Mar 25, 2010 | Big Shot, Cards, Occasion Mini 2010, Thank You |
I needed to make some more 3×3 tags for my orders and saw an email from my friend Lisa sharing a 3×3 and a card that she completed for a challenge on Heather’s Blog. Since I was already making 3×3’s I thought I would hop on over to Heather’s Blog and see about her challenge. He idea was to create a Progressive Card – where you take a 3×3 card and turn it into a regular sized card. We often talk about progressive scrapbook pages – create a 6×6, then turn it into an 8-1/2 x 11, then turn it into a 12×12. Heather wanted to apply this same concept to a card – great idea – 3×3’s are small and fun to make and it doesn’t take much to turn it into a regular sized card. I was up for the challenge so here it goes…..
Here is my 3×3 card that I made. I used the Stampin’ Up! Picnic Parade Level 2 Hostess set. Oh how I wish it wasn’t a hostess set – I want it to be in the new catalog! This is just the cutest little set and with my obsession with bluebirds – the perfect little bird is in this set.
So that was my inspiration was to make a little bluebird card using this set. The colors are Crushed Curry, Basic Black, Ballet Blue and Whisper White for the card stock. I used my Aqua Painter and the ink from the ink pads to watercolor all my little stamped images.
These will be Thank You tags on some of my orders this month.
So the challenge was to take a 3×3 and turn it into a regular sized card – that is a 5-1/2″ x 4-1/4″ card. So here is my card.
I took out another piece of Ballet Blue card stock and ran it through my Big Shot. I added texture to just the front of the card – does everyone know how to do that – maybe I need to show that one day. I used the Perfect Details Texturz Plate for this one – I like this pattern because to me it looks like lattice which is often in gardens and outside.
My 3×3 was added on the left side of the card with a piece of the Crushed Curry polka dot ribbon underneath and then tied in a knot. I added 3 black brads from the Vintage Brad set to the bottom right had corner. And then I decided to add a little tag on the ribbon. I just recently go the Tiny Tags stamp set and the Medium Jewelry Punch from the Occasions Mini Catalog. I decided that would be the perfect little touch for this card. I stamped the little dotted tag image from the Tiny Tags set and then added the little flower from the Picnic Parade set – the same one I used on my 3×3. Punched that out and added it to my ribbon. I don’t think you can really see it in the picture but I did sponge around the edge of the little tag with the Crushed Curry ink just very lightly.
So that is my progressive card – I hope you like it!
Here is a quick bluebird update for you – the last two days Mrs. Bluebird has decided to return to house #3 and she has continued building a nest in there. I checked both houses this morning and each had 1/2 of a nest – the around part but not the bottom part. I have watched her a bit throughout the day and she is adding more to the nest in house #3. So either she is just unable to make up her mind, or she is forgetful, or she is planning on a big family and needs two nests, or it is possible she made a decoy nest so no one else would build in the other house. I don’t know but I’ll keep my eye on her and let you know.
Thanks for stopping by!

Mar 3, 2010 | Cards, Occasion Mini 2010, Sale-A-Bration 2010, Thank You, Wildlife |
This card was created by Wendy Randall for some swaps. I got one at our group meeting in January but I don’t think I ever shared this card here on my blog.
Now that most of our snow is gone from yesterday it is time to focus on Spring – come on Spring – I am ready!!
I love the little bird cage stamp in the Happy Moments stamp set – this is one you can get for Free during Stampin’ Up! Sale-A-Bration.
Wendy created a pole for the bird cage to hang on and the bird is singing “thank you, thank you, thank you”. The pole is two pieces – the curved piece comes from one of the die cut alphabets and then she cut a straight piece the same width. The little piece of ribbon hides the spot where they are joined.
The faux wood background is something Wendy uses a lot – to create this look pull your ink pad across your card stock – this is called the direct-to-paper technique. Then using a Stampin’ Write marker add little nail heads here and there to create the illusion of wood planks.
A cute card!
Here is a quick peek at what the Bluebirds were doing this morning – 
I found Mr. Bluebird inside House #2. I checked later on to see if they had started a nest in there, but not yet. Maybe he was just taking a closer look. This was the house they used last year so maybe it is the one they are leaning towards. Hopefully they will decide soon and start to build. Last year it was around the middle of March.
I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for stopping by today!

Feb 27, 2010 | Big Shot, Cards, Create with Connie & Julie, Designer Series Paper, Occasion Mini 2010, Sale-A-Bration 2010, Stem Sayings, Thank You, Watercoloring |
Boy the week just flies by – its Saturday again and challenge day at Create with Connie & Julie!
Congratulations to last weeks winners of the Easter Card challenge – 1st place was Lisa, 2nd place was Robin and Honorable mention to Cynthia. Thanks to everyone that played along the entries were all great. I hope you will play this week too.
This week our challenge was a COLOR challenge – So Saffron, Certainly Celery and Orchid Opulence. And it was definitely a challenge for me! Why? Because my least favorite color out of all the Stampin’ Up! colors is Orchid Opulence – so I don’t have an ink pad and only a couple of pieces of card stock – luckily I did have my Stampin’ Write Marker! One of the big reasons that the Stampin’ Write Markers are so great – if you buy the whole set like I did then you will have ink in every color so when you need one and don’t have an ink pad – pull out the marker and you are set! It saved me with this color challenge!
The featured items this week are from the Stampin’ Up! Occasions Mini Catalog and the Sale-A-Bration Brochure – Abundant Hope stamp set, Stampin’ Up! Beautiful Wings Embosslit, Butterfly Accent stamp and Decor Stencils – Paisley Patterns and Folk Flowers. My choice was to use the Beautiful Wings Embosslit – because I love it and because it was the only one of the featured items that I had this week. And here is what I created….
Are you wondering where the background is from, the flowers under the butterflies? It is a piece from the Storybook Designer Series Specialty paper. If you haven’t taken a look at this pack of paper on one side of each is what looks like a coloring sheet. It is textured card stock so it was similar to watercolor paper. I picked a piece of one of the patterns that had flowers on it so the butterflies could be flittering around the flowers. And with no color on the design I could watercolor it with any colors that I wanted. I used my Aquapainter and the classic ink pads. But since I didn’t have the Orchid Opulence ink pad what I did for those was scribble on one of the plastic stamp cases to make a puddle of ink to use for watercoloring. I always loved to color in coloring books when I was little so I had a lot of fun with this and now that I got the pack out I think I need to play some more.
I used the Beautiful Wings Embosslit in the Big Shot to cut the Butterflies in So Saffron and Orchid Opulence. I edged the butterflies with a Soft Suede marker to make them stand out a little bit more. I used some white crochet thread around the centers to make the antennas. The butterflies are on Stampin’ Dimensionals.
Here is a full list of Stampin’ Up! supplies for this card:
- So Saffron card stock and ink
- Certainly Celery card stock and ink
- Orchid Opulence card stock and Stampin’ Write marker
- Storybook Designer Series Specialty paper
- Soft Suede ink and Stampin’ Write marker
- Sahara Sand ink
- Stampin’ Up! Beautiful Wings Embosslit
- Big Shot Die-Cut Machine
- Stem Sayings stamp set
- Scallop Trim Border Punch (SAB)
- Aqua Painter
- White Crochet Thread (not SU)
- Stampin’ Dimensionals
Check out what the rest of the Create team did with this challenge:
Connie
Julie
Mary
Kerin
If you haven’t checked out the Create with Connie and Julie site yet it isn’t too late to do it! We feature new Occasions Mini product every week.
I counted today and there are at least 27 tutorials out there already. We like to have lots of fun so we have challenges and prizes for our subscribers. Our sites stay up long after the session is done so you will always have access to the site and the tutorials. For more information and to see our Preview Week projects please visit the Create with Connie and Julie site.
Thanks for stopping by today! Happy Stampin’!

Feb 14, 2010 | Big Shot, Cards, Occasion Mini 2010, Sale-A-Bration 2010, SU Ribbon, Thank You |
Like I said yesterday I really like this Happy Moments stamp set (Sale-A-Bration set) – so you will probably be seeing it several times in the next couple of weeks. I needed a Thank You card and happen to have one of the water colored images left from my cards I worked on for my Quick Cards class so I decided to use it for my card. And then I decided I wanted to do double duty and find a challenge where I could use a circle image. I searched around and found the Mojo Monday sketch challenge and when I was done I realized it also fit the Late Night Stampers challenge – which was a technique challenge to use some type of embossing technique.
Here is the sketch and here is my card. 
I used the same colors as yesterdays card – Chocolate Chip, Bashful Blue and Certainly Celery. The flowers are stamped on Watercolor paper and colored with classic ink and an Aqua painter.
Two layers are dry embossed using the Big Shot on the new Perfect Polka Doats embossing folder. The patterned paper is from the Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper stack.
I added Bashful Blue satin Ribbon and the Curly Label punch layered with the Movers & Shapers Curly Label die for the Big Shot.
On the inside is a Whisper White layer stamped with the flowers and then I stamped on the envelope to match too.
I’ll take it to the post office on Monday to send to Zoe – thanks for sharing your skinny clear bags with me!
Thanks for stopping by!

Jan 8, 2010 | Big Shot, SU Buttons, Thank You |
I wanted to do some more challenges and decided to make a Thank You card. I got the Stampin’ Up! stamp set called For All You Do a couple of months ago. Whenever I saw other people use this stamp set I just loved the results. I don’t think I’ve seen anything with this set that I didn’t like. But now that I have it I haven’t used it much – I’ve been working on all the different holidays for the last few months and haven’t done much with flowers. So I pulled it out last night to use for the challenge I found. I found Pals Paper Arts and they had a sketch challenge (PPA24) and I decided to pair that with a color challenge (#105) from the Stamping 411 blog.
Stampin’ Up! supplies:
- For All You Do stamp set
- Tempting Turquoise card stock, ink and marker
- Brilliant Blue card stock and ink
- Green Galore card stock and ink
- Whisper White card stock
- Basic Grey ink
- Vellum paper
- Big Shot
- SU Elegant Bouquet Textured Impressions Embossing Folder
- Color Spritzer Tool
- Stampin’ Dimensionals
- Playground Designer Buttons
- Circle Ice Rhinestone Brads
- Paper Piercer & Mat pack
I used the Rock-n-Roll technique on the butterfly
– inked it with Tempting Turquoise ink and then rolled the edges in the Brilliant Blue ink. I used a small amount of Tombow Multi-purpose adhesive on the body of the butterfly to attach a piece of Vellum paper. Then I cut the butterfly out – cutting the card stock and vellum at the same time. The Tombow glue dries clear so it worked well on the butterfly. I pulled the vellum paper up for the wings.
I did realize after I made my card that the Stamping 411 color challenge was supposed to be a kids card but I missed that and just used the colors.
Thanks for stopping by today.
Be sure to visit the Create with Connie & Julie site today – Mary posted a cute project that uses the Movers & Shapers die in a new way – you won’t want to miss this one and she wrote a tutorial for the project. And the winners for the free pass to the class are in the post below this one.
Jan 4, 2010 | Big Shot, Circle Scissor Plus, Create with Connie & Julie, Designer Series Paper, Occasion Mini 2010, Sale-A-Bration 2010, SU Ribbon, Thank You, Thank You Kindly |
So today I took a break from Valentines – well actually I did a Valentine project this morning but I’ll be posting that one on Wednesday – make sure to come back. But this afternoon I worked on a non-Valentine’s project. I also tried another sketch challenge – called Mojo Monday. I see this mentioned all the time in our yahoo groups where we share our projects but I haven’t tried it before. So this is my first Mojo Monday sketch attempt….here is the sketch

and here is my card….
instead of the brads I used a greeting in that spot.
I used four new Stampin’ Up! products: the Garden from the Heart stamp set, Satin Ribbon, and the Scallop Trim Border Punch, and the Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Stack. All of these are available to order beginning tomorrow – January 5th.
Here is a complete list of Stampin’ Up! products that I used for this card:
- Garden from the Heart stamp set (Occasions Mini Catalog 2010)
- Thank You Kindly stamp set
- Taken with Teal card stock
- So Saffron card stock
- Pumpkin Pie card stock
- Whisper White card stock
- Chocolate Chip ink
- Black StazOn ink
- Watercolor Wonder Crayons: Earth Elements, Rich Regals
- Aqua painter
- Big Shot die cut machine
- Scallop Circle #2 die
- Circle Scissor Plus and Glass mat
- Scallop Trim Border Punch (Sale-A-Bration 2010)
- Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper stack (Occasions Mini Catalog 2010)
- Chocolate Chip satin ribbon (Occasions Mini Catalog 2010)
- Linen Thread
- Stampin’ Sponge
- Stampin’ Dimensionals
I’m going to like this new gardening set. And I do have it in the new Clear-Mount version which worked so nicely on the new Stampin’ Up! Clear blocks. I cut the white circle first and then stamped the image – it was easy to position on the circle with the Clear-Mount option. Happy Stampin’!
Thanks for stopping by!

Join me for Create with Connie & Julie – sign up today! This week we are giving away Free passes to the class – each team member has a different day that they are giving away a free pass so make sure to visit each day to see who is giving away a pass. Just a hint – you really should stop by my blog on Wednesday…..