Even when I'm early I'm late!!!!

Believe it or not, I had all 3 of my cards done by Saturday afternoon and here I am uploading them on Monday afternoon! I do have a good excuse....really! I have spent the majority of the weekend and all Monday morning (it's now 1:30 pm) re-arranging the store! It's still not finished, but at least I have all the important stuff where I need it! I think I'll really enjoy the new layout...hope my customers do too:) Anyway...here are the 3 cards we'll make this week. You can't really tell in the photos, but the shell is heat embossed and then sponged and stamped over. I added a little bit of Flowersoft to the centre of each flower on the butterfly card and the "happiness" card uses the distress Core'dinations cardstock, which I dry embossed and sanded. Hope you like them...now I need to get back to organizing stuff!

Paper Inspirations

I was looking through my patterned papers for some inspiration this week, because I wasn't getting any ideas from my rubber stamps. I picked up the Basic Grey butterfly print with the intention of using a strip across the card for starters, but then I looked at all the beautiful butterflies on the sheet and thought it might look more striking if I die cut them individually. As soon as I cut this one out with my square nestabilities, I knew I "needed" to open the Fleur de Lis Nestabilities dies and use the large die cut as a mat. (That's my excuse any way:)) I also swiped my versamark pad across the butterfly square and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. Both patterned papers are patterned on one side only and cost just .99 cents a sheet. This is a 4.25 inch square card so you could make a lot of these cards using one sheet of each paper, plus your card stock base and solid colour mat. The Good Friends card uses paper from Basic Grey's Nook and Pantry collection. I've used the plainer back-side of this paper for several cards, but I could never think how to incorporate egg beaters into a card until I was flipping through a card magazine and saw a card with the caption "Good Friends can't be beat." Well...I don't have that sentiment on a rubber stamp, but it was pretty simple to type it out on the computer and then die cut it with the Nestabilities pennant die. The other small sentiment is from a Stampin' Up set which I'd never used before, but it worked well with this card. I've been blessed with many good friends so I may need to make few more of these, but first I need to come up with an idea for our third class card.....

Feelin' hot, hot,hot!

The dog days of summer are here with a vengeance, but even though hot humid weather is not my favourite, I'll take it over snow and rain anytime. I've been going for my walk earlier each morning to avoid the heat and I love looking at the changes in the neighbourhood gardens (the only change in mine unfortunately is an increase in the number of weeds..lol!) This week I saw several fabulous sunflower displays, so I decided to make a sunflower card for our upcoming class. After stamping the image, I cut it out with a nestabilities circle and coloured it with watercolour pencils and a blender pen. After sponging a little tumbled glass distress ink, I mounted it on a brown petite scalloped circle. I used a piece of Kaisercraft's Spirograph paper (remember playing with Spirograph when you were young? I used to love mine)and the Morrocan lace edger punch. Finishing touches are the narrow satin ribbon and rounded corners. The other card uses a technique called rusted enamel which I learned at a Ranger workshop a long time ago and had forgotten about. The small squares were punched from a piece of cardstock which was treated with the rusted enamel technique. After I embossed each one with one of Tim Holtz' small folders with gears on it, the squares almost look like tooled leather ....very cool for a masculine card. The patterned paper is from Prima's Moulin Rouge Collection. Our third class card is square card with a butterfly image....but you'll have to stop in to see that one:)Have great week!

and even more photos.....

Doesn't the ribbon look good enough to eat???????

A few more photos from CHA

Here are a few more things I saw and fell in love with at CHA....enjoy!

A few pics from CHA

Christmas in July

I'm still trying to catch up after my trip and sidewalk sales so I apologize for not posting any photos from Chicago yet. I thought I'd better get this week's class cards up first. This month has flown by...it seems like we just did Christmas cards and here we go again! Oh well....some fairly simple designs this week, but we are going to do a little spirelli (Merry Christmas card) and use some of my lovely new stamps. The warm wishes card is a similar design to one of the cards I made in a Hero Arts class at CHA. We used the shadow technique to stamp the snowflakes, and it's one of those techniques I've been meaning to use in class but haven't so far. Thanks to Jennifer McGuire for the inspiration and to Hero Arts for all the free goodies:) I opened a Winter Wonderland collection pack of Cuttlebug embossing folders to use for other two cards. The photos don't do them justice (as usual) but I'm in love with these folders. They are in a pack of 6 for just $28 and there are 3 standard size and 3 - 5 x 7 size. The sentiment is from a new Hero Arts set and I know we'll be using this one a lot for our Christams cards. I'll try to post some photos of the show before the weekend. Stay cool:)