink bows but with all boys in my house a girl bunny was  not in the cards for me! 

I did however, make bows for everyone else!  Everything was already punched and cut for us so all we had to do was use a sponge and some ink to create shading on the shapes.  That said I think I can walk you through what you need to make this since she was kind enough to send us home with a template! 

The body of the bunny is made using the top note bigz die  & the big shot.  The ears are made using the medium oval punch (for the pink) and the small oval big shot die.  The eyes were cut using the 1/2 in punch and the cheeks are made with the 1 1/4 inch punch.  The nose is the new small heart punch.  The feet use the extra large oval punch, 1" circles and 3/8" circles.  We used white gel pens for the highlight on the eyes and the cheek dots.  After I cut my cap out of the large punch I folded it up and inked around it for shading as well and used a dimensional so that the brim remained popped up and then I used the white gel pen to make the lines.  We then attached our bunnies to the bag and turned the bag over to add his tail, which was made with the small scallop circle.

 I can't wait to fill it with candy and give this out for Easter!

So many photos

         I had a few moments today to label some photos and throw a quick scrapbook page together.  I had all the pictures set aside already for another Old Sturbridge Village layout.  I know it might be a bit crazy but I keep a separate scrapbook for all three of my sons so whenever we go somewhere I actually have three pages to make when we get back home.  It's part of the reason I'm so far behind on my scrap booking, but after years of having this system I just can't even think about creating one family scrapbook. We went to Sturbridge Village a few times this summer and I decided to combine the pictures into one layout.  The only thing I have left to do it to add some journaling but I will get around to that another day.  For this page I used a striped background paper, a printed coordinating paper and a large Old Olive scrap paper.  I cut the patterned paper into a 4 1/2 by 12 strip and attached it down the side of the page leaving about a 1" edge of  striped paper showing.  I attached a 6 1/2" square of old olive paper sightly over lapping the patterned paper strip and centered on the striped paper.   I then attached all of my pictures to the page.   I had a gap of patterned paper showing and decided to add some green buttons.  I had three that were the same and looked nice as a filler.  I found some orange/white twine and threaded it through.  I attached the buttons using glue dots.  I then used some blue alphabet stickers for the title and date.  I then cut a small strip of the patterned paper to use as a background for my journaling.  And voila it's done! 

Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays!

       I spent my morning making 5 birthday card for all the birthday parties we have coming up (well, most of them anyway).  Sine I had so many to make I tried to keep them all fairly simple.  I was also able to use up a lot of scraps since I only used full sheets of paper to make the actual card itself and scraps for everything else. 


These two cards used my butterfly punches.  I just love butterflies and these cards are so simple.



I just could not resist adding a little bling to this one!  I used a gem brad on the ribbon and a row of small rhinestones down the body of the butterflies.  

I also had a few cards to make for the birthday boys!  These truck stamps were just too cute not to use!

Using striped blue and brown paper and some dark navy these cards were prefect.  I embellished them using Stampin Up's chocolate ribbons and some pieces from the Hodgepodge hardware kit. 

I finished up my card making with one final Lego inspired card.

Using an assortment of circle punches, some pup up glue dots and some contrasting paper I made an adorable card.  The number was a leftover sticker I had and the clip was also part of the Hodgepodge hardware pack.  

Masked Invitations

         I decided I should set aside my scrapbooking and get some invitations made.  I decided to just use a balloon stamp.  I made postcard invites by cutting three  8 1/2 x 11" sheets of pumpkin pie card stock into quarters.  I then trimmed three sheets of whisper white card stock to measure 4 x 5 1/4".  Using my Pumpkin Pie stamp pad I stamped the Dot Invitation to the bottom/ side of the white card stock.  I used my double hole slot punch to make a hole in the top of the invitation and threaded some orange satin ribbon through it.  I decided I wanted a cluster of balloons and used a technique called masking.  To do this I stamped the red balloon; once on the card and once on a scrap of paper.  I cut out the paper scrap balloon and laid it over the red balloon on the card creating a mask.  I then stamped the orange balloon onto the white card stock and a second orange balloon on to the scrap paper.  Once I cut out that balloon I masked the orange balloon (and kept the mask on the red balloon) and stamped my final green balloon.  I ended up making 10 invitations and I used the same two scrap paper masking balloons for them all.  They stayed neatly in place allowing me to stamp over them and keep the images they were masking underneath intact and clean so it looks like the balloons are in front of one another in a cluster.  If your masking pieces move at all while you are trying to stamp try stamping your image onto the sticky side of a post it note and then cutting it out.  The post it note will stick to (and remove from)  your image allowing you to try masking too. 

Just one!

I am so excited that I've managed to work in my craft room for two whole days in a row!  I have so many things in there that I should be doing it's hard to focus and just get things done.  

Today, I managed to get a few more pictures labeled and into albums and then worked for quite some time on just one scrapbook page.  

It's a simple page but I just LOVE how it came out.  

I typically take tons of photos and it's hard to fit them all on a page and have it still look neat.  I often use a  6 x 12" strip of paper and fold it into thirds to hold three photos but today I thought I'd use two! I used my Cricut to cut out the first letter of each word and then used my marker (with the fine line tip) to finish the words in cursive.  I used 4 brads to hold the title strip in place and used a bit of satin ribbon to make a pull tab for each photo holder. 

With them folded shut

With both flaps opened up 

The best laid plans...

      So much for my plan to get myself motivated by using this blog!  We did, however, have a lovely snow day Friday and so I decided to spend my day organizing photos and getting ready to get moving on my scrapbooking!  I have tons of pages to get around to for all of my boys' albums, two baby "gift" albums, a wedding album, many invitations, thank you cards, birthday cards, and baby announcements... the list of paper craft projects just goes on and on.  Sadly, the longer the list gets, the more I tend to shy away from starting on it all.   I did managed to organize 9+ months of photos I had developed of the boys.  In doing so I realized I haven't developed any pictures since September so I have even more pictures than I thought that still need to be printed, labeled, and scrapped.   I finally decided to label all my loose pictures and put them in albums so that I can better see what I want to scrap and at least it looks organized in the meantime.  It's such a time consuming process though and I really need to find a better system. 
      I did wake up early this morning; I know many people complain about the time change but I just LOVE it!  I was up an hour earlier than normal and yet my boys slept later than usual so I had tons of time to myself this morning and labeled a few more pictures then turned to some scrapbooking.  I got a bunch of pages done in just under an hour.  I am loving my new color coordinated paper system as I am quickly able to find just the right paper for each page! 

The only thing left do on the cast page is to write up the journaling; I often wait until many of my pages need  journaling and then type them up on the computer all at once.  I used an old olive background paper with some red and gray accent papers.   I used black velvet ribbon and some stickers of a cast and x-ray to accent the page. 

 

 

For the Knight page I used a printed blue background paper with navy blue and gray accents.  I had some Knight stickers and hand wrote some journaling. 

For this graduation page I tried using some of the printed paper I had left over from my DCWV paper stack.  I have a hard time using pages that are printed like this but really wanted to try anyway.  I had some graduation stickers so I put the hat on the bee and used the diploma to break up the title words that I cut out using my Cricut and the Alphalicious set. 

I used an orange/tan printed background paper with some teal and navy accent papers to make this birthday party page.  I will have to journal later but don't plan on adding any other accents; I love the pictures and think they speak for themselves.  I was lucky enough to find this left over birthday sticker that matched the colors on the page and used that for my title. 

This page is waiting for the picture and journaling.  My youngest son ended up with stitches last week and I took a picture of him that I want to put on this page.  I used an orange printed background with some red and blue printed accent pages that I found in my scrap bin.  I pulled most of the colors from the "going to the doctor" sticker.  I decided to add the black netting to the background to ground the photo since it's just a 4x6 on a 12x12 page.  This black netting was carried by Stampin Up! but is now discontinued.  I'm bummed; I loved this product and owned it in many colors!   

Coming together

      Though I haven't been posting, I have been working on my room a bit here and there.  I was waiting for some thing to come in and for some help from my husband.  Today it's all finally starting to come together.  My husband was home early and helped me hang up the magnetic board with my brads.  I also ordered 5 (yes you hear me right 5!) towel rods that I had him hang to help me display my punches.  I have a bunch of them but with them all thrown into a bucket I never remember which ones I have.  My hubby is pretty talented when it comes to making things out of wood or metal and he was going to make me some rods but I found these towel rods at Amazon for only $5 with free shipping so I figured I'd save him the trouble.  They're all hung and filled and I just LOVE it!  I'm getting so excited to finish so I can finally use the room again.  I love the thought of having most things in reach and sight!  I also received the last two 12x12 paper holders I was waiting for and now have all my paper organized and put away. 

        While he was hanging the rods and magnetic board I was color coding all my markers, gel pens, and stamp pads.  I somehow ended up with two packs of Stampin Up! markers-- one set in the old colors and one in the new colors so I ordered a marker holder from Amazon and combined the two sets into one large one.  I then took one of the marker containers and removed the Stampin Up! insert naming all the colors and filled it with my gel pens.  I already had the Stampin Up! stamp pad holder (with extender) and all the stamp pads so I decided that since I was color coding everything else I might as well color code the stamp pads too.  I received my stack and store caddy from Stampin Up! and spent the day sorting buttons, eyelets and metallic accessories into all my Stampin Up! bins.  



       My Amazon order also included one more Cricut cartridge holder so I consolidated all my cartridges, books and keyboard covers into two very thin bins that fit nicely onto this tiny shelf I have.  I love that the bin is see- through so I can see at a glance which bin I need.   The clear stacking drawers that used to hold all my scrap papers now hold stencils in one drawer, my Coluzzle cutter with re-fill blades, mat and stencils in another drawer, a drawer of page protectors and clear bags from Stampin Up!, and a drawer of just envelopes.