Ladystamper

I hope you all forgive me for being a bit late with my Friday Bloggers Challenge. The holidays have kept me busy! I haven't had nearly enough time for stamping. On the flip side, I have had loads of family time! I am really enjoying it. Christmas was this last week and we had my father in law in town. He is always lots of fun. Then, I had my anniversary this weekend as well! 18 years. Can you believe it? With the number of kids I have...yes, you can believe it! Anyway! We had a bloggers challenge to make something based on something we saw that inspired us. We had this challenge a month or so ago as well, and I knew right off what I was going to do. Of course, I never did get it done that week so I was excited to have another chance. This is a beach towel that found residence in our home a while ago. (I swear, we collect more towels, socks, and random shoes that should be allowed!) The colors were just so vivid and bright and, frankly, colors I would never put together, that I wa

I live far away from most of my family. Ever since I got married, we have lived in a 'far away' place. We lived close for a couple short periods of time during transitions, but for the most part, we have been off on our own. It wasn't so bad at first. We were just starting out and building our own family and it was nice to be able to do things our own way...if you know what I mean. As the kids got older, and the number of children grew, it became harder and harder to go 'home' to visit. Now, we rarely go home. It is sad. I do good all year, but at Christmas time, and especially this year for some reason, it is hard. I miss being able to gather together with the family for the holidays. I am so grateful for all the friends I have made that have become my surrogate family. Stamping has been a great way for me to meet lots of wonderful people! I am so blessed by great friends. They make this season a bit easier. SO! tonight I am sharing a fun card I made a few days ago

I got a call this morning from a friend asking if I would make her a special Christmas card for her daughter's teacher. I felt so honored! I was inspired by a project in the January Stampin' Success. That is a magazine that comes to every SU demonstrator each month. It is full of business tips, stamping ideas, organization tips, upcoming specials and just all around good stuff! I tweeked it a bit to fit my taste and the Christmas theme. I think it turned out great. I purchased the Illuminations set right after the Fall catalog came out and have not used it much. I love how elegant it looks here. All the images are stamped with Chocolate chip. I used the blender pens to pick up ink from mellow moss, burgundy and banana pads to color them in. I cut out the J, the flowers and the leaves and adhered them with Dotto. The pearls are from the Pretties kit and stuck on with mini glue dots. The card base is chocolate chip layered with a sheet of Apple Cider designer paper, river rock, a

One of the blogger challenges was to do a sympathy card. I, thankfully, have not had much need for these cards. I'm sure I will in the future. You know...One of those "circle of life things" so I was happy to make one. I used the M3 to color the image on the stamp and then stamped it onto whisper white cardstock. I colored in the image by dipping my blender pen into my pastels and coloring with that. It gives it a faux watercolor effect. I used a sponge dauber to rub some bashful blue chalk around the image to soften it up. I roughed up the edges of the white paper wtih my cutter kit and layered it onto a card base of kraft. The patterned paper is from catalogs past. I have been making lots of these little mini albums lately. For the cover, I use left over chip board pieces from packages of designer paper or other packaging. I cover them with paper and then use my bind-it-all to punch holes and put the spiral binding on. This one has stamped pages as well. They a

I did not fall off the face of the earth, more like the earth fell on my face. LOL Just kidding. I did run into my front door with my face and got a nice big bruise. I will not force you to look at the pictures of that. Let's just say, I am not known for my gracefulness and everyone can tell just by looking at my face. I have been trying to catch up on loads of stuff before the kiddos are out of school for Christmas break. You couldn't tell by looking at my house tho! I have done some stamping. I did these for my bloggers challenge group but did not get them out on the days I was supposed to. I will share them anyway and hope the other blogger challenge players will forgive me for my tardiness. This first card is one I made to show versatility in stamps. I made another one but didn't manage to get a picture of it. I love this set! Lovely as a Tree is a perfect stamp set for every occasion. If I was going to have one stamp set, I think it might be this one. It is incredibly