Pink and Yellow

Hello! It's the end of a long day. I taught, came home and cooked, cleaned, etc. Went to the gym for a killer spinning/yoga class and now I'm laying here in bed with the laptop. It's my favorite time of day. I'm just chilling out.

I wanted to share a quick post tonight because I realized that I haven't posted this card.

 I used a Pink Paislee heart as a stencil and inked the yellow heart onto the paper. I cut it out and handstitched around it.  There's lots of layering going on. I layered some Crate paper, a doily, two Melissa Frances tags and then I backed my stenciled heart with a Little Yellow Bicycle sticker.

I decided to decorate the inside of the card, too. The stamp is Ali Edwards.  I love it!

There you have it. A little pink and yellow to hopefully brighten up your day.
Thanks for stopping by. :)

Last of the Valentine's Stuff

Happy Saturday. Hope you had a great week. Just another busy one here. I'm STILL fighting a respiratory thing. Spring can't get here soon enough. I am so sick of being sick!! I just want to open up all of the windows and get rid of germs.

I have a couple of last Valentines-y things to share today. This first layout is the one I did for Crate's Creative Weekly feature this week. We focused on RED.

 I used a combination of Fourteen and DIY Shop on this one. It's about the fondue we have every Valentine's Day. MMMM. I added some die cuts and little bits of chipboard. The tag was created on my Silhouette.

 I added some wood veneers, too. I love the little chevron shaped ones.

I love the look of cream and red together, so I kept the color palette simple. The photos also played a role in carrying the color through the page. (And on a side note, these were the first pictures I printed with my new Selphy printer. I am in love! I've never had luck printing pics at home and these turn out perfect. If you are looking for a home photo printer I can't say enough about this one!)

Finally, just a quick card. I kept this simple and bold.

 I started with some charcoal cardstock and layered a piece of velum over it. Then, I cut thin strips of Studio Calico paper and more velum and stitched them together along the bottom.

The heart was cut from some Echo Park paper. I added an EP sticker and some gems to top it off.

Hope you have something fun planned for the weekend. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Crate Goodies

Now that I have had the Crate new releases for a bit, I've been able to create some fun things with them. I really love the color combos in the new collections. They are modern yet vintage at the same time. Here are a couple of my most recent creations.

 This page is about my meeting with one of my food idols, Ina Garten, I went to a book signing recently and was so excited to meet her. I used the new Maggie Holmes collection on here. Love the colors so much.

I used a couple of the canvas frames on here. One to highlight the photo and as an embellishment.

The diecut elements are great in this line. Love that butterfly. I used the gem part of one of the clips in the collection as the center.

I finished off by cutting a large title with my Silhouette. I used silver POW paper on here. 

My next page uses the Fourteen collection. I wanted to document the yummy red velvet cheesecake brownies that we made for Valentine's Day.

 The recipe for these amazing goodies can be found HERE.

I finished off the page with lots of little banners cut from the paper. I cut the title with my Silhouette and added some of the chipboard, too. 

That's it for today. Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love Valentine's Day. It's one of my favorite holidays of the year. So fun and festive. Not a lot of work, though, which is nice. I am going to make our annual special dinner. Ryan, Fran and I are having filet mignon, crab cakes and chocolate fondue (for dessert).

Here are some Valentines that I made recently using Crate Paper's DIY Shop line. Crate has some gorgeous Valentine's lines, but I wanted to make something with a different color palette. There are several gold embellishments with the line, so I decided to use gold and cream as my predominant colors.

  I spritzed the background with gold mist and added a gold doily on this one.

Here, I layered some die cuts and added that fun clothespin.

 I love the gold chevron tag! I added a gold flower die cut and some Thickers to round out this one.

It's fun to find other lines that work so well for different holidays!As a matter of fact, that gold flower does resemble a poinsettia. Maybe I could use it for a Christmas card!

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Happy Valentine's Day!

Bright Ideas Class

Can't believe it's been a week since I've updated! But, I have been busy. I signed up for Studio Calico's class, Bright Ideas and have been having a blast with all of the challenges. This week, I was able to complete several of them.

This first card was for the create something using maps challenges. I LOVE maps. I decided to make a simple Valentine's card using Crate Paper Fourteen. I used a chipboard and die cut heart and added book paper cut out hearts to them. I topped them with some Webster's gems.

I added some stitching and an Ali Edwards's stamp to finish it off.

My next page was for the 'Stitched Title' challenge. The page is about my Christmas cactus. I've had it for over 15 years. This year it didn't bloom in December. I was thinking it might be dying or something, but lo and behold, it was a month behind. In January I had some beautiful blooms!

I used some Studio Calico, Jenni Bowlin and Basic Grey papers on here. The title is the negative space from a Silhouette cut. I stitched around it for some fun texture.

That's all for today. I'm off to work on some more challenges. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Stamp Storage

One of my 'Scrappy Resolutions' for this year is to stamp more. I have collected stamps for years, but really want to use them more. So, before I could do that, I decided I needed to organize and purge. That's done and now I can access my stamps much more easily. I thought I'd share what I did.

First, I got rid of a lot of older ones that, even though they were loved, I knew I wouldn't use. Then, I invested in some Office Depot CD plastic cases. I've seen these used by several stampers and I knew that being able to flip through my stamps would be best for me.

I placed the larger sets into the CD cases and put them in baskets on the shelf right behind my table. Here's a closer look.

 My next thought was what to do with the smaller or single sets. I decided to punch holes in the top of their packaging and put them on rings so I could easily flip through them, as well.

Since I have so many PTI stamps, I placed those rings in their own basket in front of the PTI CD case sets.

I am really happy with how this turned out. I feel like my collection is manageable now and I can find exactly what I'm looking for!

So, since I'm on the topic of stamping today, I thought I'd share a card that I made recently for Paper Crafts Stamp It 3 Ways  issue.

(I love this issue so much! There are 3 cards for each stamp set and you get so many ideas on how to use stamps in a versatile way.)

I used PTI's Hello Sunshine set. I decided to turn the sun rays into pennants!

I stamped and embossed them with American Crafts Zing powder in Butter and Mustard. The paper and little chipboard balloon are Echo Park.

Well, that's about all for this morning. Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day!