Getting Back on the Wagon

These last few months have been crazy for me, hence the virtual "radio silence" on the blog lately. It mostly started in September, when I went to Salt Lake City's first-ever Comic Con and put together a costume within 5 days. After that huge burst of creativity and resourcefulness, my brain had just had enough!

So now I've taken a bit of a hiatus and I'm back! Unfortunately, during my "break" I completely missed sending my own Dad a birthday card! (Yeah, I'm such a great daughter... But I did call him on his birthday!) When Julie invited me over to stamp the other day, I thought "Here's my chance to jump back into stamping again." Looking through some stamp sets, this one jumped out at me as the perfect choice for a belated birthday card for my Dad. And hey, it happens to fit with a challenge! I'm on a roll!

I love the way the Smoky Slate looks with Pacific Point. My default was to just go with Whisper White, but on a whim I tried out the (relatively) new color of gray. I think it turned out great! The fun stripe details come from the "Gorgeous Grunge" stamp set, and the phrases are from (ironically) the "Remembering Your Birthday" stamp set. By the way, this Gorgeous Grunge set is ON SALE for 25% off! But hurry - sale ends October 28! Use hostess code ABJABXYN at checkout.

I'm linking this card up at The Paper Players weekly challenge. This week it's to make a masculine birthday card. Perfect! The colors, layout, and details of this card are definitely great for a guy's birthday.

"Fall Fun" Blog Hop!

Hello! Thanks for checking out our Fall Fun Blog Hop!

If I'm your first stop, welcome! If you've been hopping for a few blogs, thanks for stopping by! For anyone who might not know, let me explain how our Blog Hop works: We are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators (and friends) who have banded together to put on a monthly blog hop for our readers. At the end of each post in the Hop, you'll see the "Next Blog" sign; after you've checked out this entry in the Hop, click on that sign to take you to the next blog, then the next one, etc., until you wind up right back where you started.

This month's theme was "Fall Fun." I'm a BIG fan of Fall! I love the crisp, cool weather and the changing colors in the trees. I love the back-to-school vibe (especially now that I'm done with school!) and all the great holidays that sneak up on us so fast in the next few months. I just wish that here in Utah Valley we could get true Fall weather for a bit longer before the snow sets in. Ah well. I hope you enjoy the fun, festive projects we've created for you today! Remember to click through the whole hop, and comments/pins/shares are always welcome. Happy Fall!

I created this card for the Cards In The Mail Swap I'm participating in this coming year. You can see the other (amazing!) cards I've received in my last post. This month's Swap theme was to focus on the Holiday catalog and anything "fall" themed (so it fit perfectly with this Hop -- two birds with one stone!). The lovely "Truly Grateful" stamp set from the Holiday catalog really stuck out to me. I LOVE wood grain, and so this background stamp was just begging for me to use it!

The layout for this card was actually inspired by a sketch challenge (which has, of course, expired by now -- just my luck) but it lent itself so well to this banner with a faded stamp detail. I chose the color palette using Stampin' Up's Color Coach, which I borrowed from Julie. I've had one on my "short list" for ... well, probably years now, and every time I use it I wonder why I haven't bought one yet. Hm. It may be going on my next order, now that I think about it.

Thanks again for stopping by! I hope you've enjoyed my "Fall Fun" creation. Be sure to click through to the rest of the Hoppers to see what they've made.

Fall Card Swap

Wow, September has been a busy month! Comic Con, birthdays, traveling with family, and school starting up again (for my husband -- I'm done, thank goodness). September also involved my first ever "Cards in the Mail" swap with some fellow stampers. I'm SO excited to show you all the fun cards I've gotten, so here we go!

 

Aren't they fantastic?! I love seeing all the great projects that my fellow stamp addicts come up with. Check back on Tuesday for our "Fall Fun Blog Hop" to see the card I made for the swap (and, of course, the other awesome projects by the ladies in the swap).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm holding a Halloween Banner class on Saturday, October 12. We'll be making an adorable "BOO" banner that's perfect for decorating this Fall season. Class is $15 per person; deadline to sign up is Friday October 4. Contact me to sign up today!

What fun fall projects are you planning? 

PS: Sorry for the short, image-heavy post today. Next week should have more posts from me, including one about my costume-making experience for Salt Lake Comic Con (yup, I'm that much of a nerd).

"CASE That Pin" Blog Hop

Hello! And welcome to this month's We Create blog hop! This month, our projects have all been CASE'd from projects that inspired us on Pinterest. If you're new around here (or if you need a refresher), "CASE" stands for "Copy and Share Everything" and it's our motto when it comes to sharing ideas among friends. We love being inspired by other peoples' projects! So this month, you get to see what inspires us, and hopefully it will inspire you to create, too!

The cards I chose (from my over 400 Stampin Up pins!) all focused on a fun technique that I haven't really played with before: Negative Space. Stampin' Up! has tons of fun punches, and I've done plenty of projects with them, but these cards use the punches kinda in reverse - instead of looking at the punched out shape, you're looking at what's hiding behind it. It's super-duper easy, and it gives a really fun look to your cards. Try it out!

Here's the original, from Kay Kalthoff:

And here's my CASE'd version.

This is just such a cute and simple card. The background is a piece of the Quatrefancy DSP, and the center of the Blossom punch is popped up with the 1/2-inch circle punch. I added a few little rhinestones in the upper corner to help balance out my rather bottom-heavy version of this card. Such a bright, happy hello to send to a friend!

The second project I did was a lovely little butterfly card. Here's the original (which I just love!) from Karla Dick. Unfortunately, this one was only posted on Stampin Connection, so not everyone will be able to see the original source page - sorry! I tried to find it on a blog or something and just couldn't. :(

And here's my (larger) version.

I realized as I sat down to make this butterfly card that I don't have any white ink -- a major feature of the original. Oops! So I improvised and used the silver metallic ink that's available in the Holiday Catalog. This card is very elegant. The background flowers are stamped in the silver ink on Not Quite Navy cardstock, then the butterflies are punched out of the Crumb Cake overlay layer. The Crumb Cake layer is popped up on a few dimensionals, so the background pattern is a bit removed from the butterfly outline. It gives a lovely pattern to the butterflies, don't you think? I added some pearls and a quick sentiment, and that was that!

I hope you've enjoyed the "Pinspiration" this hop has shared so far! Be sure to check out the rest of the hop, and as always we welcome comments and Pins! Click on through to the next blog, and Happy Stamping!

Quick Apology: Somehow, the month of August just completely flew right by! I started prepping for this Hop and realized that I haven't blogged at all since last month's hop - yikes! Sorry, guys! I promise to do better this coming month. Now that summer is winding down, maybe my schedule will start to be a tad bit less crazy.

"The Great Outdoors" Blog Hop featuring Stamp Camp Creations

Hello, and welcome to this month's We Create Blog Hop! Tanya from Tanya's Stamps & Things chose the theme for August: "The Great Outdoors!" So this month we're showcasing our nature-themed projects, whether it be flowers or birds or camping - anything you'd find outside is fair game!

For the hop, I've decided to show y'all the projects I made for my first-ever Stamp Camp that I held a little while ago. (For an explanation of how a Stamp Camp works, see yesterday's post.) The set I featured for this Camp was "Regarding Daliahs" - a cute set that's perfect for a beginner; it has ONE image and four great "any occasion" greetings.

I made 4 projects for this camp. Most of them are very straightforward projects, as this was a camp for beginners. The last one (my favorite!) involved heat embossing (one of my favorite techniques) but was still a very simple card. All of these cards were CASE'd, but I don't have the originals handy right this moment. As I find them, I'll link to them in the picture descriptions.

Enough words. On to the pictures!

Thanks for checking out my Stamp Camp! I'll be holding more of these in the coming months; my goal is to do one EVERY SINGLE MONTH! Early next week I'll reveal August's stamp camp, so be sure to check back!

Now go enjoy the rest of the hop! If I was your last hopping stop, thanks for joining us! Hope you've felt inspired to go CREATE!