EXCLUSIVE PRODUCT ONLY AVAILABLE ON THIS BLOG

That's right, I have a never before seen tool that you may only see on this blog. Depends, tho...if you are crafty enough you just might see one on your craft table as early as tonight!




What is this crafty lil device? Well, for those of you who are reading and not scrolling down to see pics first, I'll tell you.

Last night I finally got my new SU! order. It's the A Good Egg set and the Spring Fling DP. So I told Greg I needed a StampaMaJig. Like any other Stamping Husband he knew just what the heck I meant.

Yeah Right.

So I tried to explain to him what it was and possibly he could make me one. OK, show me a picture said Mr. Crafty. ;)

Well, today I had to ink that set up and I wanted to play around with it, so I thought, man I need that StampaMaJig now!!! LOL... like everything else.

So I scoured my room and found some whittling wood (B/c you know I needed that once too!) and I nailed one end to a smaller black and Viola! My own Stampa MaJig.

Call me Cheap or call me crafty...it was free and I can use it!!

I can easly lay the plastic sheets up next to it to see if it's OK! (BTW...yep, I've scrounged for some lame plastic sheet covers to use!! LOL)
And here I was able to line it up perfect. Well, after a few tries and I realized I was stamping it upside down than what I stamped on the sheet. Ugh.
So I give you the Hick Chick StampaMaJig (Stole the name from Cowboy Troy)

Enjoy...please let me know if you would like to buy the rights to this... :oP
OK and seriously, why did SU! put 2 sentiment stamps on one block..you know that it's gonna be messed up somewhere!! Geesh. So I was more crafty and cut them out and put one on one side and one on the other. And I put them on this way b.c it's easier to hold the block than putting the words the other way.

Then I played for real...making this cute lil card.
And with the egg top on...
RECIPE:

Stamps: SU! - A Good Egg

Ink: Noir Palette Black, More Mustand; Certainly Celery

Paper: SU! - Certainly Celery; Spring Fling DP; White CTMH; Yellowish Bazzill

Other: markers; CTMH ribbon, American Crafts Brads

{Technique Tuesday} Embossing.

OK, this is not a new technique in stamping so I apologize to the Vetern Stampers, but I do know that a few of my readers will benefit today.

So on to Embossing.

To get started, you are going to need the basics for a card,

plus, an Embossing Ink pad (I use Versamark and you can use any PIGMENT ink pad)

Embossing Powder and a Heat tool.

I also use an Embossing Buddy before I stamp on my CS. This helps clear the CS of static and moisture. It helps the EP(Embossing Powder) stick to only the ink.
I also have this lil pink Top Boss ink pad for Embossing. I got it from SU! and I looked and they no longer carry it. So I would suggest to those starting out, get a Versamark pad...you can also use it to just stamp a watermark on your CS.

So I stamped my images....

And BEFORE I stamped I (Should have here) folded a piece of scratch paper in half, opened it up and put under my CS.

Then I dump a little bit of EP on my image. Here I used some Scented EP from Cornish Heritage Farms. It smells so yummy - you really need SmelloVision!! But there are tons of EP out there in many colors.

Then I just shake it off and tap the paper to make sure it's all off. Brush any excess off where you don't want the EP (This is helped by the Embossing Buddy) Then you can dump the excess back into the container. So one container can last you forever. Almost. LOL...

Useing your heat gun, wave it over the image, careful to not stay in one place or get too close. After a short bit, you will see the image start to change. It's fun to watch... And you will end up with a shiney image like so. (And it smelled good too!! LOL)

Here above my cup I stamped with Versamark. Now, if you use a clear EP you need to use a clear ink pad, like Versamark. If you use a Colored ink pad, you will see the color under the clear EP. That is OK....if you want the color. When embossing, I just always use Versamark. It's easier for me.
This stuff is called Glassy Glaze. It is similar to a EP, but it gives you more of a shiney look. You will see....
I apply it the same way, dump on to scratch paper, back into container.

Here you can see before I Heat it....

And after I heated it up.
This is Clear EP. You can stamp your image onto the Designer papers and still see that image. This is before I heated......
And after...... Then I trimmed it out and added it to my card.
And here is my finished card....you can click on it to make it bigger and see more details.
This is a simple technique that adds some glam to your card. It's easy, but it does take the right tools.

I hope you enjoyed. If you have any requests for something you would like me to post about, please feel free to comment here. I'll look into them.

See you next week!!

Making Valentines and Coffee

Yesterday we were stranded at home and needed something for RC to do, so we made his Valentine's for pre-school. I had seen these Trident Gum Holders at Halloween and they are so easy.
I cut and scored the paper, RC punched the holes with the Word Window punch and then he put the frogs on front. I had colored those the night before while we watched TV. He was super excited to take them already, but we put them up to wait.
Since we were home bound all day, I got quite a few cards done. This set was still out & I thought it looked nice and warm. Esp. since I was enjoying my coffee all day yesterday. Sorry that the picture is so bright. Ugh.
This was pretty simple. I stamped the images (cup and foam) with Stazon and then cut out. Mounted on some Brown Bazzill that I stamped the steam in White Kraft ink. I stamped the straw separately and cut out and glued behind the cup. You can't see it well, but I stamped the coffee beans on the bottom part of the card.
When I was done, I used Crystal Effects on the cup and Liquid Applique on the foam. Looks sooo yummy!

RECIPE:
Stamps: I Like it a Latte - SU!
Ink: Stazon; Real Red - SU!; White Kraft
Paper: Kraft card (unknown); Black Prism; Chocolate Bazzill; white Prism
Other: Liquid Applique; Crystal Effects; May Arts Ribbon

Did we miss Monday?

Can you believe it's Tuesday!!

I hope you enjoyed the creations from VSN - that was all I go to. I got lazy Saturday and then Sunday took the kids Sledding. Plus is was cold...I just wanted to sit with my Hot Cocoa and a blankie.

Today it's almost 20 degrees (F) and I think it felt very warm!! I wanted to share with you a couple other cards I worked on this weekend.

The first one is made with the Basic Grey Infuse paper and the die cut that comes with them. I was trying to figure out which stem to use and the ribbon caught my eye.

RECIPE

Stamps: TAC - F is for Family

Ink: Noir Palette Black

Paper: SU! - Chocolate Chip; Basic Grey - Infuse

Other: Basic Grey Ribbon; pop dots

This one is for the Red Hatters tonight. You can see the candy box we are making here. It's so hard to make pretty cards, that are simple enough for non crafters to make. I think this one is. There may be trouble over the 2-step stamping, but I'll make them be adventurous!! LOL...

RECIPE:

Stamps: SU! -Delight in Life

Ink: SU! - Lovely Lilac; Noir Palette Black

Paper: White Prism; SU! - Lovely Lilac

Other: Oval Punches

OK, on to my ToDo list for the day. Have a great one!!

JAN08VSND, E & G

Some more of the creations for VSN. These are what I've done so far today.

The first was a VNEck card. I'd never made one of these, but they are super fun. For this I used my Simply Scrappin kit from SU!, Just Delightful. I love that kit...may have to buy another one.

Anyway, it's cute.
Then it was the ticket challenge. And I've been singing I've Got A Ticket to Ride all day!! Ugh. I love Words by Wilson and this stamp. On the inside it reads I thought a cruise would be a great way to celebrate your birthday. Then it says Pick up my mail while I'm gone. I used some old Karen Foster paper on the background, and some Heidi Swapp tape, and CTMH Ribbon. Tried to get it to work, but realized at the end I put the DP on upside down. DOH!!

And finally...some fun. We were to make animals out of punches. Well, most of the other cards look pretty, but I got messy and fun. Created a pig. LOL...

I'll probably give it to the boys to play with. LOL...it was fun tho.


I am helping a friend on the computer today, so won't get to finish until later this afternoon. See you then...

{Moose Me??}

Cuz I'm late today? Hee Hee

First, for those of you who only read me on Email, you may want to pop over to the blog and sign up for the Blog Candy - I'll be drawing for that on Friday before my Luncheon with the Gossip Girlz.

On to the creation... I really wanted to use up my new Moose You set, but he was so hard to work with today. Must be male. (Love you munchkin) But I finally created this lil number.

You can see below I used some new Clear Buttons I ordered from SU! I love them. And I whipped out some wire...remember that stuff? Oh I have tons from when that was in...so I thought I should use it. I glued the pink Bazzill on the back , then glued the heart on the front, and attached with wire.

RECIPE

Stamps: Moose You, Stampin Up!

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Stampin Up!

Paper: CS - White, Chocolate Chip, SU!; Pink, Bazzill; DP - Basic Grey Infuse Line

Other: Ribbon, Basic Grey; Clear Button, SU!; various wire

So then that all brings me to my help tonight. McKinley jumped at the chance to get up on my table and was coloring away. So I gave her a Bella image - she has to start sometime right? So then I look and she makes the sound like Hello, and she's talking to my ink pad. Oh!! So...time to wash her up and get her to bed. See you all tomorrow!!

{SU! Stamping Club}

Tonight is our Stampin' UP! Club night. My demo brought over our new catalog last night so I was able to drool over it all! There are some super fun new sets in there. My favorite being Seriously Sassy. I love the saying SWEET!! I know those would rock on some Bella cards right?

So these are the cards I made for our swap. I had seen this on one of the SCS Weekly Inkings. It's called the Split Negative technique - HERE is a link for directions.

It was time consuming, but they turned out pretty well. The worst part was matching them up and a Stamp a ma Jig would be very helpful here.

RECIPE

Stamps: Bronc Buster, SU!

Inks: Embossing Ink, Versamark, Distressing Inks

Paper: CS - Sage Shadow, Creamy Caramel, Kraft, White; DP - Outlaw, SU!; CS - Chocolate, Bazzill.

Other: Various ribbon, Embossing powders

More Boats...

I was uploading cards to SCS and realized I had never posted this card. Instead of forgetting again, here is my 2nd post of today.

I guess I love that you can pop up the smoke...too cute huh?

RECIPE

Stamps: Boatloads of Love, SU!

Ink: Noir Palette Black

Paper: CS, Certainly Celery, Pink - SU!; DP - Autumn Leaves

Other: Word Window Punch, Ribbon

**Guess what else!!! I passed 20,000 hits on here...so be watching for Blog Candy. ***

Stamping with a Cold

Thanks to my lovely little McKinley, I have a cold. After a few sleepless nights and her sneezing on me, I got it. So today I have no energy to house work, so I thought I would stamp. Makes sense right. Well, this is what happens when you try to stamp with a cold. You MASK things backwards! UGH. So right away I knew I did it wrong, {don't laugh} and I tried it again. This time getting the heart in the boat.
I love this Boatloads of Love set. And I have been wanting to try stamping it like this for some time. And yesterday, Allison enabled me to the a Sketch Challenge. Alisa Tilsner posted the sketch and I immediately thought of this. I stamped my *trailer* and then masked the heart inside on some Very Vanilla. I tried to use my blender pen, but it's whacking out, so I used some Shimmerz on the inside. Colored with my Sugarloaf markers, matted and threw it all together. If you think it looks familiar, it's because I am using up my Just Delightful Simply Scrapping kit I got for Christmas. You can also barely see that I used my Crop a Dile for some dry embossing, just under the strip of DP.

RECIPE
Stamps: Boatloads of Love, SU!
Ink: Noir Palette Black
Paper: Just Delightful Simply Scrapping Kit, SU!
Other: Sugarloaf Makers; Shimmerz paint

{Valentines}

I could not get into the stamping mood yesterday. I had forgot about a few challenges I wanted to do tho, so hopefully that will help today.

I wanted to get started on some Valentine's Day cards. I am planning an Open House for TAC and my cards so I want to have a good selection done up. So really I need to get to work huh?

I have a ton of these Loads of Love images from the Wish RAK on SCS and I figured that they would work really well to give to a man right? Also, I don't have a round scallop punch...only oval ones, but I used it and cut it almost in half to make the circle. You can't really see that in the picture...that's good.

RECIPE

Stamps: Loads of Love and Accs. from Stampin Up!, r'cd from Wish Rak

Paper: Bazzill - red and pink

Others: CTMH ribbon (thanks Khristi) and Sugarloaf Markers

The Love Doctor is in. LOL.... This last Friday was the Bella Babe challenge for the month and it was a color challenge to use Red, White and Black/Grey. I think this is the only piece of black I have left and no Grey. Anyway, I wanted to use Docabella but wanted her coat White. So I tried to chalk the background a little. Something I need to practice I guess. So then I added the shadow highlights to the inside of the coat. I think now that I should have cut her out and popped her up huh? Oh well... no mistakes in stamping... I also hand wrote the sentiment...thought it was funny too.

RECIPE:

Stamps: Docabella, Stamping Bella (Image Swap)

Paper: Bazzill - Red; SU! - Black and White

Other: SU! ribbon, chalks; Sugarloaf and Zig markers.

Thank yous

Howdy!

Here are some more of the Thank yous I made this last week. I don't think I mentioned that we had a Secret Santa visit us this year. For 12 days we got goodies....mostly for the kids excitement. It was fun to wait each night and most times we would be distracted and not be waiting to catch them. Also sometimes there would be goodies left when I went to get the paper. It was fun, and I hope that next year I can remember early enough to shop for a family too.

So this card is for the neighbor kids who were our Secret Santa. I used my Outlaw DP {See sidebar for what that means!!} and I colored my deer from the Moose You set with my new markers. The brads are form CTMH. Super simple lil card really.

This one is for a family who brought us some yummy Cinnamon rolls after Gramma passed. They were nice to have while we opened presents.

I used more Outlaw DP and my set Bronc Buster stamped in Chocolate Chip. Then simply added some brads for accents.

I still need to make a couple more now and get them all mailed out.

{Have you forgot what day it is}

Having a Holiday makes me messed up on days. I'm not supposed to post about forgetting things tho - but I am posting about forgetting what day it is. I didn't realize it was Friday when I posted this morning so I thought I would post another couple cards for the weekend.



These two are made with the Sweet Thing set from SU! I fully cased this first card from HERE and I love it. I used some Green SU CS and then my Glitter Mat Stack. I punched out with my CM square punch and stamped the yellow one and the love you. Then drew the lines, which you can tell was drawn.











This next one was super simple as well. Used the other half of the Green CS and a leftover from the Mat Stack and some scrap yellow. Stamped the Star in Certainly Celery and then the sentiment in Black. The ribbon is TAC.



I am kind of on craft over load and hopefully tomorrow I am going to clean out my craft room. I am feeling a lil overwhelmed with all the new things I have gotten and stuff I don't use anymore. So I may list it here, or pitch it, or just share. I just need to purge a little.

And then I need to get more organized. I am also working on a comforter for McKinley's kid bed so I'll post that pretty lil thing later. I have more cards, but I probably will wait til Sunday to post again.

Enjoy the weekend. Oh and when you tell me not to post something on here, you have to know I just might work it in!! Love ya Friend!!

Bellas and Elzybells

I have emerged from my craft room, just long enough to post! LOL.... so says Greg.

I love Ipodabella and the new funky look that Em created with these Bellas. I used my new Sugarloaf markers {FYI-these came from Ben Franklin Crafts and are awesome!!} I also used my Glitter Mat Stacks paper and this sentiment stamp - it has 12+ sayings and I thought this was perfect for this image huh?

I also needed to make some Thank You's for the goodies we have received. I made this for a friend who has a lil Blond-haired girl McKinley's age. It could be them!! I used my new markers here too and them matted on a punch I received in WISH RAK. The paper is all SU! and the ribbon is May Arts. I also used Liquid Applique to make the puffy snow.

I hope you are enjoying the last weekend of the year.

~having a blast~

LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!!!
I am so excited about the new catalog and new year. It's got me thinking of lots of new things, so you may see some changes this new year. Then again, you may not.

There are some super fun new stamps in here and there are so super cool new toys too. The Bind It All!! We carry that !!! Woo Hoo!!!

Plus soooo much more. I can't wait!!
I did also go down and play this morning. The boys got some new PS2 games so they are entertained. Now to get Mc for a nap and I'll have more time.

From the first time I saw this stamp I wanted to make it into a buckle. So that was the first thing that I tried.

I cut out an oval and used it as a template to emboss the oval shape. I did this twice and while it was still wet I stamped the image. Perfection!!
Then I used some Outlaw DP and Blue Bayou for the *shirt & jeans*.I used Kraft CS for the belt and distressed the edges and punched holes with my Cropa Dile. Then I popped the buckle up on pop dots. To finish I distressed all the edges and the buckle itself. It is super simple and looks awesome.

Here is a more detailed look.


Got to go put a girl to bed now...

{Now back to the Regular Programming}

I have to say I am ready for a few days between holidays here!! I hope to play a little so I have something to share here. I know people {Khristi} don't like it when I take a break! LOL....

Anyway, here is some of my crafting loot Santa brought. Actually Santa brought me some new sets: Boatloads of Love, Sweet Thing and Moose You along with the Cutter Kit. Then the *kids*{aka Greg} got me the sets: Wanted and Bronc Buster along with the Outlaw DP. I have ideas rolling!!! They also got me the Sharpies, I am always needing them, and the Sugarloaf Whispers marker set. I think they are going to be great as well.

My brother and SIL got me some more fun trinkets, a Glitter mat stack (which I was telling Lindsey about the day before) a sentiment stamp and some cool ribbons and bags to alter. And my mom found me some vintage ribbons to use too. I got some other great things as well...lots of chocolate to keep me nourished while I am down crafting.

I thought I would also post a shot of our living room Christmas night. Crazy huh. It's all cleaned up and now back to the regular chores we always have.

Have a great day. Whatever day it is today....