A Birthday Sort of Day

Good morning blog readers! Today is a pretty special day around here....it's my birthday!  :)  Which in my books, makes it a fantabulous day no matter what is going on. 

Granted, it is also make and take weekend at Archivers, so I will be spending most of my day at work helping people make Chistmas cards but at least I get to play with scrappy products all day.  Then later on I will be sharing an extra special birthday dinner with my family which should be really great. :)

I also got my very first birthday card for this year, and guess what? I made it. My church sent me one of my  very own creations to wish me a happy birthday.  :) This is the card I recieved in the mail...

Does it look familiar...its because I posted it last month. He-he....my family and I really got a kick out of this one.

So in honor of my birthday, I thought I would share my birthday cards that I made for November. I was able to play with some really cool techniques on these and I absolutely LOVE how they turned out. :)

For this fabulous card, I was able to play with several techniques. I first diecut the label shape from one of the Tim Holtz Alterations dies. I then stamped the branch and cute little owl from Hero Arts onto the label with Memento ink. I also found this great sentiment from Scrappy Cat with little stars in the letters to add to the project. I then colored my card with Copic markers. It turned out really well and the coloring went pretty quicky considering that I colored 40 of these babies. :)  I then distressed the edges with Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress ink and my ink blending tool.  Finally I stamped this woodgrain stamp from Hero Arts with Walnut Stain Distress ink and pop-dotted the label piece to the card. Definately a card that both guys and girls will love. :)

This next card uses one of my favorite ever Hero Arts stamps...Silhouette Grass. My coworkers think I am crazy for loving this stamp so much but I see *tons* of possibilities here. 

The inspiration for this card came from an SEI paper pack called Charlemagne. The copper and tan combo, highlighted with the turquoise and black accents really struck me as a beautiful autumn color combination and I thought it would translate beautifully into this card.

First I diecut my white cardstock with another one of my favorite Tim Holtz Alterations dies and then I stamped the Silhouette Grass stamp with Versamark and embossed it using copper embossing powder.  I then used Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress ink and my ink blending tool to color the edges of my image. I stamped one of my favorite birthday sayings from Hero Arts on turquoise cardstock and cut the ends to create the banner shape and pop-dotted this to my card. I still felt that it needed a bit more so I added 3 turquoise gemstones in a cluster to the front to finish my project.  It really was a fairly simple card design and I was able to create 40 of these in just one evening. :)

Well that's it for this post. Hope you enjoyed the cards and have a wonderful day everyone!

Until next time,

Janeen :)

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!