Inspired by Nature

I love the versatility of the Inspired by Nature set... it is just beautiful on its own and all you need to do is change up the colour to make it a unique card ... and have to admit that Rich Razzleberry and Old Olive are one of my favorite Stampin' Up Colour combination's! The ticket corner punch combined with the eyelet border punch also finish off this card by punching it up a notch of layering!

A Shoebox Swap ...

Loving the support of having a 'team' of demonstrators to collaborate with! Here are a couple cards from my mentor Liz's down-line meeting showcasing new products from the upcoming July catty!

Vintage Wallpaper, Artistic Etchings, The Rectangle Clearlit die cut and some awesome new designer paper showcased in these cards!

Well I have to say I really enjoyed the shoebox swap on Sunday night ... great way to get to sample stamp sets or products you do not own yet - only now my wishlist has grown to include a few more things :)

Here is Liz's swap card we made ... more Artistic Etchings used to create a background paper of its own!Here is Sherri's swap card we made ... Fox and the Friends set!

Here is Ivonne's swap card we made ... featuring Herbal Expressions and Pocket Silhouette stamp sets.

Here is Nancy's swap card we made using the Sense of Time stamp set ... which I am totally wanting now!

Memorable Milestones ...

Hard to believe that my stepson is graduating Grade 8 and heading into high school in the Fall ... just seems like yesterday that he was playing with his Thomas the Train table and the challenge was getting him out of the bath verses into one!

Anyway I was lucky to be able to take him or his tux fitting this past weekend ... so exciting for me however he was more in a place of 'why do we have to go to all this fuss - if it is 'my special day' I'd be more comfortable in my jeans and a tee shirt" ... hence my title for capturing this memory 'Tux fitting or Pulling Teeth' cause I think he smiles more at the Dentist's office!

Because I Care ...

I have a feeling I am going to LOVE this set as well ... this is a sneak peek set from the upcoming July 2010 catty ... a Level One Hostess gift you earn FREE from hosting a qualifying workshop!

This is a card I made for my 'Shoebox Card Swap' tonight with the other demonstrators in my up-line team ... this is my first Shoebox Card Swap - but it sounds like lots of fun!

Everyone brings one card sample and all the materials needed to make the card neatly organized in a shoebox and then you pass the shoe boxes around the table , make a card from each and at the end of the night you have many unique card samples for sharing at workshops or if you are not a demo for sending to loved ones! What a great way to experience stamp sets you might not own yet!

Front of Card
Inside of the Card

Love is in the air

Simple but elegant ... this is a card I made at a workshop about the wonder way that with Stampin' Up! you can combine the punches and stamp sets to make quick and simple cards!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Me again ... between Buckle up Baby clinics and preparing for the last day of one of wee friends moving on to Big School this Fall and spending the summer home with dad not much time for the craft room ... so I am once again having fun with the My Digital Studio scrap layouts ... this is an oldie from our 2006 bus trip to Toronto where we did dinner and a Jay's Game!

Another great thing I am noticing is that with the Digital Studio you never have to worry about running out of ribbon or embellishments ... great feature eh?

Playing with Embossing using My Digital Studio

This is awesome ... another new feature to play with with the My Digital Studio! I was cruising the Stampin' Up blogs and stumbled across a demo who had shared a card where she had given the illusion of an 'embossed' Medallion stamp by layering it ... it was gorgeous so I thought I would try my own inspiration! I am so sorry I didn't think to write down the demo's name - if I stumble back across her site I will come back to edit to give credit!

Here is the front of the card ....
Here is the inside of the card ...

A Rock Climbing All Star

Having a manly home means that much of my scrap-booking is needing a 'masculine' touch which can prove a challenge for me - being a flowery magically inclined soul. However working with the My Digital Studio is proving to be lots of fun even with the masculine themes ... I am loving this particular layout ... cause the Toad stamp is perfect seeing as my stepsons nickname is Toad and I loved how both he and the stamp are appearing to leap in unison up the rock climbing wall!

The other thing that I am finding cool with the My Digital Studio program is that in addition to the stamp set fonts it always comes with ALL the fonts that you have on your computer - so the phrase CLIMBING that I have going up the side of my layout is actually a Game Night font from my computer and I have just spaced it one letter per line in the text box...I think I had almost as much fun documenting Alex's rock climbing experience as he did climbing the 200 foot wall!

Looking through the Window

I have seen lots of inspirations on the net and at craft shows of the faux tile card - so wanted to play with the technique myself and created this "looking through the window" inspired card ... and yes those are more DAISES ... another great creative feature of the My Digital Studio is that you can re-size your stamps to suit your needs - something a traditional stamp set generally will not do!

Playing with MDS

OK today was a very busy day ... we were busy in the garden and doing some more landscaping in the backyard making a couple garden beds bigger and installing the Bird fountain that the in-laws re-gifted to us! So after all the work I was torn between going down the craft room to recharge my inner soul and staying outside to enjoy the sunshine and the gorgeous view of the gardens in bloom!

Why choose when you can have the best of both worlds with My Digital Studio ... it TOTALLY ROCKS my world man .... not only can you make awesome scrap-booking layouts in minutes - you can also make digital cards which you can either print out same as they scrap layouts and then embellish OR you can just print them out a la carte on their own ... and you can do it will sitting out in your new Zero Gravity Chair listening to the birds surrounded by the gorgeous pansies, lilies and DAISIES in your garden ... Daisy which are the inspiration for my card today!

Fun with Fireworks

This 'Joesph's Coat' was a new technique for me to try - and I am thinking I am missing something cause it didn't turn out as nice as the samples did online ... perhaps it is something you have to practice to get 'pretty' cause my embossing smudged and the colour is not as vibrant :(

However I thought I would share it anyway - cause every card cant be a masterpiece - and besides as I practice and get better it will serve as a benchmark for improvement ... which is what learning is all about after all!

More Pleasant Purples

I am just in love with Purples lately ... this is a card was inspired by a technique class with another demonstrator, Lisa Bowman before I started selling myself ... and I loved it's combination and alternative use of punches ... the flower pot is actually using the Holiday ornament punch with the point left off the edge of the page when punched. The stamp set is Pocket Silhouettes which is a versatile set all on its own!

Hope everyone has a great Father's Day weekend ... here is another little nugget I created for Father's Day at a Stamp a Stack event last month ... cute little set called King of the Grill!

Big Shot Flowers

Got to say I am really loving playing with the Big Shot ... there are so many 3D flower combination's you can make with the various die sets that the one of kind card combos is almost endless.

This simple card used the Square Lattice impressions embossing folder from the Summer mini, the Birds and Blooms die cut and the Little Leaves die cut from the normal catty... adding a little coordinating ink shadowing around the edges of the punched images really helps to give the flowers a popping sensation on the page ... a really simple card to make that just has some nice WOW factor :)

Plus I just love the colour combination of the purple and yellow ... the new Stampin' up Colour Revolution coming out in the 2010-2011 is going to be AWESOME ... this card is done with the Regals Collection Elegant Eggplant and new Subtles collection So Saffron ... I think they look awesome together!

The Good Ole Days ...

My wonderful BFF's from high-school have been asking me when I am going to get around to scrapping some memories of them ... however since ALL of my high-school photos are before the digital era - heck some of them are the wonderful Polaroid era - I had been planning to do them in the more traditional fashion ... however I decided to collect some scanned photos for the 80's and put them into a collage!

So here you go ladies ... the wonderful 80's montage! Styles Dances at the Forum in Cambridge, long weekends in Sauble Beach getting into mischief, parties in the basement of peoples houses ... good good times where the success of the day was often geared on how high we could get our hair teased and how bright we could get our blue eye shadow to glow!

Plenty of Pansies!

This spring I planted a Pansie garden with the daycare kids and was totally inspired by their colors as they bloomed this past week that I wanted to create a card in their honor.

So off to Google I went to see if there were any Stampin' Up! techniques already out there inspired by pansies ... cause why recreate the wheel if someone else has already done it ... so as I was online in came an email from my up line mentor Liz Goldhawk with her upcoming technique class - and I couldn't believe my eyes ... she was featuring Pansies!

So once again karma answered my call and brought me what I needed into my life!

So after attending the class I came home to work on the following with my original Pansie inspirations!

A Cajun Craze and Daffodil Delight Inspired Colour Combo:

A Concord Crush and Daffodil Delight combination:

A Night of Navy, Brocade Blue and Daffodil Delight inspiration:

And a wonderful Real Red and Daffodil Delight creation:

I am so totally in love with this Pansie technique ... while some of the youtube videos I Googled showed the use of the re-inkers and involved soaking the paper and well 'mess' plus way more time in waiting for the Pansie's to dry before you can assemble ... this one used sponging and allows for much more control of ink placement and colour blending ... and well anyone who knows me knows that I totally prefer the control!

This technique is sure to become a favorite of mine ... I am excited to combine it with some fairy cards and butterfly cards cause well it is just so 'magical' creating them ... no two are the same!

Playing with my Big Shot

How sad is it that I am actually grateful that my ole Cuttlebug croaked on me last month ... cause it was a perfect excuse to purchase my Stampin' Up! Big Shot as a replacement ... this tool is a 1000 times easier to use than the Cuttlebug was ... plus unlike the Cuttlebug it can cut multiple pieces of card stock easily AND it can cut various fabrics including felt and metal sheets ... all mediums that I cannot wait to try out!

However this weekend all I had handy was my totally awesome Stampin' Up! card stock ... so I was playing with my Build a Bear Bigz Dies and here is one of the cute cards that I made with them ... does she look like she should be heading off to the Sock Hop!

Christimas in June

Oh my - my second wonderful box of goodies arrived this week ... and oh what fun I have been having with unpacking it and getting my craft room all organized to house the additional splurges!

My favorite new toy by far is my new My Digital Studio program ... I am in heaven with this awesome product ... which I earned for FREE with my first demonstrator workshop order ... a definite perk to hosting a qualifying workshop - FREE PRODUCT!

My first night after opening all my 'present's - I created 20 scrap page layouts from Xmas's past in less than 2 hours ... easy peasy with the My Digital Studio program ... and the great thing is that when I print them out - I can still add traditional 3-D embellishments for that extra WOW factor in my album!

Here are a couple samples of some layouts I created this week ...