Rain Puddles Design

Today I'm showing a card that you could spy on my workspace from Friday's post . I finished it this weekend in time for the Get Your Diva On Challenge and the Viva La Verve Challenge from week 2. I saw the inspiration photo from the Diva challenge and instantly wanted to portray all the softness of the table linens and flowers, but get in the smooth and shiny elements from the tableware and vase. For fun I just had to make some room for the dots on the cupcake! My base paper is from My Mind's Eye Tres Belle line where I added some gray cardstock trim that I colored with my clear Star glitter pen and then straight stitched cream cardstock rick rack cut out from the Stampin' Up Tasteful Trim Bigz die. The cream mat was stamped with a linen background stamp in CTMH parchment then scored in 1/8" increments around the edges twice, then trimmed and miter-cornered and straight stitched down on itself. I hand stamped the dots mat with the dot stamp fr...

Hi there! Pretty Phrases stamp set from Paper Smooches I'm popping in super quick to just say hi and show some quick cards I made for an ongoing fundraiser I've been doing. It's the end of the school year and graduation time is upon us here at the Stollfus household. We have a niece graduating in June and I've been coming up with ideas for her present, but the last resort is always a gift card, right? I found two crafty cute templates from crafty bloggers like ourselves. One is from Carolina who always seems to have the best ideas. I love stopping in to her blog from time to time. Here is her creative take on a gift card holder  and here is what I made with it. The next one took me a bit to wrap my head around, it was a bit late in the night when I started the process, but I did get it. An AHA moment. ;)  It comes from Paper Craft Connections originally, but I found it on Cathy's blog who links you to PCC. Here is her post for the Pop-up...

Hello blogging friends! It's finally the time of week where I can breathe and freely be creative. My kids are home and no homework to be done. Only a few loads of laundry and bathrooms to be cleaned before Sunday, as I always take time out to rest on that day from my house tasks. I'm the next in my family to get a common cold and I'm not sure if this morning's napping session in front of cartoons with my 3 year old was from being sick or exhaustion from the week, but I was awakened by my son's favorite phrase these days... "mom, I'm STILL hungry. mom, I'm STILL hungry. MOM, I'M STILL HUNGRY!" These words started in my dream until I realized it was for real. So what has this got to do with my crafting blog post today? Well, I've only had energy to make cups of coffee and finish up school carpool, but I've also been out on Google Reader gleaning inspiration. In doing so I came across a article linked at Michelle Wooderson's...

We have some winners! Taylor did a quick and thorough job of wrapping up the prize winning portion of our blog hop this week. Wasn't it the best! I've never seen so many new companies and wonderful inspiration pieces. It took me a few days to get through them all. AND a huge thank you for coming by and leaving all the wonderful comments. I really do appreciate the love. So Taylor used Random.org to randomly pick 20 hop bloggers to then randomly pick the 20 winners of prizes!!!!! Whew! If this doesn't make sense read Taylor's clear version on her winner's post. If you see your name on this list please head on over to Taylor's blog and use the "EMAIL ME" to contact her for your prize. In the Subject line, please put: Valentine's Day Hop Winner. In the email, include your contact info, and what prize you've won. Some prizes will be mailed directly to you from the sponsors, some will be emailed to you (in the case of digis). And please be awa...

Happy Valentine's Day! A bunch of friends and designers got together for a Virtual Valentine's Day hop. There are 40+ participants and 19 sponsors giving away a total of 21 prizes. Random commenter's will be drawn from random blogs, so the more love you leave the more chances you have to win. So I'm in it! Start at Taylor's blog, here , if you just popped in and want a chance at the oodles of prizes that are up for grabs JUST for commenting on the blog list of hoppers (see full list below). You can comment on all the blogs leisurely up until Thursday at 6 p.m. EST.  The winners will be drawn using Random.org Find out if you are winner on Taylor's blog and she will have a temporary Email Me to get a hold of her for up to one week after the winners are announced. Here's the prize list to whet your whistle! Stamp Insanity - with a Digi stamp set of choice for one winner Meljens designs - 4 digis to one winner Pixie Dust Studio - 2 digis...

 I was sitting with my children yesterday afternoon watching a new cartoon on PBS called Wild Kratts. They mentioned a few facts about how much a monarch caterpillar eats and compared it to either a human eating the same volume as 2 1/2 elephants or a human would grow to the size of 2 1/2 elephants. I'm fuzzy on the details since I was taking little naps throughout the show. {snort} In either situation I think I'd feel a bit miserable, but that's because I'm human and not destined to be a beautiful fluttering Monarch butterfly.  Nature is a wonderful thing when that consumption turns out to be a beautiful dainty butterfly. I know y' all are dreamin' now. Anyway, I had made this card starting with the butterfly image that somehow found it's way into my recent order from Layers of Colors. Laura was so sweet to send me the Embroidery Butterfly that I really wanted to create something special to say thanks. Thank you Laura! I started out trying to mak...

(unframed art...easier to photo) I know it's February but I have a project to show that I completed well into the middle of January using the first week sketch from Viva La Verve this year. The quick story is the following. I overloaded myself with paper flower tutorials and either combined two together or came across a brown sack lunch rolled flower tutorial. In any case, I made a few and wanted to put them on a project. I picked the first Viva La Verve sketch of the year to make a card, but I couldn't possibly put the flowers on a card to mail or even shove into an envelope when the largest one was over 1-inch thick, so I decided I'll frame it in a shadow box. The dry embossed panels were already finished when I decided to frame it so I debated on tossing them and making new ones or to try and position them for a standard 8 x 10 frame. I kept them and found a shadow box frame at Joann's for 10 bucks. yada, yada, yada. Two weeks later it's done. Two weeks f...