Last Day For Last Chance List!

We all love to see the fun, stampy things on a blog post but I also take seriously my job as a demonstrator to keep you informed of promotions and their deadlines.  It's disappointing to miss a sale that you were genuinely interested in!  So I must let you know that today is the last day to order anything from the Last Chance List.

Below you'll find favorite projects made with Last Chance items.  Click them to see their related blog posts.  

This Little Piggy set & In Colors

Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper

Stargazing set

Tea Together and Dies

Painted Harvest and Leaf Punch

Parisian Beauty Suite

I've got LOTS more projects on my blog that feature retiring products, but those were the stampers' favorites.  

Tip: You can search my blog for specific stamp sets by typing the name in the search box.  

Make sure to check them out, because I include pdfs, card recipes, tips and tricks, and photo tutorials in many of those posts.  

Grab your favorite Last Chance Products by shopping my store!

Joy in being creative, community in sharing a common interest, purpose in what we make - this is stamping at its best!  Thank you, friends, for choosing me as your demonstrator!

I'm A Splitcoaststamper Sketch Challenge Designer!

Surprise. 

Shock.

Glee.

Excitement.

Yup, that about sums up my range of emotions when I got a private message at Splitcoaststampers inviting me to be a Sketch Challenge Designer!  I adore the site and feel so honored to be asked to contribute to its awesomeness.  

This week's sketch offers LOTS of opportunities to use up cardstock and DSP scraps.  Wave your hand if you have some of those (**I'm waving mine!**).

I packed my card with color!  Night of Navy, Crushed Curry, Mango Melody, Shaded Spruce, and Pumpkin Pie all play nicely here to make a vibrant fall scene.  The Painted Harvest stamp set had tons of images to play with.  I used the rougher looking fern image with Shaded Spruce ink to create a background.  I stamped the image at full strength, then stamped once or twice more without re-inking to get a nice variation of tone.

I love that wavy Linen Thread!  I used my bone folder to curl it slightly, just as you would with a pair of scissors and that shiny ribbon stuff when wrapping a gift.  I put a Stampin' Dimensional on my Stitched Shapes oval and laid the Linen Thread on it.

There are two sunflower images in this set, one to act as the base and the other as the filler.  I used Pumpkin Pie ink to stamp the base image on Mango Melody cardstock.  Then I used the same ink with the filler image and stamped several times without re-inking, turning my stamp slightly each time so as to fill in more areas of the sunflower.  The center is stamped with Soft Suede ink.  Aren't all the color shades in the sunflower so pretty? 

Come over to Splitcoaststampers and show us what you make with this week's sketch! 

You Can Make This!

• Painted Harvest
• Itty Bitty Greetings
• Shaded Spruce Ink
• Pumpkin Pie Ink
• Soft Suede Ink
• Thick Whisper White cardstock (4-1/2 x 11 base; 5-1/4 x 4 background panel; stitched oval shape )
• Shaded Spruce cardstock (to punch leaves)
• Mango Melody cardstock (scraps for sunflower and strip)
• Crushed Curry cardstock (scrap strips)
• Night of Navy cardstock (scrap strips)
• Linen Thread
• Bone Folder (to curl linen thread and fold card base)
• Leaf punch
• Paper Snips (for fussy cutting the sunflower)
• Stitched Shapes dies (oval used here)
• Multipurpose Liquid Glue
• Stampin' Dimensionals

 Thank you for your orders!  I appreciate your business!  Go to my Catalogs page to request a Stampin' Up! catalog, if you are not already working with a demonstrator you love.  

I Am Daring To Get Dirty

This week is the annual Dare To Get Dirty Challenges at Splitcoaststampers.  It's a fun, completely immersive, creativity-challenging, reality-escaping week of stamping bliss!  While SCS , as it's affectionately known, has challenges of ALL kinds every day all year long, Dare To Get Dirty is a super-charged version of them that members get pretty pumped up about.  And deservedly so!  Some years I make all Christmas cards for the challenges and other years my focus is learning the new techniques.  

I've been a member of the site since 2004.  I credit the passionate and generous community there with growing my creativity.   They also have weekly tutorials that teach techniques and 3-D projects.  I showcased a project in this post here that I made from an SCS tutorial.  Good, honest people stamp over there and you should go check it out.  You should also check out my card for one of the challenges:

Yesterday, my card screamed summer.  This one definitely says FALL.  (Will I make a Christmas card tomorrow?  I don't know....come back to find out...).  Those colors of Cajun Craze, Crushed Curry, and Garden Green with a touch of copper in the ribbon are so rich and comforting, my favorite feelings.  And that background!  

What a fantastic way to include a sentiment on your card front when there isn't room to stamp it separately!

And because I love to share, I'll show you a favorite simple technique of mine.  It's a go-to in my stamping design arsenal:

I did this to the Very Vanilla cardstock panel that the sunflower is adhered to.

I know many of you are summer lovers, but I adore cooler - cold, even! - weather.  This card has me longing for fall and all its glories like cross country, apple cider, and hoodies.  Feel free to convince me in the comments that I should love summer, though!

Here's the recipe for this rich card:

• Painted Harvest stamp set
• Thick Very Vanilla cardstock (5-1/2x8-1/2; 5x3-3/4; 2-3/4x2-3/4; scraps for sunflower)
• Cajun Craze cardstock (5-1/4x4; 3x3)
• Garden Green cardstock (scraps for leaves)
• Crushed Curry ink (sunflower; I turned my stamp and stamped three times to get a full looking sunflower)
• Garden Green ink (background, leaves)
• Early Espresso ink (sunflower center)
• Soft Suede ink (for sponging and speckles)
• Copper Trim
• Leaf Punch (designed to punch out leaf shapes in the Painted Harvest set)
• Paper Snips (for fussy cutting)
• sponge (to get that speckled look and to sponge background panel edges)
• Multipurpose Liquid Glue
• Stampin' Dimensionals
• Grid Paper
• Bone Folder

Thank you for taking the time to visit my little piece of the Internet today!  You are appreciated by me!

Pretty Card Elements Using Patterned Papers

If you've read a number of my blog posts, you can tell I love to use DSP - especially scraps - in my projects.  You see, I have trouble choosing colors.  No joke, brown is one of my favorite colors and some wouldn't even call it a color!  But using Stampin' Up!'s Designer Series Paper means a color palette has been chosen for me that already looks beautiful.  So I go with it!  Using all this DSP, though, means scraps are plentiful.  Fortunately, there are loads of ways to use those pretties.  Today I'll show you one of those ways.  At the end of this blog post, I'll link to two other ways I showed of using DSP scraps.  

That stitched circle in the middle of the card front was made using 1/2" wide strips of Bird Ballad DSP.  The strips varied in length since I was using scraps.     

And the smallest circle on the left of the card front with the bird isn't stamped - I die-cut it from a sheet from the Bird Ballad DSP.

Experiment with different shapes - squares, rectangles, hearts, labels - anything could be used!

Check out my posts here and here for some more ideas on using DSP scraps.

Card Recipe:

• Painted Harvest stamp set (sentiment)
• Petal Pink cardstock (5-1/2 x 8-1/2, 4-1/8 x 5-3/8)
• Smoky Slate cardstock (stitched circle sentiment)
• Whisper White cardstock (scraps for stitched DSP circle)
• Bird Ballad DSP (scraps of varied lengths cut to 1/2" wide)
• Basic Gray Ink Pad (to stamp sentiment)
• Soft Suede Ink Pad (to sponge edges of Petal Pink stitched panel)
• Stitched Rectangles Dies
• Stitched Shapes Dies
• Very Vanilla Scalloped Lace Trim
• Metallic Pearls
• Basics Pearls
• Sponge

If you would like a Stampin' Up! Catalog and don't already have a demonstrator, contact me with your name and address and I'll send one out to you. I so appreciate the opportunity to earn your business!

Last few days to earn Bonus Days coupons!  Earn a $5 coupon redeemable in August for every $50 order (before shipping and tax) placed in my online store.  Shop online here.