Stampin Up - God's Beauty Hostess Set

Man, when Spring comes life sure gets busy, doesn't it?! Both my boys are playing baseball and it doesn't leave much free time for crafting. Still, I managed to make some time this past weekend to play for fun and I decided to give a little attention to my non-A Muse stamps for a change. I haven't had any Stampin Up parties at my house since the last fiasco (remember my post about my DH and kids getting in a wreck?) but I really like the current Hostess set, God's Beauty. I managed to track one down for myself. 

Stamps: SU God's Beauty Hostess Set, 9-8560C Happy Mother's Day Script (A Muse)

I browsed the Splitcoast gallery for this set and stumbled across this lovely beauty, which became the inspiration for my card. I changed up a few things and turned it on its side. I like it so much it's going to be my Mother's Day card to my mom. I also needed a birthday card for a co-worker this week so I made another card just like it and substituted a 'Happy Birthday' sentiment for the 'Happy Mother's Day.' I hope she likes it. 

I have more samples of cards I made with this set to share this week. 

Stamp Club Projects

I'm not in a Stampin Up Stamp Club any more but I've been spending more time with my friend, Lisa (I know a lot of Lisa's!) who is in an SU Stamp Club. Last night, it was her turn to host so I attended. We had some really nice projects to work on but I always take projects home and tweak them to work for me. It can cost a lot for demos to provide materials to make cards really fancy, which I totally understand, and they have to gear them to appeal to the group as a whole. I think this particular pair of demos did an outstanding job with their designs. But I still tweaked some of them. LOL

I don't have any pictures of what the demos' cards looked like but here's what I turned them into.



For this card, I added some retired SU Apple Cider designer paper (DSP). The camera didn't pick it up but on the DSP, you'll see lines of small dots. I added some sparkle to those small dots with my Sakura Glitter Pen. On the word 'Fabulous' I also added some sparkle using the glitter pen. The center of the flower has some glitter on it so IRL (in real life), this card has just a little sparkle to it! I was lucky that they used a set I already own because the sentiment was not part of the original design.



This design was my favorite card, I think. I didn't change a thing!



This card used a technique I'm not familiar with. I don't even know what it's called. The large flower was already stamped onto the black cardstock with white craft ink. We colored over the top of the white craft ink with Prismacolor pencils, then outlined everything with a white gel pen. If anyone knows the name of this technique, would you let me know? This design, I totally tweaked. Actually, they had this mounted with the olive paper of the first card but I liked it with the Really Rust. I also used some of the flower images from the Fabulous Flower set and randomly stamped them all over the rust cardstock. I added the sentiment and flourish from Fancy Flexible Phrases (ret.) and outlined the black oval and Kiwi Kiss strip with my gold Sharpie.



This last card was another favorite of all our projects. I love the design elements and the Tangerine Tango with the Chocolate Chip. It's just so warm and yummy! I stamped the scallop square image by just inking everything but the center sentiment. I saved that for when I got home. Everything else followed the original design by the demos. The sentiment I added is from Happy Harmony (ret.) plus I added a few A Muse Micro Twinkle Dot stickers to fill some dead space. I had used my Stamp-A-Majig but still managed to leave too much space below the sentiment. A little bling fixed that right away!

So there you go! That's what I did last night. I had a lot of fun. It was nice that my friend's stamp club meets just a few blocks away from my house.

Tomorrow I'll be sharing a Saltbox card with you.

You Rock!

Today I had to make 3 birthday cards for a party. My nieces Cassi (14) and Sabrina (9), along with my great-nephew Max (4), celebrated their birthday at the local roller skating rink. Cutie pie Max turned 4 and I found a fun little pirate Playmobil set for him and thought my little Errol stamp from The Cat's Pajamas would make a great card for him. I had some cute pirate wrapping paper that I bought at Target so I used some to make the card, having got the idea from Leigh O'Brien's blog. I kept things pretty simple because he is 4, after all, and could care less what the card looks like. I actually drew in the planks and the side of the boat with a Copic multiliner and a ruler.




Now this card, that I made for Sabrina, looks a lot better in person than I could capture in the photo. I used a combination of the blue kitchen paper from A Muse, Pink paper from Stampin Up, the butterflies and sentiment from Inkadinkado, and the flourish trail behind the small butterflies from Memory Box. Princess Sabrina loves glitter so I made sure to sparkle up the butterflies for her.

The piece-de-resistance, though, is the card I made for Cassi. I put a lot of effort into her card because she's a little older and she really enjoys stamping with me from time to time so I knew she would appreciate it. Before she opened it I told her I worked really hard on her card and she wasn't allowed to throw it away....ever. haha. She loved it just like I thought she would. For this card I used Stampin Up papers (with exception of the A Muse black kitchen). This 'Just Jawing' set is the only set I've purchased from the new catalog and I got it when a friend had a party. I love it! The awesome background stamp is from B-Line Designs. Isn't it cool?! Inside, I tucked in an iTunes card.

ETA: the scalloped punch is one of the new Martha Stewart border punches. It's called Scallop Dot.