Prettie Wednesday...Prettie confusing!

Two weeks ago I challenged the Pretties to make a limited supply card...a 1 2 3 4 5 card you could say! What was I thinking??? So...here were the guidelines in case you forgot - Create a card or scrapbook page using the following items:

1 dry embossed piece (embossing folders and texture plates count!)
2 pieces of patterened paper
3 colors of solid cardstock (this includes any neutrals you use)
4 embellishments
5 layers

I started with Taylor's Cupcake sketch from this week (her 52nd!) and went from there. My dry embossed piece is the heart cuttlebugged pink pirouette layer. My 2 patterned papers are the stripes and burgundy piece, both from Basic Grey's Sugared collection. My 3 solids are whisper white, pink pirouette and always artichoke. My 4 embellishments are SU! button bouquet buttons, Making Memories glittery heart brads, pink pirouette striped ribbon and pink stickles. And from Sophia down to the base card is 5 layers. Phew!!! I think next time I'm picking a nice simple challenge!!!

In the meantime...you've still got time to order this Valentine Sophia and get your Valentine's made...so head on over to the store. Also, be sure to check out Tuesday's shopping day on the Paper Clip...Jodi has highlighted the Simple Special set this week...and it looks fabulous with those papers!

Have a very prettie Wednesday!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Sending You Love by Paper Pretties
CS: Pink Pirouette, Whisper White, Always Artichoke, basic grey sugared
Ink: Palette Noir
Acc: scallop edge punch, buttons, ribbon, stickles, nesties, prismacolor pencils, OMS, blending stumps, cuddlebug folder, mm heart brads

TFL!

What a Party, What a Night!

WOW! The forum was hoppin' last night...I couldn't keep up wtih Jackson in my lap for the first half, then having to sneak off and make/eat dinner then put Julia to bed for the 2nd half. But hey...it's almost 8am here and Jackson is still sleeping it off, so I can't complain! :-)

If you followed the blog hop, all the sneak peeks were revealed in the party forum last night, but if you missed it...here's mine! This little Sophia Ballerina is just so sweet. I truly love all the Sophias, and this is no exception. She is probably my 2nd favorite, after the Sophia in Snowflake Kisses - I just love snow angels!!!

Sophia is on some GinaK Pure Luxury White 80lb cardstock. I'm really liking this stuff...and I LOVE the 120 lb stuff!! She's colored in with SU! markers (gotta learn how to use Copics...then GET some!!) and cut out with my nesties. The scalloped piece is Pink Pirouette (perfect for our little ballerina!) as is the card base. The floral layer is from the Bella Rose DSP from SU!

I used WAY more accessories then I normally do on this card, but I wanted it to be "Fancy" (just like my sister, Nancy!) So I used 2 types of ribbon (May Arts polka dot organdy and SU! pink grosgrain) some flowers from the SU! pretties kit, and the metal bookplate from my silver hodgepodge hardware. Lastly, I used a tiny bit of stickles on the heart to give it a little shine.

This Sophia Ballerina is part of the Stamp of the Month club, and will be going out to all subscribers during the month of March! If you aren't a member, you'll have to wait until April 1st to order her...so bust a move and get on over there!!! Oh, and tell Christie I sent ya!!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Sophia Ballerina by Paper Pretties
CS: Pure Luxury White, Pink Pirouette, SU! Bella Rose DSP
Ink: Black, SU markers
Acc: Grosgrain ribbon, may arts polka dot ribbon, HPH, stickles, pretties kit.

TFL!

Prettie Party TONIGHT!

So, let's bring in some food and settle in to chat! I LOVE this new set that you'll be able to buy starting this evening. The Prettie Party starts at 5pm Pacific Time, (8pm Eastern) in the 2nd Anniversary Party forum on the Paper Pretties site. We'll be chatting away about new stamps, showing full versions of the cute cards you've seen this week, and giving away LOTS of prizes - you really don't want to miss this!!

When I first got this set I was a little stumped, I'll admit. But then I saw what the other Pretties were doing with it and I was amazed! Such incredible creations...and so much fun! I was happy Jackson actually took a 1 1/2 hour nap on Friday allowing me to complete this card, inside and out!!

The images are all on GinaK's Pure Luxury 80 lb. white cardstock - and I must say I am loving the smoothness of it! I added some shading to the box with my grey copic marker, then colored the chopsticks with my SU! markers (creamy caramel, real red and basic black) before cutting them out. The box, black matting and red scalloped layer were all cut with my nesties (STILL so happy to have them finally) then I popped the chopsticks up on top. The designer paper is from the SU! Bella Rose DSP package, and the riding hood red layer was scalloped with my SU! scallop edge punch. The cute glittery heart brads are from my awesome Prettie Secret Santa, Jackie! Thanks Chica!! The card base is basic black. For a more detailed shot of the front, scroll all the way down!

Now, I have to say, I just LOVE this card...but look at the inside!! This set is SO much fun, and SO versatile! Such a perfect card for my dh for Valentine's day!!! Or, why wait? Maybe I should give it to him tonight before the online party as an incentive to let me chat longer! ;-) Think it will work??

There are several "fortunes" to choose from, as well as some other fun images you could put on the box, or use as backgrounds for your card. Trust me...I'm just getting started with this set, and I know you all would love it just as much as I do! You could even WIN this set for FREE at the party tonight...so be sure to come on over!

Have a wonderful day, and I look forward to chatting with you all tonight!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Flirty Fortunes by Paper Pretties
CS: Riding Hood Red, Basic Black, Pure Luxury White, SU! Bella Rose DSP
Ink: Black, SU markers
Acc: Making Memories heart brads, nesties.

TFL!

Pretties Blog Hop Day 3

Hi everyone...and welcome to day 3 of the Paper Pretties 2nd Anniversary Blog Hop. We're celebrating in true Prettie style and you won't want to miss out! Today is the final day of our 3 day hop, and tomorrow on the 25th at 5pm PST we'll all meet in the forum on the Paper Pretties web site to celebrate and find out who our grand prize winner is, as well as the winner of a few other goodies. We will be giving prizes away every 1/2 hour from 5-8 (8 to 11 for you Easterners, those in the middle can figure it out - you must be used to that!) Everyone who orders Sunday night will receive a free roll of American Craft ribbon.

Our hop this time requires a bit of work on your part. Paper Pretties is giving away a 6 month subscription to the Stamp of the Month Club. In order to win the prize, you'll need to collect all of the clues from the blog hop - 13 in all and submit your answer to Christie at christie@paperpretties.net. Answers must be in by 8am on the 25th to qualify.

Sound like fun?

As always we are releasing a new Sophia stamp for our March SOTM. Your job is to guess what this Sophia is doing. Ready to put on your thinking cap? If you're just starting, you can get the first clue from Day 1 on Christie's blog. If you're just joining for Day 3, you can start on Jodi's blog here, and if you've come from Jessica's blog...you're in the right place! :-)
My clue for you is an event my daughter will be participating in this coming June...a recital!

To get the finaly clue for today (and the 3 day hop) beebop on over to Charmaine's Oodabug Alley, then be sure to send your answer to Christie!

"See" you tomorrow night at the big party!!!

Pretties Party and Blog Hop

Happy Anniversary Paper Pretties! Today begins our celebration with a 3 day mystery blog hop for Paper Pretties' 2nd anniversary.

We're celebrating in true Prettie style and you won't want to miss out! On the 25th at 5pm PST we'll all meet in the forum on the Paper Pretties web site to celebrate and find out who our grand prize winner is, as well as the winner of a few other goodies.

We will be giving prizes away every 1/2 hour from 5-8. Everyone who orders that night will receive a free roll of American Craft ribbon. Our hop this time requires a bit of work on your part. Paper Pretties is giving away a 6 month subscription to the Stamp of the Month Club. In order to win the prize, you'll need to collect all of the clues from the blog hop - 13 in all and email your answer to Christie at Christie@paperpretties.net. Answers must be in by 8am on the 25th to qualify. Sound like fun?

I thought so! Let's get the party started! We are releasing a new Sophia stamp for our March SOTM. Your job is to guess what this Sophia is doing. Ready to put on your thinking cap? For your first clue and the kick off to the whole shebang head on over to Christie's blog and get going!

Prettie Pastel Wednesday

All the Prettie Girls were complaining about this week's challenge of having to use pastels to color their images. I have to admit, I wasn't even sure I had brought my pastels back from Germany...so I had to dig under lots of things to find them. I'm not sure if my application is cheating, since I actually did poppin' pastels with them...but that was all I could muster one-handed this morning.

I used the wonderful Sealed with a Kiss set, which I just love and which is being re-released in RUBBAH this weekend, paired with Julee's Monday Mojo sketch #70. I stamped the fun hearts image all over my white card base with pink pirouette ink to give it a subtle pattern, then I stamped the bunch of roses with my versamark ink. Using the applicators, I applied some Rose Red pastel to the roses, and some mellow moss to the leaves and stems. I finished with some so saffron to the baby's breath. I then punched it out with my 1 1/4" punch and layered it on a scalloped Rose Red square.

The patterned paper is from a retired SU! Holiday Happenings hostess bundle and is covered in XOXO's. The scalloped circle was cut with my Nesties (LOVE em!) and I adde the sparkles from a Heidi Swapp circle frames bling set. I used the 1 1/4" pink pirouette grosgrain ribbon and stamped the Happy Valentine's Day sentiment that comes in the SWAK set. A fairly simple card...but pretty good for having only one free hand most of the morning, don't ya think?

There's lots of excitement in the Prettie world as we're getting ready to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. WOOHOO Christie!!! Be sure to join us for all the fun. Our blog hop will begin on Christie's blog on January 22nd and will span 3 whole days, culminating in our party in the forum on the 25th starting at 8pm EST (5pm for us Westerners!)

There's a contest to go with this fun blog hop, and the winner will get a 6 month subscription to the Paper Pretties Stamp of the Month club!! WOW!!! At the party we'll also have prizes every 1/2 hour, but you have to be there to win...so be sure to come on over!

Have a wonderful hump day everyone!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Sealed With A Kiss by Paper Pretties
CS: Pink Pirouette, Whisper White, Rose Red, SU! retired DSP
Ink: Pink Pirouette, Rose Red, Versamark
Acc: SU Stampin' Pastels, scalloped square punch, 1 1/4" square punch, Heidi Grace bling, 1 1/4" grosgrain, nesties.

TFL!

Prettie Friday, Pretty late!

Ok...I have no excuse other than a screaming baby for being so late. I think I'll have to switch days with someone. In the meantime...I did get a chance to stamp this little cutie on Wednesday (of course, couldn't take the photos until Friday morning...then never got a chance to type until today!)

I used Danielle's Pretties Weekly Challenge #34 sketch for the layout, along with Flutter By Sophia. If you haven't checked them out yet, Danielle does an awesome challenge every week! This week's challenge involves making a box with either Sweets for the Sweet or Made with Love. You can even win a prize for playing along!

Back to the card, I used some fun flowered patterned paper to paper piece Sophia's dress, as well as for the circular back. The pink is pink Pirouette (with matching ribbon) and the base of the card is Certainly Celery. I colored Sophia with prismacolor pencils, and the flower and her jewelry were colored with Spica glitter pens. Oh...and notice the lovely large scalloped circle?? I finally got me some Nesties!! :-) Oh...and I'm sending this card along for Jen Del Muro's blog tart contest to Texas...click through to her blog for more info on how you could win lots of stamping goodness!!

I also have to say a huge THANK YOU to all the prettie girls! They sent me the most amazing box of goodies!!! I'll post photos of some of the handstamped items throughout the coming week or 2, but here's a photo of the entire contents. Don't you all wish you were me?? One of the best things about it was they each made me a 2 page spread for a 6 by 6 album...I mean what a lucky little guy Jack is to have his first baby album completed by some of the most talented stampers out there?? I just love it!!!

I hope you all have a very Prettie Week...oh...and we have some fun coming up for you this week, so stay tuned, and be sure to watch ALL the Prettie Blogs - you could win something HUGE!!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Flutter By by Paper Pretties
CS: Pink Pirouette, Certainly Celery Whisper White, PP ?
Ink: Palette Noir
Acc: prismacolor pencils, blending stumps, oms, grosgrain ribbon, corner rounder, nesties.

TFL!

Prettie Wednesday...and some MFT fun!

So today is Prettie Wednesday, and everyone is posting their CASE from the Prettie Gallery. I had not officially started playing yet when Julie issued that great challenge. I do need to be working on my pastel card for Charmaine's challenge to us all last week...guess I better make sure I still HAVE pastels!!! This week, it's MY turn to issue the challenge. I love the Limited Supply Challenges on SCS because I think it's fun to have to use certain tools, etc...so here's my challenge to you (should you choose to accept it!) Create a card or scrapbook page using the following items:

1 dry embossed piece (embossing folders and texture plates count!)
2 pieces of patterened paper
3 colors of solid cardstock (this includes any neutrals you use)
4 embellishments
5 layers

So, the dry embossed piece must be one of your patterned papers or your 3 colors. And, at no point should there by more than 4 layers under a top piece of cardstock. However, if you have your base card with a second layer on that...you may have multiple small pieces each with 2 layers under them...right? Oh...and you may use as many tools as you like. Guess this isn't so much limited as just very specific!

On to my creative share. Last week was the birthday of a very close friend of Julia. When I bought the Isabelle set from MFT it was specifically to make paper dolls for Julia and her friends. So, the first set I made was for her friend, Izabella!

I bought about 8 DVD tins from GinaK to have on hand to make these, got a package of magnetic sheet paper for your inkjet from the office supply store, and went to work. The best part was how thrilled Julia's friend was with her set of dolls...and the complete look of amazement on her face when Julia casually mentioned that I had made it. The only downside was that I still had not finished Julia's, so she was quite jealous that her friend got one before she did!! I'm still trying to get her's completed...but she's finished all the coloring, I just have a to finish decorating the front and cutting a few more things out.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

TFL!

Card Class anyone?

Here are some cards that my friend Michelle and I created for our upcoming Valentine/Birthday card class on January 25th from 1-4pm. We got inspiration for these from a few different blogs (most notably Stamp Your Heart Out and iStamp) as well as our own little minds! If you'd like to attend this class, please send me an email (using the link to the side) and I'll reserve your spot!

All the cards to the right use new stamps from the Spring/Summer 2009 SU! catalog. Several are hostess sets available only to folks who host a workshop...so if you'd like to earn stamps for free contact me (or your local Stampin' Up! Demonstrator) and I can hook you up! :-)

Starting at the top left the sets used are: Hand Drawn Bundle, Love You Much. Center is Game Night with matching DSP and in the front on the left is A Little Somethin' and right is Goody Goody Gumdrops. I'll show some close ups of a few of these cards over the next week.

Enjoy, and have a wonderful day!

TFL!

OMG - New Catalog is HERE!!!

I can't believe how much I love the new catalog. I am going to be completely broke!!! I truly think this is the best catalog since I started stamping in January of 2002!!!

Ok...back to my wish list. I'll be back later today with some eye candy...I promise!

Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail

Ok...so I'm only 2 days late! Here's my Prettie Friday post on Sunday. The card was done, but when I went to edit the images they were totally blurry. Then, it took me a while to figure out my camera's macro mode was on some weird setting so it wouldn't focus properly...but now I have good photos for you all!

This adorable Sophia is the February Stamp of the Month (SOTM). If you want to get her during the month BEFORE she's released to the general public, you need to join the SOTM club - and then you get a beautiful new Sophia delivered to your door every month before anyone else gets her! Isn't that cool??? It's almost like being on a design team. :-)

I used last week's Our Creative Corner sketch for the layout of my card - and I swear I did this even before seeing that my teammate Frances had done the same!! Guess great minds and all that.

I used some retired SU! Berry Bliss designer paper along with my old favorite Purely Pomegranate (amazing how pomegranates are the new IN fruit, huh?? That must have happened while I was in Europe!) I colored Sophia with my prismacolor pencils, which are fun to use again after such a long time without. I put the sentiment in some Hodge Podge Hardware and added a flower from the pretties kit along with my gingham ribbon. Overall it was a very simple card, but lots of fun to create.

So, while editing this photo I got a few others done, so I'll have more to post in the coming few days, don't worry. The only trick now is finding time when I have 2 available hands for typing because I'm just too verbose to type up a post one-handed!!

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Bunny Hop Sophia by Paper Pretties
CS: Purely Pomegranate, Basic Black, Whisper White, Berry Bliss DSP
Ink: Palette Noir
Acc: scallop edge punch, designer label punch, gingham ribbon, pretties kit flower, styled silver hodge podge hardware, prismacolor pencils, blending stumps, oms.

TFL!

Sophia's got Mojo!

Sorry again for the long silence, I've been meaning to post all week! I actually have been stamping, and so want to share some fun stuff I've made.

First up is this adorable Sophia card. I used Julee's Mojo Monday sketch along with the newly released Sending You Love Sophia. Isn't she adorable?? I stamped her with Palette Noir ink on whisper white cardstock, and colored her with my prismacolor pencils. I've missed those! The DSP is some I got from the Pretties Boutique last year...can't remember who makes it but thinking Bo Bunny? The ribbon I got just a few weeks ago (part of Christie's clearance sale!) and the buttons are SU! neutrals buttons. I punched the heart from Pink Pirouette paper using the new 3 heart punch.

I really just love this new stamp, and am sorry I haven't shared her with you before now! I"ll be back to Prettie Wednesdays after next week with Charmaine's challenge to use Pastels. Gotta dig through and see if I still have any!! Oh...and be sure to check out Jules' Jewels - case a card from the Prettie Gallery and you could win Cuddle Me Sophia!! (maybe I should try to win since I lost mine somewhere between Germany and California!)

Supplies: (all supplies from SU! unless noted)
Stamps: Sending You Love by Paper Pretties
CS: Chocolate Chip, Pink Pirouette, Whisper White, DSP
Ink: Palette Noir, Chocoloate Chip
Acc: heart punch, scallop edge punch, oval punch, gingham ribbon, stitched velvet ribbon, buttons.

TFL!