COTM Swap

I got into a COTM swap on a Yahoo group that I am in, and this is the card that I made to send to my partner...

I love the little chick! It is from the Little Friends stamp set. Instead of coloring the chick, I stamped it on yellow paper cut it out and pieced it on top. It looks really cool because it adds a little bit of texture and relief to it as well.

~Michelle

Getting Started Again

After finally dusting off my stamp stuff, I have been doing a lot of stamping lately! It is so nice to be making stuff again. With the holidays just around the corner I have been working on a few things for Halloween. Here is one of the cards I made . . .
The stamp is from the Happy Haunting stamp set, which is one of my favorites! The swirly stamp in the background is from Flourishes. To give it a little sparkle I put some Black Stickles on the pumpkin's eyes and on the flowers in the background. The card was so simple to make, and I love the way it looks.

~Michelle

Has it been that long???

Oh my goodness...the holidays hit and I have hardly touched my stamping, scrapping, and computer in WEEKS! Am I the only one? How is it that the holidays always manage to make everything so chaotic? Here it is over a week later and I am still feeling very scattered.

I did have a reason to make a card though, so that got me stamping. The Angel Company's very first demonstrator's birthday is this week. Every year she sends out so many hand stamped birthday cards to all of us Angels. I have received one from her every year that I have been with TAC, and wanted to return the birthday wishes to her this year. It really is quite special what she does and I hope that her mail box is flooded with birthday cards this year!

Playing With Paisley

I started out today with the intention of making some cards for a Valentine's themed card swap that I am in. That got me started working with the red and black, but my end result was not quite a Valentine. Oh well, I love how this card turned out! I used the Paisley Rockz stamp set to make the petals of my flower. I then used the little flower stamp in the set for my flower center and put a black brad in the center of that. The red paisleys are the Palette Moulin Rouge Ink and they are a much darker red in person. The scan shows it lighter than it actually is. The base of the card is 4" x 4", and the Scarlet cardstock is 3" x 3".

It was unbelievably hard to resist doing something to the black card. I wanted to stamp something on it, add some ribbon, brads or just something. I kept reminding myself that sometimes less is more, and I really like the main focus being on the flower. There isn't anything else to detract from it.

Got My Picture Scrapped!

I had some time yesterday morning to play with that picture of the kids and I got a page done. It is an 8 x 8 page and it turned out really cute. I put instructions up on my website.

When I was done I had it sitting up on the shelf above my table. When Emma saw it, she said "2 pictures of Emma!". She has this obsession recently with pictures. There are a lot more pictures of Alex around the house than there are of Emma just because he is so much older and I have been really bad about putting pictures in frames lately. Well, she has noticed! She is constantly going to the pictures around the house as if she is looking for pictures of herself. So, she gets really excited any time that she sees a picture of herself. Needless to say, i'm in the process of printing and framing some pictures of her so she doesn't feel left out!

Gotta Love New Stamps

I got this new set of stamps in the mail the other day from Heather who is my upline with TAC. I won them on one of our conference calls and the best part is that the stamps aren't even available until January when Jubilee starts and I got them early!

I hadn't even seen the stamp set before Heather sent it to me so it was a really fun surprise to open up. The second I saw this cat on the chair I knew the Uptown Girl paper pack would be a perfect match. I love the pink and black color combinations in these papers and the patterns are awesome. I used the solid pink with the linen texture and paper pieced the chair. It turned out so cool. The chair actually looks like fabric! The stripes at the bottom of the card are also from Uptown Girl. I just cut a piece to fit across the bottom and stamped the sentiment in black above it.

Even doing the paper piecing this card was really quick and easy and it looks great. I am going to make some more of these to keep on hand to have note cards to send out. And one will have to go to Emma, our 3 year old. She tried running off with the card as soon as she saw it on the table. A cute kitty all done up with her favorite color is just too much for her to resist!

~Michelle

Let's Get This Started . . . Again!

Well, I thought that I would give this blogging thing a try, again. There are several blogs that I love to look at and it got me thinking about starting my own. Well, I got one started, and now i'm starting over. I'm still going to keep up my normal gallery of stamped stuff on my website, but this will give me the opportunity to share a lot more and should be fun!

It is hard for me to believe that Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away, and I already have started on my Christmas cards. Usually procrastination gets the best of me and I get them done at the very last minute. I got a head start this year though. To save time, I decided to keep them very simple this year. My husband and our son both play roller hockey. The season just started so our schedule is very hectic right now with games three nights a week on top of all of our other normal stuff. So quick and simple is really going to help me with my Christmas cards this year.

I am really liking this clean layout on the plain white card. Not only is it simple, but it just looks so clean and crisp. I acutally got the idea for this card from one that Eva Costigan (a fellow TAC demonstror) made. The ornament is stamped on the white, and then I stamped the ornament again on a piece of patterned paper. Cut out the patterned image and then pieced over the image on white. No coloring to do at all, and it gives it a bit of relief. Plus it looks like some of those simple greeting cards that you see in the stores that are so trendy right now. Very cool!

Now I just need to get started on my decorating for Christmas and I will be set.