Stamp TV CSS Inspiration Challenge

Tonight is the Stamp TV Center Stage Spotlight alumni Inspiration Challenge. You should have arrived here from Karen Knegten's blog. If you did, you are on the right track for the hop. If you didn't, and you'd like to start the blog hop from the beginning, go back to Stamp TV and you can start the hop there.

We were challenged to create a card using this photo as our inspiration.

Isn't that fun and wintery/holiday-ish? I was immediately inspired by quite a few things but it was the colors and the light-hearted feel that really inspired me to make this card.

 This was one of those cards that just made me smile while I was working on it. I love those little snow-people and the designer paper from Imaginisce is so fun. It kind of makes me think of Whoville from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas!

I used Pure Luxury Red Hot, Creme de Menthe and Ocean Mist. I embossed the snowflakes with a Cuttlebug border folder, leaving a blank space in the middle. I cut the dp to fit into the non-embossed space. I stamped the snow-people and colored them with Copics, then cut them out and popped them up with pop dots. I punched a circle of the Red Hot paper and layered the "Feel the Magic" circle on top. Stamps are Gina K Designs "Winter Friends" and "Holiday Greetings." After it it was all put together I spritzed it all over with SU Frost White Shimmer Paint. I think if you look carefully you can see it in the photo. In real life it gives the card a nice subtle shimmery look.


I hope you enjoyed seeing my Winter Friends card tonight. Now it's time to hop along to see what Lori McAree has in store for you.

Winter Mittens

I made this card for the Stamp TV color challenge this week, which was to use Gina K Designs Pure Luxury Apple Green, Lipstick Red, and White (or the equivalent in other brands colors). I think these mittens from the Gina K Designs stamp set, "Winter Mittens," are just adorable, and since I am still making holiday cards, I decided I'd use this opportunity to make something I could use as one of my cards.

I used the Lipstick Red for the base and Apple Green for the strip. The striped patterned paper is from my stash. I stamped the snowflakes in Memento Pear Tart and Lady Bug onto the White Pure Luxury paper. I punched the edges with a border punch from EK Success. The mittens I stamped twice with the Lady Bug ink and the top edge twice with Pear Tart. I cut out the red mittens using the Nestabilites mittens dies and then cut out the green cuff by hand so I could paper piece the cuffs to add some color to the mittens. I glued red grosgrain ribbon to the backs of the mittens and glued the mittens together. I adhered them to the card and added the Basic Grey Sugared button at the top for them to "hang" from. The little red button comes from an assortment of Gina K buttons. I stamped the oval in Pear Tart and cut it out; then added the greeting from the Fanciful Tags set. I popped the oval up on pop dots to finish it off.

Thanks for visiting. Have a blessed Thanksgiving wherever you may be celebrating tomorrow!

CSS Color Challenge

If you arrived here tonight from Karen Knegten's blog, you are on the right path. Tonight is the Stamp TV Center Stage Spotlight alumni color challenge blog hop. We were challenged to make cards using the following color combo:

• White or Ivory
• Brown
• Light Blue (Little Boy Blue, Ocean Mist, or Turquoise Sea)
• Yellow (Lemon Drop, Sweet Corn, or Wild Dandelion) 

I chose to use Gina K Designs Pure Luxury ivory, chocolate brown, little boy blue, and sweet corn on my card. Here is the result! Don't you just love this cute set -- it is the Gina K Designs Funny Farm set ? The expression on that cow's face just cracks me up! I realized after I posted this photo that the cow looks like it is jumping up in the air! She is popped up with pop dots (so is the farmer boy and the wheelbarrow) but in real life she appears to just be standing on the ground. I think the shadow on the paper makes her look like she is jumping --maybe she's trying to jump the fence and make a break for it! (Aren't I a good Wisconsin girl -- I know that is a "she" because she has an udder! LOL!)

As I mentioned above, I used Little Boy Blue as the card base and sponged a bit of Memento Summer Sky on the top half just to give it some interest and to make it look a bit more like sky. It doesn't show up well on this photo, however. I punched the brown strip with the Martha Stewart fence border punch. I stamped the images on ivory, colored them with Copics and cut them out. I added the greeting at the bottom in Memento Rich Cocoa and added the ribbon, which is the Pumpkin Mango striped ribbon from Gina K Designs as are the two brown buttons. A fairly straight forward card except for cutting out the images! Yikes it is hard to cut around some of those thin pieces like the farmer's arms. I managed not to cut off any limbs or important pieces so it's all good!

Hope you enjoyed my farm card. Now hop along the lane to Linda Payne's blog. I'm sure she has something gorgeous to share!

Snowy Village

I finally was able to get started on some holiday cards this weekend. I'm having a hard time believing it is November already so it is hard to get in the groove to make Christmas/Winter/Holiday cards but I forced myself to start working on some. Listening to some holiday music seemed to help me get in the mood!

Tonight I'm sharing one card that I made using a non-holiday stamp set! I used the Gina K Designs stamp set called "Welcome Home"by Rupa Shevde. The little row of houses seemed to fit so well with the designer paper from the Basic Grey pad, "Eskimo Kisses" and I figured adding some snow and holiday decorations would make them look very festive and wintery.

The base is Gina K Pure Luxury Cranberry Tart and the dp is Basic Grey. I stamped the image onto Pure Luxury White and colored it with Copic markers. I added Stampendous Crystal Snow glitter to the trees, the rooftops and in front of the houses. I used green Stickles to add garland to the fences and porch post and added some holiday stick-on rhinestones for Christmas lights on the houses. I punched the bottom edge with a snowflake punch I picked up at Archivers a while back (can't recall the brand right now) and used the snowflakes that were punched out to decorate the top edge. I pressed each one into a glue pad and then into SU Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I sponged a bit of SU Blue Sky ink along the snowflakes to make them stand out and at the top for a touch of "sky" above the houses. The greeting is stamped in Memento Rhubarb Stalk and is from the Gina K Designs stamp set, "Holiday Hospitality."

I made a couple of other holiday cards and will share another one tomorrow night so check back! Hope you had a great weekend and that the upcoming week is a good one for you.

I've Got Attitude, Baby!

I have never said that before and probably never will again, but today my friend Tina Gilliland gave me this award so I can say I've Got Attitude (or at least my blog does-- hee-hee)!

This award has to be given to you by a fellow blogger and I'm honored that Tina picked me! Part of the award is that I have to tell three things that make me different from everyone else. Let's see . . .

1. All of the schools I went to as a kid were within a one mile radius of my house. Two of the three were within 6 blocks.

2. I have only lived in three states and two of their names start with I.

3. I am a singer -- not just with the radio in the car but I've taken about ten years of voice lessons, have sung with numerous choirs, and sang two solos at my wedding.

The other thing I get to do is give this award to five other bloggers so I am passing the award to:

Jennie Harper

Lori McAree

Karen Knegten

Melissa Cash

Miesje Flach

Be sure to visit these blogs with 'tude and don't miss the Digi's With Attitude Challenge Blog for some fun challenges and prizes.

CAS Limited Supply Challenge

Time for another challenge blog hop with the Center Stage Spotlight Alumni. I hope you arrived here from the blog of Karen Knegten but if you didn't and would like to start from the beginning of the hop, go to Stamp TV and start out at the top of the hop.


These challenges are such fun and they really do challenge me, especially this time. I'm not usually a clean and simple (CAS) stamper. I really like the look of many of the CAS cards that others make but somehow I've always felt mine looked too unfinished. But this challenge was to do the following:


Create a CAS card or project that contains only the following items and no others:

• Your design must be CAS - Clean And Simple: lots of white or open space with one main focal point
• One image
• One sentiment
• One layer card - your card base plus only one more layer
• Embellishments - you can use any number of embellishments you want, but they all must be the same color

I managed to follow the rules (I think!) and made not one but two CAS cards for the hop. Here is the first one, which, as you can plainly see, is a Thanksgiving card!

This card was made with Gina K Designs Pure Luxury cardstock in Pumpkin Spice and Ivory. I scored the ivory piece using my Scor-Buddy at 1/4" and 1/2" on each side. The image and sentiment are both from the Gina K Designs set by Rupa Shevda called So Grateful. The image is stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with Copics. The greeting is stamped in Memento Potter's Clay and I sponged just a bit around the edges with Distress Ink Rusty Hinge. I added some adhesive nailheads as my embellishments since the requirement was to make all the embellishments the same color.

Moving on to Christmas, here is my second card.

I have to say that I really live the way this card turned out! It is made using Gina K Designs Pure Luxury Cranberry Tart as the base and Ivory as the snowflake panel. I embossed the ivory panel with the Cuttlebug embossing folder called Distressed Snowflakes and then went over the snowflakes and the open area at the bottom with a glue pad. I sprinkled Stampendous Crystal Snow glitter over it to make it sparkly. Then I stamped the adorable image from the Gina K Designs Warm and Cozy Christmas with Memento Tuxedo Black and colored it with Copics. I sponged around the image with some Memento Summer Sky. Now here is where I have to admit to needing all my creative powers! LOL! I stamped the greeting from the GKD set Warm Winter Wishes in black onto the white piece of cardstock right where it is now in white, but it came out crooked!! What made me even more mad was that I even used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to position it! I must have bumped it before stamping the greeting since I had it positioned just fine with the Stamp-a-ma-jig. I can't stand it when things are crooked on my cards so I got creative and punched the oval, stamped the greeting in white onto the cranberry tart paper and trimmed around the edges with some Flower Soft Polar White. I think I like the way this turned out better than the way it started out, so the mistake was a good one!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed seeing my two CAS cards. Now pop over to the blog of Lori McAree to see what she has in store for you. 

CSS Alumni Sketch Hop

It's time once again for another Stamp TV Center Stage Spotlight Alumni blog hop. I hope you arrived here from the blog of Karen Knegten but if you didn't and you want to start the hop from the beginning, jump over to Stamp TV to see all of the great cards the CSS Alumni made based on this sketch.

I am really a fan of sketches because they save me so much time. When I have a sketch I can just jump to figuring out the paper and stamps I want to use instead of trying to figure out the design. They are especially helpful when I need a card quickly and I can just plug in the elements I want rather than agonizing over the layout of the card. I don't use sketches for everything I make but I do like to use them on occasion.

Here is the card I made using this sketch. Even though it is almost 80 degrees here in southern Wisconsin (very un-fall like!), I decided to make a holiday card. It's about time I get started on those, so here is one to get me (and you) going!

I just love this little snowman from the Gina K Designs stamp set called Warm Winter Wishes. The sentiment is from the same set. The cardstock is Gina K Designs Pure Luxury Papers in Ocean Mist and  Rocket Red. The designer paper is from a really fun holiday paper pad from Imaginisce called Cottage Christmas.  I stamped the snowman and greeting with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored him with Copic markers. Those spots you see on his hat are actually glitter -- Stampendous Crystal Snow -- but I couldn't get it to photograph without making it look like spots! There is a touch of glitter other places on the snowman and on the ground also but they don't show up very well. The Ocean Mist strip was embossed using the Cuttlebug Snowflakes folder and then swiped with some Distress Ink in Tumbled Glass, which I also sponged around the edges of the white image piece. The snowflakes were made using the Spellbinders Create A Flake One and are held together with the silver brad. The brad doesn't adhere the snowflake to the blue strip, however; I decided to give it a bit more dimension and popped the snowflakes up on a pop dot.

I hope you enjoyed my little snowman card. Now hop on along the trail to the blog of Melissa Cash. I know she will have something wonderfully creative to share with you!