Have you checked out Sweet 'N Sassy Stamps yet?

The stamps are created by a very talented lady by the name of Korin Sutherland, and I am proud to say that she is from my home state of Pennsylvania.

I recently purchased the Trust in The Lord set from her, and I LOVE it. It is great for many different occasions in which you need to send words of encouragement.
Well, this morning I got to play/stamp a bit, and I finally came up with an idea for her February Sketch challenge. I hope Korin likes it. I really have been loving all of the pinks and browns lately. Maybe it's a touch of spring (the pink) in a blah winter (brown)? Either way . . . here are a couple of views for ya to see.
Stamps: Trust in the Lord (Sweet N Sassy Stamps) and Delight in Life swirl (SU)

Inks: Basic brown, chocolate chip and creamy caramel

CS: Pretty in Pink, chocolate chip, close to cocoa, blush blossom, kraft and white

And . . . if you haven't checked out Korin's store or blog . . . go there now, hurry, you might miss something!! (Click on the title above for a direct link). Thanks for stoppin' by!

:) Kelly

Christmas in February?

I know, I know. Maybe you are sick of Christmas cards, but I worked on so many of them last week and this past weekend, that I just wanted to show them off a bit. I really LOVE to have my Christmas cards done ahead of time, so this is a great way to do it. I only create 10 each month, so here they are all at once for the month of February.

I believe I showed you the GinaK Designs penguin earlier this month, so I forgo another up-close image of those two. I made five of the Jesus is the Reason for the Season card shown here -->

Then I had three House Mouse (HM) images left over from a HM swap last year that I have been wanting to use. They were all colored with prismacolor pencils and gamsoled to blend. One has dazzling diamonds on the berries, the other has sparkling glitter on it from my sakura gel pen and stickles for the ice/snow (wasn't quite dry in the picture hence the lumpy look--sorry), and my favorite of all three is the Warm and Cozy one.

Items used on total group:

Card stock (cs): white, vanilla, almost artichoke, hunter green, choc chip, close to cocoa, dark blue (not SU) and a little sage green.

Inks: Basic black, versamark for gold EP, and some sponged on hunter green

Designer Paper (dp): DCWV for the light blue in the penguin card and Figgy Pudding on the HM cards

Accessories: brads, stickles, liquid pearls, clear embossing powder (EP), gold EP, paper clip, ribbon, dazzling diamonds (DD).

Tools: Coluzzle, Spellbinders nestabilities classic scalloped oval and Stampin Up (SU) tab punch, SU pastels/chalks, prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits.

I hope you enjoyed seeing them. :) Kelly

Been pretty creative the last 2 days

I am so behind on stopping by all my SBS4 sisters' blogs this week. I usually check their blogs daily or every other day at least, but this past week (well . . . okay or two) have been pretty busy with work. I haven't gotten a chance to do the fun things I enjoy very much.



Yesterday and today I squeezed in some stampin' time though, hoping to win a free stamp set from GinaK Designs. There were 4 challenges after the release party on SCS Sunday night. They had to be done by 11 a.m. this morning. Well, I stayed up late last night and then worked off and on this morning while my work was loading to finish and upload these 2 cards and the first Valentine frappucino bottle you see below.



The first card was for Sketch #1 (hosted by Carolyn). I used the fishy friends stamp. I purchased this last year when Gina used to sell them separately. Now they come in sets. I thought with those big eyes staring at the girl fish . . . "I only have eyes for you" would look just right on here. One problem, it didn't all fit on the word window punch I already had punched out, so this is the shortened version with "I Only Have I's 4 U" on it. LOL (DH still thought it was cute). Little does he know, I am saving this one for our anniversary in July (if I remember where I put it by then *wink*).

This penguin card was for sketch #3 (hosted by Erika Martin). I really loved this sketch with almost a circle in the upper right hand corner, main image a little to the right of center and then the sentiment and accent across the bottom.



I used the penguin from the Sandy Claws set I purchased around Christmas time, colored him in with markers, layered him on some navy blue cs and after layering on DP, inked the edges of the card with ballet blue, stamped some snowflakes from the SU snowflake spot set, added a strip of DP near the bottom, stamped Celebrate the Magic! and accented with a clear button and sheer ribbon (which I thought was silver, but I think it is pink now that I look closer with it on some white paper).

This bottle was made for sketch #2 (hosted by Beth).
I only stamped the sentiment from Forever in my Heart,
and then used Penny Black stickers again. They are so quick and look so pretty. I just couldn't help myself. LOL












Then tonight in about 20-30 minutes, I finished two more of these little cuties to put goodies in for Valentine's day. I asked my DH to bring home some Kisses for me and some other candy that he and DS would like for Valentine's day. What does he bring home for them you ask? Fritos corn chips ---- Ack! Now how in the world would they look inside one of these bottles?! Not very good. So after the roads are cleared tomorrow, I need to get some kit kats or M and M's for DS and Reese's p-nut butter cups for DH. *sigh*









Anyway, hope you enjoy looking at my paper creations I made the past couple of days.

Swaps are coming along

Well, the card swaps I am hostessing at SCS are coming along. The birthday card front swap mentioned below is due by Feb 29, so it doesn't seem to have as many participants. I guess maybe I made it too soon. I am also hostessing a Pimped ATC swap, and a Hanna swap, which are due April 18th and March 28th respectively. I realized that I haven't posted a challenge yet this month, so . . . I challenge you to join us for some fun swapping of cards and there will be prizes given away for the top 3 submissions. These are judged by me, family and friends. Your odds are pretty good if you have the time to send your submissions by Feb 29th for the b-day card front swap. If that is too soon, the other swaps are still open for quite a while. Check them out, if you would like.










Here are some of the cards for the birthday card front swap so far. The first one I called priceless birthday is by Sarah Wade (known on SCS as MrsE) and was created for the feminine/ladies' group.

These three were created by me for the ladies' group, guy's group and the children's group. I used a mixture of different stamp companies from Sugar Nellies to Stampin Up (SU) to The Angel Company (TAC). I have to admit, I enjoyed every one of them.

The sugar nellie was colored with prismacolors, gamsoled and then after layering a bit of different colors, some doodling, some primas (which I haven't used in a while), Stickles and 2 different ribbon to finish it off. I just had to get a few embellishments on there. *wink*


The guy card didn't have as much going on, so I opted for more layers and sponging of color to keep this interesting. The Riveting sentiment was a much needed addition to unbalance it out a bit to get away from a totally central focus.

The little boy card was fun in the different shades of green I also used textured card stock for depth, ink distressing or sponging, and my favorite technique of coloring with prismacolors and gamsoling them. I thought the strips of ribbon separated the images nicely too.

Technology Woes and Prioritizing

Well, first off, my banner above is a rather pretty picture of a cloudy sky on a sort of strange fall day. I really loved how the darker cloud moved across the sky, but no rain, and the colors were still so pretty. Alas . . . blogger doesn't seem to stretch the image for me very well. I also made a rather pretty (but a little plain) digital banner to use, but it will not upload it correctly.

Then . . . just the other night, I tried to crop my picture and add a watermark for the picture I am about to show you . . . and PhotoShop had an error, which was "unrecoverable" . . . well now, I thought isn't that nice, and sounds a little serious to me. All of this STUFF (being nice) started to happen after the new HP update I received Thursday night (I believe), so I have been desparately trying to figure out how to undo an HP update. Any thoughts out there about how to undo an update? It would truly be greatly appreciated. I use Office 2003 (older version, because it was cheaper to buy, and it works well with my MT software). I have read that the new update is for 2007, so . . . not really sure why HP thought it was prudent to update my computer for me. Of course, I clicked okay without reading it through (another lesson learned).

Okay . . . enough grumbling I guess. Sorry :(

I am trying to prioritize my time a little better, and since this swap is due Feb 29th, figured I better get to it. I wanted to show you my newest creation for my Birthday Card Front Swap. It is somewhat simple, because it can't be too frilly for boys, right?! I think most boys LOVE to play with frogs and toads, so . . . here is my creation for the card swap. I used quite a few stamp sets on this one. I combined the TAC Girlz & Boyz little boy with a frog with the toad from a retired SU Teacher Time set. The Have A are from Roughed Edges Alphabet and Birthday from the sentiment in Fresh Flowers both SU sets. This is the first time I have purchased the textured cs from SU, and I toadally love it! LOL

CS: Mellow moss textured, old olive, always artichoke and white of course.

Inks: Basic black, mellow moss for sponging/distressing.

Acc: Green brad from Memory Makers, dark green ribbon from a ribbon swap from Pink Hedgehog, prismacolor pencils, SU markers, and crystal effects to pop up the toad's eyes.

Hope you have a Toadallly awesome day too! :)

P.S.--make sure you read what those updates are for *wink*