Jan 10, 2011 | Big Shot, Designer Series Paper, Stamper's Club, Valentine's Day |
I adapted this box idea from Stampin’ Up! to be a “Rules of Chocolate” box. Inside the box are 12 Hershey nuggets wrapped in some of the Love Patterns Designer Series paper.
I printed out 12 rules of Chocolate on regular printer paper – cut them into strips and then folded them up and tucked them under the Designer Paper on the bottom of each nugget. It is sort of like a fortune cookie where you pull out your fortune – only here you are pulling out a rule of chocolate to remind you that it is OK to eat it!
The Love Patterns Designer Series paper is available right now through Jan. 24th either by itself or as part of the Filled with Love Bundle. The box is the Box #2 BIGZ XL Die for the Big Shot. I cut it out of Pretty in Pink card stock. I stamped the string of hearts from the Valentine Defined stamp set on the box in Pretty in Pink – so it is hard to see in this picture. Some of the girls Friday night stamped in Real Red and that was cute too and easy to see. There is a strip of Pretty in Pink designer paper around the box. The front has 2 pieces of ribbon – Pear Pizzazz 1/2″ Stitched-Poly and Pretty in Pink 1/4″ Grosgrain. If you attach the ribbon at an angle it looks like a cupid’s arrow going through the heart but I attached mine straight across the box.
The heart on the front is some of the Real Red designer paper punched with the Full Heart punch. The Pear Pizzazz heart behind it was cut with the Big Shot using the Movers & Shapers Curly label die with the Punch Windows Movers & Shapers heart. This one was distressed with the distressing tool from the Cutter Kit. Happy Valentine’s Day is stamped in Real Red ink on Pear Pizzazz card stock and punched out with the Modern Label punch. Curl it a little with a bone folder and glue it down at the ends to the front of the box. The stamp comes from the Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set. I also added one of the heart shaped Bitty Buttons – it has a piece of 1/8″ Real Red Taffeta Ribbon pulled through the holes and tied in a knot in the front.
The “Rules of Chocolate” was added to the lid – now what do you think of that handwriting? Isn’t it GORGEOUS? Well it isn’t mine – one of the girls in my Stamper’s Club has this beautiful handwriting and we told her she needs to create a font called Sabrina (that’s her name) and sell her handwriting for all of us that don’t have nice handwriting. I’m not sure how you go about doing that but I think she should do it.
I’m writing this on Sunday night as we wait on a snow/ice storm to come – it is moving closer with every news report but so far nothing is here yet and our schools haven’t been closed but many others have. We are supposed to have 100% precipitation tonight and all day tomorrow. I’ll put and update on here when I get up in the morning and see if we scared it all away by getting so prepared.
SNOW UPDATE: the snow did come – started about 10:00 pm and we got 1″ in the first 30 minutes. This morning we have 6″ – record highs all over GA for snow. The snow has stopped and we are now getting some freezing rain. Almost everything is closed and the airport is pretty much not moving right now. I don’t know how little dogs handle places with lots of snow – mine couldn’t walk because it is up to their bellies – they finally figured out they needed to hop to get through it. I’ll post pictures later today.
UPDATE: CLICK HERE for a pdf file of the 12 Rules of Chocolate that I used – I found several lists on the internet and picked from those.
Jan 7, 2011 | Designer Series Paper, Holiday Mini Catalog 2010, Punch Art, Simply Adorned Jewelry |
At the end of December I had a Simply Adorned class for a small group of ladies. We had a nice afternoon stamping as we watched the Christmas snow melt away in the backyard.
The ladies requested an owl theme for one of the inserts because their school mascot where they work is an owl. I wanted to use the cute owl punch. He is just a little too big for this size charm – it is the 1″ x 1-1/4″ charm – the medium size of the three that Stampin’ Up! sells.
He is still cute in there – just set off to the side a little bit. The background is from the Play Date Designer Series Paper. The owl is made from the Autumn Spice Specialty Designer Series Paper. I liked using it because it was heavy weight textured card stock.
I hope you like this little charmed owl!
I have been working on my swaps for the Stampin’ Up! Leadership conference. I leave in 5 days! I hope the weather isn’t bad because I’ll be driving up. I’m signed up for four group swaps – I have two of them done and two left to go. Then I also plan to make some card fronts for general swapping. I’ll be busy the next several days working on all those swaps.
Jan 3, 2011 | Big Shot, Designer Series Paper |
January always seems to be the time to get reorganized. It’s a new year and maybe a slow time as far as other activities go – at least we are in between sports it seems for right this minute. High School Tennis Team tryouts will be later this month and Ryan plans to tryout – we’ll see how that goes. He hasn’t played in probably a month and he broke his racket about that time so he is going to be rusty…..
Anyway back to organizing – I have discovered that the Clear Stamp set boxes are very handy for doing some organizing. And luckily we can buy them in a pack of three from Stampin’ Up! – Now if you purchase a clear stamp set your stamps will come in their own case. But Stampin’ Up! also sells empty cases and I’m going to be sharing some ideas on what you might want to do with them.
I tend to save coupons – for the grocery store or various restaurants and fast food places that we eat at. I save them and stick them in places and then when I need them I can never find them. So just before Christmas I was working on cleaning up some piles of stuff that had various coupons mixed in and I realized I needed a better way to keep my coupons handy so that I would actually use them. So here is my idea –
I used two of the clear stamp cases and got out some Designer Series Paper. The one on the left uses a piece of paper from the Play Date Designer Series Paper. The one on the right uses a piece from the retired Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper stack.
I used one of the insert from a clear stamp set to measure the size I needed to cut my paper to. I cut the paper and slid it inside the plastic sleeve on the outside of the box. Close the boxes and it naturally creates the folds in the right place.
I cut the letters using the Big Shot die-cut machine and the GoGo Boots Sizzlits Alphabet dies. I decided to separate my coupons into store coupons – those for the grocery store – and restaurant coupons – those for the places we go out to eat at. Then I just stick my coupons inside and they can sit nicely in the center console in my car or I can slide them into my purse.
This is a super quick and easy project – just order some of the empty cases. I have more ideas to share later. Tomorrow Tyler and Ryan go back to school and we can get back to a more normal routine. I love having the “vacation” time but our days get so messed up and I loose track of what day of the week it is. So I am looking forward to being back on a schedule. Kyle will still be home for the rest of the week and we’ll take him back to school this weekend.
Dec 28, 2010 | Birthday, Cards, Designer Series Paper |
Can you believe Christmas has passed and the new year is almost here? How long will it take everyone to remember to write 2011 instead of 2010? I’m excited for January to get here because I’m excited to be attending the Stampin’ Up! Leadership conference! Not much longer now…… but lets move on to the Utah Diva’s Color Challenge – this is #16. Click on this link to go to the Utah Diva’s Color Challenge blog. This is the inspiration that Gretchen gave us this week –
So this made me think of Valentine’s Day and Chocolates. I even thought about just creating a box that looked like the cake in the picture. But I still had my Paper Crafts magazine lying on my craft room table and there was a card sketch in there that I wanted to try – so that is what I ended up with – actually a birthday card in these colors. Real Red, Soft Suede, Regal Rose, and Blushing Bride. Here it is:
I used several designs of Designer Series Paper – Love Patterns pack (the special right now) – In-Color Hostess Paper Pack – Neutrals Patterns Paper Stack – I didn’t have any Regal Rose designer paper so I used card stock to add the Regal Rose to the card. The triangles are very easy to make – I used the large Star punch – and cut off two points on either side of the point I kept – the other end which then has a notch in it from the remaining two points was tucked under the card stock. I tucked them all under different amounts so they appear to be different sizes but they are really all the same.
My card base is actually the Soft Suede but I cut the front short to be only 1-1/2″ and then added the points and then a Whisper White front panel to complete the front of the card. A Real Red piece of the Love Patterns Designer paper, punched with the Scallop edge border punch was added to the left size. And the stamp is from Afterthoughts stamp set – a Level 1 Hostess set.
Now it is your turn to play with these colors – then go to the UDI blog and add your creation to the linky section.
Stampin’ Up! Supplies:
- Card stock: Soft Suede, Whisper White, Regal Rose
- Ink: Soft Suede
- Stamp sets: Afterthoughts (Hostess Level 1)
- Accessories: Love Patterns Designer Series Paper Pack (Filled with Love promotion), In Color Designer Series paper pack (Hostess Level 1), Neutrals Patterns Designer Series paper stack, Scallop Edge Border punch, Star punch
To order Stampin’ Up! Supplies to make this project click here.
Dec 22, 2010 | Christmas, Designer Series Paper, Holiday Mini Catalog 2010, Tags |
This set of Tags in a matching Tin is one of the projects that we made during my Holiday Treats & Tags class last week. If you are wrapping your gifts and need tags you can make them quickly using just scraps from you Designer Series paper – some stamps and punches.
I cut pieces of 3″x3″ card stock squares – for these I used Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive, and Crumb Cake. Then I cut pieces of the Holly Holly Designer Series paper – I used 2-3/4″ squares for mine, but you can use strips or other size pieces of scraps. I used the Tags Til Christmas stamp set from the Holiday Mini Catalog and various punches to add the designs to the front of each tag. I ended up with 16 tags to put inside this tin.
The tin is just a flat tin that was from some old Stampin’ Up! embellishments that they sold a few years ago. For awhile they had them for sale on the Clearance Rack – you can find that in my online store on my website – check regularly since they are always adding new things and you never know what little treasure you might find. To decorate the tin I just covered the front with a piece of the same Designer Series paper that I used on the tags. I put a piece of the Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding underneath so that I could tie it in a bow around the top. I added a little tag for a decoration.
All the tags fit inside the tin if you wanted to store them or give them to someone. Once you use the tags you can then use the tin for a gift – like a gift card or money for someone. There are only a few more days until Christmas – I hope you are ready. I’m finishing my wrapping today and I have a few more cards to mail out – I ran out of stamps. And I’m going to try to do some baking today – well maybe you can’t really call it baking – this is what we are going to try to make today – peppermint bark, oreo balls, snowflake sugar cookies (ok, those are really baking), and my almond chicken cheese-ball – which I need to share the recipe for because several people wanted it when I made it at the Gift Making class – I’ll post that tomorrow.
Dec 13, 2010 | Big Shot, Christmas, class, Designer Series Paper, Scrapbook Pages |
Earlier this month I had a scrapbook class. Normally my class is at the end of the month but with Thanksgiving and Christmas falling at the end of these two months it makes getting the scrapbook class into my schedule a bit difficult. So instead I have one class at the beginning of December for both months. My regular schedule will start again in January. Anyway, this time I decided to go ahead and do Christmas pages so that everyone would have them ready for this years pictures (or could scrap older pictures if they needed to). For mine this layout will probably be for this years pictures and my second layout is going to be for some older pictures.
This idea started with a sketch in a scrapbook magazine and then combined a few ideas from different versions of that sketch. I love how this turned out and can’t wait to get some pictures on it. But it is pretty even without any pictures on it.
The colors are Crumb Cake, Early Espresso, Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive, and Very Vanilla. The Designer Paper is the Holly Jolly paper in the Stampin’ Up! Idea Book & Catalog. The designs on this paper are just stripes and dots so it is easy to use for anything. The alphabet that I used for the title and the “ho ho ho” is the Jumble Alphabet. This set is just like it says a jumble of alphabet letters in various fonts so you could easily pair it up with any other alphabet that you might have to get the right combination of letter sizes. This set has a variety of big and small and upper and lowercase letters. It also means you don’t have to worry too much about things being straight. I did use my Stamp-a-ma-jig to line up my letters but free hand does a good job too.
The main sections of the layout are Old Olive textured card stock that is 12″ x 6″ in size and I used a ruler and Stampin’ Write Marker to draw lines every 3 inches to create the squares. Then I used my Paper Piercer and Mat Pack to pierce along the lines so that it would look like faux stitching.
I cut pieces of the Holly Jolly Designer Series paper, Very Vanilla card stock, and Crumb Cake card stock into squares to layer on the Old Olive Squares. The Cherry Cobbler accents are cut with the Big Shot Die-Cut Machine and the Two Tags Die and the Hearts 7 Brackets Die.
The main stamp set that I used is the Winter Post stamp set – it is one of my favorite ones. I even created a faux postage stamp for one of the squares.
To do this I stamped the reindeer in Early Espresso ink on Very Vanilla card stock and punched it out with the Scallop Square punch. Next I used the Early Espresso Stampin’ Write Marker and a ruler to draw the lines around the edges of the scallop square. I sponged the edges of the square and wrote 44 cents in the corner (since the postage will change in January again – this will be a reminder of what it cost to send cards this year). I attached the faux stamp to my square of Crumb Cake and the stamped over it with the Cherry Cobbler ink and the Santa Post cancel stamp.
The right page of the layout has many of the same elements. The square with the snowflakes as the little pearls in the center. The “ho ho ho” has little stamp from Punch Pals scattered in between to add some more color.
The “2010” at the top is the Calendar Alphabet and Numbers stamp set. The zero is actually the letter ‘O’ from the set since it doesn’t have a zero by itself. These were punched out with the Jewelry Tag punch and then tucked under the top of the page.
I also used the new Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch to make the Early Espresso ribbon strips. I started with about a 1″ strip of card stock and punched all the way across to get the ribbon strip and then the left over straight strip is what I used to create the edge at the top of the panels.
At the bottom of the right page is the Heard from the Heart stamp set with an extra little heart punched using the small heart punch.
Satin Ribbon and Linen Thread finish off each of the tag accents. And a Bitty Button tied with Linen Thread was added to the large heart on the left page. Add your pictures and journaling in any of the empty squares. You could either leave the designer paper squares as they are or put pictures on those too. I’ll wait and see how many pictures I have that I want to add to the layout.
Like the page says “Welcome Christmas into your Heart”.
I hope this inspired you to create a Christmas layout – I’ll have another one coming so check back with me this week.
Holiday Treats & Tags Class – Dec. 17th – RSVP by Dec. 15th. – CLICK HERE.
I adapted this box idea from Stampin’ Up! to be a “Rules of Chocolate” box. Inside the box are 12 Hershey nuggets wrapped in some of the Love Patterns Designer Series paper.
I printed out 12 rules of Chocolate on regular printer paper – cut them into strips and then folded them up and tucked them under the Designer Paper on the bottom of each nugget. It is sort of like a fortune cookie where you pull out your fortune – only here you are pulling out a rule of chocolate to remind you that it is OK to eat it!
The “Rules of Chocolate” was added to the lid – now what do you think of that handwriting? Isn’t it GORGEOUS? Well it isn’t mine – one of the girls in my Stamper’s Club has this beautiful handwriting and we told her she needs to create a font called Sabrina (that’s her name) and sell her handwriting for all of us that don’t have nice handwriting. I’m not sure how you go about doing that but I think she should do it.
