Bermuda Bay Merry Little Wish

The color of this card base, Bermuda Bay, always makes me happy! It reminds me of the beach. So my merry little wish today is to be somewhere warm, with my toes in the sand :). 

Don't you just love the texture of the burlap ribbon against the Bermuda Bay background? The Christmas tree from the Stampin' Up! Festival of Trees set is embossed with Pool Party embossing powder on Whisper White card stock, then the ornaments were stamped in Versamark ink and embossed with gold embossing powder. Finally, the tree was topped with a gold glimmer star, punched with the itty bitty accents punch. 

The sentiment is stamped in Bermuda Bay ink on Whisper White card stock and punched with the large oval punch, and added to a Coastal Cabana scallop oval.

Dimensions: Bermuda Bay: 5-1/2" x 8-1/2", Coastal Cabana: 2-1/2" x 3-3/4", Whisper White: 2" x 3-1/2". Both the coastal cabana and whiper white piece are rounded on one side with the Project Life corner rounder punch.

Click any of the links in the project description to go to my online store to find these products. I'd love to see what you create!

Happy Stamping!

Big News Birthday

Birthday cards seem to be the cards I need most often, so I like to keep a variety on hand. Today's card is an easy (less than 10 minute) card for the Song of My Heart Christmas party Shoe Box Swap.

If you're not familiar with shoe box swaps, basically each person who is attending designs a card and cuts a set of all the pieces for each person who is attending and puts them in a shoebox or other container. Then they add the stamp set, any ribbon, embellishments,  a glass block, punches, ink pads, etc. to the box so that everyone else can recreate the card that they designed. We go around the room, making each of the cards, with a break for fun and food about halfway through the process. Since we have about 20 people attending, that's quite a bit of stamping!

The Designer Series Paper (dsp) is from the Stampin' Up! Lullaby pack. There are some great patterns in the set that can be used not only for baby cards, but for many other occasions too. I thought that the baked brown sugar and pistachio pudding patterns worked well for a more masculine birthday card.

Start by cutting your 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 card base from Crumb Cake card stock and folding in half.  Then cut a 1" x 5-1/2" strip of the brown sugar Lullaby dsp, a 3-3/8" x 2-1/2" piece of whisper white card stock, and a 4" x 2-3/4" piece of pistachio pudding Lullaby dsp. Stamp the birthday sentiment from the Big News stamp set in Wild Wasabi ink on the whisper white card stock, then attach the pieces. Next, stamp the candle twice in Pistachio Pudding ink. If desired, you can use the Wild Wasabi Stampin' Write Marker to darken the wick a little, especially on the dsp.

Punch two stars from gold glimmer paper and attach with a glue dot at the top of the stamped wick.

Lastly, stamp 'Enjoy the fuss' in the lower right corner in Baked Brown Sugar ink.
Quick and easy! Just what this season of holiday busyness calls for.

Visit my online store to purchase these or many other great Stampin' Up! products. As always, the clearance rack items are in the rotating display on the right panel of my page, so check there for great stocking stuffers!

Happy stamping!

Merry Little Wish Bag

No time to make a card today, but I found a little time this week to finish up a couple of Paper Pumpkin bags that were left over in my craft room from the In The Bag Kit:

The first one just uses the circles and letters from the kit, and may get more embellishments at a later date. It's looking a wee bit plain for a party bag :)

For the second one, I turned the blue circles over and used the plain white side, then added circles of wild wasabi behind the letters. I cut a star with the star framelit die from Wild Wasabi card stock, and cut an additional star the same size using the red-flocked window sheet from the Stampin' Up! Candlelight Christmas stack (retired). Then I used two star framelits to create a Real Red border around it.  Little gold glimmer stars were punched using the star punch from the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack.

If you don't have the February 2014 Paper Pumpkin kit, you could make your own circles with punches or dies and add lettering with stickers or stamps. For the red-flocked window sheet you could add color to a plain window sheet with heat embossing or craft ink, or substitute a stamped star for the window sheet. There are SOOOO many possibilities!

Paper Pumpkin kits make great gifts too! You can purchase them as a prepaid subscription or as a month-to-month subscription. See all the details on prepaid subscriptions here.

If you're interested in a month-to-month subscription you can visit My Paper Pumpkin to get more information and to sign up today! There are many ideas for Paper Pumpkin kits on my Paper Pumpkin Ideas Pinterest board. So check them out, then come join the fun!

Happy Stamping!

Merry Little Wish Upon Christmas Stars

At our October Stampin' Up! demonstrator group meeting I shared this card as our Make 'n Take.

After I designed it and cut the pieces I laid them all out on the floor. I checked twice to make sure I had cut all the card stock pieces, had included the Delicate Designs embossing folder, the star framelit die, heat tool for embossing, gold embossing powder, envelope punch board (to round the corners), gold baker's twine and stamps for the Festival of Trees star and sentiment and Stampin' dimensionals to pop up the Old Olive piece. Suddenly I realized I was missing the Crumb Cake card bases! (Hard to make the cards without those - LOL!) So back to the cutting table to cut card bases...

Then I thought I was all set. But the night of the demo meeting I noticed everyone was making the card without doing the embossing for the stars. Why was that, I wondered? Then one of the ladies informed me that there was no Versamark ink pad AND they were borrowing a glass block from another table because I forgot that as well. Duh! The best laid plans don't always work out the way you imagine!

The card looks so simple, how can it possibly need all that stuff????
So don't worry if you don't have all the supplies I used, just substitute as needed and make your card! Happy Stamping!

Starry Medallion Wreath

I went down to my craft room for a little stamping time and once again, those cute little stars from the Noel Paper Pumpkin kit grabbed my attention. There was a stack of partially finished Paper Pumpkin kits on my desk, and these stars were on top. If you're not familiar with Stampin' Up!s My Paper Pumpkin subscription service, you can find the details here.

The Daydream Medallion stamp set had also been left out on my desk (I don't always have the neatest stamp room - LOL!), so I inked it up in Versamark and heat embossed the stamp in silver with the intent of making a wreath. Then I used the coordinating Floral Frames framelit die to cut out the medallion.

 I knew I wanted to use those little stars, so I chose a stamp from the Letterpress Winter set for the center of the wreath and embossed that in silver as well. It fit so nicely inside the Daydream Medallion set, leaving just enough room for me to add stars! It doesn't show up real well in the photo, but the silver embossing is gorgeous. You can see the embossing a bit better here:

To attach the stars, I simply added a mini glue dot to the back of every other star and pressed them in place. Easy!

Once the stars were in place, the middle of the wreath begged to pop a little more, so out came the Flower Patch stamp set, which has a flower just the right size for the center. I stamped it in Real Red ink and added a rhinestone to the center for a little bling.

The sentiment is from the Good Greetings stamp set and is popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals on a small rectangle of retired Designer Series Paper (DSP), but any Real Red dsp scrap will work.

I love the Smoky Slate, Real Red and Whisper White combo. What do you think? I still have a lot of stars to play with, so look for more starry cards here on my blog.