My new swaps!

Welcome, thanks for stopping by!  My new swaps were finally shipped out the door and here they are!!!  Now they may look a bit familiar, but I cased myself from the same swap last year because I really liked the layout!!  I also took the ice cream parlor awning and turned it into a curtain valance. 


Stamp Sets:
* Greeting Card Kids
* Scenic Season

Techniques:
* Brayering
* Masking

Cardstocks:
* Whisper White
* Early Espresso
* Baja Breeze

Ink Pads:
* Stazon Black (Girl)
* Early Espresso (Trees)
* Real Red (Greeting)
* Baja Breeze (Skyline)

Markers:
* Marina Mist
* Wild Wasabi
* Real Red
* Daffodil Delight


Accessories:
* Brayer (skyline)
* White Gel Pen (snow)
* Punch
* Scallop Trim Corner
* Big Shot
* Textured Impressions - Vintage Wallpaper
* Vanilla Shimmer Smooch (all over for snow) & Color Catcher
* Frost White Shimmer Paint (dress trim)
* 5/8" Grosgrain Real Red Ribbon
* 1/8" Taffeta Marina Mist Ribbon
* Dimensionals
* Mini Glue Dots
* Grid Paper
* 1 1/4" Circle Punch
* NSU - Post-it Notes

General steps below, I can post up more detailed steps/dimensions later if anyone is interested.

1. Mask the moon & tree line then brayer skyline - I went to Michelle Zindorf's brayering classes - so awesome and I wanted to incorporate it some how!!
2. Stamped the trees, added snow with white gel pen
3. Spray the shimmer smooch in the color catcher
4. Stamped the girl in the very bottom left corner - love clear mount!!
5. Colored the girl and used a tiny paint brush to apply shimmer paint to trim - let dry!!
6. Cut into quarters
7. Punched holes for her ribbon scarf and looped it through
8. Stamp greeting on the bottom right corner piece (again love clear mount, I cut my greeting in half and mounted them on the same block in the format I needed)
9. Added folded ribbon to back of the bottom right corner piece
10. Mounted on to Early Espresso layer using dimensionals
11. Embossed Early Espresso strip, punch, cut to size, score, mount on card layer
12. Mounted to Marina Mist
13. Voila! :)

To make it easier for myself, I had drawn up some guides on my Grid Paper.

1) This is most of it, shows my top part indicates my marking spots and also where I did so much brayering for the swap that it ultimately ripped through.  The bottom part is where I stamped, and the right had my cutting notes.

2) Close up of the brayer / masking section.

3) My stamping section where I had my cut lines marked so I could get the tree into a bit of the bottom left panel but leave enough room for the girl's head.

4) This shows where I even draw lines for where my white CS and clear block would go.

I hope you enjoyed this post and my first (of hopefully many) creation in quite awhile.  I am considering making more of these for the Baltimore Regional swap - if you are going and would be interested, let me know.  

Birthday Cards

I have a birthday party to attend tomorrow for two little girls that are turning two! I made two birthday cards which I CASED from a card found on the web by a lady named Ruth Hinds. I only changed a little bit of the dimensions and the image that was used.



I need to make a few more of these to have on hands for birthdays! My only sad part is that this paper is retired and I'm a paper hoarder so it is going to be hard to part with this paper!

Halloween Prep & Stuff

So here is a picture of the card I made for the 100 card swap that I had joined. I didn't think this was going to be hard to make, but after making 100 - I realized differently!!! Wow, the swaps I got back though were just AMAZING. Everyone did such a fabulous job. I actually had issues getting mine done and wouldn't have if my husband hadn't actually ended up helping me assemble at the end. I had started having really horrible morning sickness (all day!) after I signed up for the swap and was sick for over a month and then ended in a horrible cold / cough / chest congestion for over another month (which I'm still recovering from).

Okay- so here is the picture of the swap using the new SU set Two Cool Dudes. It was based on the sample shown in the catalog with a bit more embellishment:

Here are some of the other stuff I made to send to the hostess as both a thank you and an apology because I was short 2 for the swap (I can't count) and it took me forever to get them out the door because of said illness above.

Top Note - Halloween - this is the front and back of what I did with the top note. The ribbon is more green, but it didn't show up in the picture too well. The front was from the SU samples using the new stamp set and the back is using a Sizzix Halloween Die. I think this is what I'll be using to give to my son's classmates for Halloween.

Halloween card we made at my UL's camp and I CASE'd it. I love this card and the candy corn is made with Crystal Effects for dimension. I really like CE - just takes awhile to dry!


Simple Card - This was based on a card we made maybe a year ago at my 5 level up's event. I liked how simple it comes out, although its not quite as quick to make!



The colors of this card was inspired from the same event as the card above. I would never have thought to do this combination on my own. The different layers were inspired on cards on SCS. I love those ribbon sliders!




This card I just gave away as a birthday card. We made this at my UL's house a long time ago when Crab & Co was first in a mini. I'm so glad they brought this set back - I didn't buy it when it was in the mini, but you better believe I have it now! Now that I've given this card away, I've gotta make another one to replace it :)