This one is a contender!

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 25

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dara Gloden’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

This week I am sharing a card I designed that I almost used as a swap card at convention for one of the organized swaps I was in or for generals.  Ultimately I went another way, but I still love this card!

I am loving the “Remember This” Project Life stamp set and I am using the sentiments in it all the time!  It’s a photopolymer set (another huge benefit in my book!) and I just love the fonts 🙂  I used Life is Good on this card and I know I will be using that particular stamp often!

The card is pretty self explanatory, I used Hello Honey as my main color with pops of Pool Party to set it off.  The results are a quick and fun card with lots of wow factor!

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Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dara Gloden and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Convention Fun!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 24

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

I just got home from the best week ever:  the 2014 Stampin’ Up Convention!!!!  I had so much fun with my friends old and new and filled my soul up with that friendship and creative inspiration 🙂  It was truly a perfect week.  I have lots to share from convention and today we are all sharing our Monday Montage swap cards.  These cards are fantastic…seriously!  I have been drooling over my set for days now!

I used the cute set “What’s Up?”  I just love this versatile set and I have used every stamp in it on various projects.  It is also a perfect Project Life set, works great for memory keeping.

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Stay tuned for more convention fun over the next few weeks!

Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Just fabulous!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 23

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

There are a million great projects out there using “Work of Art”.  I have pulled this set to use about a million times myself and the creative muses have just left me flat.  I finally actually made something I like with the set and I couldn’t wait to share it!  What better time that our fabulous blog hop to share my “fabulous work of art”?

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The card is relatively simple, I used the chevron pattern a couple of times colored with markers.  I used Pool Party, Coastal Cabana and Island Indigo.  I used another stamp from the set on the left side.  I cut a banner from vellum and gold embossed the circle from the set on the banner.  I gold embossed the sentiment on vellum also and punched it out with the Label Bracket punch.  The final touches were baker’s twine, a button and rhinestones.  I also used a cute heart from the In-Color sequins.  Oh gosh, that thing is ca-ute!

Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Gold, gold & more gold!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 22

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

I have had so many computer probs lately that I have hardly been posting!  Once again, my photo library is not cooperating….sigh…I hate technical difficulties!  One thing I totally love, as you may have noticed, is GOLD!!!!!  It does not seem to be tarnishing for me one bit 😉  Last weekend I finally got to play with a bunch of goodies from the new catalog and some new rubbah!  Oh how I love new rubbah!  For this card I used one of my many new faves, “A Happy Hooray”.  I just love that feather and the fonts in the sentiments….yum!

I gold embossed the feather on black card stock and cut it out.  I also cut some “feathery” parts out although that’s a little hard to see but it gives the feathers nice dimension.  I gold embossed “thanks” on vellum.  The finishing touches were the beautiful “Back to Black” Designer Series Paper, the Gold Satin Ribbon and some gold splotches stamped with an image from “Gorgeous Grunge”.

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Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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BFF’s

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 21

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

Today I played with coloring and paper piecing.  This stamp set lends itself so well to these techniques!  I used Blendabilities and I stamped my image several times on various colors of card stock.  Once I had my stamped images, I cut out the parts I wanted to pop up on the main image.  The effect is super cute!  I just love the boots!  I finished off with some Washi Tape, Baker’s Twine and a button.  This card wasn’t fast or easy but it sure was fun to make 🙂

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Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Tis the season….for Graduations!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 20

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dara Gloden’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

I had to make something a little outside the box for graduation.  I love, love, love the new Traveler stamp set and I had to make something with the globe!  I also used the new Something to Say stamp set for the sentiment.  These two sets go together like peas & carrots for graduation!

The other new product that I used that I am over the moon for are the Blendabilities Markers!  These aren’t available for purchase yet so if you have to have them you just might want to consider signing up!  It’s going to be only $50 to sign up starting tomorrow for a very limited time!  Really!  I used the markers to color the globe and the rhinestones!  Aren’t those rhinestones gorgeous??????  I cannot get enough of this technique.

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I hope you enjoyed this project I made to celebrate all the graduates this month!

Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dara Gloden and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Happy, Happy Mother’s Day!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 19

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something super fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

I just had to use a couple of our new products coming in the new catalog in a few short weeks and some stuff that that will soon be gone from the Occasions Catalog!  I also used some of my April Paper Pumpkin goodies & I was totally inspired by that project.  If you are not subscribing to My Paper Pumpkin, you are totally missing out!  The projects are so super, duper cute and the stamps sets are only available to subscribers.  I have to say, the stamps that come with MPP are some of my “go to” stamps!  Sooooo adorbs!

MPP came with a beautiful white 4″ x 4″ frame and some pre-cut pre scored card stock to make a cute “wrap” around the finished frame.  I wanted to show that you can duplicate this project with any frame you pick up at any craft store.  I got my beautiful gold frame at Michael’s in the dollar bins.  I think I paid $2 for it but it is so pretty and well worth the $2 🙂

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Let’s talk about how I made the outer wrap first.  I had to modify the dimensions of the wrap piece to match my frame.  The MPP project has the top and bottom of the frame sticking out and I loved that look…my gold frame sticking out top and bottom is just delish!

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Here are the measurements I used:

The narrow dimension was 3.5″ to fit my frame and leave some of the gold edges visible top and bottom.  The long dimension was 11″, that gave me a front of 4.75″, a back of 4.75″ and 1.5″ to score and fold for the ends.  See the dimensions below:

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You just need to adapt to whatever your size frame is, your folds are based on the thickness and the big sections are based on the front dimensions.  Really easy I promise!

Since my frame was gold, I had to add lots of gold accents, hearts punched out of gold foil and gold glitter paper.  Isn’t that new little heart punch the cutest?  I just love the look of that heart!  I also added gold sequins and rhinestones.  I can hardly wait to order the new sequins in the new catalog!  They are soooo cutely!  If you don’t have a new catalog yet, let me know and I will get one right out to you!

I was also super excited to see that the thick baker’s twine we had during Sale-A-Bration made the catalog!  I just love that stuff!  I un-twine it and it makes the best fluffy twine ever.  I used Coastal Cabana for my front bow and my twine inside on the frame.  I used the MPP stamps to do my background and my front tag.  MPP stamps are photopolymer now.  I really, really like using photopolymer stamps.  It is easy, peasy to get them lined up right where you want them and they stick to the blocks like crazy!  Another stamp set I just had to use was “Off the Grid”.  I am so, so, so sad that set is retiring!  I have used it so much this past year, I just think it is the perfect add to nearly everything!  I stamped it in Versamark on top of my arrows in the background and embossed it in white.  I just love how that looks!

That’s pretty much it, I used a few new items, a few MPP items and a few soon to be gone items!  I also used the MPP inspiration to make a similar project with other supplies (the frame).  Lots of things to inspire you to look outside the box so to speak!

I hope you enjoyed this project I made for my mom for Mother’s Day & that I’ve inspired you to use MPP as a jumping off place for your creativity 🙂

Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

At the bottom of my post you can find the products I used, just click on the picture to order!

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Springtime Fun!

mondaymontage banner revised Oct 13

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 18

Hello friends! Welcome back to our Monday Montage Blog Hop! You may have gotten here from the amazing Bree Renwick’s blog, make sure you select the “next” button below and that will take you to the next stop on the hop, the fabulous Dani Dziama’s blog. I have something fun today & I know my friends have amazing inspiration too!

I wanted to make something with the Springtime Garland Simply Created Kit and I kinda wanted to make some cards instead of the garland.  I have LOT’s of parts left though and can definitely make some more cards and a garland 🙂  I have made bunches of projects lately and I really wanted to play with my favorite retiring products to showcase those before they are gone but they are seriously selling out so quickly that I hardly have time to post a project before all the parts are gone!  Soooo I just decided to play with something that is still current 🙂

On both cards I cut some of the cute banner stickers in half, these were fast and easy to use and added lots of interest to my projects.  On this first card I also used the Spiral Flower Die which gave me an over the top Spring look!

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The second card features more pieces from the kit and I stitched the circle pieces to one of the banners, I love how this came out.

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I hope you enjoyed these fast & easy projects as much as I enjoyed making them to share!  There are so many goodies in this Simply Created Kit that you could knock out several quick cards without very much work on your part!

Don’t miss the rest of the pretties my friends have for you!  I just know everyone has gorgeous projects to share!

Make sure you go “Back” if you missed Bree Renwick or you can loop on around by hitting the “Next” button to get to Dani Dziama and the rest of the hop!

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My sweet girls…

I love this picture of my daughter and her dog Sawyer when Sawyer was just a little puppy that I have scrapped it into a traditional page and now a digital layout.  This project was quick and easy….so much faster and more portable than traditional scrapping!

I used the beautiful SVG “lovely” from Endless Birthday Wishes…gosh I just love the word brushes in that set!  I also used the new “Gorgeous Grunge” brushes, I love that stamp set so much and I am thrilled its available in digital form now!

Marissa-Sawyer Digi Scrap

I hope you are having a fantastic Sunday and find a few minutes to do something you love!

You can find all the fun things I used below, click on the picture to go to my online store to purchase!

beautiful butterflies

I’ve been obsessed with butterflies the last few weeks….crafted butterflies anyway!  I pulled out a couple of things I haven’t used in a while:  the Papillon Potpourri stamp set and the Beautiful Wings embosslit.  And look how beautiful they are!  I tried a couple of techniques on this card.  I love how it came out but I have to say, I probably won’t do at least one of these techniques in quite the same way again!

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The first thing I did was use my Hive framelit as a stencil for Gesso.  I slathered Gesso into some, not all of the openings.  I dried the Gesso with my heat gun and then I painted the gessoed octagons with gold encore ink.  The part I would not do again is use the framelit as a stencil!  I cannot get all the dried Gesso off!  Next time, I will make a paper stencil first…much better plan 🙂  I love the look though, very pretty tone on tone look on the Whisper White with a hint of gold sparkle.

Next I added a folded doily on the right side and spritzed the whole card front with Tempting Turquoise re-inker mixed with alcohol.  I slid the fat white banner underneath the spritzed doily and added a sliver of plain white doily underneath the banner on the other side.  I love how this looked!  The spritzed doily is really set off by the plain white banner underneath it.  Tiny little “thanks” sentiment on the bottom of the banner stamped in Tempting Turquoise.

I stamped one of the butterflies from Papillon Potpourri in Versamark on vellum paper.  Then I heat embossed it in gold and punched it out with the butterfly punch.  I made his little feelers out of fluffed up Gold Baker’s Twine and added a huge fluffy baker’s twine accent underneath.  The rest of the butterflies are out of Gold Foil and Whisper White cut with the Beautiful Wings embosslit.  A few rhinestones and sequins finished the card.

I wish you could see how pretty this is in person!  Yummy!  I still love, love gold in all its forms and seem to have to include it on nearly everything I make lately!

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It’s been a long week.  My daughter had surgery on Monday and I just haven’t had a chance to create much this week.  I needed some creative downtime though and this project soothed my soul today.

I hope this inspires you to make something pretty!

You can find all the fun things I used below, click on the picture to go to my online store to purchase!