Words, Words, Words.

I absolutely adore Crumb Cake. I love how it's neutral enough to use everywhere but not so plain that it's blah. Here I've CASEd the lovely BeStempelt. I think she's German? I'm totally guessing based off the blog's foreign language. I really like how her image was stamped onto a longer piece of card stock. Unfortunately, I looked and looked but couldn't find a stamp that had a nice long stem like hers. Instead of actual pearls like she used, I used Liquid Pearls. Remember those? The trick to having them not look like little pointy pieces of poop or a cold nipple is after you've applied it, hold your card stock up face up and flick it from underneath a few times. This settles the liquid a bit and makes it look more rounded. 

Birthday Love

I recently used an American Crafts scrapbook layout as inspiration for both scrapbook pages and cards! These cards actually threw me for quite a look. First off, I made the blue one but when I went to put the sentiment using rub-ons, I ran out of room!!! The darn doily was too far over. I couldn't salvage it no matter what I did because I glued the doily on with liquid Tombow. The paper ripped to shreds and took the card front with it! So then I set out to make another one. This time, I got all confused with my words! The bottom blue card was supposed to say "birthday wishes" but then I started putting the word "happy"! I screwed up twice so ended up using way more rub-ons than needed. In the end, it turned out quite cute! Here's the original link to the inspiration. 

Using Up Scraps

Calling all frugal crafters! I hate wasting paper, especially when it's nice patterned paper! If you're like me, you probably hoard all the little leftover scraps from projects and keep them stashed away, hoping to use them up one day. I found a gorgeous card from Cristina that does just that! You can see her beautiful card here. I think the paper she chose works way better than the ones I did, but I'm okay with that because I got to use up a few pieces of scrap paper I had on my desk. 

Doubling Up!

I'm all about trying to be efficient when it comes to card making so whenever I'm creating a card, I will try to make 2 at least. Today I was inspired by Connie's card over at Constantly Stamping. I loved the pop of Poppy Parade and the simplicity of the card. Here's my CASE. I still like how Connie used Poppy Parade because it pops way better than Rose Red, but I'm trying to clear my desk of old DSP. Have a great weekend everyone! 

New Goodies!

I haven't found time to stamp in a while but since I have a meeting tomorrow, I needed to make up some swap cards! I have so much retired merchandise that I had to peruse the new catty to check if the items I wanted to use were still available or not! I used to know the catty inside and out... Now I feel ashamed that I don't even know what's current anymore! Worst. Demonstrator. Ever. Period. On a positive note, I did finally bust out some new items! Our stamping team was given a specific layout for inspiration, found here. I've been leaning towards a more vintage look as of late so I brought out the beloved Elements of Style. Oh my how I've missed inking that baby! I paired that with the new Papaya Collage stamp set and the new In Colors, Primrose Petals and Summer Starfruit. This is the first time I got to use the new foam pads that Stampin' Up! has introduced and let me tell you folks, I'm in love! It inks up my stamp like 1000X better. Even with a big stamp like Elements of Style, it took minimal effort. All I can do now is pout because I own every single color in the traditional felt pad and it makes me sad. Do you think I could sucker someone into buying all my old stuff so I can buy all new stuff for myself? Yah... I didn't think so either. The butterfly stamp actually has a space in between the wings and I knew I wanted to use pearls to fill that gap. Instead of putting 3 pearls on individually, I used the long strip of mini pearls that comes in the pack of Jewels Basic Pearl and just cut them into 3s. It worked out perfectly and I still have a string of about 9 pearls left. Add some Soft Suede sponging for that worn look and ta-dah! I'm very happy with the turn out. Now it's off to bed! 

In My Thoughts

It's been almost 2 whole months since my last post, but as the title says, crafting has been in my thoughts! I recently returned from my honeymoon in Europe, where I did manage to journal and craft using a Smashbook. That was so fun and I'm so happy I did it. Then between getting ready for the trip, the trip itself and starting a new job, I just haven't found a lot of time to blog. This card is actually from a few months ago. The inspiration came from Andrea over at Work In Progress.  It uses a Papertrey ink stamp and was a lot more work than you'd think. I stamped the image and actually took my paper snips and cut it out to create the negative space. Despite the amount of time and energy it took, I think it turned out great and have since made variations of the same thing. 

Happy Mother's Day

I absolutely fell in love with this color combination when I came across it on It's a Stamp Thing's blog. I also really liked the layout so I CASEd her card and am really happy with how it turned out. You could actually put whatever saying in the middle and it's be a great card for any occasion. I love the stamp set, Apothecary Art and the matching Labels framelits. One day this summer I'm going to sit down and crank out a ton of these suckers using up my leftover DSP. Happy Mother's Day everyone! 

Clean & Simple

I fell in love with Susan's CAS card layout found here and decided that it was definitely copy worthy. So I set out to CASE her card and I love how they turned out! The white on white looked better in Susan's photo than the cards that were sitting in front of me so I decided to layer all the rectangles and pop them up on dimensionals. You could stamp any sentiment in that top right corner since the flowers and colors are suitable for any occasion... Except a manly man's birthday. Unless said manly man is so manly that he's comfortable with his femininity.