I *think* I haven’t shared this card yet but I could be wrong.  This one was made prior to injuring my back.

I dusted off some Greeting Farm stamps during a little craft room purge in April and realized that my Greeting Farm stamps haven’t seen much love.

This little guy was fun to colour and the title of my post comes from all the silver flat backed pearls I used on the card:

I believe the paper is Basic Grey Oliver and the layout is just one of my “go to” layouts.  I tend to angle the sentiment when I use my oval punches just because I think it’s more fun that way.

A quick, easy boy card for my stash!

I thought this would be an appropriate card to post after my unexpected absence.

I hurt my back in March (torn disc) and I’ve been having problems off and on ever since.  Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to do pretty much anything – let alone lean over my craft table colouring images etc.

I made this card just before I damaged my back to welcome a coworker back to the office:

I’m going to guess that it’s a CASE from Alice Wertz…I love how she uses big panels of white on her cards.  I don’t want to make this style of card all the time because I’m all about the patterned paper but I think the white has a big impact.

The image is an Anna Wight stamp and the sentiment is computer generated.  MME paper and Basic Grey buttons – it was great to be able to use a few of the clear buttons – I have trouble integrating them on my cards for some reason.

Hopefully, I’m back in the saddle now but I have to be careful that I don’t re-injure myself and I am so far behind on house projects now that cards are going to take a bit of a back seat.

I made such a fun card yesterday!  I chose the image and then looked through the pad of paper I wanted to use and found the PERFECT paper.  I love how the paper is striped and picks up on the hats and the boy’s shirt.  There were so many colours in the paper that it was very easy to choose colours for the shirt, hats and present.

Isn’t it cute?  This image is tall and wide so when I use it I tend to use the “outside the box” technique when die cutting.  Yesterday, I simply cut a standard rectangle because I knew I’d be pop-dotting the balloon and the boy’s head. 

I used my Family Phrases sentimens from Stampin’ Up because I think the font is perfect for children’s cards.  It’s whimsical and goes with just about any cute stamp you can think of.

The paper is MME lime twist (I think it’s Fly a Kite or Go Fly a Kite – I don’t have the paper next to me at the moment) and the stamp is my beloved Whipper Snapper.  I’m dying to place a new order of their stamps but I haven’t had much play time lately so I’ll hold off – with luck I’ll make it to the next release (so they don’t come out with more stamps I want right after I place an order).

Happy Easter!  I made this a few weeks ago – I didn’t need an Easter Card – I just wanted to have an excuse to colour this little bunny:

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

My Dad’s birthday is coming up so I thought I’d get crafty during yesterday’s holiday rather than waiting until the last minute and stressing myself out.

I saw a cute card on Limedoodle’s website and liked the treatment she used for the image (the rest of my card is your basic one-pattern background).  I did make a boo-boo when stitching along the end of the image – my sewing machine zagged left – oops!  I’m sure my Dad won’t mind!

I used some fun Basic Grey paper, a few buttons from my stash and a really cute Paper Smooches stamp (bought these before Christmas)  Kim Hughes fonts are just the funnest (it’s a word!) ever.  I wish I owned them all.

The hardest part about making this card was swapping the white thread in my little sewing machine for black.  On my “grown up” machine I don’t find it difficult to rethread but I always have to look at the manual for my little Kenmore so I usually stick with white.

I needed an anniversary card for one of my brothers and SIL (happy 12th, guys!) and since I was on a Stamping Bella kick and still had the MME paper out I made this card for them:

I was pleased to use a few brads on the card (which, funnily enough, is for my brother Brad…) because it’s nice to use some older embellishments now and then.  Gives me an excuse to hang on to them for even longer.

I’ve been so busy lately that I only pop into my craft room on an “as needed” basis.  In fact, before I made this card yesterday, I made a baby shower card and some gift tags (that I didn’t have time to take a picture of), wrapped the baby gift, got cleaned up, went to the baby shower, then came home, made this right away, got it ready to mail and then made supper…after that was the usual “get ready for the work week” chores.  Don’t even get me started on how much laundry I did over the weekend!

Hopefully, I’ll be back soon – my Dad’s birthday is coming up so at some point I’ll need to make a card!

A wedding congratulations card using some long-abandoned Stamping Bella stamps…almost forgot about them.  I went through a phase of these stamps a couple of years ago but then got addicted to Whipper Snapper where I send most of my stamping dollars…

I used some pretty My Mind’s Eye paper and CASEd the layout from Alice Wertz (cause she’s amazing!).  Once the colouring was done, this was actually a quick card and I totally scored finding two buttons with the same glazed finish.  The paper was too pretty to use “ordinary” buttons.

Back tomorrow with another Stamping Bella/MME card.

My cousin and her two young daughters were over for a visit on Sunday (to play in my craft room) so I thought I’d whip them up a little Easter treat.

I found a template for test tube holders on SCS and adjusted the dimensions to fit a kit kat bar, pencil and bunny pop.

The kit kat bars were Easter themed but the colours weren’t doing much for my little gift so I used the scraps of patterned paper that were left to make a quick wrap for each bar.  The paper was a little short but it didn’t stay on the bars for very long so it really didn’t matter!

This was a fun little project and the girls seemed to like it.  Score one for “Aunt” Kelly!

I was browsing the blog of one of my more recent discoveries (Limedoodle) and saw a card she CASEd for a challenge.

I LOVED the layout using a popped up white panel on the front of the card (the link above takes you directly to that challenge if you want to check it out) and had to immediately make a card using the same technique.

I was itching to use one my new PTI stamps (Up and Away) and its matching dies so I chose a cheerful piece of patterned paper for colouring inspiration/direction and came up with this cutie:

I had a little trouble getting the true colours to show in the picture but it’s fairly close.

What a wonderful layout – you’ll be seeing it again…soon…like, maybe next time I blog (okay, second or third “next time” because I have a few more projects to share but I was so darn excited about this layout that the card I just made jumped the line!).

You should go make a card using this technique.  Seriously.  Do it now.

I had a request for a Christening card – no problem…oh, wait…there’s a problem

Oddly enough, I’ve only ever had to make Christening cards for girls and usually go with a Christening dress shaped card with a bit of ribbon and a rose…not gonna work for William.

Sooooo, after a futile search through every single one of my stamps, I realized I have NOTHING suitable for a boy’s Christening card.  I switched to checking out the options on all my Cricut cartridges – minus the Christmas ones – still nothing.  In total desperation, I looked at the Christmas cartridges – I thought there might be something religious on one of them – a cross, a decent shaped chapel – still zip.  Then, while looking at Joys of the Season, I spot “4 calling birds” and realize I can pretend one of the birds is a dove – that’s appropriate, right?

Well, it is now…

I used some glamour dust to make the “dove” a little less boring.  I didn’t have an appropriate sentiment for the front (blessings would have been nice) so I left it off.

I cut out 5 “doves” before deciding on the size and if I wanted a blue dove on a white background or a white dove on a blue background.  Blue dove won.

Congratulations, William!