Old School Stamping

It's Stamptoberfest over on the 2Peas stamping board and I decided that I would host a challenge.  Lately I have been thinking about what it used to be like in the stamping/paper crafting world.  We didn't have a gazillion patterned papers or embossing folders for creating layers on our cards.  When we wanted a patterned paper...we stamped it!  I miss that sometimes, so that gave me the basis for my challenge.

I'm calling it "Stampin' It Old School".  No pre-made patterned papers, embossing folders, stickers, rub-ons, digital stamps, printed sentiments, etc.  Going to have to get those stamps out and get them inky! 

This is the sample card that I made for the challenge.

Main image, sentiment, and background paper, all stamped.  Felt like it was 15 years ago when I made this card last night.  Well, minus the die cut, lol! 

Now I am moving on to making a holiday card for the Operation Write Home blog hop for World Cardmaking Day.  Can't wait to sit down in the morning with some coffee and peruse all the blogs. 

Take care & happy stamping,

Michelle

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Happy Birthday Emma!

Today is Emma's birthday!  If you don't know, Emma is my daughter.  She turns 8 today!  She is excited as can be, but Mama is feeling a bit like boo-hooing.  Can't believe she is getting so big, so fast.  Emma is also my little stamping buddy.  She shares the craft room with me and usually she gets more cards made than I do! 

So, in her honor of her special day, here is the birthday card that I made her this year.

Her favorite color is blue, so of course, I went with that.  I wanted to keep the card bright and cheery and man did I have a hard time resisting inking up those edges.  I am very glad that I did though because it just looks so clean and bright. 

Used the Nestabilities Classic Scallop Circles to cut the paper for the cupcake.  Trimmed down the edge where I wanted it to be straight on the side and popped it up with some pop dots.

Colored the image in.with my Stampin' Up markers.  And, I am very happy to say that I finally found my gray Tombow marker for shadowing.  Hooray!  That little guy has been hiding from me for quite some time now. 

One more picture to share before I go.  I don't know how it got started, but we have a little tradition of taking pictures the night before the kids' birthdays.  So here is Emma's "Last Day of being 7" picture.

 
Now I am off to wrap some presents for the birthday girl!

Take care & happy stamping,

Michelle

Spooky Stuff!

I LOVE Halloween. It has always been one of my favorite Holidays, only second to Christmas, and it is really a bit of a weakness. Every year I have a really hard time resisting buying more and more Halloween stamps, even though I already have a pretty good collection of them. I just can't help myself! All the cute little ghosts, witches, pumpkins...I just want to buy them all up. And the stamp companies just keep putting out more cute stuff every year to tempt me!

Not this year though.  My goal is to use what I have and not buy anything new.  So far, so good, I have managed to spend plenty of time in the stores and not buy any of the new Halloween goodies.  I have also managed to make a few new cards like the one I am sharing today.

The Haunted House image is one that I got in a set from TAC, probably 2 years ago.  Used some  Scrapper's Floss around the bottom with the Skull brad.  The little bat guy up in the corner is a dimensional sticker.

Do they even make Scrapper's Floss anymore?  Going to have to look that one up.  That was one of my favorite things to use for a long time, so I bought quite a few colors.  Really fun to scrunch it, curl it, twist it, etc., and it doesn't add too much bulk for mailing. 

Now that I have a few Halloween cards done, I need to move on to making some cute treats for the kiddos and teachers!

Take care & happy stamping,

Michelle

Getting Back to Stamping

Well, it's been over two years that I have gone without stamping.  Hard to believe that I went that long without it!  Looking back, I think that the worst thing I did was sign up to be a "demonstrator" for one of the stamp companies.  The thing that I loved to do so much became work over time, and all the fun got sucked right out of it.  Well, no more.  This girl is going back to stamping for fun!

The other day, while perusing some different sites I came across Operation Write Home (OWH).  I remember them from a few years ago and wow, they have grow!  Such a good cause, and it makes me happy to see it grow to such a success.  I watched one of the videos and really liked Sandy's idea of the "Hall-no-ween" cards.  Basically, it's just using your Halloween images on cards that are not for Halloween.  Got me thinking that a lot of the images that I would normally use for Halloween cards would work really well on pretty much any cards for kids.  With my own hubby being Air Force, and now Air National Guard, we are all too familiar with deployments.  So many service members in the field have kids at home who are missing Mommy or Daddy and would be made very happy just by getting something in the mail from them.  Here are a couple that I have made so far.

The stamps are from a set that I picked up at Michael's (Recollections - My Little Monster).  Adorable little monsters!  On both cards I stamped the monster image on white cardstock, then paper pieced the image instead of coloring it in.  Trying to go with clean cards for OWH so they are easy to mail.  The paper piecing is a great way to add a lot of polish and dimension to a card without adding a lot of bulk.

I am really looking forward to making more cards for this cause.  The timing is perfect too.  I have already made several Halloween cards, don't really need to make any more, but still want to play with all the stuff!

Take care & happy stamping,

Michelle