PROVOKING THOUGHTS POST 2 - THE MINI BOOK

This past weekend several of us got together to make this awesome mini book of quotes called Provoking Thoughts. We also made the accompanying box and the roses on top. Today I wanted to share another photo of the box with book and to talk a little bit about the book. I got the idea to do this for a class when several of my friends and I went to the Remarkable Stampers Retreat in Harrisburg Pa this past Spring. A fellow stamper named Jeneve Pike showed me her book and my friend Paulette Hall and I just fell in love with the book and vowed that we had to make it. I bought the original design and directions from a sideline demo Deann Oliver. She is pretty clever to have come up with this. I loved Jeneve's version using the Cottage Wall Designer Papers so I did mine with card stock that matched the dsp - namely rich razzleberry, old olive, pale plum and orchid opulence.
I added the clear specialty window sheeting to the top of the book called Flower Fantasy. I'm almost positive that SU! has sold out of it but you could easily use regular SU! window sheeting and just stamp with staz on for the cover. I loved how the window sheeting matched the dsp perfectly. Those who made the book loved this added touch.
Each page has a quote on it. We borrowed most all of the quotes from Deann who included them with the planner. Linda Kincaid retyped most of them in a font we thought worked best with our book. Linda even added a few quotes she really liked. Then Linda and I split up 24 quotes and made 24 pages. We added dsp to each page and backed each quote. We added embellishments to each page. In the photo above I punched some flowers with the boho blossoms punch and ran each through the Big Shot embossing with the square lattice embossing folder. I love the texture. On top of each flower I added a SU! clear rhinestone that I took out of it's metal prongs. In the new Idea Book out this July 1st (yeah only a few short days) SU! will begin to sell sticky back rhinestones that can be added to any papercraft. They will also have pearls.
On this page I used the mini punches from the summer mini catalog and put clear buttons that match the punches right on top. I love these mini buttons. They are adorable and add such a nice accent to the page.
The page just above was designed by Linda Kincaid. I love how she gathered the rich razzleberry ribbon (say goodbye to it June 30th. That is the last day I know of that you can purchase it even though Rich Razzleberry is a color SU! will continue through the new idea book). The filigree brad is a nice touch also. Look at the quote. It says "let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." I'll tell you that Linda and also Hsiao-hui who created the box, do this for me. They are great crafting friends. I want to thank them so much for all of their help in getting this project realized. It was truly a great project and I will have one more post to show you a few more pages we made and a few more photos of our stampers making them. This project certainly makes a great gift for you to give yourself or a friend. I hope to be able to repeat this class in the new SU! year with some of the new papers that will be available Thursday. Watch for it!

PROVOKING THOUGHTS POST 1 - MAKING ROSES

We had a really wonderful time at Linda Kincaid's home yesterday. We got together to make our Provoking Thoughts book and gift box with roses. Wait til you see the finished book. I'm going to be posting that tomorrow or the next day, but I wanted to show you at least some of the photos I took at class. This is the finished box that Hsiao-hui Lin designed for us. The box holds a mini book or cards, or candies or whatever you would like. I love the roses on the front and the top note was embossed with the Big Shot using a brand new folder for SU! called Vintage Wallpaper. It comes out July 1st with the new idea book.
Amanda Hindle came to class and it was great to see her and everyone else. Amanda absolutely loved the class and you can tell by her sweet smile how proud she is of her box. Isn't it lovely?
Hsiao-hui taught us all how to make this great gift box and also gave us a tutorial on how to make the roses from the large flower punch. Sharon Liberto is in the foreground in red reviewing the steps for rose making. Kim Kincaid, Peggy Kincaid and Kim Titus are in the background and Hsiao-hui is teaching.
These roses are absolutely gorgeous! Look how delicate they are in Amanda's hand.
These are some close ups of the folding part.

Hsiao-hui told us we need 3 flowers punched out and she showed us how to cut them and fold and twist them to make those gorgeous roses. We had the technique mastered after we made our first rose. We each needed 3 for our box.
I love how Hsiao-hui had it very detailed for us. She also took us through all of the steps to making the box. I'm going to make a few of these boxes. I must give my mother one of them. She will just cry when she sees it, also. By the way, the colors we used match the cottage wall dsp (retired and sold out - I think I bought the last few packs SU! had for this class - so the ladies who came got a real treat!) we used on the book - rich razzleberry, orchid opulence (retiring and almost sold out), and old olive card stock.
This was a really well thought out project and was so beautiful. I love the way Hsiao-hui took us through each step and helped us make the roses.
Linda really loved these roses. At the end of class, Linda punched the blossoms out of all different kinds of card stock colors. Someone mentioned sitting and watching tv and making a bunch of roses while you watched a movie or a favorite tv show and Linda got to thinking...."these boxes will make great gifts with the roses on them." so she is getting a head start on teacher appreciation gifts for next year, by working on her roses. I think the packaging is just amazing and such a wonderful presentation for a gift. You could give the box and it would be a gift in itself. I am thinking that it is a great way to give a gift certificate to someone and secretaries will love these also.
Kim is working on her rose and I have to say that she really did a nice job. Even Peggy who is next to her in the background did a really nice job with the roses.

Watch for Provoking Thoughts Post 2 and Post 3 coming this week. I have to show you the book and some of the pages we did. Absolutely stunning!

JACKPOT

I have a lot of family birthdays in July so I'm getting a jump start on some of them. My brother in law Danny will be the recipient of this card. I used some of the retiring SU! stamp sets and papers. The designer paper for this card is called Jackpot and it's great for more masculine cards and also for game night scrap booking. The happy birthday is from teeny tiny wishes. I used my word window punch and modern label punch for the sentiment.
The inside of the card uses two retiring stamp sets - jackpot and game night. They are truly great for this card. I used the ink colors real red, basic black and so saffron - which is a great combination. Luckily, you will see these in the new idea book that comes out July 1st. There is a color renovation happening but these colors will stay put.
This is my envelope. I will stamp Danny's name on it and then address it and get it out. His birthday is towards the end of July, so I'll mail it in a week or two. These are a couple of stamp sets that I don't think I'll be able to part with once they retire, so they'll go over to my favorites pile.

ENJOY EVERY MOMENT - WHILE IT LASTS

I just wanted to share a card today that I made yesterday to send to my mom. I recently opened up a package of Kaleidoscope dsp by SU! I've shared some cards with it, but since it is retiring, I thought I better make a few more things with it. Crushed curry card stock is retiring also and believe it or not it is on sale for only 1/2 price for the pack at the 2009-2010 prices (card stock will go up from $5.50 to $6.95 on July 1st. Anyway....This card was really easy to make. I used the crushed curry for the card base and the label holder. The ribbon is striped grosgrain and there is good news about that. Even though that ribbon is retiring, you can still get it for My Digital Studio. All 6 rolls are for sale in my online store as a package (can be used with any computer program that takes a jpeg!) I just cut a piece of dsp 4 inches by 5 1/4 inches and then cut it 2/3 by 1/3 (approx) and used the back side for the bottom. I added a teeny tiny wishes sentiment to the front of the card.Inside the card and on the envelope I used the stamp set Enjoy Every Moment. I really love this set and it has really fond memories for me. We've used it at a number of classes in the past 2 years or so. I will definitely be keepting this set. The colors used are dusty durango (also retiring) and crushed curry.

Here is another view of the outside and below is a close up of the front. I also die cut some butterflies using my SU! butterfly embosslit. I like how it die cuts and embosses at the same time.

GREAT BIRTHDAY CARD IDEA CASED FROM LISA

Recently I met up with my sidelines Arleen Graham, Kathy Winland and Lisa Chattergee. We did a shoebox swap so we could gather some new ideas. I was so happy that Lisa shared this card design that I made. She is quite talented and I like that she taught us how to use the new roller wheels in the SU! mini catalog called Builder wheels. Lisa suggested that we use the wheels candle crazy and birthday. She inked the special cartridges that are triple cell. You can add any reinker that you like and Lisa wanted to match the dsp called Travel Journal. The stamp on the front is the under $10 Birthday Block (118084 for $7.95). We used pumpkin pie and garden green inks. The card base is sahara sand and it goes with everything. The ribbon is pumpkin pie wide striped grosgrain and I colored it with summer sun marker to make it unique. I colored some of the words with pumpkin pie marker.
We also rolled the builder wheels on the inside of the card to really showcase them. On the outside of the card I colored some of the candles in with summer sun marker. Love it Lisa. Thanks for sharing!

A KIND WORD

Here is another card from class this past Friday. I wanted to use this set for a long time and pulled it out for class. It is called a kind word and is one of those sets that you stamp and looks better if you color it in with watercolors or markers. Of course, I always add crystal effects to make the card even nicer. The image is stamped on watercolor paper and then water-colored using my SU! aqua painters and watercolor crayons. I used the Sahara sand color to shadow underneath the girl on the swing. Crystal effects is used in a few places to accent the card. The ribbon was actually white taffeta and was a happy accident to get the light pink like color. We do make a pretty in pink taffeta but it is a little darker. What I did originally was try to die the ribbon orange using dusty durango reinkers. I put the ribbon in the reinker that had water added to it. When I removed the ribbon, the resulting color was this lighter color which was more of a light pink. I thought it looked perfect on this card and it only took a few minutes to do. In fact there were 10 people at the class so I dyed all 10 ribbons at the same time and then they dried in about 5 minutes each.
The card stock base is pretty in pink ( a non-retiring color) and then regal rose (also not retiring) backs the water colored image. Inside the card I used whisper white ultra smooth and stamped the hat with the kitties inside. I also used the Many Thanks stamp set (also not retiring) on the inside and strategically stamped it inside an image from the retiring Gallery Stamp set! Of course, I even used crystal effects on the outside. The card stock base and the regal rose accent color were run through my Big Shot using the SU! exclusive Pretty Petals embossing folder. The clear button on the outside of the card is backed with some apricot card stock. These buttons are really great and unfortunately, are also on the retiring list.

ANOTHER STUDIO SKETCH

Recently I began converting my SU! color ink pad caddy to the new 2010-2011 BRAND NEW COLORS. I also started to separate the card stock. I want to be more than ready July 1st to use all my new things. As a demonstrator, I was able to preorder all of the new in colors, new color collections and some stamps. Great perk for becoming a demonstrator! (see side bar for how you can join now for only $99 - keyword scrappinriri - and join my team!) So last week I pulled studio sketches aside and made the card with the water pitcher and the pears. Today I decided to do the wine bottle and the loaf of bread with cutting knife. What a wonderful set! And...wait til you see the new SU! Idea Book (another perk of becoming a demonstrator!) it is filled with so many new and delightful things to enjoy! I stamped the image using my new IN COLOR markers - with the new color concord crush. Wow! this is just a fabulous color and let me tell you it looks just like grape jam when you color with it. The other marker colors I used were marina mist and river rock. Oh, so a great combination!
The card stock colors are elegant eggplant and river rock. I didn't open up the card stock pack with the concord crush just yet. I used my 2 sizes of SU! oval punches for the sentiment on the inside which comes from the set Three Little Words. The sentiment on the outside - thank you - is from teeny tiny wishes!

FATHER'S DAY THIS WEEKEND - NEW CARD

I wasn't sure if I would miss every color that is retiring from SU! - especially Handsome Hunter. I was looking to rearrange my card stock and was going to pull all of the retiring colors when I stumbled upon the Handsome Hunter. I pulled it out and die cut a Big Shot Top Note. Then, since I had recently gotten my new Idea Book (demonstrators receive their copies in June) from SU! and a preorder of some great items coming in July - I decided to go to town using the new stuff. One of the best new products SU! is putting out July 1st is a new embossing folder called vintage wallpaper. I used it on the Handsome Hunter Top note. I love this folder. I think it could fast take over my love of the square lattice folder which I used on the River Rock card stock base (p.s River Rock is returning July 1st!). I had some alpine ribbon left and I just took my new River Rock stampin write marker and colored the cream part. The ribbon then matched my card really well.
Father's day is this Sunday (I know...where is the year going?) and I needed to quickly get a card off to my dad. He lives in NJ and even though I'm in Maryland, the mail can be so hit or miss and I just don't like it when holiday cards arrive after the holiday (except for Christmas when I feel some of those delayed cards help extend the spirit!). So, in addition to the top note...I punched some stars using my large and small star punch and also punched a modern label punch. I stamped Happy Father's Day from the stamp set Teeny Tiny Wishes onto whisper white card stock and punched it out with the word window punch. Those two punches I just mentioned - modern label and word window - go together so well and may just be the two punches I reach for the most, other than the varying circle size punches.
Inside I added the border from the die cut top note, which I don't usually do. I usually end up throwing those into the recycle bin but honestly, why waste the card stock. The Handsome Hunter goes so well with the River Rock! I stamped 2 sentiments on the inside. The top is stamped on designer paper called Jackpot (retiring June 30th) that I also used on the large star punch for the card front. The sentiment is from the stamp set One of a Kind. The sentiment below is from one of my new favorite sentiment stamp sets called Full of Life.
And here is a close up of one part of the card so that you can see the detailed embossing you get with your Big Shot. I even embossed the modern label punch and I could have done the stars, but I had to run out the door to work and really wanted to get the card in the mail. I think the designer paper for the punched star did the trick and the real red coloring really added to the card.

Hope my dad gets this card on time and I hope he enjoys the sentiments inside. I love my dad and am so happy to be able to have the ability to make him a card for his special day!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL THE FATHER'S OUT THERE, EVERYWHERE!

VERY CHEERFUL CARD

At class last night we made this really cheerful card using some of our retiring SU! colors that I'm sad to say goodbye to - crushed curry, handsome hunter, and ruby red. We made an assortment of cards and this card looked cheery enough to be a get well card. There isn't much stamping involved...this is more of a card that uses the Big Shot and punches. First we ran the card base through the Big Shot using the square lattice embossing folder. Then we die cut the top note in handsome hunter and ran it through the Big Shot with the brand new Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder (oh, this is a good one folks!) The largest flower and the leaves were die cut using the island floral die (new in summer mini), the large flower punch and then by stamping a blossom from a beautiful thing set and cutting it out. Ok SU! we could use a punch this size too! all of the flowers except the stamped flower were run through the Big shot using the dots embossing folder for SU! Now...here was the fun part...next we brayered the square lattice die with handsome hunter ink and placed the die cut petals in the folder and ran them through the Big Shot. The leaves then took on the handsome hunter color in the embossed areas only. How cool is that? Learned that technique at a Remarkable Retreat (next one is October 29, 30, and 31st in York, Pa - email me if interested). The epoxy brad in the center is from the RETIRING BUILD A BRADS in Brass (pewter is staying!) and the sentiment is from teeny tiny wishes stamp set.
I stamped more images from a beautiful thing stamp set using tone on tone crushed curry and then stamped the get well soon sentiment on the inside punched word window punch layered with the modern label punch.

This card was made as a get well card because I didn't have too many on hand (in fact, I may have had one or none) but could also be used for other occasions as well - like birthday, thinking of you, etc.

Below are the island floral die which is brand new in the summer mini catalog and the A Beautiful Thing stamp set that is retiring in less than 2 weeks.

PUNCHED POSIES AND GOODBYE CAMEO CORAL

The card stock color that is retiring from SU! June 30th that I will miss the absolute most is Cameo Coral. I Love, Love, Love that color! What a cheerful bright color! It goes well with so many colors. I used it on my card base that I ran through the Big Shot using the upcoming new embossing folder exclusive to SU! called vintage wallpaper. Then I stamped all my images from the new level 2 hostess set from the summer mini catalog (yes! you can earn that set now!) and punched the images out. I used melon mambo, only orange and crushed curry colors for the flowers. Notice that every image can be punched out using a SU! punch!
The stamp set on the inside comes from the new Level 3 hostess set called occasional quotes (you will be able to earn that one all year starting July 1st!) and it has some great quotes to use on your cards inside. The two scallop circles on the front of the card were die cut with my Big shot and use the jackpot dsp (red print) and apricot appeal card stock retiring June 30th.