by Susan Itell | Sep 25, 2017 | Paper Pumpkin |
Good Morning! I hope that you had a great weekend, I sure did!
I have a post for you that I hope you will let “sink in” and see if it is something that you can see the benefits from. You know me well enough, I like to share with you “real things” that I use for myself, my family and friends.
I know that you all are familiar with the Stampin Up Paper Pumpkin Program. It’s the little box of surprise that comes delivered to your door each month. The cost of it is $20.00 (unless they are running a special) and each month it is a total mystery what is inside.
I admit….sometimes I love it and sometimes I don’t. The beauty of the program is you can sign up anytime you want… You can drop it anytime you want… You can actually put it on pause if you want to take a break from it for a month or two.
The magical date of ordering the paper pumpkin program is the 10th of each month.
That is the date that you can make a decision to pause it or cancel it. When you are a paper pumpkin subscriber you have the opportunity to purchase past kit refills If they become available, and that’s what this post is about!
The paper pumpkin kit for September is called Layered Leaves.With being limited with my hand I decided to open it up and put it together exactly as the kit was intended. Many months, I have tried to reinvent the wheel and do something different than what the suggested instructions are from Stampin’ Up!.
This month,I did it straight from the book.I absolutely enjoyed the experience of putting this kit together and I was so excited with the possibilities.My fingers have been crossed that they would be offering the kit refills and today, my wishes have come true.
In the below picture you will see all of the elements that are included in the refill kit for just $8. I realize that the refill kit does not come with a stamp set but I am sure you have many stamps that you could stamp a sentiment on to create in amazing project…we all know how to make things “work” for what we have.
After having so much fun and feeling so rewarded by putting this Kit together I was thinking… if refills become available I will not only continue to make fall projects… What about things for Christmas! In the picture you can below you can see what I have come up with.
With a refill kit coming with eight of the pillow boxes… These are perfect for holiday gift giving. I also do several craft shows and I thought these would be a great offering.
The only catch about being able to purchase these refill kits is… You need to be a current paper pumpkin subscriber. This is what I would do– if you are interested I would purchase the paper pumpkin for one month.
This way you would be able to get the kit for next month (which is also supposed to be super special as it is geared for the holidays) and then you would be able to pick up this refill kit or two.
Here is a quick video of the upcoming promotion.
After you receive your paper pumpkin kit and if you feel like you do want to not continue… No worries– all you need to do is cancel your subscription by the 10th of the month. (I don’t think you’re going to want to as this upcoming two months are to coordinate together for the holidays.)
Here is another peak of the Kit put together. What am I going to do with mine? Well… In a couple of weeks John and I are taking the peeps away for a beautiful fall weekend in the mountains.
I plan to use the pillow boxes as a part of my weekend fun with my children.I am going to use them on the table for our dinner one evening and tuck a special note inside of each one’s boxes with some yummy chocolates.
Wouldn’t these be wonderful for Thanksgiving?
Think about this….let it soak in and then hopefully that you will see that not only being able to purchase this refill kit will be fantastic, but seeing and getting a “feel” for the next kit will be exciting as well.
Enjoy your day and let’s all get this week rolling….Remember, these refills are WHILE SUPPLIES LAST and yep, mine are already on order!
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by Susan Itell | Sep 23, 2017 | Fall Cards |
Good morning and happy weekend to everyone…Well, the calendar says that it’s fall but it sure still feels like summer on the East Coast! I don’t know about you but hands-down – fall is my favorite time of the year. When I simply hear the words “Fall” I automatically think of beautiful leaves, apples, cooler temperatures, and comfort food!
Do you remember back in the spring… Sarah had a paper pumpkin called it’s a Sarah thing! It was one hot paper pumpkin and I sure did stock up on the refills.It was so much fun because she used a technique with clear embossed images and then using watercolor crayons to blend colors together.
In today’s card I am doing something something similar but I’m using ink pads instead of the watered colored pencils today and I will show you how you can stamp the leaves from the Colorful Seasons Bundle to make the fun!
Below you can see the beautiful colors that truly remind you have a spectacular Fall scene. The colors that I used were Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, and Crushed Curry. Today, I did use the watercolor paper as using watercolor paper is essential to have super blending.
Very Vanilla is my card base color as I like the softness of the the very vanilla with the fall leaves. when I see this card I smile as it truly reminds me of doing projects with my children when they were younger with coloring. Let’s get going!
I bet you’re looking at this picture and going YIKES – this looks like a MESS!!!! Hang tight as we all know there sometimes that you need to make a mess to make a beauty 🙂
All I did was stamp the leaf image on watercolor paper and heat set it with clear embossing powder. I do recommend using the embossing buddy to make sure you do not have any stray powder going where you do not want it!
Now for the fun… Grab yourself a little cup of water and a paint brush.
1 – Wet the entire area that has been heat embossed with clear water.
2 – Now, dab your paint brush into a little of the ink and simply tap it over the embossed image as shown below. This is where the magic happens as you will see the colors blend together.You will have to just play around with color combinations to get the look that you were going for.
The one color I absolutely adore but you have to be careful with that is the color of yellow.You need to “protect the yellow” as it has a tendency to get muddy and change color if you add too many other colors right next to it.
This is such a fun technique to play around with and just have fun with color. After I have colored my images I then cut them out with Mr. Big – super easy and fast.
Hopefully you can tell in the pictures that I have allowed some movement to the top of the leaves. I achieved this look by just simply using glue dots towards the bottom of each leaf to anchor them to my card. This way you can kind of pulled the ends of the leaves to make them look more natural and free-flowing.
By now you know I adore sentiments and simplicity. I could not resist using this sentiment which is from the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set. I invite you to make sure that you remember to blend stamp sets together to achieve a fun look when you are creating a card.
To me it is the sentiment that makes a card special and unique. I felt that the font typeset went well with the feeling of fall and “movement of leaves” cascading down!
If you or anything like me, we tend to use stamps that are super current like from our new catalog… (naturally that makes sense) but please do not forget we have so many good “old faithful’s” that have carried over and they need love as well!
Now I ask you,imagine if I did not use the embossing folder with this card. True… It would still look beautiful but the feel from the embossing folder gives it a rustic and natural look. This embossing folder is called the pinewood planks. They sure do add a lot of texture to a card with minimal effort and they’re so affordable.
Another tip I wanted to point out to you is look how your eye takes the whole card in from the top to the bottom. By creating different focal images throughout the card it allows your eye to naturally go up and down and take it all in.
Also, grouping images in clusters of odd numbers also help to make your eyes naturally take it all in! Are you wondering about the embellishments? These are called “dew drops” that I have in my embellishment stash that I think are fun to add a bit of bling.
Well….thoughts? I hope I’ve been able to explain to you that using a technique like this is not only fun… It is easy. I think sometimes it is great to be able to pull out an old technique and put it back into use.
I invite you to look at your stamp sets and images to see other Images that leaves and figure out a way to use it with this technique. Here’s an idea… What about taking a large heart and stamping either a geometrical image or possibly some for small flowers/hearts to it and then use this technique. Hmmmmm…..I think I have an idea for a future post!
Enjoy your day, and many thanks for popping in! I hope you have a fabulous day…
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by Susan Itell | Sep 21, 2017 | Uncategorized |
If it’s Thursday… it’s time to play tic-tac-toe! Take a peek at this weeks game board and then put your thinking cap on and see what you can come up with!
Having a challenge like we have on Thursdays with playing tic-tac-toe really brings out the “Inner Picasso” within us all. Make sure you take time to pop by the challenge to see what the other designers came up with as well!
I just think it is super fun to see how we all can look at the same game board and then have so many different interpretations of it!
For today’s challenge I took the far right… Straight down – Persimmon, dimension and rounded corners. I wasn’t quite sure about the color of persimmon so I decided to throw in two colors… I used Calypso Coral and a little peek of Peek-A-Boo peach.
The fun thing about this card is you could make it rather modern (like I did today)…you can use a multitude of colors… and you can put many different types and styles of sentiments on your card.
In the below picture you can see how I simply placed the framelits randomly on the thick white card stock before I ran it through Mr. Big. The beauty of this card design is you can use any of the shapes in any direction and also the fact that the stamp is a photopolymer it makes it super easy to stamp.
I used versa mark Ink – the clear water marking ink that we use for heat embossing to do a very subtle tone on tone stamping.I highly encourage you to try this type of tone on tone stamping as it truly is amazing the effect that it gives. I think sometimes we just think of this ink for actual heat embossing but it truly does give you a wonderful effect that is very subtle.
Can you see the gold the splatters of ink that I flicked all over the card?I wish you could see it in real life as it is truly stunning… sometimes the camera just doesn’t give it justice! (Actually the whole card is hard to photograph as the Lemon Lime Twist always throws the lighting/color off a bit)
I have been asked many times how I do that… I use these metallic paints and all I do is get them nice and wet with the paint brush and then tap my index finger against the paintbrush to let splatters hit the paper. It is a great touch with little effort but the WOW is there!
Now we can chat about heating embossing…I used the sentiment from the stamp set and stamped it in Bermuda Bay against the Pool Party card stock. Right after I stamped it I added clear embossing powder over top of the Bermuda Bay Ink and heat set it.
Again, the camera doesn’t pick it up wonderfully but I will say it is very pretty in person.The color of heat embossing against the pool party is just so bright and cheerful.
It’s time to pull this party together with a beautiful envelope.You can see the colors that I pulled together to take from the card. Today I decided to adhere all of the colors together and then run it through Mr. big with the Sparkle embossing folder.
I realize making your envelopes beautiful is an additional step but I do think we all can agree that it truly pulls it all together. Trust me, once you get started giving your envelopes some love – you will never break the habit. It not only does it make you smile you, the recipient will beam with excitement to receive such a pretty piece of mail! 😀
Below you can see that I rounded to the corners of the card.This is something that I rarely do and I am not sure why and in the end I like the effect!
I find it best to use the corner rounders that comes on the envelope punch board to give the best results. Again, a little simple step that gives you a fun look and feel.
There you go…Another card for the challenge. I do hope that you pop over to the Tic Tac Toe website to see what everyone else came up with this week. If you would like or need help in how to upload a picture please shoot me an email and I’ll be glad to walk you through the process.
Enjoy your day and I hope you’re able to find some creativity time.We all know that is the best dose of medicine that anyone could offer to us. Yesterday I felt like you all were in my house… As I was busy organizing my craft area. I felt like I was Chevy Chase in the Christmas movie as I was finding all sorts of memories – brought lots of joy to my heart!
All I can say is… It’s amazing what we collect!
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by Susan Itell | Sep 18, 2017 | Uncategorized |
Good morning and here’s to a new week! I have a fun post for you today as it is filled with pictures that will make you smile…make you giggle…make you just say life is great! John and I went away to a county fair near where we live!
I have never been to this fair – it is the Frederick County, Maryland fair. I simply could not get enough of all of the amazing animals that we saw but more importantly my heart was filled with joy seeing so many children and adults having nothing short of good old-fashioned fun!
I know this has absolutely nothing to do with stamping… but this is what I love about having a blog– I am able to share part of my life and my happiness with you! With pinkie still being by my side…my time creating is a little back-burnered right now but taking pictures was a blast!
You all know that I adore my animals and they are huge part of my life… and you also know that I have a pet pig named Daisy Mae! My entire family (with the exception of me naturally) thinks Daisy is huge… but after seeing these pigs in Daisy is very petite!
Enjoy these pictures I have for you showcasing the amazing animals that the children in our area proudly showed. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to see children and their parents have such pride and just a wonderful time together.
This MAMA had 13 piglets….these piglets are 4 weeks old. I love the way they snuggle with each other.
Everyone needs a friend….RIGHT!?!?
This super sweet girl was 14 years old and she was snuggling with her pig Wilbur….Wilbur will be leaving to go (you know where) – he has proudly (made the weight)…YEEK….I was sicken to hear that….but I guess that is a part of the journey. This pig has had to gain 1.5 pounds per day since June 1st to “make the weight” – heck…we really shouldn’t feel bad putting on an extra 5!
Friends to the end….(these girls have some big hocks)
LOVE THIS PICTURE….this pig was just snoozin’ away….Pigs are really SUPER smart……and SUPER clean!
This is a pretty pig…she looks like Daisy. (but bigger)
Poor Piggie….he isn’t as “pretty” as the others…..(and YES – PIGS get sunburned)
Can you say A D O R A B L E – just too sweet! (she is tired) – Love the ears….
Movin’ onto Sheep….now I thought Hannah and I were a little nuts about horses…but these sheep people….they are serious…ENJOY!
Time for GOATS.…Not to offend anyone… But this is one animal I would never have!
True, they’re super cute but they climb over everything!
Now here we go…help me out – John wants to get a couple of Alpaca’s…..I say no….he really wants them…
(he has a client that raises them)…they are cute……What do you think???? YES or NO?
Now this totally TOUCHES MY HEART-STRINGS…..not only is this cow adorable (3 years old) – this little boy MELTED my heart….he talked and talked….and then talked and talked to me (I was in hog heaven) and every time I would ask him a question he would look at me and say yes ma’am… No ma’am… Yes ma’am!
Just look how proud he is of his cow!
I simply cannot explain how amazing this time was seeing these amazing animals and these amazing children.
Now I just had to take this picture because I swear if I ever was involved with cows I could see this being me holding a cow waiting for one of my kids.This poor lady looks like she is just waiting for someone to come get this cow! TOO FUNNY!
Poor Girl….she is saying, “TAKE ME HOME…I NEED MILKED”
Now to the food….Every fair has great local food…..Just look at these potato chips… We didn’t– I resisted…..
And here are turkey legs… They looked amazing… I resisted….
And there was the pit beef sandwich… We both caved in and enjoyed! SUPER YUM!
You can see it was a wonderful afternoon and as I came home my joy tank was filled to the brim!
In closing here is a picture of my boys as we drove In the driveway…
I love my sweet Oscar and Colin…There is just nothing like the love and joy you get from an animal!
I hope to be enjoyed and smiled a little glimpse of my weekend….Let’s all have a great week!
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by Susan Itell | Sep 16, 2017 | 3-D Projects, Halloween |
Happy Weekend…I told you that I was going to share some more fun using this bundle so grab a cup of coffee because I have a trio for you! I think I know my customers very well and with that said I know many of you are intimidated by doing 3-D projects.
I hope with all of the pictures that I have for you it will inspire you to think out-of-the-box in give it a try. As I shared in my last post I truly believe this is a very special bundle… and of course you need to get the bundle… as the framelits are wonderful and who doesn’t like to save….I’ll take a 10% discount!
Trust me, everyone that I give something like this to always has a huge smile with a huge thank you! They truly are so easy to put together an once you learn to make them you will use them over and over every year.
We can learn the “how to’s” and then each year pull the same concept…possibly change the stamp and DSP… and presto you have a new project!
Here’s a little secret for you…It might be the same project… On a different year… but those same smiles and thank you’s will be on the recipients faces that are lucky enough to receive them!
You know me by now… I love the watercolor using the aqua painter.Today I chose to heat emboss with black ink and then sprinkled clear embossing powder over and heat set it.
Why? Easy….I wanted to share with you another way that you can watercolor without stressing out.I feel when you emboss an image and then use the aqua painter it is very, very easy to get amazing results.
The reason that it is so easy is the embossed lines create a little “wall for your water and ink” to stay within the lines. In the second picture below you will see is super close up picture of how I use additional layers of ink and you can see the watercolor look and feel it gave!
To make this fun origami style….DSP treat holder… You can click here to an old post that I made making the exact same thing! You can easily see that this is a great example of how I have reused…and repurposed a concept… Just updating it with current product!I
In the picture below you will see that there is a great substitute if you run out of linen thread. Just remember… We always have tricks up our sleeves! I know all of us are you in the same boat…the boat that has way too many products– my biggest tip for you is look at what you have… and use them creatively!!!
Now let’s move to these adorable test tube treat holders…I am just giddy about them and with my daughter Hannah working at a research lab at Duke University…you better believe that I will be having plenty of test tubes going her way!
These gems are first made their debut in a paper pumpkin kit…You can click here if you are a paper pumpkin subscriber and still buy that kit refill….and Stampin’ up! now sells them as a standalone product – click here to see it from the NEW Catalog! (I think they are just adorable and they are the perfect little sized to put a little something in with a quick little add one of the fru-fru and Bam– you’re done!)
You can clearly see that I have a ton of fun playing with the ribbon! I basically opened up my drawer of ribbon and just pulled anything that I thought would look fabulous with this project… the only color I was missing was pumpkin pie!
I put my thinking cap on and I think I have another fun idea for you.I took a very small sliver of pumpkin pie card stock and then after using the bone folder to soften the papers fibers… I wrapped it around my pokey stick. You could easily use a pencil to get the curls and presto I have a fun ribbon like element!!!
Now let’s touch base on our final project. It is the adorable little container of a box that has the seasonal chum pumpkin on the front and his little bum on the back of the box.
Making a quick and easy box is super easy… The picture below show you exactly how I trimmed the ends to make it form into a box. I did decide to add the polka dot DSP around all four sides but you easily could skip that step if you want.You know me well enough… I love a fun presentation!
To make the box I took a piece of pumpkin pie card stock measuring 4″ x 3″…I scored it at 1 inch all the way around and cut up as shown.I like to use fast fuse adhesive to hold the box together.It is super strong and you know it will stay together forever!
Wouldn’t this be just adorable to give to an office worker… a teacher…someone in a home to have by their bed…or even a table decoration! I just think little things like this are so much fun!
Well there you go… a post filled with fun ideas for you! I hope I was able to inspire you and I deeply thank you for popping in today!
I am doing well even though I think I over did it a bunch this week. This talking to my computer is a dream in trying to keep my posts going. I look forward to posting as soon as I can!
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