Beanstalks

Jack and the Beanstalk is a fairy tale full of wonder and mystery, and the ever fun phrase "Fee-fi-fo-fum" that my boys used to giggle at every time during the story. It is nice to know that fairy tales usually have good endings, and that Jack and his mother lived happily ever after with their new wealth obtained from the giant.



I'm excited to showcase a new stamp set from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps being released this month called Beenstalks. Michele did a wonderful job designing this set as usual! There are many background building vine elements in this set, some stand alone images as well as beautiful sentiment choices. I stamped the large, solid leaf sample repeatedly on watercolor paper and then misted with water in a few choice places. After then panel dried, I stamped the sentiment and the whimsical leaf images, fussy cut white leaves and then added black enamel accents. I stitched the panel to a green card base. Please stop by the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Blog for more excited examples!

I'm going to take a blogging break to get some things in order, not sure how long it will be. I'll miss commenting on your gorgeous creations and creating some projects of my own, but it is what is needed right now.

Right Where I Need To Be

Right Where I Need To Be by Gary Allan is "our" song, I guess, because the hubby and I had a long-distance dating relationship of two years before getting married. This led me to think of a target, being right where you need to be, being on target, etc. so this card came to be. I like listening to Gary sing the song, but I do like my husband's better... he's got a rather good voice and for some reason can remember all the words to any song.

The theme at CAS-ual Fridays Challenge is Love Song: Create a clean and simple project inspired by a love song. The sponsor this week is CAS-ual Fridays Stamps! Please stop by the CAS-ual Fridays Challenge Blog for inspiration from the Girl Fridays, read about the challenge rules and details, and find out more about the prize!

To give the card a bit of interest, I did trim around the feathers of the arrow and mounted a piece of yellow card stock under the blue panel.

Cupid

Cupid. A mischevious, winged child armed with a bow and arrows famous for piercing hearts and making his targets fall deeply in love... ~source
The Craft's Meow is gearing up towards the Valentine Holiday with a day full of lovely inspiration. If you are following the hop you should have arrived from Jessica's Blog, and if you've just begun, you can find the entire list of links at The Craft's Meow Blog.

The Craft's Meow has an amazing collection of Valentine's Day/Love Themed Stamp Sets, you can find them all here! I chose to work with the super sweet Valentine Wishes stamp set, because I needed some children friendly cards to send to a friend for her recent card drive.

I stamped the sweet Cupid image onto plain white cardstock and colored him in with markers. The wings have a touch of glitter added to them, and I scribbled a shadow around the image as well with a light gray marker. I stamped the sentiment and finished the card with a few layers of washi tape.

Today's Tip: Make an image pop off the card base by coloring the area around it with a light gray or brown marker.

There is a prize today too, for participating in the hop and leaving comments! Your choice of an in-stock stamp set! You have until 8:00 pm Pacific on Saturday, February 9th to leave comments.

The next stop is Lin!

Their Own Situation

It's not too often that I listen to the radio and actually hear the song. When this one came on the other day, I had tears rollin' down my cheeks before it was even finished. It hit a chord with me, like he was explaining everything right now in my life-from both dies of the song (although the situations weren't the same).  I'll share the chorus with you: "(They don't understand.) Everybody's busy with their own situation. Everybody's lost in their own little world. Bottled up, hurry it up try to make a dream come true. (They don't understand.) Everybody's living like there ain't no tomorrow. Maybe we should stop and take a little time. 'Cause you never really know what your neighbor's going through. (They don't understand.)

Stopping in today with two cards I made using the absolutely gorgeous February Artful Delight Card Kit. Dreamy it is! You can check out the contents here.

And here's this month's Artful Delight Card Sketch, that you can create a project for and link up too, for your chance to win a kit of choice! (Scrapbook or card kit, they are both equally awesome.) Both my cards followed the sketch with two different results. (The plate to make the impression on the card base of the first card and the May Arts Burlap String used on both cards, along with the sentiment on the second, are the only items NOT in the kit!)

Today's Tip: Use leftovers! I cut out the inside of the postage stamp sticker to make a frame and used the unused backing to mount the butterfly sticker so that I could fold his wings for some dimension on my card.

Today's Question: When you have multiple cards per post, do you share your favorite first or last? I always share my favorite first, but then wonder if it is the last card that people think about when they click to another blog...

Ribbonista Hop

The Ribbonistas at May Arts have a few Valentine's up their sleeves to show you these next few days! Today is the first day of the Blog Hop, you should have arrived from Virginia's blog! (A complete list of participating blogs is available at The May Arts Blog.) Please be sure to leave us comments for entries for the prize, as there are four spools of your choice if you are the winner!
 

No card for me today, but a really sweet Valentine Towel!

(Disclaimer: I shamelessly stole this idea from my mother. She is the master sewer and mentioned this idea!
I'm not great at sewing and only have an itty bitty machine, this was so easy to do!)

Only just a few supplies. I picked my towel up at the Dollar Store and I chose this ribbon.

(The mircofiber makes sewing a bit slippery, so take it slow and easy.

Backstitch at the ends to prevent unraveling.

Oh, and remove the pins before you get to the needle!)

This was so super easy and only took around fifteen minutes, literally the longest part was pinning the trim to the edge of the towel. 

I am going to use this idea for so many holidays, as May Arts offers NINE colors of this mini pom-pom trim! Can you see a black towel trimmed with the cute orange and purple poms, or add some black grosgrain to this towel for a cute Santa-inspired gift?!

The next stop is Lalo! Thanks for visiting!

Ice Fishing

It's cold, so very cold, here in Wisconsin. What better way to beat the winter blues than to pull out a beautiful, spring stamp and ink it up? The boys, rather, are going ice fishing at the annual fisheree, I sometimes think they are crazy.

Later today the 49er's play the Ravens in the Super Bowl. Normally with any household in Wisconsin there would be some resentment seen as how the beloved Packers lost a couple weeks back to the 49ers, however, there will be some partying going on at my house. My husband has trained the little one to be an avid 49er's fan, just has he has been since he was a young buck.

I do have a general tip today, but please stop by The Craft's Meow Blog for more details...

Today's Tip: Selectively fussy cut around an stamped image from a collage stamp for a whole new look.

**So much spam lately, I've got to moderate my comments. Do you have this problem too? If you don't see your comment pop up right away, that's why! Hope it is only temporary.**

February Love

Another Valentine's Day is almost upon us now the February is here, and CAS-ual Fridays has a challenge perfect for getting you prepared, if you do so wish.

Create a project using letters: letter dies, letter stickers, letter stamps...It will be most fun! Ellen Hutson is sponsoring the challenge and the cool prize is a $25 gift certificate. Please stop by the CAS-ual Fridays Blog to read more about the prize, sponsor and see fabulous lettered inspiration from the Girl Fridays!

Today's Tip: Ink up letter stamps while still on the acetate sheet, selectively remove ink from the "h" and "i" and ink with a marker, then stamp.

Sparkly Love

Still feeling puny over here, so I've got to keep this short and sweet. I've got one last card featuring products from the January Artful Delight Card Kit. (The February Kit arrived yesterday and I all but drooled over the contents of that one too!)

I dry embossed the card base and die cut sentiment panel. There is a bit of May Arts silver ribbon (not in the kit) tucked behind the tuft of tulle that was stapled to a black banner. I added some silly string, as I like to call it, behind the sentiment panel to break up all the black. The chipboard letters had some silver glitter glue slathered all over them to change up the look.

3x3

**Please scroll down for my Paper Smooches CHA post as well as the Skipping Stones Design Blog Hop post.**

The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah. The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah... The Ants Go Marching was one of the first ever books I ordered from Scholastic when my baby was in daycare, and I will never, ever, get rid of it. Both my boys loved it, and the best part of it all is that they mostly loved it when I read it to them because I made the corresponding noises and voices, etc. (The Ants Go Marching and Cowboy Bunnies.)

I made a 3x3 card. Its a wee bitty thing! When I read of Moxie Fab World's 75 Creative Card Challenges Week: Make an Itty Bitty Card, this stamp from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps was the first that came to my mind. I stamped and heat embossed it in green onto a stitched rectangle die cut, then mounted that to some patterned paper and then onto a card base. Reminds me of the no-fuss kind of cards that you give men... You still want them to look nice, but you've got to get the point across and not use too much of the "expensive stuff".

Today's Tip: Embrace mistakes. I didn't get fine results from embossing so I embraced the grungy look and reached for masculine colors and designs, as well as inked up the edges.

*Lynda, I wasn't able to contact you via email or find a link to your blog. I've updated my previous two blog posts with the answers to your two questions!

Design Motifs

**Please scroll down to see my Skipping Stones Design Farewell Blog Hop post**

Paper Smooches is showing off their CHA release during the entire month of January. 37 designers (including me!) are participating along with the Paper Smooches Design Team, so there will be a ton of projects to inspire you this month. Paper Smooches is known for their fun and whimsical hand-drawn stamps. They decided that it was time to broaden their product line to include DIES and wood mount stamps! I have a project to share using NEW Paper Smooches Product that releases on February 1, 2013 on their website along with many retail stores around the globe. You will find a new blog link (or two) to follow every day in January at the PS Blog.

Paper Smooches is giving away $500 worth of product! Hidden on FIVE of the participating blogs is a prize package worth $100 each. The prize includes a variety of stamp sets, wood mounts and dies. Comment on as many blogs as you can to increase your chances to be one of the five winners. Deadline to comment is January 30th, winners will be announced on the PS Blog on January 31st.

Today I'm introducing Design Motifs, a clear stamp set with many, many geometric shapes! How fun it will be to put together your own pattern with these stamps. My first card features the large chevron image, stamped repeatedly in rows of magenta, orange and red onto watercolor paper. I sprayed some water on the top edge of the image and let the colors drip together, and then finished with some white splatters and a sentiment from Word Up. The embellishments are simple: some black floss and a few coordinating colors.

I've got another card too, featuring the long stamp contained of many rectangle boxes in different shapes. Some simple gold embossing onto a custom background paper, along with the same sentiment and tied with May Arts Burlap String. This set, Design Motifs, was entirely way to fun to work with and there are about a million pattern combinations swirling in my head-waiting to make their way onto paper...

*I used the residual ink left on my baby wipe after cleaning up my mess on the first card to make the background on the second. Just pressed the wipe onto a clean sheet of watercolor paper!*

I enjoyed making my own background paper for these two cards...thanks to Moxie Fab World's 75 Creative Card Challenges Week: Make your Own Background Paper Challenge for the inspiration!

I'm so honored to be among this amazing line-up of designers to help Kim and Paper Smooches introduce their fabulous new product. Thank you!