My Light

Today I wanted to share a layout I made using my new Pink Pailsee mistables mask - I love that it's 12" long - perfect for a layout! This is my son and I - he really loves hugs and kisses and is soooo sweet (when he's not being a total daredevil and driving me insane, that is). It's called my light and I used the cutest little light bulbs as the bodies on the butterflies and on the lantern. The butterflies and heart I cut out of chipboard using my Tim Holtz mini movers and shapers dies.

Me...Copics??

I'm finally using my Copics!! Yay for me :) They were awesome enough to sponsor the Punky Sprouts DT and I got a set of the pinks I used here. I also used paper from the Girl's Paperie who also sponsored our DT. The stamp is by Penny Black (too cute, right??). And as the background/mat for the stamp, I used a layer of the new Punky Sprouts filter flowers. It makes for such a perfect stamp background - it's already textured and shabby looking - it came ready to use, I didn't have to do a thing to it!

The Lovely December Kit!

Here are my two layouts for the Paper Lovelies December Kit....unfortunately, it's already sold out. As usual for the Paper Lovelies kits, it sold out in the first couple of days...so if you're interested, make sure you check out the Paper Lovelies blog of add them as a friend on Facebook so you know when the new kits come out. As always, they're a mind-blowing $15. It's crazy how packed they are for that amount! This month's kit was all about Prima "North Country" - it had two of each sheet, a pack of the flowers, a pack of the glass accents, the tiles, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I LOVED it!

And here's my 2nd LO:

Printer's Tray!

Hi guys, today I'm sharing a Printer's Tray I made for my grandmother for her 86th Birthday. You can see more about it in my YouTube video. I used the gorgeous Kaisercraft "Bonjour" collection again - it goes so well with black and white photos! And I love the elegant and sophisticated colors for gift-making. I also used lots of Scrapmatts laser-cut chipboard - a scroll border, the large butterfly, and the "happy birthday" sentiment.

And the winner is....

Thank you for all your comments!! Make sure to check back regularly in the next month, as I'm planning on doing a big giveaway for the Holidays :)

And of course I want to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. I, for one, am very very grateful to have the support that all of you give me in this artsy venture. I know for sure that I wouldn't be where I am without it, so thank you!

But for now, the winner of the Cricut Cartridge and mini alphas is....

....

Kathy R! Kathy, please email me your addy at ileneemail@yahoo.com, and I will get your prize out ASAP. Thanks for commenting!

Also, I had a LO I wanted to share, using the new Pink Paislee Mistables collection. This is DD at the Pumpkin Patch on a hayride last month.

My Little Shoebox Winter Card Blog Hop!!

Hi guys, welcome to my stop on the hop. Let me start off by saying that I LOVE this winter line. I just love the gorgeous colors, the beautiful snowflakes, and the super cute houses. My favorite, though, are the little girl ice skating and the little boy sledding - I feel like this pp was designed for me (LOL!) - the girl looks just like my DD (and she even took ice skating lessons a couple years ago), and the boy looks like my DS! Thanks Helen :)

Ok, so I made a little holiday card that's very neutral and perfect either for Christmas or New Year's. I used the Unity/MLS stamp set for the sentiment. The snowman is from the sticker set, and I first adhered it to black cardstock, and then cut out. Thanks for visiting!!

I also made a Christmas Ornament using a little bit of the gorgeous paper and a sticker tree from the collection. The chipboard "ornament" and reindeer are by Scrapmatts.

OK, this is a blog hop, so some prizes are in order, right?? There will be two Winter Wonderland collections given away to a random commenter on one of the participating blogs. Prize winners will be announced on the My Little Shoebox blog on Tuesday, November 22.

Also, just for my blog followers (and if you're not a followers yet, just click to follow!), I am giving away a Cricut limited edition Holiday Cartridge and throwing in the mini alphas from this collection - they're the "Peppermint" color. All you have to do is be a follower and leave a comment. The Cricut cartridge was given to me by Carrie, the owner of Paper Lovelies Kit club - she has the most amazing kits every single month for only....$15! If you guys haven't checked it out yet, you really should! I will announce the winner of my blog giveaway on Thursday morning :) Here's a look at my giveaway:

Thanks for joining us today for our Winter Wonderland inspirational card hop. Now hop on over to the sweet and talented Erin.

Hoo-Ray!

A little card I made using the gorgeous Harmonie paper, flowers, and stamps, as well as Copic markers....yes, that's right, I'm finally using them! And guess what - they're a ton of fun and I'm in love! LOL Isn't that owl stamp adorable? It's part of the stamp set that goes with the "Fable de la Fontaine" collection.

A bight and happy birthday mini :)

I still needed to scrap my daughter's 7th birthday and I had the perfect combination of supplies at hand - a beehive chipboard mini album from Maya Road and the super adorable, happy, and bright "Berrylicious" line from Imaginisce. I also used some Prima flowers, as well as ton of embellies from Imaginisce that all went with this line - chipboard stickers, canvas stickers, dimensional stickers, and die-cuts. I added glossy accents to some of the die cuts here and there for extra "oomph", as well as glimmer misted the pages for a more fun and artsy feel. I hope you guys like it! :) It's appropriately titled "Sweet 7", and it has the whole "sweetness" theme throughout. I also loved the chipboard quote - "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Some of you might remember that this was the disaster of a lifetime birthday that we managed to turn around so DD had a good time after all. For those of you that like video's, I did make one about this mini where I go over the pages and share some more details about it - you can find it HERE.

Sharing some more My Little Shoebox goodness :)

Just a quick layout and a couple cards I wanted to share, using the My Little Shoebox "Destination" line. Have I mentioned before how adorable I think this line is? So boyish - perfect for boy projects, as well as all travel-related projects.

This LO is another one about DD's first day of 2nd grade. Her before-school care is at the daycare my son goes to (and where she went when she was little), so they both got dropped off there that morning. And when my son saw the little bus, he said "I want bus!" He always wants to keep up with his big sister, so he definitely wanted to go on the bus too.

And a couple quick cards. The first is an example of how the Destination line can be more pretty and feminine. To create the background, I lined it with pp and then added the left-over negative from the MLS letter stickers. Super quick and a great way to upcycle. To make the heart, I used my Sizzix and Tim Holtz mini hearts movers and shapers die. I cut it out of chipboard and then covered it with pp. And the beautiful red rose is from IAmRoses.com

And the 2nd card is a really quick and easy boy birthday card - I told you this pp is perfect for little boys!

Stamp Carving Tutorial

Hi guys, today I wanted to share a really quick and easy tutorial on how you can make your own stamps. I wanted to make a picture tutorial since I know some people don't like to watch YouTube videos. However, for those that do, you can see my YouTube video HERE, where I carve a stamp (shown in the last image).

1.

Supplies:
- A sheet of MLS 3-D Roll Up Flowers from any collection
- Speedball Carving Block
- Speedball Carving Tool
- Pencil
- Large scissors
- Scrap paper
- Ink Pad


2.

- Punch out one of the clouds from the die-cut sheet
- Use a pencil to trace onto the carving block
- Using your large scissors, cut out the cloud with a little space around it


3.

- Using the finest tip of your carving tool, carve around the cloud outline


4.

- Now you can switch to a broad tip and carve away around the cloud
- If you like, you can use your scissors now to trim your stamp down


5.

- Ink your stamp and stamp onto the scrap paper


6.

- Use the stamped image and inked stamp to determine where else you need to keep carving
- Once satisfied, stamp again to see whether any more needs to be removed


7.

- You can continue to repeat the process of carving and stamping until you're entirely happy with the completed results. Here, it took me 3 tries.
- Consider the fact that you might not want to perfect it too much - one of the charms of making your own stamps is allowing it to be imperfect so it can retain that "handmade" look.


8.

- Here is an example of the 3 cloud stamps I made using the die-cut clouds as my templates. These are the finished results. They are the perfect size and they're quick and fun to make. Of course, you can draw your own stamps and do not need to use a template, but having a template does make it much easier.
- My next stamp-carving adventure will likely include the super-cute punch-out banners on the die-cut sheets. It would be fun to have a banner stamp!