Getting a lot of stamping done lately.....

But no cards made!  I've been fighting a bad cold all week, so my mojo has been a little sapped.  I've been working on cataloging my clear stamps, and here's the progress I've made:

I'm gradually working through my Christmas stamps, and heaven knows I have a LOT of them!  I think just my Christmas stamps alone will fill an entire Stufftainer! 

Cheers!

HEART to HEART Card Drive

Cammie has organized a HUGE card drive on her blog to honor the caregivers of Alzheimer's patients.  While Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, many times we forget just how much it affects the families and caregivers of these patients.  In honor of her grandmother, she reached out to several papercrafting companies to sponser this tremendous card drive.  To get as many people as possible to participate, the sponsors put together an ENORMOUS Blog Candy Giveaway; an estimated $1000 in products!  Not to mention all the beautiful hand stamped cards individuals have put together for this gift pack, those are priceless!

Blog candy or not, this is a great cause and inspired me to make this card:

I actually cased this card from The Ink Trap.  I've been drooling over her blog lately and just love her cards and her coloring!!  This little miss is Fall Willow from Whiff of Joy, and the sentiment stamp is from Verve.  I definately stepped out of my normal card making routine for this one, but I'm pretty pleased with the results!

Go visit Cammie at her blog and see all the details of the card drive.  She even has an address you can send cards to if you don't know someone personally who takes care of an Alzheimer's patient.  This is a great cause to contribute to, so time to get inky!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

My latest organization project

Here's what I've been working on lately, organizing and cataloging my acrylic stamps!  If you remember from this post, I was thinking about redoing the way I store my clear stamps.  A friend of mine mentioned that she uses Stufftainers from Stampendous to store her clear stamps.  I was also eyeballing this post over at Triple The Scraps where she uses a rolodex as a quick reference for her stamps!  I figured that it would be easiest to do both of these at the same time:

Here's the Stufftainer I picked up to give this a try.  I took a few sheets of heavy weight cardstock to the local office supply store to get them laminated.  It came to $1.10 per sheet, which is definately cheaper than buying a laminating machine just for this one project!  I would definately recommend trimming the papers before getting them laminated, that way you have a little bit of wiggle room since the Stufftainer holds just over an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.  You don't want to trim the laminate all the way to the edge of the paper because it will peel.

I cut a pile of cards at 2 5/8" x 4" out of white cardstock, since this is the standard size for a rotating Rolodex.  I stamped one image per card for each stamp set, and then arranged the clear stamps on the laminated sheets after I cleaned them off.  If the stamps are fairly small, I stamped two on a single card.  Here's a close-up of the cards:

In the upper left corner I'm writing in CL for clear stamps, WM for wood mounted, and UM for unmounted rubber.  The upper right corner is where the stamp is located, in this case the stamp is in Box 1, Sheet 1.  The bottom left corner has the manufacturer and part number, and the bottom right has the name of the stamp set.  I can't take credit for this stroke of genius, this is all Patter's idea at Triple The Scraps!  I definately recommend going to her blog and checking out some of the organization posts; it's very inspiring!

I will, however, take credit for THIS little glimmer of brilliance!  Use your ticket punch or circle punch to cut off either a corner of the laminated sheet or a "scoop" out of the top center, this way you can grab the sheets while they're in the Stufftainer!  Otherwise it's a very tight fit and takes a little bit of juggling to get the sheets out!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Fall is here!

It looks like Fall is officially here, we had our first frost this weekend!

Time to break out the snuggly sweaters and the soup recipes, wahoo!!  Unfortunately, this also means that I woke up with the beginnings of a cold this morning... not so much with the wahoo. :(  Hopefully I'll get some stamping in this afternoon!

Cheers!

Bling-y Birthday Card

Wow!!  I gotta get up at 5 a.m. more often, my Mojo was in full swing this morning!

This little chickie is Friday from The Greeting Farm's Creeper Crew.  I just LOVE this stamp!  Not sure why this is the first time I've inked it up!  The Bling Fairy had a birthday this week, and since I was having a Mojo-slump I had a hard time getting inspired to put together a really awesome card for her.  Having downed a half a pot of coffee by 6:30 a.m. certainly was inspiring!!

I stamped her in VersaFine Onyx and used my Prismas and OMS to color her in.  I used a glitter pen on her belt, and a silver ink pen on her pants/shoes, necklace, and barette.  I added some Crystal Lacquer to her barette and necklace, and the niftiest thing happened when I did that!  I used my paper piercer to get the crystal lacquer into all the corners on her barette, and when I did that some of the silver ink actually LIFTED UP and mixed with the crystal lacquer!!  It looks like there's a little silver swirl in the barette, very cool!!  I did wait until the ink was good and dry before I added the crystal lacquer, but I think next time I'll add it when the ink's wet so I can try to reproduce the swirl!

I also used my two new favorite tools on this card: my brand new, super sweet, awesomely nifty iRock, and a silver leafing pen!  Just a note on the leafing pen: go to the Hardware store to buy it, since at the Craft stores it's about $4 MORE for the same stinkin pen!!  I have a ton of chipboard that is bare, not the white coated stuff that you can ink up easily, and the bare stuff took the leafing pen beautifully!  I did two coats on this for a little added shine, but it could easily have done with just a single coat.  The single coat gives it more of an antique feel, where two coats has a lot more shine.  The sentiment is from my favorite go-to set, Mint Motif's Very Square Sentiments.  I topped it off with some Prima Flowers and a little iRock bling, and here ya go!  I actually love this card and may have to make another for myself!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Fall Apples

*Sigh*

I'm still not thrilled with this card.

I reworked this a few times, and this is the best version I came up with.  I think this is actually the FOURTH incarnation of this card!  I still think the only thing I'm really happy with is how the basket of apples turned out!  I do love this little tomboy stamp from the Greeting Farm's Hope & Grace set, but I'm not sure if she's Hope or Grace!  I added a little more Crystal Lacquer on the heart on her overalls, and used a pattern I've used before, but I'm officially calling this card Done!!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

The Bling Fairy came!!

I had a visit from the Bling Fairy today, and look at all the sparkly goodness she brought me!!

I'm not really sure what I did to fall in the Bling Fairy's good graces, but I can't wait to play!

Cheers!

No Mojo

So I'm not really sure where my mojo went tonight, I just can't seem to get this card to come together.

I picked up this stamp and paper recently, and had grand schemes to make a FABULOUS card!!  This is as far as I got.... I think I'm gonna look at this again in the morning, because at this point the only thing I like about what I've come up with is the crystal laquer on the apples!  Yep, I'm goin to bed!

Cheers!

A little more Funkiness from the garden

This is what happens when you leave your carrots unsupervised:

Musta been cold in the ground!

Cheers!

Flirty Anya Birthday

Here's another card for my MIL's birthday:

I inked up Flirty Anya for the first time on this one, and had fun playing in my pink scraps to put this together!  I'm not much of a Pink fan, but my MIL is so this was a good excuse to use up a little of it!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Apple Birthday Card

Here is a card I put together for my MIL's Birthday for a family member.  Her only request was Red and she liked this little girl!

The paper is ALL scraps from my Tower, and the two patterned papers are actually two sides of the same sheet.  The paper is Crate Paper, but I'm not sure which line it's from.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Christmas Cards!

I finished about half the Christmas Cards I started SEVERAL months ago while I was away this past weekend.  Remember these?  I was working on them on the plane in July!

I finally got the rest of the pieces inked and assembled for 20 of the cards over the weekend, then added the stamped panel to the fronts.  It was about 180 pieces that I inked on Saturday, so I think it's gonna be a while before I ink anything else!  It's been rainy and icky outside all day today, not a single sumbeam to be seen to take a good picture.  Now I just need to decide if this needs a sentiment on the front....

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Iris Sympathy Card

My good friend Suzie surprised me this weekend with a sympathy stamp set she picked up for me on her last road trip!  As thrilled as I as to get it, it was followed by getting some bad news about another friend of mine who had recently lost her father.

Here's the inside, the other half of the stamp set:

The stamp set is from Penny Black and I bought it specifically to use with my rediculous stash of Flower Soft, and this is the first time I've use the set!  I've had it for at least six months, and I pull it out and ooh and aah over it, but have not yet managed to ink it up!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Thankful Tuesday

Here is a card I made for the No More Drama Ladies over at Splitcoast!

This is the first "official" card swap we've done, so I really wanted to pull out all the stops!  I finally inked up Tuesday and had a blast trying different color combinations on her.  I had one that was purple and lime green, but it just didn't look right with this paper.  The paper is out of the Bridgeport paper stack by SEI, and all the matting scraps are from my Tower.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Stamping Weekend is Here!

Well, we made it safe and sound to our Fabulous Weekend Destination!  Finally managed to get things unpacked onto my table...

Now where did I pack my mojo??

Cheers!

Pre-Trip Packing!

Tomorrow I'm headed to a friends house for the weekend.  I started getting things together to pack up tomorrow and here's what I have together so far:

You don't think it's too much, do ya? ;)

The sad part, I haven't even packed any paper yet!!

Cheers!

More Cheer!

I made a few more of the Christmas Cards today to go in with the catalogs to go in the mail today.

I changed the position of the present since I didn't want to cover the pretty swirls on the tree.  I wanted to do the bow on the package in some gold embossing powder, but can you believe I actually don't own ANY gold powder?!?  How on earth did THAT happen?!?

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

An Early Bit of Holiday Cheer

I'm running a liiiiittle behind on sending out my August Card Swap cards, and I wanted to include these in the envelopes when I mailed out the new CTMH Catalogs!

The patterned paper and stamps are out of the new catalog, and the dark green mats are actually a velvet paper out of my Tower-o-Scraps.  I used a pattern from Wishes from CTMH for the card design.  The ribbon is also from CTMH, and is much prettier in person!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Sea Stained Glass

I decided to try something a little different to ink up the last two stamps in this set.  I saw the Try A New Technique challenge for last week over at Splitcoast and decided to give it a try!

The technique is Sparkly Stained Glass and Beate did a tutorial here.  To do the technique, stamp an open image onto a transparency using Staz-On or Palette Ink.  I used Saddle Brown Staz-On for my image.  Then once the ink is dry, flip the transparency over and use clear glue and glitter to color in the image!  I thought this turned out pretty awesome!  I cut a frame out of the Clove cardstock using my Nesties, and then used my 2-Way glue pen to glue the transparency to the frame, and then used more glue where it would be hidden by the frame to glue on the blue background piece. 

I used glitter glue for this card, and I would definately recommend NOT doing that in the future.  The glitter isn't very consistent in the glue I used, so I had to use a LOT of it to get even coverage behind the image.  I had to do a second coat with the glitter glue just to fill in the empty spots from the first coat.  Using clear glue and loose glitter would work better because you have more control over how much glitter you get in a small area.  Also, by having less glue, you can adhere the whole thing to your backing piece without worrying about extra glue smooshing out the sides of the glittered image.

This way to the Beach!

Carrying on with the Summertime theme from VSN and the Down By The Seaside stamp set I'm working on getting inky, here's another card I came up with:

I used a card pattern from Wishes from CTMH, and thought the Beach sign would be a fun 3D element for this!  The  brown mats are my favorite Clove cardstock and the blue is from Bazzil; all are scraps from my stash.  I'm sure by now the patterned paper looks familiar. ;)

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Summertime Lighthouses

Here is another card I made for the VSN last weekend:

The challenge was to use your childhood summer vacations as inspiration for a card.  I can remember going to Point Loma in California when I was a kid.  There's a lot of family history at that lighthouse, going all the way back to when my grandparents were courting (I think.)

I decided to try to use every stamp in this set for the VSN Challenges, and this one works so well as a main focal point image that the card really didn't need much more!  The tiny little shells in the bottom corner are from a necklace I cannibalized from Hawaii, and I love how they have the little detail swirl on them!  The base is a piece of linen cardstock, and I think it really picked up the ink beautifully from the sponging.  The blue matting is scraps from my stash, and the striped paper is more of the Back Country paper I used on the Camping card for VSN.  The papers and this stamp set just seem to go so well together!  Very beachy with just a touch of masculine. 

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

A Clean Slate

After this post over at Home Sanctuary, I got to thinking about the concept of a Clean Slate.  You know how you get to a point where things just seem so overwhelming that you just don't know where to begin?  This part in particular spoke to me:

Forgiving yourself for not measuring up to your own standards.

...
Going back to square one on a project that isn't going well.
Clearing a work space so that you can function better.

It seems like all three of those apply to me lately!  I'm one of those people who usually needs to clear off my entire workspace when I'm feeling unfocused and unproductive.  I have quite a few projects on my To Do List coming up due here shortly, and I've definately NOT followed my self-imposed schedule on them!  I went through the bedroom and my office/scraproom and cleared off and wiped down all the surfaces.  I tell ya what, it's like a breath of fresh air!  Seeing a clean nightstand first thing in the morning will be such a relaxing way to start my day.  Cleaning off my work desk made me much more productive at work, and having my scrap table clean has definately pushed my mojo into overdrive! 
 
With my mojo in full swing and my personal challenge to ink every one of my stamps, I am going to try to get back to posting daily with new cards!  This will mean that I will have to actually *stamp* every day, but I think it's high time I devote a little more time to my passion!  I'm in the mood to get some serious stamping done on Christmas Cards, so I'd better get a move on!  Happy Stamping!
 
Cheers!