Bubbly Birthday

Hopefully I can get this loaded in time for Kristina's Color Inspiration challenge tonight. We were to use Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, Bordering Blue, Sage Shadow and Certainly Celery.
I just loved the soft colors, and thought it would be a cool way to use these cute new sets I just got from i {heart} papers. Oh, and I have another family birthday next week, so this little fishy will be swimming its way to my niece Hannah in California.

What you can't really tell in this scan (couldn't seem to photograph it well either) is that the fish bowl has acetate behind the cut-out, and it's raised on dimensionals.

And speaking of i {heart} papers, one of my fellow design team members is offering some bling-y blog candy right now. Hurry on over to Amber's blog to enter!

What I used:
Stamps: Sushi Bowl Party & Sushi's Favorite Words (Stampendous)
Ink: Palette Noir, various markers
Paper: Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, white
Other: acetate sheet, Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon (SU!), Circle Nestabilities

An obsession with cupcakes (and an exciting announcement!)

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, you will know that next to paper crafting, my favorite thing right now is cupcakes. And if you know ME, you know that I never just get interested in anything — I get obsessed. It's a Scorpio thing, I think.

My current obsession with cupcakes is rather recent. Last spring, when my youngest daughter was planning my older daughter's bridal shower, she had the brilliant idea to use cupcakes as both centerpieces and favors. This translated into 12 dozen cupcakes. That's a LOT of cupcakes! I agreed to make 8 dozen, and one of the bridesmaids would make another 4 dozen. I was absolutely sure that it would be a nightmare from which I would never recover. Much to my amazement, the job went much smoother and faster than I could have imagined, and I was hooked! The cupcakes came out great (I made the ones with the white and pink frosting).
We had stacks of Wilton boxes that held 4 cupcakes each that we gave out at the end, and everybody got to take home cupcakes!

I am so happy that the worlds of cupcakes and stamping have collided! This is where my exciting announcement comes in. But you'll have to wait until Friday to find out what it is. I know... I'm such a tease!

Watching Stickles Dry...

This is how I spent my Sunday. With my friend's cards out of the way, today I tackled my stepdad's cards. I had "favorited" this card by judylb on SCS over a year ago because it was so simple and stunning, and decided that it was the perfect card to crank out 25 of relatively quickly — no layers, no extra cutting.

I created a mask a little bigger than the card from acetate, and outlined the shape of the card on it with a Sharpie so the swoosh would be in the same place for all the cards. I used a couple of dots of temporary adhesive to hold it in place while I sponged Baja Breeze inside the mask.

Then came the magic: following a brilliant tip from my friend Kate (of i {heart} papers fame), I arranged all of the snowflakes and the greeting on one large block so that I could stamp all the cards quickly and consistently. Worked like a charm! Thanks, Kate! Here's a close-up:
The snowflakes and greeting are stamped with Encore silver ink and embossed with silver EP. After all the embossing and inside stamping were done, I dotted the center of each snowflake with Waterfall Stickles. They actually match the Baja Breeze much better than the photo shows.

The snowflakes are a combination of Papertrey Ink and Verve stamps, and the greeting is from Verve as well. The inside stamp peeking out from one of the cards above is from Little Paper Shop.

Now to figure out what I'm doing for the other half of my own cards!

City Holiday Card

For the past several years I've made not only my own holiday cards, but cards for my step-dad and one of my best friends. This year I've let things slide a bit and I can't believe how fast the holiday season is going. Anyway, my friend handles the public relations for the Waterford New Year's Eve ball that brings in the new year in Times Square (which means she's never available for parties because she's stuck in the middle of all the chaos every year). She asked if this year I could somehow work the ball into her card, so this is what I came up with.

I've had this Sizzlits strip die for ages and this was the perfect time to bring that puppy out! And for the ball, get this: I used a silver holographic gift bag from the 99¢ store! It's much more stunning than it appears in the picture.

I double-punched it with my scalloped circle punch to get more thingies (very technical term here) around the edges. I used 2 of them for each ball, and they are glued around the strip of silver mirror paper just around the sides, so you can actually slide the ball up and down the pole — I am so tickled with myself! The strip is held on to the card only at the top and bottom with mini glue dots. The cardstock base is SU! Not Quite Navy. The greeting is embossed with silver, using a stamp from Verve's Snowflake Splendor set, which happens to be on sale right now. (I'm in no way affiliated with Verve — just cluing y'all in!)

Oh, and just to enable your spending habit a little more, Kate at i {heart} papers is having a special sale this weekend (can you say 15% off everything?!!!) for all members of the i {heart} papers group on Paper Craft Planet. So go on over and join so you can save!

Wishing all of you a holiday season full of joy (and a few extra hours in each day!)

5 Golden Rings

Today is day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas contest over at Paper Craft Planet, and today i {heart} papers is a co-sponsor. The assignment was to make a card or project using rings or circles, so here's a card with 5 golden rings, using lots of stuff from i {heart} papers.

Go over there and play — you could win free stuff!

What I used:
Stamps: s.e.i. Alpine Frost
Ink: Versamark, gold leaf pen (edges of designer paper)
Paper: PTI white , SU! brushed gold, s.e.i. Windsor Stack
Other: circle Nestabilities, assorted clear gemstones, sheer gold ribbon, gold EP

Golden Calling Bird

This was my entry for today's Paper Craft Planet 12 Days of Christmas contest - 4 Calling Birds. We had to make a card or project using a bird (duh!). I'm in a gold kinda mood, and totally digging heat embossing again. Remember how completely awed you were the first time you saw embossing powder melt into that glorious shiny image? It was magical, wasn't it!

I made the frame for the bird by die-cutting 2 Nestabilities together, and then embossing them (in my Cuttlebug). The bird is actually mounted behind the frame with dimensionals.

What I used:
Stamps: Winter Birds (inkadinkado), Christmas Greetings (Little Paper Shop)
Ink: Versamark
Paper: PTI white, Windsor Paper Stack, SU! brushed gold
Other: gold EP, Nestabilities

Last Day — Don't Miss Out!

This is the final day of the i {heart} papers Black Friday Sale. Don't miss out on Kate's great offers:

• FREE SHIPPING on US orders of $25 or more ($50 or more for Canadian orders). This is reduced from our normal $40 threshold.

• For every $50 you spend you will be rewarded with a $10 gift certificate towards a future purchase. Gift certificates will be issued on December 1.
  

See the website for complete details. Happy shopping!!!

A Tale of No Turkey

Remember (yesterday) when I told you that my family always celebrated Thanksgiving together on the Friday after? And how we were gathering down near Philly at my brother's house? Well, some of us made it, and some of us, well...

This is what happened before we even left Brooklyn. That is not a flat tire — that is one shredded tire! I will spare you the story of how it actually happened (but it involves some construction workers and a metal grate that they had left in the street).

These are my daughters texting their friends (and updating their Facebook pages) while we were waiting for AAA. Aaahh, technology. Long story short: yes, there was a spare; no, we didn't have the little doohickey to release it from under the car. And neither did the AAA guy.

Over 3 hours later, and following a confluence of unfortunate circumstances, we had 2 new rear tires, still no access to the spare, and frazzled nerves. Not conducive to a 2-hour drive down to Philly, only to turn around and come back after dinner. I must give Laila due credit, though, for handling everything with amazing calmness and grace.

They felt awful about not being able to join the family for Thanksgiving, and even more awful for me, since they had enjoyed the holiday at a friend's house the day before while I was at home, baking cupcakes, swooning and drooling from the aromas wafting through my apartment from my neighbors' feasts, looking so forward to the gastronomic delights that awaited me the next day.

So we went to the supermarket, picked up my son-in-law from work, and he and Annisa prepared a chicken (which they named Agamemnon — don't ask, because I don't know), stuffing, and all the fixings for our own little celebration.


The food was delicious, and we enjoyed each other's company while consuming a surprisingly large amount of wine! While I did miss being with the rest of my family, I felt truly blessed to have these amazing people in my life. And isn't that what Thanksgiving is really about?

and speaking of cupcakes...

My family does things a little differently for Thanksgiving. To avoid the stress of traveling with the hoards of "normal" people, we celebrate on Friday. It works out quite well, actually. We get an extra day to prepare the yummies, and those with spouses/significant others have the opportunity to celebrate with both families.

More often than not, we travel down to my brother's house near Philadelphia. My sister-in-law is a fantastic cook (though she humbly denies it), so she handles the basics of the meal, and the rest of us provide things like appetizers, wine, or an extra dessert or two.

The splendiferous cupcakes you see above are one of my contributions this year. Well, these are the ones left after I packed up the rest to go. They are devil's food cake, stuffed with creamy white filling (à la Hostess), and the tops are double dipped in chocolate ganache. This was my first time filling cupcakes, and it's not nearly as intimidating as I thought. After they cooled a bit, I stuck the handle of my wooden spoon into the tops of the cupcakes to make a little room for the filling. Then I just piped the filling in with a pastry tip. The frosting covers up the hole.

They do taste as good as they look (thank goodness). I had to test one for quality control, if you know what I mean. Hope you all had a wonderful day yesterday. I'm thankful for so many things — YOU among them!

and we have a winner!

I've been struggling with a layout for the bulk of my mass-produced holiday cards this year, and I've finally settled on one. Thanks to Sharon Johnson (notimetostamp), I found my inspiration. Simple, but cute!

My criteria were: use the yummy cupcake stamps from Taylored Expressions, and this cute My Mind's Eye paper from i {heart} papers. Oh, and it also had to be sufficiently flat so it would not require additional postage. And of course, easy enough to reproduce many times...

The cupcake image piece is popped up on dimensionals. I think it needs a little bling. Maybe I should add some Stickles on the cherry. What do you think?

What I used:
Stamps: Season's Sweetings (SASI)
Ink: Palette Noir, SU! Riding Hood Red, Copics
Paper: PTI Cream, SU! Riding Hood Red and Always Artichoke, Trim the Tree (My Mind's Eye)
Other: Nestabilities

Black Friday Sale at i {heart} papers!!!

While you're recovering this weekend from your Turkey Day, spend a little time giving thanks to Kate at i {heart} papers for this awesome sale. Click the graphic above for full details and get ready to gobble up some goodies!

Thankful

Every year for Thanksgiving, at least for the past 4 or 5 years, I've made some kind of table favor — filled with chocolate, of course! This year I used Beate's Triangle Box Tutorial on SCS for my favors. 15 of them, to be exact.

I started with Pumpkin Pie CS, cut to 4" x 8" and rolled it with Stampin' Up!'s Forever Flowers wheel with Creamy Caramel ink and tied them with chocolate taffeta ribbon. Mmmmm! Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Pumpkin Pie, caramel, chocolate... tasty stuff!

I used PaperTrey's First Fruits for the decoration, cutting with the new Nestibilities Labels 2 die that I got from i {heart} papers, and using the die as a mask while sponging with More Mustard (just killed the dessert image, didn't I?) ink. The acorn is stamped with Close to Cocoa and Pumpkin Pie ink, and Thankful is stamped with Chocolate Chip. You can see from the picture that I needed to re-ink my Close to Cocoa pad halfway through the batch.

These little boxes hold 4 mini Reese's peanut butter cups perfectly. Sweet!

Edited to note: I actually used 2 different types of ribbon to tie these with. The kind shown in the photo above is actually some shimmery brown American Crafts ribbon I had on hand.

Season's Sweetings

I've been dying to use Taylor's yummy holiday cupcake stamp set, and this paper from i {heart} papers was just the perfect complement to the tree. I decided to use Jen's wonderful sketch. For the horizontal stripe I used some of this luscious embroidered satin ribbon (also from i {heart} papers). This image is colored with Copics, but what you can't see in this scan (I really need to get a photo tent) is the sparkle from the Spica pens I used on the tree ornaments and the cherry on top of the cupcake. The star on top is colored with a gold marker, and the designer paper is also outlined with the same gold marker, although not very neatly; I actually decided after it was all put together to outline that piece.

I still don't know for sure what I'm using for my own cards this year, but this is a contender. One of the things I'm focusing on is a card that's flat enough not to need extra postage. I love using bling and ribbon, but the bumps and bows have caused several cards to be sent back to me for additional postage in the last few months, and me no likey that.

So waddya think?

Birthday Tulips

I wanted to share a card I made a little while ago using Ranger Crackle Accents. It's just like the Glossy Accents (which is just like Crystal Effects), but it dries to a crackled finish. I thought it was perfect for a vase. The stamp is a Lockhart image, and it's colored with Copic markers. I went over the tulips with my Sakura glaze pen to give them just a little dimension.

One of my co-workers will be receiving this on her birthday tomorrow.

Also used:
SU! scalloped edge punch and Soft Sky CS, Nestabilities, greeting from one of my PTI sets, and some random DP I picked up at Walmart a long time ago.

i {heart} papers Challenge

For the first ever i {heart} papers Design Team Challenge, we are focusing on "Giving Thanks" in honor of the upcoming holiday. I use Thank You cards all year (although not as often as I should), but this one is done in autumnal colors, using supplies available at i {heart} papers (of course).

If the layout of this card looks familiar, it's because it's the same layout as the card I showed a few days ago. It takes full advantage of large-scale printed papers that card makers might ordinarily shy away from. This gorgeous paper is called Windsor by s.e.i., and there's a matching stamp set that I used for the elegant sentiment and to stamp a shadow design on the background cardstock.

Be sure to check out my teammates' blogs:
Sarah
Cathleen
Deb
Amber
Loretta
Kendra
Lori
Tracy
Meredith

And as a special treat, check out the i {heart} papers blog for a limited time 10% off coupon!!!!

What I used:
Stamps: Windsor (s.e.i.)
Ink: More Mustard (SU!), Palette Burnt Umber
Paper: More Mustard, Chocolate Chip (SU!); Windsor (s.e.i.)
Other: Nestabilities, satin ribbon (PTI), scalloped edge punch (SU!)