For a departing colleague

Hi folks,

well, when I returned to work today I found an email inviting me to lunch as a colleague of mine is leaving our research lab. She is exceptionally bright and we will definitely miss her input and valuable contributions on the project on which we both work. So, I decided to make this card to wish her all the best in whatever lies ahead.

The image is from Kraftin Kimmie stamps and is coloured with Prismacolor pencils. Papers are CTMH Bella.

I used Sketch 89 from Sketch Saturday for the layout. I hope she likes it. Dearly beloved thinks this totally looks like her.

I'm going into withdrawal

Eeeeep...I haven't made a card since Friday and I am going into withdrawal! I've also been neglecting my blog reading as I have been working on a couple of sewing projects. Finally sitting down to just do nothing (catch up on Dexter!) and did a little blog reading and saw this awesome candy over at Michelle's Scrapbooking and more.

Be sure to check it out - you can enter to win until St Patrick's Day! And check out her store as well!

Craft room update

Yay - my newly constructed shelves have been installed. A few pics of the installation for you viewing pleasure!

Dearly beloved measuring for placement - I wanted the shelves to be stepped and equidistant.

The little one supervising....

Okay...he's not so little....maybe a better name would be the younger one.

Getting it just right....

Nice new empty shelves - just waiting for a ton of supplies.

Newton taking a break from all the excitement.

Packet doing the same...

Fully stocked

• Top shelf: cricut cartridges and 3D projects I have been gifted or made myself
• Middle shelf: assorted embellishments (brads, buttons, etc) and reference books
• Bottom Shelf: ribbon. Just ribbon. Dearly beloved thinks I have a lot.
• One of my crafting tables, protected with two very large self-healing mats. Yes, there are TWO Cricuts in the back corner. The various and sundry organizers have my always used supplies - dew drops, foam squares, adhesives, punches, more ribbon and stuff from CTMH specifically in the wooden case, PrismaColors.....etc etc etc.....

And Packet's basket is back in its rightful spot so he can snooze while I craft.

Let the wheeling and dealing begin

Hi folks....well, I totally missed out on the release party fun at PaperWorksCo for the launch of their latest collection of cuties as I had dinner at my favourite local Italian eatery - PocoPazzo - with a dear friend and we then spent the rest of the evening stamping away.

I had fun with my friend but boy did I miss not attending the launch. Especially since I had no inkling of what the new images would be. Well, once again Peggy and Natalie, the new artist for PaperWorksCo did not disappoint. Take a lookie!

Aren't Zoe and Zach too cute? I've already placed my order as Peggy of course has a release bundle waiting to be snapped up by all us eager beavers! The details can be found at this post over at the blog.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out - as well as all of the posts from the launch featuring the adorable creations by the PaperWorksCo design team - the girls rocked the release!

Oh - and for you super-creative types. Peggy has another contest going where you can win all of the PaperWorksCo releases for an entire year. Just put on your thinking caps and think of the sort of stamps you would like to see released by PaperWorksCo.....all of the details can be found here at this post.

Welcoming Jenn's Baby

Okay so if your name is Jenn McMillan you might want to NOT read this post -- if you would like this card for baby to be a surprise! So...the rest of you aren't Jenn....right?....

So those of you who know Jenn know that she is a member of the StarvingArtistamps design team and makes the wickedest cards with their images. Well, to welcome her new little one, StarvingArtistamps has put out a call for you to design a card to welcome the little princess (yes, Jenn and her hubby, Brooks, know that they are having a little girl) with the bonus of a pretty nice blog candy up for grabs - a full sheet of images AND a free set of sentiments.

Now, I originally planned to use one of my StarvingArtistamps sets to do a cute little farm scene card (I love the little baby chick in the farm set) but I got my new Bildmalarna stamps from Paper Jewels just a few days ago and one of the new stamps I got from them was this cute cute cute little baby stamp and I just had to use it with my Pretty Please papers from My Mind's Eye that I recently got from PaperWorksCo but had yet to use.

I coloured the image with Prismacolor Pencils - the perfectly coordinated buttons are clear buttons from CTMH that were glued to the papers and then cut out.

The layout is from this week's challenge over at the Sketch and Stash Challenge Blog.

Hope you are headed into a fantastic weekend!

A little toot!

Wowee! I was just reading some of the blogs I follow before heading upstairs to exercise this morning and guess what! This cute card I made for my niece was selected as the winner on Friday Sketchers this week! How neat is that! .... now to exercise!


What a nice way to start the day!

Valentine Explosion Boxes

Hi folks...Wow...it's been a few days since I posted. hmmm...maybe I should have scheduled some of those multiple posts from the past weekend for this week!

Well, after finishing up the valentine cards for my nieces and nephew, I figured I would make them a little treat box or bag of some sort in which to put a few chocolates (they also get $$$ in their cards but a little sweet is always a nice treat!).

I really wanted to put a good dent into my Valentine papers I purchased this year from PaperWorksCo as I am really going to strive to reduce the amount of STUFF in my craft room. I am saying this after Jenn delivered a MASSIVE load of all the new CTMH papers and some extra card stock I wanted to go with them.

Anyways, back to my project. I decided to make some little explosion boxes like one I had been given last year. There is a great tutorial on SCS for these with one little caveat - the lid needs to be bigger! The instructions on SCS say to cut the lid paper 4 1/4 inches in size but I found that is too snug and buckles the side of the box. So, I increased my paper to 4 3/8 inches square and kept the scoring the same (at 7/8) and found that the lid fit just perfectly.

I made five explosion boxes using the Bo Bunny Love Bandit papers - mixing the bases and lids so they would all be different. I chose the Bo Bunny papers because they are very heavy weight and double sided so you get a pretty pattern on the inside of the box as well. The tags for the boxes are from the cut-out sheet that coordinates with the papers. You can get all of these here at PaperWorksCo - and the nice thing about these papers is that they can be used all year round. Think of nice love, anniversary, wedding or birthday cards. I'm pretty sure that my leftovers will be cropping up on cards all year round as some of the patterns are quite versatile. I think I will submit my little project to Verve's Challenge: Tags, Tins and Treats. There have been some very cute projects in their project parade - probably why I felt inspired to make these for my nieces and nephew.

And mark your calendars for tomorrow (Friday Feb 5) between 8pm and 10pm Eastern! PaperWorksCo is launching their next stamp set release on their blog - and I see from the sneaky peeks and Peggy's teasing that there are going to be a couple of new members for the PaperWorksCo family! I'm hoping I can stop in for the release party but I am planning on having dinner with a friend and then spending some time stamping/crafting with her.

Oh....and if you have any CC Designs Swiss Pixies in your collection, Danielle is hoping you wouldn't mind doing an image swap with her! Please check out her post here for the details! And that reminds me, if you ever see an image on one of my creations and would like for me to stamp you some if you don't have them yourself, you can always drop me a line via my email link on the sidebar and I would be happy to try to accomodate your request! Feel free to ask if I have others from that collection as odds are I do but haven't gotten around to inking them up yet! I think we all know about that!

Now, back to the craft room! I told dearly beloved I had been tidying up in there in the hopes of quilting today and he said if I wanted to do a little more tidying (i.e. get the tables out of his way), he would put up my new shelves he made for me --- tonight!!!

Now to move those two tables and everything that is ON and UNDER them!