Monday, April 5, 2010

Happy Easter!

Hello there my blog friends! I just wanted to pop on here and share some of my Easter photos with you. Enjoy!










It was a gorgeous Easter Sunday here in northern Indiana...the flowers were blooming, the temps were in the 60's, and it was sunny...could we ask for more?

And by the way, we did not dress to match...we just all happened to match...weird huh? But it is going to make one great scrapbook page! :)

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Card Frenzy

Hey there my blogging friends! Again I have neglected you and my poor blog. I have been super-busy with a ton of other things lately and the computer just hasn't been a high priority for me. So with a new month comes a new resolution to get on here more and document my creative adventures.

So here goes....

I don't know what it is lately, but I have been on a card making frenzy. Perhaps its the warm weather (we had record temps today...78 and counting!), Jennifer McGuire's blog, or all the new stamping goodness I have splurged on over the past few weeks, but I have been whipping these babies out like crazy.

First up are some older cards that I made in Feburary...


This sweet froggy card was inspired by a Valentines' class that I took and also taught at Archivers. I loved this large cling stamp from Hero Arts and it went so well with one of my new Quickutz dies. The papers were inspired by my sweet friend Cindy who made these adorable treat boxes with the frog paper from K&Company's new Valentine's line and some of the Dotted Swiss cardstock by Bazzill.  Such a sweet card!



I absolutely fell in love with this card that Jennifer McGuire made for the Hero Arts blog hop back in January and thanks to her amazing video, I pretty much copied her card from start to finish. It really gave me a chance to play around with Tim Holtz' distress inks and see what fun things they could do. Totally loving how this one turned out and I will definately be using this fun "Silhouette Grass" stamp from Hero Arts again!



This sweet froggy card was the one I made for my church ministry for the month of March. I made 50 of them while watching the final hockey game at the Olympics between the USA and Canada. The stamps are all from Hero Arts and I colored my frogs in with Copic Markers.


Next up are some really fun cards I made a few weeks ago when I was not in the mood to scrapbook, but was feeling the urge to be creative....



This is just a sweet, simple card that I made using scraps left over from some of my scrapbook layouts. Totally love the bright springy colors here. :)



This was one of those cards that just came together on its own. I found this great butterfly stamp from Hero Arts on clearance at Michael's when I was there last and I combined it with some Distress Inks and Perfect Pearls to create this sweet card.  The close-up photo shows you the shimmer on the butterfly...so pretty!



I also used my new butterfly stamp on this card with Distress Inks and Perfect Pearls. I also was able to use my new sentiment stamp set with these really cool scripty sayings on them.  Too perfect! :)



This sweet card is one I made for my friend Sarah who is expecting a baby this month. Sarah and I were friends in high school, but last month a whole group of us got together to go to lunch and catch up. It was a lot of fun and I inlcuded this sweet card with my gift for her.




This year I decided to make my own Easter cards. I found this beautiful cross stamp from Stampendous and used Ranger's alcohol inks in the light colors to create the stained glass look on the background. I also glittered around the cross and used a label die cut from Quickutz to add to the sweet look to my card. I made 30 of these beautiful cards to give out to my family and friends. :)

The rest of these cards are some of the ones I made for my April birthday cards for church. I had so many ideas rolling around in my head, that I couldn't just do one....



I saw a super-sweet card using this new stamp from Hero Arts and so I decided to make one myself.  Since I was doimg this for church and I had to make a lot of them, I left off some of the stuff from the original card, but I still like how mine turned out. :)



This week when Rebekeh came down to spend the day scrapbooking with me, we headed out to our local stamping store, Stamping Day & Night. I picked up these sweet flower stamps as well as a product called Gamsol that is used with colored pencils to give them a watercolored look. So I actually pulled out my new toys and created about 10 of these sweet cards for church.





The rest of my birthday cards for this month were made entirely of scraps. I went through my scrap box and pulled sets of 3 coordinating patterns that I could cut to 1 5/8 by 4 inches. I then imked the edges and attached them to an A2 size card. I then used my new die cut from Tim Holtz' Alterations line (we have them at Archivers!) to die cut scrap chipboard. I used Ranger's Distress Crackle paint on the labels and then stamped my sentiment with Staz On ink right on top of the crackle paint. Love, love, love the look it gives.  Below are a few more of my favorite color combos from this project. :)


On this one I used clear crackle paint right over the chipboard...such a cool look!





So in all, since February I have made almost 200 cards! Whew! That's a lot of cards!