March Sparkles Team Swap

It's that time again, time to share what I made for my stampin' team's meeting. We meet over at upline Jeanne's house and her awesome stamp room each month. The theme for this month's swap focuses on Moms and Mother's Day. I have a bunch of CD folders from way back when I did an album project using a tutorial from Patty Bennett (I bought a case of them, and still have half a case left). I thought I'd use up a few by using them for my swap project. Patty's project used three of the CD folders, but I chose to keep it simple, only using one this time around. Inside there's room for a larger picture, three or more smaller ones (to go on the tabs) and some journaling.  Since it's a CD folder, I thought it would be great to put some pictures of our girls on a CD and send them inside this album to my mother-in-law who now lives out of state.  

I used the new Paisley Petals DSP that will be available in the 2011-12 Idea Book & Catalog later this summer (another perk of being a SU! demo is getting to preorder pretty stuff!).  It probably wasn't the best idea to put the mini pearls along the scallop trim border (they want to move/get rubbed off), but they sure are pretty, don't ya think?

That's Always Artichoke seam binding holding the album together - it sure photographed darkly!  Speaking of photographing, today's my birthday, and guess what I got?  I asked my DH for an inexpensive photo studio, and he ordered it up for me!  It's a white pop-up cube that's about sixteen inches in each direction, along with two small lamps and a mini tripod for my digital camera.  We'll see how well it does next time I have something to share with you.

Easter Wishes

While doing a little net surfing this past week, I came across this gorgeous card by Chat Wszelaki. I felt another CASE coming on but I wanted to use the color scheme I'd used for a Stampin' Addicts Blog Hop a while back – Pear Pizzazz, Baja Breeze, and Perfect Plum. Today I recreated Chat's gorgeous card, but with a couple of minor modifications to match supplies I happen to have in my craft room. I really like how it turned out, and I'll be sharing this one with my stampers as a card they can make at my Spring/Easter stamp camp coming up in April.

CASEing Shelli Gardner

Shelli Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Stampin' Up!, created a beautiful card that she shared with those who attended Leadership in January.  The card really caught my eye, so I knew I'd want to CASE it (Copy And Steal Everything) if I broke down and got the Easter Blossoms stamp set, which I finally did.  This week I played around with the card, trying to figure out what to do with the blossoms.  I tried white gel pen, Vanilla watercolor crayon, white watercolor pencil, using aquapainters, using blender pens... and finally settled on using a blender pen over the stamped image to add some colors to the blossoms.  I also added two mats - one behind the DSP, and the scalloped oval behind the sentiment (if you know me, you know I like to mat things - love those layers!).  If I were to do it again, I also might try doing the pennant border in Soft Suede instead of Crumb Cake.  This is one of the cards I'll be sharing with my stampers at my Spring/Easter stamp camp in April.

Two Tags Easter Basket

I shared over the weekend the beveled windowpane pendant I made for those at our last team meeting.  Today I'm going to share what they were packaged inside of - a cute little Easter basket using the Two Tags die and, of course, my favorite DSP right now, Springtime Vintage.  I got the tutorial for this cute project from Julie Davison's blog, here.  I wrapped the pendants inside some pink tissue paper and placed them inside the baskets, which were the actual swap item I'd made for our Easter-themed swap.

I'm currently working on this month's swap for Sunday's meeting.  The theme this time is Mother's Day.  Once again, I chose to do something other than a card.  I need to put the finishing touches on my swaps today so I can relax, knowing they're ready for Sunday's meeting.  Then perhaps I can make a dent on my craft room.  There's so much stuff in there right now, it's hard to even walk around in!  There must be a foot of supplies out on my desk, needing to be put away.  My problem is that I just have too much stuff - where am I going to put it all?  I share the room with my DH and he's got a lot in there, too.  I need to seriously use up some of what I have before I buy anything new, but SU! keeps coming out with catalogs with things inside them that scream 'Buy me!' and I cave and get more new stuff!

Beveled Windowpane Pendant

After seeing the beautiful beveled windowpane pendants created by Patty Bennett and a few others, I made one as part of my swap for our team meeting in February.  I used Parisian Breeze DSP and embossed a monogram using the Lovely Letters alphabet in Chocolate Chip craft ink, embossing with crystal clear embossing powder.  I sponged the edges of the monogram layer with Chocolate Chip classic ink before mounting it onto the darker piece of DSP.  The ribbon is Baja Breeze and Very Vanilla seam binding (love this stuff!) and it's topped off with a vanilla rosette and Filigree/clear rhinestone brad.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Later this weekend I'll share the cute two tags die box/basket I made as my actual team swap for last month's meeting.

New Blog Look

I was SO excited that SU! did a retired product for a My Digital Studio download.  Cottage Wall has got to be one of my most favorite designer series papers in a long while, and I was sad to see it be retired.  Now, it's great to have it in digital form!  I'm on spring break this week, so I decided my blog needed an update so I used my favorite DSP to give my blog a fresher look - hope you like it, too!  Now if I could just figure out how to center the header I created and still use the Blogger template I selected!

Pop-up Gift Card Holder

In January, my upline asked us to do birthday-themed gift card holders for our team meeting swap.  I took a card I'd made from a previous blog hop, modified it to make it a little easier to mass produce, and made it a pop-up gift card holder as well.  I forgot that I hadn't shared it with you, so here it is!

Top image is a scan of the outside, and, yup, that's me photographing at night again on the dining room table for the inside.  I either need to stop doing that, or better yet, I need a small lightbox setup!