Golden Days of Fall

I did this card at a recent Card Camp I held and after searching for an image that would fit this scallop punch, I was delighted to find that these birds from SU!'s retired "See With the Heart" set are an excellent match in art style for the Bella Toile background stamp, new in this season's catalog. Done in the splendid autumn gold of More Mustard and Whisper White, add the help of a ticket corner punch and a Coluzzle circle and an organdy ribbon, this card was done in about 5 minutes...if you don't count the thinking time - sometimes that takes me a little while!

Twinkling Snowflake Card

Ther SCS Sketch Challenge today is my fist card in about 2 weeks or so. I tried and tried to catch the sparkle of the rhinestones on this card, and they still look like brads! I used the snowflake from SU's retired "Perfect Presentation" set and the Cuttlebig Snowflake embossing template in my Big Shot. I punched the squares with what I thought was Baja Breeze, and turned out it was Soft Sky (last year's In-Color). Since I already had the snowflakes stamped in Baja, I decided to combine the 2 colors, as they do blend well together, and used Baja Brezze cardstock on the card's bottom side. The Black ribbon, is actually paper, and I had grosgrain in a light blue that matched. I added the sparkles, on the ribbon and on the snowflake centers. Easy card!
Although I wanted to put a greeting on it, there didn't seem to be a place for one that looked right without being overmuch. Suggestions would be welcomed!

IN THE PINK AGAIN!

After 2 weeks of not participating in any challenges, I am back to making cards again. I saw the Pink Week come up and I absolutely couldn't bring myself to jumping on the bandwagon when I knew that I myself, hadn't had a mammogram in over 5 years. (Yikes!) In that period I had a pregnancy and extended nursing, but had put it off an extra couple years. I felt to participate would have been kinda hypocritical and I made an appointment for myself on that first pink day - and yesterday I finally had the "squish." In and out in 20 minutes - why do some of us procrastinate? We really do owe it to ourselves to take precautions. Our daughters, grand-daughters, nieces, and mothers might just follow our footsteps! So, I kept busy with another project.

THINGS TO PILE UP, DON'T THEY???

I have been re-arranging stuff in my stamp room for the past 2 weeks. My sweet husband was able to get a hold of a desk-hutch from his workplace about 2 weeks ago so I finally have a good place for all my 12x12 Stampin' Up! card stock and designer papers. scrapbooks & kits and stuff like that. I got that all set up and then he brought home another one! This was a bigger project because, I had this huge place of stacking stuff and tower-style piles of things in various containers and things jammed on top of my stamp sets drawers, which was where it needed to go... Excited to begin, I took everything off the top of my cabinets and filled 3 tables 1 foot and a half high with stuff...Oh my! I have been sorting, gathering and making use of this new-found storage space, and am down to a half a table left to clear. Monday, my husband the brought home the last of the 3 hutches they were getting rid of at work...but this one is going over HIS desk area, because now that my space is looking pretty good now, his space is looking pretty bad.

Well, I have typed way too much and realize I should have split this day's entry up a bit... and now I find I cannot 'copy' and paste on another entry.

Hope you didn't mind...have a great day!

For Unto Us a child is born...

Today's Featured Stamper was Anne Ryan, and while I don't always have time to stamp much on Sundays, I did get a quiet time this afternoon and set off to play. A Featured Stamper Challenge is when a certain talented person is chosen and stampers wanting to play along are sent to their personal gallery on http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/ Players then select a card they wish to 'CASE' (which means Copy And Steal Everything) and copy it MOSTLY, but have to change at least 2 things about it, and tell how we did it, and what we changed about it.

First of all I 'flipped' her sketch (turned it sideways), and then I went with an old retired Christmas image (SU's A Gift From Heaven) that seemed like fun watercoloring to do on an embossed image. (This image reminds me of "The Friendly Beasts" children's carol - Does anyone know it?) I opted for a banner instead of Anne's string of beads. I also used a pattern paper instead of a solid background. Anne Ryan's card is found here. So now you can compare and see how they are much the same, yet very different.

Have you tried this? I do this often with the Stampin' Up! Catalogs, when I need a good idea...find the card design you like and re-make it with your own stamps and colors.

C-Ya Later!
Cheryl

"C" is for...

Coffee, Cocoa, Chocolate, Cup, Company, and Cheryl. Working on a Monogram Challenge last week, I decided if I were going to do my own monogram, I wanted to personalize the frame to reflect a bit more of myself, and I am a true Coffee Craver. So I used the little cup from Flourishes' Coffee set and put the "c" on the cup. I made a set of them, but will plan to send some to a friend that I happen to know who not only likes coffee, but shares my initial too.

C-Ya Later!
Cheryl

5 Minute Framed Snowman Card

My friend Jody dropped by the other day with a new border punch she wanted me to check out. (It was from Micheal's and was light blue in color) ...The funny thing was that I was at the very moment she arrived, fooling around and trying to come up with ideas to use with my own Border Punch Collection, including Stampin' Up!'s new scallop border punch...so I picked up one of my precut white pieces and gave her punch a whirl and in about 10 seconds had the frame done. Since it had the snowflakes, I grabbed a little snowman image from the Merry & Bright set and stamped it in the middle, touched it with a couple markers and pulled out the red ribbon...decided I also needed a red backing for the white piece, so I used a scrap. At this point I wished I had used light blue on the little guy's hat, but I went with Bashful Blue anyway (It does look more like Cool Carribean, doesn't it? That would work good too, but it is Bashful!). I ran it through my new Big Shot with my Cuttlebug A2 Snowflakes Template to add a tough of frostiness to it, attached it to the front and Voila! My quicky card! How do you like it?
C-Ya Later!
Cheryl

World Card Making Day with my Daughter

This is my youngest daughter,
Natalie Miracle, who is not quite
4 and 1/2 years old. She is truly
a miracle girl as she was the baby
I was told by doctors that I would never have another. But God had other plans. Usually when you
ask God for something, the answer
is 'yes' or 'no.' In this case, His
answer was 'wait.' And wait we did!
I also have 3 other daughters, who are now 30, 23 & 21 years old...
and 3 grandchildren, 12, 11, & 4 (almost 5) and one on the way.
What a joy and blessing she is to my husband (Mark) and me!




Natalie has been very involved in my stamping business since day one. She gets her own little stampers and art supplies (even a sidekick) and we work together at times...all right, I don't get as much done myself, but that's all right, I'm raising a stampin' buddy!

What amazed me today is how much she put things together without alot of direction. I started by helping her die-cut the first heart and put tape under it. She decided it all from there out.


She practices the the layout...

Studies for what to do next.

Makes a goofy face while thinking.

It is now a butterfly and it needed a head.

Making his ears (antenaes)

Gluing on his legs.

Having a good time!

TA-DAA!!!!

This momma is very proud!

Hope you had a chance to stamp today! See ya soon!

My Artist and her Work of Heart!

The finished work!

Espresso-ly Inspired Card

This espresso can has been hanging around my kitchen all summer as an unbreakable vase for my little girl to keep filled with forget-me-nots, dandilions, daisies, Queen Anne's Lace and other such rare teasures that might be found in a backyard.

When I found the reindeer stamp for a dollar at Micheal's last week, I instantly thought of that can! It took all of a few minutes to cuttlebug the snowflakes and layer the deer with some square scallop punches. I layered blue grosgrain over the chocolate organdy and it was done!

I used almost the same method of operation on this card as the one with the three silhouettes. This leafy one is just too big to fit in the Key Tag Punch, so I Scallop-Circled it. I have a couple of friends that have birthdays in the fall...Hmmmm...
I wonder if one of them is reading this entry?

Back to Upsy Daisy set again...I think the designer paper doesn't look so hot with the Real Rust in this photo, but IRL it really is a great match. Paper ric-rac and those ovals again...no mistakes, I actually planned this one and went with the bandage idea after this one was done.

Pocket Silhouettes are such a fun card for quick cards...I used a fall designer paper stack for the pattern paperm and those tiny little acorns were a great match for my leftover retired River Rock paper. I used the Riding Hood Red, Chocolate Chip and Tangerine Tango on the keytags and matched the bases. The ribbon was a strip of paper, to accomplish a challenge card today on SCS...where we were not use embellishments on our cards...only paper. I used a real ribbon last night when we made cards, so now I have 2 of the same.

Autumn Harvest of Cards

Stamping with friends! Who can think of a nicer way to spend a cool Autumn evening together. Last night we had fun laughing and talking while we whipped up a few fall greeting cards (no two alike) and I want to show you what I came up with.


The set is called "Upsy Daisy" and I am so liking all these new silhouette stamps! On this card I also used my new Big Shot with the Top Note die cutter to make the Rust layer on the bottom and the vanilla layer on top. This die has stitch lines around the edges, so after I cut the vanilla layer, I used the stitching line for a cutting line and made the layer a smaller size. How easy is that? I originally stamped the phrase onto the panel and it didn't come out so good, so I used my small and large Oval punches to put an oval shaped "bandage" over it and now it's all better.

The Big Shot that I am talking about is featured in Stampin' Up!'s Holiday Mini Catalog that you can see here. Once there, Click on "SHOP." This Mini Catalog is only the beginning of Stampin' Up!'s line of die cutting machine, and we can expect more exciting tools to use on this marvelous machine in the future. This Big Shot can use a variety of different die-cutters, so it will be my one tool that enables me to use all of my old sizzix dies and embossing folders, my fiskars texture plates, my cuttlebug dies and embossing folders, my Nestabilities...and the regular Sizzix dies are able to cut through a list of 50 materials!!! (thin and wafer types)
Other die-cutting machines offer a variety of layers of varying thicknesses of layers to accomodate other manufacturer's dies. But Big Shot made it easy by giving you one tool to use to accomade all the rest. Resembling a book, you don't need to try and remember the combination and look for the right assortment of layers, you just find the die or folder you want to use on the layers that are hinged like pages, and it is printed which page to use and which ones to leave open. Even I don't have to rely on my memory and that is a good thing! The Big Shot is ideal for righties or lefties, just turn it around, but to tell the truth, cranking the paper (or whatever of the 49 other material you can use) is so easy, it doesn't matter which hand I use to turn the handle.


You'll find the Big Shot in Stampin' Up!'s Holiday Mini Catalog here, and be sure to check out the sales and promotions too. You can now order directly through me - online - see my website for more details. Call me if you have any questions or want me to do it for you!