Rain Puddles Design

Today was the Harvest Party at my daughter's preschool. We supplied 24 sugar cookies for the class. If you have been following my blog any length of time you know I love to make cookie bouquets, so just supplying nondecorated sugar cookies is a fierce showing of restraint. LOL The reason? It was the classmates that decorated their own cookie. So what am I to do? Over-decorate the cookie container of course! I measured the cookies after baking them to account for any spreading while baked and then created a 3-1/4 inch square box template. I added just enough extra space for the naked cookie to have breathing room. Yes, I believe all sugar cookies need to be clothed with bright cheery frosting. I sponged only two of the boxes to give to the teachers and left the rest for little frosting glazed hands to add the orange color. I've had the adorable Chicken Girl Designs, Happy Halloween set for a few weeks and I am just now getting to a Halloween project. The images in this set are...

Late Monday night I got a wild idea in my head to make some ruffles and use them in a card for the Moxie Fab World Challenge: Not Your Regular Ruffles . I wanted to do something different with ruffles so here they are in layers! Card Details: Stamps: CTMH Be Yourself, MyDigis Ruffles, Stampin' Up Canvas Paper: AC Pattern Paper A La Carte, Mohawk Smooth White CS Ink: Brilliance Graphite Black, Stampin' Up Baroque Burgundy and More Mustard Ink, Baroque Burgundy Writer Marker, PITT SuperFine India Ink Pen, Prismacolor Markers (Henna, Flagstone Red, Deco Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Goldenrod) Accessories: Kaisercrafts Black Rhinestones And here is the digital stamp: If you decide to use it please give me, © Janelle of Rain Puddles Design blog 2009, credit. While the digi-stamp is very simple art it is still my art form and time, I would appreciate that you not redistribute it on your blog or through any other form. You may share a link to my blog if you want others to know about it....

Last week I mentioned I would be sharing a project I made and well I got busy with other posts and didn't get this one out. I went very creative with a digital stamp from In Style Stamps . You have to go see their stamps! They are SO neat. The anime digi I used is called Alyssa . She is a catch isn't she? So much that she was featured in the sports section of the newspaper. She's not new but from a league of her own so you're seeing an article while she was still in her youth. That's right! I designed the framework of the newspaper article and added the Alyssa digi-stamp as a "photo". Some time's I get an idea in my head and I can't stop until it comes to fruition. LOL If there is interest I'll do a tutorial on how I made the newspaper article. I did it in MS PowerPoint! I used only Prismacolor markers and pencils on the newspaper image adding a second arm with mitt for dimension. The baseball is made slightly like the felted cardstoc...

Gratitude I came home for lunch today to the smell of delicious Stuffed Peppers in my oven and I didn't even prepare them! Fresh cranberry sauce was in the refrigerator and green beans on the stove. Wanna guess who did it? Nope it wasn't my super hubby. It was my SWEET mother-in-law. Don't assume it was for me though. We were celebrating a friend's 60th birthday at my house. She is a past preschool teacher to my daughter, past fellow alto in the church choir to me, swim partner and former teaching companion to my MIL. So it was a family style birthday, we even had THE family birthday cake. I thought I was in some sort of heaven today. Thanks CJ! Card Today was a restful day because well it ought to be, but also because I was tired from staying up more than half the night delighting in the creation of this card for the Viva La Verve Sketch with a Twist Challenge. The twist was to use fabric. The image is the Verve October release free digital stamp, offered on...

I love the peppermint cocoa cups over at WixedPixie Creations. They look like the cup I was suppose to have been sipping during the Verve Stamp release party tonight. I'm sitting at my computer with cocoa that has had a peppermint overdose! I didn't have any peppermint hard candy to melt in it so I put 3 drops of pure peppermint oil in it. Well, the first was intentional...the second hesitantly...the third? Oh well it couldn't hurt! I need to go lay some of it to rest down the sink and what's left doctor it up with more hot cocoa. ;) Verve just released their October stamps, where I was for most of the evening, and one set I want to mention is called Believe. A beautiful set that is in honor of breast cancer awareness. A portion of the purchase price is going straight to Susan G Komen for the Cure. Check it out and if you're at all touched by the sentiments in this set and a few dollars left in your craft budget it is worth the purchase. See how the Verve Diva'...

I'm starting a set of cards to send out to my Bible Study small group and Verve's 1 Peter 5:7 popped into my head for a good encouragement card. I'll post the whole set of them later, but wanted to get the first one out to also post about the sketch. It's Verve's October Release week and the first sketch is where this card is inspired. I say inspired because I started with the sketch but couldn't get my elements to fit nicely without covering up half of the verse. I am loving using my brayer with a little ink rolled on it, to give my cardstock some depth. It's easy, but deciding when to brayer was somehow difficult to do this time around. (This means that every element has something stamped on the back of the card. LOL) The medallion was stamped first and clear embossed a couple of times. Then I put a heavy hand on the Old Olive-inked brayer to get down into all the negative spaces of the medallion. I sponged around the edges with Ranger Vintage Linen...

I've been on a bit of a hiatus with blogging this past week. I was deep in creativity and I can't wait to show you what I made. That will be for another post though. My card today is a combination challenge card. I used the sketch and twist challenge from Viva La Verve's October week 2 here , and SCS Inspiration challenge here . The VLV twist challenge was to not use browns and oranges so I went over to the SCS challenge links and found an Inspiration Challenge from last week. I used one of the awesome jewelry found at TzaddiShop for my inspiration. Card Details: Stamps: Verve Starstruck Paper: Mohawk Smooth White, HP Photo Paper (image), Pink Passion, Basic Black, Gold shimmer paper, Green background paper unknown Ink: StazOn Jet Black, Basic Black, Brilliant Blue, Marvelous Magenta, YoYo Yellow, Glorious Green Accessories: Stampin Up Clear EP, Stickles Cotton Candy, AC rhinestones, Stampin Up Scallop Edge punch Thanks for stopping by!

Has anyone else been crazy busy with their fall schedule? I don't see it on the calendar, but somehow when the cool brisk air comes along the schedule seems to get busy. All that to say I've had less time to be in the craft studio. The shabby chic card is for October's Viva La Verve Week 1. I had a tough time making my elements work on this card, but I like the end result. The added blue top note layer to the challenges sketch help anchor this card together. I had a spool card of twill tape from Stampin' Up that has been collecting dust and it was just crying for some attention. The inspiration I had was to assemble an embroidered element onto the card. I designed a flower filigree digi stamp to fit exactly the width of the card and printed it out to use as a paper foundation for the hand embroidery. I like how it looks VERY homemade with the irregular stitch lengths and spaces. I enjoyed it so much that I put the same flowers, sans filigree, on the sentiment layer. I f...

My daughter and I decided we would take turns with projects. She wanted to make purple cards and I wanted to try making a pumpkin from strips of paper (from instructions at azlearningbug.com here ). It was our special time together this afternoon. So here are the purple cards that my daughter wanted to make... ...and here is my pumpkin and her "pumpkin purse". Have a great weekend!