Featured Butterflies

For today's card, I headed over to SCS's Sunday's Featured Stamper challenge for my inspiration. Sunday, they featured Versamom's gallery. I chose this card of hers to CASE using Lizzie Anne Design's August Monthly Mix butterfly. You can't see it in the photo, but I used a clear spica pen on the butterflies and they are all sparkly.

Have you signed up for the Monthly Mix club yet? Free shipping offer for the first one ends Friday.

See how I used the corner punch on opposite corners on the green panel which is opposite the butterfly piece? I like how that looks and it's such a simple design element.

Clean and Simple BBQ

I created this card using SCS Clean and Simple sketch challenge from yesterday. I liked it so much I even kept with the same colors that were shown.

Supplies:
stamps: Lizzie Anne Designs Chillin' and Grillin'
paper: SU!, Making Memories
ink: Memento Black
other: ribbon, markers, Mono Adhesive Permanent

Sankari's Snowman Challenge

Today, Sankari is our hostess. She has challenged us diva's to think snow...snowmen that is. Since I am NOT a HOT weather person and it has been HOT the last couple of days, I can only dream of snow. No, I'm not ready for snow yet as I LOVE fall. But I DO like snow too.

Here is my snowman card AND another sneak of what went to CHA. This is from Inky Antics Sweety line. The snowmen from this line are adorable!

If you need a sketch to follow, Maria has drawn this one up for you.

Be sure to stop by the CSAYL blog to check out the other Diva's snowmen creations.

Summer is Here!

It has been HOT the last couple of days. I'm not a big ice cream eater, but summer reminds me of ice cream. This card was inspired by many different ones on Splitcoast and I just kinda combined all the ideas together.

Another things that says "summer" around here are cherries. We've been picking cherries slowly for several days now. We even had my nephew help us today.

He was so proud to have filled a bucket 3/4 full and could barely carry it.(It got fuller than this when I took the picture)And while I was busy making bread, Bruce talked Benjamin into making him a fresh cherry pie. We have LOTS of cherries in the freezer, so will have lots of pies this winter I'm thinking. I will probably make jelly with the rest of the cherries on the tree. Not only is it yummy, but makes great gifts.

One last thing today that says summer is flowers from my flower bed. These are blooming right now and I love the colors.

Dare to Get Dirty

I was asked to make samples for two different challenges that have now gone live.

The first one is Deb's Moved by Music. I love how this turned out. I am alwasy inspired by my friend Michelle's circle cards or circles ON cards and decided I was going to give it a try. The crocheted flowers are ones I made and I used some vintage buttons from my stash.

The second challenge I created for is Toy's Color challenge of mustard, blue and red.This card is on it's way to CHA in Florida! I made 13 cards and 11 3-D items in this color scheme. I will show those after CHA, but Jackie let me give you a sneak look for this challenge.

Be sure to scroll down to see the other posts I've made today.

Triple Challenge

This card took me two days to make. The bright side is I was able to create it for 3 different challenges...

1. sketch challenge on Dare to Get Dirty on SCS

2. FredSheSaid digital image challenge

3. EIO embossing challenge

Boots Hello

This is a fun digi print from The Digi Shack. Be sure to stop by her blog and she has been giving free images from time to time. I was blessed to have one a blog candy of hers and was able to choose 10 images.

These boots were a free image she posted a week ago. I don't know if it's still available, but I see she has a new cute one available this week.

Anyway, I would LOVE having a pair of these boots! My guest design team stint is over now at The PaperTemptress. For this card I used Black Licorice and Spearmint. Stop by her store as she has lots of fun designer type cardstock.

Lizzie Anne Sneak Day!

Today is the first of 3 days of sneaks for Lizzie Anne Designs new sets and digi paper! I will be showing you sneaks today and tomorrow.


Today I have made samples for The Great Outdoors and Cute as a Bug. I used digi paper from Great Outdoors on both of my cards.

For my Cute as a Bug card I used LAD's sketch #81. These sketches come in handy when you need some inspiration.


stamps: The Great Outdoors
paper: digi-Great Outdoors (I color changed the water paper to match my mushrooms), brown from my scrap bag
other: Copic markers, ribbon, buttons, embroidery floss, Nestibilities Ribbon Tag Trio




stamps: Cute as a Bug
paper: digi-Great Outdoors
other: glitter, ribbon, Copic markers, Nestibilities Ribbon Tag Trio


Go here to see all the images in both of these sets. Be sure to click on the Design Team members blogs (listed on the right) to see what they designed.

Monthly Mix Sketch

Yesterday, Kendra was the hostess for LAD's sketch challenge #88. I love the sketch and needed to get some cards done, so made this with August's Monthly Mix "Hey Sunshine". Have you signed up for the monthly kits yet?

Papers are from My Mind's eye paperpad Simply Delightful.

Blueberry Muffins and a card

Yesterday, my friend Michelle and I were chatting on-line and she told me she had just picked up 100# of blueberries (not all for her)! I told her I had just made blueberry muffins this week and took some pics (yes I know I'm weird) and would post the recipe.

I have wonderful memories of picking blueberries at a U-Pick farm in Michigan. Yummy!

Blueberry Muffins

3/4 c. milk

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 large egg

2 c. flour

1/2 c. sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1 cup fresh (or frozen) blueberries

Heat oven to 400*. Either grease only bottoms of muffin pans or use muffin liners.

Beat milk, oil and egg in a large bowl. Stir in dry ingredients just until flour is moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fold in blueberries. Do not over mix or your batter will be blue. Spoon into muffin cups and sprinkle with Struesel Topping.

Streusel Topping

1/4 c. flour

1/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Mix, then cut in 2 tablespoon margarine until crumbly.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until done.

Now on to my card. Punch art has been really popular lately. You can find all kinds of punch art ideas on Splitcoaststampers. This card was inspired by this one on Stamp Owl's Studio by Frances Byrne. Isn't this puppy just the cutest?

Monthly Mix Tree

I know I said I was going to post this a couple of days ago, but blogger has been giving me fits and I didn't have time to keep messing with it.

As soon as I saw this Monthly Mix set "Hey Sunshine", I knew I would want to paper piece the tree. I used paper from my new My Mind's Eye paper pad "Simply Delightful". This set from Lizzie Anne Designs is Simply Delightful! It's full of all kinds of fun summer images. I know owls aren't blue, but a brown one wasn't working either, so I just stuck with the blue one.

I've been busy creating goodies for Inky Antics for CHA and have some goodies to share with you after CHA. Just so you know I've been busy, I've made 13 cards, 5 3-D items and am working on 6 more, took Aaron to camp, made Monster cookies (and some other yummy ones I will share later) for Benjamin to take to youth camp this weekend, (where Aaron is also, so the kid is going to be mega tired when he gets home late Sunday!), took Benjamin to meet the bus today to go to youth camp (it's youth camp, but for high schoolers). I am tired, so kinda taking today slow and then will be back at it tomorrow and Sunday.

Week 25

We are at the halfway mark for Christmas Stamping All Year Long.

This week I am the hostess again and am late with my card. I've been swamped with CHA and getting Aaron ready for camp. We took him yesterday and he will be gone for a full week as when he is done at Long Pine on Friday, his friend's sister will pick them up and take them to Merritt for a weekend camp. I'm going to have a very tired boy when he gets home. Ü

Okay, on to my challenge. This week's challenge is Inside Out. The trend lately has been to decorate the inside card as well as the outside. For the outside I used a digi image from Shirley's 2 Girls. She has such fun images to play with and she posted this image just in time for me to use for this week's card. I like the wavy banners that Anna Wight is popular for and decided that would be fun to use on the front. You also can't have a crown without it shining, so added some stickles to it and I thought maybe if the the fruitcake had sparkly frosting it might help it taste better. LOL!!

She also included 3 sentiments and this one cracked me up. Now if my DH was to answer it would be "YES!" He loves fruitcake. However, if just about anyone else in my family would answer it would be "NO". So this will go to one of them.

Maria came up with this fun sketch for you if you need some inspiration.

Paper Flower

This is another card I made for Making Handmade Cards using their Refresher e-kit. For the paper flower I printed the design on paper rather than cardstock so I could crumple it easily. I used 3 different designs and just free-hand cut the circles and then sewed the button to all 3 layers.

Moose by Aaron

Post by Aaron:

Since I like to draw, I just wanted to draw a picture and color it for my card this week for The PaperTemptress. Do you like my moose? I’m thinking of selling some digital images.

My mom let me use her Copic markers. This is the first time I’ve used them and they are cool.

We were trying to think of words to go on this card and I thought of MOOSE-ance, so typed it on Microsoft Word and then punched it out with one of my mom’s punches.

I used Hot Fudge and Teal Felt Grandee cardstock.

Thanks for looking.

Aaron

Simple Butterfly

This is one of the super simple cards I've made for Making Hand-Made Cards using their Refresher e-kit.

I only used product from this kit. I printed off 2 of the paper pattern designs for my base. The butterflies are already printed and you just cut them out. I cut out two and adhered one to my card and then the second one I only applied adhesive to the center to give it a 3-D effect.

4th of July

Before I get on to the post I want to thank everyone who e-mailed me with birthday wishes yesterday. I rec'd so many e-mails. Thank you!

With so many coming on the 4th (I think the final count was 32), I was needing something to put the forks, spoons and napkins in to keep them organized.

So I was very excited when I received this blog post notification for THIS tutorial! How cool is this? It was perfect for what I needed. I used Lizzie Anne's Stars and Stripes digi paper. They say to use cardstock, but I wanted mine to be really sturdy, so I used the chipboard that comes with SU!'s 12 x 12 paper. I can store this for next year to use again. Tombow's Glue Stick is perfect for adhering paper to chipboard. It is strong and stays stuck!

There are soooo many ideas to use with this template! I can't wait to make more and share with you my ideas. It's super easy to make, so if you give it a try, please let me know and link me to your project.

My husband's niece made this flag cake. I had to quick get a picture before we cut it. I usually make a flag cake and Aaron was disappointed that I didn't have time to make one, so was glad when Teresa showed up with this. You can find the recipe here.

Along with everything else I made, I made a jello poke cake that I didn't get a picture of, but it really looked like this. I also made this. Very yummy!

LAD Blog Hop Day 6

WOOHOO!!! Today is my turn. I am so excited to be able to showcase one of my favorite sets for you all. It was hard to pick just ONE favorite. I love them all. But I chose Bless This Nest.

As soon as I saw this tutorial by Kelly Lunceford, I knew I wanted to make one using Bless This Nest. This matchbox is so easy to make. I saved some blue chicks from Easter just to make this box. LOL! One row of marshmallow chicks fits inside this matchbox perfectly. I added some brown shredded paper for twigs for the chicks to nest on. Just as I am typing this, I'm thinking I need to add some eggs underneath! How fun would that be to add some Malted Ball eggs?! I've got to save this idea for next year. Ü I used Nestibilites Labels Two dies for cutting the nest design and the polka dot behind it. I also added some tiny rick rack from my vintage stash to finish it off.

Thank you for stopping by! Don't forget to hurry over to Lizzie Anne's today to order this set. Today ONLY can you get it for 40% off!

** sure to scroll down to see my 24th Christmas card for Christmas Stampin' All Year Long challenge.

Puddles

I love this digi image from Whimsie Doodles, esp the sentiment. I've had this colored for awhile, just needed to get it uploaded. I've been getting ready for tomorrow and hadn't take the time to do any photoing.

For the sentiment, I cut it with Nestibilities Label One. Rather than layer them the same way the design goes, I turned it. I really like how that looks and haven't seen anyone else do this.

Have you seen the NEW Whimsie Doodle designs? Oh my....gingerbread men! I LOVE gingerbread men and have a small collection of different items of gingerbread men. My bd is coming up on Monday and that is going to be my gift to myself. Ü Go check them out, they are absolutely adorable.

This also fit the color challenge at Christian Paper Crafts.