tea-drinking stamper

The third card made by the girls at my class last week featured a butterfly. [Actually, it was the second one we made, but it is the third to be posted.] I cut the banners and the butterflies, both layers, ahead of time using my Big Shot. All the girls had to do was put the card together and stamp the greetings. When my granddaughter spotted the floral stamp in the Birthday Blossoms stamp set, she wanted to stamp them inside, which mean they all had to do so. Such creativity. Once again I was using retired products. I still love the Blackberry Bliss former In Color.

Another fun design for my little girls' stamping class is this one that required not stamping, although I gave them the option. Two girls used a thank you greeting from the retired Delightful Dozen stamp set while several others made their cards into Father's Day cards, stamping the greetings on the blue overalls. I cut everything out ahead of time so all they had to do was follow directions to glue the pieces on the card front. We used up my Basic Black and Basic Gray candy dots for buttons on the overalls. Such fun!

Last week I had a group of little girls come to my house to make some cards. I developed three different cards. The little girls lost interest after two cards, but the older ones made three with no problem and one actually wanted to make more. So my challenge was to make fairly simple yet nice cards. Admittedly, the prep for this class was more time consuming than those classes I do for adults. The class was organized because one mom wanted her girls to make thank you cards. This  card was designed with that in mind. My thought was that the fireflies in the jar were thankful to be set free; hence the jar lid propped against the jar itself. Knowing that these were not prospective buyers, I used some of my retired products that have been laying around, like the Naturals White and Lost Lagoon card stocks. I even had some leftover Lost Lagoon ribbon, which I added in the form of a bow on the neck of the jar after scanning this card. The stamps are current (Jar of Love), although th...

We've all had it happen. A major mistake that ruins the whole card. Here's my example. I had designed this card for stamp class, demonstrating the method of dipping watercolor pencils in water before coloring the image. However, I made two mistakes when using my pencils during one of my classes: I grabbed the Basic Gray pencil instead of Old Olive and then, in my frustration, I smeared the color outside one flower petal. So I laid it aside to rework later. Here is the result—and I actually like this better than the original: By cutting out the image, the smear disappeared. A change in color combination made it appear intentional. The funny thing is that I used old retired designer series paper, a pattern I never knew how to use when it was current. Of course, now that it's no longer available, I love it. The stamp set I used for these cards is Birthday Blossoms. I heat embossed the greeting on the gray card. My colors are Daffodil Delight, Melon Mambo and Old...

I was so excited to discover that the upcoming Stampin' Up! catalog includes more designer paper that looks like coloring book pages. But they come with a twist: they are weighted for use with watercolor pencils and Aqua Painters or Blender Pens. Meanwhile, I decided to color the page I really had no idea how I would use it for cards. I colored the entire scenic page and then cut it up to use on my card fronts. I love the way they turned out. Amazing how sitting down to use things you don't think you can sparks creativity you didn't know you had. The first picture shows the cards lined up so you can see the original page colored; the second photo shows the finished cards.  I have viewed the new catalog on-line numerous times and can't wait to start ordering. My biggest problem is going to be deciding what to order first!