I have a love of any and all office supplies! I get it honestly – my mom has the same obsession! So it just goes that I love stamp sets that are “officey”. When I start a card I generally look through my electronic index and pick a set and SU’s office Accoutrement set really popped out at me, so I went with it. Then I had to find a layout – so I opened my notebook that contains all the sketches I collect and found one (unfortunately I didn’t make a note as to which/whose sketch it was – sorry!). I grabbed my SU Notations paper and that gave me a color scheme.

After stamping the calendar, I used the SU Certainly Celery marker to mark the date of the birthday. I used my SU flower punch to punch out one flower. To make the smaller flower, I stamped the flower from the set and cut it out. I wanted texture, so I used the fuzzy inside of the paper (crimp the paper over and over and eventually you can open the paper up). Here is a shot of the inside and the envelope.

I made this card way back in November for my sister-in-law’s birthday. She always strikes me as a fun and festive chick, so I wanted a bright card – and I went with the Cheers set from StampinUp. I created patterned paper once before and I really liked it, so I wanted to do that again. I choose a Mojo Sketch to get me started.

I stamped the images with Noir Palette ink and colored with my SU markers. To make the drink more focal, I added crystal effects to the glass and a tiny bit of glitter around the lip of the glass.

I even decorated the inside and the envelope. I’m really starting to enjoy doing that…it is like another little canvas. For the inside, I made the bottom part with masking and a stripey stamp from SU – then I just used a marker to draw the blue dividing line.

So last weekend was Word Card Making Day. Splitcoast had a day of challenges. I tried, but managed only one card. I do like the card – I did the sketch challenge…though my interpretation might be a bit loose 🙂  I got the idea for the circle accent from a commercial on tv.  I already had them cut when I decided to try this challenge. The free-form cutting and bright colors made me think fun. I always need birthday cards, so doing a b-day card was a no-brainer! I *love* this new Designer paper from Stampin’Up! – it is a great color scheme and some fun patterns. I free-form cut the strips and outlined them with a black pen – to match the circles. And all these free-form shapes made me think of the Doodle Alphabet set.

A couple nights ago I started on the thank you cards I needed to send with the goodies I’m sending to my contest winners (for the DSS program on SCS). I finally finished them today. I used a PageMaps sketch (Mar 08), and some neglected paper and rubber. This is a simple card, but I like it.

carefreecreations.

I haven’t stamped in what feels like forever, but is probably more realistically only a week. I’m determined to get back in the groove. I had a card I needed to make and I hoped that would spark some other ideas.

The first card is a thank you. I knew I wanted to do a pine tree for this recipient, and I needed the card to be a long card. The pine reminded me of the holidays, so I pulled out some old SU paper. I went with green and blue so it didn’t feel quite so holiday-ish. I went with white accents to balance the dark feeling from using a brown base.  Silly me, though, I knew the paper was Olive, and I thought I grabbed the Olive marker, but I got the Artichoke instead…so yes, my tree doesn’t “go” with the paper…but by the time it really bothered me, it was done! The square behind the tree is cheap chipboard (i.e., cereal box) covered with Cocoa paper and sponged with white ink.

When I was done I definitely wanted to keep stamping, so I checked out some challenges and decided to do both the Mojo Monday challenge from Julee, and the OCC stitching challenge. This card is for my kiddo to take to a party.  When I looked at the Mojo sketch sideways, the optional triangle turned into a candle flame.  I recently appropriated an old pair of jeans into shorts for painting. I used the left over jean material and stitched a piece to Saffron cardstock. Then I stitched and sponged the edges of the Saffront layer. Since the cutting wasn’t too good on the jeans, I put everything on an angle.  I didn’t want to put accents at the bottom of the candle, like in the sketch, so instead I put eyelets throughout the candle. The flame is done with a teardrop punch which is then edged in red, sponged with orange, and stickled. I attached the flame with some wire. In retrospect, I should have used a brighter yellow or even pattern paper for the Saffron panel.

Mom needed a swap card for her upline meeting. I came up with an idea in my head, but when I tried it, it was horrible! But I didn’t want to give up. She came up with her own design for the swap, so I was free to use any supply/technique on this card.

My original design was just the wheel and a punched star. The punch in my mind was much much bigger than what is actually the SU punch.  So I got out my stash of chipboard sheets and I cut a bigger star. Then I covered it with Gesso for a base and Yoyo Yellow craft ink. I had to add ribbon to give the star an anchor and help separate it from the wheel image.

The center of the punched star is filled with a yellow button, yellow beads, and some clear microbeads to fill the leftover space.