Stylin' Stampin' Squad Blog Hop: May 2012

Hello and welcome to this month's installment of the Stylin' Stampin' Squad Blog Hop.  If you came from Shellie's Creative Electica blog, thank you for visiting me!  This month's themes are Mother's Day, Kids and/or Friendship.  I have a project for each of these themes.  I hope you'll like what I have for you.  And please, give my blogpost some love with your kind comments!

The first card is for Mother's Day coming up.  Using the retiring 2010-2012 In-Colors, my card was inspired by ?  I am so sorry... I can't find it!  Anyways, I had made some changes and here is my version.  I used a lot of retiring products on here: the In-Color papers, Ticket Corner punch, ribbon, embossing folder.  Yes, this particular folder is the ONLY embossing folder to be retired.  Can you see me

This next card is inspired by my newest downline (Hi, Bronwen!).  Before Bronwen decided to take advantage of the awesome new $99 Starter Kit, she had ordered a Word Window punch from me, in order to make spinner cards.  She even emailed me her fabulous cards.  That got me thinking that I really should do one myself.  So, I dug out the tutorial I had saved from quite awhile ago HERE.  Two more items to be retired here: Fox and Friends ( ) and On Your Birthday.

This last project is a fun-fold.  It's a double-pocket.  You can find the tutorial HERE.  Here is the front. I used Top Note die.  For the Whisper White and DSP pieces, I used my paper snips and cut along the perforation so that they will layer nicely with the Peach Parfait piece underneath.  I used retiring Upsy Daisy () stamp set here.

Inside, you see how it's a double-pocket.

I used Two Tags die to create 2 simple bookmarks.  Since they're bookmarks, I didn't want to create too much dimension and ruin someone's book, so all pieces are flat.

Retiring items here are the Chantilly Crochet Trim ribbon (), Triple Treat Flower stamp (), 5-Petal Flower punch (), and the already-retired Punch Bunch from Sale-a-Bration 2011.

There you have it.  Please continue along the hop with us.  Your next stop is with Pam.

Blog Hop Participants:

1. Shellie G. of Creative Electica
2. Annie L. of Love Me Cards
3. Pam S. of Stampin' in the Sun!
4. Nancy B. of Lady Stamps a Lot
5. Rose C. of Stamp with Rose
6. Tonya B. of Stampin' with Tonya
7. Dawn S. of Dawn's Creative Chalet
8. Patricia T. of Sunnyone Stampin'
9. Heather W. of Heather's Stampin' Blog
10. Pamela W. of Stinky Tofu
11. Marla R. of Marla's Stampin' Spot
12. Darcy J. of DJ's Stampin' Place
13. Nicole B. of Creations by Mommy
14. Kim R. of Stamping with Kim

Click HERE for the Retiring Stamp Sets

Click HERE for the Retiring Accessories

Click HERE for the Retiring Definitely Decorative

Owl for You

Happy Monday!  Today's card is a simple one that I CASE'd from Jessica.  I used my Circles #2 die and the tiny circle punch from Itty Bitty punch pack, and just laid out the different size and color circles somewhat randomly.  Adhere to cardstock.  Run through the Big Shot using Square Lattice embossing folder.  That's pretty much it!

My Supplies List (all supplies and images by Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Stamp Set(s): Fox and Friends, A Word for You

Ink: Wild Wasabi, Early Espresso

Papers: Wild Wasabi, Island Indigo, Early Espresso, Baja Breeze, Soft Suede

Accessories: Square Lattice embossing folder, Circles #2 die, Itty Bitty punch pack, In Color Printed Designer brads, Wild Wasabi stripe ribbon (retired)

Animal Kid Birthday Card

I CASE'd this card from Terry SU from quite awhile ago.  Isn't it so cute?  I always need some kid cards when I do card buffets, so this was one of them.  The carts are made from the Curly Label punch, cut in half, then run through the Perfect Polka Dot embossing folder.  I used Sweet Buttons embosslit for the wheels.

My Supplies List (all supplies and images by Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Stamp Set(s): Fox & Friends, On Your Birthday

Ink: Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, Certainly Celery

Papers: Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, Certainly Celery, Rich Razzleberry

Accessories: Curly Label punch, Modern Label punch, Word Window punch, Perfect Polka Dot embossing folder, Sweet Buttons embosslit, twine

Foxy Kid Birthday

***If you have left me a comment recently seeking a reply (Donna and Sandy), PLEASE leave me a way to contact you... via your blog or your email address.  Or you can email me: lovemecards@yahoo.com.  Thank you***

I thought this was a fun one for a kid birthday.  I CASE'd this one from Gretchen Barron.  I changed the colors to the new 2011-2013 In-Colors.  The bonus here is that I kept everything pretty flat.  Even the Ruffled Ribbon ties pretty flat.  So this card is great for mailing!

My Supplies List (all supplies and images by Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Stamp Set(s): Fox and Friends, On Your Birthday

Ink: Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Wisteria Wonder, Calypso Coral, Pool Party

Papers:  Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Wisteria Wonder, Calypso Coral, Pool Party

Accessories: Houndstooth embossing folder, Large Tag punch, Crop-a-dile (for hole on tag), Wisteria Wonder 3/8" Ruffled ribbon

Humorous?

This week's weekly challenge over at A La Card Monkey is "Humorous".

And look at the yummy blog candy for the winner of the challenge!  Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.... delicioso!  (quote from Dora... sorry, my daughter has been watching waaaaay too much Dora lately)

Oops!  Didn't realize until I came to write up the post and link to the challenge, that it's also a sketch challenge.  Oh well.  I had to take all week thinking about what I wanted to do for a humorous card, because, you know, I'm not really all that humorous.  People may think I'm funny, but I'm really not trying to be. :D  Anyways, I finally decided on what I was going to do, and this is what I came up with.

On the inside, I hand wrote "We're so flippin' happy for you!"

My Supplies List (all supplies and images by Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):

Stamp Set(s): Fox and Friends, Woodgrain background, Silhouette Sentiments (sentiment)

Ink: Early Espresso, Pumpkin Pie, Marina Mist, Old Olive, Soft Suede

Papers: Chocolate Chip, Pear Pizzazz, Wild Wasabi, Pear Pizzazz In-Color Paper Stack

Accessories: Oval punch, Word Window punch, Two-Step Bird punch

Sweet Sunday

Some of the bloggers I follow do the Sweet Sunday sketches. This Sunday's sketch seemed simple enough for me to do, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's the sketch.
The more compelling reason for me to try this was that "The extra challenge this week is to create a birthday card and mail it to Operation Write Home and they'll send our challenge cards on to those men and women who are serving in the armed forces." I've always thought it was very cool that people make cards to send to the troops. Now I think I will join the masses.

Here's my card.

Kid Birthdays #2

Just realized there's a bunch of children's birthdays coming up in September. I just love these cards. They're so easy to make. I changed up the dimension a little bit, so that I could make 2 cards out of one piece of 12x12. I also managed to use up a whole piece of pattern paper, one piece of colored cardstock, and two pieces of the white. Love my Fox and Friends animals.
I used my Cricut to cut my circles and the number for the age of the child. Thank goodness for the Cricut, because I just can't imagine having to buy the same shape (circle, in this case) punch in different sizes.
I bought the Around and About Sentiments from PapertreyInk. That's what's inside the circle. Isn't it cute? I put the child's age inside the circle. I wish I had thought of this earlier when I did the other cards. Oh, these sea creatures are from Look Who's Turning from Stampin' Up.
Here's a close up of that circle with sentiment and flower. I didn't play with this set when I got it. But now that I've looked at it a little more, I am going to use it a lot!

Kid Birthday

Another birthday card for a child. I've been meaning to cut out the number for the child's age with my Cricut, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Me bad. Need to do it soon, as the child's birthday is drawing near. *NOTE TO SELF*
I also like making this card because it uses up 12 eyelets at a time. I had no idea it's this hard to use up my eyelets that I bought years and years ago... and I still have what seems like full tins of various colors of them. Then, heard that eyelets are no longer the "in" thing to use as embellishments. Good thing I'm not a trend follower or trend setter, for that matter. But I have decided I want to use up more of my eyelets.

Fox & Friends

I was looking for some inspiration to use my Fox and Friends stamp set. Looked on page 96 of the IBC, but didn't like the colors--too subtle. Then I found THIS in the splitcoaststamper gallery. So I started stamping the monkey in different directions. Then realized that the white CS is too small to add any more "friends." Oh well. I decided not to crowd them. Once again, my card turned out nothing like the inspiration. Sigh...
Originally, I used this Melon Mambo paper as base, embossing the front with my embossing folder. But then I didn't like seeing the back side when you opened it up. Plus, I had added brads, so you would see the backside of the brads also. So I cut up the Melon paper and used it as a card front, and adhered it to white CS. But then I thought it toned down the hot pink from Melon Mambo too much, so I added the second half of the Melon Mambo to the inside of the card, so the left side is hot pink, the right side is white. Perfect balance. Lastly, I rounded the corners on the card.

The sentiment is from My Pink Stamper. I decided to get her Punny-licious, More Punny-licious and Tweetie Hoo stamps. I do like these stamps. I just need more occasions to use them all!

Fox & Friends

Today's card was inspired by Jason the Stampin' Dad. I used Cricut's Storybook cartridge to cut the scalloped square, and the squares. Used Fox & Friends stamp set, popping up all the heads and the mane on the lion. I decided to forgo the sentiment because I thought it might look a bit too busy on my card.



BTW, I see on a lot of SU demos' blogs that they all love using the Square lattice embossing folder. Well, I found Houndstooth by Cuttlebug, which I thought was close enough. Haha... "close enough" has always been my mantra! What do you think of the Houndstooth embossed look? Not too shabby, huh?

Critters

I made this card inspired by Laurie Zoellmer. I used SU's Fox and Friends stamp set. I decided to color the animals and add some dimensions with the pearl and bling. However, I decided I just wasn't too happy with it. So I made another one.

This one was made using the Cute Critters stamp set from SU a few years back. Looks like it was a Sale-A-Bration set. Anyways, I popped the critters up using pop dots and the sentiment is flat on the cardstock base. I colored using a really fancy tool called the Q-Tip. I rubbed the Q-Tip on the ink pad and dabbed it on paper. I'm surprised at how this looks. It actually looks like chalk! I totally dig this. Don't be surprised to see this technique on future cards!