My first blankie

Since God decided not to bless me with a little girl of my own to spoil (i did get 2 cutie little rascals though!), i get to spoil other little girls in my life. Like my bf's little sweetie pie who turned 1 last week! And she loves tags! So i tried to make my first taggie blanket. In this picture i think it look ok. But i think it's a good thing that it's going to a one year old who doesnt care if my sewing lines are straight! :)

Here is my taggie blanket...

Surprisingly enough, creating the quilt pattern was the easy part. The hard part was stitching the front and back together! (the back is minky dot fabric. I think my biggest error was not giving myself a big enough seam allowance along my edges. I gave myself more seam allowance with the quilting. :) So all in all, not terrible for my first one, but i think i need a lot of practice before i make any for anyone else! :)

Ok, time for bed for me! Sneak peeks for paper makeup stamps december release start tomorrow! :)

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A little verve for you...

I have another verve card that i did last week for the Viva La Verve challenges. For those that followed their release last friday with their challenges... Julee has extended the deadline to tonight at midnight. Unfortunately for me I still have too much catch up to do! So i doubt i'll get in on the action, but check out the Verve Stamps Blog for details. :)

Here is my card...

Sorry for my not standard card set up. I was at my parents house so i didnt have more normal ghetto fab card picture taking equipment. hahahaha.

And another sorry, i dont have many details for this post since i was using my mom's papercrafting scraps! I can say that the stamp is from Verve's Beautiful You set. :)

Have a wonderful day!

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A mug for ME!

So in a recent outing with my mommy playgroup... we went to a clay cafe. There are lots of them around, but basically you go on and paint on whatever pottery (at a price) and they glaze and fire it for you and then you go and pick it up. I've gone many times, but usually it's to make things with the kiddos handprints or footprints. Or make some other kind of gift item.

Well in my recent trip i did make a couple of gift items, but I also made a coffee mug for ME ME ME! I am overjoyed at my coffee mug. haha. The only thing i wish i had done better was in painting my lettering. Perhaps i should have used stamps! :)

Here is my mug...

It's really difficult to tell what my mug says in the pictures, but it reads "Makeup is Art!" And yes those lippie prints are mine. My friends sure got a good laugh at me painting my lips with painting glaze! hahahaha. I think i even had video of it somewhere on my computer. It was pretty funny and fun. :) But oh so worth it for my very one of a kind coffee mug! :)

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Viva La Verve challenge card

I'm going to keep this post quick since this is my last day visiting my parents and my 10 year high school reunion is tonight!

This is a card i did about a week ago but just hadnt found the time to post yet. WOOPS, i'm getting a little behind! AcK!

Every friday verve posts a challenge with a twist in their forum on splitcoast. This past month was the first month i did all 4 challenges! Granted i did them kinda back to back minus this card, but i still did them all! I did not win though. Oh well. haha.

Here is my card...

Ok, time to go meet up with an old friend for lunch, so i'll chat with everyone soon!!!!

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Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Anniversary AND a card! :)

Hello Everyone! I wanted to be sure to wish everyone a fantastic Thanksgiving today! We traveled yesterday and it took 2 hours longer in the car than normal due to a rockslide! No fun. But the boys were great. :)

Today is a double holiday for me! Not only is it Thanksgiving... but it's also my anniversary!

4 years ago today my hubby and i were married! And today we are back in the same town. He says our anniversary landing on Thanksigiving is completely unromatic. I think it's kinda fun that we are in the same town we got married in though (since we were living in LA when we got married, but the wedding was in Indiana where i'm from).

So indeed today I have a lot to be thankful for!

In honor of the day, I wanted to list some other things that I am truly thankful for...

My Family

Our good health

My friends

The success of my new stamp company

the support of the paper crafting world in so many ways

Here is the card I made for my hubby. I also used a technique i've never done (because in order to get anything accomplished in my life, i must double task! I made this card using the Viva La Verve challenge number 2! :)

Using the cracked glass technique... here is my card...

Since Verve has some fantastic clear stamps, i was able to curve the sentiment to go along the oval. I love that you can change the shape of clear stamps!

I really wanted a lovey dovey image, but *GASP* i dont any hearts from verve! So i've heard, i'm going to "heart" the next release from Verve which is TOMORROW, so i see some buying in my future! Since i dont own any heart stamps, i just drew some hearts and colored them in with copics.

BUT, speaking of the Verve release...

Verve is going to be having a super fun blog party tomorrow for their release...

Thanks for stopping by today and perhaps i'll see ya tomorrow!

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Home for the Holidays with Verve!

My subject title is multi purposeful! I really am going home for the holidays! Well, the thanksgiving holidays anyway! :) We're packing up the kiddos into the truck and making a very long 9 hour drive to Indiana. Please pray for me with no potty accidents and boys who dont try to poke each other!

The other reason for my post is Verve's Project Parade for the month! Now if it no small secret that I'm in love with verve's stamps along with the sketches, challenges, and delicious inspiration from the design team. It truly is the best place for me to go to work up the crafty mojo! And each month they have a project parade showing off the releases from that month fit with a prize at the end!

This month's project parade was to make a holiday gift. The samples from the design team were all less than $10! Well i followed suit making a gift for less than $5. Go me!!!!

I simply altered a candle jar. I love giving candles, and AC Moore has these fabulously smelling candles for only $4! All the paper and ribbon used on my candle were scraps! (the paper is actually baby boy paper! shh, dont tell the candle it's not christmas paper!)

Here is my gift...


Now of course since it's around the jar of the candle it was hard for me to photograph the scene. So here's a couple other shots...






This was super easy and quick to make! I always have these jar candles around (because we always have them lit in the house, and at 4 bucks a piece and them going on sale for 2 for $5 often, i buy them a lot!) So all i needed was a 3.5 strip of patterened paper, whatever other scraps and bit you want to embellish with and then maybe some ribbon. You could easily add other 3D embellishments. I stuck to paper piecing to make the images stand out. And since they were pieced onto the main patterned paper, i didnt want to distract from them so i kept the entire thing pretty flat.

To paper piece the trees and snowflakes i just stamped them onto paper and cut them out. I also stamped onto the main paper and glued the cutouts inside the stamped images. Also stamping on the background helps to give the paper pieced image a little more oompf.

I hope that everyone has a fantastically wonderful thanksgiving holiday and for those traveling, please be safe!

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Refilling copics and making custom colors

Hey there everyone! This is just a quick little video tutorial. I've been asked by many how i refill my copic markers. I dont do it any special way, but for those that have never seen a marker refilled before, this might be helpful to watch.

In the end of the video i also show you how i make custom colors (you know, when you go "man, why hasnt copic made a color to go inbetween G24 and G28!")

The other type of custom colors i like to make that i dont reference in the video is lighter version of some of my favorites (like Y21 for example). I do it the same way as in the video but i use colorless blender solution as one of my colors. So 5 drops y21, 5 drops blender solution, 5 drop y21, 5 drops blender solution, etc.

Enjoy!

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2nd post for the day, just an announcement...

Hey everyone! I posted my card i made last night at midnight last night so this is techncially my 2nd post for the day. :)

I just wanted to give a little shout that the countdown to christmas sale is up on the PMS blog and this week is a fun one because there are free fairies involved.

Ok ok, so it's a shameless plug! But i didnt think i'd be a very good store owner if i did post about it here as well. :)

Ok, scroll down to see my vervie verve card. :)

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A little mojo for your weekend

Well it's no secret i'm in love with Julee's sketches for mojo mondays. My new goal is to do the mojo challenge each week. Ok, so that was my goal starting this month and i think i've done 2. hahaha. Well, in my defense, the middle of this month got a little rough on me.

In any case, i have a fun card to share with you using this week's mojo sketch...

My tree image is one that I used to teach my copic club class at Funkie Munkie this month. I taught about the cone shape, how it relates to images we color often and then in addition, how to add a little more shape to a cone. For this this example, we took the shape of a cone for the pine tree, but then by using some shading of copic markers, helped to make the branches stand out. It was a super fun class! And now since i have about 6 trees colored in, i figured, why not work on some christmas cards! :)

Here's my card...

I used the Christmas in the Air set by Verve Stamps. As you may see if you clickie on that link there, that the tree in the set is a very 2 dimensional tree. It's fantastic for paper piecing (which is the next thing i plan to do with it!!!) but I wanted to show everyone in the class how you can really make a 2d image stand out with a little shading. I was very pleased with the outcome!

I used various snowflakes from the set (there are 5 different sizes!) to create other aspects of my card, like background paper, etc. And i outlined everything with a spica pen which you can kinda see in this picture...

Well, thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!

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PMS FAN BLOG HOP!

Welcome the PMS Fan blog hop. Ok, so yeah i'm the company owner, but i can still be a fan of my own stamps right? Hahahah! I'm definitely a fan of all of my illustrators so it isnt like i'm saying i'm just a fan of myself! If you are just a reader of my blog, and dont follow the PMS company blog... today we are having a blog hop for the fans! My hopes are to do this every month. There is also a new "makeup for the weekend" challenge posted on the PMS company blog so you really should go over there RIGHT NOW! :)

I actually didnt even follow the challenge. Shame on me! I kinda forgot when i was making my card for this hop that it would be posted the same day as the challenge. Woopsie. :)

Here is my card using Moody for Fall from the Moody Girls line...


I just love the moody girls! They are so much fun to color! This image i actually used in my copics class last month. So ladies who are in my class, yes this is the exact image i colored in class. Notice the pretty flowers at the top of the image. Thats from where my copic peed on my paper and left the ugly brown blob! hahahha!

I should have taken a better close up shot of the image. Well, maybe we'll do a color with me for this one! :)

You have just 1 more hop to make in this blog hop! And that hop it to my friend JAN! She is so awesome and has really supported me in my adventure of starting my own stamp company! So i'm honored to get to link to her!

Also a reminder that today is the LAST DAY to get the 35% off of any set on the PMS site. Tomorrow will start an all new Countdown to Christmas sale!

And now...here's




Stamps
Moody for Fall
Everyday Thanks
both from Paper Makeup Stamps

Copics:
SKIN E00, E21, R20(cheeks), B91 (eyeball) E71(eyelids)
HAIR E33, E35, E37
LEAVES YR12, YR14, YR18

SCARF B91, B93, B95

Paper
Patterned Cardstock from Martha Stewart Crafts (it's from a stack you can get at walmart for 8 bucks! and it's thick!)
Cardstock is from SU, forgive me but i think the colors were brocade blue and ruby red??? they were just in my assorted stash!)

Tools and Accessories

Oval from Custom Cutting System by Creative Memories

Flowers off the stems available at AC Moore (1 buck for like a prima bottles worth!)

Swirls from Quikutz flourish set

Pearls from kaisercraft

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