Sunshine Award

Wow, I've never gotten a cute blog award before!  Candace over at CJ Lawlor Designs awarded twelve folks with a Sunshine award, and I was one those lucky recipients!  Thanks, Candace, that's so sweet of you! 

Candace left me a comment on my last post and I've had fun checking out her work on her own blog this afternoon.

Now it's mine turn to pass the torch.  The guidelines for the award are:

1. Put the Sunshine Award on your blog and/or within your post.
2. Pass the award to 12 other bloggers.
3. Link the nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they received this award by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award.

The hardest part, of course, is narrowing it down to just 12 blogs!!  It was tough but here are 12 blogs that I enjoy visiting on a regular basis (in no particular order):

1.  Nancy iSTAMP
2.  Gretchen Inspiration in Action
3.  Deb ARTfelt Inspirations
4.  Connie Constantly Stamping
5.  Dawn DO Stamping with Dawn
6.  Corinne (aka Roxy)  Stamping With Roxy
7.  Jaydee  Stampin! With Jaydee
8.  Miriam Creations by Miriam
9.  Mike  Stampin-Style
10.  Teneale  Teneale Williams
11.  Margaret  Margaret Moody
12.  Michelle  Freedom in Creating

Thanks everyone, for your inspiration - some of you I've been visiting for quite a while, and some I've just recently found but plan to visit often!  Have a great day!

April Sparkles Team Swap

I really waited until the last minute this month to get my swaps done for our monthly meeting (which I can't attend this month - sigh).  This was a BUSY week.  Sunday was my first stamp camp for a friend in a LONG while, then Monday through Thursday nights I was busy helping my daughter with her 'Larger Than Life' art project where they take an object and enlarge it 10 times (she did a single-serve carton of Tropicana juice, and it turned out GREAT - no bias there, right?!).  Meanwhile, progress reports were due mid-week as well, so I've had zero time to do anything, until last night.  After work, several of my stampin' teacher friends got together and they did the Vintage Vogue cards my wonderful upline, Jeanne, had designed for a stamp camp of her own earlier this year.  While they were stampin' away, I got busy working on my swaps (FINALLY).  I had been inspired by this card that I saw on Jaydee's blog, and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into my swap card this month.  Since I'm the Sparkettes team swapmeister, I get to pick what we swap each month.  This time I choose an old Mojo Monday sketch for us all to use to create our swaps:

I used Jaydee's cut out embossed petal and white background stamping ideas and came up with this:

I used Whisper White for my card base, with the outline flower stamped in White Craft ink on Night of Navy card stock.  The petals were stamped in VersaMark onto Night of Navy card stock and embossed with Iridescent Ice embossing powder and are mounted on the Whisper White circle with stampin' dimensionals.  The Old Olive DSP is from Cottage Wall (my favorite!).  I used Crushed Curry card stock and polkadot ribbon as well.  I found some clear stick-on crystals in my stamp room, so I decided to use them for my card.  My prototype used the smallest clear rhinestone brads (why are they so dang hard to line up?) and the Old Olive was card stock stamped with the small outline leaf that comes with Awash With Flowers instead of using the pattern from Cottage Wall DSP.  I like the second version of it, shown here, better.

Happy Easter!

Last Sunday at our upline's meeting, we made these cute square baskets.  The idea came from another demo's blog, but they're so cute!  I made one for my stampin' sistah, Darla, who couldn't be at the meeting.  For hers, I used up some retired DSP (Spring Fling, I think), and I added the grass in the box along with the butterfly die on the handle.  Unfortunately I was shooting in low light quickly this morning before heading off to work, and my pictures were all out of focus a bit, but you get the idea.  The box holds three Cadbury Creme Eggs.  At Jeanne's meeting, we made an insert tray that helped keep the eggs standing upright - very clever of us, if I do say so myself!  I gave Darla her basket today and I think she liked it a lot - especially because it had Cadbury Creme Eggs inside!  I knew there was a reason why she and I get along so well - we like the same Easter candy!  This is the first time my Chocolate Bunny stamp has seen ink - amazing it took me so long!  I'll have to use him this weekend to make up some Easter cards for my family.  Happy Easter!