ICICLE RUB-ONS CARD SET

Since I'm not doing my traditional Christmas Card Cranks this year, I wanted to give you some easy card ideas that you could do at home. I was hit by the Icicle Inspiration this morning and made this set in less than 2 hours. That included cutting, digging through the ribbon drawer and everything! What's Icicle Inspiration? It's the gorgeous Icicle Rub-ons in the Holiday Mini catalog (p. 27, #116804, $10.95). You get 2 sheets -- one with silver and the other with white.

This photo shows all 14 cards together. I used one sheet of the rub-ons, so you could really get twice as many cards. I actually used one more rub-on on Brocade Blue cardstock and it didn't show up very well, so you could get 30 cards from one package of rub-ons. As you can tell, I varied the embellishments so you could see what the various ribbons or brads look like. For all the cards, I used a card base of either Bordering Blue or Whisper White, then a layer of 4" x 5 1/4" Night of Navy for the rub-ons. The sentiments are all from Four The Holidays in the Holiday Mini catalog (p. 19, #116921, $13.95 for the set of 4). They're stamped in Night of Navy on a 1" x 3 1/2" piece of Whisper White which is layered on a 1 1/4" x 3 3/4" piece of Bordering Blue. Actually, there's one renegade that has a piece of Real Red instead. I wish I'd done a few more of those because I like the "pop" that it gives. I realized at some point that I needed to be careful about making the cards too patriotic LOL

So, now let's look at them closer up. Please excuse the line running through the scans. I have no idea what's causing that. I experimented with various ribbons and brads. If you're mailing these, you probably want to avoid the big knots or bows unless you have a really nice Post Office. When I only had a couple cards to go I remembered that you can use rub-ons on ribbon. Check out the ones on the wide red ribbon. Cool, huh!
So, which embellishment do you like best on these cards?

If you want to order the supplies to make these cards, you can do that directly from my website or by calling or emailing me. Remember to order your envelopes too. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Cheers,
Sharon

THOROUGHLY MODERN WOW FLOWERS Card Set

If you want to make a batch of card sets, check this out! This set uses the Thoroughly Modern designer series paper (#115673, p. 163, $9.95), Wow Flowers stamp set (#111714, p. 173, $12.95), and those super cool Gusseted Envelopes (#115693, p. 169, $5.95 for a set of 3), which I used as the packaging for the card set. Add a decorated pen and envelopes, tie a ribbon around it, and you've got a nice gift for teachers, friends, or someone who has everything.

The Gusseted Envelopes are designed to coordinate with the Thoroughly Modern designer series paper. There are 3 different designs in the set and if the planets align properly, I'll make another set with different stamps and different dsp sheets to go in another envelope and will post it soon.

You could definitely fit more than 4 cards in the envelope in case you want to be more generous. Or, you could put a gift card in the envelope with the cards. Better yet, put a Stampin' Up! gift certificate in the envelope. (Yep, you can purchase those from me.) Hmm, what else could you do with this?

The bottom two cards (the non thank you ones) are a bit non traditional. The base is simply a 4.25 x 5.5" base that doesn't open. The rectangle on top is a mini card that opens. It's perfect for a birthday card where you really don't need to write much other than the recipient's name and your autograph.

I'm feeling lazy today, so haven't made the effort to scan the individual cards. Yeah, I know, it's a push of a button. If you want me to scan the individual cards so you can see 'em up close, leave a comment to that effect.

Thanks for stopping by.


Cheers,
Sharon

HAVE A PHEASANT DAY

Sorry for the corny title, but you get what you pay for. Anyway, I made this card a while back using Stampin' Up!'s Autumn Days stamp set. The leaves were a bit of work because I colored the stamp with the markers and each leaf is different. But, other than that it was pretty straight forward. Enjoy!

My Digital Studio Cards

One of the many cool things about My Digital Studio is that you can make cards as well as scrapbook pages. The first of these three cards is one of the templates. All you'd have to do is print or email it to someone. Doesn't get easier than that! I did have to add the framed part in Photoshop because the white on white didn't work too well.

For the second one, I used the same scrapping kit, but changed the paper and ribbon.

For this last one, I used a completely different scrapping kit for a completely different feel with the same layout. So stinkin' easy! You gotta love it!

5 Minute Cards That Took 2 Days to Make

You know how sometimes cards evolve and your simple 5-minute creation turns into 30+ minutes or several days? This is one of those times! Both of these cards use Razzleberry, which is a 2009-2010 In Color.

The first card started out with the gorgeous French Filigree stamp in the background and a nice simple Upsy Daisy image in the foreground. Then it needed a bit more, so I spritzed it with that marker spritzer thingy --- oh yeah, the Color Spritzer Tool (p. 192, item 107066, $12.95 -- aren't I a good demonstrator giving you all that info? LOL) Add a bit of ribbon and it's done. But NOOOO, it needed more. So I pulled out Eastern Blooms and added flowers on the background. Pretty good. Then add some white dots on the scallop edge.

By this time everything had been glued together but it still didn't make me happy. So, I added a left hand border with the Finial Press embossing folder and punched it with my eyelet border punch. Now I wish I'd used a different color ribbon, but enough is enough!

In case you're interested, used the Circle Scissor Plus to cut the circles. I found it really easy to use once I put a smidge of temporary adhesive on the cardstock before attempting to cut.

So, on to this one. After doing the background with flowers on the previous card, I wanted to make one using French Filigree as stems/vines. Again, I figured it would be a really quick card. But somehow I had to keep adding stuff to make this work. I loved that I could use my In Color Markers (thanks SU!) to do multi-tone flowers by coloring directly on my stamp. This layout is really growing on me and I may have to make something else using it.

OK, time to go make Alton Brown's Swedish Meatballs for dinner, even though it's only 2:15 in the afternoon here. With the kiddos' after school activities, dinners are a multi-part process. Thank goodness for microwaves and crock pots! Where's that fairy godmother when you need her?

Cheers,
Sharon

Deal of the Week

Check out this week's Deal of the Week. If you've got a little pirate or princess in your life, you can't go wrong with these. Both kits provide the supplies for 8 invitations, decorations, eye-patch or crown, party favor holders and more. At $15.95 they're a pretty good deal, for the special price of $9.99 they're a GREAT DEAL! Plan ahead for your next party and order these now.

One of the cool things is that you can also order a a stamp set or even a personalized stamp to go with it.

This offer is only good through Oct 31, so order now. No really, click on one of the pictures and start ordering from my website. OK, so subtlety isn't one of my strong suits :-)

BLOGGING WITH MY DIGITAL STUDIO

How do you like the new blog header? I was playing around with the fantastic new My Digital Studio (referred to as MDS from here on out) and made some new headers. Who needs sleep when there's creativity to be had! One of the super cool things about MDS is that it's compatible with other software programs. So, I was able to crop the page in Photoshop so that it would fit as a header. In all honesty, it took a bit of time to make the first header, which is the Halloween one you see at the top of the page as of this posting. HOWEVER, the Autumn and Christmas ones which will be appearing at the appropriate times took almost no time at all. The most time consuming part was figuring out what images to use. LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!

If you haven't already discovered the Stampin' Up! You Tube channel, go check it out.



Oh cool, my upload worked! I'm feeling like a freakin' technical genius first with my digital scrapbooking and then uploading a You Tube video. Pretty amazing considering I never did figure out how to program the VCR, but that's ok 'cuz I can program the DVR.