Mojo Monday 214 Birthday Card

August is a busy birthday month for me.  So, I grabbed the calendar and some sketch challenges and got to work last weekend.  I'm not sure who is going to get this one, but I have had this SU! pack of flower dies with colored gems for a while and decided it was time to open and use it!  I love the Mojo Monday sketches and pulled #214 (older one - from November of 2011).  I then pulled card stock colors that matched the flower dies and this is what I came up with!

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

July Swap Card

Here is a picture of my swap card for our meeting.  I made packages with all of the pieces ready to go and you could decide between the penguin or the sentiment.  I CASEd Lee Ann Greff's card here.  I loved her design and wanted to recreate it making it into a Christmas card.  I used markers to color in the penguin image and markers to color the stamp directly for the sentiment.  I love this Be of Good Cheer DSP - one of my new favorites for sure!

Here's a picture of the group of women that were able to attend the July swap.   What a fun day!

Thanks for looking and have a wonderful day!

July Swap Meeting Upline Gifts

My sister (Debbie Naylor) is my SU! upline and she's the BEST!  She does so much for all of us under her and each year, she does two big swap meetings (one in July and one in December).  I love these and wish I lived closer so I could attend the ones in December, but I'm happy to be able to make the July ones.

I decided to show Debbie what a great upline she is by making her a coordinating In Color desk assortment of gifts.  I altered a magazine holder, tissue box, pencil cup, pens, glass jar, and acrylic frame.  I haven't bonded with these In Colors and really wanted to show them some love, so I systematically started using them on each gift.  The pens use both the Wisteria Wonder and Pool Party.  I'm not sure you can see it, but I punched out a butterfly with the new punch and jazzed it up with some pearls.  I filled it with Hershey Kisses :) Yum!

Debbie, if you are reading this - you are the best!  Thanks for all you do -  Love you!

July Challenge Cards

What a great time Michelle and I had with this month's challenge.  The colors and sketch were really good and easy to work with.  I made two cards and Michelle made three!  We both agreed that we'll definitely be using this sketch again for other cards.  Here is the challenge:

First are Michelle's cards.  For the first one, Michelle designed it exactly per sketch.  I love it!  This color combo and layout does seem to fit a masculine themed card.  I love this sporty car image she used.  Look at the awesome star embossing on the background piece!  I just love it!

Next is Michelle's second card.  Look how beautiful and feminine it is!  I ended up with two masculine cards and couldn't think feminine on this one, but love what she did here with the main flowers, the subtle background stamped with smaller flowers, and the gorgeous flowers she cut out for the corners.  This is a great translation of the sketch!

I absolutely adore this last card by Michelle.  I love this set and it works beautifully with these colors and the sketch!  I believe Michelle used the cupcake punch for the clouds - very clever!  She also gave them some depth with a little sponging action.  The offset sentiment over two circles is brilliant - I love the way that looks.  To get more information about these cards, head over to Michelle's wonderful blog here.

Here is the first card that I made.  I ended up using the Naturals White instead of the Whisper White cardstock.  I really like it with these colors.  I have a friend's birthday coming up and he's from Boston.  So, he loves the Patriots and Red Sox - This card has his name all over it!  I colored the main image with my markers and stamped.  I wanted the sun to be yellow and didn't think it would be a pretty if I first stamped in black and colored it in.  I think this technique worked well with this image.  I then did a lot of embossing with the Big Shot.  I ran a lot of scrap pieces through a bunch of different embossing folders and then ran some of those pieces through to make the stars.  I love the texture you get!

After making the first card, I got the idea for the second card.  I got this set a while ago and have been itching to use it!  This sketch works well for sets that have a main image and then smaller images that accompany/accentuate it.  So, I used the same Whisper White and got to work stamping, punching, and assembling.  I love this card and I think my father-in-law will too!  He's Greek, so we celebrate Name Days.  He'll love the color combo and loves ship images :)

I can't believe another month has come and gone!  This year is flying by!  Next weekend, I'll post the August challenge.  Please join us if you can.  Thanks for looking and have a great day :)

July Simply Paper Design Challenge

Stamp a patriotic card with us!