Bird/Nests Notecard Set

Hi everyone, how's the week going? It's been rainy here still so the temperatures are wonderful again today.......which will make me feel no guilt when I send my girls outside and lock the door behind them! They are full of laughter and energy...which is better than fighting and screaming....however it's getting a little rowdy around here today! Wait.....it got silent all of a sudden....which scares me even more. What are they up to?

Oh well, I'll work while it's quiet! I had this leftover card set from Card Club so I thought I would make up a little gift set to have on hand. I had all the supplies cut and placed inside a Papertrey stationery box. Inside there were 8 envelopes, 8 quarter sheets of SU! Soft Sky card stock, 8 pieces of white card stock cut to 4" x 5-1/4", 8 pieces of 1" x 4" strips of SU! patterned paper, 8 white circles and 8 colored scallop SU! punched pieces of Soft Sky card stock, plus a ribbon to tie the box up.

I hadn't done the stamping yet so I pulled Karen Lockharts Itty Bitty Birds and Itty Bitty Nests and my Copic Sketch markers. I stamped and colored the images with the colors shown below. Then I assembled the simple note cards with the strip of patterned paper going vertical on the left hand side of the note card. By turning the card and placing the paper strip and stamped image piece in various places, you could easily come up with some other layouts for the note cards.
I then packaged the 8 cards and 8 envelopes back into the clear stationery box and tied it up with a simple piece of ribbon. I'll keep this little note card set in my gift stash so I'll have a little something ready when I need a simple gift.

It will be back to school time before we know it......hmmmmm, I'll have to be thinking about welcome back gifts for the teachers.

Also, stay tuned for a fun SCRAPBOOKING segment to come to my blog. My friend Pine was my first volunteer(well, I kinda called her and hoped she would join in...and she said YES!) to join me in a fun scrapbooking adventure. And you will be able to join in the fun too! Once I get the details and ideas put together, I will share! (big tease I know.....but I gotta get it somewhat organized and planned out)

Sweet Little Baby

Hi all, just a short post for today. The girls and I are headed back to the city for a haircut for me and more school shopping for them. We're trying to squeeze in all the fun that we can before school starts.

I made this *adorable* card back when I was making all the quilt cards but forgot to post it. I'm so into the paper piecing right now. I just love the combined look of a stamped image and patterned paper. I used the sweetest baby set ever from Papertrey Ink called Bitty Baby Blessings. The images and sentiments combine to make the cutest little stamp set. As you can see in the closeup, I stamped and then cut out the little onesie and then added some pink shading with a Copic Sketch marker. Patterned paper and *adorable* quote is from Cosmo Cricket. Flower embellishment was handmade from felt and a button. A new label Nestabilities from Spellbinders was used for the white diecut. Sweet Blush card stock and Sweet Blush ribbon from PTI.
I think this is one of my cutest cards lately. Do you have those moments in your stamping career when things are *clicking* for you? I just love when projects turn out the way you planned.

I hope you all have a great day!! It rained yesterday and the temps were so pleasant. But I hear it's back to the heat wave soon. Looks like a gihugic pop from Sonic will be on today's list!

Quilt Insired....again

Ever since I first laid my eyes on Nichole's Guidelines stamp set from Papertrey Ink, I knew I would have some serious fun with this set. My first inspiration for this set came from my bedding. I have searched and searched for some bedding that would look nice, not be too fancy, had a homey feel and would be simple enough in colors that I could switch out pillows. AND it had to be family friendly because all four of us like to sit on our bed and chit chat and watch tv. My solution came from Pottery Barn when a simple, quilted bedspread went on sale. I loved the color and the simple quilted stitching. And the fun part now is searching for fun pillows. And now that I'm a wanna be quilter, some day I will make a new quilt for our bed...or maybe just start out with some pillows. In this closeup photo below, you can get a better look at the quilting pattern. That was the inspiration for my card.
If you haven't yet purchased the PT Guidelines set, here's out it works. There is a large grid stamp that gives you the base to work with. You stamp that first. Then there are various patterns that fit within the grid squares....or they can be stamped over the lines that intersect. The stamps can also be turned at any angle. It's kind of like designing your own tiles. It also reminds me of my Interior Design days and laying out floor plans,etc. And for those of us bitten by the quilting bug, you can also design some great quilt patterns with this set. Be sure to click on the link again to the Guidelines set so you can get a better idea of the designs and to see the grid. This is quite an ingenious set that Nichole designed. Once you get the basic concept, the possibilities are endless. Check out Pine's post HERE (and the one below it)for some other great samples and even more at the Papertrey Gallery.

This is my finished card below. I used pretty much tone on tone with PT Spring Moss ink and cardstock but also added in some white ink. The colors for the card were inspired by my green bedding and aqua and brown pillows. The die template is a new design from Spellbinders. Chocolate Ribbon from Papertrey, cardstock is PT Aqua Mist and Spring Moss. Just a simple thank you note that really shows off the Guidelines design.
And here's another fun thing I've been doing. I printed some personal address labels using Avery 18160 address labels, available at Walmart or your local office supply store. Use label #8160 in your word document to set up your file. I left about a 1" space on the left side of the label so that I could have a space for stamping a small image that matches my card. For this card, I used a stamp from the Guidelines set that matched my card. This would make a great gift.....type up some labels for a friend, add some stamps that match a set of cards......add in some postage stamps.....PERFECT personalized gift!! Enjoy.

Recipe...Party Chicken for Eight

WHAT'S DRIED BEEF? Dried Beef is very thin slices of beef that's been cured....or preserved with so much salt it lasts forever! It comes in little plastic packages and can be found near the luncheon meats at the grocery store. Cheap stuff too. My mom used to make this dried beef gravy that she served over toast. Man it was good! I won't tell you the name she called it....!!

UPDATE: Sandy over at the Crafty Secrets blog has some fun give aways. You can sign up to win the darling Halloween set and some vintage booklets by leaving at comment at HER blog. The deadline to enter is Saturday. The link is HERE. Good luck!!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I know you guys love the recipes and I am in the process of adding labels to all of my posts. This will allow you to click on the label at the bottom of my post and then all posts that correspond with that label will show up in order. So if I add the label *recipe* to all with a recipe in the post, you can find them all at one time. Same with the labels *lockhart*, *Papertrey*, *Crafty Secrets*, etc.

Also, the font used for the script on my recipe card is Creating Keepsakes Becky (after Becky Higgins).

Today I killed two birds with one stone......ha ha.......and made a fabulous supper for my family AND made a recipe card of my main entree...Party Chicken for Eight. My friend Carmen gave me the recipe after she brought over some leftovers. Talk about melt in your mouth! Every last morslet was DEEE-LISH! Carmen has given me some really good recipes since we've become friends...and she's SO cute too. Thanks Carmen!!

When I see the name of this recipe....Party Chicken for Eight... it reminds me of those good recipes from the 50's with the retro kitchens and the women in their aprons. That inspired my color combinations that I picked from some SEI patterned paper. The green, orange, brown and turquoise colors remind me of my mom's kitchen appliances and all the wonderful recipes she made for our family........like meatloaf, tuna casserole, liver and onions (loved it!), biscuits and gravy, BBQ Fried Chicken, Tator Tot Casserole and Bologna Mountains. (No wonder I'm *plump*!!) My card measures 4" x 6" and from the closeup below you can see the stamp better. I used Karen Lockhart's whimsical In Hot Water stamp. That chicken cracks me up! I mounted the circles onto a Spellbinder's cut scallop circle die and colored the image with Copic markers. The strips of patterned paper have notches cut out of one end. I LOVE making recipe cards because they come together quickly.....there's not much room for design elements so it's fun to work in such a small space.
I will add this recipe card to my growing collection. I would LOVE to have all my recipes be handmade. That would take a lifetime probably but I do like to convert some favorites. That recipe you see there off the side of a recent brownie box is to die for, by the way. I s'pose you'd like the recipe?
Here's some of my supplies and Copic colors I used for this project.
And here's the recipe....you can copy and paste it into a word document. Enjoy!!!

Party Chicken for Eight
8 chicken breasts
8 slices bacon
1 package dried beef
2 cans undiluted mushroom soup
1 pint sour cream
Wrap chicken with bacon slices. Cover bottom of baking dish with dried beef. Mix soup and sour cream. Place chicken on beef. Cover with soup and sour cream mixture. Bake at 275 degrees for 3 hours, uncovered. Can make ahead and refrigerate. Good with rice or potatoes. Serves 8.
From Carmen Burns 2007

I would LOVE to hear about your favorite recipes you had growing up as a kid. You know, those casserole type recipes that were filled with canned soups and cheese. If you'd like to reminiscence with me, please share your favorites in the comments section.....and be sure to come back and read them. I love your comments SO much!!

Summer CHA.....Homespun Accents

UPDATE: Sandy over at the Crafty Secrets blog has some fun give aways. You can sign up to win the darling Halloween set and some vintage booklets by leaving at comment at HER blog. The deadline to enter is Saturday. The link is HERE. Good luck!!

Hey everyone! Today I have more some more fun photos to share with you. While I was visiting the booths at CHA, I was drawn to all the homey/homespun accents. You all know that I'm in love with the idea of quilting, right? Guess how much I freaked out when I saw these jelly rolls and quiting fabric pieces at the Basic Grey booth!!! And here's a quilt on display, isn't it beautiful!??
Forgive me for forgetting the booth names where some of these accents came from, too much photo overload! These little books were made from corrugated cardboard and use stitched flowers as accents.
This altered bread tin was from Pink Paislee....guess what I'll be looking for at garage sales now!?
Straight from the farm.....a chicken wire frame to display scrapbooking pages and that cute little dress.
I believe these were from Prima......they look like hand cut fabric flowers. Oh Mother Dear, I need some scraps!

And I LOVED this photo album made to hold vintage looking photos. Check out the stitching around the album and the quilted look.

Here's one of the inside layouts....eggs! You know how much I love the birds! Great layouts too....simple layouts and just a few accents. I need to make one of these!
And this little darling of a card. Long strips of card stock with lots of stitching.
This was BEAUTIFUL....a quilted book from the Ranger booth. You gotta zoom in for a closer look at the details.
This photo is kind of blurry but you get the idea. More ribbon/fabric scraps shaped into a heart and then stitched.
Talk about inspiration! I don't know what to create first!!! I'll be busy working in my stamp room this week....trying to play catch up. So please be patient with me, I will have some samples of my own to show you soon.

Have a great day everyone! I didn't go outside til 8pm last night because it's so HOT here. We pulled up the green beans, tilled up some space and we're going to plant pumpkins soon. Eric wants to plant seeds for the GIHUGIC ones. That should be fun, hope there are still seeds left at the store.

Summer CHA....Jenni Bowlin Booth

I know how fun it is to see all the new stuff from CHA so I thought I would share some of my faves. My friend Pine said I must see the Jenni Bowlin booth. She was right! It was full of fun vintage ideas and the simple displays were old wire baskets and tables. So fun and the ladies were so helpful! Here's the ladies of the booth (sorry I cut off some heads!). Jenni Bowlin is pictured on right. Their aprons were SO cute! I would love to make Josey a quilt out of that vintage looking fabric in Americana colors. (Yes, I'm still fascinated with the quilting!)
One of Jenni's new products is this fun crepe paper ribbon. It's about an inch wide and comes in several colors and patterns. On this page below, it's folded accordion style to create an emblem of sorts for the scrapbook page.

I love this clever card display idea.......an old folding ruler.
And I really want to start incorporating some more altered art/collage type projects into my projects. I just love that tiny soldered domino! (Adding that to my *to try* list!)
Here's some more of the fun crepe paper ribbon added to the top of this page for a frilly accent. And check out the stitching and homespun heart and button accents.......looks like quilting to me!
How fun is this altered plate? Do you know how many plates I've passed up at garage sales!??

And tiny bingo cards! Love the big button!
Another bingo card altered with a sweet baby photo and felt flowers. I love all the felt too!
And lots of projects that had glass glitter! Gotta get me some glass glitter!
I see some more fun ideas for my next July 4th party below, so cute!
So there you have it, some really FUN stuff from Jenni Bowlin. You can check out her website HERE for products and kits. What a nice gal too! It didn't hurt that her dear hubby was very cute also!

I hope you all have a great day! The temperatures in Kansas are nearing 100 so it's HOT! We'll be staying inside today and hopefully I'll have a chance to stamp! I have NO SAMPLES to show you!. *gasp*

A Perfect Shopping Day......Priceless!

Hi everyone, I'm back from CHA and am back in the swing of things at the home front. I'm dragging though...these trips really take it out of me. I saw lots of new and old friends....got tons of great ideas.....saw all the latest and greatest products....ate some fabulous food and more! I'll be sure to share some of my favorites from CHA when I get those photos sorted.

For today, I created some fun cards for my girls. I just felt like putzing around in my stamp room yesterday but didn't really know what I wanted to create. Then the girls got up and we started talking about school starting soon and what new things we needed. So I decided to make them each a card that they could write their shopping list items on the inside.

I'm still loving my new October Afternoon patterned papers so I dug those out of my stash, along with Papertrey's Wise Owl. I thought that the owl would work well for school shopping, being they are are so *wise* and it would work into my school theme. The kits of October Afternoon paper contained lots of cut outs, photo corners and scalloped borders so it was easy to put together collage type cards. I paper pieced the owls onto some polka dot patterned paper, the beak and bellies onto solid pink card stock and then stamped the eyes onto PTI white card stock. I added some Ranger Glossy Accents to the eyes to make them pop even more. The front owl pieces were tied with Papertrey Dark Chocolate Ribbon.
Then for the inside of the card, I used some lined ledger paper from the OA kit....added some more of the fun owl stamps on punched circles........and then stamped *my shopping list* using the PTI Simple Alphabet stamp set. I'm going to have the girls fill our their lists and then carry the cards with them on our school shopping day. School shopping is one of my favorite things to do....I loved getting new pencils, paper, markers, book bags, etc as a child so I want to make it just as fun for my girls. We'll take the entire day to shop, try on clothes, eat lunch and make some fun memories.
Along with the cards, I'm going to give the girls a bag full of snacks, some juice boxes and spending money for the day. They'll be so surprised!! Then afterwards, we come home and lay out all the goodies for Dad to see. This is exactly what I would do too, so fun!!
Tip of the day: Above I have a photo of some Ranger Distress Ink and the foam applicator that attaches to a wooden stamper type block. While at CHA, I stopped to watch Tim Holtz for a little bit and he used the inker in a cool way to add distress shading to projects. Instead of holding the paper in one hand the inking tool in the other and *flicking* the paper edges.........he placed the paper onto a craft mat and then inked it by sliding the inked tool onto the paper edges. He inked the tool then started on the craft mat then overlapped the paper edges, rubbin in a circular motion. This gives THE softest application of ink. If you want just a little shading, you just go in with the tool a little bit. If you want more shading you move the inking tool in further. VERY cool tip I learned so I had to share it!

Papertrey Soldered Quilt Blocks

Hi everyone, by now I'm in Chicago for CHA! I wanted to show you some soldered pieces that made using the Papertrey Quilter's Sampler and Sentiment sets. I startd out by stamping quilt blocks onto PTI patterned papers. I punched them out with a 3/4" square punch, available at PTI also (a must have with this set). I added a little shading to the stamped quilt blocks with Copic Sketch markers.
Then I adhered various quilt blocks to a square of solid cardstock.
On the other side, I pieced together a sentiment that I just LOVE. It was too long to fit into my square so I stamped it, then cut it into strips. I like the homemade look it gives. I then inked both sides of my piece with Ranger Distress Ink for a vintage look then soldered my pieces to make pendants.

I'll be giving these pendants as gifts to some fellow Papertrey Designers. I included a snippet of ribbon so they can be tied onto a bag or name badge, etc. Later on, the pendant could hang from a chain or ribbon and be used as a necklace. I could see these soldered pieces also being used to tie around a baby quilt as a gift.....maybe hang off a big basket that holds winter blankets....or maybe on a sewing basket. Ohhhh, the possibilities!
I'll take lots of photos at CHA to share when I get back! Hope you're having a great summer!!

Lockhart Sweetie Pie

I loved making this card, there are so many fun elements!! I was inspired by some new October Afternoon patterned that I purchased recently. I just had to do something with that apple paper! I paper pieced Karen Lockhart's new Apron stamp with some coordinating October Afternoon patterned paper. The towel also has been paper pieced. I then colored a Lockhart Itty Bitty Apple and adhered it to the apron pocket. This totally ties the apron into the background paper. For an accent piece, I cut a portion from the Lockhart Berry Pie Shoe image and colored it to resemble a slice of apple pie. I mounted this on circle and scallop circle Spellbinder's Die Templates and added some airbrushing to the white circle so that the pie slice would stand out. I finished off my card with Papertrey birthday sentiments....love that Sweetie Pie, it's perfect with this card! There's lots of layers and dimension to this card, here's a closeup view.
And another closeup of the slice of pie. Yummo!

All Lockhart stamps can be purchased at Ellen's online store. I found the October Afternoon paper at the Two Peas website.

October Afternoon Quilt Card

I'll be heading off to Chicago for CHA very soon! I'm working half days at the Copic booth, a few hours at the JustRite booth on Friday and the rest of the time, I'll be walking the floor to scope out all the cool new products coming out soon. And I get to meet up with lots of friends. It will be a good time! I'll take photos and let you know my favorite finds when I return on Sunday! Some girls asked how you go to CHA....you can go as a vendor who has products or you can go as a retailer who wants to purchase products. For girls like me, you can either go by working in vendor booth as part of the design team or you can tag along with a retailer friend who is kind enough to acquire a badge for you. It's a great time!!

Remember that old quilt that I rescued from the garage sale. This is it. It's worn and tattered but I love it anyway! How could you not admire the hard work that someone did? I love to think that these scraps were probably leftovers from someone's dress or curtains many years ago. I was inspired to make a crazy quilt card of sorts. Here's my sketch and I've got lots more that will work with the small squares of the Papertrey Quilter's Sampler sets too so stay tuned.

I chose lots of patterns from my new October Afternoon papers. I could just swim in these papers!!
Then I took my 3/4" square punch and punched out a square from each sheet of patterned paper.....then arranged them on the bottom of my card in rows.
For the top of my card, I colored one Ohio Star block from the PTI Quilter's Sampler set....and then layered it up with the new Label die from Spellbinder's. Isn't that little label so cute?
I also used some fun colored buttons...dressed buttons......which means they have to be tied up with string, etc. Piney would be proud that my buttons are not *naked*. :) I finished off the card with a PTI sentiment from the Quilter's Sampler Sentiments set, inked the edges with Ranger Distress Ink and tied on a pretty polka dot ribbon from PTI.
I love the quirkiness this card has....kinda crazy, eclectic colors. Just like an quilt might have! Woohoo, still having fun with these amazing sets from Papertrey Ink!!