Neat & Tangled Blog Hop

Today I am helping Neat & Tangled release a new set. 

This little cutie was designed by the uber cutie pie herself PAMELA HO. Can you just scream cute?! 

The little girls look just like my own babies...look! 

The set will be available on Thursday July 17th.  Pick up your very own cutie pie set HERE. Leave a comment on the Neat & Tangled blog for a chance to win the set and a free pack of sequins. 

Altenew Blog Hop

Welcome to Altenew's second Blog Hop! Altenew is a relatively new stamp company that opened it's doors last April. In a couple of days they will be releasing their second collection of stamps. All the stamps that you will see here will be available for purchase at 9:00 am EST on Monday July 14th.

If you are here from Taheerah's blog, welcome!

 I was asked to participate this time around and am so excited to see some well needed Islamic stamps designed this release. Here is what I made:

I paired the sentiment from Super Script 2 and the flowers from Persian motifs to make this fun simple flat card.  It makes a beautiful background against the bold font. 

For my next card I created an ombre background with watercolors and then stamped the flowers from Persian motifs on top. Pretty easy! I was inspired by a card I saw Julie Ebersole make! The sentiment is from Eid Greetings. Oh my gosh am I so excited to see this set! It is long overdue and so needed!!

Prizes

To celebrate their second release, Altenew is giving away five stamp sets of choice to three lucky winners! The winners will be chosen from comments left on the Altenew blog. There is more! I will choose a winner from comments left on this post and the prize will be two stamps sets of your choice. You have until Monday July 14th 7:59am EST to leave your comments. You may enter up to two comments on each blog: 

• Comment on the project, or the stamps. 

• Like us on Facebook

The winners will be selected and announced on Monday July 14th at 9:00 am EST! 

The blog hop has some real talent. I hope you will check everyones projects out! You can find the full list of participants HERE.

Flight of Ideas...

For those of you know don't know what the term FLIGHT OF IDEAS means (it's a medical term) meaning a nearly continuous flow of rapid speech that jumps from topic to topic, usually based on discernible associations, distractions, or plays on words, but in severe cases so rapid as to be disorganized and incoherent. It is most commonly seen in manic episodes but may also occur in other mental disorders such as in manic phases of schizophrenia. 

I use this term humorously, though I understand the disorder to be serious...


I haven't been blogging as much as I would like, but do have a few things to share because well I don't always HAVE to showcase cards right? I mean I am this time, but maybe next time we can chat about my vision board or that my 10 year old is hitting a personality bump that has me kind of pondering my mothering skills? Right? 

So here is something I ran into that has me laughing...

I made this little card for my mother in law who celebrated her birthday last week and I will be seeing her tomorrow. She is pretty awesome and I wanted her to know it! The girl is from Dear Lizzy and the sentiment is from Avery Elle. 

Speaking of my mother in law...I had to share this. I travel to Columbus Monday to Wednesday for my work and while I am there, I stay with my inlaws. One day I came home from work and no one was there. THIS was waiting for me to eat with delicious cheese and crackers!!

Ok well catch you later. We are going to DC for the 4th. I suppose it's very timely, no? :)

A Card Maker without any Cards and some Cards Humor

Ever make a ton of cards and give them away thinking you got plenty more and then need one and have NONE?! So I sat down and made a bunch of much needed cards. Here is the first of a few more that I will be showing in the weeks to come.

I found a new challenge and well this is perfect. Darnell started a challenge which is supposed to help you open up those wonderful stamps and get to inking! It's called NBUS (never before used schtuff) and the theme this week is friendship.

 I was sent this deliciously cute set for Avery Elle by JJ Bolton herself! How I wanted to ink it up and never got to until now. The set is called Red & Goldie. I made another card using this set and Sophia, my 10 year old wanted to color the little girl so she colored the one above. Then she just LEFT it on the table. I noticed it and thought she was cute...so here she is. I was not allowed to post it unless I specifically gave her credit. Sheesh!

Here is the other card I made with the cutie pie...

I can't get over her cuteness, how her braids just poke out so perfectly. LOL!

So back to studying for me. There is so much to learn and I am enjoying every single minute. It is everything I imagined the job to be! I am going to leave you with some Cardiology humor!

A Card, A Quote and a POWERFUL video

The Colorado Crafting crew took a trip to a craft store in Colorado Springs. I was VERY disciplined and walked away with a SINGLE sheet of 12x12 paper by SEI. Now this was no ordinary paper. It was flocked/textured/raised. It was prettier than wallpaper. I came home and cut it up into strips (only a portion of it), after all, these types of papers need to be used with great care. 

The stamps are from Penny Black --the flower is called POPPY TRIO and SUNNY HELLO. They are inked in gold. It's hard to tell but the flowers have a shimmer to them.  I have become so lazy with my blogging...no watermark, no linking or mention of products. What has become of me?!

I have been really inspired by words lately. I will be traveling to Columbus for work now and look forward to all the books I will be audio reading (is that a word??). In any event, I am going to leave you with this quote which really really inspired me.

Lastly, I started a new job in Cardiology recently (I mentioned that right?).  During the first week, we were shown a video. It is so POWERFUL. I am in the business of making people better and to be part of their lives during a challenging time.  I am so proud of that.  It is a gift. I wanted to share with you...

On the Crate Blog...Stationary Sets!

Stationary to me means coordinating sets of pretty papers and envelopes, so that's what I set out to do for my project today on the Crate Paper Blog. I used the Open Road Collection to make a stationary gift set. I started with coordinating double sided papers that had both a masculine side and a feminine side and made envelopes. Based on the design of those, I made 4 cards. Here is one of them. Check out the blog to see the entire set HERE!!

Cristina is a Published Author, and I am Her Friend.

My friend and fellow cardmaker, Cristina Kowalczyk, has some exciting news. She’s also an author (she writes under her maiden name – Cristina Henriquez), and her novel, The Book of Unknown Americans, comes out TODAY! To celebrate, I, along with a few other crafty friends, are helping her spread the word about her book.

Ben Fountain said it was “a triumph of storytelling,” Heidi Julavits called it “extraordinary,” and Amazon editor Chris Schluep chose it as his “must read for summer,” saying, “This novel snuck up on me. It’s moving and beautifully written, never overwrought, and I read it virtually in one sitting. It’s compelling, tragic, sometimes funny, uplifting and heart-wrenching. I can’t stop thinking about these people.”

Cristina is giving away 5 signed, first-edition copies of The Book of Unknown Americans. And because this is all about spreading the word, there are four ways to enter.

1.     Tweet about The Book of Unknown Americans (#UnknownAmericans)

2.     Write a Facebook post telling your friends about the book

3.     Pin the cover of the book on Pinterest

4.     Or simply leave a comment on Cristina’s blog

If you do all four of those, that’s four entries! (On Cristina’s blog, submit one comment per entry. For example: “I tweeted!” “I put it on FB!” “I pinned it!” etc.)

From all the comments on her blog, Cristina will choose 5 people to win a copy of the novel. Plus, one lucky person will win the grand prize, a signed book plus a giant stash of craft supplies – stamps, dies, inks, you name it!

For more info about the book and other ways that you can show your support, head over to Cristina’s blog.

I thought it would be fun to make a card using the card as inspiration. Here is the card I made:

Here are some amazing crafters who are celebrating the book release also, so check out their blogs too!

Julie Ebersole : http://papertrufflez.com/

Virginia Lu : http://virginialusblog.blogspot.ca/

Maile Belles : http://mailebelles.blogspot.ca/

Debby Hughes : http://limedoodledesign.com/

Wida Miller : http://beachorado.blogspot.ca/

Laura Bassen : http://laurafadora.wordpress.com/

Jennifer McGuire : http://www.jennifermcguireink.com/

I am so honored to have such a talented friend who I hope to meet in 2014 so help me! LOL! Hopefully, I will get my autographed copy in person.  ;)

Wida

A Bucket List Book

Hi Everybody! Today I wanted to show you what I call a BUCKET LIST BOOK. I made a mini book of places I want to go in the United States with very minimal supplies. The paper for the cover is so colorful that it looks great as a stand alone. All I did to give it a little handmade touch is adhere a pennant from the Open Road collection to the cover, but you could adorn yours more if you like. 

Here is a peek of the inside. To see the rest of it and how I made it, check out the Crate Paper blog HERE!

Have a great day!

I'm Late!

Well I am a little late in posting this!! I started my new job this week and it has been a whirlwind of changes and excitement. I am pursuing my dream nurse practitioner job in cardiology and I am both scared and excited. I have bought books, organizational items, got a new bag, a lab coat with my name embroidered on it and I am set to go to learn inpatient cardiology. EEK!

With all that has been going on, I seem to have forgotten to post my card for Case Study! Oh boy! Here is my card.

The card is based on this one:

To make this card I used the doily embossing folder from Crate Paper. It's pretty amazing :) I used gelatos and kind of white washed a white piece of paper in rows of the 4 colors that came in the pack and then die cut them with a PTI button bits die. I think the Hello die is from SSS. I used my friend Ceal's supplies. It's pretty cool to get to use friends stuff, all the awesomeness without the price tag! She gave me the gems too. Have I mentioned that she is a gem herself?

I am missing my Colorado friends. I hope you hug your friends extra tight next time you see them. Sometimes you take for granted that they will always be there to hang out, you know?

A Project From Scratch

I'm on the Crate Paper Blog today with a project from scratch.

You know, I have never made a project from scratch. Just me and my crafty supplies with no instant help from any ready made items. It was quite fun actually. Let me show you what I made.

I wanted to make something special for a fellow crafty friend and hand made embellishments seemed like the perfect idea. I took out some of my favorite Crate Paper goodies and got to work keeping in mind the color scheme this month of Emerald, Gold, and Pink.

My supplies included:

• Kraft with gold polka dot paper from Style Board 
• Pink patterned paper from Oh Darling
• Flower dies 
• Card stock 
• Gold twine
• Crate Paper Style Board flair 
• Wood veneers 

I started by making the embellishment (TUTORIAL HERE).

I made a matching box to put them in using my Silhouette-Design #41611. I did make sure I used extra firm tape to secure the box. Regular tape would not be strong enough. I chose this particular shape box to be able to see the handmade items better.




I love the idea of the little pretties all nestled together on display!  To create the crinkle paper, I watched THIS tutorial. So far, my project was pretty easy to do...phew! To adorn the top of the box, I simply cut some scraps of paper and glued them on the gold twine like a banner. For a few, I did use the bow die from Style Board because it had the perfect banner shape.

I made a matching card using one of the embellishments so they all coordinated and the recipient could see how I used the gift too!  I watercolored white paper a shade of Emerald/Blue and adhered a die cut on top. If you don't have a plate, the silhouette has some options also, like THIS one.

Seeing them all together makes me happy. They coordinate, are such a beautiful color combination and have the feminine touch I was going for.