Mommy & Me Class

What you get:

-8 cards (2 of each pictured above)

-2 boxes to keep them in

-That’s 2 gifts for $25!!!!

I'm so excited to introduce this class to you. I can't wait until June 20th!! This is a Mommy & Me class. It will be held on Saturday June 6th at 11:00 am. Come and spend a fun hour with your child making this fun collection of cards. Looking for a gift for your child’s teacher or preschool/ daycare worker? This class is a fun project for you and your child to make. Suitable for school aged children, although older toddlers could quite happily participate with ‘help’. Will you need child care for other children while you attend the class? Let’s talk – I’m sure we can work something out. Babies are always welcome.

You can register online here.

Can't wait to see you there!

Boy Birthday

This card was inspired by a card that I received at regionals. You can look here to find the original by Jennifer Picard. She used the In Colours but I decided to use Bold Brights instead. The wheel is from the Occasions Mini and the sentiment is from the Birthday's Count mini note kit. The train and cloud are stickers from my stash. I am definitely going to CASE this card properly once my new In Colours cardstock arrives!!!

Tuesday Tutorial #2

Welcome to Tuesday Tutorial. This week we are doing a 1 picture 12x12 layout.

It all started with this gorgeous picture of my daughter. I feel it captures the true spirit of my daughter and her love of smiles and laughter. The colours of her eyes, her shirt and the grey pillow were straight from the Walk In The Park DSP from the current occasions mini. Sometimes I find that when I look at a picture I can immediately see something falling into place. So when I first saw this picture of her, I knew that I already had my colours. With colour taken care of, I needed to figure out a good layout. The photo was already blown up as large as I wanted. Any bigger and the picture would be blurry. I also knew that I wanted to use a 12x12 layout as my daughter`s scrapbook is 12x12 and I want this picture in her scrapbook.

Mounting the picture carefully is important in order to have the picture be the focal point despite it`s smaller size. Above are 2 examples of how I played with the colours to matte the picture. The one on the bottom was the one I chose.

Next I decided to try and find a large title for the page. I was looking through my rub on collection and found these two titles which not only went well with the colours I chose, but also fit the spirit of the page perfectly. I layered the coloured DSP with the grey floral DSP, but felt that the border was not defined enough. So I took some white cardstock and punched it with the Eyelet Border punch.

I tried out a few layouts, including this one below and eventually decided that both words needed to be at the top.

After placing the title and the photos, I used my rub-ons and coordinating stamps to add the date and the butterflies. One thing I really love about Stampin`Up! stuff is that everything coordinates with something else. It makes the planning stages MUCH easier.

Mother`s Day CASE

This card was cased from the card below. It was given to me by my MIL. (she has amazingly great taste) As soon as I saw this card I immediately knew I wanted to copy it. The stampin up .colours just jumped right out at me. Paper: Sage Shadow, Whisper White. Ink: Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Kiwi Kiss, Rose Red. Stamps: Petal Pizzaz, Itty Bitty Buds, Trendy Trees, Season of Friendship. Accessories: Filigree Brads, Stampin`dimensionals, Word Window punch.

This card was created by caroline gardner. You can find her website at http://www.carolinegardner.com/

Fabulous Friend

This card was created by my upline and friend Angela McKay. You can find a link to her blog on my sidebar. She sent me this lovely card. It features the Matthattan Flowers Impressions Sizzix Die for the Big Shot. I believe that Angela used the brayer technique and used the debossed side of the impression. (BTW embossed would have the ridges of the flowers stand up, and the debossed side means the ridges of the flowers are `valleys`.) Colours are Summer Sun, Kiwi Kiss, Rose Red and Tangerine Tango. Stamps: Oval All. Accessories: Large Oval and Scallop Oval punches.

Sunshine Garden Card Class

Here's a sneak peek of my new Sunshine Garden Card class. I will be having this class on June 10th at 7pm. Please RSVP by June 1st so I can order the supplies. This class includes 8 cards and envelopes stored in this cute little Bag-a-lope. I got the idea for the bag from my upline Angela. Check out her blog on my sidebar. Isn't it cute? The cards will have interchangeable sentiments to add to their versatility. I am making one of these for my MIL. Her birthday is coming up soon.

Swaps, Swaps, Swaps

More Swaps I received from Regionals in Seattle.

This one was made by my upline Angela. You can find her blog linked on my sidebar. Stamps: Fifth Avenue Floral. Cardstock: Kiwi Kiss, Urban Garden DSP, Basic Grey. Ink: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Basic Gray, Accessories: Vintage Brads, Dimensionals, Sponge Daubers, Texturz Plates, Beads Duo, Crystal Effects, Aqua Painters.

This cute card was made by Karen Harper from Snohomish, WA. Stamps: Crazy for Cupcakes, Cupcake Wheel. Ink: Basic Black, Pretty In Pink. Cardstock: Prety in Pink, Basic Black, Certainly Celery, Whisper White. Accessories: Big Shot, Scallop Circle Die, Scallop Oval Punch, Large Oval Punch, 3/4 inch circle punch, 1 inch circle punch, eyelet border punch, Stampin' Write Markers, glitter, two way glue pen, paper piercer and mat.

This one was not labeled so I can't give credit to the creator.

This card was made by Linda Heller.

Interested in a Class?

These two cards are part of a class I'm offering. This is a great gift for the special women in your life. I designed this as a gift for my Mother-In-Law's upcoming birhtday. It's 8 cards in a cute carying case. You'll get a better glimpse of the cards over the next few weeks. The sentiments are completely interchangable which makes this class an amazing gift. Stamps: Oval All. Ink: Chocolate Chip. Paper: Certainly Celery, Whisper White, So Saffron, DSP from Sale-a-bration. Accessories: Rhinestone brads and stickers from Michael's. Flower Stickers from Sunshine Garden Simply Scrappin'.

Tuesday Tutorial

Many of you have told me that you are very interested in my scrapbook layouts. As I've been working really hard scrapbooking my recent vacation photos I had a bit of a revelation. I've decided to start a new chapter here and mix my passions of papercrafting and teaching. So welcome to my new Tuesday Tutorial. In this tutorial, I will share with you some of my techniques for designing scrapbook layouts.

This is a card that was one of the Make-n-take's at Seattle Regionals. I have already posted an 8x8 scrapbook layout that I created which was inspired by this card. I redid this layout as a 12x12 size. You see the layout below.

I love this photo of my family. Almost everyone is looking at the camera and the colours are really beautiful. It's important to find a good photo to start with. For me, the colours are the most important part of a layout. I find myself very attracted to certain colour combinations. Usually I love very bright colours. I have to admit that this layout was a real stretch for me. And then I noticed that the flowers in the stamp were very similar to the colours in my sister-in-law's dress. I pulled out the colours from the stamp to mount the photo on. This layout was very easy and didn't take a lot of planning. Here's where the tutorial begins...

Step One - COLOUR
What do you do when all your pictures are NOT perfect? When we posed for this picture, we also took several other shots. Of course, my children did not cooperate and we wound up with several uninspiring pictures. I wanted to make this a 2 page layout, so naturally I decided to use the same colours as the layout above. After sorting through my pictures from that evening, These are the ones I decided to use. They are unimpressive pictures by themselves, but as a group they have the same colour palette and I am really drawn to the lighting with the bright desert sun so low in the sky.

STEP 2 LAYOUT
So after deciding on the pictures I needed to figure out how to lay them out on the page. I often use scrap maps for inspiration. For this page I went straight to the goddess of scrap maps herself - Becky Fleck. I went to her website http://www.pagemaps.com/ This is an excellent place to start. This is the layout I decided to use.


I like to treat scrap maps as a place to start, and as you will see, the final layout doesn't really look like this map very much. I was drawn to this map because of the thick border near the bottom of the page. I knew I would be using the thick grosgrain ribbon like I did in the previous page. I was also drawn to the layout with one larger photo and a few smaller ones.
I decided to highlight the photo of my son, so I blew it up. After I played around with the photos for a while, I came up with what I thought was a balanced layout. Next I mounted the photos on cardstock which not only matched the first page, but also drew from the colours in the pictures themselves. The Old Olive worked best for the photos of my daughter, but my son's turquoise shirt clashed a bit, so I mounted it on Riding Hood Red. I also decided to include some journaling so I needed to leave some space for that.

So here it is, the final layout. Remember that none of these photos are great photos by themselves, but in a double layout like below, I was able to pull them together to make a layout that is interesting, and representative of our holiday.

Mojo #86

Here's my attempt at this week's Mojo Monday sketch. I bought these clear stamps at Michael's a few weeks back. I'm not really sure why I bought them as I'm not a big fan of the cupcake craze out there. But needless to say, I bought these ones and took them home and played. I tried aqua painters and ink, blender pens and ink, and finally watercolour pencils and aqua painters. These cupcakes are all a variety of all techniques. I apologize for the poor quality photo, but I'm rushing to get this post up as I'm trying to get it in before my new Tuesday Tutorial post comes up in the morning. Check back to see what I'm doing there. Stamps: Sudio G. Ink: Watercolour pencils, Paper: Riding Hood Red, Chocolate Chip, watercolour paper, DSP from K&Co. Accessories: Scallop edge punch and stampin dimensionals.

An example from Regionals

Here's an cute and simple card that was a make-n-take from Regionals. Cardstock: Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White. Ink: Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, Blue Bayou. Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, Library Clips, Bashful Blue Grosgrain. Stamps: Soft Summer.

Buggy Birthday

This card was made for a coworker. She was looking for a birthday card for her son. I pulled all the colours from the DSP. Paper: Kraft, Always Artichoke, Whisper White, Manchester DSP. Ink: Mellow Moss, Old Olive, Always Artichoke, Close to Cocoa, Creamy Caramel, Not Quite Navy, Blue Bayou. Stamps from Gel-a-tins.

Good Luck

Again, this is another card made from the "Walk in the Park" DSP. I really liked this paper, but for the longest time I could NOT find a way to make it into a card that I liked. This card was inspired from several on Splitcoast. Stamps: Sincere Salutations. Ink: Basic Grey. Paper: Cameo Coral, Basic Grey, Whisper White, So Saffron DSP from Sale-a-bration, Walk In The Park DSP. Accessories: Summer Love Rub-ons, Large Oval Punch, Scallop Oval Nestabilities

Swaps from Regionals

These are a selection of my favourite swaps that I received at Seattle Regionals. Of course, that means that these are all Stampin' UP! cards.

This one was my absolute favourite. Maybe it's because my son's 3rd birthday was a few weeks ago, or that he has a special spot for trains. This simple, yet very effexctive card was made by Jennifer Picard from Langley. The colours are the current In Colours and the stamps are from the current Occasions Mini.

This card was made by my level 2 upline Kari Metzger. You can find the link to her blog on my sidebar.

This is another card made by Jennifer Picard.

This card was made by Barb Calbick. She used Lovely as a Tree and All Oval. Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, Tea Party DSP, So Saffron, Very Vanilla. Ink: Chocolate Chip, So Saffron. Accessories: Dimensionals, Scallop Oval Punch, Write Grosgrain dyed with Close to Cocoa Ink.

My Gorgeous Little Boy

I know that several of you are waiting for more of my scrapbook layouts, and I've been busy in my scrap room. Check here for upcoming posts of these new pages! Here's another layout I made for a challenge at a local scrapbooking store. I showed you one a month ago that I made for the same challenge. You can find the link here. The requred elements were: one baby photo, 2 patterned papers, hand-stitching, ribon, buttons, and journaling. I used my Sale-a-bration DSP, my favourite baby picture of my son (at 2 weeks old), and the rub ons from "It's a Loop Thing" I tried to copy the handwriting from the rub-ons and wrote all the journaling myself. All the flowers are rub ons on cardstock. I sponged the edges for some dimension and then popped them up Cardstock: Bashful Blue, Kraft, Whisper White, Certainly Celery, So Saffron. Paper: Sale-A-Bration DSP Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, Scallop Circle and 1 1/4 inch & 1 3/8 inch circle punches, Certainly Celery Ribbon from Sale-a-bration, Button bouquet, Chocolate Chip Stampin' Write Marker.

More and More Mojo #85

Both of these cards were designed for the Mojo Monday Sketch this week. Look at the bottom of this post for the sketch. Anyway, I started with the retired Porcealin Prints DSP and went from there. Stamps: Live Your Dream, Paper: Porcelain Prints retired DSP, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, Very Vanilla, River Rock. Ink: Certainly Celery, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, Old Olive, Not Quite Navy. Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, Stampin Dimensionals, Stampin' Write Markers, Ribbon from Mike's

tools, tools, tools,

Here's another card I made for the man in my life. I'm not sure when I will give this to him, but not only does he love earth tones, but he is an eager hobby handyman. Colours: Blue Bayou, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, Kraft, Bordering Blue. Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, Rectangle Nestabilities, Silver Brads

Itty Bitty Baby girl

I sat down today with my patterns pack from the hostess rewards and realized that I had some left from the last patterns pack. So I pulled out the prety in pink DSP and decided to make baby girl cards. It took me a long time to come up with the third colour. I went through my box of stickers and then I pulled the third colour from what I came up with. Stamps: Paper: Prety in Pink DSP, Whisper White and Apricot Appeal or Kiwi Kiss, Ink: Brown Staz-on and Pretty in Pink stampin' write, Accessories: 1 1/4 inch and 1 3/8 inch circle punches, scallop circle punch, stampin' dimensionals.

Scallop Thanks

This is another card using my Winner's box of cards and envies. At first I thought all these cards were horribly obnoxious and too bright. But when I brought a few to work this week, people were extremely complimentary on the bright colours. I'm going to have to remember this if I want to sell cards at craft fairs. Stamps: Say It With Scallops. Ink: Tempting Turquoise. Paper: Tempting Turquoise, Pixie Pink and DSP from Winners pack. Accessories: Top Note Die & Big Shot, Square Scallop Punch, Flower from dollar store.

Birthday Sunshine

These are some more cards I made using the Sunshine Garden Simply Scrappin Kit. These cards are Case'd from some cards made by Andrea Walford. Stamps: Sincere Salutations, Birthdays Count. Paper: Blue Bayou, Certainly Celery, So Saffron, Old Olive, Whisper White. Accessories: Sunshine Garden Simply Scrappin', Rhinestone Brads Scallop Oval Punch, Small Oval Punch Ink: Old Olive

Crazy Variations

I can't believe how many variations of cards you can make with the Summer Love Rub-ons and the Walk In The Park DSP from the Occasions Mini. I love, love, love this paper. Stamps: Sincere Salutations. Ink: Black Staz-on. Paper: Cameo Coral, Basic Grey, Baja Breeze, Walk In The Park DSP. Accessories: Summer Love Rub-on's. Large Oval Punch, Scallop Oval Nestabilities, So Saffron Ribbon from Sale-a-bration bundle.

Such a Simple Card

This is another card created from my "Winners" pack of cards and envelopes. I took the DSP and cut it into 2/3 and 1/3 pieces. Then I placed them on the turquoise cardstock and added another stip of turquoise and layered it with ribbon. Stamps: Birthdays Count. Ink: Chocolate Chip. Paper: Tempting Turquoise and DSP from Winners. Accessories: 1/4 inch Whisper White Grosgrain Ribbon