2 Cute Release Day

Hi everyone!  It's time for another digital release, this week, it's this adorable little raccoon!  I colored my guy in purple, reminiscent of the Care Bear Cousins!  :D  Head on over to the 2 Cute Design Team Blog to see what the other girls did!  Thanks so much for stopping by!

-Suzanne :O )

Just buzzin' by...

Hi everyone!  Just wanted to share the card I made for the Anything Goes challenge over at 2 Cute Rubber Stamps' Design Team blog!  I used this adorable bee digital stamp and colored her with my Copics.  I meant to add glitter to her wings, but forgot to do that before I took the picture and then decided to let it be.  Well, let it "bee", I should say.  ;)  I die-cut the image with my Nestabilities and matted it with black cardstock.  I pulled out some old Basic Grey papers and stamped the Hampton Arts sentiment next to the image.  It's pretty small, but it says "just buzzin' by to say hello..."  I had a tough time finding a coordinating sentiment, but with all the stamps I have, it would have been really disappointing not to have a bee-themed sentiment!  :)  


I hope you'll play along with us over at 2 Cute Rubber Stamps!  You have another week to link up your card and a chance at winning free stamps!  See the challenge here:


2 Cute Rubber Stamps Anything Goes Challenge


Thanks for stopping by!
-Suzanne :O )

Enjoy the little things

Happy Monday, friends!  Our Woodware assignment this week was to use the following sketch designed by our very talented Kerry!:

My card is pretty simple- I used lots of cardstock and patterned paper scraps and my Fiskars border punch to match Kerry's layout.  I stamped the flower pot from Garden Greetings three times and stamped the sentiment right below them.  I added the bee to keep things from being too symmetrical (plus he's cute!).  I colored the image with my Copics and added a shadow to ground the flower pots.  I wish I had used my normal white cardstock instead of a scrap because my colors bled a little bit (you can see it in the bee, especially) but I don't think it's too noticeable.  

I hope you'll have some time to play along with Kerry's sketch, we'd love to see your interpretation!  Link up here:

Woodware Challenge #32

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day!

-Suzanne :O )

Woodware/StampingScrapping Blog Hop!

Hi friends!  I'm SO excited you're here, and I hope you are too because there are a couple of fun prizes for two lucky winners!!  I've mentioned before that StampingScrapping.com now sells Woodware stamps, so we thought we'd do a little blog hop to celebrate our union!  :)  

My card features Mary of the Woodware set, Mary and Friends.  Isn't she cute?!  I colored her with my Copics and paper pieced her dress.  The sentiment comes from the StampingScrapping set Label Accents, which I adore because they coordinate perfectly with your Nestabilities and have every sentiment covered!  

I added some Prima flowers, brads by Kaiser Craft and some purple floss from my stash.  The layout is this week's Sweet Sunday sketch:

Now for the blog hop!  We're going to start you off at StampingScrapping and have you finish up at Woodware.  You'll see a whole lot of inspiration along the way!  Be sure to leave a comment on each blog for a chance to win the prizes.  Woodware USA will choose a winner from comments left on their design team blogs and StampingScrapping will pick a winner from comments left on their design team blogs. You will have until 11:59 PM Sunday, May 1st to leave your comments. The winners will be announced via email on Tuesday, May 3rd.  Okay, ready to get hoppin'!?  Off you go!  

http://stampingscrappingstore.blogspot.com/

Cindy Echtinaw

Alicia Ekermans  

Anary Baumgarth

Anne Harada

Billie St. Clair

Dawn Knight

Cindy Close

Harriet Skelly

Dawn Saenz de Viteri

Kerry Urbatch

Janine Blackwelder

Nancy Bush

Karen Stark

Suzanne Schmidt <-- YOU'RE HERE!  

Leanne Garner

Sheri Willshire

Wendy Stamey

Stephanie Hester

Wini Bell

Woodware USA blog

Thanks for joining us, we hope you have lots of fun!  Good luck!!

-Suzanne :O )

PS:  This is the Woodware prize package:

PPS:  I recently stumbled upon Ted's blog, and he's offering a $10 gift certificate to PaperTrey Ink.  His challenge is to use purple and green, and four of something (I used four flowers).  There are still a couple of days left if you want to play along for a chance to win!  Happily Ever Challenged #16

Just because

Hi there!  TGIF!  It's been a busy week- it took me a few days to actually get this card together, but I finally finished it today.  I'm playing along with the current Riley challenge:

I only have one non-seasonal Riley, so you're going to see a lot of this image!  :)  I've been wanting to try paper-piecing Riley, so I stamped him on kraft cardstock and cut him out.  I like the look of it, especially when I use kraft as a subtle border, it really goes together without being obvious.  I also paper-pieced his mug, but the rest of the image was colored with my Copics.  I used my Nestabilities to die-cut the main image, mat, sentiment oval and its mat.  The sentiment is a rub-on from Joann's and all of the patterned papers are MME (Pretty Please).  I really love this sketch!  It's fairly simple but you get to display Riley and several patterned papers together, and it really makes for a fun combo.  :)

Tomorrow I'm taking my mom and boyfriend to see James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy.  I'm really looking forward to seeing a play; usually we see musicals, so this will be a nice change.  We may or may not stop to get some cupcakes at Crumbs.  And Tasti D-lite for dessert.  Ahem.  :)

Hope you all have a great weekend!!  Thanks for stopping by!

-Suzanne :O )  

Woodland Mushrooms

Hi there!  Happy Monday!  :)  I'm sure we'll have a ton of participants for this week's Woodware USA challenge.. "anything goes"!  For my card, I started out with Sweet Sunday 105:

I wanted to use some fun, juicy colors, so I pulled out some of my scraps and cut them down to fit the sketch.  I used a bit of ric rac to match the red in the mushroom (do people use ric rac anymore??).  Then I stamped the image from Woodland Mushrooms on white cardstock and die-cut it with my Nestabilities.  I colored the image with my Copics and added a little bit of Martha Stewart glitter to the spots on the mushrooms.  For the finishing touch, I cut out some butterflies and pulled up their wings for a bit of dimension.  I really like how bright and cheerful this card is, and it was a great way to use up some scraps!  I hope you'll enter our challenge this week, we love have you play along! :D  Thanks for stopping by!


-Suzanne :O )


PS-  Don't forget Woodware gives 15% off any size order!  Here's the set I used for my card:

Use It! #21/Mojo #98

Hi friends! I have another set of cards to share with you today. I used the Mojo Monday #98 sketch:
Then I gathered up my supplies to fit the Use It! challenge, hosted by Melisa. She asked us to use this picture for inspiration:
She also asked us to a tool we hadn't used in at least 6 months and some alphabet letters. My first thought was "ugh." I wasn't a huge fan of the colors used in the ad, I didn't know which tool to use and I really have no use for alphabet letters. Putting my negative energy aside, I figured I should just suck it up and accept that this is in fact a challenge.

I used the Mojo Sketch to help me settle on some papers and embellishments. I used some sunny yellow paper by Colorbok, blue patterned paper by Stampin' Up!, and yellow patterned paper by K&Co. I also knew I wanted to use that smoky blue ribbon by Offray (one of my yard sale scores!).

I decided to use my heat gun for my "old tool." I rarely use anything that takes too much effort, and for me, plugging in my heat gun, doing all that goes with stamping/using embossing powder, and waiting for my heat gun to cool off is too much. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to making cards. :) So anyway, I had decided to endure all the effort, and use some blue Pearlustre embossing powder by Stampendous to make some coordinating flower embellishments. I originally planned to have them in the center of the circle, but then I ran into the problem of where to place my alphabet letters. Darn those letters! :)

I figured I should go LOOK at my stickers to see which sentiment to use, and I ran into another brick wall. The reason I don't use alphabet stickers in the first place is because whenever I need to spell something out, I never have enough letters. Spelling "hello" on four cards is nearly impossible. Soooo, plan B was to just spell "Hi". I grabbed some old Making Memories rub-ons and realized the sentiment would have to be my focal point since the letters were so big.

I knew I still had to use the flowers (to incorporate my usage of an old tool) so I decided to set them off to the side of my circle and balance out my knotted ribbon. Once I was done assembling all of my layers, I was embarrased at my poor attitude, because the cards came out really neat! In a million years, I wouldn't have come up with the color combo, metallic embossed flowers or use of the rub-ons, but I'm really glad I went outside of my comfort zone! :D I guess that's what the crafting community is all about, right?

So, thank you, Melisa, you sincerely gave me a challenge this week! Thanks also to Rae, who maintains a fabulous website where fellow cardmakers inspire and challenge each other to USE what we have! :D Hope you like this set of cards as much as I do. Thanks for popping in and bearing with my lengthy post!

-Suzanne :O )

CPS 108

I was in the mood fun a springful card, but I have to stop taking sketches so literally! The green strips are not my style, and they're not even the same size because I was too lazy to measure :( Next time I'll try to think outside the sketch box by using ribbons or something pre-measured ;) Anyway, I used lots of ProvoCraft papers- I bought this pack a year or so ago, but it's really not my style at all. I think I just bought it because it was something like $3 on clearance, but since then I've learned to only buy what I LOVE. Regardless, I think the papers look nice here :) The sticker is K&Co (love the sentiment!) and the ribbon is from Michael's. I used my EK Success border punch again ;)

Hope you like it, thanks for looking!

-Suzanne :O )