Skull & bones, Party Time!

Hello!

Here are a couple SOTW challenge cards for the A Muse Addicts group. The stamp challenges this week are Skull & Bones or Party Time clear set. I made one of each:

(All stamps and papers used are from A Muse Artstamps)

I hope you all have a fun weekend!!

Hugs!

White Card Weekly Challenge

Hi!  I wanted to share one of the cards I made while stamping with Victoria today:

This is for Jennie's weekly challenge on the A Muse Addicts site to make a card that's only one layer and a white base! Very cool challenge and makes for super simple cards!

The flourish on this card is from Baroque Motifs from Stampin' Up! I inked it up with Bamboo Leaves Memento ink and used the DTR technique to add some Cantalaupe and Potter's Clay Memento inks to it as well. I also used black Glaze pen on the crow to give it a glossy, raised look.

I had SOOO much fun with Victoria today!! We got to go to her beautiful house this time and were surrounded by tons of elaborate Halloween decorations. I should get her to post some pics of the fun decor she has. She really knows how to go all out and celebrate the holidays. Her house is full of all kinds of inspiration. We stopped by the new A Muse shop today too, to see how it's coming along!! So cute!! Of course I lost track of time and had to run out the door super fast to pick up my kids from school! I felt so bad leaving V in my dust!! :D I'm gonna be so sad when she goes back to work next week, we won't get play dates as often.

Hugs and blessings to you!

Heartfelt Sympathy

Hey! Happy Hump Day! :D

Here's a sympathy card I made last week for a coworker of my DH's. Her father passed away recently and he wanted to be sure to give her a card to let her know he cares. I don't do sympathy cards very often. I intend to but never know the right words to say so I usually end up not doing them.

For this card I pulled out my only sympathy stamp set (Close as a Memory) from Stampin' Up! and since I was on a SU kick I also pulled out some of my fave SU papers and colors, True Thyme and Vintage Violet. This is definitely my old SU style on this card with the distressing, layers and sponging, but I enjoyed making it and doing something different than what I've been doing lately.

I hope you're having a great week!

Hugs,

Quick cards

Hey there!

I thought I'd post another group of cards to get myself all caught up! These are cards I made over a week ago on a play date with my friends Kim and Sara, I just hadn't gotten around to posting them.

These are all super simple, quick and easy Stampin' Up! cards, which is not something I do often. If you know me, when I do Stampin' Up! I tend to keep adding more and more, lots of layers and embellishments. So much so that I completely over do it and end up with a not so pretty card, but since I put all the effort into them I post them anyway!! :D

We were focusing on doing a variety of birthday cards to have on hand when we need to grab one and go. A couple of them were shoebox swap cards that Kim and Sara provided and the others were created during our play date, playing with various designer series papers. That's one of the best parts about stamping with friends, we all get to work together making cards, helping each other out with ideas.

All products used on these cards are by Stampin' Up! Some stamp sets are retired, but still great sets!! :D

I hope you have a happy Monday!

Blessings to you,

C*E*N*S*O*R*E*D!!!

Are you ready for today's post??? "Warning this post is not suitable for stampers without a sense of humor."

Victoria and Kim and I all got together to have a playdate today! Remember a few weeks ago I had mentioned that Victoria and I were scheming up ideas for naughty cards?? Well, it all started from Victoria's new MFT stamp set "Twisted Sentiments" and went down hill from there. I was good and started out the stamp session by working on the A Muse Addicts SOTW challenge and Weekly challenge this week (Trees and Fall card) and then got busy workin on naughty cards!! LOL!! Here's the Tree card:

Victoria got a bunch of super fun crafty goodies to play with including this Martha Stewart Picket Fence punch!  I'm in love with it along with the cupcake punch which I didn't get to play with (insert sad face here).  She also got the new Slice!!!  Such a cool die cut tool!!  

And here's the first naughty card:

I had the idea in my head, but getting it on paper was a challenge. It took the collaboration of all 3 of us to get it to work good! Thanks girls!!

After Kim and Victoria left for the day, I played around with the sentiment set a little more and made some simpler cards:

So, I know the last one's not naughty, but since I made it with the same MFT set I thought I'd post it as well.

I have several more ideas, hopefully I can get around to stamping them soon! Thanks so much for stopping by!! :D

Hopefully these aren't too bad and you'll all forgive my sense of humor!!

Hugs!

Happy Birthday Linda!

Hey everyone!! It's Linda Carnell's birthday today! In case, for some strange reason, you don't know who Linda is, well, she's none other than the A Muse Guru herself, owner extraordinaire!!!

If you're up for it, pop on over to her blog and send her some birthday wishes. She's an amazing woman with a heart of gold!

Happy Birthday Linda!!

This is the card I made for her. The pressure is definitely on when making a card for the owner of A Muse Artstamps, but I just went with it! I don't know what her fave stamps or colors are, so I decided since she's working so hard on getting the new retail shop up and ready that the stamp store would be appropriate, then it all just fell into place from there. I stamped the city background along with the Tower (Space Needle) stamp since the shop is in North Seattle. The p*a*r*t*y letters were paper pieced from scraps in my stash. Notice anything different about the Tiny Bird?? He/she's facing the opposite direction. I had already stamped the tiny bird flying in the background and putting it on the line was an afterthought. I thought it would look weird to have both the birds facing the same direction so I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig imaging sheet (the smooth side), stamped the tiny bird on it, then flipped it over and pressed it on the card leaving a light imprint. Then I used a black Pitt Artist Pen to trace over it. Maybe not the most efficient way, but it worked. The great thing about that pen is that it didn't bleed when using my Copics to color in the pink birdie! Yay! :D I put some Stardust Stickles on the bird and some Clear Glaze pen on the window of the shop and on the light post.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Hugs,

Remember Me?

Hey there! Do you still remember me?? It feels like it's been so long since I've blogged. It's definitely very sporadic for me lately, sorry.

I actually have been doing quite a bit of stamping but not much in the way of A Muse cards. I've been working on some Christmas Party invite samples for my mom's work, some wedding thank you cards for my friend Judie's reception coming up soon along with some party favors, some simple grab and go thank you cards to have on hand at home, a sympathy card, a birthday card for someone VERY special, and I got together with 2 of my good stampin friends (Kim and Sara) for a play date last week and made a couple of shoebox swap cards and a bunch of super quick birthday cards. I'm gonna post a few cards today and a few later this week. I probably won't post the Christmas party invites or the wedding reception thank you's though. There's probably info on those that may not be good to post on line. They're all super simple though, nothing elaborate so we can make a bunch quickly.

On with the show! :D

Here's a card I made with Kim and Sara. I love this Inky Antics Coffee Girl stamp and Inkadinkado flourish. I definitely need to pull them out and play more often.

These next 2 cards use up some of my Carousel Notes from Stampin' Up! I've had them on hand but hadn't been using.

The cards are huge (6x6 base), but were still fun to make. I used Iridescent White Mist Scribbles 3d paint for the whipped cream and Clear Glaze for the cup. I only had a couple of the Groovy Guava Carousel notes, so I mixed it up a bit and gave options for the shoebox swap and used the Wasabi and Soft Sky ones too. Kim had the idea to use her new Party Hearty birthday stamp set from Stampin Up with the Wasabi and Saffron colors. Fun set, but I'll admit that this kinda looks more like a baby card. I guess it could be for a little girl's birthday.

This next card is a Criss-Cross pocket card. Pretty straight forward but I got to use up some of my DS papers I had on hand that I hardly ever use.

And last, a SUPER simple, basic SU thank you card. I've been selling off some of my stamp sets on Craigslist and needed something to put in the packages I've been mailing out. I figure they'd be good to have on hand when I need a quick Thank You note to send.

Thanks for stopping by today!! I hope you're all doin great and getting ready for the Holiday season! I'm gettin the holiday bug for sure!! Such a fun time of year!

Hugs and blessings to you!

Troop Card

Hey there!! A Muse is releasing a new clear stamp set called Hero Mail along with coordinating notecards that will be sold in kits to help bless our troops and brighten their day! I think they'll be announcing more info about it on the A Muse News Blog later today so stay tuned.

There are so many great images in this set, it was tough to choose which ones to use first. Here's what I ended up making:

I definitely need more practice with clear stamps! I think pressure is my issue, but I think it'll still be ok. I used a black glaze pen on the tires and bolts and a clear glaze pen on the windows.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs and blessings!

Contain Yourself

Yes, another post today!! This is for Step it Up challenge #7 on the A Muse Addicts site. The challenge is to make any type of container, box or bag to put small gifts or goodies in.

This is a super easy goodie bag/box to make:

The template is from SCS for a 2,5,7,10 box.

I hope you'll join me this month! This challenge will go through the end of November, to give us ideas for holiday gift giving.

Blessings,

Weekly Challenges

Hello!

It's been a great day today! Victoria came over for some stamp time! I think she's just what I needed to get myself in the stampin' mood again. I had a great time bouncin' ideas back and forth with her and have a bunch of new ideas but not enough time to work on them today. As usual, we worked on A Muse Addict weekly challenges. I only got around to doing the Stamp of the Week challenge, to use the Leaves clear set, the Wine & Cheese stamp or the Wine Glass. I also stamped an owl card cuz I've been wanting to make one for awhile and decided to go for it.

Here's what I made today:

The layout for this card came from ScrapJazz online. I was browsing through the galleries and came across a scrapbook page with this layout and thought it could be scaled down and make a great card layout too. I like it, but it was time consuming for me, deciding which papers to use and cutting all the pieces to fit right. The wine glass in the front is popped up.

This card uses the Leaves clear set (thanks for letting me borrow it V!!) and the new Trees 2 set. I have no idea for what occasion I could possibly use this, but the thought popped in my head and I couldn't resist putting it down on paper!! Maybe I can save it for when my kids go off to college in 10 years!! LOL! This ribbon has been in my stash for awhile now but I hadn't used it yet. I got it at a LSS that went out of business, I'm thinkin' it's May Arts ribbon, but not sure.

And last but not least, this owl card!! I'm so excited about this!! First off I need to admit that Victoria came up with the cute sentiment!! I was stumped trying to figure out what to use with it and she blurted out "yoo-hooo" and then there was no stopping me from using it! So fun! What I'm most excited about on this is that I got to use flax seeds on the wings!! At my DD's preschool, they have a sensory table filled with flax seeds and while working on crafts there, some of the seeds fell on the glue for a project and stuck to the page, it made a cool effect and I got to thinking it could be very cool on these owls!!! Hey, if people can glue sand to their cards, why not flax seeds?? :D

I hope you're having a great week! Hopefully I won't be a stranger and be able to post some more this week.

Blessings to you!

A Wedding Card

Hi Everyone!

Although I don't feel out of my stamping slump, I have done a little stamping lately. I made this card over the weekend for a friend of mine from Jr High. She finally tied the knot at a fancy country club nearby. Such a fun wedding and party, got to see a few friends I hadn't seen in years. It was a crazy blustery day though!! At one point during the ceremony we thought the tent was gonna collapse on all of us! (yes, some people do actually have outside weddings in the Fall in the Seattle area!)

Her wedding colors were black, white and red so that was the color combo I chose:

I used Shimmery White cardstock to give it a punch of elegance and used a quickie glue pen and DD glitter for the dress. It's a window card, so the Bride & Groom are stamped on the inside.

I hope you're all having a great week. It's thundering outside right now, so I'm sure we're in for a rainy one!

Hugs and blessings to you!