Perfect Sentiments Design Team!

Only 2 more days and The Perfect Sentiments Challenge Blog will be launched! I can hardly wait to get started and share all the fun we have in store for you!

Please hop on over there for a look at our wonderful Design Team. We have a terrific group of ladies with TONS of talent who have some amazing creations that they will all be sharing with you to provide you with awesome inspiration.

I'll try to get back here later today with another card to share. But until then, I hope you'll check out everyone at The Perfect Sentiment.

I hope you have a great Monday and start of the new week!

Sizzix & Spellbinder Blog Candy Winner!

We have a winner! And it's

REBECCA

I used "Random Thing Picker" and from all the names entered, Rebecca's was randomly picked.

I will be contacting you soon, Rebecca so that I can get your package out to you a.s.a.p.

THANK YOU ALL so very much for entering and for the new followers who joined. I appreciate your readership so much and will try to do blog candy giveaways as often as possible.

Perfect Sentiments Design Team Announcement!

Hello Blog Readers. I have an announcement!

It's the start of the new week; the first in a new season. Kids are back to school and hopefully you are all settling into Autumn and adjusting to the changes that come with it.

Speaking of changes, I have made some changes in my life, and am about to embark on some new and exciting things that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, I have decided to devote more of my time to creating! My kids are all either in school or working full time, and after all my physical therapy, my hands and back are much better. I feel I am finally able to get back to spending more time in my studio once again!

So, I've decided to try a few new things. I'll be telling you more about them in the coming weeks.

But first, I have an announcement to make that I am really very excited about: I have been given the honor (and great compliment) to have been chosen to be on the Executive Design Team for "The Perfect Sentiment"! This new challenge blog will be something I'm sure many of you will want to acquaint yourselves with. It has been put together by some very talented people, and the plans they have to share with you will undoubtedly be filled with fun and inspiration.

Each week, there will be a new card making challenge... with a twist! This is not just any ordinary challenge blog, and I think you'll soon find out just how fun making challenge cards can be!

The Perfect Sentiment challenge blog will go live on October 5th, but all of us on the design team are already busy getting ready, and creating what I am sure you'll find to be very fun and inspiring.

Please click on the Perfect Sentiments badge (on the right hand side under my blog's badge) and it will take you to the site. Remember, October 5th is the day we'll be up and running. I hope you'll join us for some wonderful card making challenges!

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share my news with you!

Sizzix & Spellbinder Nestabilities Blog Candy Giveaway!

Hello my faithful blog readers! And hopefully this is being read by some new readers, as well!

In an effort to thank you all for visiting, I have decided it's time to give out some more blog candy!

As most of you likely know by now, I LOVE Sizzix products! Well, I am getting to love Spellbinders more and more too. So, I'll be giving away dies from both companies, along with some specially sized papers from Sizzix.

Here's what I am giving away:

The dies are: Spellbinders Nestabilities "Labels Two" set; Sizzix decorative strip Branch, Cherry Blossom die; Sizzix medium Flower, Pansy; and Sizzlits Dragonfly #3 die. Aren't they great?

And here are the papers. There are 3 paper pads each with 80 sheets of 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" papers in solids and prints. There are pastels, earth tones and rainbow colors.

And here's the best part- well, maybe not the BEST part, as the best is the prize, lol. But anyway, it's super easy to enter this giveaway. All you have to do is become a follower of my blog, and leave a comment telling me you are a new follower. And, if you already are a follower, then just comment telling me so. Want multiple entries? Every day you leave a comment you will get another entry (one per day) until the drawing. But you can start now, and if you come back and comment every day, you can get up to 5 entries total. You have until 11:59 pm (pst) on Tuesday Sept. 27th, and I will announce the randomly picked winner on Wednesday Sept. 28th.

My only requirement for entry is that you have a mailing address within the United States or Canada, as the cost of postage outside of these Countries is just way too costly. I hope you understand ;-)

Thanks for stopping by and GOOD LUCK!

And now, to share a card I made:

I love this stamp. It is made by Stampendous and if I recall correctly I believe I found it on eBay. In any event, it's among my favorite sentiment stamps.

I used the Sizzix/ Stampin' Up! Vintage Wallpaper impressions die on SU! Marina Mist card stock, and then sponged Early Espresso ink over it. I also distressed the edges and sponged more ink on it. The ribbon is Chocolate Chip satin, and I added some Silver Bells Robins Nest dew drops in the corner. The base of the card and the layer behind the sentiment is Early Espresso card stock.

In the corner is a Sizzix die cut cross made with SU! Brushed Silver card stock.

Thanks again for stopping by. I hope you'll leave a comment, become a follower (if you aren't already) and enter my drawing!

See you soon!

Big Floral Mini Cards

Just thought I'd share with you a few little mini gift cards I made. I am so often in need of a teeny card to slip into a package and find this 3x3 size to be perfect.

I love the color of SU!'s Pink Pirouette card stock, so I decided to make these using the textured paper as my base.

Little to no stamping was required. Just big flowers and ribbons, and on one of them a little piece of patterned paper left over from another project.

There are so many beautiful pre-made flowers you can buy (such as the one above), or you can just make your own! My stamped flowers here were made using Stampin' Up!'s Triple Treat Flower stamp from their 2011/2012 idea book & catalog (below).

Thanks for stopping by to see my quick little gift enclosure cards. I'll have some more little cards to show you soon, as I seem to be on a mini card kick lately ;-)

When Is It A CASEd Card....

.... And when does it become an "inspired" card???

I would like to share with you a card I recently made that begs to ask this question. As you probably know, CASE stands for "copy and share with everyone". And I will admit, I have done my share of CASEing! I don't do nearly as much now as I used to, but I am certainly prone to CASEing when I find one of those cards that just screams "make me" to me!

And HERE is one of them! (Please see July 28, 2011 post "Button Buddies".) I fell in love with this card as soon as I saw it. (BTW- Joanne's entire blog is filled with wonderful cards). But, as it turns out, she "CASEd" her darling card from THIS one made by Jennie. (She also has an amazing blog filled with awesome cards!)

Well, I ended up CASEing them, and here is what I came up with:

So... I'd love to know: Is this (and is Joanne's) what would be considered a CASE? I have heard that to CASE, you really do have to "copy". But when you change at least 3 elements of it, it is then not an actual copy and is known as an "inspired" card.

Okay, so I changed:

1) The shape of the card to scalloped

2) I embossed it with the dots embossing folder

3) Omitted the clip and tied ribbon around the card vertically.

But to me, it certainly feels like I copied it, as it so closely resembles both Joanne's and Jennie's. And, I always like to give credit where credit is due (and both ladies graciously allowed me to link to their cards here).

So.... I would LOVE to hear from you as to what you think. When is a card a CASE and when do you consider a card one that you were "inspired" to make? And, do you put your name on your cards if you haven't totally designed them yourself? I think this could be a very interesting subject to have others weigh in on. Please leave a comment, if you would!

Thanks so much to both Joanne and Jennie for their wonderful cards and for letting me share them!

Here are some close-up details of the one I made, and some others I made in different colors

Thanks so much for stopping by. I would really love to hear what you think about the topic of CASEing! I'll be back soon with some little cards I cased from the new Stampin' Up! idea book and catalog. Until then, happy stampin'!

Items I used for these cards:

Stamps: All SU!: Snail image from Button Buddies set. "Happy Birthday" stamp from Vintage Labels set. "A Little Late" stamp from "On Your Birthday" set.

Ink: Jet Black Archival Ink; SU! inks: Old Olive; Pumpkin Pie; Chocolate Chip

SU! card stock (for bases) in: Regal Rose, Pacific Pointe, Tempting Turquoise, Daffodil Delight and Riding Hood Red. Also, PTI white and SU! Very Vanilla for stamped layer and SU! Black for layer underneath.

Card stock for tags: SU! Pink Pirouette, Very Vanilla, Pumpkin Pie, and Papertreyink White

Ribbon: SU! Wide striped grosgrain in Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Riding Hood Red, Chocolate Chip and Black

SU! White Baker's Twine; PTI Linen thread

Buttons: Various colors of vintage buttons from PTI

Embossing folder: Sizzix polka dots from SU!

Card shape cut using Sizzix Bigz XL die scallop card #3

Other: SU! scallop edge border punch; Sizzix scallop tag combo die

Photo Shoot At The Beach

So here's the 2nd of the two scrapbook pages I recently made. The picture I used was taken the same day as the other one, but this one was shot by my oldest daughter who is a professional photographer. She had taken my husband and me to Laguna Beach to take pictures of us. She ended up putting them into a beautiful book in which all four of our children wrote the most wonderful messages throughout the pages, and they gave the book to us for Christmas. It was an amazingly wonderful gift which we will cherish always!

Anyway... back to the photo shoot: After we were finished having our pictures taken, she took a few shots with our youngest daughter in them, too. I just love this one!

For this page, I again used K&Company stitched paper from that same kit. I thought the colors in this were great with the photograph. And I found some Webster's Pages ribbon that really picked up the green that was on the page as well as in the photo.

I used SU!'s flower punch to punch out a stamped flower and simply wrote in it for my title.

A few SU! buttons and some Papertreyink twine were added on the top right corner of my photograph as a simple embellishment.

And another one of those cute bee dimensional stickers from K&Company to adorn the flower on the page.

And finally, I adhered some tiny, real sea shells with glue dots to the page. I did this little cluster and then a few shells spread about the page as well.

It was great being able to get a couple of pages done so quickly! Keeping in mind that I don't have to make a huge, long project out of every page makes me realize that as long as I just keep at it, eventually all those photos will get scrapbooked after all!

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you have a great week!