CASEing Klass and CASEing Class

Hey There, It's Tuesday!

 

A blog friend of mine, Bonnie, of Stamping with Klass, is the Featured Stamper this week at Splitcoast Stampers (SCS).  Congratulations, Bonnie, for the well-deserved honor!

Bonnie is a prolicorice clean and simple (CAS) card maker whose work is so inspiring to me.  I have usually missed the opportunity to CASE (copy and share everything) a card from the past SCS Featured Stamper's galleries, for one reason or several, so I'm happy that I was able to make a card this week as a tribute to Bonnie.

 

It was very difficult to decide on a card to CASE from Bonnie's outstanding gallery at SCS, but eventually I settled on this cutie patootie from September 14, 2010:

 

 

We are to change at least two elements when we create our CASE card.  Here's what I made:

I love Bonnie's little vase of flowers.  I flipped the card and made my vase by layering several small Cuttlebug ornament die cuts.  I used dimensionals, and patterned paper, and dotted swiss instead of the textured plate embossing.  I used the colors, which are favorites of mine, to play in this week's Color Throwdown Challenge:

 

Or not.  I just noticed the collection is closed.  Don't you hate it when that happens?  That's okay.  That challenge photo is so amazing.

Anyhoodle, I hope sweet Bonnie likes my VASE CASE card!

 

~~~

 

I have enrolled in my first online class!  The class is one I imagine a lot of you are familiar with.  It is Clean and Simple Card Making 2.  I enjoyed the videos yesterday very much and I learned several practical tips already! 

Our homework was to make a CAS card CASEing one of four sketches.  I can't copy and show you the sketch I chose for obvious reasons, but I can show you the card I made:

 

You'll have to trust me that it looks similar to the talented Julie Ebersole's card.

Okay, I know, I didn't follow the "Rule of Three."  But, shuckie cheese, there is also a "Rule That If You Mess Up, You Put Bling Over It," especially if the other tips don't work. 

So with the conversation bubble counting as one, I have five blings ... go ahead, count, I know you want to ... that makes six, which is doubly pleasing to the eye, right?  Three squared, right?  Rule of Six*?  Doubly pleasing or chicken poxish? 

 

Whichever which way, between the up and down chevron washi tap and the pops of spots, this card is just wild about you!

 

~~~

 

And that's about enough out of me.  I'm off to take my second class.  Oh, wait, did you meet Kay?  We are so lucky to welcome Kay Miller of My Joyful Moments today!  Don't you love that banner name?  Talk about a girl after my own heart ~ and just wait until you see her sensational cards!!

 

~~~

 

Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy your day.  LITS!

Thank you so much for stopping by the Playhouse.  Special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment or join as a follower!

 

 

 *You know if you put on your blog that the Rule of Six is so on trend right now, we could start something.

LIM96; SCS CCC12; PIXIE'S49 ~ December Birthday

Hello Friends!

I'm back at work three days this week.  Part of the time I am being trained on new upgrades to our office computer software.  Knowing the condition of my memory, I'll just let you have a good laugh about that.  I found that the key is to nod my head whenever the teacher looks at me.  I have perfected that illusive "all-knowing" look!   Sssh.

I have one anniversary card and several birthday cards to make in December, including a card for one of my sisters, and cards for the twins who will turn eight on the 20th!  Swoosh!

Today's card is for a dear friend who loves riding her bicycle ~ miles and miles!  And she runs and she makes cards and she quilts and she's a busy wife, mom, and grandmom.  Lawsy, I had to sit back in my chair and take a breath for a minute after typing all that!

I am playing with these challenges:

 It is a colour week at Less is More where Chrissie and Jen have chosen RED and GREEN, appropopo.  Please join in ~ there is a new sponsor for you to check out, too!

 I'm linking up again over at Splitcoast Stampers in the thread for Holiday Cards for 2012, but I'm not sure my card is strictly legal.  It isn't, technically, a holiday card, but my stinking is that it would be super cute with the sediment "Happy Holidays" in place of "Happy Birthday," and the bike basket does contain masked and unmasked Christmas pointia setias, which means it's still a holiday-inspired card.  Sort of.

 And last, by not least, I think my impish snippets-using girlfriends across the pond at Pixie's Crafty Workshop will get a kick out of my polky-dotty bikey!  Before mulling over the wine, I'll make another one from another snippet and everyone can take turns going for a spin.  I think a red one this time.  And maybe one of the girls knows how to do a handstand on the handlebars, which would be a swell number for the concert for the geezers!

Have a look.  (Another cloudy day here.)

I think my friend will really like this one.

~~~

On my last post, I forgot to thank the kind ladies at The Play Date Cafe for the creamy shoutout for my ribbon card last week.  I am very appreciative of the honor!! 

~~~

Enjoy your day!   No, seriously, enjoy your day.   Next thing you know, you'll turn around and have grandkids eight years old!

As always, thank you for stopping by to visit.   Special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower or leave a comment!

 An oldie but goodie from Pinterest  

Paper:  PTI white; SU? green 

Stamps:  SU! "Party This Way";

  Rubber Stamp Tapestry poinsettia

Ink:  PTI new leaf; SU! real red

Die:  Memory Box, "Brand New

  Bicycle"

Twine:  doodlebug design inc.

Corner Chomper

PDCC158 Colors; Pixie's 48 Snippets; SCS CCC12

Welcome to Cyber Monday!

 

Like anyone is going to see this post today.  I know you are all cyber shopping.  I'm going to be doing a bit of that myself here shortly.  I read in the paper that Cyber Monday is passe.  Really?  Sounds like that's a rumor being spread by the still-standing brick-and-mortar stores, but I may just be suspectious.

 

My card today came about via round-about.  I was at our local crafty store, sort of a small Michael's, and I found this scrummable ribbon in the cheap bin o' ribbons:

 

 

I bought it because it's like a finely textured sweater with impossibly thin threads of gold weaved into the material.  Also, I remembered I had some ancient Christmas tree paper in the same sagey colors.  I hoped I still had some.  This morning I found it, one tiny piece a bit larger than the front of an A2 card.  It was, indeedy, a perfect fit with the ribbon.

 

So I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew because I was going to use that last snippet of paper, that I could enter Week 48 over at Di's fun playground site, Pixie's Crafty Workshop.  I so appreciate having found that site because it serves as a reminder to me to reach for my snippets paper drawers, instead of my uncut paper drawers.  I could say something ear reverent . . .

 

I next looked to see if any of my other favorite challenges might fit my card, instead of the other way around.  I was pickled to find the perfect colors over at The Play Date Cafe:

 

 

This week's suggested colors are ...

Rose...Eucalyptus...Slate

and they have a brand new sponsor:

 

who is offering a fabulous prize!

And just for fun, I went over to Splitcoast Stampers where I found a thread for Holiday Cards for 2012.

 

Now that you are all suspended, here's my card:

 

 

This is definitely going to be a custom one-of-a-kind card now that the paper is gone,  but I seem to really be loving using ribbon lately, so I'll make more cards with this design.  I usually avoid the hard-to-mail cards, but at Christmas we send a family photo card to everyone out-of-town.  As a result, all the cards you see on my blog will be cards that will be hand-delivered.  It's fun to be able to go wild and shut up that incessant, insistent, practical voice in my head!  I'm kidding.  I can't shut it up because I am unable to extinquish it from all the other voices in there.

 

~~~

 

I didn't tell you yesterday because I was already running long (read boring), but Mister woke up Friday morning with a terrible sore throat, which then blossomed into a cold.  Last night, it jumped through all the precautions we were taking and came to visit me.  Not only that, but I had the added pleasure of waking up to find Lar N. Gitis had snuck into bed next to me during the night.  Rat bastard.  Let's be honest, the Mister is okay with that.  It's so blessed quiet around here!!

 

~~~

Enjoy your day!   No, seriously, enjoy your day.  And enjoy my blooming camilia!

 

 

As always, thank you for stopping by to visit. Special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower or leave a comment!

 



Paper:  PTI vintage cream;
  unknown bp; PTI autumn rose
Stamps:  SU! unknown set
Ink:  Vivid! cobblestone
Ribbons: leaf label says:  Ribbon,
  Sold-by-the-Spool 79856 58554;
  and Offray Au Rouge
SU! tag punches and eyelet
Crop-a-dile

My Birthday Tribute to Loll ~ SCS FS282 "Quit Yer Lollygagging!"

Today is my birthday!  Sing it with me!  No, really, today IS my birthday.  I'm at that age now where the HAPPY is really in the birthday, 'cause I'm really HAPPY to be around to have another round!

We celebrated with the kids and our dear friends Jeff and Susan on Saturday, pictures below, but first things first.

Loll Thompson is an amazing and prolific card crafter.  She has appeared over the years more than any other artist in my Binder of Inspirations.  Here is a direct link to her SCS Gallery.  Be prepared with a beverage and if you get past the first page in the gallery without your jaw on the floor, well, I can't even image how that's possible.

So it is quite exciting that Loll is the featured stamper over at Splitcoast Stampers.  In honor of Loll, other crafters are CASEing one or more of her cards.  It is HARD to pick one!  And it's intimidating to think about CASEing one in the first place and then publishing it for all the world to compare!  But it's my birthday, and filling out my big girl panties gets easier with each passing birthday!

Here is Loll's beautiful original artwork:

And here is my CASE:

You see how the flowers in her window box look neat?  And mine look all tangled, like the photo is blurry, but it's not, it's just that I added too many?  Teacher / Student.  I'm okay with that and am grateful there are card artists like Loll for me to perspire too.

Now let's talk about me.  I have one of those "slap-your-forehead" birthdays that fall on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd of any month.  You know how you turn the calendar and see it's so-and-so's birthday and dagnabbit your card is going to be late?  It's really okay to be that so-and-so because we get to receive cards for several days AFTER our birthdays!  Mister always says I'm the only person he knows who celebrates for an entire week.  (Me, grinning.)  Included in that week, of course, here in the USA, is the 4th of July.  People always say that I must have been born a premie because I'm definitely a firecracker!

Here are a few photags from the party on Saturday.

Jeff, Susan, Dan, Rachel, Kevin (Mister/Papa)

Duke the Dog

~~~

The twins helped make birthday cupcakes for me (Bama) and Susan:

Adam, Bama, Henry, Susan

Jeff and Susan have been friends for 35 years.  I don't mean friends with each other, although that's true, too, I'm sure; I mean they have been our friends that long.  That's a gift right there!  Susan is included in the celebration because her birthday is also in July, on the 25th.

I received the coolest bracelet ever!

(A momentary aside:  The bracelet is laying on one of the old day-to-day placemats we've been using for about five years now.  Note the trendy chevron pattern!)

I also received a very cool planter full of cacti . . .

. . . which we are going to endeavor not to kill. Mister and I tend to overwater cacti, while Dan and Rachel, on the other hand, are skilled at maintaining extraordinary cacti gardens at their place. Thank you for the great party and the gifts!

Enjoy! As always, thank you for stopping by to visit. Special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower or leave a comment!

Paper:  PTI rustic cream; SU violet
Stamps:  Leaves from Rubber Stamp Tapestry
  Flowers, SU Pocket Silhouettes; sentiment,
  SU Party This Way; W R M Botanicals 42035-4
Ink:  SU crumb cake, Marvy old olive, violet,
  and lavender
Pop Dots

ColourQ Challenge #127 and SCS CC365

Ah, this has gone a little better today.  Rather than sketches, I checked out some color challenges and had some fun making a couple of Easter cards.  The first one I'll load is for ColourQ #127.  Here are the colors:

And here is my card:

The card is Blushing Bride, the image is stamped on glossy White, the bowl, frame and word are done in Chocolate Chip, and the eggs are colored with Certainly Celery and Calypso Coral.

The second color challenge is the Tuesday Color Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers, "CC365-A Very Wild Bride!"   Karen B. Barber is bringing us the colors for this challenge and she has chosen: Very Vanlla, Wild Wasabi, and Blushing Bride. Here is my card with just these colors:

For the SCS challenge, I stamped the images on Very Vanilla instead of glossy white.

You can see that both challenges had very similar ideas!  In both cases, I embossed the background stamp first and then ran the embossed sheet through the Cuttlebug using the egg die and then I daubed the colors onto the eggs, which I think turned out so cute.

Please help me welcome TWO new followers (!): Cheryl and Scrappymo!  I very much appreciate having you join me on this journey!  And thanks to all for stopping by and, as always, know that your comments make my day!

Enjoy!

Paper and Inks, all SU as state above
Stamps: Box and Words: Papertrey Ink Framed
   Bowl: Stamps by Judith
   Background:  SU Fine Lace
Embossing Powder:  Imprintz white
Markers:  Marvy
Cuttlebug/PTI Easter egg die
Pop-dots

CFC42 and SCS374

GMS!  I have two cards today - WOOHOO, which stands for woo and hoo, nothing else.  I've worked for years at a company that uses a TON (meaning a lot) of acronyms.  It took me quite a while to fit in with the lingo and I couldn't resist, of course, making up nonsense acronyms whenever I could!  JFTFOI.

And now, in this WWW of online stampers and crafters, I am sometimes at a loss for WTH all the acronyms mean like RKY, or CAS, or DWP.  Know what I mean?  But I'm getting the HANG (meaning suspend or dangle) of it.  Huh?  Why do we use it to mean "understand" I wonder.  BID.

Today I made a card for CAS-ual Fridays CFC42:



The challenge is to make a clean and simple baby project.  Here is mine:

Embossing yesterday reminded me of how much I enjoy embossing.  I know gray is an odd color for a baby card, but because I embossed the rattle in silver, it seemed to be the thing to do, in my mind.  I first embossed the rattle in silver and then embossed the bow in yellow.  To join in the fun and make a CAS BABY (meaning infant) card or project, please check out the awesome CAS-ual Fridays site.

The idea for the sketch layout of the BABY card came from Splitcoast Stampers sketch #374 challenge.  For that challenge, I originally made this SPDC.  I stamped my Hero Arts heart stamp three times to make it look like a shamrock and then I surrounded it with rhinestone bling.  Like this:

I have to say that I made the mistake of going to SCS first thing this morning and checking out the other cards and now I'm wondering if I shouldn't instead be putting these cards just in the CAS category.  My cards are VERY (meaning quite) unadorned compared to most of the beautiful cards already downloaded.  Or uploaded.  Now the term "loaded" I am familiar with and one time ... hey now.

I'm happy to welcome Wilma Kelly of Smitten with Stampin as a follower.  Stop by and welcome her online, if you can, as she is just starting out.  Have a fabulous Sunday, wherever you are.  Thank you, as always, for stopping to visit me and say hi!

Enjoy! TTFN

Baby
Paper:  Bazzill gray, unknown other
Stamps: rattle and sentiment are both SU, unknown sets
Embossing powder: silver, Stampa Rosa; yellow SU maize

St. Pat's
Paper:  Unknown green, DSP is SU
Stamps:  shamrock from HA Heart, stem from SU leaf
Oval: Creative Memories cutter
Rhinestones: unknown

SCS CAS156 Hearts - "Hearts In Bloom"

I have a simple post today and an entry in the Clean and Simple CAS156 Hearts challenge.  I've had these hearts charms forever and so, unfortunately, I have no clue where I got them.  They just looked like they would make sweet Valentine heart flowers on a card.  I lightly smooshed SU light blue and light pink chalk for some background texture.

Enjoy!  Thanks for looking and for any comments!


Papertrey Ink: Rustic Cream
Stamp:  SU "Inspired by Nature"
Ink:  Green Marvy markers for stems,
        SU chalks for background
Accessories:  Gold heart charms / pop-up foam, unknown