Stamp Convention Photos!

Hello friends! Hope you had as great of a weekend as I did! I came back Sunday evening from a wonderful stamp convention in Collinsville, IL and created, purchased, spent time with some amazing people too…it was so fun! It was fun to talk to other stampers and just enjoy our time there! I thought I’d share some of the fun I had with you!

First, I would like to say that I was honored to finally meet up with a wonderful blog friend who inspires me with her creative art, Patti from Cherish Each Precious Day. I was so happy to actually see her in person and meeting her lovely friends as well! I really wish I had remembered to take a snapshot with you though!

This was my first time in many years that I had actually even been to a stamp convention, and I really hope to go to another one again next year as we had such a great time! I always love going and seeing demonstrations and make-n-takes from the vendors…so of course I had to take part in the fun and here are some of the cards that I made there:

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This was made from the Stamp On It vendor (Kim was the lady who taught the make-n-take) which sold these amazing kits with a variety of stunning images printed on acetate sheets. You would use this sticky glitter adhesive to go over it and create this amazing look. Of course, it’s much more stunning in person!

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This make-n-take was made from the Rubber Cottage vendor. I just fell in love with that gorgeous floral background image and bought it! 🙂 The lady that taught the make-n-take showed us a clever way of keeping the card protected while the stickles glitter dried. Again, it’s so pretty and sparkly in person!

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These fun designs were from the Marco’s Paper vendor. The “Woohoo” card was created with Nuvo paste at the bottom corner and a strip of Nuvo glitter with score tape.

The other piece you see was something that was made using a gel press and oxide ink pads. We just had fun playing around with it and got some great tips from the lady sharing it. I have a gel plate but have yet to use it! Hopefully I can pull it out soon and just play now that I’ve actually seen it in action! 🙂

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This card was made from The Stamp Pad vendor. She does not have a website as of yet, but she is a store located in the small town of Kimmswick, MO. I was talking with the owner, and she was explaining what a nice little town it was.

We used stencils with distress ink and Nuvo paste. I thought the butterfly and papers were so pretty. The sentiment was already previously stamped when given the kit.

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This card was made from the Taylored Expressions vendor (You can actually see another version of this card on the front of her website!). From what I heard from others at the event, she was new to this stamp convention, and she seemed to be a very busy vendor there! She had many different things going on with demos and several different make-n-takes. I just loved her products, and you will see something below that I got there! 🙂

This card was just a matter of adding the decorative paper in the background and then placing the colored card stock popsicles over the already cut out border. We stamped the sentiment using the MISTI, colored the popsicle sticks with a Copic marker and added the twine. She even provided an envelope. Taylor helped me with my bow! LOL! When I got home, the only thing I did was add some sparkle with my Spectrum Noir glitter brush.

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Lastly, we created this alcohol inked background card from The Paper Cut vendor. The lady there showed the different looks you get from dabbing verses twisting the applicator. I twisted my background. The frame was already die cut, but I ended up saving those tiny dots from the die and added them back onto it. (We were provided with enough rhinestones for each dot in the sentiment as well as the corners.) We used the alcohol inks to color the rhinestones in the corners and then we popped it up with foam tape. An envelope was provided for this make-n-take too.

The stamp convention also held a card contest where you could make up two cards based on the theme provided for each day. The themes for this year were Saturday: “Ahoy Matey!” and Sunday: “Time for a Nap”. I decided to send in the limit which was two cards per theme. Of course, silly me didn’t remember to take a photo of the cards BEFORE I mailed them off…so sorry about the quality, but I took photos on my phone of the cards that I made that were displayed:

Ahoy Matey contest pirate

I made this card using of course a My Favorite Things stamp set called Party Like a Pirate. Where you see the girl pirate inside the port hole looking out, this is actually cut out with real wood veneer paper, and it acts as a flap to open the card from the center so you can see the line where it opens. I had so much fun with this one!

Ahoy Matety contest map

this is the second card I made in the same category. I used stamps and a marker to make a map background and distressed the edges. The skull and treasure chest come from an older set in my stash from a company no longer in business. The parrot is from the same stamp set listed in the above card.

Nap time context snoopy

For the second day Sunday’s contest of “Time for a Nap”, this is one of the cards that I made. It’s so hard to see the details in this photo, but obviously I’ve used a Snoopy stamp and colored it with colored pencils on kraft card stock. I took a play on the sentiment and added the “Z”s in place of “be” that would be there.

Nap time contest penguin

And for my second card in this category, I’ve made this fun penguin beach theme using the My Favorite Things set called Penguins in Paradise. I thought it would be fun to add a summer beach scene with a penguin taking a nap! LOL! The sky and the water were masked to create the different looks.

I have to say that it paid off in sending in my cards! On Saturday, I had no luck at all with any prizes. On Sunday, when they announced 3rd place, 2nd place and then the first-place winner…. I was so excited to find out that my penguin card won 1st place at the stamp convention!! My prize award was $100 to spend with ANY vendor there at the show! Believe me, it didn’t take long at all to spend it!! LOL!

stamp convention winner

So I thought I’d just share a quick photo of some of the items that I got while I was there! Notice the bag I’m holding above…so it gets MUCH bigger after that! 🙂

I had no problem spending the prize winnings there!

So after the exciting weekend, long drive home…I ate a late great supper that hubby made for me and pretty much collapsed that night. Yesterday, I had been sorting, photographing and trying to “catch up” with normal life now. 🙂

Hope you’ve enjoyed my share and thanks for stopping in! Hope you can share a smile with someone today!

Week One – ICAD 2018

Happy Friday! Wanted to stop in with a quick post to share with you what I’ve been up to with my daily creating this past week for the start of the ICAD 2018 challenge! I go into my stamp studio/room each day to use the prompts/themes given and use this as a basis (or not) to create something on an index card every day up until we’ve done 61 days all together! You can click on the link above for information in case you’d like to join in the fun too! When I finish, I post it to the ICAD FB group and there is so much inspiration from everyone else that it just makes it a really fun experience.

I have enjoyed the process of being able to just play on a small piece of card as to not have it be so intimidating and gives you the freedom to just “play around” with your craft stash! This is how I am storing/displaying my index cards:

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Since the index cards already have a hole in the corner, I am using a metal ring to keep the finished cards all together in one place. The first one is the “cover” that I’ve made for this year’s ICAD challenge.

So since the first week is finished and the second week has already started, I will share what I’ve done for the first week’s cards:

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I enjoyed playing with different media and some that I’ve already had and tried in new and fun ways! I even attempted to draw my own image which I never do! I love using both the prompts and themes for a starting point especially since I would be stuck not knowing where to start without them. And since it’s an index card….so what if I “mess up”, but I have decided that no matter what, I’m not throwing it away or starting over…it’s just how it happens to turn out on that day. I also made notes and have a date stamp for the back of the cards so that I know the prompt, theme and media used for the card on that day. I may even use notes about how I was feeling. I’m also looking forward to seeing how I progress throughout this challenge each week. Hope you are too!

I am also going to have an additional challenge since I’m headed off this weekend to a stamp convention in Collinsville, IL! I have taken some items with me so that I can continue with the daily challenges. I’m excited about going and look forward to meeting a fellow crafty friend or two while I’m there! 🙂

Wishing you a wonderful Summer weekend my friends and thanks for dropping in!

Anything Goes for Cute Card Thursday

Hello friends and welcome to another Thursday! Hope you are staying cool and enjoying your Summer so far! I am looking forward to lots of fun in the coming months and into the Fall Season as well, so I still have many things to share with you and what I’ve been working on!

Thursday brings another challenge over at Cute Card Thursday as well! We have a very easy ANYTHING GOES this week and we are sponsored by Whimsy Stamps!

The sponsor was kind enough to donate some images for the DT and so I’ve used one on my creation for today:

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I just thought this penguin was just as cute as can be! I’ve used the Whimsy Stamps digital image called Penguin Loves Watermelon. I had so much fun coloring in this cute image! I actually decided to cut him away from the scene he was on so I could just pop him up by himself on my card.

Watermelon is something that I love to eat during the Summer when it’s in season. I had this punch that made the perfect sized “seeds” and so I thought I’d add some on the image as well as on the card I made. (Looks like he’s spitting out seeds! LOL!) I covered the watermelon that the penguin is holding with the Spectrum Noir sparkle pen. I covered the “seeds” with some clear sparkling Nuvo drops.

I ended up just printing the template directly on my decorative papers and then cut each one out. I just cut out the “bite” with my scissors after attaching the layers. I sponged some coordinating ink on the edges of each layer. I think you could also easily use a circle die cut and make your own version of this type of card as well. My finished and folded card measures approximately 3.75 x 6.25 inches. The sentiment comes from a retired clear Whimsy Stamps set from my stash.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my creation and I hope that you will join us this week over at Cute Card Thursday! Look forward to seeing your creations!

Don’t forget to share some smiles today! 🙂

These are the challenges I’d like to enter for this card:

2 Crafty Critter Crazies – Anything Goes (using a critter)
Crazy 4 Challenges (C4C437) – barefoot
Whimsy Stamps – Anything Goes
Crafting by Designs – Anything Goes
That’s Crafty! – A Summer’s Day

Shello

Hello friends! Hope you had a great weekend! I’m so tired! I forgot how much work it takes to put together a garage sale! We had a nice day for it and it was a great turn out! We are happy to have gotten rid of those big items in our way around the house. We ended up donating the rest that did not sell. Thinking of this, I probably need to go through my craft stash and do the same…but somehow, it’s just so much harder to decide what to keep and what not to…the pile ends up changing eventually! LOL!

If you remember, I have also been participating in the ICAD 2018 challenge which I have been going into my craft studio each day and creating at least once a day. I can share with you the results of that each week as go, so be looking for that soon!

Today I have some fun “underwater” items to share:

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Along with a fun painting retreat that I had went to in April this year…it was all the kick start I needed and then came the inspiration to blog again! I am happy that I did as I missed sharing my art and communicating with my fellow crafty friends here! 🙂

For the card above, I wanted most of the card to look underwater and that’s where I’ve used vellum and die cut out a wave at the top of it. I stamped the shoe image from above, the fish and underwater background stamp and colored with Copics. I added the sentiment banner and the awesome two toned pearls over the top. The edges of the vellum were sponged with blue ink and I added some blue sparkle on the waves.

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Next, I have this really cool Jumbo Tag that I’ve decorated with contents from this same kit! I’ve used this cover die and instead of die cutting with it, I’ve used it for embossing. Before I used the die, I covered the background with some distress inks and splashed some water droplets over it. I colored the images with my Copic markers, fussy cut them out and attached to the background.

Here’s closer view of the images colored up. Hard to see in the photos, but I have covered the mermaid’s eyes as well as the fisheyes with some glossy accents. You can also see how cool looking those fish scale flat backs are…love the different shimmery colors in it! And to give you an idea of the size of the tag, it’s 4″ x 8″!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my underwater creations today and I’ll see you again with more of what I’ve been crafting! Have a great day!

I would like to enter mermaid tag in following challenge(s):

Hand Stamped Sentiments (HSSIC291)– inspirational photo:

2. Cupcake Inspiration Challenge (CIC447) – Magical Creatures

Life is Good With Coffee

Good afternoon friends! Today is the final day for the Coffee Lovers Spring/Summer Blog Hop, so I thought I’d share my last creation today using some of my favorite stamps!

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So I thought it would be fun to go with a Summer theme this time with a couple of “coffee lovers” hanging out in the hammock on the beach! (I am hoping that maybe someday in the future that this can represent hubby and I together!) LOL!

I have started my card by masking a circle and blending in a nice tropical sky and then spritzing it with some shimmer spray before removing the mask. I added some scene elements by stamping and coloring images from the Lawn Fawn Life is Good and Love You Latte stamp sets. I fussy cut them out and then attached them to the scene. I made a little slit with my craft knife on the hammock to fit the cups inside. Don’t you just love that mustache?! 🙂 I cut the panel out with the LF Stitched rectangle die and added a black strip along the side which I then mounted to a top folding A2 sized white card base. And here’s a closer look at that sparkle on the background:

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I also put some glitter gel pen dots on the sea shell and the heart above the cups.

Hope you have a great weekend…I will be working in my garage sale, so looks like no crafty fun for me for a couple of days! Hope you have a great one! Thanks for stopping by and sharing a smile with me! 🙂

Here are the challenges I’d like to enter this card for:

Coffee Lovers Spring/Summer Blog Hop
Lawn Fawnatics – Mood Board
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes
QKR Stampede – Anything Goes (every week)

Cute Card Thursday – Hello Summer!

Hello friends! I’m totally excited to be back on the design team for the challenges over at

If you do not already participate in the challenges over there, I highly recommend it! There is a brand-new challenge every Thursday of the week along with fun prizes from our sponsors! The ladies on the team are so talented and fun, so there is plenty of inspiration provided each week as well!

This week’s challenge is of the theme: “Hello Summer!“ and our sponsor is the lovely Bugaboo Stamps!

I have used one of the sponsor’s images on my card today:

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This image is called, of course, Pig Vacation from Bugaboo. Now, I’m not sure about that, but this guy looks so happy that I think I’d like to go along him! 🙂 Summer is definitely here where I live as we’ve had some record-breaking temperatures! I think vacation sound really good about now as well!

I have used my Copic markers and glitter gel pens to color him in, cut him out with a die-cut tag and added some black twine for a luggage tag look. The wording underneath comes from a Lawn Fawn die-cut that I glued on. The rest of the decorative papers and embellishments come from an older card kit in my stash. I cut the decorative papers using the Lawn Fawn Stitched dies which was mounted onto a piece of black card stock and then mounted onto a white top folding card base.

Here’s closer look at the coloring details:

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I hope that you will stop by the Cute Card Thursday challenge blog and have a look at the rest of the inspiration for this challenge and enter your “Hello Summer” creation with us this week! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you stay cool as we enter Summer and don’t forget to share some smiles! 🙂

Brewed Two Ways

Wow! Thank you so VERY much for the warm welcome here! I’m blown away by your support and deeply touched! Please, please bare with me as I try to find my way back to getting “in the groove” with things, but I’m sure it won’t take too long to find it! I’m excited about creating and sharing what I love to do with you and think this is the best way to do just that! So let’s continue, shall we?

As I had mentioned in my post yesterday, I saw that the Coffee Lover’s Spring/Summer Blog Hop has begun! Yay! I can never pass up a yummy cup of Joe for sure! 🙂

Since it started yesterday, I thought that maybe I should make two cards! So of course I’m starting with something that I have “brewed up” in two different ways:

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I have used this gorgeous digital stamp kindly provided by one of the super sponsers for the blog hop. You can find this image here on the Stamplorations blog. I sized the image and then used a stitched circle die to cut it out. I’ve also printed it out a second time and cut out just the cup and popped it up over the design. I thought it would be fun to create a sepia colored design except for the cup of coffee. So I’ve used Copic sepia color tones to color in the flowers. For the background, I’ve used the STAMPlorations Blooming Buds set and stamped the images. I blended some sepia color inks along the edges to go with the theme. I took a strip of gold foil card stock to place the popped up coffee cup and I filled the coffee cup with some yummy vintage gold glitter by Ranger.

I’ve taken the same coffee digital stamp and brewed it up in another way…

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For this one, you can see that I have really enlarged the entire image and pretty much have used it for the front of my card design. I thought the flowers in this image were so pretty and wanted to color them to take up the whole card. I’ve colored everything with my Copics and glitter gel pens. For the sentiment I pulled out the image from STAMPlorations A Full Heart and embossed it in white over a strip of black card stock. I used my scissors to cut a banner with it and stuck it right under the coffee. Lastly, I just attached some gold sequins and filled the centers with some gold stickles.

I had fun with this pretty image and I thank Shery from STAMPlorations for providing it! I hope to play some more during the Coffee Lover’s Hop, so stayed tuned in for that!

I have also been getting ready still for the up-coming ICAD challenge as well! There have been some more warm-ups assigned, so I wanted to keep up with doing that. I am really loving the creative process with this because it’s all about just “playing around” which is always fun to do with your stash! 🙂 So one of the warm-ups is to make a map of some sort. I decided to make a “mental map” to remember things that I need as I go along with this creative process. The next warm-up was to make a card with 3 colors and 3 words. I hardly use these colors, so I put them on purpose. The third challenge was to create a cover card for the front of your ICAD creations to place in front of wherever they’re being stored. Here’s a photo of the results with that:

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Hope you’ve enjoyed my post today! I have been creating and having so much fun! Be sure to stay tuned into my blog each week as I report the week’s ICAD challenges that I’ve completed. Making sure I post it on my blog will help keep me accountable as well! Don’t forget to check out the badge on the sidebar of my blog if you’d like more information about it!

I would like to enter my coffee cards above into the following challenges:

Coffee Lovers Blog Hop Spring + Summer
STAMPlorations – Never Ending Challenge – must use their images
Dare 2B Artzy – Dreaming of Flowers
Pink and Main Challenge – #30 Anything Goes

Sorry Connie, I missed that challenge…I’ll get the next one!

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend and thanks again for stopping in, I truly love that you are here and found me! Lots more coming! -Don’t forget to share some smiles today! 🙂

Fluttering By

Hello friends! Have you already seen a couple of different styles now on my blog? LOL! I’m trying to get one on here that I think I would be comfortable with for a while…so far I’ve settled on this one! 🙂

So I’ve been “outta the loop” for a while and feel a bit rusty, but I thought the BEST place for me to start is with some of those card kits that I keep on hoarding and then it just sits and never gets used…so I’m going to stop hoarding and start using! Besides, all of the contents are already right together and you can’t go wrong with that, right?!

So I’ve pulled out an April 2018 Simon Says Stamp card kit (sold out) with some butterflies and thought it would be great to work with! I needed some “pick me up” cards that I’m sending out to a couple of fellow crafty friends who need a lift in spirit and hope this will help send a smile their way:

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This card was simple as I just used some papers from the kit, colored the images with my Copic markers and attached to design. I colored some white glitter paper with a yellow Copic to get that color above the patterned paper.

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This is probably my favorite one as I love the pop of black everywhere. I used some of the Mermaid Lagoon Oxide ink from the kit to ink blend, distress with water and then added the Copic colored butterflies.

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This one was inspired by Sheri Carrol’s card design. I obviously like her design better, but I find it amazing just how different a design can turn out from each person.

I saw that the Coffee Lover’s Blog Hop just started today (Yay!) and so I hope to be back later this evening with something fun for that! I haven’t played in challenges for a while and it’s always fun to create using some fun themes!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my butterfly cards today and please let me know if you’ve stopped by so I can see what everyone is doing! Would love to know how you are!

*Don’t forget to share a smile today! 🙂

I would like to enter one of these cards into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Use More Than one Stamp
QKR Stampede #297 – Anything Goes!

Starting With Some “Warm-Ups”

Hello there! It’s weird starting up another new blog and especially with a format that I’m not used to! (I’m learning as I type here too! LOL!) So glad you are here with me and I’m a little anxious to get started with this too! I know it sounds weird for those of you that know I’m actually an avid crafter AND an avid blogger as well, but I “feel” new to this for some reason!

I still have quite a ways to go with posting, but I hope you will follow along as I post and get comfortable in my “new home”! Since I have tested out a new post, then I also need to test out a new photo too:

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I know this is a bit of a weird photo to start with, but it is a starting point and a good one to share of what’s to come and where I am going! I find these practices you see here actually helpful with my creative process and a place to just begin.

These are my “warm up” doodles for the up-coming ICAD soon to start!

If you are interested in what “ICAD” means, you can check out the full description in this link here: ICAD Base

Basically, the challenge is to use the prompts given for each day and use a simple index card (nothing more/nothing less) and create with it once a day until the challenge is over. It starts June1 and lasts until July 31st. I found this last year and so enjoyed playing in new and creative ways that it really jump-started my inspiration and I actually got excited to go in my craft room and create! I have decided to do it again this year and take you along with my creative process doing it. There are “warm-up” prompts on the blog here: Warm-Ups 1-3 and here: Warm-Ups 4-6 I have done all of them shown above. I really had fun getting out all of my creative “writing tools” and just doodling and adding water to them and smudging them and so on. It was just fun to doodle and play!

I may just use some of these “warm-ups” as a background or part of something during my ICAD journey, so I hope you will enjoy the experience with me here on my blog or even as a fellow “ICAD-ian” and join in the challenge! I have a badge along the side of my blog here in case you want to check out the details some other time as well.

Thanks for stopping in and checking out my new beginnings here. I hope you enjoy the journey with me!

Don’t forget to share some smiles today! 🙂

testing…

Hello! Just testing out this “new to me” blog format and making sure that everything gets connected correctly before I start posting the “good” stuff!!

Thanks for hanging in there with me!!

Be back soon….