Fabulous Friday Fun!

Welcome to Friday and the Friday Fun Challenge and Friends with Flair!

Fridays are Fabulous!

;o)

Today for our Friday Fun Challenge we are challenging you to make place-cards. With all the holidays coming up, this seemed like a great way to get one of those little jobs done that make things a bit more special for any dinner.

Being military, it's been a LONG time since we were close enough to include any extended family in our holiday traditions so it's always just been the 4 of us.

This year, it's just the three of us for the holidays. We traditionally eat Thanksgiving dinner at the club on base and already have our reservations, but Christmas will just be the kids and me. As a result, I am trying to come up with ways to make the day/s extra special so they aren't as sad about Dad not being here this year (this is the first time in 17 years of marriage in the military that he has missed Christmas so we are definitely not complaining.)

I thought that an extra little present with Christmas dinner might be a fun special treat and made little boxes into our place-cards for dinner. The boxes came from Emma's Paperie and I will probably put some sort of special little candy in them.

These literally only take 5-10 minutes each to put together so it would be super easy to re-create them for a large dinner party.

I like the idea that your place-cards can also be a party gift and the boxes are super cheap ($1.49/4) so it won't cost you an arm and a leg either.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co Believe in Fairytales

*Unity Stamp Co. Frame this Alpha

*Boxes from Emma's Paperie

*Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses paper collection

*Colorbox Red inkpad

*Clear embossing powder

*Nestabilities Labels 4 diecut

*1/4" red gingham ribbon

Be sure to check out the other Friday Fun Girls blogs for more inspiration(Jimmi is out of town this week.)

Jimmi

Sherry

Kimme

Sara

We would love for you to play with us- just use keyword FFC57 when uploading to your SCS gallery.

Its a Unity Thursday!!!

{this is post #2 for today. If you are looking for my Limelight Papercrafts post, it is below this one.}

And Unity is celebrating today with the release

of this gorgeous new stamp kit by Donna Downey, The Artist in You.

I created a couple of projects using this kit. This first is a card that was inspired by the SCS sketch yesterday although it quickly took a life of its own as I was creating...

Supplies Used:

*Unity Stamp Co. The Artist in You

*Pink Paislee paper (background)

*7gypsies paper (stripe)

*Marvy Uchida scallop square punch

*button

*ribbon

*Pallette black inkpad

*CTMH Ocean inkpad

*corner rounder

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For my second project, I created a layout using one of my autumnal photos of Jacob. It's rather simple, but I like it that way. It keeps the focus on the photo and that tree stamp is perfect as a border.

(this layout looks better if you click on it to see it bigger)

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. The Artist in You

*Unity Stamp Co. Nov Scrapbooking kit- Capture Life (journaling block)

*MME papers

*MM ribbon

*Pallette Burnt Umber inkpad

*button

*jute thread

Go check out what the rest of the team did with this incredible stamp kit (links on the Unity blog or you can also find them on my sidebar.) I know that I can't wait to see what all they did!

I'm a Limelight Girl!!!

I am so excited to be able to share...

Mandy chose me to join the Limelight PaperCrafts DT!!!

I am so excited to join this talented group and every couple of weeks, the Limelight team has a challenge that you can play in too. This week's challenge is to use this sketch and add some chipboard somewhere on the project...

The Deets of the Challenge:
**Use the sketch above and try to incorporate your favorite CHIPBOARD!!
**Key word for SCS upload is LLPC034.
**Post a comment with a link to your card on Mandy's blog on the challenge post by Sunday, November 15, at midnight (or before winner is drawn Monday a.m.).
**PRIZE ~ One lucky winner will receive any one chipboard item in the Limelight Papercrafts store! Winner's choice!

And here is what I created for the challenge...

I know that this is not along the lines of my usual style and believe me when I say that it turned out NOTHING like how I imagined it, but I like it. I think that it has a Mexican-worn-tile kind of style to it.

The background is simply a recycled lightweight paper bag (my stamps from Unity come in these a lot of the time) that I crinkled up and attached to my card base.

The four squares are simply cardstock that I stamped using the swirl and border detail from the Unity Store kom for November, Believe in Fairytales, in black and then added just a few dots of white pen detail.

I colored that same border for a detail piece across the bottom of the card to accent the chipboard sentiment which I placed on a couple of punched circles (again accented with a tiny bit of white pen work.)

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Believe in Fairytales

*Pink Paislee Expressions Glitter Alphabet Chipboard

*watercolor pencils

*Med. Black brads

*old paper sack

*scraps colored cardstock

*white paint pen

*Marvy Uchida circle punches

Be sure to check out what the rest of the Limelight team has done with this challenge:

Limelight Papercrafts Blog- Mandy

Caffeinated Cropper- Amy

Dahlhouse Designs- Lisa

My Little Creative Escape- Lisa

Ryann Marin Designs- Ryann

Taylor-Made by JenMarie- JenMarie

And our November Guest- Kerry

BTW, this is Post #1 of 2 posts for today...

Paper Makeup Stamps Challenges

Paper Makeup Stamps (PMS) just had their November release party and as part of their release, they have challenges. I needed a good excuse to get some of these gorgeous stamps inky so I decided to play along...

Their first challenge was to CASE a PMS card from the SCS gallery (how about a few too many acronyms in one sentence...hehe!) I was exploring the gallery and realized that I kept getting drawn to one particular stamper, Kim Stewart, so I decided to CASE her card HERE.

This is one of PMS' new line, Moody Girls- Moody for Art.

{click on the images for better detail}

I love these stamps so much. They look difficult to color, but the way that they are drawn makes it so easy. You are going to be seeing a LOT of the Moody Girls around here (mainly because I simply love to color them...it's cheap therapy!!)

Supplies used:

*Paper Makeup Stamps- Moody for Art

*Paper Makeup Stamps- Art is Life

*Basic Grey paper collection

*Bazzill scallop cardstock

*Nestabilities labels 4 diecut

*PTI ribbon

*watercolor pencils

*Pallette Burnt Umber inkpad

******

The second challenge is a bit more detailed.

It is based on the basics of makeup application:

foundation: use textured cardstock (prism, bazzill, or embossed);
blush: use the color pink;
eyes: use the color black (like mascara);
lips: use something shimmery/shiney (like lip gloss).

Supplies used:

*Paper Makeup Stamps- Emma

*Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder

*MM Jessica paper collection

*Fiskars border punch

*Nestabilities Labels 4 die cut

*buttons

*watercolor pencils

*Pallette black inkpad

I have blog posts planned for every day throughout the weekend, so be sure to drop by often this week! ;o)

A Clean & Simple Christmas...

You all have watched my artwork...you know, I am NOT a clean & simple girl! LOL!

But when it comes to my Christmas cards, that is what I need. I make 75-100 Christmas cards each year (at least the years that I actually get it done) so I need fast AND inexpensive to mail (i.e. they can't have any dimension to them because that requires extra postage and extra money that I would rather spend on other things during the holidays rather than supporting the Post Office.)

Needless to say, this is not the easiest thing for me to accomplish so that is where I scraplift (warning...I am scraplifting a LOT this week in my blog post artwork... but don't worry, I always give credit to the original ideas.)

In my eyes, the Queen of Clean&Simple is Nichole Heady. She has an incredible style that I absolutely adore and wish that I could pull off, so I settle for copying her ideas. ;o) These Christmas cards are a complete scraplift (just using Unity stamps) from this gorgeous Christmas card of hers...HERE.

I created the card in three different color schemes just to play with the looks of it.

Quite honestly, I can't determine which color scheme is my favorite so I will probably do some of each this year for my Christmas cards. That also helps to break up the monotony of stamping 75-100 of the same card.

The most brilliant thing about these cards...simply white and black cardstock so they are ultra-inexpensive to make... another huge plus when making 75-100 cards.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Embellished Season

*Pallette black inkpad

*CTMH inkpads (all of the colored inks are old CTMH)

*Zig Writer in black

*glue pen

*ultrafine glitter

*white and black cardstock

Happy Weekend Everyone!!

It is a glorious weekend here! Just absolutely GORGEOUS!

I was actually inspired to do a bit of yardwork and that NEVER happens around here. LOL!

It is just so darn pretty outside!

I am still working on my requested stamping projects around here. Sherry had requested me to use my very first Unity stamp in a project.

Well, I have been with Unity from the VERY BEGINNING...

They started selling in May of 2008, but I joined the DT a few months before that in January of 2008.

I made this project while my mom was here and she was shocked when I pulled out those first stamps because they are on full wood blocks. That was even before the manufacturing process for the block system had been worked out so our stamps came with the old-fashioned wood blocks (which Unity has made for years for the stamp industry...that was their original product line for the stamp industry.)

Angela sent us out stamps of her choice for those first few shipments to the DT and my first shipment had 4 kits (the wood-mounted stamps were originally sold as kits, but are now sold as singles)...Wish Sticks, Oh What a Beautiful Morning, Worn Polka Dot Alpha, and a Christmas kit that included Randy Reindeer (but I can't even remember what that kit was called back then.

So I had a lot to choose from for this project, but you know...Wish Sticks has always been one of my favorite Unity stamps and still is a favorite that I don't pull out as often as I would like so I took this time to take advantage of that (PLUS Angela says that this was the FIRST OFFICIAL Unity stamp in the line!)

This is a box using one of the PTI templates, AllBoxedUp. Someday I will get coordinating cards made to go inside of it, but I wasn't sure how exactly I wanted to use it, so that part of the project will wait for another day.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Wish Sticks

*Unity Stamp Co. Le Chic Vintage(quote)

*K&Company Amy Butler paper collection

*Unity Burnt Umber inkpad

*ribbon

*flat-backed gems

*Nestabilities Labels diecut

*Bazzill kraft cardstock

I still have two projects to make from the original request list using:

*Plant a Tree (which I got in the mail yesterday!)

*Peacock from Sept KOM

If you have a particular Unity stamp you want to see made into a project, leave me a message and I will add it to the list!

Friday Fun #56 & Friends With Flair

It's time for the Friday Fun challenge!

This week our challenge was to create a card using a "woodland creature"...

I'll be quite honest with you. I have had a stressful week and my creative muse isn't liking that too much so this card is definitely not one of my favorites. I was trying to go for an elegant Snowy Owl look on a Christmas card. I don't think that I quite got the look that I was going for...

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Perfect In Every Way (owl)

*Unity Stamp Co. Christmas Bough (sentiment)

*white embossing powder

*SEI Christmas collection

*red velvet ribbon

*button

*Nestabilities Labels 3

*Fiskars border punch

*Sizzix embossing folder

*corner rounder

Be sure to check out the other Friday Fun Girls blogs for more inspiration. We would love for you to play with us- just use keyword FFC56 when uploading to your SCS gallery.

Jimmi

Sherry

Kimme

Sara

Shhhhh, don't tell....

...I am supposed to be using Unity's KOM for today's post, but I'll tell you a little secret...

I never got my Christmas cards finished and sent last year so I am in a bit of a panic about getting it done this year. So even though the KOM is amazing, the Christmas stamps keep luring me to pick them up in search of the perfect Christmas card design for this year.

Here is this week's attempt...

I used the Christmas Bough stamp and stamped it on it's side so that I could add the "JOY" letters into the sign piece using Frame This Alpha.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Christmas Bough

*Unity Stamp Co. Frame This Alpha

*Webster's Pages paper collection

*watercolor pencils

*Unity Stamp Co. Burnt Umber inkpad

*CTMH cranberry inkpad

*buttons

*white string

*popdots

*scallop deco scissors

It's November 1st...

...and that means that Unity has new KOM's out!!!

I love the first day of the month...

so much excitement with the release of these new kits.

And that excitement is well-deserved

because these kits are GORGEOUS!!!

Here is this month's KOM, Simply Magical...

AND OMG, go check out the incentive kit this month, LOVE BUG (shown in the middle of the page!) I love it and you can get it FREE if you sign up to get the KOM!!!

*******

And here is this month's Scrapbooking/Collage kom, Capture Life...

Such gorgeousness all the way around! I love the first of the month when I can start playing with these kits and showing them off!!!

********

But before I share, I just had to share this little piece of gorgeousness from last night. Here is my little princess Kat twirling in the yard right before trick or treating last night....

******

And now to my project share for today. Another picture where Kat was dressed up, but this was from about a year ago and was just a normal morning around the Snow household. The best thing about little girls is that you can play dress-up any ole time you want. hehe!

This is just a very simply layout with simply straight stamping. There is a tiny bit of color added on the stamps, but overall it is simply black stamped images on white cardstock...it doesn't get much easier or faster than that!

I used the normal Unity KOM, Simply Magical.

Everything in black on this layout is a stamp from the kit except for Kat's name which was done with Frame this Alpha. So that makes for a total of 6 stamps used (there are 7 images though because I used one of the ticket stamps twice) on this layout.

When you have stamps, you don't have to invest in all those expensive embellishments that you can use on only one project. I love the economy of stamping!!!

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Simply Magical

*Unity Stamp Co. Frame this Alpha

*Making Memories Giggle Kids paper collection

*Rhonna Farrer ribbon

*buttons

*corner rounder

*Pallette black inkpad

*watercolor pencils

Getting back into the swing of things around here...

...which this morning translates into catching up on all of the Facebook games. LOL! I NEVER should have ever started on Facebook... ;o)

Mom has gone home so for now, we are back to our boring little family of 3...

But boring is good as any military wife can tell you. When the other half is deployed, boring is VERY GOOD so I'll take it (life/appliances/cars tend to fall apart as soon as they leave!)

I just have a couple of items to share with you today. The first is another layout using Unity's Collage/Scrapbooking kit from October, UR {...etcetera}. This layout was done using a sketch as inspiration (I think the sketch was one by Julie Bonner, but I can't find the sketch now to be sure...)

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Collage/Scrapbooking Kit- UR {...etcetera} (papers, ink, and stamps)

*Unity Stamp Co. Crazy For Daisies

*Unity Stamp Co. Polka Dot Girl

*Fiskars Border punch

*ribbon

*Marvy Uchida scallop circle punch

******

We had a fantastic time when my mom was here visiting even though it rained almost the entire two weeks that she was here. We did have a couple of days where we were able to go out and take photos of the incredible autumnal foliage...

Kat with her "Mascoutah colored flower". Mascoutah is Jacob's High School and their colors are purple and white so anytime she sees anything purple, she has to have it...

These pictures were actually taken after Jacob's final game which was on a Saturday morning and explains why Kat is in "Mascoutah colors" from head to toe. ;o)

Nana & Kat playing in the leaves...I do believe that this was a leaf war...

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The rest of these photos were taken the next day when we took a road trip to St. Charles, MO. It's no secret that this is one of our favorite places to go wander around. I hoped that it would be pretty with the changing leaves and it did not disappoint. We went on Sunday morning before the downtown was open so we were able to get some pretty photos without many other people or cars around.

Nana & Jacob

I love taking photos of doors and was taking one of this gorgeous beauty and I think that I kind of confused Kat with what I was doing. She just kept looking at it. LOL!

Friday Fun News and some Friends with Flair!!!

OMG! I am so excited to share today's news!

The Friday Fun girls have asked me to join in on their Friday challenges. Yippeeee!!!

This week's challenge was to use the Halloween colors purple, orange, green, and brown on a Halloween OR non-Halloween card. I decided to make a thanksgiving card and used a kit that I bought last year from Unity, but has barely been inky, Fall Festival (and yay, this kit is 31% off all weekend long as well as most of the other fall holiday stamps from Unity!)...

For the layout of the card, I used the MojoMonday sketch from this week (#110), just turned everything on angle for a more fun look.

Supplies used:

*Unity Stamp Co. Fall Festival

*MM paper (orange)

*DCWV paper (purple and green)

*watercolor pencils

*Marvy Uchida circle punches

*ribbon

*Unity Stamp Co. Burnt Umber inkpad

Now go check out what the other girls did for this challenge:

Jimmi

Kimme

Sara

Sherry

If you decide to play along with the challenge, upload your project using the keyword FFC55 to the SCS gallery so that we can find it. We hope that you will play along!!!

And go check out Angela's Unity blog for the list of all the Friends with Flair participants.

Tons of inspiration all around!