April Joy of Card Making Swap Card

Doesn't she make you smile? Our swap this month was based on the Joy of Card Making recipe #38. It's a 3.5"x3" card. The hat girl was inspired by a Tonya Doughty's card in PaperCrafts "You Go, Girl!" (2007). Isn't she cute? I like to call the little punched flowers my "poor man brads". You can always have the color of brad you want from tiny scraps in your stash and embellish the centers with a gel pen or regular marker.

Texture - Cuttlebug Swirls
Stamps - Stampendous Fun Face Set
Mini Flowers - Michael's $1 punch
Flower Hat - flowers by Darice

Michael's 20% Off Coupon - 4/27-5/10

Here's a link to a coupon to Michael's for 20% off your entire regular priced order. I know the 40% coupons are better for big items but sometimes you just want to get a bunch of lower priced items and this fits the bill. The fine print says that it is for Teacher Appreciation Week but it doesn't say you have to be a teacher. I appreciate teachers (especially when they can get me a 20% discount).

Just one more money saving tip. I thought everyone knew this but some of my sewing friends did not realize it, Michael's will honor JoAnn's coupons (and probably any other crafty type store for those of you that have other stores in your area.) This comes in handy because JoAnn's seems to have more coupons than Michael's.

Scraps Anyone

Stop! Don't throw all those little strips of paper away. Make your own background paper and do your part for the green movement. To make the shredded grograin embellishment, start with a small strip of grograin ribbon, maybe 4". Trim one of the woven edges off, then peel off all the stringy fibers. This is a little messy. You really don't want the fan on. Then tie the fibers together with the woven strip you trimmed off.




I first saw the grograin technique on SplitcoastStampers a while ago and would love to give credit to the person that invented it but I searched and searched and cannot find the original instructions.


Stamp - Love You To Bits
Ink - Kaleidacolor
Ribbon - Shredded Grograin

Stamping Meets Sewing

The only thing that rivals my stamp/paper/ink collection is my fabric/pattern collection. Somehow, I've never really married the two hobbies together though. A couple of years ago, a dearly departed Sewing Sister, Julie, left me with some sewing themed scrapbook paper, dress form die cuts, and tape measure ribbon. (She hasn't departed the earth, just left Southern California for Chicago. Why would anyone do that? That's a whole other story.) So I pulled it all out and came up with this card.

Paper, Die Cut - who knows where these are from. Julie just knows she picked them up in her travels but can't remember where.
Cuttlebug - die cut tag and birthday embossing folder
Stamp - unmarked cube but I think it was by Stamp of Excellence

A Little Froggy

Last year I decided to stamp a set of gift cards for each of the ladies in my sewing group. We call ourselves the Sewing Sisters. No, we are not nuns, just sewing sisters. Anyway, my sewing sister Cheryl loves frogs so of course her set had to have a frog in it. Me, I'm not especially a fan of anything that creeps, crawls, or slithers but I do have this one cute frog in my stamp collection. Luckily, there was also a little dragonfly stamp to give him something to snack on.

Stamps - All Night Media, Papertrey Ink
Texture - Cuttlebug Traffic Jam
Frame - Cuttlebug Funky Square Frame

Cheap Adhesive Tip

Just to let you know that I don't limit my shopping to the Michael's dollar bins, here is my cheap adhesive tip. I have never been a fan of the snail adhesives, we never bonded (sorry I couldn't resist). But I'm getting along quite well with the Ad Tech brand. And of all places, I found it at Harbor Freight, cheap - like $1.99. Just don't take your DH with you, he'll waste a bunch of money on something silly like tools or home repair supplies. And if that isn't exciting enough, Walmart has the refills in a 2-pack for only $2.27. The only problem is that Walmart is often out of stock, guess my secret got out somehow. So if you find them, pick up a few - just not from MY Walmart.

Sometimes You Get What You Pay For

I picked up this ribbon in the Michael's dollar bin one day expecting it to be cheap, cheesy ribbon. Imagine my surprise when I took it home and discovered that it was silky and lovely to work with. And serendipitously, I found a flower stamp at home that coordinated perfectly with the ribbon. It's an acrylic stamp also from Michael's $1 bin. Yes, I'm spending way too much time scrounging around in Michael's dollar bins. This truly is a 5 minute card.

Not from Michael's:
Inks - Vivid Olive, Adirondack Expresso, and Memories Soft Peach
Stamps - SU Sincere Salutations and one of the flourish sets from Autumn Leaves

A Girl Can't Have Just One Purse, Can She?

Well, I had so much fun making that purse that I had to make another. Ok, the truth is that I did not have enough paper in the paper stack to make 5 matching cards so I had to do 2 versions. If my stamping friends read this, it will be their first clue that the East coast cards are different than the West coast cards. And by the way, no animals were harmed in the making of this faux animal print/texture purse.

Paper - DCWV's All Dressed Up
Stamps - Borders and Corners and Ambassador Monogram Edition by Papertrey Ink
Punches - SU Scallop Punch and SU1.375" Circle Punch
Textured with Cuttlebug Tiny Bubbles

March Purse Swap

Four of my friends from the East and West coasts and I do a swap once a month based on a "randomly" selected recipe from The Joy of Card Making. The March swap was a cute little purse (#50). This was my card. The dimensions started with cardstock cut to 6"x10", folded to 6"x5". The recipe had you trim in 1/2" on each side of the top. I didn't think the result looked like the samples so I trimmed 1.5" off mine on each side.

Paper - DCWV's All Dressed Up
Stamps - Borders and Corners and Ambassador Monogram Edition by Papertrey Ink
Punches - SU Scallop Punch and SU1.375" Circle Punch
Textured with Cuttlebug Tiny Bubbles

Gifted Paper + $1 Stamp

My good friend Cindee gave me this gorgeous paper from CTMH awhile back. Around the same time I discovered the $1 bin of stamps at Michael's and purchased this circle stamp. So the paper and stamp moved into the stamp room around the same time and became the inspiration for this card. I love how the timing of acquisitions determines what gets combined together.

The scalloped circles are from the Cricut monogram cartridge and the center circle is colored with chalks.

Me Too

Well it seems like everyone has a blog, why not me? I'd like to say that stamping is my hobby. But the real hobby is buying stamp stuff. Maybe if I have a blog, I'll spend more time actually stamping and using this mountain of stuff I keep buying.