A Pumpkin Boo!

I was so excited to see Tankgrl as the Featured Stamper this week on Split Coast - we were on the H&M DT together for a while last year - so I know she does terrific work! There were lots of cards I found that I'd like to case but finally decided on this pretty flower card .

I've been wanting to use these pumpkin Nestabilities as well as this fun spider web ribbon that I got from Sharon's No Time to Stamp Ribbon store and I thought they'd make great substitutes for the flower and ribbon on Heather's card.


The stamps are from the Halloween Party set by Waltzingmouse Stamps.


If you're looking for ideas for Halloween cards and crafts - click here to see other projectsI've done.


It's a gorgeous day here in MA today - I'm out to the yard to plant some ornamental cabbages, mums and asters!

Stamps: Waltzingmouse Stamps: Halloween Party
Paper: Ripe Avocado: PTI, Pumpkin Pie, DSP: SU
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Blank
Accessories: corner punch: SU, Sakura micron black pen, Rhinestones: PTI, sponge, Fern punch: Martha Stewart, Spider web ribbon: Sharon's No Time to Stamp Ribbon Store, black ribbon:Michaels, foam dimensionals, Nestability Pumpkins

A Batty Halloween and two Hawks

The Limited Supplies Challenge on Split Coast was to use Spooky colors and no more than 4 embellishments. I used black, purple, green and orange - a ribbon and 3 sparkly foam embellies. I started this card having all the squares lined up - then accidentally hit the pile and I liked the way it looked all askew!

We just got back from a wonderful week away in VT - and it's great to be back stamping again!

One of the things we did while we were away, was take a class at the British School of Falconry at the Equinox - we had an introductory lesson where we learned how to call a hawk to our gloved fist and release it back to the perch - then we walked along the field - where the hawk followed from tree to tree - then flew back to the leader - what a super experience that was!!

Here's Kent with Wallace on his glove - Dawn is attaching a transmitter to his leg in case he flew away - they could track him.

Here is beautiful Hamish - who I got to work with. In this picture - he's sitting on my left gloved fist and I'm taking the picture with my right hand. I wanted to lean over and give him a kiss he was so 'cute'! - but Dawn said they're really not into that (!) - he was just inches from my face and never tried to peck or shy away. He was happy to be going outside to play!

Then we walked them outside where Dawn took our picture - and she proceded to teach us how to cast them off our hands. They have little strips of leather tethered to each leg - and those are wrapped around our glove so they don't fly away until we are ready to work with them. We swung are arm forward while releasing the strips and they would fly to a perch - and when we raised our glove to waist height again they would come swooping back to us.

Kent got this great picture of Hamish flying back to me. Dawn also put a little piece of filet mignon on my glove as an incentive for him to come back!

Dawn told us they use hawks for these classes instead of falcons because hawks are social birds so they are comfortable when several birds are in the field. They also train to the glove - not to a specific person - so they will do their 'tricks' with anyone who wears the glove where the falcon trains with a specific person and works only with that person.

You really should try this if you ever get the chance - these birds are absolutely beautiful and so fun to hold!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Stamps: PSX
Paper: basic black, DP: SU, Plum Pudding, Ripe Avocado: PTI,
Ink: Onyx Black Versafine
Accessories: glitter stickers: Creative Hands, foam dimensionals, saddle stitched black ribbon: PTI

Red Holiday Hugs

Revved up Red was The Ways to Use it Challenge on Split Coast last week - to use red on your card. I've had this adorable little image for a while and knew I wanted to finally ink it up for this challenge. Her name is Fiona Faerie and she comes from Poppy Stamps and she has lots of other little friends like her!

This wonderful Holiday Hugs sentiment from Waltzingmouse Stamps seemed the perfect thing to pair with Fiona! I added some gold stickles to Fiona's star wand.

The image is cut with a Nestability square and embossed. I popped it up on foam dimensionals and stamped the sentiment directly on the card. Simple and clean!

I just may use this sweet little 4 1/4" x 4 1/4" card for all my Christmas cards this year!

I appreciate your visit here today!

Stamps: Fiona Faerie: Poppy Stamps, Sentiment: Waltzingmouse Stamps Oven Fresh
Paper: Pure Poppy, White: PTI
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories: square nestabilities, foam dimensionals, gold ice stickles, Copics: R20, R08, R05, R14, E34, E51, Y15

God is My Rock

I made this 6x6 page for the His Holy Name Challenges on Split Coast - for Lesson 18 God's attribute was ROCK. We are to look through the Bible (I use http://www.biblegate.com/ to search) and find a passage containing the attribute that speaks to us.

I used last weeks sketch from Split Coast for my page with these pretty new designer papers from Dream Street Papers. The scroll and heart stamps are by Waltzingmouse and the rocks stamp is from River City Rubberworks. I stamped the heart over the verse using Versamark Dazzle ink so it has a little glitter look IRL

The verse I chose to illustrate ROCK is Psalm 71:3. I found this verse gave me a great feeling of safety and comfort. You can find the HHN challenges on Split Coast here or there's a link on my side bar. You can see all of my Holy Name pages here.

Thanks so much for coming by today!


Stamps: Waltzingmouse Stamps: Celtic Heritage, River City Rubber Works: Rocks, Karen Fisher Snap Stamps
Paper: Mellow Moss: SU, DP/Dream Street Papers-Sam
Ink: Versamark Dazzle, Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories: Computer generated verse, Petaloo foam flowers, Ribbon -True black Party Plaid: PTI, basic grey glazed brads, glue dots, foam dimensionals

Welcome Ezra Boyd! A Baby Photo Book.

My son's fiance's sister just had her first baby - a bouncing baby boy with the wonderful name of Ezra Boyd. I have not met this sister yet as she lives in Kentucky and we are in New England but wanted to send her a gift when April went down to visit her a week ago. I saw this cute little coaster photo book over a year ago on Pine's (Heather Nichols) blog.
I knew that I might like to make something like it one day - and that day is now here!

I added a piece of notebook lined designer paper (Little Yellow Bicycle/Boy Ledger) cut with the Labels One Nestability above each page so they could write some notes about what Ezra was doing during that month. It also nicely covered the ends of the ribbons that were wrapped around from the front!

The cover will be for a newborn picture and then there is a page for 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 5 months and 6 months. The pages are 4x4 heavy weight coasters covered with designer papers.

All the stamps are from Papertrey Ink - I used Boxes Bags and Tags for the month circles and the Simple Alphabet for the words. The vintage buttons are also from Papertrey. (I should be working for them huh?!?!?)

The ducky, boat, bunny and elephant are from the Bitty Baby Blessings Set.

The sentiments on the notes are from the Favor It Baby set - the owl is from the Wise Owl Set.

The all star stamp is from the All Star Team set. I don't know who made this nursery paper but all the other papers are PTI - Men of Life, Bitty Box Basics, Bitty Dot Basics and Polka Dot Parade.

I wrote them a note on the back and used my Bind It All to bind it up. Then I tied lots of Papertrey Double Stitched ribbons around the wires. Now all Amber has to do is add her sweet pictures to make this photo book complete!

I appreciate your stopping by my blog today - I hope you enjoyed my baby photo book project!

Stamps: Papertrey Ink - Boxes, Bags & Tags, Bitty Blessings, Wise Owl, All Star Team, Favor It Baby, Simple Alphabet.

Paper: 4x4 coasters, PTI: Kraft, Lemon Tart, Spring Rain, Men of Life, Bitty Box Basics, Bitty Dot Basics, Polka Dot Parade, SU: Creamy Caramel, unknown Nursery rhyme paper, Little Yellow Bicycle/Boy Ledger.

Ink: PTI: Fresh Snow, Enchanted Evening, Memento Tuxedo Black.

Accessories: Zutter corner rounder, circle punch, PTI Ribbons, copics: B21, R32, E33, YR04, R29, glue dots, Labels One Nestability, Bind it All

Stamping Around in Manchester, VT !

So here I am in beautiful Manchester, VT (even though it was overcast it was still lovely!) for the Stamping Around weekend. It was held at The Inn at Willow Pond. This is the main building where we had our breakfast and got our coffee all day long.


The room for our workshop was in this bulding directly across the drive.



Our first class on Friday night was led by Erika Martin. She had us do a really intersting project involving an 8x8 canvas board, acrylic paints, small pieces of designer papers and Modpodge. Here's Erika showing us her sample (which was larger than the one we made today).


We started by painting a canvas board with blue acrylic paint. Then we added white with swirling strokes. While that was drying we cut out a sun, a hillside, and rectangles and triangles to make little houses to run along our hillside. (We had been instructed to bring a bag of coordinating color designer paper scraps with us to the workshop). So here is the beginning of my project.


And here it is after I got it all together. After we got all the pieces on it - we went over the whole thing with ModPodge - let it dry overnight and in the morning we outlined all the pieces with a fine point Sharpe marker to give all the pieces definition.


Here's a shot from the back of the room we were working in.


Here's me sitting with new found friend Dee who came over from Conway, NH for the weekend. (Hi Dee!)


We were all asked to make nametags before coming to the weekend - here's mine.

Julie & Kim give away prizes all weekend long (I won a pack of new 6x6 Basic Grey papers, an Amuse Halloween Stamp and a Castle Clear Stamp !) - below center is Julie picking out a winning number. Erika is on the left here, then Julie Masse, Kim Schofield in the green sweater (the organizers of these workshops), and you can see Cindy Lawrence another instructor in the red sweater.

On Saturday we had 4 classes and just look at the wonderful projects we made! Joanne Basile had us make this fun tote box and 2 beautiful cards! The stamps are by Stamping Bella.

We hardly took a breath and we were onto class #2 led by Cindy Lawrence where we made this wonderful box that she designed as well as these two beautiful cards using a stamp set by Our Craft Lounge.

Then we broke for lunch where the choices were smoked chicken, pulled pork, ribs, brisket, baked beans, cole slaw, ceasar salad, corn bread and Texas toast - Phew!!! talk about yummy!

Next up was Jenn Shurkus - who I'm sure many of you know as one of the Amuse Instructors

She had us make 5 (count 'em - five!) great Halloween cards using some of Amuse's new stamps. Each one was cuter than the last!

Ok, so by now we are getting pretty exhausted from our marathon stamping - but we had one more project to go. Julie Masse taught the last class and she had us make this terrific acetate box decorated with a wonderful pumpkin multistep stamping set from Kitchen Sink Stamps. Can you see how 3 dimensional these pumpkins look?! And we got 2 cute aroma wax pumpkins and a votive candle to tuck inside.

So there you have it! Don't you wish you had come!?!?! Check out the next Stamping Around to be held in PA in Nov - they still have spots open I think.

Thanks for much for dropping by today! Can a person have too much stamping in one day?!!?

Notes for an Engineer

My niece Christie, is a Structural Engineer and she recently passed the exam that she had to take after working as an engineer for at least a year. She studied like the dickens for over a month in preparation for it - and passed it with flying colors! (she's such a wizz!). So at a recent family gathering she pulled out her official stamp to show us all and I immediately thought - I can stamp that and make some fun notes for her!!

So this is the little set I made for her. The papers are all Papertrey Ink. The box is one of Lauren Meaders Templates called Desktop Organizer. I used Smokey Shadow cardstock for the box and Black and White Basics designer papers for the strips on the notes as well as to decorate the box.

I stamped her seal, cut it out with a circle Nestability and then adhered a strip of designer paper to the 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" note and then the seal over the DP. I was able to fit 10 notes and 1o envelopes in the box. (the notes are not folded - they are just a single layer note)

She was thrilled with this personalized gift - and we are all so proud of her accomplishments!

Thanks for stopping by today - I hope you enjoyed this project!

I'm off to Stamping Around in VT this weekend but I have some projects all lined up to post. I'll be on line - and hopefully sharing some pics from the workshop soon!!