Ladystamper

My parents are in town today for the Shuttle launch. They get to actually GO to the launch and see it up close and personal. How cool is that? My DH got them tickets on "the bus" for their 40th wedding anniversary. My parents are amazing. I am so proud of them for sticking together all this time. They got married very young and almost by accident. They have raised one spectacular daughter and three other kids. I'm kidding! We all turned out very nicely I think. I am often reminded of the words of wisdom my parents gave me as I grew up. I'm a lot like my dad in that I am a worker and not a perfectionist. We can do anything, just not perfectly and we are okay with that. I am a lot like my mom in that I laugh a lot but take everything personally. They have both helped make me who I am today and by that, also helped shaped my children as well. What an impact our lives have on others. Makes me think....! Because I am going to be spending every moment I can with my parents...

This weeks challenge was 'animals.' Can you believe I don't have any animal stamps? I am amazed! I guess it is time to go shopping! Where is my catalog? LOL Anyway, I decided to be good and make do with what I have. This page is one I have been working on for a while. I finished it up today in honor of the animal challenge. There aren't any animal image on there, but there is an actualy animal in the picture so I hope it counts! Supplies: Alpabet- Stampin' Up! Taffy Cardstock: Stampin' Up! Ballet blue Patterned paper: Rusty pickle (I hope...) Buttons from Walmart, ribbon from Rusty Pickle, Ghost flowers from Heidi Swapp I also wanted to show another version of the chipboard wall hanging I am offering at my all day stamp and crop day on June 21st. I will have all kinds of paper and stamps for you to make it your own. This is a picture from a trip to upstate New York a few years ago. We are at the Sacred Grove in Palmyra. It was beautiful! If you haven't regis...

While blog surfing last week, I came across this adorable little project. I just had to give it a try! I , like many of you, have a truck load of coasters in my craft closet waiting to be used. Why did we buy those again? Anyway, this little wallet photo holder is made from coasters! Okay, I'm a dork, but I never even though of cutting them smaller. How dumb am I? Beate, on the other hand is nothing close to dumb and very close to Stampin godhood. You can see her tutorial on how to make this little jewel here since she did all the hard work, I'll just tell you what paper I used. ;o) My base is Brocade blue and the designer paper is from Summer Picnic. I colored my chipboard tag with a Rose red craft pad and added some detail with my ever present white gel pen. The "memories" is from the Urban West rub on collection and the ribbon is the new green twill tape in the occassions mini. This was a lot of fun to put together! I enjoyed it so much I plan on having this be o...

I was inspired by a card in Stamp it! this month. Janice Tinklenberg made a stunning card using the Fabulous set and Paisley background stamp. I have seen this technique before, it is similar to Joseph's coat but without the embossing. First you stamp your background stamp onto glossy paper and then stamp a bold image over that with versamark ink. Let the Vmark dry for a minute and then brayer a coordinating color over the entire card. (In Joseph's coat you emboss the vmark with clear powder) The Vmark will resist the brayered ink and the design from the background stamp will show through. I wanted to try it just a bit differently....no surprise there, so after stamping my background I used a line image instead of a bold image. This stamp is a hostess stamp this year called In the Garden. You have seen me show other projects with it. I love it! I planned on coloring in the flower with the Versamarker so I stamped the flower with black Staz On in the hopes that it would not s...

In the spirit of Memorial Day weekend, I did another red, white and blue project. I also wanted to do a project that showed off some of the great chipboard elements Stampin' Up! has on sale this month. I love working with chipboard! It is so easy to use and versatile. You can do a lot with it, either as an element on something or as a stand alone project. I had these pictures of my E left over from another layout I did a while ago. They didn't fit on the layout but were just too cute to throw out. they all started out as 4 x 6 prints, but I cut down the two smaller ones to focus in on his royal cuteness. Because I was going to use chipboard on this page, I made my card base a bit stronger by layering three full pieces of papers. One Taken with teal piece of cardstock, one vanilla piece of cardstock, and a sheet of Ginger blossom designer paper. Normally, I would cut out the middles of the layers to use elsewhere. I rubbed the edges of the vanilla and teal with chocolate chip...

This week our challenge was to use Red, White and blue. I am such a dork, it wasn't until I was driving around this afternoon that I realized it was Memorial Weekend. That might be the reason for the color choices. What can I say, kids keep me young and clueless! I wanted to do something simple this week, and to use all Stampin' Up! supplies. I started with a card base in Bordering Blue. I cut my card down a bit so I could layer it onto a rectangle of Purely Pomegranate. On my bordering blue card I stamped the print perfect background with versamark on just over half the card. I cut out a tag from whisper white cardstock and stamped Birthday... in basic black. I used a sponge and ink from my Bordering blue stamp pad to shade the edges of the card. I layered the tag onto the base and then did some faux sewing with my paper piercing tools. To make my chipboard accent I used an on board star from SU, covered it with Tombow liquid adhesive and stuck it to a piece of Pomegranate c...

Okay, no... this isn't a tutorial on babies. Although, with six of my own I might have a bit to share. ;o) My bestest friend from High School just had her first baby! I'm so excited for her! She was the one 'back in the day' that always wanted to be a mom. The rest of us were not that excited and I think I even said I wasn't going to do it at all. As is often the case, teenagers haven't a clue. Two of us ended up getting married fairly young and popping out the kids. My other friend just couldn't seem to find Mr Right until about two years ago. I know she has been dying to have a baby and now she has one! (can you tell I am in my writing mode....sorry about that) ANYWAY! I wanted to make her a super cute baby congrats card. As per usual, I just start cutting and stamping and not worrying or even thinking about the size my card is going to be until I am mostly done. What I end up with a lot of times is a cute card that doesn't fit any envelope known to ma...

I missed the bloggers challenge last Friday due to a crazy week and quirky internet. This week, I made it! The challenge this week was to use the Fathers day card on pg 21 of the Stampin' Up! occassions mini as our inspiration. You can see the inspiration card here . I liked the torn edge and layering on this card. I decided to do a 5-1/2" square card instead, simply because that is the size I have been liking lately. I also decide to increase the "challenge" this week by using colors I haven't used in a while. Sage Shadow was a favorite color of mine years and years ago, but I don't use it much these days so I made my card base from that and paired it with Apricot Appeal . I added a bit of Blue Bayou designer paper for an accent (and because I had that color ribbon!) I used the Ronald McDonald house set from this years SU catalog, Just Like You for all my stamping. The curvy lines and flower in the background are stamped with Sage. On my white cardstock on t...

Monochromatic is one of my favorite techniques. It is simple, but you can get great results. When planning for my stamp a stack tomorrow night, I decided to do a purple card because, well, purple is my favorite color! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I started with a white card base. I stamped the swirled from Baroque Motifs with Versamark on a piece of Pale Plum cardstock so they were kind of coming up from the bottom of the card. I used Perfect Plum to stamp the butterflies from Kind thoughts and the words at the bottom. I love how these colors go together. With my 2-way glue pen, I 'colored' in the butterflies and then added dazzling diamonds glitter to them. You know how I feel about butterflies and glitter.....Anyway, that is all there is to this card. Very simple and sweet.

Chipboard is on sale at Stampin' Up! this month. I love this stuff! It is SO easy to use and you can make such fun stuff with it. I am planning a big all day stampin crop on June 21st and this is one of the projects you can pick to do. It is a large on-board book basic chipboard, decorated to make a photo wall hanging. I won't tell you all the details now, but...sign up for my crop if you are in the area! It is going to be loads of fun. The crop will be from 11am til 9pm at the Fawn Lake clubhouse in Mims. The cost is $30 per person and includes a Great goodie bag, prizes, food, fun, two fun projects and loads more! There will also be three other projects that are an extra charge. If you are interested in all the details, email me!

I didn't post much last week, sorry about that. Life was just crazy. We had teacher appreciation day/week at the school and my hubby was gone for part of the week. Add those two things to the constant motion of my life and well, blogging fell by the wayside. I did have a nice mother's day. Sarah and I spent a few hours on Saturday putting in a flower bed in the front yard. It looks awesome! We planted pink hydrangeas, white impatias, a pink bogunvilla (yes, I know I can't spell that..), and a couple other bushes I can't remember the name of but they had greenish red leaves. I hope it all grows and fills in to resemble the picture in my head! I'll be sure to share if it does. I spent some time this morning scrapping while I was keeping the laundry and bread going. When I reorganized my photos a couple weeks ago I made of point of putting little stick up tabs on groups of pictures that I needed to scrap. This is one of those groups. They are from 2000 ( I think!) , ba...

Yesterday was National scrapbooking day. I didn't realize it was until I read an email from one of my scrapping groups. That wasn't until after piano lessons, a soccer game, Benny's birthday party (he's 7!) a couple runs to the store, a couple deliveries of children to friends houses and a nap. So, basically, I didn't spend my day scrapping. I would have liked to go to a crop or something but...it just didn't happen. I did manage to put together this layout before the end of the day. I'm not sure if I love it, it isn't really my style these days, but I wanted to use the die cut flowers from Stampin' Up! and I thought the pictures from leadership last January would be perfect! My pages started out as natural white cardstock. I laid mounted my pictures in Pumpkin pie and bashful blue. The top left picture is matted with both colors. By each large picture of a single person there is a smaller picture with them and someone else in it. That is the strateg...

It's that time again, time for the Friday Bloggers challenge! This week our theme was Graduation. I still had my brand new Taffy alphabet out on my desk so I decided to use that. I just love these letters! I started with a piece of textured Wasabi cardstock from Stampin' Up! It was already cut to 6-1/2 (scrap pile!) so I left it that wide. I scored it at 3" and then 6" and then cut it at 8". I folded on the the score lines and adhered the last 2 inch piece down on the sides to form a pocket on the inside of the card. I used mini brads on the sides to make sure it stayed together. Sticky strip would have been a good choice for this but I was using Dotto. On the front of the card, I layered a piece of patterned paper from a past Simply scrappin kit. The stripes are one side of the paper and the narrow blue border around conGRADs is the other side. I stamped com s in blue bayou and GRAD in pumpkin pie. I thought it was a clever way to say congrats grad. I'm su...