Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you all had a fabulous weekend! Yesterday my DH met-up with one of his friends from my hometown at the Fairgrounds for an afternoon of Go-Cart racing.  Nadya and I met them for dinner afterwards.  They had a great time and it was a much-needed break for my DH after a couple of  work weeks with really long hours.

I also spent some time being creative – I pulled the Cricut out of her box, installed the blade, unloaded all of my 12×12 paper (ok not all but a lot), and began to play.  Since tomorrow officially kicks-off the Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff celebration, I wanted to have a few items ready to share! See this post for more information and be sure to visit Lindsay’s blog and the My Grafico crop room Tuesday-Thursday for fabulous freebies as well as a 50% off sale Lindsay’s My Grafico store – you DON’T want to miss out!  Thursday is my MIL’s birthday, so I put together a card for her – inspired by one of this week’s projects by Mary Rudakas at the SVGCuts blog – check it out here – and I need to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Leo and the folks at SVGCuts – one of their contests was for a FREE copy of Sure Cuts A Lot and a $50 gift certificate to the store – and my Mom and I won!!!  I split the GC with my Mom and as soon as the SCAL cd arrives, I’ll take it to her as well since she doesn’t have the software yet and she was awesome enough to let me use her baby bug while I was still deciding between the Cricut and Gazelle cutters. Anyhow, on to my project…The card is A7 – 5×7, offering me the perfect opportunity to use Lindsay’s Envelope Bonanza SVG  and Printable Template set.  I used some heavier weight DP from my stash and opted for the scalloped edge envelope as I wanted something both pretty and elegant.  If you don’t have a digital cutter, Lindsay has included a printable template file in the set. The card base is cut from a sheet of DCWV The Rustic Stack – I love the vintage feel and the subtle elegance.  Using Mary’s card as a guide, I imported the gate, oval mat, scallop 1 and scallop 2 SVG files from the Moonlight Garden Party set and sized them according to Mary’s dimensions.  I didn’t want to cover up the glittered pattern on my card base, I opted to omit the oval frame mat.  All of the elements are cut from DCWV glitter cs – though they came from different mat stacks.  I adhered the oval frame and scallops first.  Then I stamped the birthday sentiment (SU – retired) in Brilliance Pearlescent Crimson.  The gate is attached with pop-dot material – my sheet was almost empty and I thought the edge was perfect for the fence strips, so I trimmed it and used it – perfect! The flowers are Prima – attached with pop-dots and glue dots depending on the amount of dimension needed.  I wanted to decorate the gate a bit more, so I used the end of a paint brush to apply PVA glue and then Spring flowersoft – I am actually really happy with the result!For the inside panels, I wanted to continue the theme from my DP card base without the added bulk of heavy CS, so I opened up Photoshop and created 4.5×6.5 panels that my DH could inscribe. I used a couple of blending modes and an awesome overlay from Kim Broedelet’s Floral Grunge 3 set: In fact, I liked them so well, I thought perhaps they would make a nice custom notepad tucked neatly inside a 5×7 folio…so I’m giving them to you!  I didn’t stop there though – following with my idea of notepads, I made a set with journaling/notebook lines (Jodiann – this one’s for you) and a 2nd set with binder rings for the digital scrappers out there.   I hope you enjoy them and can find a use for them.

That’s all for today – I hope to see you all in the My Grafico crop room tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday!  Until then – have a great Monday!

It’s been one of those weeks here in the Desert…lots and lots of wind! This morning wasn’t too bad – Nadya and I were able to squeeze in a short visit to the park after Scaly Slimy (a class/demo on toads at the Natural History Museum)  and lunch before Mother Nature sent us home! We found a couple of those wind spinner twirly flowers, so at least Nadya enjoys the burst of spinning color through the window. Yasha ended up working until almost 9 PM last night and then had to be back at noon today – I’m still holding out hope that he’ll be home tomorrow so we can celebrate Easter with family time and a little egg hunt for Nadya.  We opted out of a traditional basket filled with candy again this year – I have a few plastic eggs to hide for her and she has a couple of cute baskets from her Baba to collect them in.  Her favorite soccer ball was flattened thanks to the teeth on our male German Shepherd, so I did opt to replace it for her as a little gift from us.

Before I get into my creations – I want to remind everyone of some fabulous deals that you won’t want to miss (ads are clickable): Ok, now that you’ve been reminded, I’ll move on to my creative ventures. I loved the He Is Risen digital stamp set from Sweet N Sassy stamps so much that I “had” to create another card with it – this is one has more digital features than many I have done of late.  Like the bird nest card from Thursday, I created the shaped card base in Photoshop (I need to test cut the SVG files and then I’ll be happy to share them), only this time I used Jodiann’s Ribbon Weave and Easter Cross styles and I opted not to trim the purple edge away from the bracket. I used the 09 KutUps font to create the mat and then added a stroke outline on a 2nd layer with a bevel style to create the embossed illusion.  Then I layered my digi-stamp over the mat, centered it, and removed the white edges to allow the mat to show through.  The fabulous leaves and flowers are commercial use extractions from Kim Broedelet designs – you can find them here.  I printed everything out on Georgia Pacific CS and let it sit for a few minutes to dry, while I rummaged in my craft closet for my Prismacolor pencils and blender marker.  I colored the image with my pencils and then blended with my Prismacolor colorless blender as I still haven’t been brave enough to breakout the Gamsol and stumps in the house.  To add some sparkle and shine to the flowers, I lightly dabbed them with Iridescent Medium (Winsor & Newton) using a small  dry brush – my printer ink is water based, so I didn’t want to smear the image by applying too of the medium. I added the stitching with a purple Pilot G-2 pen covered by coat of clear Gelly Glaze pen for interest/texture and the purple adhesive pearls (Michaels) for dimension.   I’d love to know what you think – and as a little Easter gift, I’m giving you the jpeg printable card (minus the stamped image of course) – you can download it here.  Have a fabulous and restful Easter – and celebrate the greatest gift of all with your family.

Nope – it ISN’T what you’re thinking…but it IS Thursday, so that means Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff day!  She has 3 new stamp sets (Puddle Fun, Tea-riffic, and Sew Pretty) in the store this week, all of which are awesome! However, I opted for a recent, but not brand new, release for my project.  I used the bird nest and branch from the Birds & Branches set: as well as a mat from the Embossed Mats set: and one of Jodiann’s new Photoshop styles – Light Dots (coming soon):While sitting on the couch with my DH “watching” American Idol, I was browsing  a crafting catalog – I saw a few items for sale and thought – “Hey, I can make that!”, so into Photoshop I went!  I combined some basic shapes and a fantastic font called 09 KutUps – and viola a card base was born (I have a couple of different ones, and yes, I will be converting them to SVG files and sharing)!  I used the yellow dots style on the front and the blue dots style on the back since I hadn’t initially decided if my card would be a standard or modified gate fold and in the case of the gate fold, I wanted some color variation.  In the end, I opted for a traditional fold, so both edges are bracketed. While in Photoshop, I layered the bird nest onto the branch stamp and then layered both onto the embossed mat – purposefully having the branch trail off the edge.  I added a 2nd copy of the nest and printed everything out.  I added a bit more texture to the card base by running it through my Big Shot with an SU small dot texture plate.  The branch and nest are colored with Copics and Spica pens.  I sponged Bashful Blue ink  (SU) onto the embossed mat using a cloud template from Great Impressions (I purchased it at Creative Stamp Impressions locally).  Then I added a bit of Barely Banana (SU) – I was trying to simulate sun breaking through the clouds in an early morning sort of way.  Then I trimmed the 2nd nest and layered it onto the branch, using the already printed one as my guide (I colored the base nest gray to simulate shadow). I added a bit more definition to the mat by running the edge along the brush tip of my Ballet Blue (SU) marker.  The designer paper is DCWV from my scrap pile (which means this card qualifies for this week’s Digital Tuesday challenge) edged with an MS punch.  I stamped the double row stitching (Clear Dollar stamps – retired) in Marigold Morning (SU-retired) and added the buttons (stash) for dimension and color.  The edge stitching with hand-drawn with my Tempting Turquoise marker (SU). Then I glued and pop-dotted everything to the card base. I had fun making the card – and I hope you enjoy it too!

That’s it for now – I have another project to showcase later, so I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow.  If you didn’t arrive here from Lindsay’s blog, be sure to head there – I know there’s a freebie and the links to the rest of the DT projects – neither of which you’ll want to miss. 

We have to leave a bit earlier this morning since Nadya and I are both getting our hair (yes all of them) trimmed before gymnastics.  Since the wind is supposed to be heinous today (65 mph), I think we’ll opt for “open” gym playtime after gymnastics lessons since we’ll not be going to the park – I object to sandblasting!   Then we’ll come home and start laundry – oh so much fun I know!  Have a great Thursday!