MMSC#12 Happy Birthday Bear

Well, look what we have today....a bear!!! I can't go for too long without making a bear card, I was getting jittery because I haven't done one. lol Today's card was for the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge at Priscilla's blog. Some great prizes, a chance for a guest designer spot and some cash are up for grabs, so check it out!!!

I made my own paper pieced bear pattern for this card. I did ribbon embroidery on the left edge of my tag just like what is pictured on the sketch. I love how it looks and plan to do it again. Happy Birthday was cut on my cricut. I used Martha Stewart's border punch, frond, and branch punch. The swirl is made with a sizzx die. Love those hot pink rhinestones and I love the foo foo I tied on the tag.

When I look at this card...the colors remind me of something I should have in my lingerie draw...and if I don't have it....I should run out to Victoria's Secret and get it. Are these colors sexy or what??? I love it. lol Below is the sketch that we were given for this challenge. I enjoyed this challenge very much and know you will too!!!

Today's $1.98 Stamp-Hummingbird

Picked this up from the clearance basket at Michael's for $1.98. I just love it. It is an inkadinkado stamp, but there is no name on it. I didn't know how I was going to proceed with coloring this and decided on chalking it. I really love how vibrant the shading turned out. I used a Sakura Gelly Roll pen in Blue Star to highlight the humming bird by tracing it. I outlined the flowers in icicle stickles and sprayed with a fixative. I tied a cream colored bow and used brass fasteners/brads. Thanks for checking in today. I hope to have another entry tomorrow, although it is giving me problems. Have a great evening.

98 cent stamp from Michael's

Today I did this card for the Splitcoast Sketch Challenge for two reasons. #1) I have wanted this stamp for about a year and always get outbid on ebay for it. I just had to have it because it has a bear on it of course!!! I found it last Saturday night at Michael's for 98 cents. You would have thought I won the lottery. #2) This card is 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 and may be the only card I ever will send that might just cost me 44 cents to mail instead of the 1.50 to 2.00 I normally spend on most!!! We shall see???

Any way this was a pretty simple card. I just watercolored the image and cut the paper. I used a cuddlebug swirl embossing folder on the brown background and tied the bow. Attached image with some gold brads.

Thanks for stopping by today. I will have more of my 98 cent finds soon. I couldn't believe it. I go to Michael's every week and never saw these stamps there before. My advice is to go check your Michael's soon!!!

4 Challenge Snowman with Lights

Christmas in July is still be celebrated here in Georgia. I think I am on a mission to get as many Christmas cards done in July as I can. This card was created for four challenges as follows:

Three Clovers Thursday Challenge #23 - Use Bling on your card- I have glitter, stickles, a snowflake charm, silver shiny snowflake brads, and rhinestones on the brad snowflake
High Hopes #41- Use Sparkle and Shine- same as above
Card Position System #126- Sketch Challenge...see below
Pile It On- Use watercolor technique and at least one other challenge.

I have been dying to ink this stamp up. It is a Stampendous Stamp called Snow Lights. I had wanted this for a long time and could never afford the price it was going for on Ebay. Well, a few weeks after Christmas last year this came up for bid and I won it for a reasonable price. I was so happy!!! I watercolored this with ink and a waterbrush, used the cuddlebug snowflake and swiss dot embossing folders, round nesties, spellbinders snowflake die cut, silver snowflake brads, rhinestones, Martha Stewart Glitter for the hat, stickles for the snowflakes and snowman. There is a little silver snowflake charm hangng from the bow. This card is so much prettier in person. But anyway, here is the sketch.


Thanks for looking at my card today. Why not join some or all of these challenges. Don't you love this sketch? It was fun so give it a try. See you tomorrow!

Not Anytime Soon Again Flowers

Today's "Try a New Technique" over at Splitcoaststampers was to do quilling. I named my card Not Any Time Soon Flowers because you will not see me doing another one of these "anytime" soon. lol

Attention all card makers......if you are a quiller, I get on my knees and bow to you.....you are the KING or QUEEN!!! I couldn't get my ends to "stick". Maybe I just didn't use the right glue. I made two attempts at this as the first one I did 1/4" strips....man that was way to thick, I would have had to purchase one of those VCR boxes to send the dang card. So then I redid all these flowers again with 1/8" strips and it worked out better.

Let's just say....after this challenge, I am going to confession Saturday night!!!!! This was a challenge for me, but I am thankful for the challenge.

The card itself is the same cardstock as the light pink flower, I used a cuddlebug embossing folder on the white background. The heart is white cardstock and the same hot pink as the other flower. Not much supplies, but boy you have to have the patience of a "Saint" to do this.

Why not hop on over to Splitcoast Stampers and give it a try. Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate you and welcome your comments.

PaperPieced Bear with Headband

Here is a card I made for Virtual Stamp Night at Splitcoaststampers last Friday night. The name of the challenge was "Swiss Cheese" and you were to use one of the old fashioned silver small hole punch on your project in some creative way. I thought to use it to punch holes in my dp and thread this pretty ribbon through it. This paper pieced bear was sitting on my table as a reject from another project I was working on. So I thought it would look nice as the focal point on the card with the ribbon going around it. I made these flowers with various paper punches and the branch punch from Martha Stewart. I love this little bear even though it was too big for the other project and kept the pattern I created so I can make more. I think I want to do one with a "Santa" hat....now wouldn't that be cute!!! See you tomorrow!!!

Double Challenge Flower Pot Digi

Today, I did a double challenge card. First, this free digi image came from Fred, She Said where there is a challenge going on to create a card/project with this image. You have a chance to win a set of her new releases. Isn't this digi image gorgeous. I love digi images....there is just so much you can do with them. For instance, I cropped that pretty flower out so that I could accessorize my card with them. The other challenge was a sketch from Our Creative Corner.

The flowers and the leaves in this image have been layered pretty extensively. I used a Martha Steward border punch, The white daisys with pink centers are ribbon, I have a little flower in a flowerpot charm, theres yellow rhinestones for the center of the flowers and lots of stickles just on the flowers.

Hope you enjoyed looking at this creation. I sure do appreciate you coming by. See you tomorrow. Have a great evening!

Altered Christmas Ornament

Only a few more days left for "Christmas in July". I had to get another project in!!! There is a story to this ornament. Every year I was invited to decorated a tree at the Festival of Trees in downtown St. Marys to represent the bank I worked for. Well, since I have been laid off, I guess I won't be doing it this year. I bought a bunch of these at JoAnn's at their after Christmas sale dirt cheap because each year the tree was a different theme. So, I was fiddling around today and came up with this.

I traced the ornament on old cardstock to get my pattern. I used the Spellbinders Snowflake die, the Martha Stewart branch punch, ribbon, mini jingle bells and a gold brad. I distressed the edges of the paper and inked around the wood.

I'll be back digging in that bag from JoAnn's to see what else I have tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by and I really really appreciate your comments. They inspire me to keep going. Thanks so much!

MMSC#11 Holly Berry House Frame

Welcome to this weeks submission for the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge. Isn't this a great sketch that Priscilla gave us to work on this week. Don't forget to head on over and follow her blog and play in the challenges for some great prizes. She has a guest designer spot, a SU Big Shot with goodies, weekly prizes and "WOW" some cash!!! There's lots going on, so don't miss your change at winning. Besides, there's some great people, talented crafters, and lots of fun!!!
This is my card submission for the challenge. I used a Holly Berry House Frame for this that I forgot I even had. The flowers in the middle of the frame are an Anita stamp. I made the Anita flowers dimensional and stamped them three times and pop dotted them. Everything was embossed with gold embossing power. I colored these images with ink and a water brush and I used my exacto knife to cut the center of the frame out. The flowers are from a Martha Steward flower punch and I used pearl brads in the center. I couldn't sew the gold embroidery thread with my sewing machine, it was just to thick. So what I did was used my machine on zig-zag to make the holes and then I just hand sewed the gold. I really enjoyed making this card. Thanks for stopping by and as always, I really appreciated your comments. Thanks so much.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear

Today's card is a double challenge - 1st Splitcoast Stampers was to make fabric flowers or use fabric on your card creations. The other challenge is at The Pink Elephant which was to make a card with animals. My bears were made with curly felt (left over from my bear-making days). The flowers were also made of fabric. I did a bear layout like this in a scrapbook that I made for my Mother last year. I have a closet still filled with fabric. They say this is the hot new trend. Well thank goodness for that because I need to use this stuff up. There are so many ways to use fabric on cards. Even the paper piecing technique could be done with fabric. Why not join us and give it a try. Thanks for stopping by to see what I was up to today. If you have questions, just let me know.

MMSC#10 50th Anniversary with Emily

Here is this weeks sketch for the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #10. Priscilla's sketches are just amazing. There are prizes galore, cash, and a chance to be picked as a guest designer. I have my fingers crossed that it might be me!!! Just look at one of the prizes in my side bar....WOW So what are you waiting for? Come and join us, you can't win if you don't play. Here is my submission for this weeks challenge.
This is Emily the Bride from the Boyds Bear Collection. My card was made for a 50th Anniversary that my Sister-In-Law's parents are celebrating. You can find some thank-you notes I made for them here from earlier this week. Stayed tuned because I will be making them some other goodies to go with this.
You can't believe how hard it is to photograph "white" cards. You just can't get all the detail. So I took lots of pictures so hopefully you can get an idea how detailed the card is. Also, is it me or is it very hard to find embellishments for 50th anniversary cards?

The 50 was cut with my cricut from a cereal box (yea I know....what can I say, I've been laid off...I am trying to economize...lol) I painted the 50 with rangers gold ink, then painted with glue and used Martha Stewart's gold glitter on it. The flowers were all punched with punches and then put together with gold brads. The squares were done with the Martha Stewart Border punch. Everything was measure very carefully to get it even and in the middle. I also accented the squares with gold card stock. Thanks for stopping in today to check out the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge. Remember to play along for fabulous prizes. See you soon!!!

VSN Challenge Wilted Lettuce Grazie

Hello Everyone!!! Today's card was from the VSN stamp night last night over at Splitcoast Stampers. Come and join us for 4 different challenges. You have until Sunday June 19th 10 p.m. Eastern time to up-load you cards.

The challenge-make a card in lettuce hues. Lettuce colors only, variations of green, and deep purple/red leaf lettuce, and your neutral has to be beige. Crinkled card stock technique and your sentiment has to be in Italian.

Talk about making a salad!!! This was great fun and a salad I did make. I could not resist setting up my little bear who is holding lettuce. I loved doing this card. I had so many green scraps out you couldn't see my table. It seemed like everything matched!!! What a fun challenge!

Thanks for taking time to stop by today. Hope you enjoyed your visit.

A2 Card Box and Thank-you Notes

Here is a set of Thank-you notes and a box to put them in that I made for my Sister-In-Laws parents who are celebrating their 50th Anniversary. You just can't imagine how gorgeous these are in person. It is hard to photograph the details, but I think you can see most of them. You can't really see that all of these cards are embossed. This was a challenge to photograph.....I had to hold my breath. lol I will tell you that all the envelopes that go with these match the cards. For instance the butterfly has been embossed to match the front card, the dragonfly is embossed to match that card and so forth. This is just one of the items that I have planned to send to them. You will see more in the coming days. Everything has been gold embossed. I only used white and gold for the 50th theme. Thanks for stopping by and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, I will get back to you. The A2 box card tutorial can be found on Splitcoast Stampers. I made a band for mine, if you would like the measurements for the band, just let me know. I fit six cards nicely in the box and I have lots of chunky embellishments on them.

Betty Bubbles

Today's card was made for yesterday's Card Sketch Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers. I hadn't inked this Cherished Teddie stamp from Stampendous yet, it was sitting on my table. I thought it would give me the opportunity to use it. I love the background paper used on this card. It reminded me of wallpaper that you might see in someone's guest bathroom. Perfect for the bathtub scene don't you think? It is from a stack called English Garden. I used my cuddlebug and embossing folder, Martha Stewart border punch, prima flowers, Martha Steward branch punch, brads, and the sentiment is from the $1 bin at Michaels.

Today I will be working on a Fiftith Wedding Anniversary card. Ideas have been rolling around in my head for this the last couple of days. I am going to go play and see if some of them work. I want it to be something spectacular for this couple. The lady it is going to inspired me years ago to go into the craft business as she had her own successful enterprise for several years. I want something to "Wow" her. So wish me luck. Hopefully I will post it here tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by!

Lavender Crayon Resist Flower Card

Wow, I knew I was going to love that Spellbinders Sunflower die!!! You can do so much with it depending on how you ink or layer your flowers. I tried out the "Crayon Resist" technique which I watched on Stamp TV last week on these flowers. I like how the shading develops with this process. I made this card for the Color Challenge over at Split Coast Stampers yesterday. You were to use Lavender, Banana, White, Black, and Basic Grey. I cheated a bit as I didn't have a lavender ribbon that matched the lavender ink, and I just had to put some green leaves with my flowers.

Recipe:
Spellbinders Sunflower 2 Die
DP - A Formal Affair
Ink- Versa-mark Lavender Pearl
Stickles
Ribbon
Sentiment- From the $1 bin at JoAnn's

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my card. Comments are always welcomed and appreciated. See you tomorrow!

Double Challenge Pumpkin Bear

Today we have a paper pieced card that I have created for two challenges. The first challenge is for Teddy Stampers and the challenge was to do embossing on your card with your teddy. As you can see I embossed the background on this card and ran some green ink over the embossing. I did the same effect on the inside of the card as well. I created this paper piecing pattern myself and it is a product of looking at my Fall decorations that I posted a couple of days ago.
The second challenge that this card is for is over at The Cuddlebug Spot. In this challenge you are to decorate the inside as well as the outside. of the card.

I made several different sized bears experimenting to get this bear the right size. So I have a few cuties sitting on my desk waiting for me to do something with. I plan on trying my hand at making more paper piecing patterns...so stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by and your comments are appreciate.

4th of July Tree and Fall Preview

Just thought I would post a picture of my July 4th Tree. As you can see it is filled with patriotic ornaments galore. This tree was purchased over a year ago at Hobby Lobby during their after Christmas sale. It is about 6-1/2 ft tall and stays up year round. It has white lights permanently in the branches and I added a strand of 100 Red and a strand of 100 Blue lights for this theme. What I usually do is comb the after Christmas sales to find ornaments that I can use year round, or I make my own. This particular tree has some blown glass Uncle Sam ornaments, resin heart flag ornaments, wooden star flag ornaments, ceramic hearts and flags, and an assortment of Uncle Sam ornaments that have string legs. It looks so pretty when it is all lit up. This is the entry into my home so everyone that comes in will see the tree. You can see it sometimes when you drive by the house. I think it is really cool. Next month my Back-to-School theme will go up. Wait until you see that one. I even found blown glass school bus ornaments for that theme.


I was going through my pictures and found last years Fall/Halloween displays. I just love the fall decorations. Not that I want to rush everything along, but I can hardly wait to put this back up. This is actually in my family room. It's the place we spend most of our time. On the mantel is Tabitha from Boyds Bears and a few of her Halloween friends. The pumpkin hanging above is something from Avon I got several years ago. It is probably a collector's item now. lol

Hope to be back tomorrow with more cards. I am working on making my own bear paper piecing patterns. I wanted to do a bear sitting in front of a pumpkin. I was looking at these pictures for inspiration. Until then, have a great evening!

Mets-Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Surprise!!! This is something different for me isn't it? lol My son Wesley is the ultimate Met's fan. He has a non-paying position over at Met Merized Online writing recaps of the Met's games. He and his girlfriend are going to Atlanta next week to watch the Met's take on the Atlanta Braves. It is his girlfriends birthday so he has planned a "Met" theme. He handed me this decal and asked me to make him a card to match the presents he purchased for his girlfriend. So, what better time than for me to try the "Emboss Resist" technique. I have been watching videos over at Stamp It TV and learned this from GinaK. I absolutely love it and plan on doing more. It's like creating your own DP!

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!
Carol

MMSC#9 Friends in All Sizes Bears

Join us for another week of the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge. This is our sketch for this week. Priscilla has some great prizes, some cash, not to mention a guest designer spot. So hop on over and join in all the fun at MMSC#9.

Here is my card for the challenge. You didn't think I completely abandoned my poor bears now did you? I just had to share these adorable Cherished Teddies "Friends Come in All Sizes". It was time to break out the bear stamps!

I made these ribbon roses Monday evening while watching television as I knew I was going to do something with them this week. They were so easy. You can follow the tutorial here. The squiggly underneath them is a spellbinder borderabilitie called Grand Illumination. I made my sentiment on the computer.

Just want to say thank you to all my followers and people who have stopped by to leave comments. They are appreciated more than you could know.

Have a great day!
Carol

Gingerbread Christmas in July

Christmas in July, one of my favorite times of year. Really, when I had my craft business, I was prepared to sell Christmas items at the July shows. The promoters would advertise their shows as "Christmas in July". This card was created for the "Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #8. Come and join us creating cards from Priscilla's wonderful sketches. There are lots of prizes and cash...yes I said cash. Who couldn't use some cash to indulge in some stamps right?

Today's card is a JRL design stamp. Isn't this gingerbread guy great. I love Gingerbread stuff. I decorate my kitchen at Christmas in all Gingerbread. I punched the hearts from brown cardstock and puff painted them to look like cookies. Those are green glitter gum drops I had left over from last year. I decided to paint around the card and the square with the puff paint as well because I wanted a "cookie" feel to the card.
This is how I did the inside of the card. I just colored and cut the gingerbread boy from the original stamp image for the inside so it would match. The squiggles are puff paint that I free hand painted.

Aaahhh, I am now dreaming of Christmas. I want to make more Gingerbread cards. My collections of Gingerbread stamps are calling to me. I may just have to take out those sweet images and do something else.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope I have inspired you to maybe do a few Christmas cards. It is never to early to do a Christmas card once and a while so you are not rushing two days before Christmas trying to finish up. So go ahead, get out those Christmas stamps and stamp a few cards. You'll be glad you did.

Tea Accouterments Card

Did you know I have a penchant for tea and tea accouterments? At some point you must have known with the love of bears a tea party was going to come up here sooner or later. Really, I have had approximately 6 tea parties at my house in the last 4 years. I am talking about vintage tea parties where all the participants ran to every resale shop in the area looking for Victorian garb to wear. Not to mention the Valentine tea party, nor the Halloween tea party. All complete with themed decorations, party favors, food, and dress. They were all marvelous and memorable.

Today's card was for the Split Coast Stampers Sketch Challenge #235. I just had to try this. I adore this sketch. I wanted to do something different, although flowers came to mind many times. If you look in the gallery, there are a lot of flower themed cards. As I was looking through my things I came across these teacups and knew it would be perfect for what I wanted to do. I have scrapbooked some of my parties and these are leftovers. So here is my recipe:

• The tea items are actually stickers that I stuck to card stock and cut out pop dotted for dimension.
• Spellbinders square nesties, the white ones were run through the cuttlebug with the paisley embossing folder then inked with Tuskinek Brilliance Dew Drops in Pearlescent Orchid.
• The flourishes are from a little sizzlets sizzix die
• The roses are paper flowers and, of course, I stickled the flourishes and the little flowers on all the tea pots.

Thanks for stopping by. I am working on another card for the Midnight Madness Challenge for this week that I should have up soon. There are some great challenges this week. I usually leave links in my post so check them out and join in.

I Love America Card

Today's card is for the 4th of July. I have really been laying off the bears so I stuck Uncle Elliot from the Boyds Bear Collection in the picture because I couldn't help myself. He is too cute! I made this card for the Cuttlebug Challenge #37 here at The Cuttlebug Spot. I don't think I ever make a card without using my cuttlebug. I love that thing!!! And, I have a cricut but don't use it now that I have the cuttlebug.

On this card I used the small square spellbinders nesties for under the star buttons (got those at Michael's) and the large square for behind the heart flag. The flag stamp is from Darcie's. I embossed the large square with the circles embossing folder. As you probably have figured out by now, I am a Martha Stewart punch junkie. I don't think I make many cards without one of her border punches and this card is no exception. Just like I never make a card without glitter. I just can't do it. There is stickles on the white part of the flag. I also punched out a red and white corner from a punch I have for the upper corner treatment. That's about it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Thanks again for all your compliments. I really do appreciate them more than I can say. Have a great evening!