Happy Anniversary

My dear husband and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary over the weekend. Here's the card I made for him. It uses the Always stamp set. I stamped the hearts on Whisper White in VersaMark ink, then added detail silver embossing powder and heat set it. After cutting the hearts out, I mounted them on some Basic Black cardstock and trimmed them again. The 'a' was also embossed. The card background is Baroque Motifs, stamped in Going Gray. The sentiment was stamped in black craft ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. The hearts and scallop punch are mounted onto the card with Stampin' Dimensionals to pop them up a bit. Thanks for visiting!

A Call for Cards

Please take a moment and visit Dannie's blog and send her a card (or two or three or four) for her brother's birthday. He's currently serving our great country in Afghanistan and she's requesting birthday, patriotic, or thinking of you cards written to him (read about it on her blog at the link above). Be sure to visit her blog to check out her creativity, too!

Technique Swap Page #3

I just realized I never posted my third technique swap page! For our third page swap, I chose the Mulberry Batik technique. It was a technique I had never tried but always wanted to after seeing it featured in the May 2007 issue of Stampin' Success. You can see the card I made for our shoebox swap under the Mulberry Batik label of my blog entries.

Technique Swap Page #4

Sunday is our next team meeting at my upline's, the wonderfully talented Jeanne Ciolli. We've been working on 6 x 6 technique swap pages over the last few months, which includes a shoebox swap of a card that features the technique on the card we made for our swap (gee, I hope that makes sense!). After seeing the Black Magic technique in a post on Splitcoast in late June, I knew that's what I wanted to do for my next swap page. I didn't have the Pure Color pencils at the time when we left for our trip to Hawaii, or I'd have done my swaps while we were away. So, I ordered up a set, and they were there, waiting for me when we returned home this week. Last night I created my 6 x 6 technique swap pages as well as designed the card we'll be making. My card was inspired by two talented stampers - Silke Ledlow and Karen Barber.

Today I cut the cardstock and am now ready for our meeting on Sunday! Yay! I wasn't sure if I could get it all together between the time we got home from Maui and our meeting on Sunday, but it all fell into place, and I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that they're ready to go. To learn how to do the Black Magic technique, just click on my technique swap page for the details. It's easy to do, and I LOVE the results!

Thanks to all of you over the last three weeks who put up with my vacation pictures mixed in with my vacation stamping efforts. We're back to being a stamping blog once again. I appreciate you taking your valuable time to visit my little blog!

More 6 x 6 Scrapbook Pages

I finished the other four pages after taking the girls to the pool this afternoon. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out and I wish I had a 6 x 6 album here to put them in, but it will have to wait until we get home. My hubby liked them, but isn't used to seeing such small pages (12 x 12 is my normal format), and his comment was, 'they're pretty, but, umm, what are you going to do with them?' Once again, I'll leave the titles and journaling until I'm back home. Enjoy your day!

Some 6 x 6 Scrapbook Pages

We're down to under a week left of our vacation, and I still have several sheets of paper left, so last night I decided to do some scrapbooking! I chose to make some pages for a 6 x 6 album, and here's the (near) end result. I'm going to add titles when I get home so I can use my alphabet stamps. I'll add journaling at home, too, as I didn't bring any markers along with me.

I'm currently working on four more pages that I'll post later. The pictures are ones I took of our kayak excursion while on Molokai, using a disposable camera. When we got to Maui, I had the pictures printed (doubles, of course), as well as had them make a photo CD for me. I hope you enjoy my 6 x 6 pages!

Guava Fresh Cuts

Last night I took some time to do some stamping. I've wanted to do a three panel card ever since seeing this one by Silke Ledlow, so last night I gave it a whirl. I didn't like how the five petal flowere were blending in with my cardstock, so I took the two guava ones and scraped them all over the guava stamp pad to deepen their color a bit. Did the same to the Blush Blossom flower as well (with Blush Blossom ink). I hope you like it! Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by!

Fresh Cuts Card

Here's the card I made last night using the die cuts from the Fresh Cuts notes. I used Blue Bayou for the card base, the card out of Soft Sky. I randomly stamped the background in Soft Sky. The flower was created using the cut-outs from a Fresh Cuts note, attached to a 5 petal floer punchout. I sponged over the white petals with Soft Sky after assembling the flower, then scraped the edges in Blue Bayou so it would stand out more against the Soft Sky background. After stamping the sentiment, it called out for some paper piercing, which I think really finished off the card. I will have to try a couple of variations of this next time I pull out my stamping stuff.

I still want to try the Fresh Cuts Notes pocket card that I first saw posted on Patty's blog, here. I'll try it later this week. Enjoy for now!

Last of the Fresh Cuts?

This may be my last upload of Fresh Cuts Notes, or at least for a while. I had a tough time getting a good shot of them - I really need to stop taking pictures of my stamped projects at night!! Just as a reminder, to view any picture larger, you can simply click on the image and it will open in another window. If you want to save it, you can right-click on it and choose 'save image as'. Thanks again for visiting my blog!

More Fresh Cuts Notes

Here's a batch that I made after watching the fireworks last night. I'm wishing now I'd brought another stamp set and my stampin' spots that I had originally planned on taking, but weight limits on the luggage made me rethink what I was going to bring with me. Next time, I'll make sure I've got the room to bring a larger assortment to stamp with while I'm on vacation.

Fresh Cuts Notes

Here's what I've been working on while watching the waves on Molokai. The bottom two are from Andrea Walford's Fresh Cuts class planner. The top three are variations that I made. I didn't bring embossing supplies with me, so the image in the window of the bottom two is actually done with white craft ink and not embossed with white EP. I also didn't care for the faux suede technique she had for the five petal flower punch, so on my own variations, I just punched them out from fresh paper. Hope you like them! Have a great day!