Not Really a Slacker!

Just wanted to pop in and mention that my lack of posts this week can be explained by the houseful of people I'm expecting this weekend. Need to spend all my time preparing and cleaning up rather than creating new messes!

I'll be back with some paper goodness soon...

Lovin' the Onesie!

One of my co-workers had a baby last week (well, his wife did), and another co-worker asked me to make a card for her to give them. This is a onesie card that Lauren Meader made famous, and it's just such a WOW that I thought it would be appropriate. Her tutorial for it is here.

I decided that since it was a boy, I could do without the scalloped neck- and leg-holes, so I just used straight bands. I'm sure that little Matthew Maximus will appreciate it someday.

What I used:
Stamps: SU! So Many Scallops, Polka Dot background
Ink: SU! Bashful Blue
CS: SU! Bashful Blue, Whisper White
Other: MM button brads, Nestabilities, SU! Scalloped Circle punch

My First Design Team!!!!

I'm so excited!!! I am now part of the design team for a yummy new online store called i {heart} papers. And boy, do I HEART PAPERS!!! They have an awesome assortment of papers and lots of other "stuff" that I will be proud to showcase in my creations. And Kate, the owner, will even try to get things in for you if she doesn't already carry it in her store. Go check it out!

Can't wait to get started! Stay tuned..

Shimmerz Blog Candy Alert!

Go check out the Shimmerz blog to get a chance to win some great blog candy! Can anyone ever have enough bling and shimmer?!!

Happy Birthday, Georgie!

OK, I told you in the message below that we have a LOT of birthdays this time of year. Tomorrow is my step-dad's birthday. He is easily impressed with my cards — thinks every one of them is a work of art! So every year I feel I need to outdo myself. I just couldn't think of anything over the top, and masculine cards are SOOOO hard for me to do.

This morning while I was looking through the many blogs I have in my Google Reader, I was delighted to come across this simple and stunning card by Kirsten, who was inspired by this card by ink-e on SCS. How perfect! I could change the colors to more masculine ones, and tweak it just a little, and call it a card for George.

I had a heck of a time photographing it — couldn't get the colors right. So I stuck it in my scanner and fiddled with it, and made the background grey so you could see the white card better. I really need to work on my photography skills.

So thank you, Kristen. Simple and stunning works for me, and I'm sure George will love it!

What I used:
Stamps: PTI Birthday Basics & Mixed Messages
Ink: Palette Noir, Versamark
Paper: PTI white, SU black, various patterned papers
Other: white embossing powder, SU punches, Tim Holtz Design Ruler (for piercing)

Happy Birthday, Bro!

My family has a LOT of birthdays this time of year! My brother in California has one coming up, and usually I make him a card that reflects his passion for wine. This year, however, I was having a hard time coming up with something new, so I focused on one of MY new passions — cupcakes! Over the summer when he and his family came east for a visit, I brought a bunch of cupcakes to my dad's house for our big family get-together, so I guess it will have some meaning to him. I hope so, anyway.

I wish I could have made it out west to his annual birthday wine party. Someday...

What I used:
Stamps: Birthday Cupcakes (Inkadinkado)
Ink: Memento black, Copic markers
CS: PTI white, SEI Poppy stack
Other: The striped paper has a metallic gold stripe in it, so I used a metallic gold market to decorate the cupcakes. I also used some SU! brown taffeta ribbon and the SU! scalloped border punch. Oh, and my Nestabilities. LOVE my Nesties!!!

Do you, Lisette, take Dave...

Tomorrow my dear friend Lisette is (finally) marrying her wonderful Dave! I made this card to match her gown, which is ivory with a taupe sash. There's no stamping here — I printed their names on my computer, matching the ink color to the ribbon and taupe layer. What you can't tell from the picture is that the CS is all shimmery. I used Reflections Poison Ivory and Cappuccino for this, and it is absolutely stunning in real life! Can't wait for them to see it — I know they'll both appreciate it, being as creative as they are themselves.

I followed the lead of the amazingly talented Sue Nelson in the partial embossing and scoring on this. Thanks, Sue!

It's all about the wedding!

If anyone out there wondered why I seemed to have gone underground for the better part of last year when my SCS posts suddenly stopped, let me just explain that my oldest daughter got married in May, and for many months leading up to the big event I was busy creating a great deal of the "stuff" that was involved in that. The colors of the wedding were brown and fuchsia. These are some of the things I made:

The invitations. You can't tell from this first picture, but they were actually pocket invitations (Stardream Bronze), and the fuchsia ribbon at the bottom was actually wrapped around the closed invite. You can see the inserts in the second picture (and yes, I fixed the spelling of Accommodations before I printed the final ones -- this was a test sample).


I made the Unity Candle for the ceremony. I printed onto vellum and heated it onto the candle. Then I wrapped the ribbon around the top and bottom of the vellum.

Then there were the seating cards, the menus, and the table numbers for the reception:


The table numbers were done with some very cheap 5x7 frames from Walgreen's. But they were silver—so I got some gold Rub'n'Buff and made them gold. The numbers are just printed in brown on vanilla cardstock.

Oh, and for the guests who were staying at a nearby hotel, we made gift bags filled with goodies. Of course I had to make some nugget boxes to put in there.



Oh, I almost forgot! I made the box for the wedding cards at the reception. That was a big challenge for me, and I seriously killed my hot glue gun. Really -- it's dead. But it came out gorgeous and Laila was thrilled. The bottom of the middle box is actually cut away, as is the top of the bottom box, so the cards just drop to the bottom of the whole thing.

So now you know what kept me occupied for all those months. And I loved every minute of it! Hope you enjoyed seeing it all.

Triple Threat!

The week is running out and I haven't stamped nearly as much as I'd have liked, given the fact that I was OFF 3 days this week! I work for a place that observes all of the major Jewish holidays, and I had so many plans for those days off — but things don't always work out the way we plan them. Busy, yes; stamping, not so much.

Anyway, this was my effort to combine 3 of this week's SCS challenges in one: SC198, CC188 and WT188. The color challenge was Pink Pirouette, Basic Black and Whisper White. The Ways To Use It challenge was about plaid. And this was the sketch we were to use for this week's challenge:

And here is my card:
It's not my best work, so maybe I should stop trying to kill so many birds with one stone. But it is kinda cute, huh?

What I used:
Stamps: Wild About You and Polka Dot background (SU), Limitless Labels (Papertrey Ink)
Ink: Pallette black, Pink Pirouette (I outlined the elephant and the plaid piece with a black Micron pen)
Paper: PTI white, Basic Black, some pink plaid paper I had from an old DCWV stack
Other: Googly eye (is there a right way to spell that?)

Witchy Halloween

I never send Halloween cards (well, almost never), but I just loved this Inka set that I got from Kate at i {heart} papers, Cats and Bats*, and wanted to try a Zindorf technique card. It was nice to give my brayer a workout -- it's been neglected for far too long! I also used Martha Stewart's Halloween Fence stamp.

I'm sure I can think of at least one person I can send a Halloween card to!


*Kate said she'd have the stamp set back in stock again very soon.

Bella Sketch Challenge #50

I've always wanted to try one of the Bella Sketch Challenges, and here I am using it for my very first card post on my new blog. This is for Jamie's 50th Bella Sketch Challenge, and it's a great one, so I had to use my favorite (and first) Bella I ever got - Cosmobella. She speaks to me — what can I say?!!

I covered the entire card front with this FUN paper called Bottoms Up that I got from i{heart}papers. It fits the image perfectly, doesn't it?

I also used:
Paper: PTI Stampers Select White, SU Rose Red, Old Olive, Apricot Appeal
Ink: Memento black, Copic markers
Embellishments: some cute little bling-y stars I got a long time ago somewhere.

New header, new template!

OK, I'm feeling my way around this blog setup thing, and decided I needed to overhaul the look sooner rather than later. The header is actually a picture I took out my living room window about a year and a half ago. It was the end of April, and the leaves on the tree behind the building were just coming out. I'm on the 6th floor of a 12 story building, so that gives you an idea of how BIG that tree was.

Little did I know at that time that a tornado would sweep through Brooklyn (can you believe it?!!) 4 months later and take the top of that tree right off.
I don't mind saying that I don't miss the top of that tree! It was starting to obscure my view of Manhattan. I can actually see the Empire State Building from my living room, and on the Fourth of July, I can see the Macy's fireworks over the East River (although it's pretty far away and you see more on TV).

And while we're talking about pictures, let me just mention that my photo in the sidebar is not terribly recent — it was taken about 8 or so years ago. But I like it, and I don't think I've changed that much since then!

Now I have to start finding some actual crafty stuff to start posting.

Later!

Oh boy... Here I go!

My first blog. Not that I'm unfamiliar with the blogosphere -- I subscribe to 198 (and counting) blogs on my Google Reader. Yikes! No wonder I don't have time to do anything but sit at my computer. It's also the reason I can't seem to get out the door early enough to get to work on time. Do you find yourself stuck in front of the computer blurfing (short for blog surfing -- isn't that a disgusting sounding new word?) to the exclusion of the rest of your life?

So now I can become a part of everyone else's "problem." I hope whoever finds themselves reading this will enjoy my random thoughts (nod to Merry) and pictures of the various cards, invitations and other things I deem worthy of your consideration.

I will definitely be changing the layout of this blog, as I seriously do NOT like this color scheme, but one thing at a time. Let's see how this goes...