PPC-CC #43

Good morning everyone! Hopefully you all have the day off in lieu! I have 2 days of vacation left... Booooo =( But enough sulking. It's time for another Picture Perfect Creations Color Combo! Can you believe we're up to #43 already?!? It's my friend's "21st" birthday and I made a card for her. 

The poor cupcake blends in a bit too much but I didn't want a green or navy blue cupcake popping out! Not appetizing at all! Head on over to the PPC blog to see what the other team members have created! 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!!! May your bellies be full of delicious food and your hearts warmed with loved ones all around. 

Boy I'm not very good with this My Digital Studio thing. My projects look terrible right now... Will definitely need to work on this. Have a great day! 

Christmas Stamp-A-Stack

This post is way long overdue. Back a few weeks I had my second Christmas Stamp-A-Stack. The only problem, I spent all night either on the couch nauseous or in the bathroom puking. I felt miserable but didn't want to cancel because I had 6 people coming over and it's so hard to find a date/time that works for 6 people! Everything that came was super. I had typed out some instructions and they managed to complete their cards. Everyone had to help each other out but I'm glad they were all so understanding and I don't think anyone caught the stomach bug I had! Here are the cards that we made that night. 

This card was actually CASEd from a card I found online at Splitcoaststampers. I don't have the actual girl's name that created it though. Love how it uses a simple tree to make it a Christmas card. 

This card was CASEd from one of my favorite blogs, Clean & Simple Stamping. 

This was CASEd from one of the girls in my DARS Stampin' Up team. It's just absolutely gorgeous. I don't have her sample on hand to get her name right now. 

Finally a card that wasn't CASEd from anyone. 

Another card that wasn't CASEd. Off to bed! Have a good night! 

A New Personal Blog!

Ever since I started blogging all my card creations, I've always wanted to share more. You might have noticed that a lot of my posts include personal things like what I was doing that night or what we had for supper. Well I finally decided to make another blog to share my non-card making life. I do have a life outside of card making! I decided to call it Live, Love, Capture. Jamie didn't understand why I chose that name but I think it's quite meaningful. The "Capture" part of it was more related to taking photos but I think even writing posts is "capturing" a part of our life. Feel free to pop on by the new blog if you'd like to creep on what our little home has been up to! 

PPC-CC Specialty Challenge #2

Happy Monday everyone! Is anyone else as lucky as me to have this week off? I love planning vacation around the Christmas holidays and every year I'm so happy I do! Unfortunately Jamie didn't take the week off so next week when I'm back to work, he's off work! I spent the afternoon baking some shortbread cookies. Every year Jamie and I do some Christmas baking for our neighbors and some close friends. This year is no different. Although we have scaled down the variety of baked goods we do. I think the very first year we had like 5 or 6 different types and it was stressful! This year we'll likely just keep it down to shortbread, gingerbread, and Jamie's famous puff wheat squares. Possibly some yummy fudge... and perhaps some oatmeal cookies... LOL that's already 5 again! Darn! Anyways onto this week's Picture Perfect Color Creations Challenge! With it being Christmas, Megan has decided on another specialty challenge. This week is to create anything Christmas related. Not difficult at all right?!? This little card was super fast to create. I actually got 4 of these little cuties from one sheet of 8.5"x11" card stock. Cut it into 4, fold in half and layer on some more card stock! I used SU's 2-Way Glue Pen to outline the antler swirls and just dusted on some gold glitter. Easy peasy. Pop on by the PPC blog to see what Christmas goodies the design team has created. Have a great week everyone! 

Daisy's 30th Birthday!

My good friend Daisy turned 30 this past week and I had organized a surprise birthday party for her. She was totally clueless and it was an awesome surprise because she wanted her 30th birthday to pass without commotion. Being a good friend, of course I couldn't let that happen! So on top of decorating her desk the night before her big day (thanks Amber for the awesome idea!), we managed to organize a dinner and gift for her right under her nose! 

She loves ribbon, buttons and green! Not really knowing what to get her, I decided to just collect donations for a gift. At first I was thinking something along the lines of spa to pamper her aging skin but then came up with a cooler idea. I know she's been wanting a new phone and has been looking at the iPhone4. So the money collected was put into a tin that I altered to look like an iPhone4! Took me till 3 am but it was totally worth it! 

Christmas Cards

Good morning everyone! Hopefully no one else is up at this ridiculous hour like I am. It's 3:11 AM and I've been up busy crafting! I'll post my little project tomorrow night and I'll explain tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to post a picture of the Christmas cards I made for all my coworkers. I got the idea for these cut little mitts from a fellow Stampin' Up demonstrator on my team. I forgot to take a picture of who made the card so I can't give the exact stamper credit but please know that I didn't come up with this uber cute card. It uses 3 punches, the wide oval, small oval and scalloped oval. Super easy and super cute. Also, in case you're wondering why the heck I photographed them sitting in a box that says, "Fruit Buddies", it's because I bought Fuzzy Peach flavored candy canes! Hope you all have a great day! 

PPC-CC #42, SSSC96 & Top Tip Tuesday Challenge

Good morning everyone! We're only 12 days away from Christmas! Hopefully you all have your shopping and cards finished. I don't have either so I'll be working on those all week. Megan has another fun color challenge for you this week over at the Picture Perfect Creations blog. I combined it with 2 other challenges today. I used Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 96 and it's my very first Top Tip Tuesday challenge! I stumbled onto this blog a few weeks ago and was excited to follow another challenge blog. This week's challenge at Top Tip Tuesday is to use ribbon on your creation. More on that after I show you what I came up with. 

I was just thinking this afternoon that I need to use more ribbon on my cards (preferably on all my cards) since I was organizing my ribbon today. I was at the mall yesterday and stopped in at Deserres. They had a sale on some Craft Mates storage items so I stocked up on 4 of the ribbon holders. After loading in as many Stampin' Up ribbon rolls as I could, I realized I need more!!! So I'll need to stop by sometime this week and pick up another 2 or 3... Here's my new ribbon storage! Any thoughts? Jealous? =) 

Lazy Sunday...

Just wanted to share a couple things on this lazy Sunday. Jamie had a craving for cinnamon buns so decided to make some! I've made them once before and he criticized that mine were dry. I told him he should make sticky buns so it has that ooey gooey yumminess on top. Well I must say, if I didn't tell him to do that, his buns were just as dry as mine!!! So if he brings up my dry cinnamon buns again (which is often does), I'll have some ammo to fire back! 

The second thing I wanted to share before bed. Remember when I made my little garbage container out of scraps? If not, you can see it here. Well something that I learned that night made me love Stampin' Up card stock even more than I already do. When I first started crafting, I did as all beginners do. I went to Michael's and bought a bunch of card stock to get started. I still have about 4 packages of white hanging around. I often will use this card stock as scraps so what better time to use it than now for making letters for my garbage box. After stamping a few times, I kept wondering, "Why the heck is my stamped image so crappy?" It looked as though I didn't ink it up enough. So I decided to change card stock and viola! It was the card stock and not the ink or stamp that was crappy! Stampin' Up's Whisper White just takes ink so much better. Try clicking the picture and enlarging it to see for yourself. 

So the picture above shows the same stamp set and same Classic Basic Black Stampin' Up ink. The bottom row is white card stock from Michael's (Value Pack White Cardstock Sheets by The Paper Company ANW Crestwood). The second row is just white card stock from Staples (Staples brand). The top row is the gorgeous Whisper White card stock from Stampin' Up. Not only does it take ink way better, it's also a nice bright white color and just oh so smooth to the touch. Michael's card stock is rough and kind of dull looking. Really just bleh in my opinion! Do you have a go-to white card stock? 

Color Q #62, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

Alrighty this is going be a very short post because it's already 12:36 AM and I need to work in the morning! And you read correctly. I am making another card for 4 Crafty Chicks and Fall to Layout! I had made a birthday card for my friend and posted it yesterday. The colors I chose were very close to this week's Color Queen Challenge. Although it was close, it still wasn't the exact colors and you could definitely tell so I wanted to make an exact replica of the card using similar colors. Here is it along with Clean and Simple's Fall To Layout #119 again. Love this sketch!!! And yes, it again does qualify for 4 Crafty Chick's challenge 14, to make a birthday card. Have a great night everyone! 

PS. I miss my beloved Circle Circus stamp set! I'm glad I busted it out again! 

PPC-CC #41, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

I can't believe it's another Monday already!! Have you started our Christmas shopping yet? I've been sick sick sick lately and haven't really done much of anything! First it was the flu for 2 weeks, then numerous bouts of nausea and vomiting. Then on Wednesday night I sneezed a couple times and felt a tickle in my nose. Thursday morning I'm down with a cold. I've been out of commission all weekend. We did manage to go to Jamie's work Christmas party but I went to the washroom every 10 minutes or so to clear my sinuses. Good thing the washroom wasn't too far away. Today I took a sick day from work because with my hacking and green snot, I'm not visiting new born babies and I can't even imagine having to talk to parents for 4 hours on their child's growth and development. Is anyone else having as much illness this winter as me? My manager and Arlie keep telling me to start taking Cold FX. I think I just might. Onto today's card! Boy I haven't done a triple play in a long time. I really wanted to make my friend a birthday card for her 30th birthday and I know she loves green so I decided to combine Picture Perfect Creations #41, Fall To Layout's #119 and 4 Crafty Chicks #14 birthday card challenge. Here's what I came up with. 

I'm loving the ribbon and I think I just might need to do more of that! Works great with Stampin' Up's satin ribbon. And the big ol' button is from the winter mini catalogue's Big Designer Buttons. I might need to redo a card that's more "wintery" for my friend's birthday as I'm not so sure I chose the theme very wisely.... Hope you get a chance to join us at PPC this week and pop on over to see what the other creators have made! Have a great day!