Make-n-Take Cards

Remember how I had a little therapy session a few posts ago? You all were so nice...giving me advice and just plain sympathizing with me! Adilane is now walking holding on to one hand (instead of two),so I am sure she will be walking soon. She has learned to point at what she wants recently, so the screaming is not as frequent as it was...not much still in the talking department, but we are getting by!

I am finally getting to showing you the Make-n-Take cards that I had everyone do that came to the New Catalog Kick-Off party I had last week. It went very well and everyone seemed to like these two cards.

The first one uses the Branch Out set...on a side note, I was totally freaking out when I got my new catalog and didn't see it in there, but it wasn't on the retiring list, finally they released the dormant list (last year for it thank goodness) and it was on there. Since it is one of my favorite sets, I came up with this simple card to allow them to play with it. Going for a summer feel with the Garden Green and Summer Sun color combo. To give the tree a little bit more interest, I did the Rock-n-Roll technique with Creamy Caramel and Chocolate Chip. Nothing else too crazy here...simple with a little bit of extra detail.

The second one used the Circle Circus stamp set and the new In Colors. This was just one color combo I did for a sample, but everyone got to choose the colors that they wanted to use. The medallion was just stamped in black and then colored in with the In Color markers. I love the little bit of texture that the textured cardstock added to the card. Finally a greeting form Sincere Salutations and a couple of white gel dots finished the card.

That is all for now...I have lots to show sometime in the future, but right now I am actually going to submit them (probably just jinxed myself just by admitting that...oh well!). Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

The Engineering Details - Celebrate Life Card

Stamps - Branch Out, Sanded, So Many Sayings (retired); Paper - Garden Green, Summer Sun, Creamy Caramel, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White; Ink - Creamy Caramel, Chocolate Chip, Garden Green, Summer Sun, Basic Black; Accessories - Round Corner Punch, Word Window Punch, Sponge, Paper Piercer, Mat Pack, dimensionals

The Engineering Details - Birthday Wishes Card

Stamps - Circle Circus, Sincere Salutations; Paper - Rich Razzelberry, Dusty Durango Textured, Bermuda Bay, Whisper White; Ink - Whisper White Craft, Basic Black, In Color Markers; Accessories - 3/4" Circle Punch, 1-1/4" Circle Punch, 1-3/8" Circle Punch, Scallop Circle Punch, White Gel Pen, dimensionals

Colorful Circles

Wow it has been awhile since I have posted anything! I had a New Catalog Kick-Off Party this weekend, so I had been busy preparing for that. I will show what I had everyone make (nothing earth-shattering, but I think they liked them) later this week. I made some other stuff too in there, but not gonna show you quite yet...actually going to try submitting for publication and a contest...well I have some more to do for that though, so I should probably get busy.

This is a simple card I made for display at the event this weekend. I am pretty sure this was inspired by something I saw in the Demonstrator magazine, Stampin' Success...I don't think it was a complete copy...but I am honestly not sure. Anyway, very simple but I liked how it showed off the new In Colors (which I love!) and the Circle Circus stamp set.

Well I am off to learn some songs and motions for Vacation Bible School...I am Song Leader Lady again this year! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Circle Circus, Happy Everything; Paper - Bermuda Bay Textured, Dusty Durango, Whisper White; Ink - In Color Markers; Accessories - White Taffeta Ribbon, Fire Circle Rhinestone Brads, Scallop Edge Punch, dimensionals

Daisy Mojo

Before I have to get my butt in gear and commence the packing of everything but the kitchen sink (traveling with young kids is so much fun!), I wanted to share the card I did for the current Mojo Monday Sketch Challenge #94 (and it is a contest week!). This card really was a labor of love...I cannot tell you how many times layers got ripped apart and put back together. I think it weathered the storm though!

I was looking through some old cards I had done and found one that I did some faux embossing with wheels. A cool technique, but can be challenging to do because if you are off too much it doesn't look right. Anyway, the light bulb went off in my head...the Upsy Daisy set would be perfect for this! So I chose to do some faux embossing as my main image. If you are unfamiliar with the technique, you stamp the image in Craft White, let dry, and then stamp the image in colored Dye ink just a smidge off from the first image. I will admit that it took me three tries to get this one! At the last minute I decided to actually emboss the image as well, so I really just enhanced the embossing. The detail shot shows better how the images are just a smidge offset from each other.

I used the Round Tab Punch to give me some little brackets on either side of my main image. At the very end I decided the main image was still a little too plain so I added some white dots all around the perimeter. The patterned paper is Raspberry Tart which was retired from SU! last month. Kind of a funky color combo throughout the whole pack, but I like it. These pieces from it weren't that crazy.

I added a felt flower from the Flower Fusion collection with a circle of the patterned paper lined with the White gel pen at the bottom corner. At first I didn't have the circle underneath it, but decided it got lost, so I added the circles to help it stand out a little bit more. Did you see I tried to accent the felt flower? I added white gel pen along one edge of each petal and Rose Red Marker along the other side in an attempt to match the main image stamping. What do you think of my little bow? I really like it...just looped the ribbon in and out a couple of times and adhered the end to the back side of the main image. I will have to use this again!

Well I think that is everything! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Upsy Daisy; Paper - Raspberry Tart DSP (retired), Rose Red, Cameo Coral, Whisper White; Ink - Whisper White Craft, Rose Red, Rose Red Marker; Accessories - Round Tab Punch, 1-3/8" Circle Punch, 1-1/4" Circle Punch, 3/4" Circle Punch, Rose Red Felt Flower Fusion Flower, Clear Rhinestone Brad, White Gel Pen, Crystal Clear embossing Powder, Heat Gun, White Taffeta Ribbon, Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, dimensionals

Oh My Goodness and a Road Trip

So I may use a little space here as a little therapy session...if you would rather not hear me whine, skip down to the next paragraph. Still here...oh thanks! Let me start by saying I love my baby girl so very much...have to remind myself of that sometimes especially on days like these! So she seriously needs to start talking already...she is 13.5 months old now and all we really get are "doggie", maybe "duck", maybe "car", and a lot of mamamamamama (which may or may not relate to me!). The reason I say this is because the poor thing has no way of communicating with me besides screaming! Problem is all of the screams sound the same...LOUD! I have tried and am still trying signing with her, but she does not seem to get it nor has she ever attempted to show me a sign. I got to the point today I yelled at her to stop, which startled her, then she did stop screaming (yeah!), but then started crying (which is close to screaming!). Ahhhh, I just want her to start talking, signing, or something so that we can communicate better with each other! My son was an early talker, so I didn't have this issue with him....I am so struggling right now! Ok enough of my therapy session...on to the subject at hand.

First for my "Oh My Goodness" portion of the title of today's post. I got some very exciting news recently! Spellbinder's (the makers of the Nestabilities) blog had a Blog Frenzy last week to showcase their new Pendants and Borderabilities (all of which are very cool!) and you could enter each day to have a chance to win that days Pendant and matching Borderabilities...and if you entered all of the days, you had a chance to win the Grand Prize of all of the new Pendants and Borderabilities. Well guess what....I WON the GRAND PRIZE! Check out all of the cool stuff I won HERE! It is so exciting to see my name as the winner...I just couldn't (and still can't) believe it!

Now for the Road Trip portion of the post...my family is headed on a trip this weekend to southern Ohio. This will be the longest trip I think we have taken with the kids, so I have been trying to come up with ideas to keep Eli (Adi is too young for all of this) entertained without too many DVD's and such. Allison Fillo was kind enough to send me a link to a Road Trip game that you try and count up the number of each vehicle you see. So I took that idea and made it into a Road Trip BINGO. So as we are driving along, we will play BINGO with the things we see. It sounds like it should be fun...I will let you know how it goes when we get back!

Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Seeing Stars

I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July! We went to my parents house to pick up the kids after two wonderful days without them (we were ready to get them back though). It was actually very cool...we drove home last night between 9 - 11 pm. Ok that isn't the cool part...the cool part was how much fireworks we saw on the drive. For about an hour my son had the best time looking out for all of the fireworks...he got so excited every time he spotted some. This was the best way for him to experience the fireworks...he hates loud noises so we usually tend to avoid the fireworks shows because of the noise.

We had some of our good friends over for dinner on Friday night and one of the guys was celebrating his birthday. So I put this card together for him. Plus I just got my FREE Verve set from my random win (and another set I ordered to go with it!), so I was excited to get them inked up! I started with the current Mojo Monday Sketch #93 and some recently retired Stampin' Up! DSP, Rainbow Sherbert. Stamped and cut out a bunch of Stars from both the Seeing Stars and Starlight Starbright Verve sets in various colors. They made up the "image" panel and then the sentiment "Wishing you a day filled with Possibility" with the oval star background (cut out by had due to lack of an oval punch!) covered the oval element of the sketch.

Since this was a guy card, I skipped all of the scallops that were in teh sketch and just did one torn edge. I added some Apricot Appeal ribbon, even though it is a guy card, and believe me it matched much better in person than how is showed up on camera...weird! Anyway, I cut out three more stars for the upper right corner and dressed them up a bit with punched out pieces of the circle DSP and some of the fake (cheap!) dew drops. I love the little touch that those added especially with the punch out pieces of DSP underneath.

That is all for me...I am busy trying to work on a Catalog Kickoff Party and a future Stamp Camp...so not sure how much of that I will be showing yet. I am due a couple of birthday and what not cards though this week, so I will show you those (when I make them!). Thanks for stopping by my engineering world!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Seeing Stars (Verve Stamps), Starlight Starbright (Verve Stamps); Paper - Rainbow Sherbert DSP, Tempting Turquoise, Gable Green, Whisper White; Ink - Tempting Turquoise, Apricot Appeal, Green Galore, Gable Green; Accessories - Apricot Appeal 1/4" Grosgrain Ribbon, Fake Dew Drops (from Michael's), Crop-a-Dile, dimensionals