Love Scrapbook page and Valentine's cards

This is the page that we did this month, using the Valentine's Day bundle for this year. I just love this bundle! I can't stop using it, lol. The bundle price is only available until January 31, so don't miss out on the great savings! I plan to use this page for a couple pictures of my hubby and I together from this fall.

• Stamps: Love You Much
• Paper: Real Red textured CS, Very Vanilla, Bella Rose DSP, Candy Lane DSP
• Ink: Chocolate Chip, markers in Real Red, Regal Rose, and Old Olive
• Accessories: 2 Way glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, Scallop edge punch, Heart to Heart punch

1. Cut 2 strips of 3/4x12" strips of DSP. Cut a 2-1/2" square of light colored DSP.
   
2. Stamp the LOVE stamp in Choc Chip on the DSP square. Color in with the markers. Use the 2 Way glue pen to apply glue to the letters in LOVE, then apply glitter. Ink edges of square with Choc Chip ink. Adhere in the right Bottom corner of your 12x12" sheet of Real Red textured CS.
   
3. Use Scallop edge punch to make a 12" long scalloped strip, trim to approx 1/2" wide. Adhere your strips of DSP and Scalloped Very Vanilla just above the Love square, overlapping slightly on the bottom edges.
   
4. Use Heart to Heart punch to punch out a variety of DSP hearts and adhere to page as desired.


5. Attach your photos and add your journaling in the bottom section. You could also add a title above your photos. All done!

These are little matchbook style Valentine's cards that will hold a mini Hersey's, Twix, Kit Kat, etc. You can write on the back for the to and from. You could also punch a hole in the bottom and put a sucker in it instead of a candy bar.

• Stamps: Love You Much, Holidays & Wishes
• Paper: Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip, Riding Hood Red, Candy Lane DSP
• Ink: Chocolate Chip, Riding Hood Red
• Accessories: scoring blade with paper cutter, Word Window punch, Scallop Circle punch, 1-1/4" Circle punch, Scallop Edge punch

1. Pink Pirouette cut to 2-1/2"x8-1/2". Chocolate Chip Chip piece 2-1/2" long strip, edge scalloped with Scallop Edge punch. DSP cut to 2"x2-3/8" . Scraps or Riding Hood Red and Pink Pirouette for the Scallop circle.



2. Now score at 2-3/4", 3", 6-1/8", and 6-3/8" along the long edge




3. On the longer end, take the Word Window punch and line the top edge up with the 2-3/4" score line and punch out. This is where the candy bar fits into the card. The picture below is what it should now look like after folding at all of the score lines. Make sure to crease well.
   
4. Stamp the message below the punch.
5. Put a little glue at the top edge of the punched section and glue to inside edge of the card.
6. Glue the Chocolate Chip scalloped strip to underside of the top flap.
7. Glue the DSP to the top flap.
8. Stamp the scallop circle in Chocolate Chip ink once on the Riding Hood Red and once on the Pink Pirouette scraps. Punch the center circle from the Pink with the 1-1/4" circle punch. Punch the Red with the Scallop circle punch. Glue together, then glue to top flap.

All Done!

Special Order Birthday Card

I had another request from a co-worker for a birthday card for a construction worker friend of theirs. This is what I came up wit. I had just been playing with my old Fiskars Texture plates and my Cuttlebug and finally got the sandwich right, so I had the wood grain texture fresh in my brain. And when I was digging through my hardware drawer, I found these great screw head brads! I had swapped with someone for the toolbox image a while back and it all just fell into place. Don't you just love it when that happens?!

• Stamps: For Father
• Paper: Not Quite Navy, Ruby Red, Creamy Caramel
• Ink: Creamy Caramel, Close to Cocoa, Ruby Red, Not Quite Navy, Going Gray
• Accessories: Fiskars wood grain texture plate with Cuttlebug, screw head brads, blender pen
  

Happy Birthday Anyone?

I felt like doing a couple of birthday cards this evening. I actually had a sleeping idea of a card. I don't remember exactly what the card in my dream looked like, but I remembered the color scheme and that it was a birthday card. Do I usually dream up my ideas for cards while sleeping? I should be so lucky, lol!

I have had that ribbon for ages and use a little here and a little there, but this is the first paper I have had that really matches the color of the dots! But alas, it is not SU. And that star brad is also from years ago, I found a box of 200 brads in gold and silver of hearts, stars and squares. That's a lot of big brads!

• Stamps: Party Hearty, Classic Stars JW
• Paper: Baja Breeze, Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip
• Ink: Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip
• Accessories: CAD, gold eyelets, white gel pen, star brad, ribbon, dimensionals, 1-3/4" circle punch, scallop circle punch, 1" circle punch

This is another card using basically the same layout, color scheme, and sets. I just changed it up a little bit. I took a 1/2" wide strip of Choc Chip and ran it through the paper crimper, glued it to the card front, then used the white gel pen to make white stripes in the valleys. The matted B is up on dimensionals also.

Hope you like them! I am feeling the creativity starting to come back! Of course I go back to work on Monday night so I hope I get to use more of it before then :)

I Love Tea page

I decided to try to do a little scrapbooking for myself this weekend. After all of the holiday commotion, it will be nice to get back to the usual routine of life :) Check out the end of this post for a little update on our recent chimney fire incident.


This is a page I have been meaning to do for a couple weeks now in honor of my love for tea. Here in the USA people generally drink coffee, or soda ("pop" for all you Minnesotans out there, lol) all the time. I drink tea. Any kind of tea. I have to try them all. But I always have a couple favorites. I even travel with my own supply of tea in a baggie with a little sweetener to go with it. I have managed to pass my love for tea on to my kids. How many teenage boys do you know that take tea to school with them in a thermos to drink during the day, lol! As I am typing this, I have decided to redo the journaling for this page. I didn't give near enough of what it means to me.

• Stamps: Espress Yourself, Love You Much
• Paper: More Mustard, Lovely Lilac
• Ink: More Mustard, Lovely Lilac, various markers
• Accessories: paper piercer with mat pack, white gel pen, SU Cherish rub-ons, Making Memories Heidi white alpha rub-ons, cuttlebug, square and scalloped square nestabilities, dimensionals, Heart to Heart punch, sponge, box from my favorite tea :)

This is a close up to show you how I punched out a bunch of More Mustard harts, sponged them with More Mustard ink, then glued them to the cs. Add a neat texture to the page, don't you think?

And this is the picture of my tea from while I was scrapbooking this page. I will have it printed and put on the right upper quad of the page. It is the cup my kids gave me for Christmas last year :)
And this is the mixture of creosote and fire extinguisher stuff that we had to clean up yesterday. This is where the fire got the hottest in the top of the stove.

And this is the mess behind the stove after we pulled to old stove pipe off. Yummy huh :) But, on the up side, this was all cleaned up and working well by 3pm that afternoon, so all is well. I am sitting here in the same room as that wood stove all toasty warm!

Thank you to all of the people who commented on our safety, I really do appreciate it. It's wonderful to be able to reach out to each other even if we have never met each other and live many miles away.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Thank You cards and a chimney fire!

Ok, when I started writing this post, we developed a chimney fire in the wood stove just 15 feet from where all on my stamping stuff is and I had to actually call the fire department! I had shut all the dampers, dowsed the logs with water, took the wood out of the stove and put it in the snowbank outside. It looked like it was going to be ok, but then the stove pipe got cherry red near the ceiling and started to warp. Oh, !@#* This is beyond my capabilities and the capabilities of my little fire extinguisher. So I called the county dispatch number (didn't want to use 911 as the house wasn't on fire yet, I know, how dumb! But they answered on the second ring anyway) and then had the kids get all of the pets out of the house (6 dogs, 3 cats, a rabbit, and a rat-can we say Noah's ark here!) It's a good thing I called. By the time the 1st fire rig got here, the stove pipe was cherry red all the way down to the stove and it was 1300 degrees Fahrenheit. No fire anywhere but the chimney though, so that's good. But I had 2 fire rigs, an ambulance, and a state trooper in my yard! I called Jamie, my hubby, to let him know what was going on as he is working 100 miles from here tonight. I'm sure that made him feel real good not being able to be here. But I kept him informed. The firefighters crawled into the attic (the only access is about 15 feet up from our deck on the front of the house) and crawled on our steep tin roof, with a ladder thank goodness, and blew a fire extinguisher into the stove up into the chimney. Then watched it until the stove pipe wasn't red anymore and the temp came down to 150 degrees. We are going to have to replace the stove pipes inside the house before we use it again, but we still have the big wood stove downstairs that is doing just fine, so we will be warm enough downstairs, or under the blankets.


This is a "before". It was actually taken about 18 months ago. See how nice an uniformly black the stove pipe is? It was this morning, just like this. But not anymore!


This is the wood stove after the fire was extinguished. Kinda messy huh. But I keep thinking it could have been so much worse! All of the discoloration on the stove pipe is from it getting too hot and warping. NOT cool.
Close up of the damage to the pipe where it joins the stove. This is where it was 1300 degrees when the firemen got here.

This is the top of the stove pipe in the house, where it first turned cherry red and started to warp in. The lighter parts are the parts that seemed to sink in a bit.

And this is a close up of all of the fire extinguisher stuff. I'll clean that up tomorrow.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Tis the Season...for thank you cards! I am horrible for remembering to make these, let alone sending them, as any of my family and friends can attest to! But this year I am trying to be better at it. This first one is an attempt on my part to use some of the More Mustard paper that I accidentally ordered too much of recently, oops!

Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes

Paper: More Mustard, Not Quite Navy, Old Olive, Very Vanilla

Ink: Old Olive, More Mustard, Not Quite Navy

Accessories: distressing tool from Cutter Kit, gold brads, Old Olive poly twill ribbon

1. Stamp a Silhouette image repeatedly in More Mustard on the card base.
2. Distress edges of all layers, then ink edges with matching ink.
3. Stamp one image repeatedly in Old Olive on the Very Vanilla square, then stamp a different Silhouette image in More mustard.
4. Attach ribbon. Adhere all layers together.
5. Stamp "thanks so much" in Not Quite Navy .
6. Use paper piercer and Mat Pack to punch holes for the 3 gold brads, then attach the brads.
   

This is one is my attempt to CASE a card I found on SCS, but I had to and more stamping. I don't know if I like it though. I used some really bright colors on this one, colors I don't usually use, so it will have to grow on me, I guess.

• Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes
• Paper: Whisper White, Pink Passion
• Ink: Brilliant Blue, Pink Passion, Gable Green, Orchid Opulence
• Accessories: Top Note die, die cut machine, Curly Label punch, dimensionals, sponge

1. Cut a Top Note die with the Pink Passion cs, then randomly stamp a Silhouette image repeatedly on it. Sponge to edges with Pink Passion ink. Adhere to the white card base.
2. Stamp one Silhouette in each of the 4 colors on white cs, then punch out with the Curly Label punch. Sponge edges with matching ink, then mount on card with dimensionals.
3. Stamp thanks so much in Brilliant blue around edges of card.

Ok, this post is getting really long, and I think the card is pretty self explanatory, so I will just list the supplies I used.

• Stamps: Party Hearty
• Paper: Tangerine Tango, Pacific Point, Old Olive, Very Vanilla
• Ink: Tangerine Tango, Pacific Point, Old Olive
• Accessories: paper piercer with mat pack, gold brads

I hope you like the cards! I think I need to go shower to get rid of this smokey smell on me and my clothes, ugh!

Stampin Up! is doing it again!

Stampin Up! is offering another amazing deal! Up to 50% off of select retired, retiring, and current product from January 5-18 only! Here is a link to the Blow-out List
Check it out and order soon to be sure to get everything you want off the list before it sells out! There are a few of the previous In-Color stamp pads and ribbons on the list even. Lots of ribbon, embellishments, Designer Series patterned paper, and Rub-ons too. I'm going to hurry up and shop myself, lol!