Hello!! I am sharing some happy news that a card that I made was featured in Northridge Publishing’s newsletter today - thanks to everyone for their sweet emails! The magazine has gone digital and has a new format, and it’s still my favorite to read. This card that was mailed back to me today - it was published in the March issue of CARDS magazine, and it was made using Crate Paper’s Lil Bo Peep line:

It’s no secret that this is my favorite paper company. Have you seen Crate’s sneak peeks this week? I don’t know about you, but Christmas papers that have pink in them make me smile - check these out! How about you? Do you have a favorite paper company? Any other peeks that I should see? I’d love to know!

XO,
Suzanne

Hey there! I want to share this card with all of you - it was published in CARDS back in January, but I am so happy to be sending it off to some friends who had a baby boy the other day.

I also want to thank everyone who played along in the Ugliest Card Ever Blog Hop on April Fool’s Day - thank you all for having such a great sense of humor and joining in the fun. Maybe we will do it again next year!

I put together some fun crafty goodies to give away as a prize to one of the players (chosen at random), and the winner is:

Bev, congratulations! I left a note for you on your blog so I can ship these to you. There’s a fun assortment of dies, stamps, chipboard, and inky fun things for you, as well as oodles of baker’s twine samplers.

Hopefully, I can get crafty this week. I tried to make a card tonight but after 4 attempts, I just gave up! Wishing for better luck tomorrow…

Suzanne

I’ve been crafting up a storm and I couldn’t resist this week’s Runway Inspired Challenge, mostly because I picked up the new baby patterned paper pads from Crate Paper. I was mainly inspired by the grass that the babies are sitting on in each of the inspiration photos - they’re so cute! You should head on over to check them out.

The baby shower is being held in honor of Sarah Jay and Cristina Kowalczyk, RIC DT members who both had babies very recently. I used the same layout for each card and just switched up the papers for the boy and girl versions. The giraffe die and sentiment are from Clear and Simple Stamps. Hope you can join in on the fun too!

Welcome back to Day 4 of the Clear and Simple Stamps Collection 4 release! I hope you’ve been enjoying everything so far…and there’s still lots more to come! Today the team is featuring some fun shapes and backgrounds sets; I have made a card set using the new Background Basics 2 stamps.

I wanted to use my background stamps for something other than a background, so I broke out my Clear and Simple Stamps Baby Shower dies and created a giraffe mask using a post-it note, which was adhered to the card front and filled with Distress Inks. Next I stamped the background image over the mask in brown ink - this is a technique that I learned from Danielle Daws. After that, I added the sweet sentiment from Flowers and adhered the panel to a matching cardstock base:

This was super easy; I love that the cards are all perfectly flat and ideal for mailing.

Here is a list of all the designers who are featuring projects with today’s new products…they’re all super talented and I am honored to be among them this month. Please hop on over to their blogs:

You can view the new Background Basics 2 stamp set - it has some great patterns and flower images in it. Thanks so much for stopping by and enjoy your Sunday.

Hi everyone and welcome back to Day 2 of the Clear and Simple Stamps Collection 4 Release! If ever there was a warning to go up on this blog this is it: I love the beach, and everything that comes with it: clams, shells, seagulls. {Love.} It follows that I love beach stamps, so this is a very photo-heavy post because today we’re featuring oodles of new beachy stamps!

Today we are showcasing the new beach themed image, sentiment and background sets! Growing up, we spent our summers going to Cape Cod, and these stamps brought back so many wonderful memories for me.

My first project is a baby-themed card and favor combo that was inspired by all the nautical horizontal stripes that are being sold in stores right now. I used the Clear and Simple Stamp set called Create-a-Plaid to stamp the stripes in blue ink and added sentiments from Baby Sentiments to match the adorable whale image from the new set called Seaside Sentiments 1.

The favor is a lollipop shaped out of blue hair elastics, and is finished off with a handcut tag decorated with the same whale and sentiments from the same sets used on the card. Very easy!

For my next project, I went a slightly different route, thinking about couples that might be headed off on a honeymoon or vacation together.

I used the Beach Bum stamp set to stamp the waves, which were masked and shaded with Distress Inks. I used patterned papers to dress up the design a little bit, and scored the card base with my Scor-Pal.

The matching tag was done similarly, but with twine and pearls to finish off the look. I am somewhat new to distress inks, but found them very easy to use. I’ve been inspired SO much by my wonderful and dear blog friend Danielle Daws.

For my next project, a card and a bookmark, I really wanted to showcase one of the beautiful quotes that is included in these sets. I stamped and heat embossed the starfish image repeatedly across the bottom of both, and then edged everything with white ink.

The knotted jute twine is a trick I learned in a class with Kim Hughes a few months ago - I thought it would go very well with the beach theme.

Are you still with me?

Here is my last card using the new Caning Weave background stamp, which was heat embossed and then filled with Distress Inks. In case you’re interested, I have prepared a very quick tutorial showing you how I did this, but I am going to post it as a separate post so I don’t totally overwhelm you. I want you to see what everyone else has made with these great sets first!

Thanks so much! Happy Friday!

It feels like forever since I’ve blogged anything, but I have actually been pretty busy working on some stuff TBA a little bit later… Hope you’re all doing great!

Today I have a card to share for this week’s CAS-ual Friday’s Challenge, which is to make a card using pink in honor of National Pink Day.

Our sponsor this week is The Ribbon Carousel…Corinna has generously offered up a gift card for you to use toward any assortment of ribbon, twine, patterned paper, cardstock or carousels that you desire!

For my card this week, I was really inspired by a pattern that I found on Pinterest, so I tried recreating it using a mix of cardstock. Since pink is the perfect color for baby girl cards, I paired it up with a sentiment (actually, a combination of two sentiments) from the Baby Sentiments set from Clear and Simple Stamps, which was stamped in raspberry fizz ink from PTI. The panel was layered over pebble cardstock from A Muse Studio and the finishing touch was the pearl heart embellishment from Hero Arts.

The base squares were punched with my 3/4″ punch but the remaining squares were cut with my paper trimmer. This was surprisingly easy to put together, though even I am not sure it technically qualifies as clean and simple. What do you think?

Have a wonderful weekend! My husband and I are taking vacation next month, so I’ve been busy getting ready for that - shopping for a new bathing suit, wrapping up some stuff in the office, etc. I can’t wait, but so wish there were more hours in the day because I’ve missed sharing stuff here. Hugs!

I’m entering this into the Doilies and Lace Challenge on the MFW Blog at nearly the last minute! I wanted to play around some more with some of my newer stamps, so I broke out my Waltzingmouse sentiments and my doilies from WPlus9 to make this card.

I started by stamping the grid lines from A Muse studio across the bottom of the card in amethyst ink onto some of their amethyst cardstock, masking the edge where the Hero Arts lace trim was to be placed. I then reversed the mask and spritzed the top with some yellow Mr. Huey’s. Next I stamped the tag diecut from WPlus9 with the doily and sentiment, adding some matching floss and the Basic Grey button to finish it off. And you know how much I love a rounded corner…

I’m thinking I need to use purple and pastels more often!

I just wanted to share this project really quickly - it’s something I worked on this morning for my mom. A couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that she was invited to a coworker’s son’s first birthday party. She showed me the photo invitation and it had photos of the baby from different months of his first year. She asked if I could make something cute out of it as a keepsake. I said OK, not really knowing what I was going to do.

This morning I came across this pin by WMS on Pinterest, and that is where I got the idea for this project. I cut out the photos and glued them onto some Spring Moss cardstock from Papertrey Ink, and then I made the diaper out of oatmeal cardstock from WPlus9; it took me a while to figure out, but in the end I think I got it okay. I embellished everything with green baker’s twine and green jute twine from RibbonCarousel.com, adding a button and some fancy ribbon too. Lastly, the envelope was decorated really quickly to match, using my tag die from Wplus9 and my Sizzix letter dies.

Since this is sort of like a pocket and I used PTI cardstock, I am entering this into this week’s Make-It-Monday Challenge #68 at Papertrey Ink.

I just dropped the project off at my mom’s house and she seemed to like it, so I am a pretty happy camper. Thanks for stopping by…enjoy your day!

Well, folks, this could very well be a first: a card inspired by Nicki Minaj! This week’s challenge at the CAS-ual Fridays blog is to make a card that is inspired by a song, and I chose “Starships.” If you ask me what is the song about, I admit to not really knowing…but I shamelessly admit to loving Nicki’s music.

I couldn’t find a link to an official music video, but she did perform this song on American Idol last week. You can view her performance here. The line of the song that inspired me to make this card is sung just before the 2-minute mark. “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” :)

I immediately knew that I wanted to use pink and yellow, because those seem to be her favorite colors (at least for hair color), and I chose glitter paper because of the sparkle in her outfit in the video.

This was my first time using my steel impression plates on A Muse studio paper, and I have to say that I love the result. Their paper is a lighter weight than PTI’s, so it takes to embossing much easier, making for a more defined pattern. And about that fabulous yellow cord from Hero Arts - it is so much more pliable than twine. I love it!

I’ll be back later today with another post! Enjoy the morning!

On Friday night, I had a great time at the Paper Smooches class! Meeting Kim Hughes and Karolyn Loncon was so fun; I love meeting such sweet and talented people! I left the class wanting every single Paper Smooches stamp!

One of the techniques that Kim taught us was paper-piecing. Though I had used this technique before, I never realized how easy it is to do with her stamps - they look amazing when peper pieced. I decided to use this technique on this card for the Retrosketches Challenge #4.

I used the Spring Fling paper pad by Teresa Collins, as well as some coordinating brads. I cut the metal off the back of the brads and adhered them with glue dots - I feel like this is better for placing them exactly where I want them.

I used PTI’s Tag Sale #5 die to cut the bottom of the banner. The die is wider than my paper strip but it still gives the same effect…love this trick.

Here I am with Jessica, Christina, Kim, and Karolyn! If you ever have a chance to go to one of their classes, you absolutely should.

Teresa Collins Spring Fling Paper Pad

Corner Chomper

Limitless Layers Ovals

Paper Smooches A Little Lovin

Dark Chocolate Ink

TC Spring Fling Brads

Tag Sale #5