cps 160

i have a baby who learned to scoot . . . and i have to relearn to have eyes in the back of my head again! and somehow i have to teach a 5-year-old to remember that under NO circumstances, can Legos be on the living room floor anymore. and i suppose i better be careful about brads and tiny jewels on MY floor too!

in between chasing a baby on the go-go, and scouring the floor for Legos and jewels, I would love to share one of my TWO CPS cards for the week . . .yes TWO - I just loved this sketch! This one uses Pebbles Inc paper and a rubbery fun embellie from Close To My Heart. I'll be back in a day or two with my second card!

hope you are having a beautiful weekend!!

XOXO

hugs!

I design cards for Apron Strings Designs card kits every other month. I just got my kit for April. . .which means the last time I designed was for the month of February. . .and guess what? I just realized that I don't think I ever finished sharing all of my February cards! Where do the days and weeks go running off to?
So here is a FEBRUARY card from Apron Strings. . .created with Pink Paislee patterned papers and rub-ons.

I know that April is going to be here in about one blink of the eye, and I am attempting to get myself organized in time for the new month. Watch for much more organized blogging. . . right now I think that Sunday will be CPS day. . .Tuesday will be The Stamps of Life Day (as well as whatever the first day of the month is), and Thursday will be a new day. . .Close To My Heart Day! (I am doing some CTMH exclusive projects for my sweet mama and HER blog.) Friday will be Apron Strings Day, during the months that I design there. In between, will just be whatever else I am playing with!! So that's my plan . .. until I change it :) Hopefully it will help me stay on top of my blogging a bit better! Thanks for stopping by!

XOXO

have a sunshiney day!!!

I have another Stamping Bella card for my CPS card this week! I couldn't resist these sweet teacups and flowers, when I was picking out stamps from the Stamping Bella website! I paper-pieced the cups, and colored the flowers with pencils. All of the patterned paper, and the scalloped sticker strip are from My Mind's Eye.

Yesterday we planted some flowers outside. It's been feeling SO springy lately, and the weather was just PERFECT, so we got some marigolds and some wildflower seeds in the gardens. We are going to start a little tomato plant in a pot too. We tried it last year, but just got two tiny tomatoes around the time it was starting to get cold, so they never made it.

We are off to church this morning. . . miraculously the boys all seem to be on the mend - AGAIN. Hoping the healthiness LASTS this time!!! Have a beautiful Sunday! I hope its springy and wonderful where you are! XOXO

PS. . .I have tons of stamps for sale on 2Peas right now; I've sold a bunch but there's still lots left. . . . if you'd like to do any shopping for some gently used and much loved stamps! Here's the link!

feelin' the love with cps 158

Stamping Bella . . . hello sweet cute stamps. So fun to have fabulously cute stamps to work with! I chose this fun stamp, perfect for wedding or anniversary cards. I can see myself using this stamp with a million different fun color combos too. A great stamp to make quick and simple unique cards, and fabulous backgrounds as well.

So everyone in my house has been sick again. We've passed this cold (or is it multiple colds?) around at least twice. Currently, the littlest and the hubby have it. Here's hoping its the last round of colds in my house. 2 months is enough of it I think. In fact I'm quite sure it is.

Have a terrific weekend! (Think healthy thoughts for us!!!) XOXO

(card goodies: cardstock - Bazzill, stamps - Stamping Bella, ribbon - recycled from somewhere!, colored pencils - Prismacolor, jewel (on ring) and ink - Close To My Heart)

Button it up!

The {Stamps} of Life girls are having another little challenge today. . .buttons! I created this card using cute paper from Sassafras Lass, and the Quick2Borders set, plus the sentiment from Thanks2You. To create my flower (or is it a sunshine?) I stamped the borders on thin strips of cardstock, bent them in half and stuck some adhesive on. Then I overlapped them all, and stuck a BUTTON in the middle. (Remember, the button is the challenge!)

Please feel free to play along with us!
If you are playing along with The {Stamps} of Life stamps or digital images please upload to the gallery on the site –> HERE <— with the keyword TSOLD05. Please link to one of our blogs so we can see your stuff!

And now, go visit some of the other TSOL chickies and see what they've done:

Stephanie Barnard
Jeanne Streiff
Deb Felts

Vicki Garrett

Jennifer Buck

Joana Studer

Have a terrific day!! :)

a little sand and a little sun

Baby crying. . .must keep this short. (And he REALLY must learn to nap!)
Went to the beach yesterday. Me and the little guy stayed on the balcony, but the big boys had oodles of fun, and i was happy for my mega giant camera lens to capture them!
Did I ever share this card? It's one of my recent faves. Unity Stamps. My Minds Eye paper. Can't go wrong with that combo! K&Co stickers.
Heading to Target to buy flower seeds today. Wearing capris. The sun is shining! Spring must be coming. (Or maybe its already here based upon the pollen covering EVERYTHING.)

Time to pat the baby, shhh the baby, and tell him to go to sleep. And then I'll go do it again in 5 minutes.
Must perfect the 5 minute blog entries.
XOXO

a couple more EGG cards!

I promised you I had more oval shaped cards, and here they are!!! The special releases for March are available NOW at The {Stamps} of Life, so I can finally share a peek of these cards!! I used the new Quick2Border set to create the stripey border across each of these cards. (The pink egg also features Back2Basics, and the black and ivory card uses a sentiment from Tinyand2Cute.)

If you missed the tutorial on how I created my egg-shaped cards, you can find it right HERE!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a terrific day!

same stamps . .. different look!

These two cards were both created using The Stamps of Life Thanks2You set. As I just sat down to post these, and I really looked at them, I was struck with just HOW different a look can be achieved with these stamps!!! It's the same stem, but on this first card I added the little puffy flowers - and left it without, on the second card. And on the second card, I outlined everything with a white colored pencil. Two cards. . .same stamp set, totally different look. I love it! XOXO

(card goodies: Thanks So Much - paper, ink (Close To My Heart, ribbon - recycled from packaging. Thank You - patterned cardstock - Jillibean Soup, green cardstock, ink - Close To My Heart, ribbon - May Arts, button - Stampin Up)

CPS 157

Coloring. I love to color. But I don't own any fancy markers . . . .a set of 10 year old Tombows is it. But I have some really nice Prismacolor colored pencils from college, and some beautiful watercolor pencils (that I really should use more often!) I debated whether to even ATTEMPT coloring this, because most of the colored JustRite Stamper images I see are beautifully, amazingly colored with Copics. And I gasp, and sigh, and think "Oh, that looks AMAZING!" but unless they fall out of the sky like raindrops, I will never own a set of Copics . . .and with the way i LOVE color, having just a FEW Copics would just not be enough! So now that I have ranted and raved about coloring, I'll hush and say "JustRite Stampers is our sponsor at CPS this week, and here is my card!" They are always so generous with us, and I LOVE the new BIG stamps they have! This thing is gigantic! As you can see (or as you heard me rant about) I colored it with colored pencils, and for some reason decided to use my LEAST favorite color to work with. . . .purple. Why? I don't know, but at least it used up some of the big stash of PURPLE cardstock I have! I LOVE the way the flower turned out. The whole card overall, I must say, not my fave. . .but I like the flower stamp, and I am so appreciative to JustRite for sharing the goodies with us!

And now. . .off to church! Hopefully we can make it through, without coughing. The boys and I are still trying to recover from our colds! Spring. . . .where are you???? :)

XOXO

All Systems GO!

In my attempt to continue using up my paper stash, I focused on Cosmo Cricket Cogsmo paper this week. I fell in love INSTANTLY with that paper when it came out, and I've been using it. . .but it's time to finish up the pack. I just get bogged down looking at big packs of paper, even when I love them. I get tired of seeing it, and I feel like I lose the ability to be creative with it after a while. SO, here are three cards I made using the Cogsmo paper! It worked especially well with my StarvingArtistamps Doodlefactory space stamps. LOVE these!!!! (And my son does too!) They are such fun to paper-piece, and thats my FAVORITE thing to do!!!

(Card goodies: All Systems Go - rocket and sentiment stamp from CTMH/Happy Birthday - sentiment stamp from Cornish Heritage Farms/Out of This World - space stamps from StarvingArtistamps)

Oval shaped Easter Egg Card Tutorial

To create my card, I used an oval template. Believe it or not, I have NO diecutting system, no circle cutter, oval cutter, or any other fancy tool. Just a template. (This one happens to be from CTMH.) My oval is about 4x5.5, so it will fit in a standard invitation size envelope. To get started, I traced TWO matching ovals and cut them out. One will be the front, and one will be the back of the card.


On my Scor-Pal, (which, by the way is SUCH a great invention. I don't use it often, but every time I do, I think to myself "I should use this thing more often!") I scored TWO lines. One at the 5, and one at the .5

On one of those score-lines, use scissors or a paper trimmer to CUT the edge of your oval off. Fold the other one. (The flat side will be where your card rests on the table. The folded one is where we attach the two pieces together)

Apply adhesive to the fold, line up your two ovals and adhere them together. Line them up the best you can, but you can go back and trim from the card front, if they aren't quite perfect, once your newly formed card is closed.

This is what it should look like. From here on out, you're on your own to decorate away!

I said yesterday, there is definitely more than one way to do this. I'm not sure this is the BEST way, but it worked. If you come up with a different method, I would love to hear about it!!! And if you make an oval card, link it up! I wanna see it!!! :)

I have two more oval cards to share, but you'll have to wait a few more days until the stamps are released!!! :) Here's one more view of the card I shared yesterday, which shows the back a little bit better. I hope this all made sense. . . if you're confused, let me know, and I'm happy to help ya out!

Have a great day!

XOXO

too little too late, but still EGGstra cute

So I was feeling inspired by last week's challenge at the CARDS blog, to create a shaped card. I sat there looking at my oval template, and thought. . .hmmm, what can I make. Granted I didn't get it done, and photographed before the challenge was up . . . .but I have been going crazy making oval "egg" shaped cards this week, just in time for Easter!! (I've done three so far, some Eastery and some not!) I am working on a little tutorial, to show you how I put this together, but you'll have to give me a day or so to get it together. I'm sure there's more than one way to do this, and I'm not sure my way was the BEST way, but I'll show you what I did, nonetheless.

I am in LOVE with this Quite Contrary paper from My Mind's Eye. I've never met paper from MME that I didn't adore, so I was THRILLED when this came in my CARDS goodie box a few weeks ago!!!!

Okay, bear with me, and check back tomorrow, and I promise I'll show you how I did this, (or you can go figure it out on your own, and then come back and tell me how YOU did it!)
XOXO

flowery goodness from TSOL!

It's new release day at The {Stamps} of Life. I think this might be my favorite set so far! It's called thanks2you and you can see it HERE on the website. Beautiful flowery stems, and lots of GREAT "thanks" sentiments. (I'm a sucker for great sentiments!) One of the fabulous things about clear stamps, is the way you can bend them. If you look at the flowery images on the stamp set, you will see that I did some adjusting to make the stems go where I wanted them to. It's also so easy to overlap images when you can actually SEE what you're doing!!!! And you just can't beat using clear stamps for sentiments. It's so much faster, because you can SEEEEE if its straight or not. I don't even have to line it up on my acrylic block . . .I don't have to measure or stamp on scrap paper first - I can SEEE (really SEE) what I am doing!!! Love that!

On this card, I traced around my image with a white colored pencil. I tried it first with a white marker and it was tooo much. But I really like the way the colored pencil highlights came out.

Be sure to check out all the inspiration arriving in the gallery at The {Stamps} of Life! The design team will have more to share on the 6th, when we get to show you the special edition sets this month! (Oooh la la! Just a few more days to wait!)