Rain Puddles Design

 I'm hosting the Monday Tutorial on the Paper Craft Planet Blog and would love for you to come on over and give it a try! The finished project is a gift bag I've decorated with the Holiday Greetings stamp set and Flourished Trim die from Verve. Here are the details for my supplies. Details: Stamps:   Holiday Greetings (Verve) Paper:  Old Olive (Stampin' Up), Lucky Me ( Yellow Bicycle), Graph Refill Paper Ink:  Tuxedo Black (Memento, Tsukineko), Copic Markers Accessories:   Flourished Trim Die (A Cut Above Die, Verve), Bag die (Lifestyle Crafts), scissors, glue dots, adhesive runner

I'm hosting the Viva La Verve sketch this next week on Splitcoast Stampers. I'd love it if you came and joined along. My card, (is it wrong to rotate your own sketch, lol) is using some paper that I absolutely love and puts me right in the mood for Christmas presents under the tree the old fashion way. I've combined the new release set, Holiday Greetings , with Borderline 's presents in a row today. I created my own washi ($1 store medical) tape using acrylic paint (Old Fashion Linen, and Tree Moss Green) and the star stamps from the  Holiday Greetings  set. I added some layered texture under the sentiment banner with a border emboss with a honeycomb folder from Cuttlebug/Cricut and stitching. Some fiber wrapped and tied in a bow and then one of the sweet paper pieced trees with a present from  Holiday Greetings  popped up on the Ribbon Banner die. Lots of goodies on this card and I love every little piece. It's a warm fuzzy card for sure. :) Stop over on ...

My how the weeks fly by between Halloween and Thanksgiving. I'm not even sure I want to know how many days it is until Christmas, do you? LOL Last night was the first time teaching at Inspiration Boutique. I had so much fun with the ladies that were there and I can't wait until next month when I get to go back and teach again. A new card today for the blog using Verve's latest released set Joyous Noel. I love the poinsettia's in this set. They are perfect for paper piecing. To give my card some sweetness, of course I went with sweet Diva Maureen's sketch over on the Viva La Verve forum . If you have some time to go and try it out, I think you'll love the style. I hesitated when creating the angled panel, but then realized all I needed to do was use the piece I cut away from the end as my guide to line up the cut on the other end. I'm using an older color challenge from Splitcoast Stampers and added the neutral color gray to it. :) Here's the...

It's our finishing hop on the Fast Finish Fall Hop today and I've got a bookmark that I've distressed and aged. With all that goodness it must be protected so it's a perfect fit for Beacon Adhesives . I started with that sweet little tricycle girl from the Children Play Perfectly Clear set . The image was colored with Copic markers and acrylic paint before I painted a quick one-pass layer of Fast Finish to the surface to seal it. After drawing some leaves in the tree, I made a puddle of more Fast Finish so I could sprinkle Fresh Green, Grass Green and Black Crushed Glass Glitter . I pushed those around until I liked where they were and while it was drying I stamped the first two words from the Life is A Circus stamp. The L was painted with some acrylic paints and then it was all coffee distressed and glued with Beacon 3-in-1 glue. My own handwriting is on this piece since I didn't have any easy way to add part of the sentiment (don't ask how many time...

This week the Stampendous Impression Design Team is gearing up for some fast finishing on projects. Well wouldn't you know that our Hop is using the Official glue of TLC's Craft Wars  and the glue I used on my project is called Fast Finish? It is and let's take a look! Back in the summer I decided to try my hand at altering an old book. It had missing pages and a small amount of water damage so it wasn't in a readable state. So there was my chance to alter this book, but I immediately started to see a HUGE amount of warping on the book cover. I thought I was shrinking the cover with the liquid glue I was using. I put wax paper around it and sat it under a few heavy books and forgot about it. Guess what? I found it and decided to see if Beacon's Fast Finish would dry quickly enough to seal the cover and also keep it from warping. Hooray! It had minimal warping. So I began with some white gesso. If you work quickly the gesso won't stick to the Fast Finis...

  Welcome to our November Diva Inspirations Hop!  On Friday night,  Verve  released their holiday collection of stamps and today we're putting on our monthly hop to inspire you with a fresh mix of old and new! So grab a drink and hop along as we share a little Verve with you! There's a great little prize involved, too!  A random commenter on one of the hops will win our entire new release, so be sure to leave a little love in the comment section as you hop about!  You can find out all the prize details over on the  Verve Blog  today. I picked up the Bloom and Grow set with the lovely solid flower shapes and some of my favorite leaf sprigs too. Before putting the card together I played with my acrylic paints and created my own pattern paper that have the same flower and leaf shapes used on the sentiment panel. I've used today's  Mojo Monday Sketch #266  and since it's the first Monday of the month it's contest week!  You ...

  New month and new challenge! We would love for you to join us this month as we pull out our Stampendous Essentials to bling, glitz and add dimension to our projects.  I've created this card with a few layers of Essentials to frame the Jumbo Butterfly Trio set that just released from Stampendous. You'll be tickled to know that one way I used the Essentials is a mask. Aged Ivory Embossing Enamel over a portion of the stamped Decorative Grate image on the Ivory cardstock gives the look of a partial stamped image. I love that I was able create a subtractive look by the addition of same color Essentials. A combination of Jade PEARLustre , Hematite PEARLustre , Chunky White , Tarnished Mica Fragments and Royal Purple Glass Glitter are framing the butterfly. The key is lightly sprinkling the powder, not to close to the paper, and only just a smidgen at a time, then heating from the back side of the paper. You'll end up with some papers warping, but there's ...

  It's release day my friends, and we are on our last Holiday Hop! You'll be able to see all of the stamps revealed tonight AND find out who all the lucky winners of each days hidden prize. I love Friday's for many reasons, but when it's is a Verve Release Party night I am just about beside myself. I love showing up to catch up on everyone, chat and laugh it up. Oh I hope Marisa is going to be there to give us updates! Here are the details you need to come join us tonight! Splitcoast Stampers Forum: Verve Stamps ~ Release Parties Catching up and getting use to refreshing the conversation is before 9 p.m. ET (5 p.m. MT), but then Julee starts revealing the sets and announcing winners until the shop opens up with new Verve at 11 p.m. ET (9 p.m. MT). To have a chance at the hidden prizes this week, you can hop through all the days (if you are just getting in on our Holiday Spotlight Hops) and comment on all the blogs. Commenting on each blog gives you m...

It's another day for sneak peeks and only one more tomorrow before we meet up at the Release Party. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you've just dropped into the middle of a week long showcase sneak peeking new stamps about to release from Verve Stamps . We are having some fun before the release party with a secret blog post that has a hidden prize every day. To have a chance at the prize just comment along the hop and then the winner's will be revealed at a Release Party! The prize is the featured stamp set of the day! So, I'm closing up the hop today with a simple little card using a sentiment from the Joyous Noel set. This card was the first I created when the release sets came in the mail. This set was an eye-popper out of the stack because it has some amazing images to pair up with fabulous sentiments. So many possibilities! Yep this is the end of the hop list, but if you missed getting around to the other Divas sneak peeks here...