Belle Papier {pretty paper}

This was the view from my house this morning when I got up at 6:30 with my two littlest boys. They are early risers and never can wait to get their breakfast. The pic does not do it justice. The sky was black adn the sunrise was glowing pure pink passion. Immediately the verse came into my mind… The heavens declare the glory of God. I’m so glad that I got up early.  What a wonderful way to start a Sunday morning.

With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d share my recipe for Wheaten Bread with you. My mom is from Belfast Northern Ireland and I grew up eating Wheaten Bread made by my mom and my Nany (her mother). Wheaten bread is a quick bread made with whole wheat flour, white flour, buttermilk and a few other ingredients. It is so good with strawberry jam or cheese and so easy to make. My husband came home with a cool brand new mixer/blender combo yesterday and I just had to try it out last night. LOVE it! I can tell I’ll be doing LOTS of baking now!

Wheaten Bread Recipe

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups white all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 rounded teaspoons baking powder

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup 2% milk

Mix all ingredients together and spoon into greased and floured 9×5 loaf pan. Bake at 350°F for 50 minutes. I love to double this recipe. It freezes well, although I hardly need to with this large of a family. Enjoy!

Keep it Simple…you know the rest. Not feeling at all well today (bad sinus cold that just keeps getting worse) but wanted to make a card, so….I’m keeping it really simple. And why not? Sometimes…simple is all it takes. Especially with this cool double-sided paper by SEI…it is so pretty, I’m just letting it do all the work. I’m rethinking card design too. Why do we always spiff up the outside and leave the inside so plain. What if the outside is simple but pretty with just a hint of the beautiful inside to come. That is just the concept I wanted to try out here. The card is 5″ square made out of the designer paper. I trimmed off about half an inch from the right side-opening to catch a peek at the cool patterned inside. I took the guide off my tiny corner rounder punch by EKSuccess and repeatedly punched scallops along the edge to spiff it up. A little sponging with SU’s Close to Cocoa Ink around all the edges provided just a hint of definition. My favorite super cool, super BIG rickrack from Starlitstudio’s ebay store was a perfect match. I adhered it to the front of the card. I love these super tropical flowers from Prima and it was a perfect match as well. The brad is a retired K & Company brad that I picked up in the Michael’s dollar bin months ago…wish they stilll made them as they are gorgeous. The flat center seemed to be the perfect spot to add another rub-on. I think I’m turning into a rub-on freak….they are SO fun to work with.

I made this quick card for the Limited Supply Challenge today which was to use up scrap ribbon. Very quick card with hardly any stamping but it was fun to do!

Sparkle Ribbon Card

Supply List:

Fabriolis Notecard, sewing machine, ribbon scraps, gem - Making Memories, Prima Flower

I found this little frame in the garbage pail in my daughter’s room. It seems that my littlest guy (20 months) has a very creative streak. That boy is a Sharpie magnet! I do NOT know where he finds them all! For those of you who may not know…Sharpies are permanent markers. To date he has colored on my stairwell, some carpet, a door, the hardwood floor, a duvet and this little frame. Red seems to be the color of choice but he will also go for green and blue. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers have become my best friend and a real life-saver. My friend Trudee suggested them when I was freaking out one morning and I couldn’t believe they worked….even on the carpet! And so, when I found this frame,  I pulled out my trusty magic eraser and cleaned it up…wouldn’t know it had been there. DD still didn’t want the frame back so I quickly made off with my find. A little paper, a darling flower/brad embellishment from Making Memories, a monogram and some rub-ons, et voila!… a super makeover transformation.

It’s All White Now
…Baby, it’s all right now….sorry I just couldn’t resist, breaking out in song!

Supply List

Designer Paper: One Heart One Mind

Other: frame, flower and brad - Making Memories, ribbon  & white acrylic paint- Michael’s, Ghost Shape Clear monogram - Heidi Swapp, rub-ons - \

Apply rub-ons to frame. Add flower/brad combo with a glue dot. Tie frame with ribbon. Cut patterned paper to size. Apply friends rub-on to F. Paint back of F ghost shape with white acrylic paint. I like the fun look that an uneven coat gives. Attach monogram (wait for paint to dry) with a glue dot. enjoy!

I’m SO excited…I NEVER win anything! But I did this time! I woke up this morning to an e-mail from Linda at Amuse Stamps. I had entered a contest on the Amuse blog after reading about it in Sarah’s Kindred Spirits very cool blog. Thanks so much for the info Sarah! Amuse is releasing the coolest lower case monogram clear stamps for their new spring line. They are SO super cool. If you want to check them out, here is the link to AMUSE NEWS. Linda had posted a challenge to guess which were the most popular and least popular monograms. I thought I’d give it a whirl. The least popular was the easiest to guess. Not too many first or last names starting with that one. I was actually thinking of guessing J for the most popular but someone had already taken that one. hmmmmm…. then it popped inot my mind how many M surnames were on my maternal side. McFal, Milliken, McCurdy, McElrath… lots of M first names out there too. I decided to go with it. Now I just can’t wait to get my new stamps….all 26 of them! Wahoo! You are going to be seeing LOTS of monograms on this blog. Thanks so much Linda! Amuse rocks!

Trying to choose the winners of the WT100 challenge contest was a very difficult job. With so many cards, styles and ideas and great ones at that…the choice was not easy. After much deliberation, Lindsey (Jacksonbelle), Michele (Shel9999) and myself  have finally come up with the winners. We really hated to narrow it down to two…there were so many very wonderful cards to choose from. We were really hoping taht Trudee would be able to help us out but due to a freak lightening storm, her internet connection is still not working. We miss you Trudee! Thanks so much to everyone who played along. I love seeing your work week after week. You can see the winners cards at the following links…

1st place - Cindy Haffner with Carte Postale

2nd place - ctrmom3 with Pottery Barn Friend
Random Draw - fivekids7 with Postale Tag Card

Random Draw - lacyquilter with WT100 Brilliance Resist

Well, I’m sure you have all had one of those days. The kind that nothing seems to go right. Well, this is one of them for me. I was awake most of the ngiht with a terrible sinus headache and cold. I get up just after 6 to start the ball rolling. With 5 kids in the house and 4 of them to get out to school, a challenge to post, a card to make, there is so much to do. To make matters worse…we are out of French Vanilla…my morning drug of choice. There had been some freezing rain just after 5 so my oldest boy who is 16, checked the bus lines internet voice recording. Highschool cancelled, two hour bus delay for the closer Elementary School. OK…well, maybe can squeeze in a little time to stamp. I do need a card for today’s challenge. The next couple hours fly by and as I’m finally getting some time to finish my card, I see the bus stop at the end of the lane from my window. What on earth? I phone the school…no delays! There was an error on the web-site, school has started. Yikes! We have no lunches made, I have to get 5 kids ready to take the four oldest to school. Four of us are still in our pyjamas! I did finally manage to get them all off to school but needless to say, the challenge was late. I did manage to stop by Tim Horton’s for some of their French Vanilla though ….hopefully that will make me a little more functional and improve the rest of the day!

100% Wonderful

I made this card this morning for today’s SCS WT101 challenge. The Way’s to Use it Challenge is posted by myself every Thursday morning and is a challenge to find way’s to use a certain product or idea in your papercraft design work. Today’s challenge was to use sponges or sponge daubers and you can play along here. This card has all the edges of each layer sponged with close to cocoa ink. I love the way sponging seems to give depth and a little bit of aging or character to paper designs. I just had to use my new Making Memories paper again today. Using it up will clean off my desk a little, right? I love how it has a distressed vintage look to it right of the bat and makes it the perfect style to go with a little bit of sponging. The image was stamped with my favorite Petal Prints SU stamp set. It is so flexible with many styles, it is the floral set I always seem to reach for. The flowers are over-stamped with By Definition…a retired SU background stamp that I love. The edges of the So Saffron layer are distressed with a little Heidi Swapp edge distresser I have….it was so inexpensive and does the job perfectly. The bottom edge was scalloped by cutting a strip off the bottom of my dotted panel (seam is covered with the striped paper) and repeatly punching and sliding the slit punch along the edge to create scallops.

 Supply List;

Cardstock: Close to Cocoa, So Saffron, Whisper White - SU

Patterned Paper: Making Memories

Stamps: Petal Prints, Stamp of Authenticity, Warm Words, By Definition - SU

Other: ribbon - Michael’s, eyelets - Making Memories, Crop-a-dile - We R Memory Keepers, sewing mahine, slit punch & Hodgepodge Hardware - SU

I haven’t made a sketch challenge card in a long time so I managed to create this while the little boys were watching Cars this morning. My stamping desk is in the corner of the family room. Great for keeping an eye on my little guys, but not so great for keeping little fingers out of my goodies. Joshua was the absolute worst! For some strange reason, he developed a taste for rubbah! Everytime I turned around, he was chewing on my stamps! He actually chewed the rubber off quite a few and my very favorite “celebrate” stamp from SU’s Everyday Flexible Phrases set disappeared never to be seen again. I was so grateful to SU that they made an exception and replaced that tiny bit of rubber for me. This is such a great flexible sketch design…one I have made many times. If you want to play along….here is the link.

This is some more new paper I just couldn’t resist by Making Memories. Having two little boys in the house makes for needing some boy birthday cards on hand. All edges were sponged with Chocolate Chip ink. I just love adding sewing to my cards. So much so that I rarely put my machine away. It is such a quick, inexpensive way to add interest, movement and texture to your design. For this little plane, I stamped it onto the patterned paper and embossed it with black embossing powder and then cut it out. After marking in pencil where I wanted it to go on my design, I then freestyle stitched a little “jet stream” across the panel. The plane was then adhered with some double sided foam tape I picked up at the dollar store. Because it is not acid free, I would not recommend using it in a scrapbook, but for cardmaking….it is a perfect and economical solution. It is amazing how just a little elevation on your card can make it pop. for the little brad circle design element I just punched out a circle and marked evenly where I wanted the brads spaced. I then held the circle onto my card and pierced the holes for the brads. I love how the circle echoes the shape of the circular sentiment and also draws attention to the tiny celebrate word in the corner.

Supply List:

Cardstock: Ballet Blue, Kraft - SU

Designer Paper: Making Memories

Stamps: Toy Box, Circle of Friendship, Everyday Flexible Phrases, Fontastic - SU

Ink: Ballet Blue, black, versamark

Other: circle punch, Crop-a-dile, brads, eyelets, ribbon - Michael’s, sewing machine, black embossing powder

Every time I go to clean the incredible mess that is my stamp desk, I can’t seem to restrain myself from making a card with the scraps that I find. Hence, it rarely gets very clean! This card just kind of fell together. A pink scrap of One Heart One Mind paper from February’s DDgallery and shocking…the acetate daisy stamped piece was still there from my very first month on the team, June’s gallery. Even the flower, ribbon and corsage pin were found on my desk. So really! I DID clean something up.

Good For You

Supply List:

Cardstock: Black, Whisper White - SU

Designer Paper: One Heart One Mind

Stamps: Petal Prints

Ink: White Stazon, Pink Passion, More Mustard - SU

Other: sentiment tag - Making Memories, Acetate - Staples, Corsage Pin and ribbon - Michael’s, Prima Flower, brads