Caramel Apple Mudslides

If you've been following Nichole's blog, then you've seen that Christmas ideas are in full force at Papertrey Ink! Today I even did a little holiday work in the kitchen...but that will have to wait for the big release. So for today I have another yummy, little morslet to show you that is more Fall themed.

CARAMEL APPLE MUDSLIDES is what I have named them. They make my mouth water!! Here's what ya do. Take some Caramel Apple Dip and Chocolate Almond Bark. Heat the caramel dip up in the microwave, you can use the container it comes in. Melt the Almond Bark in a double boiler or you can use the microwave if you have success doing it that way too. Take some delicious apples, I believe I used Fuji, and poke in some craft sticks. These are wider than the usual popsicle type sticks. I forgot to take a closeup so zoom in....can you see that I used the *caramel apples kit* stamp from the Papertrey Spooky Sweets II set? Okay, so it's not a kit but I thought it was clever to stamp the stick anyway. I then took my handy dandy Crop-A-Dile and punched a hole through the stick. Then I tied on a pretty black and white ribbon.
I then placed my apples on some pretty plates and drizzled on the melted caramel. You don't dip, you drizzle...sha-dizzle (okay enough of the cool, hip talk right?) Keep drizzling til the apple is oozing over with sweet caramel goodness. You want the caramel to pool onto the plate.

Now for Josey's caramel apple, we added toasted pecans and stopped there because she doesn't like chocolate that much. *GASSSSP*, I KNOW!!* I sometimes wonder if she's my kid.
BUUUUUUUT, for us normal people who LOVE all forms of chocolate, here comes the good part!! Take that melted chocolate and drizzle, don't dip, the chocolate all over the the caramel covered apple. Again, you want the chocolate to pool onto the plate. Make sure a little bit of the caramel is peeking through. Then take some more of those toasted pecans, roughly chopped and sprinkle them over the chocolate. A lot of the chocolate and caramel will ooze onto the plate. That is okay. Oozing is good. For good measure, sprinkle on a few Halloween colored sprinkles. Place the apples, plate and all, in the frig to get cold. The also helps all the caramel and chocolate from sliding off the apples.
When you're ready to serve these beautiful Caramel Apple Mudslides, arrange them on your table oh so prettiful (that's a word right?). These make gorgeous table settings, almost too pretty to eat.........I said *almost*. When you're ready to dig in, there are two ways to eat a Caramel Apple Mudslide. You can hold the stick and cut the apple into quarters if you want to be less messy. Or you can it it like the girls all corn on the cob style and just dig in. Jordan says that you MUST eat it corn on the cob style. She couldn't get enough of these and now she's requesting them instead of cake for her October birthday party. Sounds good to me.
So who wants to lick the computer screen now? I DO!! I bet if you zoom in and get real close, you could probably even smell the chocolate!!

Okay.....it's back to the drawing board for me. I need to finish up some projects. Enjoy!!

Airbrushed Poppies

Thank you everyone for your nice comments about me joining the Senior Design Team for Papertrey Ink. I am SO excited for this opportunity! I would also like to wish Amy R the best with her new adventure of designing stamps for CC Designs. Two new members will also be joining the Papertrey Release Team, Melissa Phillips and Betsy Veldman. Woohoo!! You can read all about it on Nichole's blog.

Today I have a pretty card to show you that is made with Lisa Johnson's Remember stamp set from Papertrey Ink. In this first photo I have masked three colored poppies, leaving the swirly designs unmasked. The beautiful red is Pure Poppy ink from Papertrey, a beautiful deep red color. Next, I used my Copic Airbrush System to airbrush blue and purple tones over my poppies, keeping the darkest tones right next to the outline of the poppy flowers.
Here's the magic, peel off the masks to reveal the beautiful blooming poppies!
Here they are in full color. Lisa did a fabulous job on this set, tons of details!
Here's more magic! I used my Copic Colorless Blender, which is really well inked, and made dots all over the airbrushed portions. If you want to make lighter dots, leave the tip of the Colorless Blender on the paper for just a bit longer.
And here's my finished card, be sure to zoom in to see the beautiful speckled effects. I finished my card off with white and Pure Poppy PTI cardstock, some PTI satin polka dot ribbon and a Spellbinder's Ribbon Tag Die with the sentiment *Thank You* stamped on from the Remember set.
Check out this view below, I added Ranger Glossy Accents to the poppy centers for a finishing touch. Hope you enjoy!!
Be sure to check out Nichole's blog today for a whimsical sneak peek of her new snowman set. There's also links to Pine's, Lauren's and Melissa's blogs for more fun projects!! The count down is on for the September 15th Papertrey Release!!

Also, be sure to check out the Stampin' Champion contest going on at JustRite Stampers. Vote for your favorite before Friday at 9am! There's some CUTE projects!!

Best Witches Card

Fall is in the air in Kansas and thoughts of Halloween are among us. I purchased a Halloween village house and Jordan just went nuts. She loves villages and this one has a witch that circles around an apothecary shop that lights up and has flashes of lightening...and screaming witches. So fun!!


So that put me in the mood to do a little Halloween card. I used Karen Lockharts new Witch's Broom stamp and Witch's Clothes stamp, available at Ellen's online store. I colored the images with Copic markers and die cut the top layer with a Spellbinder's die cut. The broom is cut out and raised up with pop dots. Paper is from Making Memories, ribbon from May Arts. Here's the inside of the card. I used a strip of the leftover patterned paper, a Making Memories bat tag and Karen Lockhart's fun *bippity...boppity...boo* sentiment.

I found a new little shop that has awesome seasonal decorations. Eric took me there while on our country drive and it was SO FUN! Each year, the owner removes everything from the store and paints the interior of the old house a new color. Then they bring in tons of decorations and just go wild! I can't wait to decorate for Halloween now that I have some new ideas! Ohhhh, and Michael's had black wreaths for $3.99, I got one to decorate for the entry. I'll be sure to take pics for you.

A gift for Pine

Pine (Heather Nichols) is such a good friend of mine. I was so excited and happy for her when her first set, Rustic Branches, was released for Papertrey Ink. She recently had a birthday too so I wanted to make her a little something special using her new stamp set. When I first saw Pine's stamp images of the wreath, it reminded me of this berry wreath I have hanging in my kitchen. So that was the start of my inspiration. I decided to make Pine a decorated envelope to hold some goodies. I started out with an open ended envy from Stampin' Up and a long scallop rectangledie from Spellbinders. I cut the rectangle out of PTI Kraft cardstock and used a small polka dot from the Rustic Branches set to stamp small circles on each of the scallops...in white ink for Piney. I used a cardstock rectangle mat of PTI's Everyday Blessings patterned paper collection and then covered one half with PTI's new Stamper's Select Vellum Cardstock. On the vellum piece, I stamped the wreath from Rustic Branches in white ink and then overlayed it with Spring Moss dots. The entire rectangle piece was stitched with my sewing machine. I added two layered buttons to the center of the wreath. To finish off the envelope, I tied a polka satin Spring Moss ribbon around the entire envelope. I stamped a Spellbinders cut tag with *for you* from the Rustic Branches set and then spelled *PINE* using PTI's Simple Alphabet. I finished off the tag with some white polka dots and green sequin stickers. The final touch was the green Leaf Ribbon that was also released with Pine's Rustic Branches set. It's amazing how a little snippet of that ribbon can add so much to a project. I need more!
For the inside of the envy, I had really planned that yet. Then I thought of all the wonderful emails that friends had sent to Pine when her new stamp set was released. I copied all the email responses into a word document, printed them off and cut them into individual strips. I thought Pine could refer to them for fun or perhaps use them all on a scrapbook page about her new stamp set.
I also made Pine a small gift card to go along with her envelope present. More of the same supplies from the envelope project were used.
I can't wait to see what wonderful new creations Pine comes up with next. Congratulations Piney!!

Lockhart Rooster

TGIF everyone! Just wanted to let all the volleyball fans out there know that Josey did an awesome job last night!! She started on JV and played almost the entire time. When she did sit out, she subbed in a lot to serve....KILLER serve with lots of aces! Josey's best friend's mom and I were just snapping photos and were beside ourselves. We played volleyball together in high school so it brought back lots of memories. Good times, good memories.

Okay on to today's cards. Have you noticed the popularity of the fancy roosters in home decor? I've seen them everywhere. Karen Lockhart has now added a fancy rooster to her collection too. I colored my rooster with Copic markers in shades of deep reds and greens. Karen has added a lot of detail to the feathers so there's lots of possibilities when it comes to colors. I also paper pieced the wing to give the card some additional dimension. I cut out my colored image with the new Spellbinder's Label 1 die template and then airbrushed it with a light tan Copic marker. The scallops of this label die really added to the elegant look I was hoping to achieve with this card.

I was particularly pleased with the finial leaf type stamp above the rooster. It's from Papertrey's First Fruits set and it works perfectly! I had to stretch out the ends of the stamp a little bit when placing it on my acrylic block but that is super easy to do because the clear stamps are flexible. It aligned perfectly above my label die, I'll definitely be doing this again.
I stamped *thankful* from the First Fruits set below the rooster accent and then added three decorative pearls to my finished card. For the patterned paper, I used Webster Papers which added to the rich feel of the card. Be sure to check out Cindy's store called Star Lit Studio. She has a brand new website full of fun stuff! I'm just so pleased with this layout. I think that it would make a beautiful invitation for a fall gathering, perhaps printing the invitation information on the label part...so elegant.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! I know that we enjoy those two days off so much.....sleeping in, no pressure of getting homework done, no where to go...ahhhh. Tonight though we're heading to our first high school football game. There's a tailgate party to start off the season, which means supper is already planned...hotdogs and chips, woohoo!! I hear that all of our Senior boys on the team got mohawks, that should be a sight to see!!

Josey's #1 Fan!!!!!!!!!!

Today ROCKS!!!! Josey plays in her very first school sporting event as a 6th grader tonight. Volleyball season is here and I can't wait to see my girl serve that ball. We practiced for two straight weeks this summer on her overhand serve and she is awesome!! Her 8th grade friend, Brittney, told her that she's got one of the best serves on the team!! I couldn't have my Josey girl not know how to serve overhand...it's the competitive side of me coming out!!

Sooooooooo, being that I AM Josey's #1 fan, I had to have a special game day bag right? Remember when I went that little purse party a few weeks ago? This is my new bag. We'll pretend those zebra stripes are wildcat stripes okay? And our school colors are black and white so I think it's especially fun! I'll bring some snack, cash, lip gloss and my camera tonight, I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!

But wait, I couldn't just leave the bag unadorned now could I? Oh no. We must have adornment on our wildcat bag. So I went to work this moring and made a soldered piece to tie onto my bag.
I stitched together two vintage like ribbons and tied my soldered piece onto my bag handle. I used that vintage jewel button to secure it on extra good by adding some stitches through the entire knot of the bow.
And for the soldering, I used a wavy edged copper tape from Simply Swank, a pawprint stamp, SU! letters, more of that checkered ribbon and some Marth Stewart glitter.
For the back side, I used a simple black and white polka dot. My bag is actually cream colored so I distressed all the edges with Ranger Distress ink.
So there you have it! I'm off to get things done around here so we can head out for the 5:30 game. Goooooooo Cats!!

By the way, the battery in my Trailblazer is DEADER than a door nail. (What is a door nail anyway?) I called Eric with specific instructions to bring home a new battery or whatever is needed and to FIX IT pronto. If my new bag and I have to ride to the ballgame in Eric's lowriding, Nissan Flintstone Mobile I will not be a happy #1 Fan. I swear my butt drags the highway in that thing! :)

Bitty Blessings Animals.. Crafty Secrets

Today I have a baby card I made with an image from the Crafty Secrets Childhood Journal and Image Booklet. You can easily make many variations of cards just by choosing different images. They're already colored and ready to use! I chose this darling image of little baby stuffed animals having a birthday celebration. I simply matted it on yellow cardstock and then on a Labels 1 diecut from Spellbinders. The card base is cut from Papertrey Sweet Blush cardstock and has a layer of Crafty Secrets patterned paper that resembles chenille fabric, like a baby blanket. For the sentiment I used *Bitty Blessing* from Papertrey's Bitty Baby Blessings stamp set and another tag die from Spellbinders. I airbrushed the tag while the paper was still in the die template for a soft look. The tag is tied on with Papertrey Lemon Tart satin ribbon. I finished off the card with two pink flowers that are adorned with stitched buttons.

I just love the softness of this sweet card. It will be perfect for a sweet little someone's first birthday.

Just Hatched Baby Cards

My friend Bev issued a fun challenge over the Labor Day Weekend. I'm sure you've heard about not wearing white after Labor Day:

"Popular fashion etiquette dictates that white should not be worn after Labor Day. Originally it was white shoes that were taboo— white or "winter white" clothing was acceptable. The custom is fading: "Fashion magazines are jumping on this growing trend, calling people who 'dare' to wear white after Labor Day innovative, creative, and bold. "

Bev's fun challenge was to create a project using white...accents, paper, buttons, ribbon, etc. I was up to the challenge! I worked on my stash basket this weekend and baby cards came to mind. I hadn't inked up the cute nest from the Papertrey Birds of a Feather set yet so it became my focus along with the cute *just hatched* sentiment.
I stamped the nest image with Dark Chocolate ink and used Aqua Mist for the eggs. I cut the eggs out and adhered them to the nest image with a pop dot. Glossy Accents was added to make the eggs shiny and more realistic. I punched the image out with SU!'s new label punch and mounted that onto a piece of Aqua Mist cardstock. For the white base card, I used a square Spellbinder's Nestabilities die template and embossed the card front. I love the look of all white for the card base, but the textured embossing just added so much detail.
For the bottom of the cards, I used Papertrey's Everyday Blessings patterned paper which I edged with the Fiskar's scallop border punch. I then layered on a strip of Papertrey's Aqua Mist saddle stitched ribbon, a layer of tan lace like ribbon and a pretty green flower. I finished the flower off with a stitched button and a snippet of the Green Leaf ribbon that was released with Pine's new Rustic Branches stamp set. I love how just a little snippet of that ribbon really finishes the flower off nicely.
Sooooo, a few more cards done for my stash basket.....and an end to a great summer! We enjoyed a nice weekend close to home, just enjoying the last long break for a while. I'll be sure to post my latest finds soon! I hope you all had a great weekend also. Thanks Bevie, for the fun challenge!