Birthday Daisy

Happy Birthday, Jeanette - if you're reading this:)  Sorry the post is a day late!  I had to do the calendar on the First.


I started with a Fiskars Corner and Border punch to make the bottom mat. I then cut the next layer out of some textured white cardstock to fit inside the punching. The main stamp is from Papertrey Ink's Round & Round set, and I stamped it with Glorious Green. The sentiment is from the same set. The daisy in the circle is from a K & Company package that I got from Archivers.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

July Calendar Page

July First - amazing!  Here is my page for this month.

I guess when i make the pages I should write down what stamps I used!  I do believe these stamps were all from a dollar set from JoAnn's or Michael's.  I stamped them all with Versamark and embossed them with Detail Gold embossing powder.  I did the coloring with Stampin' Up! markers.  Here is a close-up so you can see the shine:)  Happy July!


If you would like my Excel file for printing your own calendars, please feel free to email me.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

WHAT IF? Wednesday - a Repeat Impressions Sketch Challenge

Today is WHAT IF? Wednesday - the day you are challenged to create a card with a sketch from Wendy of Repeat Impressions.  You can find the sketch and the details here.  How about joining us? :)  You have two weeks to create your card, upload it, and link it to the Repeat Impressions blog, The House That Stamps Built.  Have fun!  One random participant from the July challenges will win a $25 gift certificate to Repeat Impressions.  Check out what the other Design Team members have done, too!

Ayana ~ Dana ~ Darsie ~ Harriet ~ Joy
Julie ~ Makiko ~ Michele ~ Robin

Here is the sketch.  For my card, I used the Lupine stamp (which is the Stamp of the Week - scroll down just a little bit) and colored it with Stampin' Up! markers.  I cut the image with a Nestability and embossed it.  I left it in the die, and used Barely Banana chalk around the edges to nearly the center. The matting for all pieces is Mellow Moss.  The patterned paper is from Die Cuts With a View.  The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink and is cut with Nestabilities, also.  I added pearls in the corner (per the sketch) and beside the sentiment.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge

I made this card using Taylor's Sketch #118.  You can find it here.  I kind of made it a Clean and Simple card, though:)

The stamp I used is from Taylor's store.  It's called Scotties in Love, and it was a gift in the "goodie bag" that I received when we visited there.  Isn't it darling?  I paper pieced the dog house, and colored the rest with my SU! markers.  The papers are SU! also. The sentiment was printed on my computer and the border was punched with a Fiskars punch.  (The papers are So Saffron and Old Olive.) 


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Repeat Impressions Stamp of the Week - Lupine

It's Monday again, and time for a new Stamp of the Week from Repeat Impressions!  This week's stamp is Lupine #1711-K.  You can find the stamp here.  Just visit the Repeat Impressions blog, The House That Stamps Built, and learn how to get this stamp at 50% off - this week only!  Isn't it gorgeous?  But then, I love flower stamps!  Also check out the beautiful creations of other Design Team members.  You can find them here:

Harriet ~ Joy ~ Julie ~ Makiko ~ Robin

Here is another view of the card I made using the Lupine stamp.  (When we were in northern Wisconsin last year, we saw lupines all over.  We bought some seeds and planted them a few weeks ago.  I sure hope some of them grow!)  This is a modified side-step card.  There are several places to find directions for a side-step, but I wanted the "set-back" part to be in the middle.  I know there are directions for a card like this, too, but I just took some directions for the side-step and modified it to suit me.  First let me say how I finished the card, and then I'll get into the measurements I used.  I cut the blue cardstock (Stampin' Up!'s Blue Bayou, I believe) to fit on the front with a sixteenth-inch border all around.  I embossed the top parts with a Birds and Swirls Cuttlebug folder.  I scored the lines with my Scor-Pal.  The sentiment is from Repeat Impressions, also.  The middle section of the middle section (:) ) is just plain cardstock.  The back section of the middle section is the image.  I colored it with my blue Copic marker and a Certainly Celery marker from SU! and matted it with Blue Bayou.  OK.  I think that takes care of that part of my description.

One more view of the card, just for fun!, and also the measurements that I used.  I started with a piece of white cardstock cut to "standard" size - 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches.  I cut a slit an inch and a half in from each side, from one inch from the bottom to 6 3/8 inches from the bottom. ...  I decided the easiest thing would be for me to show you a diagram.  I had done a "test run" on a piece of computer paper first, so I just wrote the measurements on that.  The dashed lines are mountain folds, and the dotted/dashed lines are valley folds.  The solid lines are where you cut.  I scored the lines with my Scor-Pal, and then folded.   I hope that all makes sense!  I guess if enough people ask for it, I could do a tutorial!  Anyway, here is the diagram with measurements.  You can click on it to enlarge it.

Whew - are you still with me? LOL!  Don't forget - you still have today and tomorrow to make a card for Repeat Impressions' "WHAT IF Wednesday" challenge.  A random participant from the month of June will be selected to win a $25 gift certificate from Repeat Impressions.  Worth playing for, for sure!

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Another "Two-Fer" Day

I have two cards to share with you today.  I did them a couple weeks ago but hadn't shared them  yet.  

This first one came about after I used some yellow felt-like rick-rack on a previous card.  I had trimmed off some ends, and I noticed the little scraps looked like tulips!  So, I purposely cut some more for this card.  I hand drew the stems, leaves and grass and then used a marker to color them.  The background is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.  The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Fillable Frames #1.

This second one "happened" after doing that first one:)  The circle piece came that way.  I again drew the stems and leaves, and colored them.  I'm not sure where I got the flowers.  I think they were a freebie from Crop Stop.  I added brads for the centers.  The sentiment was a gift from Verve.  I just noticed that a lot of my recent cards are done with pretty much this layout.  Oops!  I guess I must like it!


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Best Wishes Bouquet

Another really simple card for today.  I really do love Clean and Simple cards, but sometimes I feel like I should do more.  Not sure why! :)

The flower bouquet and the butterfly are stickers by Sandylion courtesy of my friend Harriet.  I have often admired them when she has used them, and she happened to find some more of them before she came to visit me and she gave them to me! How lucky am I?! I put them on a piece of shimmery white and matted with textured pink scallop. Both are cut with Nestabilities. The entire panel is mounted on Pop Dots. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Round & Round anniversary set. This is for a wedding shower I'll be attending today.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Simple Butterfly Thanks

A simple card using two gifts from friends.  How awesome!


At our Group Gathering, a few ladies brought items they wanted to sell or give away.  The butterfly punch I used for this card was in the "give-away" pile of Vicki's.  Isn't it great?  When you punch, the butterfly stays in the circle.  After punching three of them in a row, I used a Sizzix embossing folder to emboss the top, and my Scor-Pal to add the lines above and below the butterflies.  The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Anniversary set called Round and Round.  Harriet had earned two of them, and she surprised me totally by giving me one when she came to visit!!  What a super friend!!  The cardstock and ink are Stampin' Up!'s retired Vintage Violet.  I popped the entire violet piece up on Pop Dots.

I also got this teddy bear punch from Vicki, and the sentiment on this card is also from PTI Round and Round.  I didn't use Pop Dots on this one.  EDITED TO ADD:  Based on Suzie's comment, I guess I need to tell you what colors I used for this card! The card base is white, and the punched/embossed piece is a baby blue.


Don't forget - you still have a few more days to take the Repeat Impressions challenge and make a card using Wendy's sketch.  A random participant from the June challenges will be selected to win a $25 gift certificate from Repeat Impressions.  Come join the fun!


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Thank You for Taylor

Talk about pressure - imagine making a card for THE Taylor Van Bruggen! LOL!  I wanted to send her a thank you for her hospitality last week when our group visited her home.  This is what I came up with, using her set Garden Party Blooms in a Clean and Simple style.


I used Versamagic inks in various colors.  I used the "Rock and Roll" technique on the flowers, inking them with one color and then just rolling another color ink pad on the edges.  The "rick-rack" on the bottom layer is a stamp from the same set.  I embossed the image panel with my Swiss Dots folder and rubbed the edges with an ink pad.  I added some of Taylor's Tiny Twinkles to the center flower.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge - Thank You

I made this card for SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge #276 - Almost Amethyst, Soft Suede and Apricot Appeal. Fun combo!

A very simple card - I just punched three squares of each color using an EK Success 3/4 inch punch. (Thanks, Vicki!) The letters are stamped with Versafine Onyx Black with an All Night Media alphabet set. The flower is punched with a dollar punch from Michael's. The flower center is a Tiny Twinkle from Taylored Expressions. That's all there is to it!


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Multiple-Challenge Card

I made this card last week for three challenges - SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge #275 (Real Red, Mellow Moss and Barely Banana), SplitCoastStamper Technique Lovers Challenge #277 (to make a one-layer card) and Susan's One-Layer Wednesday (to make a one-layer card with a flourish of some sort.)


The two stamps I used are both by Inkadinkado.  I colored directly on them with Stampin' Up! markers.  The flourish on the upper right didn't come up quite far enough, so I added a little bit more by masking what was already there and positioning my stamp carefully and stamping again.  (Thanks for the suggestion, Harriet!)  The embossed border is done with a Cuttlebug folder and the lines above and below it are done with my Scor-Pal.  I added a few little seed beads to the flower centers.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Repeat Impressions Stamp of the Week - Land of the Free

My goodness, Mondays roll around quickly!  It's Repeat Impressions' Stamp of the Week day already!  This week's featured stamp is 3704-I, Land of the Free.  (Scroll down a ways to see the stamp.)  Please visit RI's blog, The House That Stamps Built, to find out the details on how to get this great stamp at 50% off!  Check out the links to the other Design Team members' blog, too, to see the marvelous cards they have created.

Ayana ~ Dana ~ Darsie ~ Harriet ~ Joy ~ Makiko ~ Michele

I colored directly on the stamp with my Stampin' Up! markers - Real Red and Night of Navy  - and stamped on shimmery white paper.  The matting papers are all from the very first Die Cuts With a View matstack that I ever bought - about seven years ago at Archivers.  They were very appropriate for this stamp.

Like I so often end up doing, I made a couple cards with this stamp.  This one is colored with Brilliant Blue and Real Red and stamped on lightly textured white paper.  I matted with Real Red.  The blue background is lightly textured, also.  I added a small strip of the textured white with a tiny strip of the red and white striped paper I used on the first card.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge - Birthday Wishes

I made this card for SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge #275 - Barely Banana, Mellow Moss and Really Red. 


Harriet brought a few things with her when she came for her visit.  I used a couple of the items she brought on this card.  I used her Papertrey Ink set called Everyday Button Bits and her My Favorite Things Cloud die. The larger red button is from Gina K, and the smaller buttons are Stampin' Up! I sponged Barely Banana around the edge of the image panel and also the clouds. The clouds are mounted on Pop Dots.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Our Group Gathering!

Well, I’m finally taking the time to tell you about our “Group Gathering.”  I hope you won’t be too bored, but I have to share!  Just a brief background: four years ago I joined a brand new Yahoo! group started in part by someone I had purchased some items through. The group stayed small and we became great friends and wanted to meet “for real.”  So we did!  This year was our fourth year of getting together, with members attending from California, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.  (The attendees were (from left to right and top to bottom) Joanne, Dawn, Joyce, me, Sheri, Georgia, Harriet, Andrea, Vicki, Kris and Terri.)

Harriet flew in to Minneapolis (from California) and together we drove down to Des Moines.  We met for lunch and shopped at a stamping store in Valley Junction.  We checked into our hotel and had dinner at The Machine Shed.  We spent ALL day at Archivers in West Des Moines.  They are soooo wonderful to us, and reserve us the whole room.  The two years before this, we left all of our things in the store and went back again on Tuesday.  (I can't believe I have NO pictures from Archivers this year!)

This year, however, we all went to Taylor Van Bruggen’s house (of Taylored Expressions!) on Tuesday.  How fun was that!  She had a Make and Take prepared for us.

Here is a picture of me with Harriet and Taylor.  (Yes, Taylor is very tall!)

This is the card we made – isn’t it great?  We got to shop, and she also did a demonstration using stencils and Maya Mist.  We met her mother, Linda, and her husband, Jon.

Taylor is known for loving cupcakes, and there was a cupcake waiting for each of us.  We each also got a goodie bag!  It was fantastic.  After leaving Taylor’s, we went to lunch and capped it off with a trip to Michael's:)  Then we had to split up and each go our own ways.  That is the hardest part.  But, we’ll do it again next year!

This picture is some of us at the hotel after doing a card swap.  See the figure on the table?  That is "Flat Char."  Char really wanted to join us, but couldn't make it.  So, Flat Char came :) )


Lucky for me, Harriet comes back home with me and we get to spend all day Wednesday on the computer and stamping!  But then Thursday comes along, and we need to return to our “real” lives.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Butterfly Birthday

I didn't have time to do a post about our Group Gathering yet, so you get this card instead:)


I'm sorry to say that I don't know who makes this stamp.  I can find out and add that information later.  (EDITED TO ADD:  The stamp is a retired Hero Arts stamp.  I was thinking it was, but it has been confirmed:) ) I used a friend's stamp when we were in Des Moines.  I also colored it with her Copic markers - how fun!!!  (Thanks, Vicki!)  The light blue background is done with chalk.  I added some tiny little gems (that I got at Taylored Expressions) on the butterfly wings, the butterfly's antennae and the flower centers.  I cut the image out and matted it with some Crayola "holographic" cardstock.  The background is from a Die Cuts With a View Holiday Collection Winter Matstack.  I stamped the sentiment (from Papertrey Ink's Birthday Basics) with Versamark and embossed with silver embossing powder.  That's all there is to it!


Well, life is back to "normal" now.  We got home from Des Moines Tuesday evening and Harriet went home yesterday afternoon.  I got my stamping area all cleaned up again.  (Well, except for my new things that I have to play with first!)  We had the most awesome time and have ideas for next year already.  Our visit to Taylor's was so fun - I can't wait to share the pictures!


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

SCS Color Challenge Birthday

A quick post for today.  Tomorrow I hope to get some pictures posted of our "Group Gathering."


This card was made for SplitCoastStampers Color Challenge #275 - Barely Banana, Mellow Moss and Really Red. My friend Harriet (hskelly) is still here visiting me and I got to use some of her things! I used her Papertrey Ink Button Bits set and her My Favorite Things Cloud die. The larger red button is from Gina K, and the smaller buttons are Stampin' Up! I sponged Barely Banana around the edge of the image panel and also the clouds. The clouds are mounted on Pop Dots.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

WHAT IF? Wednesday #4 - A Repeat Impressions Challenge

Well, today is Repeat Impressions "WHAT IF? Wednesday" challenge. Today's challenge is another sketch.  You can find all the details on the RI blog, The House That Stamps Built.  Just make a card following the sketch that Wendy has created for all of us, upload it to your blog or an on-line gallery (please use the keyword J1610) and link it to the blog.  You will then be entered for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Repeat Impressions!  Check out the fabulous creations the other Design Team members have created, too!

Ayana ~ Dana ~ Darsie ~ Harriet ~ Joy ~ Julie ~ Makiko ~ Robin

Here is the sketch:

For this first card, I used Repeat Impressions stamp #2710-D Small Pine Tree.  I colored the stamp with SU! markers.  The sentiment (from RI) is stamped and matted with Chocolate Chip.  I think the green layers are Handsome Hunter from SU!, but I'm not 100% positive.  I embossed them with a Cuttlebug folder.

I made a second card with this fun sketch, too.  For this one, I used RI stamp #1612-G Ducks on a String and an RI sentiment.  I colored the ducks with SU! markers.  I stamped the image again and cut out the larger duck for the upper square.  The yellow rick-rack is felt.  I embossed the white on the left side with a Swiss Dots CB folder, and rubbed it with yellow ink over the the raised dots and the edges.  I also added a little yellow flower with an orange brad.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Thank You Card Swap

I made this card for a swap in my Yahoo! group - and got to deliver it in person!  The theme this month was a Thank You card.


I used a Michael Strong stamp (that I got at last year's Group Gathering - thanks Andrea and Mike!) called Cloisonné Tulip.  I stamped it with Versamark on green and purple cardstocks and embossed it with Gold Detail embossing powder.  I colored them with a couple Stampin' Up! markers.  I cut out the tulip and the leaves and adhered them to some more purple cardstock.  I popped the tulip up on Pop Dots.  I matted it with green, then matted it with a larger piece of purple.  I rubbed the Versamark pad on the edges of the purple, and embossed with gold embossing powder.  The sentiment is from Verve, and is also embossed.


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Repeat Impressions Stamp of the Week - Life Is

It's Monday, and you know what that means, right?  Repeat Impressions' Stamp of the Week time!  This week's stamp is called "Life is not ..." #6113-K.  To find all the details necessary to get this stamp for 50% off (this week only!), please visit the RI blog, The House That Stamps Built.  Then be sure to visit the blogs of the other Design Team members for more great ideas.  

Dana ~ Harriet ~ Julie ~ Makiko ~ Robin

I started by stamping another Repeat Impressions stamp (By the Stream) with Stampin' Up!'s Creamy Caramel ink.  I colored it with SU! chalks.  Then I stamped the "Life is not ..." stamp with Creamy Caramel on vellum, and embossed it with clear embossing powder.  I added the "faux brads" with glue dots on the corner, and then used glue dots under those to adhere the vellum to the background.  I matted the image with Creamy Caramel cardstock and added it to a white base.


(Check out the Special of the month on the RI web store, too, for a 25% discount off certain "Wings of Summer" stamps.)


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Card Parts #2

OK.  Here is card #2 using parts from one of my "Card Parts" boxes.


The image was stamped already.  It's done with an Anita's stamp.  I trimmed it down.  The bee was already stamped also - on vellum - and colored.  I cut it out and mounted it on Pop Dots.  I did do the embossing when I put the card together.  The double mats were already cut, too.  They worked perfectly!


Note to Colorado:  I sure didn't intend for my blog to be harder to read!  I have increased the font size.  Does that help?  What can I do to make it easier?  If you would like to, please free free to email me at LJNeus@hotmail.com.


I'm writing this Friday night, to be posted Sunday.  When it posts, I'll be getting ready to drive to Des Moines. :)


Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!