Mar 17, 2011 | Bingo, Birthday, Occasions Mini 2011 |
I saw this really fun project idea HERE at Becky Roberts blog. She is amazingly creative with lots of fun ideas. I took her cake mix kit and used it for my Stamper’s Club project this month. I had to change pretty much all the measurements because I used a different brand of cake mix – she tells you that in her instructions that her measurements are for a specific brand.
I’m calling mine a cupcake kit because I included cupcake picks in the front pocket. The Celebrations DSP was perfect for this project and so was the Create a Cupcake stamp set and the Build a Cupcake punch! Both are in the Stampin’ Up! Occasions Mini Catalog.
In the first picture you can see in the back section of the box is the cake mix. When you open up the front flap of the box on the inside you will find two tubes filled with sprinkles.
Inside the front pocket I added some candles (my picture only has 2 – I included 3 for the club – that was because that was all I had in the house when I made the sample).
Inside a medium cello bag are some cupcake picks made with the Create a Cupcake stamp set.
And then to finish off the set we decorated a tub of frosting – you have to have that.
Here are the next two pieces for my Spring Bingo players. I know several people have three in a row – I’m not sure if anyone has 4 in a row yet – maybe after today.
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
Have a fun day! I almost forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day. I better go put on something green – I probably should have reminded the boys of that before they went to school – oh well.
Luckily one of the bingo pieces is green – at least my blog has some green!
Mar 16, 2011 | Big Shot, Bingo, Cards, Occasions Mini 2011, Thank You, Wildlife |
When the Stampin’ Up! Occasions Mini Catalog first came out there was one stamp set that I just loved. Can you guess which one?
It is the Nature Walk stamp set – and I got the wood version because I think it is so pretty that I can just set the stamps out on a shelf for decoration if I want to. I have been using the set but I’m not sure if I have shared any on my blog. Today I have a card that is similar to one that we saw at Leadership. It was a card that Shelli showed us on stage – I think hers was possibly a 3×3 card – mine is actually a 4-1/4″ x 4-1/4″ card. I have been making this size card lately and like that it is a square but it still fits in our medium sized envelopes.
The card base is Cherry Cobbler. There is a strip of Basic Black that was textured with the Square Lattice textured embossing folder.
The scallop circle is a Big Shot die cut from White Naturals card stock. Then the Nature Walk stamp set is sort of stamped as a collage on the scallop circle. The bird cage in Crumb Cake, the floral in Always Artichoke, the bee in Basic Black, the number in Cherry Cobbler. I added a thank you greeting from Teeny Tiny Wishes but you could use this for many different things. 
The inside is stamped to match. On both pieces I used the Color Spritzer with the Stampin’ Write marker to add some more speckles. At the top of the scallop I punched two holes and threaded a piece of Linen Thread through it – then I created a cheater bow – I’ll have to try to find the blog that I saw this on – basically you take your ribbon and hold it like the cancer ribbon with the loop at the top and the ends crossed. Then you take the center of the loop and bring it down to the crossed part. Take and place that in between the Linen Thread and then tie the thread around it until it is tight – adjust the loops and tails to get the bow you want.
There is been some bird activity around my bird houses. Here are a couple of pictures of House #1 – one is a tufted titmouse from a couple of days ago and the other the female bluebird from last week.
Tufted Titmouse
House #2 and #3 have also had some visitors.
Bluebird
And I’ve even had some lookers at the Woodpecker house – that is exciting because it is new – I didn’t have it last spring.
There is also a new house that my friend Sue gave me – it looks like a cat and the birds go in and out through the mouth. I haven’t seen any birds near it yet. The dogs do check it out occasionally making sure it isn’t a real cat hanging there.
Spring Bingo players – is anyone getting close – any three or four in a row – or is there a 5 in a row winner today?
Here are the next two pieces –
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
Have a great day!
Mar 15, 2011 | Bingo, Cards, SU Ribbon, UDI Color Challenge |
Tuesday is here again. And its UDI Color Challenge day. For those of us on the design team we actually create our projects the week before and send them to Gretchen so she can get the post ready to go for Tuesday. Some weeks I cut right to the deadline (ok a lot of weeks) and other weeks I’m a little ahead of the game. This week I made it ahead of the deadline and thought I had a pretty creative idea to share too. I’ll see if you agree.
Here is the inspiration photo for this week –
Click on this link to go to the Utah Diva’s Color Challenge blog. There you can see the creations from the entire design team and add a link to your creation if you decide to play along. So here is my card creation for this week –
I was very happy when I realized we had the Seam Binding ribbon in three of the colors in our challenge this week – Baja Breeze, Always Artichoke, and Very Vanilla. I wanted to use all three but couldn’t decide exactly the best way to do that. I finally decided to try braiding the three colors together. To start tie a knot with the three pieces together and then tape that down to the table to hold it still. Then do a loose braid for the length that you need. For this card I used a trick that one of my demonstrator friends, Joyce, reminded me of this weekend – I had seen it before but had forgotten. See where the knot is right under there is a hole punched through the Very Vanilla card stock. So to start come from the back and bring the ends of the ribbon through. I used tape to hold the ends together while I worked. Bring the ribbon (in this case my braid) around to the front of the card, all the way across, and to the back. For mine I secured the end of my braid at the top edge and bottom edge with tape on the back side – and then un-braided what was on the back so it would lay flat. When the end gets back to the hole on the back bring the other end of the ribbon through the hole. Now both ends are in the front – put one on each side of the braid and then tie the knot around. This keeps everything in place and everything secure. Then I decided to fray the ends – I think that actually took the longest. Trim just the very edge off each side of the ribbon and then pull out all the cross hairs until you are just left with the long pieces. I did that 6 times one for each end of each color of ribbon.
The stamp set is Herb expressions. I used sponging on the edges of the Very Vanilla and the Color Spritzer with the Stampin’ Write Markers. The Rosemary image is colored in with the markers too. I created a matching inside panel but forgot to take the picture of it. I’ll try to add that later. I hope you like it!
I hope you’ll visit the UDI site and play along with us this week.
Stampin’ Up! Supplies:
- Card stock: Basic Gray, Very Vanilla
- Ink: Basic Grey, Stampin’ Write Markers in Basic Grey, Baja Breeze, Always Artichoke
- Stamp sets: Herb Expressions
- Accessories: Scallop Edge punch,Crop-A-Dile, Color Spritzer, Seam Binding: Baja Breeze, Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke, Stampin’ Sponge, Stampin’ Dimensionals.
To order Stampin’ Up! Supplies to make this project click here.
Monika’s Spring Bingo – here are the next two pieces for you:
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
Mar 13, 2011 | Bingo, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages, Thoughts & Prayers |
I’m not sure that Ryan even remembers this anymore (he probably does – I’ll have to ask). These were pictures from 2003. We found this baby squirrel in the backyard and it was following Ryan around everywhere. It must have fallen out of a nest because he was all alone.
We decided to give it some food (birdseed) and a little cap filled with water. We put it on a paper plate – this was one of those small paper plates not the normal size – the are maybe 4 or 5 inches diameter – so he was still pretty small.
I really wasn’t sure what to do with him. We had out dogs in the house so I couldn’t bring him in there and we need to leave for something so I didn’t have time to take him anywhere. I finally decided just to leave him in the back yard – I didn’t think he would be able to get out of the fence and the dogs were inside so I thought he would be safe for the hour that we would be gone.
When we came back and searched for him he was still in the backyard but somehow had injured himself – he was now dragging his back legs. Not good. We got him into a shoebox and drove him up to the wild animal vet. Ryan was still pretty young so he didn’t really know that something was wrong. The vet said the squirrel had broken his back and wasn’t going to survive. It was so sad and I didn’t really have the heart to tell Ryan. So instead I just told him the vet was going to find a proper home for him and we left him there. It was several years later when Ryan was older before I told him what really happened to the baby squirrel. I still don’t know how he hurt himself unless he was climbing the trees while we were gone or a cat came into the yard and tried to get him.
The pictures were still very cute so I decided to drop them on this scrapbook layout – it was a sketch I found on a scrapbook blog somewhere. I created the rectangles – three photo boxes and three punched rectangles. I got them all to the exact same size by using the edit object and setting the height and width. Then I aligned them with one another using the align options in My Digital Studio – you align the top, the bottom, the centers, or left edge or right edge. On the left side is a rectangle punch filled with the Crumb Cake (Kraft) Textured card stock and then the scallop border punch (two of them overlapping). I added some chocolate chip stitching. The stamped images are from the Thoughts & Prayers stamp set. I played around with the drop shadow on the flowers and the title – changing the opacity and color until I got the effect that I wanted. Once I had everything on the page – I decided to add a text box at the bottom for my journaling – but when I was done the journaling was way to close to the bottom of the page so I wanted to move everything up to make the whole thing include the text be centered at the page. I didn’t want to move all the elements individually because I finally had it all lined up. So I figured out that I could go to the ARRANGE drop-down menu and have it SELECT ALL. Then with everything selected you can select GROUP – so it groups it all together. Then go to the Align Objects button and select to center vertically on the page and the horizontally on the page. This will move the whole group at once. Then you can ungroup and unselect. I hope that made sense!
Spring Bingo players here come your next two pieces – are you ready?
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
Is anyone close to a Bingo yet? Let me know when you get 5 in a row.
So remember yesterday I told you to change the clocks. So Greg changed the clock in our bedroom. What we didn’t know is that the clock actually changes itself – it has a setting that you turn on or off and it was on. So this morning we were TWO hours ahead – instead of just one. It is fixed back now but it’s good to know if we forget the clock will do it for us.
Mar 12, 2011 | Bingo, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
One of the fun things about My Digital Studio is the Designer Templates that Stampin’ Up! creates. There are several that come with the base software and then there are others that are included with various Digital Downloads. These make it very quick to create a scrapbook page (or other project) since you just drop in the pictures you want, add your journaling and you are done.
I decided to do that last night with some old pictures that I had been looking at from 2003. Yes I have tons of pictures that I have never done anything with – many are on my computer and never have been printed. Others are printed and sitting in boxes waiting to be added to a scrapbook page. Eventually I’ll get there. Until then I’ll just plug away at them a little at a time. For the page I was working on last night I used pictures from the last day of school in May 2003. Ryan was finishing first grade, Tyler fourth grade and Kyle fifth grade. That seems like so long ago! They have changed sooooo much in that time.
This page is a 12×12 Designer Template that comes with the Play Date Designer Series Paper Digital Download. The download includes 12 paper patterns plus the template for $4.95.
There are a lot more templates than I realized. Recently Stampin’ Up! added an online Catalog for My Digital Studio. You can find it HERE on My Digital Studio. net (if you have joined you need to do that right away – its free and has tons of information about MDS). It is updated monthly to include all the new downloads for that month. The catalog will show the pages with the artwork for the download and then it has a page of product details. On this page it lists – the Item #, download name, contents, coordinating colors (LOVE THIS!), price (both US and CAN), Release Date, and Designer Templates.
I was surprised by some of the things that had templates with them. Some of the punches come with card templates, many of the stamp brush sets come with card or scrapbook templates. Now I have to go back and look at what I bought and which ones have templates with them. For my personal use I have printed out the Product Detail sheets and put them in a notebook – then when I buy a download I mark it on my sheet so that I know what I have.
For this one I used the 12×12 template – I added my pictures and the journaling in each box underneath. The only thing I think I really changed was I replaced what was in the template on the letters with the date. That is what is cool about the templates – is you can use them the way they are or delete and add to them. Fun stuff!
Spring Bingo Players here are two more pieces for you today-
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
Have a great weekend and remember that tonight we change our clocks “Spring forward” an hour for daylight savings time. I guess not everyone does that but we do it here.
I’m looking forward to a fun PAWS meeting tonight with my downline, my sidelines and my SU demo friends!
Mar 11, 2011 | Big Shot, Bingo, Occasions Mini 2011, Sale-A-Bration 2011 |
The other night I had my neighborhood friends over for Pokeeno and I wanted to give everyone a little treat. So part of my Garden/Spring theme I created little boxes which decorated the table and then everyone took one home.
This little box idea is from the Stampin’ Success magazine – all Stampin’ Up! demonstrators receive this magazine monthly and it has stamping ideas, product tips, business tips and more. I love getting it every month. The April issue is due out any day now. And the other awesome thing is that Stampin’ Up! has archives online for us back to 2003 and there are lots of online extras including project instructions. I made slight changes to the box that they showed us in the magazine – but kept the basic theme, layout and colors about the same.
The box is the Fancy Favor box cut from Pretty in Pink card stock – the top is sponged with Melon Mambo ink. I cut a 1″ strip of the First Edition Specialty Designer Series Paper from the Occasions mini catalog – scored every 1/4″ and accordion fold – glue the two ends together and then turn it flat to create a circle – which I glued to the front of my box. I used the green bottle of Multipurpose Adhesive which I held for a minute so it would set.
On top of that is my butterfly focal point. I cut two So Saffron butterflies using the Big Shot and the Beautiful Butterflies die. Each is stamped with the flourish from the Bliss Sale-A-Bration stamp set. The edges of the top butterfly are also sponged. I layered the two butterflies together and on top of a Pear Pizzazz 1″ circle and then on top of the butterflies is a Baja Breeze little flower punch from the Punch Pals pack. I tied a piece of Linen Thread around the center and tied in a knot and trim – there are holes poked through the circle and the thread goes all the way through to the back of the little circle. I glued the butterflies to the front of the box on top of the DSP.
I filled them with shredded tissue and candy (chocolate of course).
For those of you that are wondering about the birds that I usually post about in the spring. Well they are a bit slow coming to my yard this year. I think because of the construction/workers that were here from mid January through the first of March. Either that or the weather is different this year. This week I am starting to see activity around the bird houses – the birds are looking in but so far no nest building has started. I even saw a woodpecker take a peek into the new woodpecker house that I have added for this year. Crossing fingers that we’ll have some nests soon!
Spring Bingo players here come your next two pieces. Have a great weekend – I’m having a PAWS Demonstrator meeting this weekend and looking forward to getting together with all my demonstrator team members and friends.
images copyright Stampin' Up!
images copyright Stampin' Up!
I saw this really fun project idea HERE at Becky Roberts blog. She is amazingly creative with lots of fun ideas. I took her cake mix kit and used it for my Stamper’s Club project this month. I had to change pretty much all the measurements because I used a different brand of cake mix – she tells you that in her instructions that her measurements are for a specific brand.
In the first picture you can see in the back section of the box is the cake mix. When you open up the front flap of the box on the inside you will find two tubes filled with sprinkles.
Inside the front pocket I added some candles (my picture only has 2 – I included 3 for the club – that was because that was all I had in the house when I made the sample).
