JUGS Challenge card

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Shauna

I stumbled across a fun card sketch challenge over at the Just Us Girls site.  You can see the specific challenge here.  They’ve teamed up with Dawn from Wplus9, and the winner of this fun challenge gets 2 stamp sets from Wplus9!  Fun times!

I love challenges like this because they force me to do some creative thinking and play with all my supplies.  I never know what I might come up with.

And now for my take on the sketch – I wanted something springy and fun but not all yellows and purples and greens. Brown, turquoise and dusty rose?  Sure.

The border piece is from one of my favourite Martha punches.  For the flower, I used a punch to punch out 5 layers from an old book.  The “happy birthday” sentiment is also stamped on that book paper.  I really had fun with this card!  And I love love love making those book-paper flowers.  I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any WPlus9 stamps yet, so I couldn’t work with any in this card.

This is the great sketch that I got to work with and interpret to my heart’s content

JUGS23

Have a go at it and see what you can come up with.  There’s a spot to link to your creation on the JUGS site.  The deadline is at 9pm EST on Thursday March 11th, 2010.

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Project 52: Catan Double Date

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Shauna

This was Nathan’s week to plan our date, so can you guess what we did?  Yep, it involved a game!  We played a great game of Catan with two of our friends – Brian and Diana.

My lovely husband is the one making the crazy face on the left.

Nathan and I had been feeling a bit out of touch with our friends lately.  After being in Vancouver for 2 years, we felt a bit like everyone had their own routines, and we were too slow to create some good ones of our own upon moving back here, with the wedding planning and everything.  Anyways, we both really want to make an effort to connect with friends, and I think this was a pretty good night for that!

Neither Brian nor Diana had played Catan before, but they picked it up pretty quickly.  Maybe they’ll win next time ;-)  For today, it was me!

I love this game because it doesn’t have to be too competitive.  I often struggle with games against Nathan because the logical Engineer side of him has to always be thinking about strategy and the “best” way to do things.  However, with Catan, you can plod along in your own little world and still end up doing OK, or at least feeling like you’re doing well!  Just never ever play the 2-player version (there’s an extension for that).  I think I cried when Nathan and I decided to give it a shot.  Wow, him against me in a battle for the win wasn’t as fun as regular Catan.

Hopefully we can have these two over for game times again.  It made for a fun and relaxing night.

Now, take a look at Simply Modern Mom’s site and her Project 52: Date Night project that she started.  You can browse all the dates that others have done as well.

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Finishing up the One-sheet Wonder

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Shauna

I managed to finish my last two cards today!  Boy oh boy did that take a while.  I was trying to be imaginative, which wasn’t coming easily today.  And everything seemed so pink.  Well, that was the point, lots and lots of pink.  I do love it with the dark chocolatey brown!

I have a special place in my card-making heart for butterflies.  They’re just so delicate and pretty.

I used a very old PSX stamp for the butterflies.  You know a stamp’s old when the company hasn’t been around for years!  I stamped the little guys in VersaColor Peony, and embossed them in Glitter Galore.  Next, I cut them out and bent the wings a bit.  I used foam tape to stick them to the card for a bit of extra dimension.  Each little guy has a gem in the centre.. I think they were originally nail art gems!

Card #4

I’m a fan of cards that sit upright like this.  This can be achieved by cutting your 8 1/2 x 11” cardstock in half the long way so that you have two pieces that are 4 1/4” x 11”.

I bought the dandelion seeds stamp from Hero Arts a few weeks back because I think it’s simply beautiful. Or beautifully simple :-)  Like in my other 3 cards, I stamped using VersaColor Peony ink, and embossed with Glitter Galore embossing powder.  I don’t know what I’d do without Glitter Galore!

Oooh, and pink strip on the bottom I stamped using an Inkadinkado clear stamp and the same Peony ink.

Other Materials used:

Celebrate It Ribbon from Michaels, Martha craft border punch and tag punch, VersaColor Orchid ink (for edging) and Momento Lilac Posies ink.

One-sheet Wonder roundup

I deem it to be a pretty successful (and fun!) project.

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2nd one-sheet wonder card

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Shauna

Card #2 of the one-sheet wonder cards done (using the handy dandy template).  Card #1 is here.

This is definitely a lot of pink! Pink background, pink borders, pink paper, pink ink, pink flower, pink ribbon.  Woah.. the word “pink” is starting to sound like gibberish to me.

I used a Martha craft punch for the pretty holey border, and the paper flower is from a local person here.. although I’m thinking she buys them bulk and re-packages them.  I’m fond of this collage-ey bird stamp.  It’s from an Inkadinkado clear set.

Wish? Always.

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A one-sheet wonder

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Shauna

Who doesn’t love a fun challenge?  In card making, we seek them out.  And I certainly do love it when this challenge comes with some layouts to follow.  So the other day I started my first one-sheet wonder.  I was inspired when I saw this post at Sweet Pea’s Story. The template used is here

You find some patterned paper that you really like, and all you need is a 6”x6” square of it.  You chop that up, following the pattern instructions, then make 4 beautiful cards – using other materials, of course.

I had so much fun with this project.  It took me a long time, but I bet it’d get faster if you did a few different sets.

For this card, I embossed the flower and “Life is fun” in Glitter Galore, on top of VersaColor peony, then I added a little jewel to the flower.

I’ll post up the other 3 soon!

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Project 52: Dine Around Victoria

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Shauna

It seems like we’ve been a bit repetitive with the typical “going out to dinner” date.  However, I had a good reason for dining out this week!  It’s the annual Dine Around and Stay in Town event here in Victoria.  Restaurants have delicious 3-course meals at various price points.  It’s a great way to try out new restaurants, and living in Victoria, there are a lot!  It was the last week of this event, so I wanted to get us out to at least one place.

I found a menu that looked rather appetizing and called up the restaurant, which also had a neat name.  The one I chose was Sips Artisan Bistro.   It was a cute little wine bar type place that could be fun to go to with girlfriends.  For some reason Nathan’s not really into wine bars or tapa bars or other such places, but this one turned out to be pretty good.  My meal was delicious.  Nathan found his main course a little less to his liking.  I don’t think he’s a fan of celeriac and other such “odd” vegetables.  He said “it was very bland with dashes of bitter.” Oh well, we know what to stay away from if we ever go back! However, their chocolate espresso mousse is amaaaazing.

We had some leftovers to add to our lunches the next day.  I LOVE leftovers.  One more thing that I don’t have to cook? Yes please!

And the best part of this date?  I secretly brought along some paper and pens.  Before any food came, we spent out time writing ideas of what we would have in our dream home.  For me, a craft room with lots of table space and natural lighting.  For him, pretty much the same criteria for his office, and the whole house wired to the nines. 

This was a fun project to see what our goals are, and to see that we can actually realize some of these dreams.  How exciting!

Check out others’ date nights at the blog of the amazing woman who started all of this – Tiffany, over at Simply Modern Mom

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Happy Home

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Shauna

This is a fun card that I made as a house warming card for some friends who recently bought their first home together.  I loved the little toad stool as well as the paper, and was excited to put them together.

new toadstool

I used some shimmery Basil cardstock, along with this pretty scrapbook paper by Magenta.  I used a corner rounding punch on the paper and edged it with my VersaFine Onyx Black ink.  The toadstool and ladybugs are both from a Hero Arts clear set.  I got the toadstool colour by sponging part of it, and carefully using my versa colour ink cubes straight on the paper to lightly ink the edges and blend. 

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Handmade Friend date book

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Shauna

One of my besties had a birthday coming up, so I tried to think of things that I really love to do with her.  I couldn’t think of any one thing, but wanted to give her something that would keep us spending time together, since it’s sometimes hard with all of our commitments these days.  So I came up with a date book.

This is it before I got the ribbon tied.. I somehow failed to get a picture of the final product :-(  Anyways, what I did was give a 2-week time period for each date.  For example, sometime between April 12th -25th, we’re going to try a new recipe to make together (and this comes with money for ingredients).  All we have to do is find a time to book our “date,” then follow the instructions.  She received it really well and I’m definitely looking forward to the dates!

I cut my pages a few inches longer than the book size so I could fold the bottom up to create  a pocket.  Also, the cover pages are slightly bigger than the rest, with rounded corners.

I attached eyelets to the holes to keep them from ripping and make it easy to tie them with ribbon.

I slipped “date cards” inside the pockets along with anything needed for the dates, like gift cards.

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Project 52: Quest (board game)

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Shauna

I’m not sure I can fully communicate my chagrin when Nathan informed me that we would be “doing a quest” for our date together.  The quest is for a role playing board game called Hero Quest, and is definitely not my cup of tea.  I was feeling all kinds of grumpy little gremlins in my tummy when I thought of how this date experience might turn out.  He sensed my unease and asked me if we should change our date, but I did my best to put on a happy face, as this is Nathan’s favourite game ever.  Notice the wine glass?  That helped me get through it!

OK, so let me explain a bit.  I am generally not a fan of any board games.  There are a few that I surprisingly really enjoy, but aside from Settlers of Catan and the like, I would rather be cleaning toilets than playing games.. and this especially applies to anything that resembles a role playing type game. *shudder*  So I think I did pretty good during our date in not running out in a stomping fit or something (and the toilets still need to be cleaned, so yes, I did play the game!)

I got to be 3 of the 4 characters.  Nathan was the 4th and also controlled the map and everything.. so needless to say, he caused some problems along the way.  There were goblins and mummies and chaos warriors and I’m sure there were other terrible creatures that I had to destroy (well, I being the wizard, the barbarian and the elf).  We made it to the end without too much loss.. and hey, I survived the ordeal too!  I can’t say I’ll ever be looking forward to this game in the future, but it wasn’t too terrible of an experience as our date, and it made Nathan super happy. 

Check out my other dates and take a look at the original project 52 at Simply Modern Mom’s site.  She’s got a listing of her dates as well as links to others’ who are involved in the project like me!

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Blue Butterflies

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Shauna

Did anyone notice how sunny it is here today?  Blue sky, no clouds, sun, sun, sun!  We get a lot of rain in general this time of year, so this sunshine is very much appreciated!  Not to mention the fact that we’ve had very little winter.  Some of the Japanese Cherry Trees are already in full blossom. Crazy? yes. Beautiful? Definitely.

So now you know why I’m inspired to use colour and things that remind me of spring and sunshine, like this little butterfly card here.

I used a scalloped paper shaper punch and cut a smaller white square to fit inside.  The butterflies are actually from a kids set that I found somewhere (by PSX back in the day?).  I painted them in with Twinkling H2Os, added some Hero Arts gems and a bit of knotted ribbon.  Happy Spring? Yes please!

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Batch of Bugs

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Shauna

I had made a whole shwack of these cute little bug cards.  I think they’re pretty elegant in a simple sort of way.  I’m super fond of the  Thank You! stamp.  You can’t see, but the two at the back say ‘happy birthday!’ and ‘best wishes’

I used the Denami Designs swirl stamp along with some cute little bugs from various companies.  I painted them in with Twinkling H2Os and added some glitter here and there.

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Cute simple glittery gifts

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Shauna

This card is pretty enough to give to a good friend and simple enough to do when you think you just don’t have enough time.. although you do need some drying time.

I started with the card (already had lighter circles on darker blue background) by AMuse, and added the little gift stamps, stamped in VersaFine black ink.  The gifts are from a clear Stampendous set, and the ‘happy birthday’ is by Hero Arts.

Next, I just added a touch of aqua glitter glue to the bows and allowed them to dry. 

Tip:  The “professional” glittering technique?  Squeeze and smoosh.  That’s right.  Squeeze out a little dab of glitter glue, then smoosh it around the area you want it.  This way, you won’t get a crazy thick kindergarten looking glob.

This one’s up on my Etsy Store

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Flowers and Circles

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Shauna

I was still feeling pretty inspired by my purple and brown combination, so I decided to branch out a bit.  I also wanted to try the new stamp set I got for a very nice price… After playing around with layouts and paper punches, here’s what I came up with:

          

The second picture is without a flash, so you can see the depth a bit better – the largest flower circles is raised up a bit.

I used lots of fun things.. Clear stamps, punches: tag punch, Martha Stewart border punch, and 2 Paper Shapers circle punches.  Purple cloth ribbon from the dollar store, and some pearl stickers from Hero Arts.  I used VersaMark ink for the flower stems to get a subtle look.

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Project 52: House and Crib

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Shauna

That title sounds very much different from what it means.  No, we didn’t do any house planning, or anything to do with babies.  For our date night last week, we did 2 things that Nathan likes very much!

 

We watched an episode of House – one of the few shows that Nathan’s really in to that I can also enjoy. This we pared with a fun game of crib.  Nathan loves games of all kinds, so I thought that’d be a good date for him.  It was a bit tough to concentrate on the show and the cards at the same time, but we mostly managed. And the important part?  I won! Lots of luck, but hey, that doesn’t matter, does it?

Thanks to Tiffany at Simply Modern Mom for starting the whole Project 52 Date night idea.  Check out her blog to see what she and many others did last week.

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Simply sweet cupcakes

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Shauna

Who doesn’t love cupcakes?  They’re my favourite.  In fact, I made them instead of a cake for my wedding.  Yep, 120 cupcakes later and I still might make them again!  I even hand made little gumpaste flowers for each one.  Check it out.

IMG_0541

Here’s a sweet and simple cupcake card.  I really like the sentiment in the middle “hey cupcake.” It’s a wee bit cheeky!

The card comes with the circles – by AMuse.  The cupcake stamp and the sentiment are also both by AMuse.  I just stamped everything in black ink and added a touch of sparkle with some red glitter glue on the cherries.

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