Playing Catch Up!

Some of you may have noticed that I didn't do a blog post over the weekend!!  And if you didn't, that's OK too!!  But I had a wonderful time on Saturday getting together with some of my stamping friends that I met online through Stamp TV's Florida group.  What a wonderful bunch of ladies I have ever had the pleasure of knowing!!

We went to a LSS (Local Scrapbook Store) in Ocala and spent the day creating, coloring,

chatting and eating!!  It was so fun!!  

In the back row from L-R is Asela Hopkins, Paige (my BFF's niece), Tiffani (my BFF), 

Cathy Clark (our hostess) and me!  In the front from L-R is Deb Felts (my DD pal), 

Naomi, Barbara and Vianna (my partner in crime!)

Here is one of Asela and Deb! They are two of the sweetest people you could ever meet.  I have had the pleasure of meeting Deb many times before, but this was my first time meeting Asela.  What a sweet and talented lady she is!! I can't wait until we can do this again!!  It was so much fun!

I did a lot of shopping while I was there and bought some Bo Bunny, Graphic 45, Basic Grey, Creative Imaginations and SEI papers that you will surely be seeing in the future.  While there, I  spent the majority of my day working on an album cover for my puppy's first year.  It was a submission for the Dirty Dozen Gallery this month.  Our theme was critters!!  It was super fun to create for this month's gallery and my Sunday was spent finalizing my projects and uploading them for the new DD Gallery reveal Sunday night as well as preparing for Monday's Hippity Hop!!

Here is a snippet of the album cover I made for our puppy Tasha.   I made the title using the word Puppy from the DCWV Pet Tales line of paper and the word LOVE that I stamped using {ippity's} Alphabetically Adorable set.  You can see the whole picture by going HERE, but you will have to be a Fan Club Member to view it.  (Want to become a Fan Club Member?... Click HERE to learn more about it!)

I hope you will go and check out this month's  

Fan Club Gallery 

full of wonderful Critter Creations  that were submitted by the Dirty Dozen.  Unfortunately it was my last month as a Dirty Girl. :-(   I can't believe how fast that six months went!  We welcomed in two new Dirty Girls this month too that you will definitely want to meet!

Mona Pendleton 

Ann Schach

And finally I had time to catch up and play along with last week's Whimsie Doodles Challenge (WWC22) on Paper Craft's Planet.  We were challenged by Nikki to use Glitter on our card!  So I made a cute Easter card using one of the images from Whimsie Doodles Easter Sentiments collection which is available in red rubber to make this card...

While I am not a fan of eating those little Marshmallow Treats at Easter time, I did find it absolutely adorable to work with!   Doesn't it look sweet enough to eat??

 I added my glitter in the form of crystal glitter called Diamond Dust.  I think it made the peep look just like they come with the candy crystal sugar coating on top!

In closing....

Tonight at midnight my {ippity} blog candy drawing closes and I will be picking one lucky winner to win an {ippity} set of their choice!

What do you have to do?

Become a Follower of my {ippity} Sales blog

and

Leave a comment on my {ippity} sales blog!

CLICK HERE to go There's Ippity In My Bucket!

I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday and may your bucket overflow with sweetness in the form of friends, creative projects and candy!!!  LOL!!

The Last Hip Hop Hangover

If you are a Unity stamp fan like I am then you know that yesterday was the last Hip Hop blog hop for Unity. But don't worry! They aren't going anywhere, they are just changing things up a bit! So if there aren't any more HH's then there can't be any more Hangovers after today's. So enjoy my last contribution towards the last Hip Hop Hangover!

Even though I am curious to see what is in store for us with Unity, I know that it will be good! So I am celebrating the upcoming changes and calling today a Happy Day!!

Here is my happy card in celebration of things to come...

I am so excited to be using this dragonfly stamp from Unity's August KOM because I am on the Whimsie Doodles Design Team with the very talented artist who drew this. Her name is Kelli Caslow and she makes some really awesome cards too! Please check out her blog and send her some love if you like her dragonfly! I hope to see more stamps of hers in our Unity kits in the future!

The colors for this card come from a color challenge at the Florida Group at Stamp TV. I just got it done in time!

I have a couple of other Unity cards to share with you today too! I was able to complete both of the Hip Hop challenges on the forum yesterday. In fact the one you see below won the da da da Doodle contest where we had to use some doodling on our card. I was awarded the Hullabaloo stamp as my prize! Woohoo!!

This card uses the adorable old fashioned phone from the Everyday Adorable set. I paperpieced the four handsets and placed them in each of the corners and framed my card with doodles phone cords. The DP is from We R Memory Keepers. The phone was colored using my Copic markers.

The last card I want to show you combines FOUR challenges in one!! I have been behind making my challenge cards this week at SCS so I decided to get all caught up today!!

The first challenge for the next card is CC233 to use Red, Kraft and Chocolate Chip.

The second challenge was SC243 which was this week's sketch challenge.

The third challenge was WT233 which was to use Vintage ephemera on our card.

And the last challenge was the Hip Hop challenge Ta ta ta Texture. We were supposed to add some type of texture to our card.

See what you think!! I like what I ended up with!

The stamps I used were from the 100% Happiness in-store kit. The red dotted DP is from K & Co. and the Vintage label is from Flair Designs. The texture was added with my Swiss Dots embossing folder and my Cuttlebug!

If you are interested in getting the next in-store kit I hope you will go to the Paper Maniac to get yours! My good friend Stephanie Muzzulin is on their DT!

Hope you are enjoying the last HHH and are getting inspired by the talented fans of Unity Stamp Co. May your bucket overflow with good changes for you in the future!

Aaahh! It's Good to be Home!

I never thought I would say this but I was glad to be home and even back to work today! There is something to be said about routines and your normal way of life being comfortable!

I wanted to share a few things with you from the CHA Supershow and tell you some of the cool things I bought! So I hope you don't mind a little recap of my weekend!

First of all as I arrived on Friday evening it was too late to go to the Supershow because they were shutting down within the hour, so I made my way to my hotel room where I met up with Vianna. Vianna and I met through Stamp TV's Florida group and it turns out that we live less than two miles from each other. We had already met each other before this weekend so that we could be more comfortable rooming together. She was such a sweet roomie. She thinks of everything and even brought us some wine and pepperoni and crackers to have before going to dinner!

Christina and Vianna at Giordanno's

We met up with Christina from Scrap Time in Canada for dinner. I had never even heard of Scrap Time before, but you can be sure that Christina's site will be some place that I visit much more frequently from now on! She took over a thousand photos from CHA's trade show and has them posted on Flickr. Check them out right HERE! And be sure to go to her site regularly where you will get to see her use and report on many products from the SB industry.

We had dinner at the famous Giordanno's pizza restaurant. They make the heaviest pizzas I have ever seen! Their pizza's are stuffed and look like they are a calzone that is turned inside out! The pieces stand a couple of inches high and are filled with the ingredients of your choice! We had a good time getting to know each other!

So Saturday morning after a breakfast at Denny's, we headed into the Supershow! I will say that I was a little disappointed that it seemed more like many other expos I had been to. I think I thought I would see more of the trade show displays and get to see some of the new stuff coming out! But all in all there were great things to buy and lots of make-n-takes to do.

Vianna hooked me up and saved me a seat for one of PaperTrey Ink's Make-n-Takes and I got to meet Debbie Olson! Here is the card that we made...

I also got to meet Dawn McVey and the owner of PaperTrey, Nichole Heady. I have always been impressed with how she runs her business. Nichole does nothing that isn't pure perfection! There stamps are awesome and I am glad that my collection of them grew this weekend!

Dawn McVey, Vianna, Nichole Heady

I also went over to the Splitcoast Stampers area where all the company sponsored Make-n-Takes were going on and I got to meet some of the "famous" people from SCS! Here is a picture of a few of the people that were in the area helping people make their SCS pins and greeting people!

Back row from L-R, Beate Johns, Lori Craig, Daven Nolta

Front row from L-R, Jen Balcer and me!

I have a funny (and embarrassing) story to tell you about the guy you see pictured above. He was helping me make my pin after I had introduced myself to Beate and Lori. I said to him, "so did someone drag you along with them to help out today, or how do you belong to Splitcoast Stampers?" Turns out he is none other than the founder of Splitcoast Stampers, Daven Nolta (along with his wife Tracy!) I wanted to crawl under the table and hide! So I kind of laughed it off and went along making my pin! LOL!! How embarassing!! :-)

Here is the adorable pin that they had us make...

Then, to no surprise to anyone who ever reads my blog, the highlight of my time at CHA was meeting Angela Magnuson and the rest of the Unity crew! I had heard that they had left before the Supershow started so I was sorely disappointed, but then much to my amazement they were doing Make-n-Takes in the SCS area between 11am and 1pm on Saturday. Thankfully I showed up just at the right time or I would have missed meeting them. I gave Angela a big hug and I am sure that I gushed like any groupie meeting her idol for the first time!! She is so sweet and beautiful on the inside and the outside! And the thing that blew me away the most was that she actually recognized my name as one of her customers and regular uploaders to the Unity Gallery on SCS! She really made my day!

From L-R, AJ Otto, Angela, me and Brooke!

Here is the Make-n-Take from Unity...

You can't tell it from the picture, but the base of this is a wood block! Oh so cool!! And some more great news is that Unity is going to be having a line of scrapbooking stamps coming out soon! I got to see a sample of it and am so excited to get my hands on those too! I didn't buy any Unity stamps while at the Supershow because only one store was selling it and I had practically everything already that they were selling. I did get to see a sneak peek in person of the August KOM and it's another great one!! Woohoo... can't wait!!

I also got to meet two other special people that are a part of my daily online life. I met Sue Morris (but she has the picture of us) and Deb Felts. Both of them are in the Florida Stamp TV group and I recognized each of them in the crowds and introduced myself to them. The Stamp TV Florida group was supposed to meet up for dinner, but as it turns out, I think a lot of us just got too tired to make it til the end. I ended up leaving at about 3pm with sore feet and an empty bank account! LOL! So my apologies to Jean and any one else who had hoped to meet up. I certainly hope to do that in the future! I love all you ladies and appreciate your comradery on Stamp TV!

Deb Felts with me!

So where did most of my money go?

• Seven new PaperTrey Ink stamp sets
• Seven new Cornish Heritage Farms sets
• Stamp N Foil in eight colors
• The complete collection of Judikins Mica Gloss inks
• Assorted papers and collections of paper from Nikki Sivils, October Afternoon and Imaginesce
• A collection of sand glue mixtures from MuddPuddles
• Many colors of flowers from KaiserCrafts
• The I-top Brad Maker kit from Imaginesce and
• The Crafter's Companion

I am so excited to put some of these things into use! I will let you know as I use these things how they work. I am really excited about the brad maker and the Crafter's Companion.

I hope I get some time in the stamp room or it is going to seem very wasteful that I bought all this stuff if I don't use it!

So for now that gets you all caught up with me! I am glad to be back and into my routine. I hope to have some projects to share with you tomorrow and I will also start showing you some of the assignments that I completed using this month's SheetLoad sketch. I hope you went to the site to get your free copy of the eZine. It is a really wonderful sketch that you will want to use over and over!

Have a great day and may your bucket overflow with exciting new things to keep you inspired in your craft room!

Go Fly a Kite!

Today was a fun challenge for me! The card I created actually combines two challenges! I am really starting to like (yet continue to be challenged by) the Clean and Simple Challenges that are hosted on Mondays over at Splitcoast Stampers.

We were challenged today to use "Little Bits of Ribbon" on our cards! Those of you who know me know that I have a rather large collection of fibers. Many years ago my favorite type of swap was to swap fibers/ribbons with other members of the forum that I belonged to. It really helped to build up my collection! I just can't seem to pass up a sale on ribbon. Have you been loving those adorable, and inexpensive ribbons that Michael's has been selling lately??

Anyway, on to the challenge card. Today's card was also inspired by a challenge given by Asela over at Stamp TV. Every Friday she gives us a new batch of colors to work with. This week's colors were so bright and vibrant. I loved them. They were like a breath of fresh air!

Here is the color inspiration...

And here is my Clean and Simple card that I made with these colors...

The Fine Print: DP: Colorbok Friendly Forest paper pack; CS: Georgia Pacific; Stamps: Unity (Kites and sentiment April KOM); Ink: Amuse Black; Markers: Copics; Ribbon: Michael's; Cuttlebug embossing folder: Frills; Technique: Paper piecing.

This card is going to my niece Cassidy who turns 14 this weekend. I am trying to decide on a comment relating to Kites to put on the inside.

I was thinking something like "Hope you have a high flying time for your birthday!" But I don't want it to sound like she should get high as a kite, if you know what I mean! LOL!!

Any suggestions? I would love for you to leave me a comment on this post about what I should put on the inside of this card that would relate to kites and be appropriate for my niece. Thanks!!

I did find a really nice quote that I will definitely be using with the great Unity Kite stamps in the future. Lauren Bacall was quoted to say "Imagination is the highest kite that one can fly. " I think that is really inspirational!

I have finally finished my projects for my DT application. I hope to have my blog post with all my projects done tomorrow or at least Wednesday at the latest.

Talk to you soon! May your bucket overflow with bright colors that make you happy!

All I can say is WOW!! Have you joined StampTV yet??

I was pretty speechless and blown away this morning when I logged onto the Florida Group on Stamp TV only to find that Asela had chosen my card (shown below) as the Card of the Week! This has never happened to me before and I can't tell you how humbling this is! I am sure I am making it out to be more than it is, but to me that is really special.



If you don't know Asela, then you should get to know her. She designs stamps and sells them at Gina K Designs (Gina K is the lady who created the new Stamp TV and also the lady who offers the best Copic Markers Club in the country!) Asela is very talented, so for her to pick my little card this week really makes me feel good! On her blog today she has an awesome Wishing Well card! You know how partial I am to anything Wishing Well related and to buckets! (My Wishblading Well friends will know why!) You should check it out!



Thanks so much Asela! I hope I get to meet you in person someday, especially for a Copics class!!

Thanks so much to those of you who left a comment yesterday for Ricky wishing him a Happy Birthday! It means a lot to him (and me!)

So this weekend I had the chance to get a couple of cards made using two of the challenges that they had over at SCS!

The first one is from Saturday's Inspiration Challenge. We had to find some inspiration from the awesome website calle Room Service Home. I was inspired by this cupcake plate here. And this is what I created from that...

The Fine Print: DP: Some older paper that I bought in a collection but can't remember the name of. Stamps: Large cupcake from Sarah Beise, and small cupcakes from CC Designs; Ink: Amuse, and Copic Markers, Brown Bic Markit pen for the brown dots; Flowers: Petaloo (?); Ribbon: Brown Felt and dotted ribbons both from Michael's dollar bin; Sakura Gelly Roll pen.

Then on Sunday, the challenge was to pick a card from the Gallery of the Featured stamper who also is named Kelly! She had a great gallery full of many things I would love to case, but I kept looking until I found a masculine card because I needed to make Tom's birthday card for his upcoming birthday next Saturday. This is the card of hers I chose to case... and this is my rendition of it! I do like the masculinity of it and think that Tom will like it too!!

The Fine Print: DP: MME; CS: SU; Stamps: SU Sentiments and Autumn Leaves Stars; Ink: SU, and VersaMark; Brads: Basic Grey.

Please think about joining us over at Stamp TV for some awesome video tutorials and great fellowship and if you are from FL, like me, please join in on the best group there!

Have a great day and may your bucket be overflowing with exciting news like I had today!! :-)