Gift Bag & birthday card

I love this technique for making gift bags!  I will do a tutorial soon. It involves decoratingvdirt cheap manila envelopes. When folded just right, they make a fabulous gift bag!

I made the card for a kids birthday swap I'm in. I had an extra. Since it's the same colors as the bag, PRESTO! Instant matching set!

The recipient is in Daisies, the youngest girl scout group. I thought this punch kindda resembled a daisy. I used sticky strip & grosgrain ribbon for the flower stems.

Funny Birthday Card story!

January is chock full o' birthdays in my family! Mine is on the 13th, my daugther's is on the 19th (she was due on my birthday, and what a gift that would have been, but she showed up a week late!), my mom's is a week later on the 26th, and my aunt's is the 18th..I mean 16th! That's the funny part! To me, anyway!

My parents and my brother came for an overnighter on Saturday, the 15th. Mom figured we would just have on grand celebration, which was awesome. My little one is turning two and we're having a big Wiggles party, but Mom figured she wouldn't know if they were here or not and this way they could spend more quality time together. It was great!

Fast forward to Sunday night, the 16th...I get a voice mail from my aunt, saying my dad had called to wish her a happy birthday and said they'd been having a belated celebration with me, etc., etc. She went on to apologe for not calling me on my birthday...which is funny to ME because on my calendar her birthday is on the 18th! So, I made her this card using My Digital Studio today and will email to her with a funny message about how we both got our dates mixed up. Knowing my aunt, she will see the humor in it.

I CASEd (copy and steal everything) it from the Stampin' Bug.

My Digital Studio (MDS) is a great way to play around with many of the Stampin' Up products without taking up a lot of room! I also like to use it to design cards before I sit down to make them. In this case, it's also a great way to make a card for someone and send it electronically. If you are already a digital stamper or scrapper, you can still purchase and use MDS downloads with any program that uses JPG files.

I hope you enjoy this birthday card!

Warm Winter Wishes

I have no idea yet who will receive this card. I created this card which I believe fits into two challenges:

Clearly Inspired Challenge #20 : Use three shades of blue, and use one of their stamps. The gals at Clearly iStamp even tossed in a freebie, which I used in the challenge.

Stampin' Sisters Challenge #39: Based on Ephesians 4:29, we were instructed to make a card that would encourage someone. Ah! Now I know who will receive this card!

Besides the Clearly iStamp snowman stamp, I used paper I had on hand. The following supplies came from Stampin' Up:

• Ribbon
• Flower brad 
• Crystal Effects (snowman's hat band)
• I printed the sentiment on my computer and punched it out with the Scallop Oval Punch.

I had a lot of fun creating this.

 

Love Birds

A worship leader we know is celebrating his 27th wedding anniversary with his wife in a few days. I saw his post on face book and decided to whip up a card. I searched for inspiration and found it at She Stamps (thanks, Cheryl!). I gave myself 15 minutes...then set the timer for 15 more minutes...then went a bit past that. So much for 15 minutes. I think if my office were more organized I could've done it in about half the time! I'm working on it. Progress, not perfection.

I used paper I had on hand, the Owl Punch and Scalloped Oval punches from Stampin' Up, the Journey and Ashlyn's alphabet Cricut Cartidges.  I made a little "oopsie" at the bottom. I wrote in my nicest handwriting, "A Chord of thee strands is not easily broken." Notice I wrote "thee" instead of "three." There was no way to squeeze the R in there. Then I remembered I had this gorgeous chantilly crocheted trim in my stash! I used sticky strip to lay down the satin ribbon to cover up my oopsie. I would have preferred to use Chocolate Chip, but I was out. I think the black works ok with the crocheted trim over the top. Another  layer of sticky strip (where would I be without this indispensable tool!?) went on over that, followed by the lace. My friend Michelle taught me this fold over technique & I use it every chance I get. It's a fun, easy way to add some flair. I'm all about fun and easy!

Thank you Card: Emma the Caroler

Hubby asked me to make a thank you card for a client who gave us a huge ham. She's a pianist who loves angels. It took me quite a while to find just the right stamp. I will edit this post later with a link to the site I bought it from. Yes I said bought. I'll explain more about that later.
I used paper I had on hand for the wedding album I have yet to make, despite recently celebrating our fourth wedding anniversary!

Update: I bought the Emma the Caroler/ Caroling Angel Pre-Colored digital stamp set from Fred She Said. I searched all day for just the right freebie, to no avail. I found one I liked used on a card but I couldn't find the source stamp. In my search, I came across this little cutie. As much as I of course prefer freebies, I just had to have this one!  $4 for a stamp I can use forever is not a bad deal!

Christmas Card ala My Digital Studio!

This was my first crack at my Christmas Card. This isn't the one I'm going with but a couple of my followers will be receiving the real thing in the mail, so I didn't want to give it away.  I'll be doing a 12x12 page from the Cookie part we went to Friday night and a Gymnastics birthday party we went to on Saturday. Stay tuned!

Happy crafting!

Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge #40

I'm on vacation with hubby this week. We are up in Tahoe. It's kind of a working vacay for him, but it gives me some much needed down time. I've been working on a quilt (stay tuned for pics!) and have been doing some digital scrapbooking. Along the way, I've meandered into the world of digital stamping.

In my meanderings, I encountered Peachy Keen Stamps. They have some super cute stuff. Right now they have a challenge going on. I hope to have time to make something with real tangible paper when I get home, but realistically I have way too much on my plate when I get home as it is. So, for now, I made this digital scrapbook layout.

I'm new to PhotoShop Elements. This is only my second project using it and I just started today! If you want to participate in the challenge, check it out here!

The papers are from a collection called Christmas Confection. I found these delectible freebies over at ComputerScrapbook.com.

More Easy,Peasy Digital Scrapbooking

At first I was just going to use some recent freebie kits I'd downloaded to create some pages to fill in with photos later. Then I realized I have so many photos and unfinished pages, I might as well take a couple of extra minutes to plunk some pics in there! Voila! May 2010 spread is finito!

If you would like to play around with this kit yourself, you can find it one of my new favorite freebie sites, No Reimer Reason. Even if I weren't head over heals nutso for the awesome scrapping products she has, I love the blog name. I'm sure it's based on her last name or something. But, the reason I like it is it reminds of my favorite teacher of all time, Mrs. Squires!  There is so much I could say right now, but I'll try to stay on topic! One day I was absent, but when I came back the next day she had this on the chalkboard, "The poetry and logic contest has been canceled for no rhyme or reason." I cracks up so hard when I read that, I was shaking! Everyone else thought I'd lost my marbles, but not Mrs. Squires. She knew exactly what I was laughing at. While everyone else had seen the note the day I was absent and shrugged it off, thinking "Huh? What poetry and logic contest? Well, I didn't enter so I don't really care." But I caught the joke in it and laughed uncontrollably.  OK, enough about Mrs. Squires!  Here are my scrapbook pages for today:

I am going to make a coordinating facing page that has all of the various nicknames we have for Miss M. This is all I got done today, headache and all!

Recent Digital Scapbook Pages

I don't have Photoshop. I wouldn't know how to use it if I did. I downloaded a free "knockoff" of it called GIMP once but couldn't figure out how to use that either. My friend showed me some awesome pages she has created using digital scrapbook freebies she has found on the internet, and layering them in Microsoft Publisher. Sooo...here are some pages I made today. I will be adding some others in the next few days as time allows!   I don't know why Blogger won't let me display them side by side! grrrr. Anyway, if you are interested in the free kit, you can get it over at Free Digital Scrapbooking.com

Cricut cards with Stampin Up features

I should check in with my own blog mire often! I totally thought I had
already posted these. I made these with my new fave Cricut cartridge,
Opposites Attract, some paper I had on hand, a Stampin Up stamp &
stampin up ink.