Butterflies are taking over!!!

Good morning, my fabulous stampers!

What a beautiful day. The birds are singing, the girls are at school, and the

BUTTERFLIES ARE TAKING OVER!

Victoria's music program is this morning and for the past two weeks, she has been telling me that she needs to wear a white T-shirt and jeans today. Sounds easy, right? There is only one slight problem: my beautiful girl is very girly and she does NOT like JEANS. She loves dresses and leggins and therefore we do not own any jeans in her size.

As you know me, I don't buy things that will be used only once and so I was hunting through the house and I FOUND a pair of jeans (hurray!) that Courtney (V's big sis) wore years ago and they are great with the exception of two small holes.

Can you tell? I was going to sew felt flowers from the flower fusion set onto the pants to hide the holes but Victoria didn't go for it. She suggested butterflies and I took her up on the challenge. We put some cute HOT PINK material and placed it in the beautiful wings embosslit die, ran it through the Big Shot and schwupsdiewups (can't help it, my German is coming through), we had butterfly patches.

Aren't they cute? If I had fabric glue on hand, I would have glued them on. But since I didn't, I spent a few minutes last night sewing them on. This morning, I had a very excited Victoria who is wearning jeans to school for the very first time. :)

Why don't you give it a try?

Don't have too much fun stamping without me. Tanja

Spring Birthdays

We seem to be in the kids' birthday season. Victoria's birthday is this week and last week she was invited to her twin friends' party.

Of course, we had to make special birthday cards for Colby and Ellie! Here are the details:

Ellie's card

• Paper: Whisper White, Melon Mambo, matching Designer Series Paper.
• Big Shot: Top Note for the insert and the natural serif die for the letters.
• Punches: Two Step Bird (from the current mini, so it's only available until the end of THIS month).
• Other: Eyelets, yarn, and sponges to offset the bird a bit.

Colby's card

• Paper: Whisper White, Dusty Durango, matching Designer Series Paper.
• Big Shot: Top Note for the insert and the natural serif die for the letters.
• Stamp Set: Animal Stories.
• Other: Jumbo eyelets, ribbon, brads.

As always, don't have too much fun stamping without me.

Tanja

Birds and Buttons

Hi Everyone,

Have you missed me? The weather is beautiful and I find myself playing with the kids in the afternoons outside instead of hybernating (and writing blogs) inside. But this card is certainly full of spring! I have been in love with these buttons for a while and yesterday I was looking for a project to go.

One of the cool things, that I've been doing lately, is that I go stamp with Brenda and Belinda regulary. They stamp together almost every Wednesday and I am just inspired by their creativity. They are awesome SU! demonstrators and I love hanging out with them. So as I was looking for a project to take yesterday, I decided to take only paper colors that would match the buttons that I like so much. That really put me out of my comfort zone of Appricot Appeal and Rich Razzleberry, but I love the cards that I came up with.

The colors are Tempting Turquoise, Real Red and Old Olive. Here are the links for the Playground buttons and the two step bird punch.

I hope these cards inspire you to use one design but then vary it as you duplicate it. Two of the three cards have different greetings and then I also played with the buttons, decided to have one bird nest, etc.

Don't have too much fun stamping without me. Tanja

Cards in a jiff

This set of cards is going to become a must in my house. I love spending hours on making cards but sometimes you need something simple that can do the job while not spending days in your stamping corner. I started with a 12 by 12 sheet of Kaleidoscope DP and thought about getting the most out of this sheet of paper. I pondered 4 by 4 cards for a little bit but liked the idea that if I cut it into 3 by 3 inch pieces, I could get 16 of them out of my one sheet of DP. So that's what I did. So then I needed either an embellishment or a stamped image and I looked over my stamp sets and settled on the elephant from the "Out of the Box" Level 1 hostess set. I stamped him on white CS in Only Orange and really liked that. I punched him and a piece of Pink Passion CS with circle punches and then cut my white CS to fit around my paper. The CS is 3 1/4 inches by 7 1/2 inches (scored at 3 1/4). And this little card is the outcome. Forgive the shish-k-bob stick in front of the card in all the pictures. The cards kept wanting to move on me while taking the pictures so I decided to line them up behind the stick. With my second piece of 3 by 3 DP, I decided to add a button in the middle of the flower. The elephant is on the inside of this card. And lastly, this piece is first framed in white (3 1/8 by 3 1/8) and then the Tempting Turquoise CS is the same size as the white from the other cards. This card looks higher because it was stubborn and squeezed up behind the bamboo skewer.

This is a great way to make 16 little cards in "no time flat."

Tanja

The pink season is upon us!

The pink season is upon us and I am ready for lots and lots of Valentine's treats. This is my variation on a gift idea on page 6 of the new occasions mini catalog. After I was all done, I realized that I didn't stamp a single thing for it.

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As always, the Designer Series paper, the felt flowers (Flower Fusion) and the buttons work together beautifully. I didn't even feel the need to add a tag to it. As I was making it, I thought that adding a scallopped edge might be cute too. I'll have to play with that another time though.

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Don't have too much fun stamping without me.

Tanja

Stamping 411 Challenge

Wow, I've been making so many Christmas cards, I am ready for a break!

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This Stamping 411 challenge is a perfect distraction. I love this stamp set and have been "dying" to use it. This will be a wonderful card to send to my parents for their 41st wedding anniversary.

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The stamp set is "Of the Earth." The colors are Glorious Green, Rose Red, Appricot Appeal.

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Merry Christmas, Tanja

Sometimes a simple card tells the message better

On this thoughtful Thursday, I wanted to concentrate on the message of the card and I chose a very simple design. I stamped the message on Whisper White and framed it with Apricot Appeal. I rounded the corners with a corner punch, added felt flowers with the silver brad. This can be done with any greeting set. Mine is retired and so I looked through the Idea Book and both the set "God's Blessings" and "Full of Life" would wonderful for this card. The size of this card is 4 by 3, so I measured my paper, Melon Mambo, to be 8 by 3 inches and scored at 4 inches. The flowers are from "Flower Fusion" which contains flowers in three colors, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, and Rose Red. Even though my colors in the card are a bit different, these flowers look great. They always add that bit of elegance. ' hope you have a great Thursday! Tanja