$50 joining kit last day

June 30th is the last day to sign up for $50!  You chose the items you want, make the started kit your own, and because the type of demonstrator you want to be.  Do you want to make some extra money and be a business minded demonstrator?  Or do you just have a lot of items on your wish list and so you want to be a hobby demonstrator and get a discount on the things you love?  It's up to you!  You can click on the Join my Team tab at the top and watch a video on Stampin' Up! And read more about it.  Here is a flyer outlining some of the details.
Feel free to contact me for any details, but hurry because it all ends soon!

MDS Blog Hop ~ What are we working on?

Hi everyone!!  It's MDS Blog Hop day!!  Yea!  The MDS Blog Hop is put together by a group of Demos who LOVE MDS!  We hope on the second and fourth Thursday of each month, the first hop having a Theme and the second being a "what are we working on" day.  Well, I am working on Digital Stamp cards!  I have some customers who would like to learn how to better use digital stamps in their crafting, and so I am making up some samples to show.  Then I hope to find a good time to have some ladies over to make some digital stamp cards.   One of the stamp sets I have been thinking of getting is the Wetlands stamp set.  I can't decide if I will get a lot of use out of it, but there was a card online that I thought was really pretty and I wanted to make something like it.  Digital stamps were my solution.  The digital version of this set is just $ 4.95, so I decided that was the way to go.  And I love that I can go from ordered to using the set in just minutes! 

I started out by adding all of the digital elements to an 8 1/2 by 11 page.  I used punch boxes to add the digital paper that I wanted to use ("Sweater Weather" used here).  Another great thing about digital crafting, you wont run out of your favorite patterned paper!  I also added the color washes behind the stamp, these came from the "Be Yourself" download.

I printed out my images on Whisper White paper.

I cut out all my pieces and assembled my cards.

  Some linen thread and a natural button complete the project.

This card was fun too!  I love this digital Download, "Calling all heros".   Inside the card says "thanks" in a fun comic book looking font.

I used dimensionals to pop up the top city scape and the "My Hero!"











And, by having this stamp set in digital format you can add masks and toupees to your babies photos!  Silly but fun.










Well, I hope that you see some fun in using Digital Stamps!  Now hop on over to Holly's blog where you will see what she is working on, I'm sure it will be great!

New Weekly deals today!

There are some great bargains in the weekly deals today!  check them out!

Too Kind in Hello Honey

Hi eveyone!   Playing with the new In-Colors today!  I really like the rich colors that came out this year.  I think fall colors are my favorite and so I am really drawn to these colors. Here is Hello Honey!  I right away had to use the honeycomb paper from the new Moonlight paper stack with it.  A bit obvious I know, but it had to be done. 
I used the stamp set Too Kind for this card.  The "Too Kind" stamp set is a fun one because it is a "two-step" stamp.  You use two stamps together to make the final image. I stamp the lighter shade by inking up the stamp in Hello Honey, then stamped it onto a piece of scrap paper, then stamped it onto the final Whisper White card stock.  Next I stamped the overlay stamp in Hello Honey at full strength.  The stems are in Mossy Meadow.  I seem to keep using the ovals collection framelits to frame my main images lately!

 I used the smaller flower on the inside.
















The greeting ended up too low :(  but I thought I would show it anyway. 

 Thanks for stopping by today!!

Moonlight paper stack

Ovals collection framelits

Too Kind Stamp set

Watercolor meets Regarding Dahlia

I love the big flower in the Regarding Dahlia set.  So big and pretty!  If you follow my blog you also know that I love my Aqua Painters. So, I had to combine the two.
At first look I thought it would be hard to do because the petals of the stamp are somewhat small and there are a lot of them, but I actually found it to be really easy.  Here is what I did.  First I inked up the stamp with Rose Red (I am loving Rose Red with Mossy Meadow by the way!).   I stamped on watercolor paper. 

 I used the slimmer brush and started by coloring in the petals with the lines in them. They end up darker due to the added ink in the petals.  The lines start to blur and that is ok.

Here is the end result.  I sometimes did add some extra ink from the lid of my stamp pad to make some petals a little darker, but mostly I just relied on the ink from the stamped image.  I love the dark and light shades I got with these petals.  Next I sponged the edges with crumb cake and even used the aqua painted and some crumb cake ink to add a bit of shadow around the flower.















I used a post-it note to mask the flower, then stamped the swirls from the "Everything Elenore" set. 

The bumpiness of  the watercolor paper can make stamping tough, but I just went over the swirls with my aqua painter and they ended up looking great!

I stamped the "Hello, You" onto watercolor paper, and then punched it out with the Artisan Label punch and sponged the edges.  I added some Mossy Meadow Ribbon strips behind the label. 










Hope you like today's card!  And I hope I've inspired you to get out your Aqua Painters!
Thanks for stopping by!!

another zentangled!!

More Zentangling cards, and more MDS!  These hearts are made with an MDS download! Seriously there are just so many stamps that come with MDS you really need it if only to use what it comes with!  Want to see what it comes with? click here!
And, what you may not know is that even the kits that don't say "stamp You need to look at the images for sure, but also check out the description pages that follow. 

I printed out my sheet of digital stamps, then cut them apart to use on various projects.

The I added my section lines and stated to make the fun Zentangling patterns.

I added a tangle of Strawberry Slush Twine. 

This "love you always" stamp is from the new "something to say" stamp set. 

A little more Zen

I am still playing with Zentangling.  It is really fun and relaxing.  The technique is found at this link if you would  like to see a video or more samples. I was looking for some stamps that would work will this technique and I didn't really have very many bold outline stamps.  I decided to go to MDS and search there.  I resized this coffee cup from the "Perfect Blend" download and printed it out. 

If you are familiar with this stamp, you might have realized that I altered it a bit.  I had to "Clean up" the sketchy-ness in the areas I wanted to "Zentangle".   The cup on the left is the cleaned up version.  To make it look this way I added a brush layer with the free form tool and added white on top of the lines to make them disappear.



After I printed the cup out, I added the separation lines.

Then I added my patterns and cut the cup out.

My fab son Zachary saw what I was doing and made his own version of Zentangling! Isn't it so cute!!?!  It is a "Cup of love" and it says "kind, super, nice, loving" at the bottom and the ice cubes all say things like "love" and "awesome".  He us such a sweetie!!

Blooming watercolor

I was inspired by some recent cards on my fellow MDS Monday team members blog.  Heidi has made some really pretty watercolor cards and I wanted to get out my aqua painters and make some too!  The Aqua Painters do get a lot of use in my house, I even bought some for my kids so they would leave mine alone! 

I inked up my stamp from the Hostess set "Bloom with Hope" and then gave the stamp a spritz with some Stampin' Mist (stamp cleaner ~ you can use water but this is always sitting on my desk and it smells pretty) and stamped my paper.

I took my thin Aqua Painter and added a bit of ink and water in Rose Red to the flowers, letting the ink get smeary. 

I did the same with the green, in this case Mossy Meadow.

I next used Soft Sky to add a background.  I also gave it a bit of distressing by adding some crumb cake dots with the tip of a broken pencil.

I cut out an oval with the Oval Collection framelits.  I added a little depth to the top layer by sponging along all the edges and using Versamark (a watermark ink) to ink up the leaf stamp from the same set.  Versamark gives a nice tone on tone color effect. 

I added some ribbon and a Happy birthday and I was done! 
I think it turned out rather pretty but a bit safe, did you check out this one by Heidi?  Not safe at all, but stunning, I need to be a bit freer with my water, I keep the brush a bit drier.  I'm going to try to let loose a bit next time :) 
Thanks for stopping by!!