paper possibilities

what is BIG love?

This is BIG love! Making Memories giant chipboard love is BIG & FUN!  I covered this in my My Minds Eye paper and I am sad to say I am down to scraps on my supply. I glittered up the O with Martha Stewerts fine brown glitter and doesn't it go so well with the pink and brown??  I don't know exactly where the idea came from to lace up the V & E, but I like the outcome!  I used some suede that I had from years ago, when I used to cross stitch. This is going to work with me and gonna hang in my office.

Now how about some smaller love!  When I stamp out my images I usually stamp out some on a colored cardstock and also on white/off white. The look and feel can be so different, I like to play around with it and see the change the image takes. This time the image from Festive Four took a sweet approach, very pinky- peach and yellow. Not my usual color choice, but I let the color take me where it wants to go!

card ingredients...paper: Bazzill & SU cardstock, Basic Grey, Daisy D & SU pp. stamp sets: Festive Four & "love" from Loads of Love, both SU. ink: Palette Noir and Ranger Distressed ink in Old Paper. misc: fiskars postage stamp scissors and ribbon.

Thanks for looking!

Full of LOVE!!

Yeah, I am full of it today!!  We had a "free" day at work, because we had no power this morning. While I am sad that the world will be lacking in 1000 pressurized toilets, I am happy that I got to come home and work on some cards and Valentine stuff that I was working on last night. I also got to take a little siesta...haha   

My latest "love" is this card!  I am so loving the polka dots and that I remembered to put a little person inside the truck before I took the photo. Oh, yeah, that's me in the truck...this card is going for a special journey!

card recipe...paper: SU very vanilla & Bazzill cs, My Minds Eye & Collage Press pp. stamp set: Loads of Love from SU. ink: Palette Noir & Ranger Distress Ink in old paper. ribbon: May Arts. glitter: Martha Stewert & Hero Arts. misc: Prismacolor pencils and gamsol.

A monday quickie...

Wow, I love this card too!!  I have had the Festive Four stamp set from Stampin' Up for some time and I always forget about it. Why?? I love the little images! I pulled it out and colored a few up with my prismacolor pencils. Once again, I reached for some great My Minds Eye paper. The ribbon is from American Crafts, kinda whimsical, and goes with the cookie hearts. At least I think the hearts are frosted sugar cookies...haha  Wouldn't that be a nice gift in the mail?  Hope you think the card is a s sweet as I do, thanks for looking in!

Loads of Love to YOU!

I am so happy with this card today! It slowly evolved into a real pink beauty and who wouldn't love a red truck fulla love. One of the hearts is kinda special because it got glittered up for the trip.

Even though this is supposed to be a day of rest, I have more cleaning to do tonight. So I won't babble too much, and hey... I just noticed I didn't put a person in the truck!! I will have to fix that, because I do have the set of extras that goes with Loads of Love from Stampin' Up!

In the mean time, I used a great piece of My Minds Eye paper for the background, and a very dark piece of Bazzill brown for the ground. Don't ya love the ribbon? It came from "the wall" and I bought it in a few different colors....sooooo cool! I colored the truck with my prismacolor pencils and gamsol, my favorite way to color these days.

Hope you all had a very relaxing weekend! Tomorrow we are off to see 27 Dresses after I get out of work, hope it's as funny as it looks!  bye!

A fresh new saturday morn...

I love waking up to a clean blanket of snow...as long as it's not like a foot! haha  Today is that day here in Michigan. Huge flakes were falling this morning as I was finishing up my latest card. I would have finished it last night but the BFF's went to the eastside for a round of ribbon madness! We went to "the wall", we circled the store for new stuff, I looked in their baskets to see if I missed anything good, and then back to "the wall" again. We laughed at some ribbon because it just reminds you of something and then I started singing...Sound of Music! I won't even spell it, but you know the song, about the little flower, strong and bright, clean and white...bless my home land forever... Yeah, that song! Mary kept saying she would start crying?? and hug me because it reminds her of her homeland {{ her homeland is the USA, but she really thinks it's Ireland }} and then Janine picked up some pink ribbon that looked like something off a disco outfit and she starts singing Bee Gee's! We were laughing so hard, it was time to move away from "the wall" so we could hold up the line while Cass cut all our ribbon. One register, one HUGE mountain of spools and we were outta there! It was FUN, can't wait to do that again!!

No, I am ashamed to say this is not any of the new ribbon! haha, but the color worked so well with my card!  I even borrowed the little bow that Nichole Heady had on her blog. It isn't a bow I would think to use, I am very bow challenged, so being it was fresh in my mind from yesterday... I used it. I think it fits perfectly for this card!

The stamps from this card are Hero Arts, and all in the same set. How cool is that? You can't really pick up the small swirls that I used to make the deep pink paper. I stamped those swirls using SU's purely pomagrante and ruby red, only the darker pomegranate is coming through in the photo. The swirly heart flower is stamped in DewDrops dark olive, and I colored the hearts in with my prismacolor pencils. I used my versamark pad to make the tiny hearts on the light pink card base and stamped the sentiment in DewDrops jumbo java. The patterned paper is from my Amy Butler pad, by K & company.

I have been stamping out several Valentine images from SU and need to get in my room and start playing with them. I am waiting for a call this morning on when my car will be ready from the repair shop. So this weekend does seem to be a promising one for my stamping and crafting. I also bought so Making Memories Valentine chipboard.  See ya soon!

With a little Hope & a little organization...

anything is possible!  Well, Hope only needed new soil and water and love and a new home...she is sprouting NEW bright green leaves! Yeah! She is so happy sitting next to my desk, and I am so happy to see her shiny additions on her branches. Her "sisters" are all in their new homes and they are doing well also. I have to tell you that her other plant sibilings were HUGE !  One left in a U-Haul and the other had to ride home in the back of a pick up. They all used to live in the front lobby of Sloan Flushmate ( my work) and they had two story windows and it looked a little like a jungle up there. So a re-decorating project got underway after the holidays and our new "kids" needed homes. Now you know the whole story behind Hope, & her "sisters" Charity and Faith!  Since you are all warm and fuzzy inside, how about we talk organization!!!!   yes, I love to clean and organize. Have you started thinking there is something maybe wrong with me?

It all started with me cleaning a bookcase...I had bought some magazine holders years ago on a trip to IKEA. { yeah!! love this place} Only two wooden magazine holders and I always planned on decorating them!  For some reason life just never lead me down that path and they sat, on a bookcase, plain and unadorned. The lightbulb that went off on Sunday almost blinded me and I knew they had a purpose, finally a purpose besides collecting dust in my room. I could cover these two boxes with paper and let them store my Stampin' Up! cardstock { 8.5 x 11}. I knew the paper i would cover them in and it would match so well with the colors in my room. Amy Butler's double-sided paper from K & Company. I had purchased both pads from Michael's...yes at 40% off, and had not really used too much of it yet. I love the bold graphic look of Amy's stuff!  I covered to boxes and I used an extra strength gluestick to adhere the paper. That is all the paper I have in my stash...by some other crafters measure, not a lot, but my 4 containers do manage to hold it all. haha  I do keep my scraps and some paper packs from Close to My Heart and Stampin' Up!, in a small bin next to my chair.

On Sunday I took my planned IKEA trip and found this cool storage box. Made of wood and I had to assemble it myself, it was screaming cover me with paper too!!  So being the type of person that I am, I had to help the little guy out and cover him with Amy Butler paper also. I had hoped to put small tv on top of this box, but it just made it way to high, and it ended up sliding right under my shelf and I feel like I have so much more room. I wanted to tie both storage systems together and cut a slim piece of blue and ran it across all the fronts. I also added some buttons, I love buttons! I toyed with the idea of labeling something on the fronts, but I just couldn't.

I also wanted to show you my ribbon jars, an idea I found a couple years ago in another magazine, and I still love the look. My pictures used to be sitting on the shelf but I finally commited and hung them up. It kinda makes me laugh, because I am so not the type of person who needs to decide on decorating issues. I just do it and usually love it, or I do it over until I love it.

So here is my inspiration that I look at when I am crafting. It's a small room, but it's all mine and I have a room, many others are not as fortunate. I do look forward to when I can have more space and table surface, but until that day comes...I will just continue to evolve my small space, as I need it. I'm happy with it!  {{{smiles}}}   paula

When I grow up...I wanna be a mailbox!

A pink mailbox with all the trimmings! Oh, yes...pink would let everyone know that I live here and ain't affraid to show it! haha Wouldn't it be cool to have real lifesize mailboxes like these?? To be able to go all out and make the mailman smile, and never know what to expect! If only paper would stand up to the weather outside.

Ok...fantasy world is over and I guess we'll have to settle on these little cuties sitting on our desk or table. Either way, they make me smile and Jordan actually wanted the one with pink hearts all over it.  Jordan is not a fan of pink, but she thinks this has a retro look with the black accents around some of the hearts. I have to admit I agree and that is why two pieces of this paper jumped right into my hand at the store. The heart paper is double sided from Scenic Route. On this mailbox I used black satin ribbon and sewed on three black & white acrylic hearts from Making Memories. That is why I needed that dang black thread! LOL  I started these two boxes on monday and I had to look at them for a day or so to decide what I wanted to do with the ends. The photo on the left is the back side <--------.  On the  "flag" I used the same tag on both...very small Nestabilities and then using a new Hero Arts alpha set that I cut the individual letters to spell love notes. For the heart mailbox I kinda kept the same cutout letters, all in the same color with an extra layer around them. I added some bling around one of the hearts that I cutout from the paper and used my black glaze pen to make the black around the heart glossy. I love this box!!!

The next box is covered in a scrap piece of Basic Grey paper. I got such a different feel from this box and took it more organic. There was a wavy strip in the paper and I cut it out and put it both on the front & back. While I was digging through my brown ribbon I ran across this vine ribbon and decided to pair it with some button "flowers". I cut out the word Always and inked it with some Tim Holtz antiqued paper. I stamped a heart from a Hero Arts acrylic "love" set and finished it all off with some Martha Stewert twill ribbon...in the perfect shade to match this paper.  Wow, I love this mailbox too!

Tomorrow I wanna show you what I have been working on for some new organization on my desk...   Thanks for stopping by!

Hello...I am supposed to be a mailbox...

What the heck happened to me??  Just a quick post while the "real" me is away.  Paula has been slaving away over two pink mailboxes, found at Target, and {{{ gasp }}} she needs black thread! she doesn't have black thread?  What kind of wacko doesn't keep basic black thread, right next to the basic white and basic brown? I guess we know who that person is, and I guess we should assume that she just never needed basic black thread..until now! So until she gets out into the cold Michigan weather and wanders around Joann's searching for the perfect shade of black...look at this. Some very pretty 7Gypsies paper that Paula found, & an I love U stamp {$1.00 } at her lss. Ohh, and is that expresso brown Bazzill cardstock and basic brown thread? Yes, I think it is, and I think I see Paula used her Nestabilities again. That poor girl must have been so stressed over not having had black thread that she needed to do a simple Valentine's Day card. What a precious little card that is just a little different from what she normally would do. That girl almost never puts anything on an angle...she's pretty "square"!

A little bird told me...

that they were still the "in" thing! They have been all over scrapping supplies for a year at least, I grabbed some last spring too. There aren't too many trains that I won't take a ride on...hahaha This Valentine's seems that there are still some birds out there and I picked up a little set of three pieces from Inkadinkado at Archivers. Flourishes seem to still be pretty popular, so birds & flourishes, well,  they gotta be a hit!  I worked with my bird yesterday and it needed some fussing with because there is a small low spot on the birds back. I was able to work around this issue because I stamped the main image with VersaMark Dewdrop, in Jumbo Java. I like this ink because it is lighter than my other browns, so I can go over the leaves with my green Prismacolor pencils and you can see that it's a green leaf. But...my birds are two more layers. I used cameo coral to stampe one image and get the outlined bird and then stamped a second image to get the top bird. I had to press down to get a complete image of the top bird { the one that has the defect } and pressing down really caused the outlined bird to lose that sharp line. Layers are cool, a little extra depth doesn't hurt at all! ;)  Now I should note here that maybe I should have waited until the sun started shining in my room this morning, because the green hued paper is really kraft cardstock. The scalloped circle is a lighter shade of kraft, but from Archivers. Speaking of the scalloped circle, that is from the cookie cutter dies by Quickuts. I think I have used them before on an earlier post, & they work like the Nestabilities in my Cuttlebug machine. The patterned paper is from My Minds Eye, new...very cool, very pretty! The fawn colored velvet ribbon is from Michael's and that is my last piece...gotta watch for that to go on sale again.

It is freezing here in Michigan and I gotta go out today and get my gift card for all my stuff I sold at the garage sale last weekend. Notice I slipped in there that I gotta go to the scrapbook store! I also gotta go to IKEA & I am gonna go spend the night at my sisters tonight. My mom is in town and I plan on watching The Office, Season 1 over there. I have never watched it before, but so many people love it, I need to see what I am missing! Maybe play some Wii, maybe. Two weeks ago I came home with sore elbows from boxing, not my kind of entertainment, when you you enjoy the after effects at work the next day!

Stay cool...uhh warm!

the HEART challenge...

oh, what to do with a string of hearts?? I have been playing with this string of hearts since I put them together a few days ago. I made a few card bases and didn't like it...I switched paper backgrounds and the hearts got lost...I went back to the original idea and this is what I came up with... I used the second house-mouse stamp that I got last weekend at a "garage sale" and added him to the card. He is pointing his finger up at the U.R. and then is goes with the sentiment..."always in my heart".

So this card is based on purely pomegranate cardstock, with Bo-Bunny patterned paper. The green/yellow paper is from Archivers colors and matches so well with the Bo-Bunny. The heart & sentiment stamps are new Hero Arts and stamped on pink cardstock in the pomegranate and ruby red. I added some Tim Holtz vintage photo distress ink to the edges.

One Valentine down and many more to go...I have so many more ideas rumbling around upstairs and less than a month to Valentine's Day!  bye...